[L.C.]

me humility: congressional hearings are nothing after having had
your manuscripts taken apart at *COMMENTARY*. If *The Book of Virtues*
had been submitted to *COMMENTARY* rather than to Simon &
Schuster, it would have been *The Little Book That Liberals Hate*—
like the dog that goes in as a Saint Bernard and comes out as a
chihuahua. Or, imagine me going in and Neal Kozodoy coming out.

Somewhere around 1982 or '83, Naomi Decter, who was then
working at *Newsweek*, helped me with a piece I was doing for the "My
Turn" column. It was a piece on heroes, and they asked me how I
wanted to identify myself. I was so proud of my writing for *COMMENTARY*—I had had at least three or four book reviews in the magazine
by then—I said, call me a regular reviewer for *COMMENTARY*. I was
summoned to the offices on East 56th Street, to the presence of
Norman and Neal. I was told that I was *not* a regular reviewer for
*COMMENTARY*, and was not likely to be one, and if this kind of self-
advertisement continued, I wouldn't have any presence at all in the
magazine. They held up the last fourteen issues of *COMMENTARY*, in
which there appeared 27 pieces by Edward Luttwak, and said, "*He* is
not a regular contributor." So I was sent off to find another career.

Well, ideas do have consequences and words do matter—or
in Brooklyn, where I and others here grew up, you might say “woods
matter.” It does matter what is said, and I am very pleased that
Norman—and so many of those gathered here tonight—decided on
this career. I was going to quote some old Jewish wise man from hun-
dreds of years ago, but instead I’ll project 200 years into the future
when they’ll be saying, “If the Kristols and the Podhoretzes had been
tailors, we would all have a lot of pants.” Instead, we have a lot of
magazines, and more to come, of a high standard, if I can put it that
way.

In any case, the moment of redemption came for me, the
prodigal son, when I got a call at the National Humanities Center in
North Carolina, where I had been sent far away from *COMMENTARY*.
Norman wanted me and Terry Eastland to write the lead piece on
reverse discrimination for the September 1978 issue. Out of the book-
review section and onto the front, on the top, above the fold. Norman
said—I will never forget it—"We're asking you to do this because we
have such extraordinary confidence in your ability, your writing, your
insight, and your probity."

I said, "Thank you."

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Norman said, "Here's how we want you to write the piece."

And he then proceeded to tell us, line by line by line, how to write it. Which we did—to our glory and later on to our emolument and to high positions in government and influence over the public debate.

General Podhoretz! It has been a pleasure to serve you, sir. Thank you for the opportunity.

## NEAL KOZODOY

The conservative movement in America has grown and developed and articulated itself in so varied and sophisticated a manner over the last two decades that it may be hard to recall that electric moment when a young thinker with a coruscating pen first hung out his shingle. It read, in effect, Ye Olde Truths; William F. Buckley, Jr., Owner and Sole Proprietor; Apply Within. After all these years, what can one say? Later this evening we will hear from a gentleman widely known as the godfather of one branch of American conservatism. It is only fitting that he should be preceded on the program by the biggest mother of them all.

## WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR.

Mr. Kozodoy, ladies and gentlemen, Midge,

I am, as expected, both sustained by hearing Bill Bennett and deflated, left feeling like some of the appendix material in *The Book of Virtues*. But the reanimation is immediate, thanks to our guest of honor.

9

[10]

There is no way in which I can interdict the memory of my own professional passage through the world of journalism. I remember spotting the item in *Editor and Publisher* after William Shawn re-signed from, or rather was retired from, the *New Yorker* some years ago—that I was now, as editor of *National Review*, the longest-reigning magazine editor in America. The ink was hardly dry on that announcement before I found myself propped up at a ceremonial banquet, retiring as editor, after 35 years of service. Norman and I have a lot in common, I like to think, but add to that list our inclination to orotund cycles. Thirty years as editor would have been a little on the frivolous side, 40 years, a little topheavy—lapidary.

It has been a heady tenure, for Norman obviously, but also for the legions who have observed with admiration and awe the services he has performed so self-effacingly—to be sure, occasionally extruding an autobiographical book that reminds us of the distance he has traveled. I say legions and I mean it. The gap between the circulation of *COMMENTARY* and its influence does not surprise: the *New Republic* was the brain trust for the New Deal when its circulation amounted to 35,000, and *National Review* went to one of our subscribers, Ronald Reagan, when our circulation was a mere 15,000, and Reagan was still a mere Democrat.

But although we know that there is no correlation between the size of a magazine's circulation and its influence, it is nevertheless disappointing when now and again one bumps up against the profundity of the ignorance of so many of our public men. This was brought to mind a year or so ago when Senator Moynihan was arguing the qualifications of Carol Iannone to serve on the national board of the Endowment for the Humanities. She was facing the charge that she had published "only" in *COMMENTARY*. Senator Moynihan thought to tell his colleagues on the floor a little story. It was that hitching a ride with Vice President Mondale on Air Force 2 one afternoon in the late 70's he had urged his host to read the current issue of *COMMENTARY* for special insight into a then-burning question. The good news, said Senator Moynihan, was that Mr. Mondale had agreed to read the article. The bad news, that he had never before heard of *COMMENTARY*. It is not politically correct to argue the need for a rudimentary public literacy. On the other hand, here *COMMENTARY* had one less subscriber than it should have had, and the cost to the nation was the reduced vision of the Vice President of the United States.

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Norman Podhoretz led the way to a new vision for his magazine. The itinerary is familiar to those who feel a special debt to him for endowing the movement he embraced with such strength and discipline. The movement he left behind is described in an article in the current issue of *COMMENTARY*: "*The trouble is that 30 years of shuffling have blurred the creed, so that liberalism now resembles a person who has undergone 27 face-lifts; the natural contours have disappeared. . . . Mainstream liberalism—the kind that exists in national and local politics, as opposed to university campuses—has become vaporous. There are no deep channels of energy.*"

That review was written by David Brooks, whom I encountered as a very young student at the University of Chicago. He was then a liberal, but he declined the proffered face-lifts. And now he has been recruited away from the *Wall Street Journal* by Rupert Murdoch, as a part of the editorial nucleus that next fall will publish yet another conservative journal, a weekly. *National Review* is 40 years old this October, and to get where we are we were required to absorb a deficit of $19 million. Never mind. As a fraternal gesture, I promise Rupert that if the time comes, I shall happily teach him how to write Fund Appeal letters.

Norman Podhoretz's career brings to mind the comment by the comedian Phil Harris years ago when our first astronaut took flight. "What I admire about him," Harris said, "is that he does it without nets."

I don't mean to suggest that Norman was all alone when he spotted that great horizon and decided to pursue it. For one thing, who needs nets, who has Midge alongside? But he did need to take issue with many who were still engaged in face-lifting, and it must have been terribly hard, and very, very lonely: during those days it didn't seem right to extend one's hands spastically to those who had been adversaries. The ordeal of the convert is heroic—a pain I never experienced—and for that reason, among others, so singularly honor. But the evolved Norman Podhoretz is, as always, a man of great brilliance and extraordinary erudition, with the skill of the devoted teacher but with a vision now that uses fully his skills. And he is, for all his continuing and passionate devotion to the causes of the Jewish people, genuinely ecumenical. It does not offend him, I am sure, that from time to time I have prayed, obviously with insufficient fervor, for the conversion of the Jews.

11

But in closing I speak for no one other than myself, for reasons
this is not the occasion to explicate, in professing my gratitude to
him. As a thinker, as a moralist, as a teacher, and as a friend.

NEAL KOZODOY

We have had our share of creditable national moments in the last period of time, and our share of discreditable ones as well. Where we have been on strict rations is in our share of inspirational moments. The tenure of Jeane Kirkpatrick as American ambassador to the United Nations in the early 1980's was just such an inspirational moment. It is true that her first meeting with President Reagan, then candidate Reagan, took place as a result of her now-classic article in *COMMENTARY*, "Dictatorships and Double Standards." It is also true that, for more reasons and on more grounds than she would permit me to name tonight, she is—in her person no less than in her public example—an inspiration to us all.

JEANE J. KIRKPATRICK

I'm very pleased to be here and I thank you Neal, and Norman,
for giving me the opportunity.

It is true as stated that Ronald Reagan read my article in *COMMENTARY* and wrote me a letter about it, before it had ever occurred to me that Ronald Reagan might read *COMMENTARY* magazine.

