Irving Kristol, godfather of the right dies

Michael Tomasky
guardian.co.uk, Friday 18 September 2009 22.00 BS

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2009/sep/18/irving-kristol-dies-neoconservatism

As the godfather of neoconservatism, Irving Kristol blazed a trail. The progressive movement could use a figure like him.

Few intellectuals of the 20th century were the equal of Irving Kristol, who died today at age 89, in terms of political influence. His journey from left to right from the 1940s to the 1970s was one that many others would follow, but he blazed the trail.

In the 1930s, he was a Trotskyite. Many a history exists describing the circle of formidable Jewish intellectuals who studied at City College of New York in Harlem – Kristol, Sidney Hook, Alfred Kazin, Irving Howe and many others. In those days, tables at the cafeteria were divided between Stalinists and Trots. Debates were ferocious, but it was assumed that one was on the left.

Source: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/18/AR2009091802514.html

Irving Kristol, Architect of Neoconservatism, Dies at 89

By Adam Bernstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 18, 2009 3:25 PM

Irving Kristol, 89, a forceful essayist, editor and university professor who became the leading architect of neoconservatism, which he called a political and intellectual movement for disaffected ex-liberals like himself who had been "mugged by reality," died Friday at the Capital Hospice in Arlington.