It is an important irony that it is conservatives who disproportionately are the defenders of real liberal ideals in important areas of modern American society, including the media and academia.  The leftists who claim to act in the name of those liberal ideals often betray those ideals in their actual methods.

That’s also due to the fact that many truly classical values are conservative values (old values). In fact, I believe that conservatism is the only way to keep liberalism ‘liberal.’

Leftists who do so are not themselves liberals, although they act in the name of liberal ideas.  They are rather a watered-down brand of totalitarian, claiming (as most totalitarians do) the mantle of liberal ideas while pursuing them in deeply illiberal ways.

It is an important irony that it is conservatives who disproportionately are the defenders of real liberal ideals in important areas of modern American society, including the media and academia.  The leftists who claim to act in the name of those liberal ideals often betray those ideals in their actual methods.

My correction to your reply to Xel was about lefty vs. liberal, here is where we disagree. Somehow the liberal term has been attached to the left in general, and that  rankles me very much (being from USSR) when the respected definition of liberal gets attached to a simple socialist or ultra-lefty ( who are intolerant indeed)

And Kristol is a unique case by itself,

No, he’s not. That’s the problem. The attempt to remove Kristol from the realm of public discourse under the pretense of "respectability" is only the latest and highest-profile case in a long line of cases where those who believe the "wrong" things (especially about Iraq) are targeted. David Horowitz and Michelle Malkin get targeted for intimidation and assault every time they make a public appearance. Conservative students who write for college papers are routinely fired by their leftist editors and are sometimes targeted for punishment by the college and or its professors too. Conservative speakers, already a tiny minority on college campuses, are routinely “disinvited” after threats from leftist student groups who object to them as “not respectable”. Any graduate students or junior faculty that believe the “wrong” things about Iraq learn VERY quickly to keep quiet or else put their careers at risk before they even get off the ground. I could go on and on and on and on.

“Not respectable” is just a fig leaf and a very old one at that. The truth is that there exists a large and influential group of leftists (especially in the blogosphere (Michael already cited several examples) and academia) for whom any disagreement on the issue of Iraq is BY DEFINITION “not respectable” and unworthy of inclusion in the public debate. These people do not merely have a problem with Bill Kristol. They have a problem with freedom of speech whenever they disagree with the content of the speech.

Let me add that as a professor of international relations specializing in security studies, I disagree with Kristol’s prescriptions more deeply and intensely than almost any of his leftist critics in the blogosphere are capable of doing so. I equally disagree with the prescriptions of radical anti-American critics like Noam Chomsky. But I do not attempt to remove EITHER from positions of commentary and I assign and discuss their views in my classes. I even initiated a discussion of Ron Paul (and you KNOW what I think of his views). Any genuine commitment to the principle of free inquiry cannot accommodate ad hoc exceptions like those being deployed by many on the left against Kristol. I don’t even need to discredit the “respectability” exception itself — the mere fact that they even TRY to cook up an exception reveals their true stance.

The whole "respectability" thing looks like a fig leaf for being just incapable of dealing with disagreement. The claim that his “political creed” is not relevant is laughable — his political creed is precisely what they find to be not “respectable” ever since Reagan and even Goldwater. Replace Kristol with anyone else who disagrees with liberals about Iraq and they would be making the exact same demands that they be removed or “disinvited” (just as they do on college campuses day-in and day-out). It is not like this “no conservatives need apply” attitude is new. In fact, the systematic efforts to exclude conservatives from “respectable” media outlets is precisely why conservative talk radio emerged in the 1980s and created the perceived need for Congressional Democrats to censor them there also.

And I have ZERO doubt that if the ideological tables were reversed, the lefties would be crying about "censorship" without reservation. In fact, in the ONLY such example that I can think of (Ward Churchill), that is exactly what many liberals are claiming.

So if you want to complain about lack of credibility, maybe you should be tending your own ideological garden first.