I was a Democrat still, you may recall, though clearly I was a
troubled Democrat. (I had, after all, written that article, "Dictator-
ships and Double Standards," in *COMMENTARY*. ) So, I was surprised
when I went to my faculty mailbox at Georgetown University in Janu-
ary 1980 and found there a letter whose letterhead announced,

12

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Governor Ronald Reagan. I thought it must be a misdirected fund-raising letter. But it wasn't, it was a "Dear Professor Kirkpatrick" letter in which he told me at some length and in creditable prose that he had found the article very interesting, as he frequently found articles in *COMMENTARY* interesting, and that he had been enlightened by two or three points I had made, which he spelled out. Then he expressed the wish that I would be willing to discuss these subjects at some later time when he might be in Washington or I might be in California.

I was very surprised. I dropped him a thank-you note and said that I rarely got to California, but that if he were in Washington, certainly I would be happy to discuss these issues. Well, he came to Washington, as we know.

Of course, I was not the first Permanent Representative of the United States to the United Nations to be recruited directly from the pages of *COMMENTARY*. As I understand it, the same thing had happened earlier to Senator Moynihan, with another article, in another issue, and another President. I don't know if there's ever been another magazine which has served as recruitment office for UN ambassadors, and who knows what else. Yet that is but one of the unusual attributes of *COMMENTARY*, and of Norman—that he should have conceived ideas, and authors, and edited us in the way that he did, to make us readable in the way that he did.

Aristotle tells us that we become by doing, and, especially, that the virtues and skills we acquire, we acquire by exercising them, "as a man becomes a builder by building, and a lyre player by playing the lyre." Just so, Norman has become, over 35 years, a brilliant thinker by thinking, a writer by writing, and an editor by editing. And *COMMENTARY* has become the most interesting, and the most influential, and the most brilliant—apologies to all other editors in the audience—magazine in American life.

One of the attributes of *COMMENTARY* by which I have been struck is that it created a community. Now perhaps all good magazines, all influential magazines, create communities. But the community of readers and writers created by *COMMENTARY* is a particularly good one, a community that is open and inquiring, and that is bound together by its commitment to a free society, to democratic politics, to the success and the survival of the United States and of the West and, yes, of Israel.

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COMMENTARY has become a center of debate and discussion and very intense controversy on virtually all the most important issues of our times. That is because Norman has a sure sense of what those important issues are, where their heart lies, and how, therefore, they can best be approached. Norman is a partisan, a partisan with an unerring sense of how best to illustrate the truth of whatever issue he is approaching. That's a very extraordinary skill, and not only is it present in Norman's writing, which is voluminous, and about to become more voluminous still, but it has become indistinguishable from the magazine itself.

Reflecting on Norman's writing and on COMMENTARY under his editorship, I thought of George Orwell, and I remembered something I had read once that struck me as relevant. Orwell said:

> What I have most wanted to do throughout the past ten years is to make political writing into an art. My starting point is always a feeling of partisanship, a sense of injustice. When I sit down to write, I do not say to myself, I am going to produce a work of art, I write it because there is a sense of some lie that I want to expose, some fact to which I want to draw attention. And my initial concern is always to get a hearing.

Orwell goes on to say that he has sought to fuse political purpose and artistic purpose into one hope.

Well, I believe that under Norman, COMMENTARY has sought to do just that—to call attention to facts which require attention, to expose lies that require exposure, as lies do, and to excite interest. And I remembered a comment of Lionel Trilling (Norman's teacher) about Orwell, and it too reminded me of what I wanted to say about Norman. What Trilling said about Orwell was:

> He used no political jargon, he made no effort to show that his heart was in the right place, or the left place. He was not interested in where his heart might be thought to be, since he knew where it was. He was interested only in telling the truth.

I believe that COMMENTARY has been not only influential, but powerfully influential, and that Norman's own writing has developed and grown in power, because he has focused with single-mindedness on telling the truth. And I congratulate you, Norman, and COMMENTARY, for giving us all of this.

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—DINNER—

NEAL KOZODOY

Ladies and gentlemen, the business of the evening continues. Before we go on to the next round of toasts, I would like to say a brief word of thanks to the COMMENTARY staff, and especially to my colleagues Brenda Brown and Gabe Schoenfeld. And I would take this moment as well to remember our recent losses, in particular our darling Marion Magid; Sam Lipman, our music critic and close intellectual companion; our long-time contributors Elie Kedourie and Chaim Raphael; and Ted Ellenoff, who served as a member of the COMMENTARY Publication Committee and as its chairman. Y'hi zikhram livrakha.

Anybody who was reading COMMENTARY back in the 1970's will well remember its relentless assaults upon the foreign-policy doc trines devised and executed by our next speaker. Indeed, it remains one of the enduring mysteries of the entire cold-war era why this gentleman should persist in harboring warm feelings toward the editor of a magazine that was chief among his tormentors. I am not about to solve that mystery—he can if he chooses. But when has he ever been introduced this way? Forbearance, thy name is Kissinger.

HENRY A. KISSINGER

I have known Norman for a long time as a critic, but I've known him even longer as a friend. Being Norman's friend, however, doesn't spare you from his being your critic. He has a commitment to values which he considers absolute—and with which I happen to agree.

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[L.C.]

Norman's view of diplomacy is a little bit like that of a masseur I knew at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem while I was conducting the negotiations between Israel and Syria. This man proved to me, above all, that massage is not what has made the Israeli people great. And while he was thus torturing me he kept telling me that he was praying for the success of the negotiations. But when I asked him how much territory could be given up—and I was talking about territory on the other side of the original dividing line between the two countries—he said: “Territory! Given up! To the Syrians! You must be mad!”

Over the years, I have had many foreign-policy conversations with Norman, though usually when I begin speaking he casts a beady eye on me. Yet, fundamentally, in the world in which we find ourselves, we are indeed fortunate to have Norman as a guide and an inspiration.

America is a country that has never had to conduct foreign policy as process, or felt the need to look upon diplomacy as a continuing set of relationships. Nor has it ever known tragedy as a people. By contrast the Jewish people have experienced an endless series of tragedies. Moreover, Americans inhabit a continent, while Israelis inhabit a territory which, at its widest point, is 50 miles—from the Jordan to the sea. Reconciling the imperatives of a superpower with the necessities of an ancient people is no simple matter. Norman's enormous contribution of the 1970's was to embed the values and needs of freedom in the world within the requirements of Israel's security, and vice versa.

In the present situation, it has become a standard piece of wisdom to say that America is in great trouble because it no longer has an enemy. I think this is nonsense. America has a great opportunity before it: to help bring about a world in which democracy can flourish and in which totalitarianism shrinks to the point that, in time, it is eliminated.

Nobody has stood for these goals more fiercely than Norman. Nobody has meant more to me as a person, and, even though I can't claim to have appeared in the pages of *COMMENTARY*, one can always hope. Souls, after all, have been saved before. In the meantime, I know this: Norman will not only continue to live in the pages of *COMMENTARY*, but, even more importantly, will badger all of us. He will continue to be our conscience and our inspiration in working toward a world in which the just can be free and the weak secure.

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NEAL KOZODOY

Once, at another gathering not dissimilar to this one, I intro-
duced our next speaker—who may already be well known to this
company as the father of the famous Republican strategist Bill
Kristol—by observing that he represents, in intellectual life, the vir-
tue which the great economist Joseph Schumpeter identified as be-
ing crucial to the progress of economic life: the virtue of creative
destruction. Who can count the number of false ideas that have been
deservedly destroyed by Irving—or, if not destroyed, then at least
well and truly mugged? As for what he has helped to create: well, si
monumentum requiris, look around.

IRVING KRISTOL

It's a great pleasure for me to pay tribute to Norman Podhoretz. I shall not speak of his personal virtues, leaving it to others to emphasize his humility, for which he is famous, his meekness before the slings and arrows of his critics, the gentleness with which he replies to them.

Instead, being myself an editor, I want to speak of Norman as
an editor. And I'll recount an anecdote which some of you may have
already heard. It goes back to 1959, when I was the editor of the
*Reporter*. Norman came to me one day for a little conference, and
said he had been asked to take over *COMMENTARY*; what did I think?
And I said, "No, Norman, you don't want to be editor of *COMMENTARY*. The magazine is okay, it's a good magazine, but it's not going
anywhere, and you're on your way to being a very distinguished
cultural and literary critic. Stick with it, you'll end up replacing
Edmund Wilson in our pantheon." (Which I think, in fact, would
have happened.) Norman said, "Thank you, very good advice," and

17

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went downstairs to the nearest public phone and rang up COMMENTARY and accepted the editorship.

