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Post by redwolf on Feb 27, 2008 11:35:50 GMT -6
William F. Buckley Jr. dies at 82 By HILLEL ITALIE, AP National Writer NEW YORK - William F. Buckley Jr., the erudite Ivy Leaguer and conservative herald who showered huge and scornful words on liberalism as he observed, abetted and cheered on the right's post-World War II rise from the fringes to the White House, died Wednesday. He was 82.news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080227/ap_on_re_us/obit_buckley
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Post by whoswho on Feb 27, 2008 13:35:36 GMT -6
Sorry to say, my extreme dislike for the man prevented me from appreciating the pearls of wisdom dropping from his lips.
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Post by redwolf on Feb 27, 2008 14:34:26 GMT -6
I hate to speak ill of the dead, but I felt the same way. I thought the following quote from his obituary was interesting.
He certainly didn't suffer from low self-esteem!
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Feb 27, 2008 15:04:01 GMT -6
Red Wolf,
Thanks for the post. It was interesting. The following passage was the most interesting.
Buckley also took on the archconservative John Birch Society, a growing force in the 1950s and 1960s. "Buckley's articles cost the Birchers their respectability with conservatives," Richard Nixon once said. "I couldn't have accomplished that. Liberals couldn't have, either."
This is the 2nd time now that I've heard of Buckley's ongoing dispute and conflict with the John Birch Society, now almost synonymous with "The New American" (not the same as the New America_ society or organization).
I'd really like to find out what their specific disagreements are. The New American has a lot of positions I completely agree with. They are fervent opponents of unrestricted free trade, and all "free" trade agreements—the WTO, NAFTA, CAFTA, the North American Union, etc. They are also opponents of illegal immigration, the Iraq War, the Patriot Act, a national ID card, torture, illegal wiretapping. They are "libertarian" oriented on most issues concerned with civil liberties.
On the down side, the New American shares some of the pseudo-Christian Right's views on religion & abortion.
Their overall views are similar to those of Ron Paul's, though I don't think they would ever make some of the statements that Ron Paul has made, such as "free trade is good." (Again, despite Paul's public statements, he has the most pro-populist, anti-globalist voting record of anybody in Congress).
(Also, like Ron Paul, the New American overuses the term "socialism," labeling every aspect of the One-World Globalization trend as "socialistic." Socialism generally implies government ownership, not private ownership. Since multinational Corporations are privately-owned, the term "socialism" doesn't quite fit. Control by Corporations is better described as Corporatism or Fascism.)
If anyone knows what the Buckley's conflict was with the John Birch Society/New American, I'd encourage them to post it here.
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Post by blueneck on Feb 28, 2008 5:39:06 GMT -6
I actually liked Buckley. I rarely missed a Firing Line, read some of his books. I agreed with him as much as I disagreed with him Many of his closest friends were noted liberal thinkers like Galbraith and McGovern and were frequent guests on his show.
He could debate and discuss without being nasty or insulting, something sadly lacking from right wing discussion today.
There was a lot to like about his true conservative message - less govt intrusion in private lives, less foreign interventionism and the avoidance of foreign entanglements, fiscal responsibility, decriminalization of drugs, and minding our own business at home and abroad, strict constitutional ism. we could learn a lot from him. He was also a critic of the Iraq war
Sadly the true conservatism has been hijacked by neoconservatism - which has more in common with neo liberalism than any real conservatism.
I think but am not certain since much time has past, that Buckley's issues with the JBS revolve around their racist and pseudo christian rightism ideology
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Post by redwolf on Feb 28, 2008 7:53:16 GMT -6
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Post by blueneck on Feb 28, 2008 19:11:21 GMT -6
From Huffington Post
With the death of William F. Buckley, Jr., conservatives have been eulogizing him as a pivotal figure in the history of their movement. President Bush declared, "His legacy lives on in the ideas he championed and in the magazine he founded -- National Review."
