Over at TAP Online, David Greenberg reviews Jacob Heilbrunn's They Knew They Were Right:
Not long ago the term "neoconservative" seemed ripe for retirement. The label was originally applied in the 1960s and 1970s to the ex-liberals (themselves ex-socialists) who turned halfway to the right after becoming disenchanted with the Great Society, left-wing politics, and the Democrats' post-Vietnam isolationism. Under Ronald Reagan, however, the neocons kept moving right and joined in a broad right-wing consensus, and by the 1990s it became hard to tell them apart from other Republicans. Did second-generation neocons such as Irving Kristol's son Bill -- baby boomers who never made any left-to-right voyage -- even warrant the moniker? The younger Kristol said he was "just a conservative."
And Eric Alterman has a detailed list of the pros and cons of Bill Kristol on the New York Times op-ed page.
--The Editors
