The Irving Kristol Legacy
When a major figure from the other ideological camp dies, I think the common thing to do is to praise the dead guy and disparage his modern-day co-ideologues by comparison. But as Brad DeLong points out, Irving Kristol’s own account of his role in popularizing nutjob anti-tax politics is sufficiently damning that I don’t think that strategy will really fly:
Among the core social scientists around The Public Interest there were no economists…. This explains my own rather cavalier attitude toward the budget deficit and other monetary or fiscal problems. The task, as I saw it, was to create a new majority, which evidently would mean a conservative majority, which came to mean, in turn, a Republican majority – so political effectiveness was the priority, not the accounting deficiencies of government…
The presence of a major ideological movement in the United States of America dedicated to the dual propositions that taxes must never go up, and that government expenditures don’t need to relate to government revenue in any real way as long as the Republican Party is in charge simply makes it almost impossible for the country to be governed in a responsible manner. If we had a different political system, it’s possible that such an ideological movement would marginalize itself, lose elections, and the other guys would run the show responsibly. Maybe. You could at least imagine it happening. But in our system even a defeated minority gets a ton of influence over policy and becoming completely dogmatic and irrational actually enhances that level of influence.
61 Responses to “The Irving Kristol Legacy”
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September 20th, 2009 at 10:07 am
No, no, no. Everyone knows that the Republican Party is the party of fiscal responsibility.
I don’t care what the facts say….
September 20th, 2009 at 10:09 am
Just as the Republicans in Nassau County, New York how well that worked out and the Democrats that took over for them how painful it was to clean up after such nonsense. Property taxes soared when they were already incredibly high because, for many decades, the Republicans spent and spent and never accounted for it with corresponding tax increases.
September 20th, 2009 at 10:17 am
Really? The Irving Kristol Legacy is anti-tax politics? Are we on the same planet?
September 20th, 2009 at 10:33 am
I think the most damning evidence against Kristol and his ideas is the following quote:
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,” – Irving Kristol.
Res ipse loquiter.
vml
September 20th, 2009 at 10:36 am
If we had a different political system, it’s possible that such an ideological movement would marginalize itself, lose elections, and the other guys would run the show responsibly.
September 20th, 2009 at 10:47 am
I would have thought the damning part of the statement is the easy transition from “we need someone else to run the government” to “well, that must mean conservative” (evidently) to “so it will be the Republicans”. Thus, the goal no longer becomes “someone different” nor even someone conservative, but rather Republican. Then, you want to be politically effective versus say effective in governing. At the end of the day, the movement is about power and not about anything else.
September 20th, 2009 at 10:50 am
Irving Kristol is really only interesting to me from 1945-75, especially in the 50s, as a minor member of the group of institutional liberals that included Hofstadter, Schlesinger, Bell, Galbraith, etc. This was an elitist, Vanguardist, anti-populist group of coastal intellectuals who reacted to the insurgencies of the late 60s with horror (see Schlesinger’s attack on multiculturalism in the 80s).
Issues and ideology aside, and only considering power politics, Kristol and Podhoretz and the neo-cons decided to ally with the party that could absorb, manage, and benefit from their populist insurgencies and gained power for forty years.
Democrats, on the other hand, moved to the right around 1980 in an attempt to marginalize its populist insurgencies, especially the economic and anti-war Left, and weakened itself, possibly permanently. We obviously remain in that crippled position today with Obama and a relative lack of grassroots enthusiasm for his triangulation strategies.
(Borrowed in part from John Emerson and Paul Rosenberg over at Open Left)
September 20th, 2009 at 10:52 am
I find it more or less insane that everyone in the media treats the Republicans as though they are a fiscally responsible party. It’s contrary to every piece of evidence we have. They spend recklessly while cutting taxes.
It’s basically how banana republics are governed.
If their position were actually smaller government, we’d have a legitimate difference that we could test. Put them in office, have fewer programs, lower taxes, see what happens.
But they are not actually the party of lower spending. They are the party of high government spending and low taxes. They are the party of stimulating economic growth through massive, ever-expanding deficits. Not just as a countercyclical emergency measure when conventional monetary policy fails. They have embraced this as their core economic policy. It’s insane, and yet it’s exactly what they have done under every Republican President since Reagan.
