Neoconservatism

...But there is another, deeper prob64 The American Spectator September 1995 lem with the neoconservative approach to religion's political utility that Kristol also attempts to confront...

...T here is a sense, though, in which Kristol is not just a sociologist of religion, concerned with its social utility, but a theologian, concerned with its truths...

...Citing Franz Rosenzweig, he invites us to consider to what extent Christianity is a sister religion to Judaism, a form of "Judaism for Gentiles"—and vice versa...

...The collection is stud- are terms with positive connotations religion in the political life of the cornded with gems large and small...

...For those who have known him in his capacity as friend and mentor, Neoconservatism is a reminder that Irving—as everyone in this ever-growing class calls him—has evolved a style that cannot be duplicated...

...It is the Had he become a two-term President, he the theological...

...ideas...

...They are the inscriptions, the deposits, of an age of euphemism...

...He certainly can...

...influential essays in social thought...

...Problems arise, and theology becomes necessary, because immortality and eternity are characteristics of the universe, not of man...

...Early in his "Memoir," after discussing his own neo-orthodox religious beliefs, Kristol writes, "I have emphasized the importance of religion in my personal and intellectual development because, in my writings, it is only on rare occasions evident...

...The observation that American workers have always been "conscientious objectors" in the war between the classes, to take just one example, speaks volumes...

...It is a provocative line of thought, but one which, Kristol's writings suggest, it is necessary to work through if we are to overcome what could be a major tension in neoconservative thought...

...Liberal intellectuals, as were instrumental in defeating "advanced," and "enlightened" merit the Kristol notes, have derided neoconservaCommunism abroad and dethroning lib- quotation marks Kristol gives them...

...But religion is more than evident in most of the essays collected in Neoconservatism no matter what their official topic—whether politics, economics, Einstein or Freud—hapThe American Spectator September 1995 65 pens to be...

...sphere, one in the political, and one in The Autobiography of an Idea...

...And intimations of an intriguing and attractive theological approach do emerge...

...Few had heard of number of quotation marks surrounding (and we) would have found that, after "supply-side economics" before different words and phrases...

...One hopes he will write on religion as an end, and not only as an instrument of social cohesion...

...There is, finally, something else, evident enough in these essays when taken singly, that emerges with considerable force when they are collected between covers...

...I sen enemy was contemporary liberalgisms...

...I am not a theologian, after all, though reading theology is one of my favorite relaxations...

...Neoconservatives have been critics both of multiculturalism, the fracturing of American identity, and of the more secular or humanistic varieties of American religious-moral experience, insisting that only theologically-steeped virtues and values can sustain a social order...

...reviewed by ANDREW STARK I n such an age, where old usages are dying and sometimes distorted beyond recognition, the birth of S omething almost literally leaps from a 1975 Wall Street Journal op-ed: new phrases is the natural order...

...On less nefarious between "being observant and being reliUniversity of Toronto...

...But perhaps the most imporessays that follow—recall his fifty years something that I have always possessed, tant neologism in Neoconservatism is as author of some of the century's most long before the very term itself was "theotropic...

...think it fair to say that what might be ism, not socialism or statism in the Kristol's memoir—and the forty called a 'neoconservative imagination' is abstract...

...Instead, they critics [of] liberal institutions," he noted gave the term currency—had heard of are the kind represented nonverbally by in a 1975 essay, "are today commonly "neoconservatism," which Kristol distwo crooked fingers on either hand called `liberals'") and where, conse- tinguishes "in one crucial respect from repeatedly wagging in the air, the kind quently, much of what was meaningful its conservative predecessors: its chothat surround euphemisms and neolo- required new words to express it...

...among which, having been appropriated for munity" while remaining nonobservant the latter is this prescient observation political purposes, came unmoored from in their personal lives—a criticism their original meanings and acquired Kristol easily deflects by distinguishing Andrew Stark teaches management at the often perverse usages...

...Early on he came across John Crowe Ransom, whose writing, Kristol notes, "was lucid, straightforward, unpretentious, but brightened with flashes of irony and wit...

...Speaking of Christianity and Judaism (but the argument would presumably apply to other faiths as well), Kristol raises the possibility that even at the deepest levels of orthodoxy—indeed, precisely at the deepest levels of orthodoxy—"the two faiths" are capable of living "most amicably together...

...Toward the end of the "Memoir," Kristol suggests that he will be turning more of his attention away from everyday politics to some bigger questions...

...Few—before Kristol utterances made by others...

...Certainly, this is what liberalism conventionally propounds...

...though now part of the IanKristol's essays contain no footnotes, so Kristol's writings span a half-century guage, the term first appears in quotes the quotation marks that appear here are when words became untethered from when Kristol discusses its coinage in not generally the sort that embrace their original meanings (the "severest the late 1970s...

...In other words, euphemism "All people, everywhere, at all Neoconservatism also recounts his role abounded and so neologism was times," Kristol writes, "are `theotropic' as founder of three journals (and editor required...

...Those intimations, on a thumbnail sketch, might go something like this: The good news is that the ultimate objects of human longing—immortality and eternity, love and recognition—exist and are manifest...

...Thus, Western religions concern themselves with arguing the possibility that it is God's love and not indifference that suffuses the universe, and that immortality is available to the soul if not the body...

...while love and recognition are traits of man, not of the universe...

...As his the ideological smoke had cleared, not Kristol championed Jude Wanniski's friend Nathan Glazer recently observed, all that much had changed...

...It is Kristol's prose style...

...But if Irving's writing and career are such that imitation has been impossible, his friendship and accessibility are such that emulation has been easy...

...0 66 The American Spectator September 1995...

...beings, who cannot long abide the at two others) that, without ever Euphemism abounded: Words like absence of a transcendental dimension to descending to the level of agitprop, "progressive," "intellectual," their lives...

...While they in no way hang heavily and are never inapposite, they make their presence cumulatively felt— Free Press/512 pages /$25 as they should...

...even, occasionally, "as the British would say" and "as the British call it"—appear Irving Kristol throughout...

...References to the "so-called 'right-wing' Laborites," the "'liberal' " strains of Judaism, the "`rich'" and the "'relatively deprived,'" "'higher needs— and "low '" conceptions of human nature, and "'containment' vs...

...The result is a matchless body of work, and a generation of talented conservative writers and thinkers...

...While Kristol never disavows this basic theological impulse, one gets the sense that, for him, the manifest good news—the eternity of the universe and essential human kindness—are sufficient to generate a rich spiritual life...

...liberation— in American foreign policy: all are testimo, ny to an era of ever-shifting meaning...

...Perhaps he would dispute this...

...And off the pages of Irving Kristol's "Ronald Reagan was a two-term gover- Kristol devised or gave currency to at absorbing "Autobiographical nor of California, and whatever his least three of permanent and revoluMemoir," the piece that opens his latest accomplishments, the restoration of tionary import—one in the economic collection of essays, Neoconservatism: 'free enterprise' was not one of them...

...occasions euphemism emerges, and dou- gious...

...invented...

...But the impulse away from pluribus toward unum, and the drive from the secular toward the theological, have historically been thought to point in opposite directions: as individuals repair to their own orthodoxies the differences between them should grow, not diminish...

...Hence, a third and innovative line of argument—an attempt to reconcile these two potentially warring impulses—appears in Kristol's recent writings...

...they tives for stressing the "importance of eralism at home...

...That's the style for me," Kristol reports himself thinking at the time, "I can do it...

...In fact, phrases like "so-called," "we call them," "as we say," "as it were," "what NEOCONSERVATISM: we call," "what is commonly called," THE AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF AN IDEA "what . . . contemporaries called...