May he rest in peace, alongside all the other people his ideology sent to early graves.

It’s not whether you’ll live or die, because everyone dies. It’s how you choose to live. His ideology made life a whole lot harder.

I wonder how we will respond, with the same vitriol as the Right showed on Kennedys death, or with a touch more class?

I tried to find a middle ground between class and vitriol. :-)

Let’s face it, the entire world (especially brown people sitting on our oil) would be a lot better off had Irving Kristol never been born. I’m not trying to make a comment that Michelle Malkin and her posse will pick up as evidence of the angry, rude and classless left, but it is the truth.

It’s not the godfatheriness so much as the actual fatheriness that rankles.

I’m curious how many tributes will acknowledge his Trotskyite past?

Lol @ ’still at 29.’

I’m sure the Trotskyites would prefer no one mention it.

Brown People and Nuns in South America should be happy the strong NeoCon anti Commie at all costs winking at Death Squads killed allot of people.
On the other hand it did turn most of South America Left:)
Irving built his house on sand.

What happened to him what made him crazy?

I have to confess, the only reason I posted about Kristol is that I wanted to use that line. :)

It’s not the neocon association that is disturbing about this man but his zionist rants.

Kristol also co-founded Institute for Educational Affairs with William E. Simon in 1978, “financial resources directed toward sympathetic scholars and the research projects of think tanks.” According to John Saloma, the Institute for Educational Affairs has dispensed more than $2.5 million in grants to academics since 1979. 23

CNP’s William Simon [CFR] was chairman of the Nicaraguan Freedom Fund. He is or was on the board of AmeriCares and is a longtime member of the Knights of Malta, both of which were a part of the Nicaraguan contra supply network. 24

http://www.seekgod.ca/cnp.ken.htm

Lets hope that Irving’s death stands as a reminder to Democrats about what happens if you don’t Prosecute Republican scandals that result in Brown People being killed and tortured.
The same people who backed him with cash and GOP Welfare will only rise again later and get us into another war like Iraq where they will really take the gloves off and try and get things Right.
The NeoCon lesson learned about Vietnam, South America etc they needed to go harder and more violent.

Let’s not forget that he left us with Bill The Bloody. That’s quite a legacy right there.

Neoconservatism visited two disastrous and seemingly endless wars upon us. It engaged in a third, the War on Terror, which wasn’t just seeming but truly was endless by definition. Indefinite detention, rendition, torture, and domestic spying are just a few of its accomplishments. Neoconservatism also helped bankrupt the country, wrecked our image abroad, and damaged our Constitution. It institutionalized the public lie and championed immunity for those neoconservatives, of whom there were many, who broke the law. This is the cobbled together, amazingly unthought out “philosophy” of which Irving Kristol was the godfather.

Its much like Helicopter Ben and the Great Depression forget Keynes and that putting people to work worked we need to go more Right next time bank bailouts!
This whole WW 2 got the country working GOP meme and not FDR misses one important fact all those tanks ships etc which got people working and were necessary to win the war were paid for with higher taxes.
Whats the difference between government spending on tanks vs roads?
Roads provide a benefit to our economy. Tanks kept us free but if their was no war what benefit to out economy is there?

I forgive him for everything but his son. RIP Irving.

Lets be Nice Irving’s ideas once given a chance under Bush have discredited and tainted the GOP’s entire platform of ideas probably for a generation if Obama has a successful Presidency:)

What will the GOP do for ideas after the no healthcare lower taxes for the rich and gay marriage, abortion issues deliver for them 20%ers but no Moderates next election?
What will the new GOP philosophy for the future be?

ahh, Things, always making the best of things.

Excellent point. Amazing how many neo conservatives had a Trotskyite past.

What will the new GOP philosophy for the future be?

You don’t know?

Do you think the people with guns showing up at Obama’s public appearances are a coincidence?

Cheney’s still all I want.