Sure, there’s a difference between the parties in that the Democrats think spending should be funded more by the wealthy and Republicans think it should not be. But it’s much less important than the fact that the Republican MO is that this spending should be paid for by NO ONE.
That’s the difference between the parties. The Republicans are the “free lunch” party, and the Democrats are the paygo party.
September 20th, 2009 at 10:53 am
Well said Windshouter!
Also charming is this quotation, found at Digby’s site.
http://digbysblog.blogspot.com/2009/09/what-moved-him-by-digby-towering-neo.html
September 20th, 2009 at 11:01 am
At the end of the day, the movement is about power and not about anything else.
And what do you think politics is about, ineffectual idealism?
Politics is about power and nothing else. Politics is not ethics.
September 20th, 2009 at 11:01 am
Another enduring legacy is his wretched son, who will continue to do his worst for his country for decades more.
September 20th, 2009 at 11:06 am
We have a word for Republicans, Communist, the Stalinist form in particular.
September 20th, 2009 at 11:07 am
Re: The other ideological camp?
Heck, he’s just another “progressive” bully with a twist.
Which might explain his lack of concern about deficit spending.
September 20th, 2009 at 11:18 am
Democrats and Republicans both deny the secrets of GOOOOOOLLLLLLLDDDDDDD!!!!
September 20th, 2009 at 11:20 am
In 1967 I was fortunate enough to spend an afternoon with Daniel Bell, who was at the time quite excited about The Public Interest, the journal he and Kristol co-founded. Bell wrote good essays for that journal — “The Study of the Future,” for instance. He also taught a cross-section of students, some of them quite distinguished on the left. And Bell certainly did not have a “cavalier attitude toward the budget deficit and other monetary or fiscal problems.”
Bell also left the journal in 1973.
There is a danger in representing “The Public Interest” as simply the starting-place for a certain kind of Reaganism. It also reflected some hard liberal reservations about utopianism, spending, and the limits on government’s capacity to achieve things. These are still worth remembering.
In short, the Public Interest represented, perhaps, the momentary conjunction of some lines of thought that have since separated. A very interesting moment, certainly more interesting than Kristol makes it appear in the quotation provided.
Dan Tompkins
September 20th, 2009 at 11:42 am
1)The Kristols would not have such malign influence if not for the two-faced whoring of our news media. You can not get rid of all the liars –but you can identify them and remove them from the national forum.
2) Anyone see the National TV networks doing that?
Anyone see George Stephenopoulos reporting: “And the Big Lies being told This Week are a,b, and c. And the reasons we say they are Lies are x,y, and z. The people telling the Lies are j,k, and l….”
3) Why is it that our News Media tells us that the Fiscal Conservative has put us $6 Trillion deeper in debt only well after the elections?
September 20th, 2009 at 11:44 am
And it is not just the News Media — why isn’t there a single Democratic spokeman who will stand up and call the right wing liars?
Will, e.g, point out that the Republicans have fought Medicare tooth and nail in the past?
ANd not just once every three months but every damm day. Because Glenn Beck doesn’t broadcast once every three months.
September 20th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
The current deficit spike is mainly a result of the baby boom generation retiring and driving social security and medicare costs through the roof. It’s pretty creative to blame Irving Kristol for this problem.
September 20th, 2009 at 12:10 pm
The signature trait of Kristol and the neocons is their ability to remain impervious to the reality of their folly. They seem afflicted by a terminal inability to connect the dots. Supply-side tax cuts followed by tidal waves of red ink? No connection. Unbridled laissez faire and ‘perpetual prosperity’ monetary policies followed by the worst financial meltdown and recession since the Great Depression? Who, moi? Invasion of the Middle East followed by quagmires of insurgency? What, me worry? Regrettably, the binnacle housing Kristol’s compass lacked the corrective magnets needed to make it point to true north. Kristol put the con into conservativism.
September 20th, 2009 at 12:15 pm
David, you are aware that your post is quite simply a lie, right? You know that for the past three decades the deficit has been partly masked by the over-collection of Social Security funds and that even today Social Security is taking in more than it is handing out, right?
It’s pretty creative to blame Social Security for the spike in the deficit. On the other hand, unprovoked assault on tiny nations aren’t free. Cutting taxes on the wealthy isn’t free. Protecting the capital markets from total meltdown isn’t free. All these expenses and more are directly in line with the demands of Kristol and his nitwit son.
