On Neoconservatism and Its Meaning

There’s perhaps no living person who better embodies the themes, contradictions, ethos, and pathos of “Know Your Enemy” than William Kristol, this week’s guest. Today, Kristol is editor-at-large of The Bulwark, a valuable redoubt of unreconstructed Never-Trumpism, which he helped found in 2018. But before dedicating himself, full-time, to the admirable if quixotic mission of undermining Donald Trump from the center-right — alienating many of his one-time friends in the process — Kristol was best known as an influential practitioner of neoconservatism: a staffer in the Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations; cofounder (in 1995 and 1997, respectively) of The Weekly Standard and the Project for a New American Century; a prominent champion of the 2003 invasion of Iraq; and faithful son of one of neoconservatism’s First Couples: Irving Kristol and Gertrude Himmelfarb. Kristol was also trained in political philosophy by the Harvard Straussian (and frequent KYE subject) Harvey Mansfield. As such, we had an enormous amount to discuss in a limited amount of time. A few things we covered: What was neoconservatism? How should political theory inform political action? Why didn’t Never-Trump conservatism work? Where did Trumpism come from? Are Straussians to blame for the Iraq War? And, why does Kristol (a longtime proponent of regime change in Iran) oppose Donald Trump’s current war with the Islamic Republic?

Further Listening: 

"Harvey Mansfield on Political Philosophy," Conversations with Kristol, Jun 30, 2014

"Know Your Frenemies (w/ Samuel Moyn)," KYE, Aug 10, 2020. 

Further Reading: 

William Kristol & Robert Kagan, "Toward a Neo-Reaganite Foreign Policy,"  Foreign Affairs, Jul 1, 1996.

William Kristol & David Brooks, "What Ails Conservatism," Wall Street Journal, Sept 15, 1997.

Justin Vaïsse, Neoconservatism: The Biography of a Movement, (2011)

William Kristol and Steven Lenzner, "What was Leo Strauss up to?" National Affairs, Fall 2003. 

Anne Norton, Leo Strauss and the Politics of American Empire, (2004)

Sam Adler-Bell, "How the War on Terror Fuels Trump," Jacobin, Aug 13, 2016.

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