“There are different kinds of truths for different kinds of people. There are truths appropriate for children; truths that are appropriate for students; truths that are appropriate for educated adults; and truths that are appropriate for highly educated adults, and the notion that there should be one set of truths available to everyone is a modern democratic fallacy. It doesn’t work.”[14][15]

Just how can you get any more Elitist than that? I presume *Cough* Wise Philosopher Kings like Irving are the only ones to get the Real Truth?
Judge a Man by how his actions match his words

Irving was anti Commie his death squads a generation later have turned how many South American countries Left?
Venezuela, Nicaragua, El Salvador, Brazil, Ecuador, Bolivia, etc
Irving supported Israel and Bush, Bush before he left supported Saudi Arabia getting Nuclear Reactors how this makes Israel safer I have no idea but the Neo Cons are strangely silent on this.
Support for Bush’s economic plans have ruined us.
But without all these failures would we have an African American President today?

I do like to be Positive once in a while:) I think the more Positive we all are the more people like the blog.
I do admit the temptation to go Negative is always there though.

Thats a Philosophy? Assuming Obama does not let the Union break apart I do expect an FBI crack down.
That and a tightening of credit for GOP media companies from the banks Obama bailed out.
Fox News borrowed to buy the Wallstreet Journal I assume they put up NewsCorp stock as collateral for the loan.
That stock has since gone down remember Enron the stock went down the banks asked for more stock as collateral for their loans and the rest is history.
Christmas is the big ad buy time for newspapers if we have a good Christmas Fox News survives but Obama gets the credit for the economy.
A bad Christmas and Fox is in trouble but so is Obama.

in his 1978 book Two Cheers for Capitalism that it creates a “psychic burden” and “spiritual malaise” because of its failure to meet “existential human needs.”

So that is why the Villagers labeled Jimmy Carter’s speech the “malaise” speech although the word “malaise” is nowhere in the speech.

Just think of all the innocents his philosophy sent to an early grave.

The world needs more Trotskyites and fewer Kristols.

His son.

Best reason for Birth Control yet!

I think that an even more basic problem is that it smacks of relativism. Once a person begins to talk about different sets of truth he can comfortably excuse any behavior. I guess what makes Neoconservatives “Neo” is that they have given up the search for objective truth.

Trotsky was a great organizer, a good essayist, and a sharp polemicist but he was a lousy socialist.

Irving who?

Today the left has plenty of great essayists, sharp polemicists but what the left lacks is a great organizer. Since MLK, who does the left have? And there is the rub. No organization, no movement, consequently no meaningful change. The feel good internet at the moment is nothing but an outlet.

Yep. Sad commentary, non?

There was a time when Tom Hayden was a good organizer.

The search has ended. The Truth revealed.

So was Mother Jones. Are there no Mother Jones’s out there? Jane?

You have no idea how many times I asked the ether that question about Jane. A natural.

Can anyone imagine the burden that has now been placed on the shoulders of Bill Kristol with the passing of his father?

Not to change the subject but do you live in the South? I have a personal affection for the south since my grandmother was from Tennessee.

Shit, Billy the Grin hasn’t had an original thought since he quit shittin’ yellow. He knows that all he has to do for the neocon geniuses is rehash the same old tired shit and they’ll eat it up.

My family settled in SC in the 1750s. I currently live in Gulfport, FL, just south of St Petersburg and across the bay from Tampa.

And I make the best corn bread in town.

I often visit Florida since my mother has a condo in Naples. A strange state but I do enjoy it. Only been to SC while passing through on Amtrak. Your family settled in SC prior to the 1st Revolution. You must have some great family stories. Tampa by the way is a favorite, especially Ybor City and the Columbia Restaurant.

Irving’s public conversion to the neo-Conservative Faith took place in the mid 1960’s, and the proximate cause of this was Martin Luther King’s speech at Riverside Church in opposition to the Vietnam War in 1967. It was not so much King’s speech that flipped him, it was decisions on the part of his associates in the Socialist milue to approve of King’s speech that did the trick.

