What Moved Him

by digby

A towering neo-conservative intellectual died yesterday — William’s Dad. He lived to a ripe old age having had a long and prosperous life. He was a very important man in American politics, having been among those who provided the intellectual purpose and fundamental principles of modern conservatism.

Here’s something he wrote in 1993, to give you and idea about what animated him and, therefore, the movement which carried forth his ideas:

For me, then, “neo-conservatism” was an experience of moral, intellectual, and spiritual liberation. I no longer had to pretend to believe–what in my heart I could no longer believe–that liberals were wrong because they subscribe to this or that erroneous opinion on this or that topic. No–liberals were wrong, liberals are wrong, because they are liberals. What is wrong with liberalism is liberalism–a metaphysics and a mythology that is woefully blind to human and political reality. Becoming a neo-conservative, then, was the high point of my cold war.

It is a cold war that, for the last twenty-five years, has engaged my attention and energy, and continues to do so. There is no “after the Cold War” for me. So far from having ended, my cold war has increased in intensity, as sector after sector of American life has been ruthlessly corrupted by the liberal ethos. It is an ethos that aims simultaneously at political and social collectivism on the one hand, and moral anarchy on the other. It cannot win, but it can make us all losers. We have, I do believe, reached a critical turning point in the history of the American democracy. Now that the other “Cold War” is over, the real cold war has begun. We are far less prepared for this cold war, far more vulnerable to our enemy, than was the case with our victorious war against a global communist threat. We are, I sometimes feel, starting from ground zero, and it is a conflict I shall be passing on to my children and grandchildren. But it is a far more interesting cold war–intellectually interesting, spiritually interesting–than the war we have so recently won, and I rather envy those young enough for the opportunities they will have to participate in it.

I guess it’s serendipitous that could be synthesized so well into the well worn grooves of primitive racism and tribal hatred isn’t it? Let no one say that Rush Limbaugh and his ilk are anti-intellectual. All they have to do is point to Irving Kristol as their mentor.

He had a major impact on American life of the past thirty years. Brad Delong points out this quote to illustrate just one small corner of his influence:

“Among the core social scientists around The Public Interest there were no economists…. This explains my own rather cavalier attitude toward the budget deficit and other monetary or fiscal problems. The task, as I saw it, was to create a new majority, which evidently would mean a conservative majority, which came to mean, in turn, a Republican majority – so political effectiveness was the priority, not the accounting deficiencies of government…”

Same as it ever was.

And he’s greatly admired for all those things:

Former Vice President Dick Cheney was a longtime admirer and former President George W. Bush, whose administration was heavily populated by neoconservatives, awarded Kristol a Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2002, praising him as “a wide-ranging thinker whose writings have helped transform America’s political landscape.”

On Friday night, Bush called Kristol “an intellectual pioneer who advanced the conservative movement.”

Yes, he did.

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