Now I don't want you to misunderstand: Norman always listens to me—sometimes it just takes a while. In this case it took 35 years. And of course he had a great advantage over me. I knew that COMMENTARY was a very good magazine; after all, I had worked on it for five years, and it couldn't have gone down *that* much since I'd left. And I knew that Norman was a good editor. But Norman knew something that I didn't know. Norman knew that he was not a good editor, but a great editor. He didn't tell me that, but he showed it to me in the course of the next 35 years.

It has been an extraordinary performance: to take this little magazine—and it is a little magazine, with a tiny staff—and to exert such an extraordinary influence, beyond what one can point to in the case of almost any magazine now being published in this country. As a Jewish magazine, it is the finest, most important, and most influential ever published, anywhere, at any time. As an American magazine, it has been, I would say, one of the two or three most influential magazines of the past 35 years. It is a credit to the American Jewish Committee that it supported this magazine. I only wish that comparable Catholic organizations and comparable Protestant organizations would get together and have equivalent magazines. We could use them.

But all of this was possible only because of the fact that Norman was a great editor. And he was a great editor because he had something which I can only call the editorial imagination. The editorial imagination is the ability to look at a manuscript and see the article that it ought to be, and then to know how to make it into that article. It's like a sculptor looking at a slab of stone, and seeing the object of art that will emerge from inside it. Norman has that ability: not many people do. He has so used it that COMMENTARY has had enormous influence not only on our national government but on younger people whom it has recruited to what I will presume to call a more sensible political and social point of view. It has been a magazine that is a glory to the Jewish people, and to the Jewish community of this country. I wish they appreciated it more, or I wish more of them appreciated it more; but that will happen. (Jews are better at retrospect than they are at coping with the present.)

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What Norman has done is so extraordinary that future historians will have to deal with it, and I will not try to compete with them here. I will just say what a pleasure it has been to watch him for these past 35 years—watch him do what no one thought possible, or anyhow no one thought likely, and to accomplish something which is without parallel, to my knowledge, in the history of magazines in this century, in this country. And so, I don't mind that he waited 35 years in order to get back to writing—the 35 years were very well spent.

## NEAL KOZODOY

On your programs you will see listed as our next speaker a gentleman who began his career as a political scientist and who has had a very long association with *COMMENTARY*, for which he has written many articles, including the one which, as Jeane Kirkpatrick mentioned, got him appointed as American ambassador to the United Nations. Pat Moynihan now serves as the senior Senator from the State of New York. Unfortunately, his office called us late this morning to say that the nation's business would keep him from joining us. Luckily we were able to persuade someone to take his place later in the program as a pinch hitter, a mystery guest whose identity I won't reveal at the moment except to note that he, too, is a political scientist of very great distinction—and also, as he did not fail to remind me earlier in the evening, another *goy*.

But now we go on.

"It seems," Charles Baudelaire remarked to Edouard Manet, "it seems you have the honor to be hated." Any number of people in this room tonight can vie for a place on that particular roll of honor. But let us do our sums by the number and the extent of territories conquered, fortresses gained, kingdoms subjugated, public benefactions distributed, monuments erected, *channels* opened. By that calculus, and in this company of honorables, I give you the right honorable Rupert Murdoch.

19

RUPERT MURDOCH

I feel completely overawed in this company, particularly follow-
ing such great men as Henry Kissinger and Irving Kristol and their
predecessors here tonight. For someone like me, someone who comes
from many thousands of miles away and who landed here about 25
years ago after a rather poor education in Britain, to be suddenly
immersed in this wonderful world, this firmament of ideas, is a piece
of luck that I cannot describe. Tonight is yet another example of the
uniqueness and the glory of America, in its freedom and its open-
ness and its willingness to debate and fight and argue over ideas.

As something of a newcomer, perhaps I look at Norman and
COMMENTARY with a slightly different perspective. Norman's life has
been a demonstration not merely of great intellectual honesty, but
above all of intellectual courage. And his trials, I think, have been
proof that ideas do matter. And that has also been the clear lesson of
the Reagan revolution and its renewal under Newt Gingrich.

Without most of you in this room tonight, without your contri-
butions to *COMMENTARY*—and to the *National Review*—one can
question very seriously whether this country would be where it is
today, or on the path it is. You have been the principal sources of the
ideas that have fueled the great debate which has led to such a prom-
ising direction not just for this country but now for the whole world.
As for Norman and *COMMENTARY* in particular, their greatest contri-
bution lies in the formulation and implementation of the policies
that led to the great triumph over the evil empire. What more can a
man want than a part, and a major part, in that piece of our history?

But ideas matter as well in the culture wars that we wage in
this country. And here I, with many others, am in a difficult middle
position, where, for many obvious reasons, I must try to strike a bal-
ance between the elite which so many of you represent and lead and
those who are loosely referred to as Joe six-packs. But try as we do to
walk that fine line, and as many mistakes as we make, it is refreshing
and good for us to read *COMMENTARY* every month, with its great
pantheon of writers who continuously call us to higher standards.

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Finally, I want to pay tribute to Norman's willingness at all times, in his own words, to break ranks. Even in this country, with its great freedoms, breaking ranks can be damned awkward, as Norman in his book has explained. Many others of us, to a lesser extent, have experienced those sorts of awkwardnesses. But throughout Norman's life there has been that willingness to go against the tide, regardless of the physical and social pressures that are about us in our lives every day, and which we would be very foolish and wrong to underestimate. But we can say finally that we all recognize, tonight, that we are all better, we are all safer, and we are all wiser for the great role Norman has played in our society. And we salute you Norman, and wish you the best in your new career.

NEAL KOZODOY

Many idols have fallen in our century of idolatry. One that remains undeposed is the idol that goes by the name of Art, with a capital A. Under its aegis, much damage has been perpetrated in our time, and even more excused. But here among us is Cynthia Ozick, novelist and short-story writer, translator and critic, formidable literary artist, and intrepid foe of every false god.

CYNTHIA OZICK

Norman Podhoretz's ideational reputation and teacherly influence, his steady and impassioned preoccupation with our society and our culture, his flawless and fearless instinct for the preservation of Israel, his just and glorious and far-from-painless role as the gadfly of fools and the rebuker of knaves, his logical and courageous and clarity-bringing political voice—all these complex and manifold

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Normandine lives have sometimes obscured what Norman essentially *is*: a writer. He has written some of the finest and cleanest and most persuasive prose of our time. To put it as blatantly—and as shamelessly—as possible: Norman is an English major, and *COMMENTARY* is the brainchild of English majors.

And still, consider: *COMMENTARY* is, lucidly and incontrovertibly, a statesmanlike periodical, and we might almost say that Norman Podhoretz has made his extraordinary mark as a statesman-without-portfolio. We might *almost* say this, but the truth is that Norman carries not one but two portfolios. The first, of course, is *COMMENTARY* itself, a portfolio he has long filled with powerful analyses of the exigencies of freedom. His second portfolio, more intimate and less visible, contains the whole freight of a literary mind.

Now there may be some in this distinguished company tonight who will privately judge that to call Norman Podhoretz an English major, or even, that fancier term, a literary intellectual, is to diminish or trivialize. Poets and storytellers—what do these have to do with grand affairs of state, with political philosophy, with international relations, with the concerns of government and jurisprudence, with the determination of policy, with the horizons of history? But Norman's statesman's portfolio has always been twinned with his literary portfolio, and that is why *COMMENTARY* is unlike all those political journals where the English majors are there for copy-editing, not for shaping thought.

Over 40 years ago, Norman observed in a literary essay that the great novelist “begins with pity—in which his own emotions are more important than the object which has called them forth—but he moves on to sympathy, in which detachment has been achieved without diminution of feeling.”

No cabinet member, no professional diplomat, no political scientist could have written that sentence. It is profoundly a writer's sentence, born out of literary insight. The critical difference between sympathy and pity—sympathy as humane objectivity, pity as self-celebration—is exactly the difference between a useful politics and a useless politics, between a politics of responsibility and a politics of condescension: the latter also known as “the politics of meaning.”

And the difference suggests that, at least concerning culture and policy-making, there can never be a chicken-and-egg dilemma: culture comes before politics, culture *forms* politics—the neoconserva-

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tive formulation engendered by Norman's twin portfolios. They are
twin, but the order in which they are handled matters.