The analysis of the old Trot’s during the mid 60’s was that they needed to support President Johnson, and Senator Scoop Jackson on Vietnam, because the hand behind the Viet Cong were out and out Stalinists — and thus the choice on Vietnam policy was really about the latest effort of the Stalinists to dominate the Communist International. (sounds far fetched, but if you dip back and read their writings of the time, you’ll see it stick out like a sore thumb.)

In essence, Kristol broke with his socialist friends such as Michael Harrington and Irving Howe in 1967, both of whom had gradually been moving to a critical posture on Vietnam, both of whom recognized that the younger intellectuals out of the New Left were making major points among the war opposition, and while they had major doubts about New Left analysis, they reflected where many old leftie types were leaning. Kristol never really came to terms with Harrington’s and Howe’s association with and support of Martin Luther King and his movement. Harrington, Howe and many others at least intellectually comprehended the American nature of King’s mass movement — they could fit it into their evolving socialist construct, but Kristol remained pretty stuck in the politics of 1940 when the Trots were leading the charge against Stalin’s pact with Hitler, and there was no essentially American Civil Rights movement about that needed to be intellectually integrated into politics. For Kristol, the notion in the mid 60’s that one would privilege and value the analysis of a Black Baptist Preacher with a mass movement on American Policy regarding the Communist World, was a step too far.

If you want source material on this — Taylor Branch has a great discussion of Kristol’s departure from the Socialist Fold as a result of King’s Riverside Speech in the third volume of his King Biography, “At Canaan’s Edge”, Michael Harrington’s biographer covers it, as does Tom Hayden in “Reunion” — his memoir. Hayden has the advantage as he was personally present (first hand observer) of the loud debates about the relevance of Stalinism to a position on Vietnam, in the mid 60’s.

There was also some small time money involved. Strange as it may seem, the American Socialist Movement has an endowment which over the years has paid for office space, some support for journals and the like, and prior to 1966 Kristol had considerable control over this small change and the content allowed into supported journals. Perhaps of greater import — this socialist group has the franchise on membership in the 2nd International, which puts it as a sister organization to the British Labor Party, Israel’s labor party, the Scandinavian and German Social Democrats, the French Socialists — et. al. Their annual conferences always included the American Socialists — Kristol liked hob nobbing with this crowd. But when Howe and Harrington moved to include some younger members in delegations, and Kristol was retired to Senior Status, he was miffed, and took off for DC to associate with the Scoop Jackson crowd.

So in 1960 Irving’s son, William, was probably a teenager. All the more reason to think his 180 was the result of his son.

Someone in my family has fought in every war up to and including Viet Nam. My brother had grrls but they didn’t go into the military. I have tigers and I can’t even get them to answer the goddamn phone.

Being close to Detroit, I’m really fond of Tigers and unions.

Looks like the Tigers are gonna be in the post season.

I sure hope so. Detroit needs it. I can remember the 68 Tigers with Denny McClain and the 74 Tigers that were a whirlwind. Nostalgia ain’t what it used to be, however.

I should add one more note about the 2nd International. It was in 1967 that the parties decided to admit Yasir Arafat as representative of the PLO to the annual conferences, meaning that had Kristol participated he would have been in the same conference room with Arafat. It could well be why he took off down the New Jersey Turnpike for the welcoming arms of Scoop Jackson. I heard some great stories about all this from my former Economics Teacher, who was leader of the Danish Social Democrats in that time — later Denmark’s Finance Minister. He said they had to find conference rooms where there were two distinct and equal entrances so that the Israeli Labor delegates could use one, and Arafat the other — and he told me that Kristol tagged along behind the Israeli’s at the meetings. But he also said that upstairs in the suites, they all socialized without the special doorway accomodations.

I’m still putting my money on his son being a bad seed. Thanks for the history though.

