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February 13, 2012
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Menachem Wecker: Though Controversial, LL.M.'s Can Lead to Specialized Legal Jobs
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February 7, 2012
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Suzanne Bohan: Leaping lizards! Tiny reptiles advancing robot design
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Jonathan Tobin: Iran Threatens Israel With Destruction, But the New York Times Doesn't Hear It
Jeffrey Fleishman: In newly democratic Egypt, tens of democracy activists jailed, to stand trial; their groups are 'threatening the stability of the homeland'
Julie Deardorff : Researchers say antioxidants may not be that effective and could do more harm than good
Mark Clayton: How did Anonymous hackers eavesdrop on FBI and Scotland Yard?
February 3, 2012
Edmund Sanders : Israeli official says Iran is creating missile that could reach East Coast of US
Victoria Kim: Immigrant-smuggling ring used black drivers to avoid racial profiling
February 2, 2012
Jim Carney: Wrong number call may have saved her life
Reza Kahlili : Ex-CIA spy in Iran's Revolutionary Guard: What Obama doesn't grasp about striking deals with Tehran
Tina Susman: For woodchuck rescuer, every day is Groundhog Day
February 1, 2012
Brian Bennett: US officials see increasing threat of domestic attack from Iran
Emily Brandon: How to Take Advantage of New 401(k) Fee Disclosures
January 31, 2012
January 30, 2012
Paul Richter and Ramin Mostaghim: Misreading Teheran's limits -- deadly and economically devastating as they may be -- is a risk administration, Europe seem willing to take
Suzanne Bohan: Warning: Nap-deprived tots missing more than sleep, study finds
Meg Handley: Banks Revamping Rewards Programs to Woo Customers
January 27, 2012
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Yochonon Donn: In liberal New York City, fervently-Orthodox Jews may soon be getting a district to call their own
Jeannine Stein: An inflated ego and thinking you're 'all that' doesn't just make others sick of you, it can make you ill
Katy Hopkins: New budget rules may affect how much money you get for college
January 26, 2012
Ed Koch: To the New York Times, calling for the murder of Jews by those capable of having their incitement taken seriously isn't news
Jeannine Stein: Mental illness struck one in five U.S. adults in 2010: Report
January 25, 2012
Richard Simon: House passes two bills endorsing the use of religious symbols at military memorials
Fred Weir: Putin: Multiethnic Russia cannot survive as a US-style 'melting pot'; must find its own way
Susan Johnston: 5 Sneaky Coupon Strategies Consumers Should Watch Out For
January 24, 2012
Carol Clark: The price of your soul: How your brain decides whether to 'sell out'
Caroline B. Glick: America lost most in 'Arab Spring'. Sadly, many voters still don't grasp the extent
Warren Richey: Drug criminal scores win in GPS ruling from conservative-leaning high court
Erika Bolstad: Black conservatives gather to talk about gaining strength
January 23, 2012
Melissa Dribben: Jewish voters to play a key role in Florida's Republican primary
Jordan Rau: In quest to grow, Catholic hospital system will announce this morning its break from church
Ali Safi: U.S. envoy gives Taliban terms for peace talks
January 19, 2012
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January 17, 2012
Frank J. Gaffney Jr.: No-kidding red lines: U.S. response to an Iranian nuke may be bluster, but Israel's won't be
David G. Savage: They sued their principals after slandering them online --- now the cases are headed to the Supreme Court
David Francis: Where to Invest in 2012: With stocks expected to rebound, opportunity abounds for investors
January 13, 2012
Ben Lynfield: Israeli lawmakers move to annex Jewish Judea, one museum at a time
Alexia Elejalde-Ruiz: Thriving through touch: Gentle massage helps older people with low mobility improve in mind and body
January 12, 2012
Warren Richey: Landmark Supreme Court ruling a 'resounding win' for religious groups
Warren Richey: Supreme Court says no to new rule on eyewitness testimony
John Fauber : Statins found to raise diabetes risk in postmenopausal women
Katy Hopkins : Consider This Before You Pay for an Online Degree
The Kosher Gourmet by Joseph Erdos: This mushroom and barley soup has an intense -- almost nutty -- flavor that mixes robust with Middle East. It has creaminess without cream
January 11, 2012
Shari Roan: Millions of atrial fibrillation sufferers at risk for devastating, but preventable, stroke
Tom Hussain: Pakistan -- recipient of more than $21 billion in civilian and military aid -- speeds pursuit of Iranian pipeline, defying US
David G. Savage: High court signals it won't be loosening TV's 'indecency' rules
Stephen Ceasar: Oklahoma's Islamic law amendment can't go into effect, court rules
January 10, 2012
Reza Kahlili: From an ex-CIA spy: US must exploit new split in Iran's Revolutionary Guard
Karen Kaplan: Study: Nicotine replacement products ineffective when used in real-life situations
January 9, 2012
Michael Doyle: Put through legal hell over dream home, couple fought back hard --- all the way to Supreme Court
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Jewish World Review
Sept. 30, 2009
/ 9 Tishrei 5770
The Intellectual Talent Scout
By
Paul Greenberg
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
There must still be places like the all-night cafes and cafeterias I remember on the Lower East side, where students could sit till all hours nursing a cup of coffee or maybe a glass of tea -- a glesele tay, to lapse into my childhood Yiddish -- while solving all the problems of the world, or maybe just stirring them up. Or at least making the kind of obscure ideological distinctions that seemed all-important at the time.
