Toasts and Remarks Delivered at a Dinner in Honor of Irving Kristol on His Seventy-fifth Birthday

Christopher DeMuth, George Will, Walter Berns, Midge Decter, Charles Krauthammer, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, and William Kristol, "Toasts and Remarks Delivered at a Dinner in Honor of Irving Kristol on His Seventy-fifth Birthday," The American Enterprise Institute, January 21, 1995.

Excerpt:

If what is called neoconservatism is by now an institution of sorts, it truly is what Emerson said institutions are–the lengthening shadow of a man. And the man is Irving Kristol. I shudder to think what would have happened if he had not broken free from the particular doctrines loose in that particular alcove at CCNY where they were chopping up the Left into ever-finer fragments, producing, in the process, some wonderful slogans. My favorite slogan from the history of the American Left is “Lovestone is a Lovestonite.” What Irving’s career has affirmed is not only that slogans are no substitute for ideas, and not only that ideas have consequences, but that only ideas have large and lasting consequences.