Jeane Kirkpatrick

by Staff - December 9th, 2006 - Opinion Journal (Wall Street Journal)

Jeane Kirkpatrick, who died yesterday at 80, was that rare thing--a public intellectual and a public figure. She excelled at both.

Ms. Kirkpatrick is known to the public at large because Ronald Reagan, after defeating Jimmy Carter for the Presidency in 1980, appointed her U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations. It is worth mentioning in this context that earlier this week Senate Democrats succeeded finally in driving John Bolton from the U.N. ambassadorship. The mind's eye recalls the televised image in the early 1980s of Ambassador Kirkpatrick, a Democrat then, seated at the U.N. Security Council table and publicly defending U.S. interests against the Soviet Union with an articulate, no-nonsense bluntness that makes Mr. Bolton sound like Little Bo-Peep by comparison. That style--American interests made perfectly clear--will be missed.

She knew how to use words as weapons. Her most famous turn of phrase, at the 1984 GOP convention, was "San Francisco Democrats." Ms. Kirkpatrick's "Blame America First" speech marked her most public departure from the Democratic Party.

Explaining in an interview years later why she and other Democratic intellectuals--yes, they were neoconservatives--formed the anti-Soviet Committee for the Present Danger and aligned themselves with Ronald Reagan, Ms. Kirkpatrick said: "We were concerned about the weakening of Western will." Incidentally, the antipathy to "the neoconservatives" that one hears so often these days flows back directly to those years and the neocon battles with American liberals.

Jeane Kirkpatrick was a giant. I first learned about her when Ronald Reagan appointed her as Ambassador to United Nations. Like John Bolton, she stood up for America without equivocation. It was through her that I learned about "neo-conservative" philosophy and started to adopt that philosophy as a major part of my thinking on what we should be doing as a nation.

Like most neo-conservatives, I left the democratic party over their rejection of the principles of free enterprise and adoption of the evils of socialism as their economic world view. I also rejected the democratic party's embracing of the "blame America first" knee jerk reaction to any international issue.

Jeane Kirkpatrick (AP Photo)

You cannot truly be a liberal (as defined by the democrat party) and a patriot. Jeane Kirkpatrick taught me that. Many people love her for the fact that she was smart and strong and loved America. Many democrats hate her for the same reasons.

God bless her. We will miss her greatly.