A Retrospective on Irving Kristol's Neo-Conservatism

I recently came across James Q. Wilson's review, in the Wall Street Journal, of The Neoconservative Persuasion: Selected Essays, 1942-2009 by the late Irving Kristol, edited by his widow, Gertrude Himmelfarb (Basic, 390 pages, $29.95). Wilson provides a nice overview of Kristol's contribution with these passages,


"Neoconservatism, as the title of this collection suggests, is a "persuasion," not an ideology. The word comes from Marvin Meyers's book "The Jacksonian Persuasion" (1957), in which Meyers defines a persuasion as a "half-formulated moral perspective involving emotional commitment." Kristol liked "tendency," "impulse" and "cast of mind" as well. As a long-time contributor to the Public Interest, I think any of these words is right. How else can you bring together into a happy working relationship, as Kristol did, Daniel Bell (a democratic socialist), Pat Moynihan (a lifelong Democrat), Martin Feldstein (a conservative economist) and Robert Solow (a liberal one)?

What such figures had in common was a belief that it is a good idea to know more about proposed or enacted policies than can be inferred from an ideology or extracted from journalism. Such a belief amounted to an argument for social science, or at least for the kind of social science that tries to understand the facts that seem to demand action, the alternatives to government action, and the chances that a policy will have benefits that exceed its costs."

Put that way, it hardly even seems that the movement has a partisan component, so much as a rigorous analytical one. Wilson continued with these passages,

"Perhaps the best place to start reading "The Neoconservative Persuasion" is one of its last articles, "An Autobiographical Memoir." Published in 1995, it is Kristol's summary of the people and events that shaped him. Two in particular stand out: the literary critic Lionel Trilling (whom Kristol calls a skeptical liberal) and the political philosopher and legendary teacher Leo Strauss (whom he calls a skeptical conservative). Trilling explained in "The Liberal Imagination" (1950) that the great modern writers (T.S. Eliot, William Butler Yeats, Franz Kafka, William Faulkner) portrayed human behavior in ways that refuted the claims of socialists that we could all become brothers. Strauss restored the importance of ancient thinkers as a way of understanding ourselves.



Trilling thought that great novelists and poets understood people better than social scientists, while Strauss refused to accept the Enlightenment view that "the truth will make you free." Strauss believed, Kristol emphasizes, that the truth would make some people free but enslave others if that truth were not anchored in prudence and natural law. As Kristol reminds us, Strauss, contrary to the caricature that has emerged in recent years, was not a right-wing ideologue. As a student in two of his classes, I can attest that Strauss never uttered a word in support of or in opposition to any public policy."

I liked the reference to Trilling and his thoughts about novelists, as well as Strauss' that allowing truth to be a fluid concept can leave it abused in the hands of tyrants, enslaving others.

Wilson made this interesting observation on Kristol's departure from what was a narrower base of conservative thinking prior to his conversion,


"Kristol decided that the success of neoconservatism arose from its having enlarged "the conservative vision to include moral philosophy, political philosophy, and even religious thought," thereby making this persuasion "more politically sensible as well as politically appealing." Perhaps, he added, this has helped make the Republican Party more interested "in the pursuit of happiness by ordinary folk" rather than just in the success of the business community."


This last passage reminds me of something Glenn Beck says repeatedly which I believe his detractors confuse as mere religiosity. Beck notes that American Progressives talk and act as if our rights come from government. Thus, when they establish new 'rights,' such as FDR's prospective additional 'bill of rights,' or health care, these Progressives attempt to make the source of the rights to be the federal government.


Beck notes that the fundamental belief of our Founders was that rights to "life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness" were "endowed by our Creator." Specifically, the Declaration of Independence states,


"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed...."


Kristol, too, before Beck, seemed to realize instinctively that a sterile, economic brand of conservatism wasn't ever going to fire the passions and imagination of the broad American political middle. Instead, arousing passions by appealing to concerns that other men will style themselves the creators of rights and, thus, the arbiters of how those rights are granted, and to whom, has made the conservative movement far more accessible.

For example, the Tea Party movement is at least as much about protecting individual liberties as it is about the federal- and state and local- government spending within its means, and restraining itself from excessive taxation. Something Kristol would not doubt have understood.

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.