Norman Podhoretz

In the late 1990s, I attended a conference on conservatism held by the American Enterprise Institute at the Mayflower Hotel. Various eminences of the right were in attendance, including Norman Podhoretz and Midge Decter. Podhoretz was on a panel with Glenn Loury, who had moved away from his conservative views, and Podhoretz ventilated his exasperation over this evolution. But the panel that really caught my eye was the one that Decter spoke on about American culture. She described a country in a state of breakdown, prompting her daughter, Rachel, to remark, “Mom, it isn’t that bad!” The audience laughed. For Decter, however, it was never a laughing matter. Decter, who recently died, formed what in retrospect can be seen as the vanguard of the culture war.

Dolphins returned to the canals of Venice during the COVID-19 lockdown, and neoconservatives are returning to the Democratic party. Bill Kristol and his colleagues at the Bulwark support Joe Biden for president, even though an anti-Trump Republican of sorts briefly jumped into the race. Michigan congressman Justin Amash earned the esteem of the Kristol crew when he collaborated with Democrats to impeach Donald Trump last year. But the Bulwark feared that if Amash was on the ballot as the Libertarian party’s presidential nominee, he’d take votes away from Biden.