Put politics before culture, and what will creep out? Euphemism,
tyranny, self-regarding pity, self-deception—for instance, what today
goes under the name of multiculturalism. Put culture before poli-
tics, and the stingy notion of parochialism vanishes. Put culture be-
fore politics, and the Jewish state is both assured and secured.

The unexampled gift Norman Podhoretz has made to our gen-
eration and to its successors, and will go on making in book after
book, is simply this: the knowledge that if one portfolio is empty, the
other, no matter how full to begin with, will ultimately be found to
be just as empty. And without Norman Podhoretz's principled force
of opposition, what might we now be enduring with no ameliora-
tion, what might have swept us away altogether? Pity without sympa-
thy, calculation without culture, and "meaning" (so-called) without
sense.

If Norman Podhoretz had not been an English major—and, one
should add, also a student at a theological seminary—we can only
imagine our losses. Luckily, following 35 years of Norman Podhoretz's
intellectual devotion, we can rejoice in our gains.

NEAL KOZODOY

Ladies and gentlemen, I have just been informed that Senator
Moynihan—for such are his powers and privileges—has caused a
United States flag to be flown this day over the Capitol in Norman's
honor. Said flag having been brought among us by special courier, it
will now be presented to Norman by Ron Law, Senator Moynihan's
aide.

And, since you have been very, very good, you may have dessert.

—DESSERT—

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NEAL KOZODOY

When I first infiltrated myself into the Podhoretz household, John was I think six, so Ruthie would have been eight, Naomi and Rachel fifteen and sixteen—and were they ever. That made, counting their parents, six maniacs all told, and when the six of them got going at once the place was bedlam; I remember one night, as I made my escape, referring to it as a polymorphous loony bin. At age six John had already memorized the entire route system of the New York City subways, and was well on his way to achieving his present effortless command of the entire canon of modern popular culture, including all sorts of places where no one in his right mind would ever want to go. But that is the least of the accomplishments of a great man, a wise and deep and infinitely amusing friend—and, though I suppose it's not for me to say, the best of sons.

JOHN PODHORETZ

Tomorrow morning, on the first day of his new life as a retiree, my father will climb into the driver's seat of his beloved late-model Lexus, with his wife, my mother, at his side. And these two profoundly cultivated people, as intimate with the great works and ideas of human civilization—from the seven Noahide laws to James Q. Wilson's broken-window theory—as they are with each other, will head west on 79th Street through the Park, down Columbus Avenue to the Lincoln Tunnel, with Bach's *St. Matthew's Passion* stirring joy and wonder in their hearts.

Where, you might ask, will they be going? To Newark airport perhaps, to board a nonstop flight to Vienna, where they can stroll

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the pavement where Freud, Schnitzler, and Herzl once walked? Or
perhaps to England, to visit the hallowed ground of Cambridge Uni-
versity, Clare College, where Geoffrey Chaucer conceived his *Can-
terbury Tales* and where seven centuries later a Brooklyn boy named
Norman Podhoretz would encounter not only the great critic F.R.
Leavis but the wondrous Jacqueline Wheldon?

No, they are going to Florida.

They can't help it, you see. They have to. According to Medicare
regulation number 88942/X, all Jews who retire at the age of 65
must immediately drive to Florida, or they will receive no benefits
for the remainder of their lives.

Somewhere around Norfolk, Virginia, the khaki Brooks Broth-
ers pants my father favors will mysteriously transmute themselves into
a double-knit polyester blend, with a green-and-orange checked pat-
tern. At the South Carolina border, his driving sunglasses will slowly
change their tint from the usual green to a peppy yellow. In Georgia,
his mostly hairless pate will find itself covered with a white cap, com-
plete with fluffy ball on top. And by Daytona Beach, he will turn to
the author of *The Liberated Woman* and *Liberal Parents, Radical
Children*, the executive director of the Committee for the Free World,
and he will ask her, "Midge, did I forget my four-iron?" Forgive him,
it's not his fault. It's the 615th commandment: y'hi miami, Let There
Be Miami.

My father leaves COMMENTARY to take this strange and interest-
ing journey tomorrow, knowing one thing. He knows that the people
in this room constitute, as Jeane Kirkpatrick said, a community: a
gathering of disparate souls from around the world, many of whom
would never have found each other, gotten to know each other, even
fallen in love with each other, as did my sister Rachel and her hus-
band Elliott, without him. He has given ideas a voice, and a voice
and sensibility to two political ages. And he has given many besides
me, my sisters, and their children, a family.

Our own family owes so very much to him as a loving father
and grandfather, an adopter, a generous friend, a teacher, and a guide.
There are, in our family, five people so far who have become writers,
because of him. I am one; my sister Naomi Munson is another, writ-
ing editorials daily for the *Washington Times*; my sister Rachel Abrams
is a third, a published critic and author of fiction; and our sister
Ruthie is sadly absent this evening because she must meet two dead-

25

lines, one for the home-repair column she writes under the name
Tal Katz in the *Jerusalem Post*, and the other dispensing her hilari-
ous advice to the population of Israel in a column in the same paper
entitled, "Dear Ruthie."

The fifth is my mother, our mother, Midge Rosenthal Decter
Podhoretz, who tells me that my father taught her how to write. Mat-
thew Arnold once said that it is by their pupils that you may know the
teacher. And simply for giving the world the voice and spirit of Midge
Decter, the writer, my father has served us, his family here, you, his
family here, and the times he has lived in surpassingly well.

NEAL KOZODOY

Abe Rosenthal is a romantic, in the sense that Chesterton had
in mind when he wrote of "our fathers," with their "plain sort of
piety," who, "when they saw something which in their eyes . . .
really violated their morality . . . did not cry 'Investigate!' They did
not cry 'Educate!' They did not cry 'Improve!' They did not cry
'Evolve!' . . . [T]hey cried 'Stop!'" That sort of romantic. But then
Chesterton adds, rather wonderingly, "And it did stop." Well, it hasn't
stopped, and so Abe is still writing; this is one romantic who will take
a lot of punishment.

A.M. ROSENTHAL

In the Hebrew Bible, Abraham did not have a last name. If we
were going by the Hebrew Bible, as we should, I would not have
spoken tenth, but first. I would like to remind you of that.

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First, I thought I would tell you why, as a practicing daily news-
paperman, I have read *COMMENTARY* ever since I returned to the
United States from being a foreign correspondent abroad, 30 years
ago. I read it for three reasons, all of them deeply rooted in great
American motivations, and journalistic traditions: sex, profit, and
revenge.

Sex. Every issue of *COMMENTARY* provides me with that spe-
cial deep pleasure of reading intelligently written articles that ad-
vance intelligent positions, that generally coincide with my own in-
telligently arrived-at positions, biases, prejudices, passions, and rages.
Tell me, who could ask for a greater thrill than this instant verifica-
tion every month of one's own deep worth? It is exciting to the bone.
I have a copy of *COMMENTARY* at home, and I have a copy that I read
in the office. And I want to tell you that at the *New York Times*, this
sense of intellectual excitement is the closest we are allowed to come
to sex during working hours.

Now, profit. Any writer who does not write for money is, if
you'll forgive the profanity, an amateur. And any writer who does not
snap up good ideas and take them as his own, and build them into
his work, is an idiot. Not being either, I count on getting at least
eight good ideas for columns from *COMMENTARY* every year. Since,
I'm happy to say, I am enormously well paid, eight columns amounts
to a pretty penny. And that is certainly far more than the subscrip-
tion to *COMMENTARY* costs me, particularly since, of the two copies I
get, one is free, and the other I put on my expense account.

Revenge. When I was the editor of the *New York Times* for
412 years, I considered it my duty to read dozens of publications, to
make sure none of them was getting anything into print that some-
how should have been or should be in the *New York Times*. I was
competitive to the point of mania, and believe me, for my virtue in
carrying out this duty, I read all kinds of magazines that bored me to
tears.

Now I don't have to do that any longer. In revenge for those
days wasted, those hours frittered away, I have dropped from my sub-
scription list dozens of magazines, free or not free, that used to bring
tears of ennui to my eyes. Dozens and dozens. All sports magazines,
all entertainment magazines, all gossip magazines, all the gutter pub-
lications like the *Village Voice* and the like. Even when reading the
*New York Times*, mind you, I am now a free man. Do you hear me? If

27

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I see a story, a byline, by somebody I know from personal experience over the years is a numskull and a bore, I just do not read it, I tear it out, put it in an in-house envelope, say, "This is your table, Joe," and send it to the executive editor.

