Neocon Founder Kristol Dead at 89

The president showed respect for a war he opposed

(NEWSER) - Even the staunchest Iraq war supporters had to be happy with the speech Barack Obama delivered last night to mark the end of combat operations, writes William Kristol of the Weekly Standard . “President Obama opposed the war in Iraq. He still thinks it was a mistake,” he reasons. It’s unrealistic “to expect the president to give the speech John McCain would have given.” More»

'Going Rogue' phenomenon may foreshadow something bigger

(NEWSER) - Just 5 days into her book tour, first-time author Sarah Palin is attracting crowds so huge and adoring that they're feeding speculation about her political future. The philosophy that moved one fan to call her "the female Ronald Reagan" is nothing new, experts tell Erika Bolstad of the Anchorage Daily News , "but Palin seems to have seized on something timely by putting her brand on common-sense conservatism." More»

Time for America to start flexing its muscles instead of making deals

(NEWSER) - Neoconservatives are making a comeback and it's about time, writes Bret Stephens. They're back "because Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Kim Jong Il, and Vladimir Putin never went away," Stephens writes in the Wall Street Journal, and because the world wants America to use its strength to stop Iran and North Korea's nuclear programs in light of the failure of President Obama's "shambles" of a foreign policy. More»

(NEWSER) - Bill Kristol remembers his late father as a man of a "deep modesty" who "loved intellectual pursuits but always shunned intellectual pretension." Irving Kristol, who died earlier this month at age 89, is generally regarded as the architect of neoconservatism, but the honors he accrued never gave him an inflated sense of "self-importance," his son writes in the Weekly Standard. "I've had such a goddam lucky life," he said a few years back before lung surgery. More»

Fear of post-'60s 'moral crisis' spurred neocon's shift right

(NEWSER) - "Neoconservative" was originally a label applied to newly conservative ex-liberals and Irving Kristol, the late godfather of the movement, was among the first and finest of the kind, E. J. Dionne writes in the Washington Post. Kristol made a powerful case for "pragmatic liberalist" when he was still a moderate Democrat in the '60s, Dionne writes, before being pushed to the right by the New Left and the "counterculture’s attack on bourgeois values." More»