PrintSeptember 27, 2009
Liberal Jews and the Legacy of Neoconservatism
With the passing of the Godfather of neoconservatism, Irving Kristol, the release the same week of the book Why Are Jews Liberals, (2009), by Norman Podhoretz, and the arrival of the annual Jewish high holidays, one entertains the fascinating subject of American Jewish politics. Neoconservatism, of course, is not essentially a Jewish political philosophy, and some of its leading exponents and adherents are/were not Jewish (Hons. Jeane Kirkpatrick, Scoop Jackson, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Wiliam J. Bennett, James Q. Wilson, and John Bolton, to name just a few admired American statesmen), but the list of Jewish intellectual forebears who inspired neoconservative ideas is impressive (Max Shactman, Leo Strauss, and Lionel Trilling, to name just a few).Prominent modern Jewish conservative intellectuals have included, among many others, Nathan Glazer, Ben Wattenberg, Joshua Muravchik, Paul Wolfowitz, Douglas Feith, Richard Perle, Elliott Abrams, David Frum, Robert Kagan, Peter...(Read Full Article)