Not exactly. As Buckley headed into his final years, he became vehemently opposed to the crusading, neoconservative stance that the younger generation at National Review adopted in championing the Iraq War. Indeed, both Buckleys, William F. and his brilliantly talented son Christopher, became acidulous critics of President Bush and vice-president Dick Cheney. The elder Buckley declared that if Bush were serving in a parliamentary democracy, he would have to resign, if not impeached. And Christopher, writing recently in the Washington Monthly, noted that he hopes the GOP loses in 2008: "Who knew, in 2000, that "compassionate conservatism" meant bigger government, unrestricted government spending, government intrusion in personal matters, government ineptitude, and cronyism in disaster relief?"
What lies behind this disenchantment? A book that has not received the attention it deserves, and that goes a long way toward explaining why conservatism has become shipwrecked, is Jeffrey Hart's recent history of the National Review, The Making of the American Conservative Mind. Hart, a longtime contributor to the magazine, makes two important points. The first point is that Buckley wasn't a radical conservative. He didn't believe in trying to destroy the Eastern Establishment; instead, he wanted to reform it. Hart's second, and related, point was that Buckley's devout Catholicism meant that he shunned evangelical Christianity. Buckley believed in hierarchy and tradition and authority, not in personal revelation. He was no fan of the southern evangelicals who wanted to carry on their own little crusade to renew America. Hence the distaste among older, Catholic conservatives such as Buckley and Hart for George W. Bush. According to Hart, Bush "a southern evangelical and moral authoritarian," has championed policies based on a belief that "many moral issues [are] within the sphere of government." Unconservative, in other words. But what Buckley hated most of all was the rise of neoconservatism within the GOP. (something I also touch upon in today's Los Angeles Times). Buckley didn't believe in a Wilsonian crusade that consisted of fighting wars to create peace. Instead, he viewed such bellicosity as a recipe for another Vietnam, which is what Iraq has become. As Buckley fell out of step with the movement he had helped create, he himself was treated as though had lost it, as the British writer Johann Hari has shown, on a National Review cruise last summer. Buckley's sin was to chastise Norman Podhoretz for clinging to the delusion that the Iraq War was about weapons of mass destruction
No, Buckley never became a (gasp!) liberal. On the contrary, I suspect that his politics are, in many ways, most closely carried on by the American Conservative, which is published by Patrick J. Buchanan--and whom Buckley essentially expelled from the mainstream conservative movement on grounds of anti-Semitism. But that's another story for a different day.
For now, it's enough to note that Buckley deserves laurels not simply for his elegant flair and tolerant temperament, but also his contempt for radical ideologues on the right--the unhinged types who are now whining that John McCain isn't conservative enough because he has the temerity to recognize that global warming is actually taking place and needs to be stopped. Or who, as the indispensable Spencer Ackerman shows in the Washington Independent, are using an organization called the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies to sponsor a spinoff called Defense of Democracies to lambaste Democrats for not supporting Bush on spying wiretaps. In other words, a neoconservative organization supposedly devoted to supporting democracy is subverting it in America itself.
These are the kinds of zany ideological excesses that Buckley ultimately recoiled at. He didn't try to edit reality. He lived in it. It's something that conservatives of whatever stripe might want to think about emulating before they charge off on another misbegotten crusade.
Jacob Heilbrunn, a senior editor at the National Interest, is the author of They Knew They Were Right: the Rise of the Neocons
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Post by unlawflcombatnt on Feb 29, 2008 23:07:32 GMT -6
by William F. Buckley, Jr. Goldwater, the John Birch Society, and MeFrom issue: March 2008 "In the early months of l962, there was restiveness in certain political quarters of the Right. The concern was primarily the growing strength of the Soviet Union, and the reiteration by its leaders of their designs on the free world. Some of the actors keenly concerned felt that Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona was a natural leader in the days ahead.
But it seemed inconceivable that an anti-establishment gadfly like Goldwater could be nominated as the spokesman-head of a political party. And it was embarrassing that the only political organization in town that dared suggest this radical proposal—the GOP’s nominating Goldwater for President—was the John Birch Society.