Nice history lesson. Thank you.

“So in 1960 Irving’s son, William, was probably a teenager. All the more reason to think his 180 was the result of his son.”

Hardly — the son was a nothing. He was far too young for any old leftie associations, and he certainly did not emerge out of that very competitive intellectual tradition. It was a very tough school. Irving Kristol did come out of it, even if he eventually threw in his lot with others.

So Sara, just what is your background to be privy to all this delicious political intrigue? Do you categorically refute that Irving had a really troubled child that could have in someway psychologically damaged the father?

While I find your “bad seed” hypothesis interesting I think it lets Kristol père off the hook too easily. Are you really suggesting a quasi-demonic influence from BK? I find the moral relativism mixed with knee-jerk anti-Stalinism that couldn’t recognize real injustice when it stared him in the face to be more plausible.

So Sara, just what is your background to be privy to all this delicious political intrigue? Do you categorically deny that Irving had a really lousy child that could have in someway psychologically damaged the father?

My Background –

First of all my own age, I am 71.

Irving Howe, (then Horenstein) when he graduated from CCNY was sent to Akron Ohio as an organizer for the Trotsky side of the American Socialists in 1941. He had never been out of Brooklyn, but his job as what they called a colonizer was to organize Steel and Rubber Workers in Akron and Youngstown for the great socialist cause. Rubber workers tended to be out of West Virginia or Kentucky, very Christian Fundamentalist, and not exactly all that convinced by a Jewish kid from Brooklyn just out of the class struggle kindergarden at CCNY. My folks were quite involved with all this, so much so that my mom rented our extra room to Howe when he was in Akron — He was sometimes my babysitter, and when I was three and a half he taught me to read. My Mother gave him a crash course in the culture of the American Working Class that came out of the mountain hollows of the upper south, something not covered in the CCNY Cafeteria.

Howe brought all the leadership of this thread of the American Left to Akron to speak, and usually before the event my mom would make a big dinner, or host a pot luck, with the result that when I was between 3 and 6 I met most of this crew. Sometimes they stayed overnight in the guest room, sometimes they went elsewhere — but I found their loud shouting conversations absolutely fascinating, so once I reached the age where one searches out a broader understanding of one’s own history — I paid attention to these guys. Many of them served in World War II, and instead of writing to each other (to continue their loud debate) they sent their group (they call it gang) letters to my mom, who carefully typed out the letters with 9 carbons on tissue paper, and circulated it. I managed to convince my mom not to throw out these files, so upon the death of my parents I became the Heir of the wartime correspondance. Irving Kristol was just one additional member of this gang.

Folks left this gang after the war — a combination of our moving and the threat of McCarthyism, but in the late 50’s, while a student at Antioch College, I found that Antioch was on the speaker’s circuit for Howe, Kristol and Harrington and all the rest, so when they would come to campus, I would introduce myself, and usually get included in the dinner invite and all, have one of those “catch up” conversations as my mom’s agent, and then write her and fill her in on gossip and stuff. I bought their books, sent them on, and eventually got them back in my inheritance.

Those of us who have some sort of claim to “Red Diaper Baby” status generally went one of two directions in the 60’s. I’d say that more than half of us got involved with the Civil Rights movement, or the anti-Nuclear testing movement. We were the more pragmatic types, didn’t take too seriously the grand theory of everything, spent more time concerned with integrating public accomodations and schools and all, or making the case against Nuclear fallout. Some few got more involved with the partisan slivers of the old left that still survived in the 60’s, fighting some of their folks old wars. I spent the 60’s in the Civil Rights movement. I like taking managable bites of change, chewing well, and swallowing.

Anyhow, I also wrote my dissertation in American Studies on radical movement culture in the 1930’s. So I have lots of background.

Sara! Haven’t seen you since Norm finally hung it up. Do you really think it’s Bell’s palsy with him, or botox gone wrong?

