Intellectuals on Tap

A specter is haunting Irving Kristol—the specter of The New Class. It consists of “some millions of people whom liberal capitalism has sent to college in order to help manage its affluent, highly technological, mildly paternalistic ‘post-industrial society.'” These educators, journalists, city planners, social workers, editors, and civil servants constitute, so Kristol argues, a clear and present danger to the good, that is the business, society. It is against them that he directs, to borrow from Dr. Johnson, his “stratagems of well-bred malignity.”

There seems to be a paradox here: Irving Kristol, editor of the Public Interest, Wall Street Journal columnist, and Henry Luce Profess...