The society had been founded in 1958 by an earnest and capable entrepreneur named Robert Welch, a candy man, who brought together little clusters of American conservatives, most of them businessmen. He demanded two undistracted days in exchange for his willingness to give his seminar on the Communist menace to the United States, which he believed was more thoroughgoing and far-reaching than anyone else in America could have conceived. His influence was near-hypnotic, and his ideas wild. He said Dwight D. Eisenhower was a “dedicated, conscious agent of the Communist conspiracy,” and that the government of the United States was “under operational control of the Communist party.” It was, he said in the summer of 1961, “50-70 percent” Communist-controlled.
Welch refused to divulge the size of the society’s membership, though he suggested it was as high as 100,000 and could reach a million. His method of organization caused general alarm. The society comprised a series of cells, no more than twenty people per cell. It was said that its members were directed to run in secret for local offices and to harass school boards and librarians on the matter of the Communist nature of the textbooks and other materials they used.
The society became a national cause célèbre—so much so, that a few of those anxious to universalize a draft-Goldwater movement aiming at a nomination for President in 1964 thought it best to do a little conspiratorial organizing of their own against it.
_____________
In January of that year I had a telephone call from William Baroody. It was, he said, a matter of great national importance that I spend Tuesday and Wednesday of the following week with Senator Goldwater in Palm Beach, Florida. I would be one of three—along with Russell Kirk, the philosopher and author of the seminal 1953 text The Conservative Mind, and public-relations man Jay Hall, who had represented General Motors in Washington. I said I could be there up until 5 p.m. on day one and all of day two. I had a speaking date in St. Augustine on the first night. Baroody simply repeated that the meeting was very important.
Baroody was the head of the American Enterprise Institute, a right-wing think tank founded in 1943. We had met only cursorily, though I knew him to be an influential figure in behind-the-scenes conservative politics. He was invigorated by meetings with small groups, which he much enjoyed dominating. It was clear that he greatly aspired to be important to Goldwater, and perhaps to a Goldwater White House.
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I arrived at breakfast with the other invitees at the imposing Breakers Hotel and ventilated the critical point: were we here assembled to answer Goldwater’s questions, or to proffer advice on the presidential campaign two years ahead? If the latter, this had to mean that Goldwater had resolved to enter the campaign, which would be big news: so far, he had steadfastly declined to take that step.
Baroody, by nature domineering, was emphatic on the subject. Under no circumstances should anything be said touching on a presidential campaign, inasmuch as Goldwater had not himself decided whether to run and did not want to spend time discussing the issue.
Russell Kirk was not prepared simply to leave the matter closed. “What is more important,” he asked Baroody, “than to try to get Goldwater elected President?”
Baroody was obliged to agree that this would be a wonderful national achievement. “But he has said no.”
“They always say no,” I volunteered.
“Bill, he has said no on at least five different occasions. If he thought we were going to spend the day on that subject, he would just walk away.”
Kirk objected. “I’m the least experienced politically of the people in this room. But I’ve seen the polls—we’ve all seen the polls—and Bill has a point: why should we shrink from telling him that’s what he ought to do?”
It required someone of Kirk’s arrant innocence in consorting with brute political forces to make his point so insistently. He let go of it only after Baroody promised that he would seek out, some time later, an opportunity for Russell to argue it personally with Goldwater. “Maybe you can tell him something about William Pitt that will change his mind.”
Kirk smiled. “Very well. So what do you have in mind for us?”
“We’ll have to coast on that.”
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Goldwater was in Palm Beach visiting, incognito, with a sister-in-law who was resident there. He arrived at our hotel suite at about 11:00 in extravagantly informal garb, cowboy hat and dark glasses, a workman’s blue shirt, and denim jeans, together with his beloved Western boots. He did bring along a weather-beaten briefcase, though I never noticed his opening it the whole day.
What followed was an hour of general discussion on the policies of President Kennedy and the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba. Baroody noted Kennedy’s surprising drop in the polls: 61 percent of the public thought he spent money too freely, a third thought him unduly weak in opposing Soviet challenges in Berlin and elsewhere.
Moving on, Baroody brought up the John Birch Society. It was quickly obvious that this was the subject Goldwater wished counsel on.