“Sara! Haven’t seen you since Norm finally hung it up. Do you really think it’s Bell’s palsy with him, or botox gone wrong?”

Don’t know. Both Barb and GHW Bush had Bell’s palsy, as did our Joe Wilson the Diplomat and husband of Valerie, so it must be going around.

No my Ten Year Old Computer had a very hard crash just as Al was finally getting sworn into the Senate, and because of some travel plans, I took a couple of weeks to order and install a new rig, so was totally out of touch for a time.

Thanks for all the background information.

Glad to see you’re back. We missed you!

I don’t wish to be mean to a man who just lost his father, but do you think maybe, with his dad gone, Bill Kristol might finally grow up a little?

The world (including the people on the oil) might have been better off if kristol had remained an obscure communist intelectual. A self seeker like kristol was never going to stay submerged in a movement bigger than himself. one of the hallmarks of “neoconservatism” was that it really was all about a few personalities. kristol was one of them.

he thinks WE are the ones (the left) who need to “grow up”. Read something about irving kristols’ past, and his own evaluation of it and you’ll see how ironic your comment was

I think William Kristol is old enough now to have made his own choices, and he will have to live with them.

Just to complicate what everyone may be thinking about all this, probably with a little too little data, let me add another flavor, Irving Kristol was CIA, from shortly after the founding of CIA in the late 1940’s. In otherwords he was both in a leadership position in the American Socialists, and CIA at the same time. Lots of old Trots were recruited by CIA in the early years, they were dependable anti-Stalinists (for life), it got them close to power, and since most of them were better Marxists than members of the CPUSA, they were valuable in an analytic role at the agency.

Using the index in Frances Stonor Saunders book “The Cultural Cold War: Thr CIA and the World of Arts and Letters” (1999) — here are a list of things Irving Kristol was involved with. We find him as Editor of Encounter, a CIA Arts and Politics pub, published in England, If you know the famous Ramparts Article of 1966 that outed the whole CIA cultural effort — you will know exactly when Kristol was outed — but he was from 1953 on one of the founding Editors. Salary paid by the Fairfield Foundation as a pass-thru from the CIA. Partnered up with Malcolm Muggeridge on the British Side. Kristol was among the founders of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, another CIA front operation that dates from 1949, and had initially the objective of rooting the USCPA out of the Arts and Letters Biz. With grants from first Henry Luce, and then the CIA gold, Kristol’s group ran and financially supported Partisan Review, The New Leader and Commentary before they founded Encounter in London. Same outfit supported both a French and German Arts, Letters and Politics monthly. Same outfit did regular CIA supported Cultural Conferences in Western Europe from about 53 till the outing in 1966. Exercised much control over Fulbright selections of Europeans studying or teaching in the US, and Americans holding similar grant positions in Europe. The whole operation was run for CIA by Irving Brown who also managed the CIA’s operations inside the W. European Labor Movement that was financed through the AFL/CIO by CIA. This was the primary avenue through which CIA money went into Western European Political Parties in the 50’s and early 60’s. The tenor of the whole thing was just slightly left of center, and it was designed to appeal to more elite Europeans.

On being outed in 1966, Kristol moved decidedly to the Right, Kristol founded “The Public Interest” along with Daniel Bell, Took the Henry Luce Chair in Urban Values at New York University, gave Corporate lectures at huge fees around the world, and associated himself with the American Enterprise Institute. Apparently he hated 60’s students, so he didn’t stay with the Teaching Job for long, but decamped for DC.

Just before he was run out of office in 1974, Richard Nixon sold the remaining CIA assets that were in this program, (Magazines, some property, a conference center,) to Richard Mellon Scaife for a million dollars. Scaife reworked the assets as the core of his far more right wing enterprise — among other things, support for the CIA in Angola, and developing opposition to the African National Congress in Europe. Scaife supported efforts in DC were linked with these former CIA assets in Europe, and Kristol remained involved in both — just as his Son’s literary efforts always benefited from the Scaife grants. But Bill Kristol didn’t get noticed much at all till he became chief of staff to VP Dan Quayle. His job was to make Quayle look a little brighter than he was.

