As the country looks for reassurance and even tempered advice, many turn to those who have a style of being meek, mild and calm. The manner of the delivery, is often more important, than the meaning of the message. So say the public. The attraction for avoiding the hard questions, is as popular as the latest hit on the nielsen parade of reality TV. But when it comes to politics, few are any better with the grin, soft tones and non threatening demeanor than the neo-con in chief – the editor of the Weekly Standard. You know his face, but do you know the man?
William Kristol is a work in progress; a background that is disguised, while an ordinary man, image is promoted. Do you really know this man? Well, can you see through the media transparency?
“Kristol was raised in Manhattan, educated at Harvard and spent his very early years working for Democrats, including Hubert Humphrey and Scoop Jackson, but by 1976 he had become a Republican . . . . In 1985 he was hired by Bill Bennett to serve in the federal Department of Education, where he quickly rose to chief of staff. With the election of George Bush in 1988, Kristol was given the unenviable job of handling Vice President Dan Quayle.”
This maestro of the ‘spin’ is also the master of the velvet touch. Just ask the composer of the “Spin Cycle” himself, Howard Kurtz:
“If any political savant is wired to nearly all the Republican presidential candidates, it’s Kristol, the genial face of non-threatening conservatism. And if anyone is deeply embedded in the media culture–editing an opinion magazine, pontificating on all the networks, quoted by reporters in search of a glib Republican–Kristol is the man. He’s become part of Washington’s circulatory system, this half-pol, half-pundit, full-throated advocate with the nice-guy image.”
Being the son of the celebrated, Irving Kristol and Gertrude Himmelfarb, one would have high expectations. But how well do you know Irving – the godfather of neo-conservatism? Consider this quote from the father:
“Ever since I can remember, I’ve been a neo-something: a neo-Marxist, a neo-Trotskyist, a neo-liberal, a neo-conservative; in religion a neo-orthodox even while I was a neo-Trotskyist and a neo-Marxist. I’m going to end up a neo- that’s all, neo dash nothing.”
But a father need not beget the beliefs of a son. So let Bill confess up, in this quote: “there’s a reform Republicanism that can marry up fairly comfortably with the sort of center-right Democrat.”
Sounds like a mindset and platform coming out of John McCain? When Kristol started the Project for the Republican Future, he hooked up with the likes of Robert Kagan. You remember him from his – How we unlearned the art of war, published in the New Republic. “When America Blinked” is a prescription in deranged confidence for empire. Coming from the author of Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos, what else would one expect? Is this the kind of country that we want?
The next venture was the Weekly Standard, a new conservative political weekly owned by Murdoch’s News America Publishing Inc., a subsidiary of News Corp. Or should we more properly say, neo-con political weekly? For those who have falsely bought into the canard that the other Rupert enterprise, Fox News; is right-wing programming, it is an easy sell to claim that the neo-cons are conservatives. But are they? Paul Gottfried makes the point in – The Conservative Movement: “Almost all Neo-Conservatives . . . remain qualifieddefenders of the welfare state.”
In order to really understand what is going on, read this important essay – The Problem with Conservatives by Colonel V. Doner. The core of the neo-con agenda can be summed up:
“In foreign affairs we continue to use tax dollars and American troops to transplant American-style “democratic capitalism,” while encouraging “open immigration” from the Third World and accelerated emigration of blue-collar jobs to Red China and sundry Third World concentration camps. This seemingly disastrous policy is the Neo-Con’s raison d’ etat in foreign affairs—the pursuit of international cultural and political homogeneity based on secular democratic values.”
“At home the Neo-Cons betray their true colors as neo-liberals with their vehement defense of big government (albeit a well-managed one!) and the welfare state (again, an efficiently run one!). As a whole, Neo-Conservatives are interested in containing or moderating the civil government’s role as sovereign caretaker for the people, not replacing it. Irving Kristol (Bill’s father) and the progenitor of the Neo-Conservative movement, freely confesses “we are not at all hostile to the idea of a welfare state,” inferring it was merely the gross mismanagement of the welfare state Neo-Cons found irksome.”
It was said that Jerry seinfeld’s capacity for the ridiculous made the show appealing. Bill Kristol projects the same talent, but he makes the appeal of traditional themes, ridiculous for genuine conservatives. By hijacking the rhetoric, and substituting a ”social democratic” agenda, we are being betrayed. What we get from the neo-cons is the extension of the War Party and the Welfare State. Their vices resemble the methods of the Joker. They gain pleasure in breaking every principle and moral stature known to actual conservatives. More importantly, the Trojan Horse known as Kristol, makes the crime funnier by playing a game of cat and mouse with the common sense of the American public. Joker Bill knows and views each offense, every infliction of pain, and any murder in the name of empire, as the ultimate joke — mocking all of us.
Kristol is pushing the cuisine of the soup nazi, with the leftovers of the Left – nothing for you . . . The neo-cons are really seeking to enforce extremely strict adherence to the NWO bouillon stand. Misunderstood by most Republicans, he is actually “a culinary prodigy that suffers from his own contaminated stew.” That Kristol smirk reveals the contempt that this Joker of the United Underworld has for all of us. He will stop at nothing to deliver his next punchline. But this joke is not funny. He forgets that the we are sick of being fed that pricey soup, with velvet gloves . . .