William Kristol - Reflections from Israel

The Tikvah Podcast

Tikvah

Judaism, News, Politics, Religion & Spirituality

4.8 • 658 Ratings

🗓️ 9 January 2015

⏱️ 86 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Weekly Standard editor William Kristol spoke with Israeli alumni of Tikvah Fund programs in Jerusalem last month about his life in the arena of American politics. The first half of the conversation was largely autobiographical. He talks about his upbringing—including his Jewish upbringing—as the child of Irving Kristol, “the godfather of neoconservatism,” and the legendary historian Gertrude Himmelfarb. How did he go from being a professor of political philosophy to the vice president’s chief of staff? What did he learn from his time in government? The second half of the event gave Kristol a chance to assess the astounding crises and contentious debates in America and the world. What will happen with the new Republican Congress? What can be done about the economic stress facing the American middle class? What kind of problem is immigration? How will the Obama administration’s foreign policy be remembered? And what does this all mean for Israel?

The event was recorded on December 15, 2014 and was moderated by Ran Baratz.

Transcript

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0:00.0	You come from a very intellectual home.
0:03.5	Your father, your biological father is also called the godfather of the neo-conservative movement.
0:09.9	And your mother is a well-known scholar and historian and also a public intellectual, I would dare say.
0:15.8	So if you'll just go back to those early days and describe how it was to grow up in that household.
0:24.7	Okay, well, first of all, let me say that how good it is to be here at Tikva, Israel, since I've spent
0:30.2	much time at Tikva, New York, and this is, of course, an equally important part of what Tikva does,
0:36.6	and it's great to be here with Ron. I taught a class with him. I don't think we really taught a class. We led a seminar. We learned from the other people in the seminar. I learned from the other people in the seminar. Ron taught the other people last week, so that was really a really terrific experience, actually. And so it's been great to be here, and I'm going back tomorrow morning,
0:55.4	so this is a wonderful way to end, an era of Hanukkah.
1:00.3	Yeah, so my father, my parents were both intellectuals, my mother still is,
1:05.9	but my mother was and is a professional historian.
1:12.1	My father, a man of letters, as they used to say, or intellectual.
1:16.7	He never liked the word intellectuals, since I think he agrees with a lot of the criticisms of intellectuals.
1:22.7	But nonetheless, I suppose that's a good term for him.
1:25.9	I'd say one thing I learned.
1:26.9	So growing up,
1:27.5	but of course I had a normal childhood in New York, and so far as anyone has a normal childhood
1:32.4	in New York, sports, and other things. I would say the one thing I probably learned from them
1:38.3	more than anything else, though, was that the majority of intellectuals or historians or enlightened people are often wrong.
1:46.2	My father always swam against the tide a little bit.
1:50.2	He was a liberal anti-communist and then became a, it was called a neo-conservative,
1:54.3	was denounced for being not just a liberal anti-communist, but a neo-conservative in the late 60s and early 70s,
2:00.7	and he decided, you know, might as well just accept the term. So he became a neo-conservative in the late 60s and early 70s, and he decided, you know,
	...

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