Irving Kristol, RIP

I think one of the most courageous things he ever wrote was this article from 1952:

“Civil Liberties,” 1952—A Study in Confusion:
Do We Defend Our Rights by Protecting Communists?

This is the passage for which he became infamous among leftists:

Perhaps it is a calamitous error to believe that because a vulgar demagogue lashes out at both Communism and liberalism as identical, it is necessary to protect Communism in order to defend liberalism. This way of putting the matter will surely shock liberals, who are convinced that it is only they who truly understand Communism and who thoughtfully oppose it. They are nonetheless mistaken, and it is a mistake on which McCarthyism waxes fat. For there is one thing that the American people know about Senator McCarthy: he, like them, is unequivocally anti-Communist. About the spokesmen for American liberalism, they feel they know no such thing. And with some justification.