The Kristol Method

"By the end of the Clinton administration, I was content to celebrate the triumph of conservatism as I understood it, and had no desire for other than incremental changes in the economic and social structure of the United States. I saw no need for the estate tax to be abolished, marginal personal-income tax rates further reduced, the government shrunk, pragmatism in constitutional law jettisoned in favor of “originalism,” the rights of gun owners enlarged, our military posture strengthened, the rise of homosexual rights resisted, or the role of religion in the public sphere expanded. All these became causes embraced by the new conservatism that crested with the reelection of Bush in 2004," - Richard Posner, channeling my own thoughts uncannily.

And this is why David Brooks' encomium to Irving Kristol today does not convince me. If Irving Kristol had remained a real empirical skeptic, as Brooks claims Kristol was throughout, he would have resisted the transformation of conservatism into a religious cult and a neo-imperial movement. But he did neither.

He actually celebrated the cooptation of conservatism by religious fanaticism, refusing to make any enemies on his right, as his empirical critique of the welfare state morphed into the idolatry of Reagan, the collapse of any serious interest in actually governing, the enabling of massive, destabilizing debt, and unwavering support for Israel's long assisted suicide. 

Yes, there was an affect of laconic disinterestedness. But it was an affect, like his even more radical son's urbane gussying up of know-nothing violence and fiscal recklessness. The gimmick of the Kristols was to wrap a Trotskyite mentality in a world-weary, bourgeois gauze. It enabled them to evade any responsibility for their grotesque errors, errors which led to the deaths and torture of countless people, and the bankrupting of America, while pretending to be reasonable and empirical intellectuals.

The urbane patina of moderation was, in other words, a lie. You know: one of those many lies that the Kristols believe are good for the rest of us.