Irving Kristol

In his posthumous collection of essays, The Neoconservative Persuasion, Irving Kristol offers reflections into political and social issues that still hound us today. Take this passage, from his 1974 essay "Republican Virtue versus Servile Institutions," which, with a few changes in the specifics, could have been written last week:

Bill Kristol went on MSNBC earlier this week to discuss the Neoconservative Persuasion, a new compilation of Irving Kristol's essays: 

Must viewing this weekend: On C-Span's "After Words" series, Bill Kristol, who wrote the foreword to The Neoconservative Persuasion, the new collection of his late father's essays, discusses those essays and Irving Kristol's thought in general with David Brooks.

The news that Glenn Beck's endorsement has sparked renewed interest in Friedrich Hayek's Road to Serfdom reminded me of this passage from Irving Kristol's "America's 'Exceptional Conservatism'" (1995, available in Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea):

Martin Wolf asks his readers their opinion of the Austrian school of economics (whose most famous adherent in this country is Ron Paul):

I think we can say that conventional neo-classical equilibrium economics did a poor job in predicting the crisis and in suggesting what should be done in response. We can also say that neo-Keynesians pointed out some important precursors of the crisis, in particular, the destabilising role of huge private sector financial deficits in countries with large external deficits, such as the US, and the Keynesian view certainly played a big part in the post-crisis response, as did that of Milton Friedman.

Yet some would argue that economists working in the Austrian tradition were more nearly right than anybody else. In particular, they have argued that: inflation-targeting is inherently destabilising; that fractional reserve banking creates unmanageable credit booms; and that the resulting global “malinvestment” explains the subsequent financial crash. I have sympathy with this point of view. But Austrians also say - as their predecessors said in the 1930s - that the right response is to let everything rotten be liquidated, while continuing to balance the budget as the economy implodes. I find this unconvincing. Mass bankruptcy is extremely costly. Moreover, it is impossible to separate what is healthy from what is unhealthy during a general economic collapse triggered by an implosion of the financial system.

This isn't an endorsement by any means -- but it's interesting to see the Austrians get some credit from one of the most famous economic journalists in the world. (Be sure to read the comments following Wolf's post for a fascinating discussion.)

In yesterday's Financial Times, Gideon Rachman writes that Ronald Reagan "debased" traditional conservatism because

Traditional conservatives disdain populism and respect knowledge. They believe in balancing the government’s books. And they are pragmatists who are suspicious of ideology.

Reagan, in Rachman's view, propagated the "cult of the idiot savant (the wise fool)," took the GOP away from "fiscal responsibility" by embracing tax cuts, and encouraged the idea that "a successful foreign policy is a rigid distinction between good and evil, and a strong military." Reagan may have been "a successful president," Rachman admits, but he "left behind a poisonous legacy for the conservative movement." Liberal bugbear Sarah Palin is the consequence.