Neoconservative Norman Podhoretz, who was a longtime editor-in-chief of Commentary magazine, died at 95.Podhoretz passed away on Tuesday night, due to complications of pneumonia, his son, John Podhoretz, told The New York Times.
In 2004, then-President George W. Bush awarded Podhoretz the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. Podhoretz’s neoconservative views helped shape the Bush administration and its foreign policy regarding the Middle East.
He was Commentary magazine’s editor-in-chief from 1960 to 1995, and wrote a dozen books, including memoirs regarding his philosophical journey.
His son wrote on Commentary magazine’s website that Podhoretz “published 145 articles in these pages from 1953 to his final appearance, in a colloquy with me about the magazine, in November 2020.”
Podhoretz was born in Brooklyn, New York City, on Jan. 16, 1930, to immigrants from the Galicia region of Eastern Europe. His father was a milkman who spoke Yiddish, and made sure his son took Hebrew lessons.
He attended Columbia University on a scholarship and took courses at the nearby Jewish Theological Seminary at his father’s insistence before earning a master’s degree at the University of Cambridge.
Podhoretz married social critic Midge Decter in 1956, after two years in the Army. She died in 2022. He is survived by his son, John; a daughter, Ruthie Blum; a stepdaughter, Naomi Decter Munson; 13 grandchildren and 16 great-grandchildren. Another stepdaughter, Rachel Abrams, died in 2013.
He initially supported then-Sen. Marco Rubio in the 2016 GOP presidential primary, before endorsing Donald Trump as “the lesser evil.”
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