Here is some biographical information about Bill Kristol.
Kristol was born on December 23, 1952 in New York City into a Jewish family. His father, the late Irving Kristol, served as the managing editor of Commentary magazine and has been described as the “godfather of neoconservatism.” His mother Gertrude Himmelfarb was a scholar of Victorian era literature. He graduated in 1970 from The Collegiate School, a preparatory school for boys located in Manhattan.
In 1973, Kristol received an A.B. from Harvard, graduating magna cum laude in three years. In 1976, he worked for Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s successful U.S. Senate campaign, serving as deputy issues director during the Democratic primary. Kristol received a Ph.D. in government from Harvard in 1979.
Bill Kristol is a New Yorker. He’s a New Yorker who went to an elite prep school and then received two degrees from Harvard. He then went to work for a Democrat. But somehow he became a neo-confederate. He begins his latest column with an extensive quote from famed Mississippi author William Faulker.
For every Southern boy 14 years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it’s all in the balance, it hasn’t happened yet, it hasn’t even begun yet, it not only hasn’t begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances which made more men than Garnett and Kemper and Armstead and Wilcox look grave yet it’s going to begin, we all know that, we have come too far with too much at stake and that moment doesn’t need even a 14-year-old boy to think This time. Maybe this time with all this much to lose and all this much to gain: Pennsylvania, Maryland, the world, the golden dome of Washington itself to crown with desperate and unbelievable victory the desperate gamble, the cast made two years ago.
—William Faulkner, Intruder in the Dust
Hopefully, you understand that the reference is to the Battle of Gettysburg, and the scene is the moment before Maj. Gen. George Pickett launched his doomed charge up Cemetery Ridge. Many scholars consider it the turning point in the Civil War. Mr. Faulkner is saying that every Southern boy has a moment when they fantasize about what would have happened if the war had not been lost. Why does a New York-raised, Harvard-educated, son of Jewish intellectuals self-identify with a Southern army which fought for the institution of slavery? Honestly, that’s hard to explain, but he says it’s because Ronald Reagan was fighting the same battle.
For every American conservative, not once but whenever he wants it, it’s always the evening of November 4, 1980, the instant when we knew Ronald Reagan, the man who gave the speech in the lost cause of 1964, leader of the movement since 1966, derided by liberal elites and despised by the Republican establishment, the moment when we knew—he’d won, we’d won, the impossible dream was possible, the desperate gamble of modern conservatism might pay off, conservatism had a chance, America had a chance.
You see, it’s seamless. Ronald Reagan was successful where George Pickett was not. Reagan fulfilled the dreams of all those Southern boys.
The overall point of Kristol’s column is to carry water for Mitt Romney. He’s explaining to the conservative troops that they’re not going to get an opportunity to elect a conservative champion like Ronald Reagan, but they might get something almost as good, like the equivalent of the Clinton presidency, or even a FDR. Yes, his argument is a little strained. But here is how he concludes:
These other models for conservative success in 2012 need to be studied for their lessons and adapted to our times. Reversing Obama’s weakness abroad, repealing Obamacare, restoring solvency and prosperity and limiting government at home, these are tasks too important not to be achieved because of our nostalgic disappointment that we will not, in 2012, replay a moment that is not to be again—and that perhaps never truly was.
Still, for every conservative of a certain age, there is the instant when it’s Election Day 1980, and the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out. . . .
Let’s go back and learn a little history.
Ronald Reagan’s “states’ rights” speech given on August 3, 1980, was his first public address after the Republican National Convention officially chose him as the Republican nominee for the 1980 United States presidential election. The speech drew attention for his use of the phrase “states’ rights” at the Neshoba County Fair, just a few miles from Philadelphia, Mississippi, a town associated with the 1964 murders of civil rights workers. Reagan said:
“I believe in states’ rights…. I believe we have distorted the balance of our government today by giving powers that were never intended to be given in the Constitution to that federal establishment.”
He went on to promise to “restore to states and local governments the power that properly belongs to them.”
The use of the phrase was seen by some as a tacit appeal to Southern white voters and a continuation of Richard Nixon’s Southern Strategy, while others argued it merely reflected his libertarian economic beliefs.
It all comes back to Mississippi, conservatism, and the Lost Cause. Now, I can understand that Bill Kristol became disenchanted with the Democratic Party over what he perceived to be insufficient anti-communist ardor. But it’s odd to see him wholeheartedly embrace the Confederacy and to so obviously equate it with the modern conservative movement. That’s the kind of thing that liberal critics like to argue, not the kind of thing that Republicans own up to without apology.