September 20th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
Re Don Williams
I’m rather surprised that Mr. Williams has failed to understand where people like Kristol and Podhoretz are coming from. Their support for the Rethuglican Party has nothing to do with economics. It has to do which their position that the Rethuglican Party is better for the State of Israel. Their only criteria for supporting any party or candidate is how Pro-Israel that party or candidate is. There are no other issues of importance to them.
September 20th, 2009 at 12:39 pm
Yet another reason why the Republican party is morally bankrupt.
September 20th, 2009 at 12:42 pm
David (Not Smith), do the statistics in your head. The red lines go up, they go up dramatically when one of the Irving Kristol Republican regimes are in place.
Look real closely. Not only does government grow, as a share of the economy under the Kristol regime, but deficits expand madly. Those are the red lines, try looking once again.
Under Reagan/Bush 1, government grows to 25% of the economy. Under Clinton, it shrinks to 19% of the economy, under lil Bush, it grows to 25% and more of the economy.
Aging people are not causing the Communist revolution, idiots Republicans who believed this lightweight scourge of an intellectual caused the Communist takeover.
September 20th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
[...] (source) [...]
September 20th, 2009 at 1:11 pm
There are different kinds of truths for different kinds of people…..the notion that there should be one set of truths available to everyone is a modern democratic fallacy. It doesn’t work,” – Irving Kristol.
Right-postmodernism, anyone? Notice he didn’t say ‘goods’, as in ‘competing goods’, he said ‘truths’. Different sets of truths for ‘children…adults…educated adults…*highly* educated adults [gee, got anybody in mind, Irving?]..etc’. Authoritarian crap right out of Strauss, among others.
September 20th, 2009 at 1:15 pm
I’m rather surprised that Mr. Williams has failed to understand where people like Kristol and Podhoretz are coming from. Their support for the Rethuglican Party has nothing to do with economics. It has to do which their position that the Rethuglican Party is better for the State of Israel. Their only criteria for supporting any party or candidate is how Pro-Israel that party or candidate is. There are no other issues of importance to them.
The annoying thing about that, as you well know, SLC, is that they are fundamentally cowards. They believe in doing things that are far too weak to have any impact on the Palestinians but result in loss of life *and* face/honor for Israel.
I could probably respect them if they had the guts to come out for a Hama-rules solution, or a van Creveld complete separation solution, or even the old peace solution.
Right now, they’re just proving they’re lying, two-faced sadists, without doing anything to relieve Israel’s problems. They’ve succeeded in making Israel hated, but not feared, which, as Mach points out, is the absolute *last* thing you want to do.
Calling them thugs is too kind.
September 20th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
If we had a different political system, it’s possible that such an ideological movement would marginalize itself, lose elections, and the other guys would run the show responsibly.
Give it time–we’re getting there.
September 20th, 2009 at 1:33 pm
Well, Israel is only involved indirectly; should Israel become a normal ethnicity-neutral state, they won’t give a shit about Israel anymore. The correct criterion is “Is it good for the Jews?”, meaning only Ashkenazi Jews. It’s exactly the same as David Duke’s philosophy, just replace “Aryan” with “Jewish”.
September 20th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
[...] DeLong (via MY) zeros in on an Irving Kristol quote that, to me, is the essence of [...]
September 20th, 2009 at 1:59 pm
David,
You are aware that the 1st Baby Boomers were born in 1945? Meaning that even if they took SS at the first opportunity the first of them started getting it in 2007?
Yeah they really drove up the deficits under Reagan in the 1980s when they were in their 40s.
Sheesh, better right wing liars please.
September 20th, 2009 at 2:34 pm
Irving Kristol to me is an interesting polemical figure in American history. What his critics called his philosophy and he came to embrace – neo-conservatism – is not very “new” and what it conserves shall be forever open to debate.
His early attachment to Menshevism and its powerful proponent Trotksy gets much ink but little analysis. Maybe this is because so little is known or understood about Trotsky in the West anymore. Certainly there are but a relative few in the US who have ever read his writings.
Trotsky’s powerful intellect and relatively selfless leadership led him and those who followed him where? To inglorious anonymity.
Not so Kristol.
I am reminded of the comment of his contemporary New York Intellectual, Irving Howe, in the film Arguing the World. Irving Kristol was a corporatist sell-out.
