Irving Kristol

The godfather of neoconservatism has passed away.

In its obituary, the New York Times writes:

For more than six decades, beginning in 1942, when he and other recent graduates of City College founded Enquiry: A Journal of Independent Radical Thought, his life revolved around magazines. Besides The Public Interest, Mr. Kristol published, edited and wrote for journals of opinion like Commentary, Encounter, The New Leader, The Reporter and The National Interest.

All were “little magazines,” with limited circulations, but Mr. Kristol valued the quality of his readership more than the quantity. “With a circulation of a few hundred,” he once said, “you could change the world.”

Among the collections of Kristol’s articles (he wrote no books) is Two Cheers for Capitalism (1978), a title that captures the genial style of his mind.

My only contact with Kristol was a letter I wrote to him in 1994, in which I pointed out that conservatives were surrending to liberalism in every way that counted.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at September 18, 2009 05:12 PM | Send