The New Republic

Reflections of a Neoconservative: Looking Back, Looking Ahead by Irving Kristol (Basic, 336 pp., $19.95) READ MORE >>

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President Reagan's inauguration was a landmark in the history of conspicuous consumption. It signaled the total rehabilitation of lavish extravagance after half a century when practices like sipping champagne in a limousine were in mild or severe disrepute. They had to pick the east coast clean to find enough limousines to satisfy the demand from people who had flown in from around the country, often in private planes, to attend more than 100 fancy parties, crowd into restaurants that charge $40 or more for a meal, and lay down their heads in triple-digit hotel rooms. The man from Ridgewell's, Washington's leading caterer, summarized the prevailing philosophy for a Washington Post party reporter: "Rather than shrimp salad, they want the whole shrimp."When I read about people living this way, I often think it would be nice to do the same, and then I think it's unfair that some people can and others can't. Everything's relative, of course, and many might have the same thoughts if, for some reason, my lifestyle were chronicled in the newspapers. To me, these two reactions seem perfectly human and perfectly connected. But to conservatives they are very different. The first thought—I would like to live like that—is called "incentive," and is considered crucial to the proper functioning of a capitalist economy. The second thought—It's unfair that some can and others can't—is called "envy," and is considered a dangerous symptom of that political infection known as "egalitarianism" or, in Irving Kristol's phrase, "infantile liberalism." READ MORE >>