In the end Kristol was not unlike the man he railed against in his youth in the Alcove at City College (CCNY), Josef Stalin. He sold out for power. Intellectual rigor and principles be damned.
Kristol was not a neo/new anything. He was a nihilist.
September 20th, 2009 at 2:52 pm
[...] leave a comment » Just so this is clear [...]
September 20th, 2009 at 3:18 pm
neoconservatives are known for being foreign policy hawks and for their devotion to the state of israel and combinations therof, not economics.
September 20th, 2009 at 3:32 pm
1) Not sure why so many responses contain personal attacks (liar etc)
2) So if Medicare and Social Security had been indexed even partly for life expectancy, the deficit in the next few years would still spike?
September 20th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
This chart is fraudulent, of course. The appropriate measure is federal debt held by the public, not gross federal debt (which includes debt from one government account to others).
September 20th, 2009 at 7:58 pm
This chart is fraudulent, of course. The appropriate measure is federal debt held by the public, not gross federal debt (which includes debt from one government account to others).
The basic shape of the curve is the same if you use federal debt held by the public instead of gross debt. See here.
September 20th, 2009 at 8:06 pm
No thread is complete without a claim – by Al – of ‘fraudulence’.
September 20th, 2009 at 8:21 pm
I see Al has a tight grip on his “World’s Greatest Hack” trophy and won’t let go.
September 20th, 2009 at 8:25 pm
As always with Irving Kristol’s intellectual descendants, the question is: liar or stupid?
Al is actually not stupid; rather, he is one of the most obsessive liars on this planet.
It seems safe to say that David is very stupid.
September 20th, 2009 at 10:02 pm
1) Not sure why so many responses contain personal attacks (liar etc)
Because you lied and were called out on it? Yeah, that’s probably it.
2) So if Medicare and Social Security had been indexed even partly for life expectancy, the deficit in the next few years would still spike?
See, this is why you are a liar. You are trying to change the terms of the debate. We aren’t discussing deficits that may or may not happen in the future. We are talking about deficits that happened in the past under Republican administrations.
We can see through your paltry lies. Why don’t you try lying on another blog?
September 21st, 2009 at 6:21 am
Could somebody give the source of this quote? Thank you
September 21st, 2009 at 10:17 am
[...] Yglesias offers a primer, using an unfortunate Irving Kristol quote unearthed by Brad DeLong as a jumping-off point: "The [...]
September 21st, 2009 at 10:59 am
Take your Bush-hating blinders off. The graph under him stays almost flat until 2006.
Funny, from 1980 it tracks exactly with a Democratic-controlled Congress. If that’s your proof to trash Irving Kristol, then you’ve proved that a Democratic Congress can’t control spending. Good job.
September 21st, 2009 at 11:14 am
Funny, from 1980 it tracks exactly with a Democratic-controlled Congress. If that’s your proof to trash Irving Kristol, then you’ve proved that a Democratic Congress can’t control spending. Good job.
I hesitate to point this out, because you’re clearly being disingenuous, but the Democrats controlled only one house of congress from 80 to 86. Moreover, this chart manifestly does not chart a Democratic House, because the House was Democrat from 54 until 94.
Basically spending and tax cuts jumped under the Reagan/Bush years, stabilized and even fell a leeeeettle under Clinton, and then ratcheted back up under Bush II.
Of course, I’m sure Obama will probably continue that trend, but you were talking of a Democratic house.
September 21st, 2009 at 11:31 am
I see the personal attacks continue. Apparently it’s not possible to disagree without name calling on this blog.
To a more substantive point. If you look back over the last 30 yrs or so, tax revenues have represented almost exactly 19% of GDCP until 2008. So, increasing deficits are almost totally the reslult of lack of spending control. If you want to blame Kristol and his flock for being for too much spending – OK. But their support for tax cuts has not been the cause of increased deficits until 2008.
September 21st, 2009 at 11:34 am
From Austrian School anti-war Justin Raimondo on Kristol:
Doesn’t sound like laissez faire to me. And it sounds a heck of a lot like the Obama foreign policy of whacking Muslim villagers with drone fired missiles. “The other ideological camp” indeed.
September 21st, 2009 at 11:49 am
Love the graph.
But you know, these Tea Bagger protests have nothing to do with xenophobia and racial resentment, and everything to do with the fact that that uppity Nigerian cat, Hussein al-Osama plans to run short-term deficits like some kind of superfly pimp whose drunk one too many 40s of Olde English 800.