There is so much more if you follow these threads — so much it is worth comprehending about this crowd.

“The world (including the people on the oil) might have been better off if kristol had remained an obscure communist intelectual.”

Look, Irving Kristol was NOT a Communist. He was a Trotskyite in an
American faction that became part of the Socialist Party — now known as the Democratic Socialists of America. We reproduce the Right Wing nut jobs when we don’t use the language carefully. Communist and Socialist are just not interchangable terms.

The one common term you can use is “Marxist” if the sense is that one’s political theory is founded on the writings of Karl Marx. Most Communists would use the term Marxist-Leninist to distinguish themselves from all the variations of Social Democrats, which are at the core of the Labor and left of Center parties in Europe.

Given the nut jobs calling Obama a Socialist the least we can do is get the terms and concepts straight.

It must have been very difficult growing up with a name like Irving. Boys being boys and all. I wonder if that is what he meant when he referred to having been “mugged by reality”.

Rest in peace, as do the victims of your rhetoric’s wake, Irving.

Your son is a complete fucking moron.

I refuse to set nutjobs straight. It never seems to do any good.

It’s exactly as Barney Frank said: Dining room tables. That’s what they are. Mentally.

Good stuff, Sara.

“But Bill Kristol didn’t get noticed much at all till he became chief of staff to VP Dan Quayle. His job was to make Quayle look a little brighter than he was.”

And in that, he was remarkably similar to George W. Bush, in that he was an epic failure. Bill hasn’t changed a bit ever since. Just about everything I’ve ever seen the man say or do has either turned out to be a lie, an incorrect prediction, or a massive lapse of judgment. He more than anyone else is probably responsible for foisting Sarah Palin on us all. The crush he developed on her after that summer cruise made her simply irresistible to him.

Bill, and a lot of other lizard-brained hetero neocon males.

“It must have been very difficult growing up with a name like Irving. Boys being boys and all. I wonder if that is what he meant when he referred to having been “mugged by reality”.”

No, much of the Old Left were essentially Puritans, and when the New Left and the Counterculture came along in the 60’s, they found it most off-putting. These guys would never have been caught dead with a string of hippy beads or a beard. They wanted to be or join the establishment, though their particular cohort did not have easy access because they were, for the most part, the sons and daughters of poor Jewish Immigrants in a sea of similarly situated young men and women. Had they been ten years younger, they would have reached adulthood when some of the old Quotas were falling away, after restrictive covenants in real estate limiting where Jews could live were declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court. But they came to adulthood before World War II, they were depression survivors, The were drafted into service, for the duration. They were gifted, but their opportunities were limited.

What always struck me as interesting about this crowd was how difficult it was for them to empathize with the somewhat parallel circumstances of Black Americans, particularly in the 50’s and early 60’s when the Civil Rights movement really became a significant cause and movement. Conventional Wisdom would suggest clear recognition of that similarity, but in many cases, it did not occur. Their younger siblings and many of their own children got it — and joined in various parts of the movements, but that Old Left generation that dated adulthood prior to World War II rarely did. Why? Something to ponder.

And yea, Irving was a pretty common name in this crowd. It was usually shortened to Irv. I think lots of them were named after Irving Berlin, who was a most successful Broadway musician and pop composer about the time they were born.

Molly Ivins told me you should only say good things about the dead. He’s dead. That’s good.

A suitable epitaph: He did his worst for his country. And thanks a lot for young Bill, who is even worse.

You failed.

this is the greatest opportunity in the last 10 years to get all the neocons outdoors in the same place. all the brown people in the world sitting on oil should get it together and send in an airstrike.

it will same them uncountable pain, suffering, and money.