Irving Kristol Quotes
For any imperial policy to work effectively...it needs moral and intellectual guidance...It is much to be doubted that the United States can continue to play an imperial role without the endorsement of its intellectual class...
Irving Kristol, Political Philosopher, American Intellectuals and Foreign Policy" in "Foreign Affairs", July 1967
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At the end of WWII there was much tension between Russia and the Anglo-American alliance. This plan was developed but never implemented. See {613195} for Prime Minister Winston Churchill’s description of the invasion idea.
FDR had agreed to send destroyers to help Churchill but to placate Congress he wanted a formal agreement for Britain to lease bases to the United States. Roosevelt wanted the Prime Minister to work out a Lend Lease agreement with the Attorney General. Jackson’s reply was “But Republics do!”
During the Reign of Terror of the French Revolution some powerful Frenchmen in the French Colonies wanted to maintain the caste system to keep the Blacks and other indigenous people from claiming equal rights. They claimed that the colonies would perish. But the French Revolutionaries were committed to “Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity”, and Barnave summed up their viewpoint in this succinct statement of policy which became a memorable quotation.
One of the reasons that Jefferson and others were so anxious to expand the territory of the United States was that Britain had operated with the policy that curtailed and limited the population growth of the American colonies and the resentment of this policy led to growth of America and the Westward expansion.
He was referring to land where there were people already living. People included Indians and Mexicans. He was one of the few American Presidents who were not enthusiasts for Manifest Destiny and expansionism of America.
The United States and England maintained officially that their stance was moral and ethical. And it was for most Americans and Britons. However, there were some, whose motivation was economically self-serving as this quotation suggests. The less control Japan had over China, the more other countries could freely trade with China.
Irving Kristol was an American journalist who was dubbed the "godfather of neoconservatism". As a founder, editor, and contributor to various magazines, he played an influential role in the intellectual and political culture of the last half of the twentieth century. After his death, he was described by The Daily Telegraph as being "perhaps the most consequential public intellectual of the latter half of the [twentieth] century".