September 21st, 2009 at 11:51 am
I see the personal attacks continue. Apparently it’s not possible to disagree without name calling on this blog.
I hardly see how the simple act of pointing out that you’re being a disingenuous asshat qualifies as “name calling”.
September 21st, 2009 at 12:05 pm
Not only is name calling the preferred debate technique of the Yglesiastics, but they just aren’t very good at it.
These guys give the term “juvenile” a bad name.
They remind me of a bunch of fat 6th graders dropping water-filled condoms on a senior citizens luncheon.
September 21st, 2009 at 12:16 pm
Way to dismiss a seminal thinker in American politics by reducing the focus to one issue. Mr. Yglesias, you can only dream of being half as influential as Mr. Kristol was. Your envy shames you, not him.
September 21st, 2009 at 12:19 pm
Kristol and others at the Public Interest were entertaining and engaging writers. How much did that have to do with their success I wonder?
September 21st, 2009 at 1:28 pm
Mr. Yglesias, you can only dream of being half as influential as Mr. Kristol was. Your envy shames you, not him.
He was a fabulous dancer. So light on his feet. Und vat a painter! He could paint a whole apartment in an afternoon. TWO COATS!!
September 21st, 2009 at 1:48 pm
Kristol and others at the Public Interest were entertaining and engaging writers. How much did that have to do with their success I wonder?
Uh…none?
September 21st, 2009 at 2:16 pm
rty, why none? Some of the neo-cons were talented writers. That had nothing to do with their success?
September 21st, 2009 at 3:16 pm
[...] “When a major figure from the other ideological camp dies, I think the common thing to do is to praise the dead guy and disparage his modern-day co-ideologues by comparison.” – Matthew Yglesias [...]
September 21st, 2009 at 3:31 pm
[...] The Graph worth your consideration. [...]
September 21st, 2009 at 6:20 pm
To classify the Republican party as a defeated and marginal minority is, I think, to misstate its situation. Regardless of its electoral fortunes, the Republican party is still a major part of the established political structure of our federation. The level to which the parties that once organized our polity have made themselves actual institutions of our political system, as much as HUD or the Pentagon or the Congressional budget office, is truly staggering when you really look in to it. I think this is one of the major reasons why the Republican party, despite its 40 year long spiral into insanity, has not been side-lined or marginalized as it would have been in other societies; it has, through the continued strengthening of its duopoly with the Democrats, become such an integral structure within our political system, so intertwined with how policy is made (publicly and privately), with how government is funded, with the media’s coverage of politics, and with how government funding is dispersed, that its views must always be given an equal share of “official”, “serious” attention.
No matter how many elections it loses, no matter how unpopular its pronouncements and policies may be, and poll have poll shows them to be widely unpopular, it will still have a prominent place in our society until the slow merging of our governmental and political institutions is undone, or until some spectacular, anti-popular meltdown akin to the fate of the Federalists befalls it; something not likely to happen given the amount of money and effort expended by the Republican party and its unofficial branches on propagandizing the populace.
September 21st, 2009 at 10:34 pm
[...] (Yglesias via Sullivan.) [...]
September 22nd, 2009 at 1:12 pm
[...] Matthew Yglesias » The Irving Kristol Legacy Among the core social scientists around The Public Interest there were no economists…. This explains my own rather cavalier attitude toward the budget deficit and other monetary or fiscal problems. The task, as I saw it, was to create a new majority, which evidently would mean a conservative majority, which came to mean, in turn, a Republican majority – so political effectiveness was the priority, not the accounting deficiencies of government… (tags: kristol yglesias graph debt deficit gdp economics usa history budget fiscal responsibility conservative legacy) Possibly related posts: (automatically generated)links for 2009-04-20Impression for 2009-04-20links for 2009-07-08Irving Kristol, the Neocon’s Neocon, Dead at 89 [...]
September 22nd, 2009 at 3:11 pm
[...] add a little to Yglesias’ post on Irving Kristol’s support for subverting facts to politics, I think there’s a real [...]
September 22nd, 2009 at 5:44 pm
[...] of the most dangerous creatures that can exist in the public sphere: the ironic, cynical ideologue. Matt Yglesias and Andrew Sullivan both point out that Kristol openly and blatantly disregarded expertise in [...]