Kirk, unimpeded by his little professorial stutter, greeted the subject with fervor. It was his opinion, he said emphatically, that Robert Welch was a man disconnected from reality. How could anyone reason, as Welch had done in The Politician, that President Eisenhower had been a secret agent of the Communists? This mischievous unreality was a great weight on the back of responsible conservative political thinking. The John Birch Society should be renounced by Goldwater and by everyone else—Kirk turned his eyes on me—with any influence on the conservative movement.
But that, Goldwater said, is the problem. Consider this, he exaggerated: “Every other person in Phoenix is a member of the John Birch Society. Russell, I’m not talking about Commie-haunted apple pickers or cactus drunks, I’m talking about the highest cast of men of affairs. Any of you know who Frank Cullen Brophy is?”
I raised my hand. “I spent a lot of time with him. He was going to contribute capital to help found National Review. He didn’t.” Brophy was a prominent Arizona banker.
Goldwater said he knew nothing about that, but added that Brophy certainly was aware of Goldwater’s personal enthusiasm for the magazine and especially for its Washington editor, Brent Bozell. “Why isn’t Brent here?” he turned to Baroody.
“He’s in Spain.”
“Well, our—my—Conscience of a Conservative continues to sell.” Bozell, who was also my brother-in-law, had ghostwritten the book, which had given Goldwater a national profile.
Kirk said he could not imagine Bozell disagreeing on the need to excommunicate the John Birch Society from the conservative movement.
But this brought another groan from Goldwater. “You just can’t do that kind of thing in Arizona. For instance, who on earth can dismiss Frank Brophy from anything?”
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Time was given to the John Birch Society lasting through lunch, and the subject came up again the next morning. We resolved that conservative leaders should do something about the John Birch Society. An allocation of responsibilities crystallized.
Goldwater would seek out an opportunity to dissociate himself from the “findings” of the Society’s leader, without, however, casting any aspersions on the Society itself. I, in National Review and in my other writing, would continue to expose Welch and his thinking to scorn and derision. “You know how to do that,” said Jay Hall.
I volunteered to go further. Unless Welch himself disowned his operative fallacy, National Review would oppose any support for the society.
“How would you define the Birch fallacy?” Jay Hall asked.
“The fallacy,” I said, “is the assumption that you can infer subjective intention from objective consequence: we lost China to the Communists, therefore the President of the United States and the Secretary of State wished China to go to the Communists.”
“I like that,” Goldwater said.
What would Russell Kirk do? He was straightforward. “Me? I’ll just say, if anybody gets around to asking me, that the guy is loony and should be put away.”
“Put away in Alaska?” I asked, mock-seriously. The wisecrack traced to Robert Welch’s expressed conviction, a year or so earlier, that the state of Alaska was being prepared to house anyone who doubted his doctrine that fluoridated water was a Communist-backed plot to weaken the minds of the American public.
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In the next issue of my magazine, National Review, I published a 5,000-word excoriation of Welch:
How can the John Birch Society be an effective political instrument while it is led by a man whose views on current affairs are, at so many critical points . . . so far removed from common sense? That dilemma weighs on conservatives across America. . . . The underlying problem is whether conservatives can continue to acquiesce quietly in a rendition of the causes of the decline of the Republic and the entire Western world which is false, and, besides that, crucially different in practical emphasis from their own. In response, National Review received the explicit endorsement of Senator Goldwater himself, who wrote a letter we published in the following issue:
I think you have clearly stated the problem which Mr. Welch’s continued leadership of the John Birch Society poses for sincere conservatives. . . . Mr. Welch is only one man, and I do not believe his views, far removed from reality and common sense as they are, represent the feelings of most members of the John Birch Society. . . . Because of this, I believe the best thing Mr. Welch could do to serve the cause of anti-Communism in the United States would be to resign. . . . We cannot allow the emblem of irresponsibility to attach to the conservative banner. The wound we Palm Beach plotters delivered to the John Birch Society proved fatal over time. Barry Goldwater did not win the presidency, but he clarified the proper place of anti-Communism on the Right, with bright prospects to follow."About the Author William F. Buckley, Jr. was the founder and former editor-in-chief of National Review. The present essay, in different form, will appear in his new book, Flying High: Remembering Barry Goldwater, forthcoming from Basic Books.
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