All this, of course, makes me the more grateful and indebted to publications like *COMMENTARY*. Like *COMMENTARY*? There is no such thing as "like *COMMENTARY***"—nothing like it. There is no neo, post, or future *COMMENTARY*—there is *COMMENTARY*. I do not know if the new editors can do as well as Norman. I hope so, but they damned well better try. That's all I can say, and I say it for everybody in this room. They'd better not diminish my pleasure, nor my profit, nor my *COMMENTARY*.

One of the speakers tonight, I think it was Irving Kristol, said something that surprised me. I mean I hadn't really thought of it, believe it or not. He said that *COMMENTARY* was of course an American magazine, and it was also a Jewish magazine. I tell you that in all my reading of *COMMENTARY*, I never really thought of that. And I'm glad he mentioned it. Of course *COMMENTARY* has compiled an honorable and faithful record on Israel. But still I never really thought of it as a Jewish magazine, because there's so much else in it. Bill Bennett a Jew? Anyway, I want to say this: insofar as it *is* a Jewish magazine, that fills me with pride. I can only hope that the Jews of America remain as constant and faithful in the struggle for freedom and democratic liberty as Norman Podhoretz and our *COMMENTARY* have been all these years. If they do that, they will do themselves great honor, as Norman has done himself great honor, and all Americans, during his tenure as editor of our *COMMENTARY*.

## NEAL KOZODOY

We're very honored, and flattered really, that James Q. Wilson—for that is the name of our mystery guest—has agreed to speak this evening; he agreed to do so at four o'clock this afternoon. To say

28

[LC]

that Jim Wilson is our country's most distinguished political scientist would be true, and it would be wholly inadequate. Especially in the last years, when he has taken increasingly to writing about the issue of character, and about the codes by which human bonds are forged or broken, and civil society either advanced or thrown back, he has emerged as America's deepest and most beautifully modulated moral philosopher.

JAMES Q. WILSON

It was 30 years ago this year that I received my first phone call from Norman Podhoretz, and I still remember how he phrased it. He said, "It is necessary that you write an article for this magazine about Adam Clayton Powell."

Notice the construction: "It is necessary. . . ." In other locations he would sometimes say, "It is *important* that you write an article on" this, that, or the other subject. He never issued an order; he was a gentleman, and besides he was also a prudent man, not wishing to court disappointment. But he never asks you to write an article for *COMMENTARY*; he tells you that it is important that you do so. Norman has made greater use of the passive voice than anyone else I know, converting it into a new grammatical construction which I will call the passive imperative.

I did not know who Norman was when I received that phone call 30 years ago. I had not seen *COMMENTARY*, I am not Jewish. But I responded to his appeal for the same reason I responded repeatedly over the ensuing 30 years.

As I look back on those 30 years, I can only count, I think, two articles that I sent in, so to speak, over the transom. All the rest were in response to one of Norman's passive imperatives. And thus it was that I began to appreciate the fact that Norman, like Irving Kristol, is not only a great editor, but a great teacher. He makes you think by demanding that you think. It is not enough to say in response, "I don't know what I think about that, Norman." Because his

29

[LC]

reply is, "That's because you haven't thought hard enough." "I don't know what to make of this problem, Norman." "That's because you haven't worked it hard enough." And so I became a contributor to *COMMENTARY*, as to the *Public Interest*, in response in both cases to the demands of intelligent, caring, and extremely exacting editors.

Now, in the process of learning that Norman was a great teacher, I also learned that writing for *COMMENTARY* was to ensnare yourself in a bramble bush. You would finally finish the article and send it in. Then Norman or Neal would edit it. Finally, after much travail, it would appear in print. And you would say, "Ah, . . . I'm finished." And then Brenda Brown would call you up and say, "Now it's time to answer the letters." Two articles ago, Brenda said, "So far we have 35 letters." To which I said, "I refuse to answer them." Brenda said, "I'll see what Norman thinks." She reported back, "Norman thinks that it is important you do it." And of course you do it.

In doing it, as David Brooks wrote in his wonderful essay on Norman in the *Wall Street Journal* this morning, you create communities of discourse; you meet people that you had never known you would ever meet before; and you learn things about your friends and your enemies that you had never suspected before.

Norman has one failing, and that failing is this: although he loves the United States deeply, passionately, generously, properly, it has not yet occurred to him that the United States consists of three time zones. I am on the speakers' list tonight, albeit at the last moment, to represent the West—by which I mean everything west of Albany. Norman's call would arrive in my home at seven o'clock in the morning, beginning, "It is important that you write on X." To which my invariant response would be, "Norman, I won't do it, I haven't read *Calvin & Hobbes* yet." But of course, he would persist, and wear me down. And then the process would begin all over again. The writing, the anguish, the editing, and then Brenda's demands for the response to the letters.

Let me conclude on a note which I hope will not be misunderstood. I love Norman like a brother, he has been a wonderful friend and teacher and guide; but he is a very demanding editor. And I know I speak for many authors and contributors in this room when, as Norman leaves office, I recall to mind the words of the great Negro spiritual, "Free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty we're free at last!"

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NEAL KOZODOY

The trouble with *COMMENTARY*, Ruth Wisse told us a very long time ago, is that it's not Jewish *enough*. (This would come as news to Abe Rosenthal.) Of course we rejected her accusation out of hand; but we also had the wit to put an end to such accusations once and for all by coopting her to write for us. Anyone who has come to adore Ruth for her writings does not need to be told that she is a mighty, a heroic, tribune of her people, and a subtle scholar of its culture. We who have been blessed to know her personally tend to use hotter language: loyal partner, soul mate, best friend.

RUTH R. WISSE

It seems appropriate that I should be the last to toast Norman because I want to speak of his *inadvertent* achievement, something he didn't aspire to do or to become.

The man to whom we pay tribute this evening did not set out to become a leader of the Jews. This was not for lack of ambition—Norman Podhoretz wrote the book on ambition, and the book he wrote, the American classic *Making It*, set out bold aims. He intended to become a very difficult kind of writer, not of fiction but of critical truth. When he took on the job at *COMMENTARY*, he aspired to be a great editor, keeping an eye on what is essential, not merely timely, training writers to speak outward to the general reader, with clear and steady voice, something for which all his writers are equally grateful. America brought out his finest ambitions: to defend both the rhetoric and the politics of freedom and democracy, and to extend them wherever possible. And it was in pursuit of these aims that he found himself, almost by accident, *tsofe l'veit Yisrael*, watchman of the House of Israel.

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[L.C.]

Collectively, Jews have a hard time facing political reality. We have a far greater stake in fantasies of tolerance than in the truths about aggression, given the energy we realize we will have to expend if we intend to withstand the aggression directed against us. Norman does not tolerate deception, or self-deception, not even out of pity for the decimated Diaspora Jews or the war-weary Israelis. His readiness to scout out the terrain in advance of popular support, and to release the facts against the tide of popular opinion, offers the Jews as good a chance as they will ever get to assess their situation accurately and to develop a strategy commensurate with their needs.

In the past, American Jewish intellectuals have been divided between those who live out in the world, at the expense of Jewish concerns, and those preoccupied with Jewish problems, who speak mostly to their own constituency. Norman's editorial insistence on reaching the educated American reader, in clear accessible prose, created a new model of discourse that upholds the same standards of argument for Jewish intellectuals whether they are talking about Cambodia or about the Combined Jewish Philanthropies. Under Norman's direction, *COMMENTARY* became the first Jewish magazine in history that speaks to power in the polity at large while—and this is something Irving Kristol did not mention—protecting maximally the interests of the Jews.

Some modern thinkers have argued that Jews could only thrive as a proud and free people in an independent Jewish homeland. Well, Norman is a proud and free Jew, born and bred in the USA. In fact, because of the national confidence that America nurtured in him, he is immune to the self-doubt and apologetics that eat up so many of his co-religionists from inside. He demands the most of Jews: that they protect the independence of Israel for at least as many years as America has kept itself free. And he shows that to be their highest moral duty.

Norman's leadership has been hailed tonight in so many areas, but I hope you will permit me to suggest that his leadership of the Jews, the most thankless of his achievements in the short run, may in the long run prove his greatest.

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NEAL KOZODOY

Ladies and gentlemen, I remind you that when you came in you found on your seats a copy of an anthology which we prepared in order to give you a taste of *COMMENTARY* over the last 25 years. We hope you'll remember to take it home with you, to savor at your leisure. It's not the party line; it's just the party favor.

And now, or rather soon, it will be my pleasure, as it has ever been my pleasure, to give Norman the last word.

