Irving Kristol (January 22, 1920 – September 18, 2009) was an American columnist, journalist, and writer who was dubbed the "godfather of neo-conservatism." As the founder, editor, and contributor to various magazines, he played an influential role in the intellectual and political culture of the last half-century; after his death he was described by The Daily Telegraph as being "perhaps the most consequential public intellectual of the latter half of the 20th century."
Kristol was affiliated with the Congress for Cultural Freedom; he wrote in Commentary magazine from 1947 to 1952, under the editor Elliot Cohen (not to be confused with Elliot A. Cohen the writer of today's magazine); co-founder (with Stephen Spender) of the British-based Encounter from 1953 to 1958; editor of The Reporter from 1959 to 1960; executive vice-president of the publishing house Basic Books from 1961 to 1969; Henry Luce Professor of Urban Values at New York University from 1969 to 1987; and co-founder and co-editor (first with Daniel Bell and then Nathan Glazer) of The Public Interest from 1965 to 2002. He was the founder and publisher of The National Interest from 1985 to 2002. Following Ramparts' publication of information showing Central Intelligence Agency funding of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, which was widely reported elsewhere, Kristol left in the late 1960s and became affiliated with the American Enterprise Institute.
"Democracy does not guarantee equality of conditions - it only guarantees equality of opportunity."
"You have to know one big thing and stick with it. The leaders who had one very big idea and one very big commitment. This permitted them to create something. Those are the ones who leave a legacy."
"No modern nation has ever constructed a foreign policy that was acceptable to its intellectuals"
"The really difficult moral issues arise, not from a confrontation of good and evil, but from a collision between two goods"
"People need religion. It's a vehicle for a moral tradition. A crucial role. Nothing can take its place."
"Being frustrated is disagreeable, but the real disasters in life begin when you get what you want"
Leader McConnell Receives AEI's Irving Kristol Award... "I appreciate, in particular, the weight of an award named for such a prolific mind as Irving Kristol's ... "By any definition, Irving ...
Neoconservatism has its roots in the 1940s, when figures such as Irving Kristol were students at City College, where, amid a celebrated interim of intellectual ferment, neoconservative thinking can be ...
Neoconservatism has its roots in the 1940s, when figures such as Irving Kristol were students at City College, where, amid a celebrated interim of intellectual ferment, neoconservative thinking can be ...
P olitically, I’m a bit of a wanderer . I grew up in a progressive family and was a proud democratic socialist through college ...Wilson, AllanBloom, Thomas Sowell, Jeane Kirkpatrick, and Irving Kristol, the right was just more intellectually alive ... .
... that the Reagan factional coalition had been changing in the 1970s, with the moderate Left being “mugged by reality” to move to the Right under Irving Kristol, and others especially on foreign policy.
The Neocon movement was began by Irving Kristol whose son Bill Kristol even spoke at one of our conferences ... I even helped Bill Kristol launch his magazine, taking the back cover for months ... Kristol ...
And the memorandum was only one of many signs of that developing class war in the 1970s, a larger process working both inside and outside government (including what Irving Kristol called an ...
In 1978, the respected neo-conservative Irving Kristol wrote a book called “Two Cheers for Capitalism,” arguing that capitalism was essentially valuable but also flawed. The same could be said for democracy ....
As its founder, Irving Kristol, put it, this faction was “mugged by reality” and moved from left to right in the 1970s, especially on foreign policy under Norman Podhoretz.
A review of When the ClockBroke... The neocons—Irving Kristol, Norman Podhoretz, and several other leading American-Jewish intellectuals—shared the paleocons’ antipathy to the radical left and the welfare state ... Bush to go to war ... QuilletteJamie Palmer ... .
In 1978, the respected neo-conservative Irving Kristol wrote a book called “Two Cheers for Capitalism,” arguing that capitalism was essentially valuable but also flawed. The same could be said for democracy ....
Rutland Herald
22 Aug 2024
Rutland Herald
22 Aug 2024