From Paul Gottfried: I agree with Tom's assessment of Murray's ability to see through neoconservative "smoke screens," though perhaps Murray, Jim Bennett, and others who weren't taken in, expressed points of view that were also available to others, who willfully deceived themselves. I too was present at a talk by that blowhard Newt Gingrich, at the Rockford Institute, in the early eighties and came away shocked by how other "conservative" attendees interpreted what they heard. Although there was nothing Gingrich said he would do to scale back the managerial state, other than provide marginal tax relief to corporations, most of the listeners expressed ecstasy that "here is a man who stands for conservative values." From that point on I became convinced that movement conservatives are invincibly stupid, desperately opportunistic, or will do anything to appear mainstream. Note that when Irving Kristol, at a keynote speech at the Philadelphia Society fifteen years ago, affirmed his belief in an extensive federal welfare state and chided his listeners for being impractical reactionaries, nobody on the Society board read him out of the movement. In NR Kristol's commentary was praised for expressing honest conservatism. What Tom considers to be Murray's and Jim Bennett's prescience may be something else that is even more worthy of commendation, their avoidance of self-deception and mendacity.