It is over 30 years since I first met my most beloved friends Norman and Midge. I came to work for Norman not too long thereafter, and have worked by his side ever since. As many of you have heard, Norman will be retaining a relation with *COMMENTARY* after his retirement; he will have the title of Editor-at-Large, and his most visible function under that title will be, as I hope, to contribute regularly to our pages. Still, it is, believe me, no simple thing to preside over the valedictory—even so qualified a valedictory—of the man from whom today I have as much to learn, and in whose soul my own takes as deep a delight, as on the day we met.

In the book of Ecclesiastes, that early neoconservative text, it is written: *kol asher timtsa yadkha laasot, b'kohakha asei*. Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might.

That Norman has ridden at the game of life with main force is a fact to which many have attested tonight. And some portion of what he has thereby achieved, in shaping the mental landscape of our time, has been duly apprehended. I don't mean now to recapitulate or summarize that achievement, especially as Norman himself, in articles and books, has recorded the inside story of his intellectual struggles with matchless lucidity and in a spirit of passionate disinterestedness—there is such a quality in intellectual life, by the way, and Norman exemplifies it. Nor do I mean to dwell on the cost of those struggles, although it was very, very high. He bore that cost; we garnered the benefits. Once, to a reporter's impertinent question about the Podhoretz domestic arrangements, I remember Midge tartly replying: "I bring him coffee; he brings me courage." What-

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ever we in our different ways have brought him, courage is what he brought us.

In that connection I want to add a word about Norman as an editor. Earlier in the evening I referred to *COMMENTARY's* writers as our life's blood, and so indeed they are. But after everything that has been said tonight I am not giving away any secrets when I state that it is thanks to Norman's ministering influence that the work of these writers has achieved in *COMMENTARY* a fullness, a consistency, a power, and above all a courageousness that it might otherwise have fallen short of. They, better than I, can testify—some of them tonight *have* testified—to the pain they have endured in submitting to his implacable standards for the writing that appears in *COMMENTARY*; they better than I can tell you how and by what means thoughts which might otherwise have taken refuge in ambiguity or fuzziness have been coerced into rigor and trenchancy and boldness.

As Cynthia Ozick noted, Norman began his career as a critic of literature, and he has never lost his love of its subtleties, its complexities, its beauties. The English critic William Empson published in 1930 a great book about some of those beautiful and subtle complexities under the title, *Seven Types of Ambiguity*. But about those lovely ambiguities I want to say that the cause of intellectual courage in our time has been advanced immeasurably by the fact that, as an *editor*, Norman hates every last one of them.

I wish to turn personal, and to close by recalling why we are all here, and I don't mean just in this room. For there is labor in life, and there is love; and love, too, requires, and requites, the going-after with all one's might. *Travail et joie*, Matisse scrawled in the corner of one of his stupendous interiors. It has been, it is, the unaccountable blessing of my life to have been the beneficiary not only of Norman's laboring mind, but of his loving soul. So, if I may presume, have been we all. In my own case, to dilate on the manifestations of that love would be *too* personal. Let me instead testify that Norman's love as I have experienced it, and as I have watched others experience it, is spacious—hugely spacious—and it is indulgent; it is equable, and it is unshakable; it is ardent and vivifying, it is musical, it is supernally delicate; it is full of grace, and it is full of expectancy, and it is full of mirth: the low humor of Brownsville, the high laughter of the prophets. A human love, all in all, as music is a human art; and yet for me it flames with the flame of that vast inspiriting force

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RESPONSE
BY
NORMAN PODHORETZ

*Now* they tell me.

A few months ago, the *New York Times* ran a piece about my impending retirement that many people were surprised by: it seemed so relatively unhostile, even benign. Pat Moynihan was asked why he thought the piece was so friendly, and without missing a beat Pat said, “Well, he’s *leaving!*”

Having known me for a long time, Pat also knew that, although once upon a time I had been accustomed to hearing my praises sung every now and then, in recent years I hadn't been subjected to any such treatment. In fact, my condition resembled that of the elderly Jew in the hospital who's visited by his rabbi. "Mr. Levine," the rabbi says, "I've come to cheer you up. Last night a special meeting was convened by the board of directors of the synagogue, and a special resolution was proposed wishing you a speedy recovery. It passed by a vote of six to five."

That's the kind of praise I'd become accustomed to in recent years. Sometimes, the vote was even tied.

So I don't quite know how to handle all this praise being heaped on my head tonight. One way, I suppose, would be to retali ate. I could dwell on David Bar-Illan's versatility, Bill Bennett's virtues, Bill Buckley's vocabulary, Jeane Kirkpatrick's valor, Henry Kissinger's virtuosity, Irving Kristol's verve, Rupert Murdoch's venturesomeness, Cynthia Ozick's vividity—yes, there is such a word, you could look it up; Bill Buckley is not the only one in this room with a big vocabulary. I could go on and speak of John Podhoretz's vim, Abe Rosenthal's vehemence, Jim Wilson's veracity, Ruth Wisse's vibrancy. Why all the v's, I don't know, it just came out that way. Maybe it was a kabbalistic emanation because this is, after all, a valedictory.

But I'm not going to retali ate, at least not in that way. Instead, exercising the restraint for which I am so justly famous, I will confine myself to thanking everyone here tonight for doing me such great

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honor. Of course the turnout is a bit small and the tributes were a bit
understated, but one takes what one can get.

I also want to express special pleasure and pride at the presence
here tonight of three of my children—one of whom you’ve heard
from—and six of my ten ineffably beautiful and inexpressibly brill-
liant grandchildren. Four others are in Israel along with their mother,
to whom John referred just a few moments ago.

You know, I can hardly remember a time when *COMMENTARY*
was not a part of my life. I began reading it when I was in college, at
Columbia, in the late 1940’s, shortly after it was founded under the
editorship of Elliot Cohen. I began writing for it in 1953, when I was
in graduate school in England, in Cambridge. I began working for it,
as an assistant editor, in 1955, exactly a day after being discharged
from the army. And I mean exactly one day: I was discharged on
December 14, and on December 15 I reported to the dingy loft on
33rd street where *COMMENTARY* was then housed. And finally, after a
separation of about two years and the death of Elliot Cohen, I re-
turned in 1960 as his successor.

My appointment coincided almost to the moment with my 30th
birthday and it followed immediately upon *COMMENTARY's* 15th an-
niversary. I said that I would stay for only a few years, and I'm now
finally making good on that promise, and fulfilling Irving Kristol's
prophecy. To be sure, as Neal indicated, in stepping down to be-
come a Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute, in which capacity I
will devote most of my time, God help me, to writing, I won't be
severing my ties with *COMMENTARY* entirely. As Editor-at-Large I hope
to continue contributing articles to the magazine, and I'll also help
with fund-raising. And if Neal is foolish enough to ask for my advice,
I'll give it to him. Still, a long era in my own life, and in the history of
*COMMENTARY* as an institution, is now coming to a definitive end,
and I want to commemorate the occasion by saying something about
what editing this magazine has meant for me, and by counting the
ways in which it has been a privilege, a blessing, and a joy.

A few years ago, my son John gave me the most wonderful
present; he said he couldn't resist buying it for me because it seemed
so appropriate. It was a bronze relief of Theodore Roosevelt, carry-
ing an inscription from Roosevelt himself which reads, "Aggressive
fighting for the right is the noblest sport the world affords." Well, a

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marvelous opportunity to participate fully and wholeheartedly in that sport is the first of the great privileges I have derived from being the editor of *COMMENTARY*.

As you all know, I switched sides in the late 60's, having come to the conclusion, together with a fair number of others in this room tonight, that the Left, to which I had been committed (in spite of Bill Buckley's fervent prayers at that time), was, to borrow one of its own favorite formulas, part of the problem rather than part of the solution. Yet I learned many things in my years on the Left, not the least important of which was where and how and why it always seemed to go wrong. And these were lessons that stood me in excellent stead when I dedicated myself and *COMMENTARY* to the struggle against the hegemony of the Left in the world of ideas. During my years over there, I also got to meet and associate closely with a great many gifted writers whose minds were so agile and whose articles were so dazzling that they blinded me temporarily to the foolishness and recklessness of their ideas.

But if "aggressively fighting for the right" is a noble sport, it is also, as Neal especially has suggested, a very bloody one. And so, to my lasting regret, breaking with the Left cost me the friendship of most—well, not most, more like all—of these interesting and amusing people. Still, the rewards of that break were much greater than the price. In breaking ranks and becoming a critic of the Left, I forged new friendships and new associations with a much wider and more variegated circle of writers, many of whom, to my great delight and my great gratitude, are gathered here tonight. And in happy collaboration with them—with *you*—I was able to help repair at least some of the damage I had helped to wreak as a partisan of the Left.

