Remembering Irving Kristol

The New Criterion

Over the past two years we have lost the two intellectual giants of modern conservatism: first, William F. Buckley in February 2008 and then Irving Kristol this past September. In between, other influential figures have fallen as well, including Jack Kemp, Richard John Neuhaus, Paul Weyrich, Robert Novak, and Samuel Huntington, to mention the most prominent of them. This is why hectoring declarations from some quarters about the “death of conservatism” right now cut rather too close to the bone.

Buckley and Kristol, in their ideas and personal styles, remind us of the variety and contradictions that give strength and broad appeal to American conservatism. Buckley was the father of modern conservatism, but Kristol its godfather. Buckley gave birth to a movement, but Kristol guided it into maturity and showed it how to win. Buckley was born to conservatism; Kristol fought through countless obstacles before arriving there. Buckley was aristocratic, Kristol relentlessly bourgeois. Buckley was Catholic, Kristol Jewish. Buckley went to Yale, Kristol to City College. Buckley was sui generis, Kristol was everyman. Buckley wrote books, many of them, and was even an accomplished novelist, while Kristol was an essayist of a high order. Buckley had a television program, a long-running one, Kristol a column in the Wall Street Journal. Buckley attacked the premises of modern liberalism while Kristol exposed its destructive consequences. They pursued a common goal, to keep America strong and vital, but sought to arrive there through widely divergent paths.

Both men founded magazines, created ancillary organizations to spread the conservative message, and recruited influential allies into the war of ideas. Buckley did it first in the 1950s when he founded National Review and Young Americans for Freedom, served as the first president of the Intercollegiate Studies Institute, and later added Firing Line to his stable of enterprises. Kristol followed suit in the 1960s and 1970s with The Public Interest, The National Interest, and the Institute for Educational Affairs. Kristol, of course, had also been active during the 1950s as the editor in London of Encounter magazine, although it was very far from being his own enterprise. Both men also had to raise money for their ventures, which brought them into contact with business leaders, potential investors, and philanthropic foundations.

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