Irving Kristol, Godfather of Neoconservatism, is Dead

[tekisui]

Source: The Raw Story

Irving Kristol, the political writer and publisher called the "godfather" of neo-conservatism, has died. He was 89.

Editors at The Weekly Standard said Kristol died Friday in Washington.

He had been a radical in his youth but eventually rejected liberalism. He co-founded an important conservative journal, The Public Interest, and wrote several books, including "Neo-Conservatism: The Autobiography of An Idea."

His son is the influential conservative William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard.

http://rawstory.com/blog/2009/09/irving-krisol-godfather-of-neoconservatism-is-dead/

[anigbrowl]

1. It's a sad thing when you depart leaving the world less well off than when you arrived.

[Raine]

39. Especially when you played a huge part

in making it worse. :-(

[Journeyman]

2. My momma told me to say nothing but good about the dead. . .

Irving Kristol is dead.

Good.

[malaise]

33. +1 n/t

[naaman fletcher]

3. I hate the neo-cons..

Although I disagree with them, I can respect the Goldwater libertarian types, and some are even my friends. But the war-mongering a-holes that run the GOP now can all rot where their founder Kristol hopefully is at this moment.

[Drunken Irishman]

4. Sad for his family, I guess.

[JVS]

29. Which is a good thing. His kid's an asshole

[nadinbrzezinski]

5. RIP, we are better than that

Oh and radical in his youth, he was a Trostkyte.

[tekisui]

6. I didn't know that about him being a Trostky. Interesting.

[jonnyblitz]

8. the core group that started the neocon movement were all

trotskyists.

[nadinbrzezinski]

11. And it is one piece of the history that is

always conveniently forgotten. Hell, they were never able to join the ACP because they were Trotskytes. I wonder if that soured them with the left but the American Communist Party back in the day did get some funding from Moscow and ... they sneered on Trotskytes.

Lets just say, for the people who do not know the history, that Stalin did not like Trotsky, and was behind his murder in Cuernavaca.

[JVS]

27. Thus proving Stalin's suspicion of Trotsky and his followers to be correct!

[pnorman]

17. Check this out:

[e-mail]

From cafeterias to cocktail parties to the pages of important magazines and journals, few groups of friends have argued ideas so passionately and so publicly as the writers and critics known as the New York Intellectuals. Rising from America's working class they went on to wield great influence in the second half of the twentieth century. ARGUING THE WORLD is the portrait of four members of this group: Irving Kristol, Irving Howe, Daniel Bell, and Nathan Glazer. It is the story of a lifelong political argument among brilliant and engaging individuals who came of age as radicals at the City College of New York during the Great Depression and then journeyed across the political spectrum.

Tracing their rise to prominence as political and cultural critics in post-war America through magazines and journals like Partisan Review and Commentary the film charts their path through the controversies of the Cold War and Joe McCarthy's reign of terror, their clash with the tidal forces of the New Left on college campuses in the 60s, and the fights which pulled them apart in the midst of the conservative backlash hailed by Ronald Reagan's presidency in the eighties.Driven apart by their responses to these historical events, by the nineties the four found themselves at odds with one another. Irving Kristol became influential in America's resurgent conservative movement, Nathan Glazer, a forceful critic of liberal social policy, while Daniel Bell fought to defend a besieged liberalism. Until his death in 1993, Irving Howe, ever on the political margins, endured as a key voice of the radical Left.
.
.
.
http://www.pbs.org/arguing/

Here's the DVD: http://www.amazon.com/Arguing-World-Alan-Rosenberg/dp/B0006Z2NKY/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1253307567&sr=1-1

pnorman

[question everything]

7. RIP Irvine Kristol

For better or for worse, you did leave your mark on this world and on this country.

[izquierdista]

14. Too bad it's a skid mark

[BeyondGeography]

9. So is his "movement"

Had a good run there, Irving. Bye.

[Zomby Woof]

10. Fuck yeah

And yes, I am pissing on his rotting corpse. People like him can't be dead enough to suit me.

[Hawkeye-X]

12. Let me try to see if I can bring a tear..

Nope, can't do it.

[cliffordu]

13. Bummer.

[Matt_in_STL]

15. Well this sucks

"His son is the influential conservative William Kristol, editor of The Weekly Standard."

I had a two-for-one coupon but nobody asked.

[Odin2005]

16. May he burn in hell.

[SidneyCarton]

18. One less, one less...

[BurtWorm]

19. I wish he were still alive and neoconservatism was dead.

[Sebastian Doyle]

20. This makes me feel really sad

...for Satan, and everyone else in Hell, that is. :evilfrown:

Too bad Irving couldn't have taken his son and every other traitorous piece of shit who ever signed a PNAC document down there with him.

[JVS]

28. LOL

[driver8]

36. I hate to laugh, but I agree!! n/t

[charlie]

21. Fuck him

Dead or alive, he and his hellspawn and his deranged wife drove the country off into the weeds. He's a goddamned monster. Fuck him twice.

[invictus]

22. +1

[jeffbr]

23. 80g of black tea costs USD15.00 in China

[texasleo]

24. Hey Irving, How does Hitler's cock taste?

[BuyingThyme]

25. Not to be rude, but I had no idea he was still alive.

[JVS]

26. Have fun in hell, douchebag!

[KG]

30. rot in hell, douchenozzle

[BootinUp]

31. He sure spawned a lot of evil little followers in his time

just stating the facts.

[eppur_se_muova]

32. "Godfather" -- now there's a fine double entendre.

Or maybe it really was a single.

[hlthe2b]

34. I can normally dig really deep and find something nice to say...

about the dead..














Nope... got nothing...

[whatchamacallit]

35. Good. n/t

[UTUSN]

37. So does Billy "William" KRISTOL get some funeral time off?!1 n/t

[struggle4progress]

38. Irving Kristol gives inconsistent accounts of his supposed "youthful radicalism"

Sometimes he asserts that associating with leftists had been very important to him:

... I .. graduated .. City College in .. 1940, and the honor I most prized was the fact that I was a member in good standing of the Young People's Socialist League (Fourth International). This organization was commonly; and correctly, designated as Trotskyist ...
From Memoirs of a Trotskyist
by Irving Kristol
http://www.pbs.org/arguing/nyintellectuals_krystol_2.html

Elsewhere, he asserts that associating with leftists never was very important to him:

... I have never felt myself to be an "ex-Trotskyist" in the sense that some people conceive of themselves as "ex-communists." The experience was never that important to me, and my rightward drift commenced promptly upon its termination ...
My cold war
The National Interest
Spring, 1993
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m2751/is_n31/ai_13991708/

Thus, Kristol's supposed "Trotskyite background" apparently consists mainly of discussions (at a college snackbar) of some material he has read, but without any associated praxis: in particular, he seems never actually to involve himself in any real efforts to organize the working class. And the reason is simply, of course, that he has no real respect for ordinary people: he is attracted to the snackbar discussions because he perceives there an atmosphere of intellectual snobbery; when he later serves in the vast citizens' army during WWII, his reaction is that he does not like his fellow enlistees