But *COMMENTARY* not only gave me a chance as an American to participate from month to month in the incomparable intellectual exhilaration of the great debates over the soul of this country and over its role in the world. It also provided an equally precious outlet for speaking the truth as I saw it about issues of special concern to me as a Jew. On some of those issues I have also changed my mind since the early 60's. For example, I've become much more aggressive in defense of Jewish interests in general and of Israel in particular than I was then. In fact, even when, more recently, I felt obliged to voice my doubts about the wisdom of the current Israeli

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government's negotiations with the PLO and Syria, it was in the firm belief that I was speaking in defense of Israel's interests.

Now obviously, none of this marvelously heady activity would have been possible without complete editorial freedom, and for that great blessing I have the American Jewish Committee to thank. Since 1990, the AJC has assumed responsibility for only a portion of COMMENTARY's annual deficit. The rest has had to be covered by a number of foundations and interested individuals, many of whom, to my further delight and gratitude, are also here tonight. And your generous contributions have kept us afloat. But even during the previous 45 years, when the AJC was COMMENTARY's sole source of financial support, the principle of editorial freedom on which it had established the magazine in 1945 remained in force. It was unusual enough for an organization with an agenda of its own to subsidize a journal of opinion over whose contents it had no control. But the willingness of AJC, a liberal organization, to go on sponsoring COMMENTARY even after the magazine had moved into the neoconservative camp was altogether extraordinary. In this the Committee has provided a living demonstration of what liberalism used to look like, and what, at its classical best, it is still capable of looking like.

Ten years ago, at a dinner commemorating my 25th anniversary of editor of COMMENTARY, I drew a connection between the work I was trying to do as an American and the work I was trying to do as a Jew, and what I said then still holds:

> I am proud that I have been able, in and through COMMENTARY, to defend my own—my own country, and the values and institutions for which it stands; my own people and the religious and cultural heritage by which we have been shaped. Like so many of us, I was educated to believe that the last thing one ought to be defending was one's own, that it was more honorable and nobler to turn one's back on one's own and fight for others and for other things in which one had no personal stake or interest. This has been a very hard lesson to unlearn, and I am proud to have unlearned it.

COMMENTARY has defended America at a time when America has been under moral and ideological assault. COMMENTARY has defended the Jewish people and the Jewish state when they, too, and for many of the same reasons, have been

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subjected to a relentless assault on their legitimacy and even on their very existence. For me there has been no conflict or contradiction involved in defending this dual heritage by which I have been formed.

In that same talk ten years ago, I spoke a bit about Neal Kozodoy. As Neal indicated tonight, I hired him back in 1966, when he was just a kid out of Harvard, where he had helped to found and edit a magazine more or less inspired by *COMMENTARY*. It was called *Mo-saic*, and it was the most impressive undergraduate publication I had ever seen. At *COMMENTARY*, he turned out to be so talented in so many ways that in an amazingly short time he rose to become my deputy, and from then on, as I said ten years ago, he has been my right arm, my left arm, and the hands attached thereto. So it was then, and so it has continued to be. From having worked so closely with him for a very long time now, I know that he feels much as I do about first things and last things, and all the things that matter in between. And I know that while setting his own distinctive stamp on *COMMENTARY*—and you got a taste of that distinctive stamp tonight—as he leads it into what I am certain will be a brilliant new period in its history, he will continue defending the dual heritage by which he too has been formed.

In becoming the third chief editor in the 50-year history of this magazine, Neal will inherit—and here comes that word that's been used so many times this evening, and with such good reason—a community of writers who include some of the most incisive minds and courageous spirits on the face of the earth. (You know who you are.) He will also inherit a body of readers, whose responsiveness, as our correspondence columns in every issue so vividly demonstrate to the great pain of Jim Wilson and others, is without parallel or precedent either in quantity or in quality among subscribers to any other magazine.

I count that, too, as one of the privileges and blessings that come with the editorship of *COMMENTARY*. I wish Neal Kozodoy, my beloved friend and colleague, as much joy of it in the years ahead as I have had in the 35 years just past. And so goodnight, goodbye, and God bless you all.

40

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GUESTS

Mr. Marcus Hutton
Ms. Carol Iannone
Mr. and Mrs. Erich Isaac
Mr. Eli S. Jacobs
Mr. and Mrs. Leon I. Jacobson
Ms. Tamar Jacoby
Mr. and Mrs. Michael S. Joyce
Mr. Robert Kagan and Ms. Toria Nuland
Mr. Leo Kahn and Mrs. Emily Kahn
Ms. Johanna Kaplan
Ms. Courtney Keally
Mr. and Mrs. James Keller
Ms. Mary Beth Kelly
Mr. and Mrs. Penn Kemble
Mr. and Mrs. Roger Kimball
Dr. and Mrs. Edward King
Ms. Maud Kinnell
Mr. and Mrs. Lane Kirkland
Hon. Jeane J. Kirkpatrick
Dr. and Mrs. Henry A. Kissinger
Mrs. Francine Klagsbrun
Hon. Edward I. Koch
Mr. David Kohn
Mr. Morton A. Kornreich
Mr. Edward Kosner
Mr. Bruce Kovner and Ms. Sarah Peter
Mrs. Marion S. Kozodoy
Mr. Neal Kozodoy
Ms. Sarah Kozodoy
Mr. Hilton Kramer
Dr. and Mrs. Yale Kramer
Ms. Jenny Krantzberg
Mr. and Mrs. Irving Kristol
Mr. William Kristol
Dr. Edith Kurzweil
Mr. Richard M. Larry
Mr. Ron Law
Mr. Jay P. Lefkowitz
Mr. and Mrs. Robert S. Leiken
Mr. Leslie Lenkowsky
Mr. Kenneth Levin and Mrs. Andrea Levin
Mr. Bernard Lewis
Mr. Charles M. Lichenstein
M. Georges Liebert
Mr. and Mrs. Tod Lindberg
Mr. and Mrs. Christopher Line
Mrs. Jeaneane Lipman
Mr and Mrs. Kenneth Lipper
Mr. and Mrs. Thomas H. Lipscomb
Mr. Seth Lipsky and Ms. Amity Shlaes
Mr. and Mrs. Herbert I. London
Mr. and Mrs. Mauro Lucentini
Mr. and Mrs. John W. Luchsinger
Mrs. Elizabeth Lurie

Mr. and Mrs. Edward N. Luttwak
Ms. Yael Luttwak
Mr. Myron Magnet
Mr. Roy E. Marden
Ms. Sara Marks
Mr. and Mrs. Scott McConnell
Mr. and Mrs. Samuel McCracken
Mr. Adam Meyerson
Mr. Krzysztof Michalski
Mr. and Mrs. Lester Migdal
Mr. and Mrs. Menahem Milson
Mr. and Mrs. Frederick Morgan
Mrs. Sharon Morris
Mr. and Mrs. Steven C. Munson
Samuel, Zachary, and
Leah Rose Munson
Mr. Joshua Muravchik
Ms. Madeline Muravchik
Mr. and Mrs. Rupert Murdoch
Mr. Charles Murray
Father Richard John Neuhaus
Mr. and Mrs. Michael Novak
Mr. and Mrs. James Nuechterlein
Mr. and Mrs. Herman J. Obermayer
Mr. Walter Olson
Mr. John O'Sullivan
Ms. Kiki Paris
Mr. Neil Patel
Ms. Cleo Mitchell Paturis
Mr. and Mrs. Robert L. Pelz
Ms. Joan Peters
Mr. William Phillips
Mr. Robert Pickus
Mr. James Piereson
Mr. Daniel Pipes
Mr. and Mrs. Richard Pipes
Mr. Steven Pippin
Mr. Peter Pitts
Mr. John Podhoretz
Mr. and Mrs. Norman Podhoretz
Mr. and Mrs. David Pryce-Jones
Mr. and Mrs. Arch Puddington
Ms. Dorothy Rabinowitz
Mr. Ronald Radosh
Ms. Diane Ravitch
Ms. Judith Regan
Mr. and Mrs. Thomas L. Rhodes
Mr. R. Randolph Richardson
Mr. and Mrs. Robert Richman
Mr. and Mrs. Robert A. Riesman
Mr. and Mrs. Daniel Rose
Mr. Joseph B. Rose
Ms. Wendi Rose
Mr. and Mrs. Jonathan Rosen

