Over the weekend on CSPAN's BookTV, David Brooks interviewed The Weekly Standard's Bill Kristol about his father, Irving Kristol, on the occasion of a new compilation of essays, The Neoconservative Persuasion, which was edited by Irving's wife, Gertrude Himmelfarb.
The hour-long interview ranges across a range of topics and is valuable viewing for conservatives and historians of conservative thought alike. A couple of key points worth reflecting on:
Republican virtue, a topic we hear little about these days. Kristol points out that there is a phrase "Republican virtue" but we don't really hear "Democratic virtue" - there's something about republicanism that implies self-governance. Communities have moral standards, but communities can't always govern themselves simply by nature; they need virtue and people who can govern on the basis of those virtues. Brooks points out that, today, we use terms like "public spiritedness" to refer to people such as Ralph Nader, but the elder Kristol believed strongly that without public spirit supported by virtue, a people will become corrupted and subservient to institutions that don't ultimately respect them. This discussion is around the 40 minute mark in the interview.
Supply side economics. Irving Kristol saw a crisis of Keynsianism in the 1970s, and also had a skepticism about the "science" of economics. Together with Bob Bartley of the WSJ, he broke through the haze of the fight between Keynesian and austere conservatism that was preoccupied with balanced budgets only. He though it was more important to have growth than just balancing all the books or trying to manage the economy. He was also friends with Jack Kemp. These elements combined to produce a movement of which we are all heirs.
Robust foreign policy. Bill Kristol also says in the interview that his father may not have been quite as strongly committed to the pro-democracy neoconservatism of the Bush years, but only by a little bit. The elder Kristol believed the US had principles it needed to promote, not just interests to protect.
The interview is not embeddable yet, but it can be watched here.
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