Always enjoy your columns with a moral and a laugh. Thanks.

Sir;...It is so seldom that we can find anyone who outlives their usefulness by 89 years, yet I would like to nominate Irving Kristal for the associated honors...How does anyone tell such flunkys that conservatism is a neutral and natural state because everyone who is happy wants to hold onto the present while professional conservatives want to throw reality into reverse without so much as putting on the brakes... I just watched Mr. Kristal on C-span Book TV say he had a lot of ideas about a book on democracy, but that he could not get his ideas to cohere into a book..What sort of fool admits that as a writer on politics and economics, that his ideas were too incohernet to book???..We could all write a book on our experience of 'democracy' but it might be too raw to read... Rather than facing a life crisis in admitting that all our ideas of democracy are false to the reality we have before us, Mr. Kristal instead put the book aside, and one would presume, put his ideas aside well... Perhaps democracy as a relationship cannot be conceived of ideally..Perhaps democracy may be touched, and never grasped...Perhaps the reality of democracy is that where ever it is found naturally, democracy is all rough and tumble politics, just as in the kitchen and in the bedroom....No one can escape politics, and perhaps we should not try... Perhaps we all ought to resolve our ideas with our realities, and demand that something give..What if the advantage lies with the liars who confound the most plausible narative out of the bits and pieces of their desires. Platitudes, and prevarications are the honey of many flies...Rather than landing in such honey, we should inquire... . Do we need more people like Kristal who can frame a rational argument in defense of immorality like any Sophist??? Look at how well he got paid...And how should I know; but why else would anyone spout nonsense that would hell ones soul if one believed except for treasure??? The whole family is one that can see the forest and the trees, but not the environment within, and beyond.... They cannot see the world of ideas for what it is, but do sketch charactures, and do confuse ideas with attitudes, or justifications, or stragies or talking points as though a leisure with a glass bon vin blank in hand... Do they, or does anyone of us grasp the danger of false ideas when supported on the shoulders of brutes??? Do you think, If you think, that any of us can form a coherent idea out of a moral reality like democracy, or justice, or political equality??? An idea is no less easy to grasp than the thing, or the reality it represents....By example, A pound of sugar is at least two things that we can form an idea of... We should all have a sense of what democracy is, and all have a positive feeling about it...The more people as a whole are willing to defer to idea men, rationalists, and justifiers, bought and paid thinkers, the more tenuous will become our hold on a good future pursued by common consent...The more we are willing to endure a witless idea like 'democracy' from the right side because it is supposed to be good, even while it is so easily seduced -the further will the good we seek recede before us...It is easy to see that what we are missing is that loving feeling about ourselves... .. Let the devil take all such anti intellectual intellectuals as Kristal and the world could breathe a fresh breath of air... All those professional conservatives have in common is that they stink up the place....Their prince is dead, but his spawn still walk abroad...Thanks...Sweeney