GUESTS

Mr. Mark Rosenblatt
and Ms. Sarah M. Stern
Mr. Gordon S. Rosenblum
Mr. and Mrs. A.M. Rosenthal
Mr. and Mrs. Gary L. Rosenthal
Ms. Nina Rosenwald
Mr. and Mrs. Irwin Ross
Mr. and Mrs. Edward Rothstein
Ms. Harriet Rubin
Mr. and Mrs. Donald Rumsfeld
Mr. and Mrs. George Russell
Mr. and Mrs. Lewis Sanders
Mr. Michael Saperstein
Mr. and Mrs. David Schimel
Ms. Dawn Schimke
Mr. and Mrs. Gabriel Schoenfeld
Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Schulman
Mr. and Mrs. Michael W. Schwartz
Mrs. Nanette Scofield
Mr. Michael A. Scully
Mrs. and Mrs. Daniel Seligman
Mr. Robert L. Shafer
Honorable Ariel Sharon
and Mrs. Sharon
Mr. and Mrs. Peter Shaw
Mr. Henry Sherman
Mr. and Mrs. David Sidorsky
Mr. David Singer
Mr. Thomas W. Smith
Mr. and Mrs. Roger Starr
Mr. Elliot Stein
Mr. and Mrs. Harold Steinberg
Mr. and Mrs. Irwin M. Stelzer
Mr. and Mrs. Walter P. Stern
Mr. and Mrs. Willy Stern
Mr. and Mrs. Richard B. Stone
Mr. Sam Tanenhaus

Mr. Terry Teachout
Mr. David Tell
Mr. and Mrs. Malcolm Thomson
Mr. and Mrs. Laurence A. Tisch
Mr. and Mrs. Thomas J. Tisch
Mr. R. Joseph Tognella
Ms. Mary Tortora
Mr. and Mrs. James P. Upham
Mr. Ernest van den Haag
Mr. John von Kannon
Mr. and Mrs. Adam Walinsky
Mr. Ben J. Wattenberg
Rabbi Harlan J. Wechsler and
Mrs. Naomi Friedland-Wechsler
Mr. Peter Wehner
Lord and Lady Weidenfeld
Mr. George Weigel
Hon. Leon Weil
and Mrs. Mabel Weil
Mr. and Mrs. Ernest Weiner
Mrs. Elizabeth Weymouth
Ms. Megan Wheldon
Mr. and Mrs. Wynn Wheldon
Mr. and Mrs. Elie Wiesel
Mr. and Mrs. James Q. Wilson
Mr. Paul Windells
Ms. Melissa Winkler
Mr. and Mrs. Leonard Wisse
Mr. and Mrs. Tom Wolfe
Mr. Henry Wollman
Mrs. Susan Wood
Mr. and Mrs. Yuri Yarim-Agaev
Dr. Yoram Yovell
and Ms. Hannah Brown
Mr. Fareed Zakaria
Mr. Mortimer B. Zuckerman
Mr. and Mrs. Solomon Zuckerman

Dinner Chairman: Roger Hertog

The editors of *COMMENTARY* acknowledge with deep gratitude the generosity of friends who made this evening possible:

Pfizer Inc.

The Carthage Foundation

Philip Morris Companies Inc.

Thomas L. Rhodes, Stephen Friedman, Michael W. Schwartz,
Norman E. Alexander, Gary L. Rosenthal, Frederick P. Rose, Nanette Scofield,
Morton A. Kornreich, Howard I. Friedman, Robert L. Pelz

Podhoretz Toast

Henry A. Kissinger

I have known Norman for a long time as a critic, but I've
known him even longer as a friend. Being Norman's friend,
however, doesn't spare you from his being your critic. He has a
commitment to values which he considers absolute--and with which
I happen to agree.

Norman's view of diplomacy is a little bit like that of a
masseur I knew at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem while I was
conducting the negotiations between Israel and Syria. This man
proved to me, above all, that massage is not what has made the
Israeli people great. And while he was thus torturing me, he
kept telling me that he was praying for the success of the
negotiations. But when I asked him how much territory could be
given up--and I was talking about territory on the other side of
the original dividing line between the two countries--he said:
"Territory! Given up! To the Syrians! You must be mad!"

Over the years, I have had many foreign policy conversations
with Norman, though usually when I begin speaking he casts a
beady eye on me. Yet, fundamentally, in the world in which we
find ourselves, we are indeed fortunate to have Norman as a guide
and an inspiration.

America is a country which has never had to conduct foreign
policy as process, or felt the need to look upon diplomacy as an
ongoing set of relationships. Nor has it ever known tragedy as a
people. By contrast the Jewish people have experienced an
endless series of tragedies. Moreover, Americans inhabit a
continent, while Israelis inhabit a territory which, at its
widest point, is fifty miles--from the Jordan to the sea.
Reconciling the imperatives of a superpower with the necessities
of an ancient people is no simple matter. Norman's enormous
contribution of the 1970's was to imbed the values and needs of
freedom in the world within the requirements of Israel's security
and vice-versa.

Nobody has stood for these goals more fiercely than Norman.
Nobody has meant more to me as a person, and, even though I can't
claim to have appeared in the pages of *Commentary*, one can always

DRAFT

Podhoretz Toast

Henry A. Kissinger

1

Reconciling the imperatives of a superpower with the necessities of an ancient people is no simple matter. Norman's enormous contribution of the 1970's was to imbed the values and needs of freedom in the world within the requirements of Israel's security and vice-versa.

2

Nobody has stood for these goals more fiercely than Norman.
Nobody has meant more to me as a person, and, even though I can't
claim to have appeared in the pages of *Commentary*, one can always
hope. Souls, after all, have been saved before. In the
meantime, I know this: Norman will not only continue to live in
the pages of *Commentary* but, even more importantly, will badger
all of us. He will continue to be our conscience and our
inspiration in working towards a world in which the just can be
free and the weak secure.

May 2 Transcript -- page 14

1

2 HENRY A. KISSINGER

3

4 I knew Norman for a long time as a critic, and since that
5 time I've known him for longer as a friend. But being his
6 friend doesn't save you from his being your critic. He has a
7 commitment to certain values which he considers absolute
8 (and with which I happen to agree). But his view of
9 diplomacy is a little bit like that of a masseur I knew at
10 the King David Hotel in Jerusalem when I was conducting the
11 negotiations between Israel and Syria. To me this man
12 proved, first of all, that massage is not the thing which
13 has made the Israeli people great. But while he was
14 torturing me he kept telling me that he was praying for the
15 success of the negotiations. Then I asked him how much
16 territory could be given up--and I was talking about
17 territory on the other side of the original dividing line
18 between the two countries. He said, "Territory! Giving up!
19 To the Syrians! You must be mad!"

20 Now, I have had many foreign-policy conversations with
21 Norman, and when I begin speaking he casts a beady eye on
22 me. But fundamentally, in the world in which we find
23 ourselves, we are fortunate to have him as a guide and an
24 inspiration.

25 America is a country that has never had to conduct
26 foreign policy as a process, and has never had the need to
27 look upon diplomacy as a continuing set of relationships.

May 2 Transcript -- page 15

1 And it has never known tragedy as a people. The Jewish
2 people, by contrast, have experienced an endless series of
3 tragedies. Moreover, while America inhabits a continent,
4 Israel inhabits a territory that at its widest point is 50
5 miles from the Jordan to the sea. How to reconcile the
6 imperatives of a superpower and the necessities of an
7 ancient people is not a simple matter. Norman's enormous
8 contribution in the 1970's was to imbed the values and the
9 needs of freedom in the world within the requirements of the
10 security of Israel, and vice-versa.

11 In the present situation, it has become a standard piece
12 of wisdom to say that America is in great trouble because it
13 no longer has an enemy. I think this is nonsense. America
14 has a great opportunity: to help bring about a world in
15 which democracy can flourish and in which totalitarianism
16 shrinks and is, in time, eliminated. Nobody has stood for
17 those goals more fiercely than Norman. Nobody has meant more
18 to me as a person, and even though I can't claim to have
19 appeared in the pages of *Commentary*, one can always hope--
20 souls have been saved before. In the meantime, I know this:
21 Norman will continue to live in the pages of *Commentary*, but
22 more than that, he will badger all of us, he will be our
23 conscience, and our inspiration, in working for a world in
24 which the just can be free, and the weak can be secure.