Review of a Review

I've just been reading a review of a book of essays by Irving Kristol, entitled The Neoconservative Persuasion. The review appears in The Weekly Standard, a journal co-founded and edited by Irving's son William. The review is a sort of intellectual history of Irving Kristol, who began as a young man on the Trotskyite left and ended years later on the neoconservative right.

I knew the senior Kristol's work from that later period, when he was a founder of the neoconservative movement. Reading Irving Kristol's essays in The Wall Street Journal was instrumental in changing my views of the world.

Thinking of that "conversion" I am reminded once again of Winston Churchill's wisdom:

If you are not a liberal at 20 you have no heart, if you are not a conservative at 40 you have no brain.

I read Kristol essays on the op-ed page of the WSJ as a young B-school academic. Irving Kristol helped me make the transition from liberal to conservative, from heart to brain.

I think the key learning was to understand that we humans are easily corruptible, easily spoiled by handouts and freebies. What we earn we value; what we are given we don't. If you would destroy someone, put them on the dole. Strength is respected, weakness is despised.