Intellectually, the New York of the 1930s may have been the liveliest part of the Soviet Union. Name your own opiate of the intellectuals. It would surely be represented during those all-nighters. And fiercely debated. With any luck over a good piece of strudel, which would be the only connection with the real world.
A visiting rabbi circuit-riding here in Arkansas once recalled his seminary days in New York when he was trying to study a page of Talmud in such a setting -- an assignment that can be a week's if not a lifetime's work -- when he realized an old man was looking over his shoulder. "Nu," asked the stooped figure, "you want an argument?"
By which the old Jew meant a discussion full of Talmudic citations, philosophical/ theological tangents, rapid-fire volleys (called pilpul, from the Hebrew for pepper), and mutual challenging exchanges over some observation by a rabbi in ancient Babylon that may have been mined for 2,500 years, but might still have some rich ore left to unearth.
This was the milieu into which Irving William Kristol would be born January 22, 1920, the son of one of the innumerable luftmenschen (airy dreamers) in the garment trade. The boy would lose his mother to cancer when he was only 16, and his father would go broke more than once, but, what th' heck, when everybody's poor, who notices?
His was not a religiously observant household, but the habit of Talmudic argumentation persists in the ethnic culture. Like an afterglow of revelation. So it was only natural that, when young Kristol enrolled in City College, he would enlist in one of the two ideological camps represented there in the depths of the Depression -- both of them on the left, of course. The political perception of that generation of New Yorkers ended well short of center, the way New Yorkers' geographical perception may still end at the Hudson River.
The two antagonistic camps on campus back then might be summed up as (a) the party-line Stalinists, among them a young Julius Rosenberg, who would go on to a prominent career in treason, and (b) all the other lefties, including a Trotskyist like Irving Kristol, who would soon enough outgrow it.
And how. For once you see through Marxism at a young age, there's no telling how many other panaceas for the human condition you may come to doubt. Especially if you settle on a simple test for any political proposition: "The legitimate question to ask about any program," Irving Kristol would decide, is the ultimately pragmatic, very American one: "Will it work?"
That test led an older Irving Kristol, good liberal that he had become by the 1960s, to look around and notice that the liberalism of his time wasn't working, No matter how many intellectuals claimed it was. So he gathered a roster of like spirits and decided to start his own plain-spoken little magazine, one that would be free of scholarly cant and ideological politics. They called it "The Public Interest" and, if its articles could be dull, they were also realistic. Recognizing reality isn't always exciting, just sensible. That is its great virtue.
It would be hard to recall a journal that attracted so many scholars who would prove enduring fonts of common sense, as opposed -- very much opposed -- to the glitzy theorists in the social "sciences" who would come and go like comets burning out.
Irving Kristol brought a whole constellation of sane voices into his hospitable stable: Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who was anything but dull, along with luminaries like Robert Nisbet, Daniel Bell, Seymour Martin Lipset, Nathan Glazer, James Coleman, Peter Drucker, Edward Banfield, James Q. Wilson, Thomas Sowell, Abigail Thernstrom, Leon Kass, Diane Ravitch ... and so refreshingly on.
The other day, a New York Times type was at the Clinton Presidential Library in Little Rock touting his book and thesis, "The Death of Conservatism." Clearly, he hadn't looked around lately and noticed all those lively thinkers Irving Kristol had nurtured, and how through them his influence continues to spread in ever widening circles. Even among liberals, at least those susceptible to reason.
The thinkers Irving Kristol cultivated might have their theories, too, but what set them apart was their willingness to reconsider their ideas by the harsh light of reality. They also might have their differences, but this much they all had in common: They were ideologically unreliable. They cleaved to no party line. They could even change their minds on occasion. As they became truly daring, they might even embrace ideas that had been around through the ages, like the importance of family and work to a society. And their tribe increased mightily, thanks in great part to Irving Kristol's tender loving care.
He would be tagged the godfather of neo-conservatism. His most famous observation -- it was just about his trademark -- was made when he was asked to define a neo-conservative, and replied, "a liberal who has been mugged by reality." Neo-conservatism, he would claim, isn't an ideology but an anti-ideology. It was anti-utopian, too. Irving Kristol and company were too grown-up to believe in some sort of paradise man could engineer for himself.
In the course of a long life, which has ended at the age of 89, Irving Kristol made many a memorable and still prescient observation. But much like William F. Buckley Jr., whose own conservatism had nothing neo- about it, Irving Kristol's greatest contribution to American thought may not have been anything he himself said, however trenchant, but the array of other thinkers and leaders he befriended, sponsored and urged on.
He made no ideological demands on his many proteges, asking only that they have something of use and value to add to the national conversation. And with impressive regularity, they did. For he had the eye of an intellectual talent scout. If you seek Irving Kristol's monument, just look around -- at all the thoughtful, articulate, incisive thinkers he raised up around him. That is his great legacy.
Paul Greenberg Archives
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