Irving Kristol: Neo-Godfather

Students and admirers called him "The Little Giant." Small in frame, Irving Kristol lived large. His personal journey symbolized the history of ideas in his era. Designated the "godfather" of neoconservatism, Kristol informed the debates of his times. What times they were.

Kristol defined a "neoconservative" as a liberal who had been "mugged by reality." As a student of City College, he participated in the intellectual bloodletting of the past century's bloodiest decades. He lunched with the Trotskyites -- the faction that produced many of communism's most searing critics. Kristol seemed a conventional liberal for a while, then came the neocon rise that gave him his broadest visibility. He worked on magazines once considered high-brow, and was associated in one way or another with Commentary, Encounter, The Public Interest, and The National Interest. He wrote regularly for The Wall Street Journal.

As editor and co-founder, he made The Public Interest an antidote to ideology, as its roster of writers suggests: Daniel Bell, Nathan Glazer, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Charles Murray, Thomas Sowell, James Q. Wilson, Glenn Loury, Abigail Thernstrom, Michael Novak, Aaron Wildavsky, Samuel Huntington, Seymour Martin Lipset, James C. Coleman, Edward Banfield, Chester Finn, Alfred Kahn, Leon Kass, Brigitte Berger, William Bennett, and Diane Ravitch. A few years ago The Public Interest ceased publication, as did Partisan Review. Intelligence, it seems, is no longer a moral obligation. Cable does not fill a void as much as it reflects one.

Many years ago a Kristol protégé recommended to us three books Kristol cited as crucial to understanding the modern age: Denis de Rougement's Love and the Western World, Cesar Grana's Bohemian Versus Bourgeois, and a third whose title our friend forgot. The ones we read proved good enough. Kristol's Two Cheers for Capitalism bears a perfect title. Capitalism remains unsurpassed for generating wealth and alleviating poverty. Humanity needs something more. Lesser minds subsequently added a third cheer, thereby signifying a movement's descent into mere economics, a source of our current despair.

Kristol was a joy to be around. Thoughtful conservatism once welcomed wit and repartee. Its face was not florid. Cheerfulness, it knew, was the proper response to tragedy.

Kristol died this month at 89, the happiest of warriors. The disposition he represented when he was at his best already seems a relic from antiquity.