Why is this important? It is important because until we fully understand the intellectual underpinnings of the radical right, of how pervasive the presence of anti-federalism and anti-liberalism is, we will not be able to defend ourselves against those who would uproot every element of the liberal social safety net, sabotage every effort to make our nation and world more humane and civilized and eliminate those elements of our society that make us truly one nation.
Irving Kristol has been in at the birth of the radical right. He was an essayist who went from job to job always being able to find a group of wealthy intellectuals who would underwrite his latest reactionary diatribe. There were many inconsistancies and contradictions in his life. He believed religion was important but as a non-observant Jew noted that he was "always a believer" but could not tell you in what! So much for theology. As an early Trotskyite he moved on to anti-liberalism, a philosophical position that, according to him, led to "moral anarchy." He believed the "common man" was of greater moral character that his intellectual friends but believed that his G.I. buddies in WWII were inclined to "loot, rape and murder" were they not prevented by military discipline. But, as always, we are to believe he was above such beastly impulses. So much for humility.
The one constant in his life was an antipathy for liberalism. That was the consistant cash cow, though, as a young communist, he had to know that liberalism was the arch-enemy of communism. One must never allow the truth to stand in the way of a free meal. So that was a theme that always enabled him to find a rich group of patrons and keep this champion of the common man safely cloistered in his office and encircled by those lesser beings: his wealthy patrons. It is enough to remind one of the line from Edna St. Vincent Millay's Aria de Capo that goes: "I love humanity...its people I cannot stand."
A part of me wants to extend my condolences to his son, William, but in the light of the damage his brand of misguided and distorted, when not just plain mean and elitist, conservatism has inflicted on the world, I just can't find it in me. I guess coming of age in the early days of the neo-con era has hardened me. Whatever... The bottom line is that, though his lips are silent, his writings and his son continute to spew forth the self-contradictory and intellectually dishonest venom of anti-liberalism into this century. Kosacks...ignore at your peril!!!