Matthew Cooper on Irving Kristol:
Other journals and institutions would try to reform liberalism from within--The Washington Monthly and The New Republic, where I worked. The now much-dismissed Democratic Leadership Council comes to mind, too. But the first broad strokes of a serious criticism of modern liberalism were painted by Kristol. You don't need to agree with everything he wrote--or certainly with where his disciples took the country--to admire his work on this sad day.
Brad DeLong on Irving Kristol:
Irving Kristol explains where the economics articles he published in The Public Interest came from:Among the core social scientists around The Public Interest there were no economists.... This explains my own rather cavalier attitude toward the budget deficit and other monetary or fiscal problems. The task, as I saw it, was to create a new majority, which evidently would mean a conservative majority, which came to mean, in turn, a Republican majority - so political effectiveness was the priority, not the accounting deficiencies of government...
As always, the "serious criticism of modern liberalism" is that it is not conservatism.
3 comments:
"so political effectiveness was the priority, not the accounting deficiencies of government..."
If only there were a word, like "propaganda," to describe the promulgation of political half-truths, whole un-truths, baseless predictions and warnings, partisan bullshit presented as "analysis," fict--
Hey, wait a minute. There is! It's "propaganda." It's what the right has instead of a theory of society and governance. Good work, Irv.
So Irving's philosophy was to grab as much power as possible, and never mind what they would do with the power.
Sounds like he accomplished his goal.
So many stalwarts of the right have died the past year or two. But that's okay, we have Jonah Goldberg, K-Lo, and Andy McCarthy to take their place.
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