Irving Kristol?
The polemicist who was the godfather of neoconservatism
Irving Kristol?
1920–2009
Irving Kristol famously called himself a liberal who had been “mugged by reality.” Beginning in the 1960s, he helped transform that disaffection into the powerful political movement known as neoconservatism. Kristol’s advocacy of anti-communism, small government, and traditional values helped fuel the Reagan revolution of 1980 and was later credited with supplying the intellectual underpinnings of the George W. Bush administration.
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
As a teenager in New York City during the Great Depression, said the Associated Press, Kristol “was at first similar to so many other children of Jewish immigrants.” He was “passionate about books, allied with the working class,” and outraged by capitalism’s collapse. At City College, he was briefly a Trotskyist. Then, serving in the infantry during World War II, he found himself “surprised by his sympathy for the military establishment.” Kristol soon became a fervent anti-communist and, in a celebrated 1952 Commentary essay, compared liberals who defended communists’ civil liberties to a businessman paying “a handsome salary to someone pledged to his liquidation.” With such sharp, polemical observations, Kristol established himself as a cultural critic. In 1965, he co-founded the quarterly journal The Public Interest, which became the launching pad of neoconservatism.
The term itself, coined by socialist Michael Harrington, was originally derogatory, said The Washington Post. But Kristol seized on it to describe a broad-based movement dedicated to countering “the foment of the Vietnam War and the rise of the counterculture.” Kristol spoused middle-class values and traditional morality, and was suspicious of paternalistic government intervention, which he said often backfired. Thus, he rejected many of Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society programs as expensive, ineffective, and divisive. He touted supply-side economics, which held that “tax cuts would lead to widespread financial prosperity.” He also advocated a strong military.
Kristol’s philosophy found favor in an America shaken by Vietnam and the malaise of the 1970s, said the London Guardian, and he “exerted an extraordinary influence” through a growing “network of magazines, think tanks, and grant-giving bodies.” Many of his disciples—Elliott Abrams, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and William Bennett among them—were central figures in the Reagan administration. Later, a “second generation” of Kristol adherents, led by Paul Wolfowitz and Richard Perle, dedicated itself to “the maintenance of American international hegemony,” helping to lay the groundwork for the invasion of Iraq.
“Sharp, aphoristic, and assertive,” Kristol was hardly doctrinaire, said The New York Times. Though staunchly pro-business, “he criticized America’s commercial class for upholding greed and selfishness as positive values.” He once berated Republicans as “the stupid party” for having “not much more on their minds than balanced budgets and opposition to the welfare state.” He felt that “religion provided a necessary constraint to anti-social, anarchical impulses.” Yet when asked if he believed in God, Kristol responded, “That gets too complicated. The word ‘God’ confuses everything.” Reviewing his shifting allegiances to various political doctrines, from neo-Marxist to neoliberal to neoconservative, he concluded, “I’m going to end up a neo. Just neo, that’s all. Neo-dash-nothing.”
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
Kristol’s survivors include his wife, cultural historian Gertrude Himmelfarb, and son William, editor of the neoconservative magazine The Weekly Standard.
Create an account with the same email registered to your subscription to unlock access.
-
What would it be like in jail for Trump if he's convicted?
Today's Big Question The Secret Service has begun grappling with how to protect a former president behind bars
By Rafi Schwartz, The Week US Published
-
How much can you save shopping secondhand?
The Explainer Many Americans are buying pre-owned items to counteract the effects of inflation
By Becca Stanek, The Week US Published
-
Downtown St. Louis is in a real estate 'doom loop'
Under the Radar The city is ripe with abandoned buildings and vacant lots, with its real estate market in dire straits
By Justin Klawans, The Week US Published
-
Arizona court reinstates 1864 abortion ban
Speed Read The law makes all abortions illegal in the state except to save the mother's life
By Rafi Schwartz, The Week US Published
-
Trump, billions richer, is selling Bibles
Speed Read The former president is hawking a $60 "God Bless the USA Bible"
By Peter Weber, The Week US Published
-
The debate about Biden's age and mental fitness
In Depth Some critics argue Biden is too old to run again. Does the argument have merit?
By Grayson Quay Published
-
How would a second Trump presidency affect Britain?
Today's Big Question Re-election of Republican frontrunner could threaten UK security, warns former head of secret service
By Harriet Marsden, The Week UK Published
-
'Rwanda plan is less a deterrent and more a bluff'
Instant Opinion Opinion, comment and editorials of the day
By The Week UK Published
-
Remembering former US Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, the first woman on the Supreme Court
the explainer O'Connor played a pivotal role on the bench and was regarded as the one of the powerful women of her era
By Theara Coleman, The Week US Published
-
Henry Kissinger dies aged 100: a complicated legacy?
Talking Point Top US diplomat and Nobel Peace Prize winner remembered as both foreign policy genius and war criminal
By Harriet Marsden, The Week UK Last updated
-
Trump’s rhetoric: a shift to 'straight-up Nazi talk'
Why everyone's talking about Would-be president's sinister language is backed by an incendiary policy agenda, say commentators
By The Week UK Published