Matthew Continetti on Irving Kristol’s Rabbinic Mind (Rebroadcast)
The Tikvah Podcast
Tikvah
4.6 • 620 Ratings
🗓️ 9 July 2020
⏱️ 40 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Everyone can see that a revolutionary spirit is haunting American public life right now. The demands being made of our laws and culture are uncompromising and radical. The public mood is given to extremes, and notions of gradual improvement and subtle distinctions are thought to be incapable of speaking to the severity of our racial, cultural, scientific, and spiritual challenges
So this week, we are rebroadcasting a discussion from the archives that focuses on a figure whose watchwords were the very opposite of America’s present utopian fever—the essayist of American skepticism, empiricism, meliorism, and gradualism—Irving Kristol.
Our guest is Matthew Continetti, and the focus of our discussion is an essay he published back in 2014, “The Theological Politics of Irving Kristol.” In it, Continetti argues that there is a rabbinic cast of mind underneath Kristol’s meliorism, that is, his effort to weigh trade-offs and favor gradual improvement when possible within the confines of man’s broken nature.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Everyone can see that a revolutionary spirit haunts American public life right now. |
| 0:13.0 | Demands being made on our laws and culture are uncompromising and radical. |
| 0:19.0 | Figures from the past who have fallen short, like every woman and man walking this earth, is fallen short, are judged at their worst, and redemption or grace or forgiveness is withheld. |
| 0:29.6 | The public mood is given to extremes, and gradual improvements and subtle distinctions are all thought to be incapable of speaking to the severity of our moment, |
| 0:39.3 | our racial, cultural, medical, material, and spiritual challenges. |
| 0:44.1 | So this week, I thought we'd re-broadcast a discussion from the archives that focuses on an |
| 0:49.5 | older thinker whose watchword was the very opposite of America's present utopian fever, the essayist |
| 0:55.8 | of American Meliorism, Irving Crystal. Welcome to the Tikva podcast. I'm your host, Jonathan Silver. |
| 1:02.8 | My guest today is Matthew Contenetti. He was three years ago when we recorded this discussion, |
| 1:08.2 | the editor of the Washington Free Beacon, and he's now a fellow |
| 1:11.0 | at the American Enterprise Institute. The focus of our discussion is an essay that was published |
| 1:16.0 | three years before our conversation, six years ago now, back in 2014, the theological politics |
| 1:22.3 | of Irving Crystal. It was published in National Affairs. In it, Matthew argues that there is a rabbinic cast of mind |
| 1:29.8 | to Irving Crystal's Meliorism, that is, his effort to weigh trade-offs and favor gradual improvements |
| 1:36.6 | when possible within the confines of man's broken nature. I learned a lot from the essay, |
| 1:42.5 | and Irving Crystals is a welcome voice in our public life just |
| 1:45.7 | now. If you enjoy this conversation, you can subscribe to the Tikva podcast on iTunes, Stitcher, |
| 1:51.4 | Google Play, and Spotify. I hope you'll leave us a five-star review to help us grow this community of |
| 1:56.6 | ideas. I welcome your feedback on this or any of our other podcast episodes at podcast |
| 2:02.0 | at ticfunds.org. And of course, if you want to learn more about our work at Tikva, you can |
| 2:07.5 | visit our website, ticfunds.org, and follow us on Facebook and Twitter. Here now is my 2017 |
| 2:14.0 | conversation with Matthew Contenetti. Matt, welcome. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Tikvah, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Tikvah and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.