Irving Kristol's Legacy

I am sure I read a lot of Irving Kristol's pieces in the Wall Street Journal since the late 1970s. However, I confess to not having fully understood his immense network of influential colleagues, until reading James Q. Wilson's editorial/obituary in yesterdays Journal.

Reading some excerpts from Kristol's Journal columns over the years, it's easy to see how he was so far ahead of others in critiquing the roots of LBJ's "Great Society."

Bill Buckley, who also died recently, was perhaps the more public face of the conservative movement. But Kristol seems to have attacked modern liberalism on more philosophically fundamental bases. I sometimes envy his son, Bill, for having had two such eminent, thoughtful writers as parents. Gertrude Himmelfarb, Irving Kristol's wife, authored a wonderful book some years ago, "The New History, and The Old."

I suppose because of Irving Kristols advanced age, and lack of active writing in recent years, and my own more tenuous connection with his earlier work, I can't truthfully say I will miss him.

Rather, I think I'm the beneficiary of both the work of his intellectual and philosophical progeny, and the modern blogging world that allows so many of them to continue his work in ever more approachable and effective ways.