Irving Kristol, Dead

"Using his early training as a Trotskyite, and a natural talent for organizing, recruiting, and demagoguery, he managed to take over the Stupid Party, i.e., the conservative movement and the Republicans," says Lew Rockwell — Irving Kristol Is Dead at 89. "Whatever was good, he purged or smeared, in the cause of what he dubbed 'neoconservatism': corporatism, global war, and imperialism, with a special orientation towards Israel," says Mr. Rockwell. "As a warmonger and promoter of the police state, he had much blood on his hands, and wanted more."

"Uniquely in all of history," says Jack Ross, "Kristol was present for virtually the entire history of this revolutionary-totalitarian movement, easily equal to if not greater than its 20th century rivals, from its birth in the Trotskyist den of Alcove One to its likely demise at the hands of Barack Obama, the South Side state senator with an African name and disciple of Saul Alinksy who is proving the most cunning President of These United States since Richard Nixon" — The Orange Wedge, At Last. The author, however, "will save the out-and-out dancing over the grave for Norman Podhoretz."

J. David Hoeveler, Jr. offers a more charitable send-off of the "the major intellectual inspiration, and... one of the most influential voices, of the phenomenon labeled 'neoconservatism'"— In Memoriam: Irving Kristol (1920–2009).