The Origins of America's Neocons

The meaning, legacy, and future of neoconservatism are often hotly contested subjects. But the history of neoconservatism — particularly its early history — has long been deemed largely settled territory.

According to the prevailing narrative, members of the first generation of neoconservatives — perhaps the most famous among them being Irving Kristol — were left-wing intellectuals who came to question and discard the dogmas of progressive liberalism during the 1960s, especially in response to the cultural radicalism of the student protest movements and the misguided ambition of the Great Society. "Mugged by reality," as Kristol memorably put it, they embarked upon a rightward journey, explaining themselves in publications like Kristol's quarterly journal, The Public Interest, and Norman Podhoretz's monthly magazine, Commentary. Their heresy drew the ire of former comrades on the left, one of whom, political theorist Michael Harrington, is thought to have first applied to them the term "neoconservative" while castigating The Public Interest in a 1973 essay in the democratic-socialist magazine Dissent.

This familiar story proved convenient over the years for both the neoconservatives and their critics. Yet it does not stand up to historical investigation. Such an investigation reveals a much more interesting, impressive, and engaging story — mainly with respect to Kristol and his wife, historian Gertrude Himmelfarb. That story involves decades of intellectual evolution, beginning well before the heady 1960s with a profoundly conservative inclination to understand modern life through the lens of the Anglo-American tradition of political thought.

Drawing on previously unexplored archival materials on both sides of the Atlantic, we can now recount a far more thorough and accurate history of Kristol, Himmelfarb, and their intellectual milieu. By so doing, we can shed new light both on the intellectual atmosphere of post-war America and on the roots of the philosophical "persuasion" that eventually transformed American politics.