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“In every town large enough to have two traffic lights there is a bar at the back of which sits the local Donald Trump, nursing his fifth beer and innumerable delusions.” So wrote George Will in his attack on Donald Trump for having the temerity to threaten the legacy of William F. Buckley. [“Donald Trump Is an Affront to Anyone Devoted to William F. Buckley’s Legacy” by George F. Will, National Review Online, August 12, 2015]
This is not George Will’s first attempt to Archie Bunkerize an ideological opponent. Will once said of Pat Buchanan’s 1996 presidential campaign: “Were we picking not a president but the person among the candidates with whom it would be the most fun to kick back and kill a six pack, Pat Buchanan would win in a landslide.” [“Buchanan Offers Wrong Solution” by George F. Will, Gainsville Sun, November 3, 1995]
Denigrating your opponents—rather than simply challenging their arguments—is a standard tactic of the Left. Conservatives—that is, real conservatives—are supposed to be above that. It’s the ideas that matter, at least to some of us.
This brings us to William F. Buckley.
According to George Will: “[Donald Trump] is an affront to anyone devoted to the project William F. Buckley began six decades ago with the founding in 1955 of National Review—making conservatism intellectually respectable and politically palatable.”
It does not occur to George Will that very few people are still devoted to the project William F. Buckley started in 1955 with the founding of National Review.
According to its original mission statement, Buckley founded National Review with the stated purpose of standing “athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no other is inclined to do so.” Soon, however, the magazine would acquire a secondary—and increasingly primary—function as Buckley began to arrogate to himself the power to decide who or what is a true conservative.
Granted, defining what policies and principles should properly qualify as conservative is certainly legitimate. But one can expel an idea without necessarily expelling its proponent. Unfortunately, Buckley, whose intellect was always more image than substance, often chose to expel the individual instead of the idea.
When I interviewed Buckley on his relationship with Whittaker Chambers he expressed great pride in having published Chambers’s compelling review of Atlas Shrugged (“Big Sister Is Watching You”) in 1957.
While I also admire Chambers’s review, I suspected that Buckley admired it less for its substance than for the power it had to expel an individual from membership in the conservative camp. “Whittaker wrote Ayn Rand right out of the conservative movement with that one review,” he told me with a mile wide smile on his face.
According to Buckley, Rand never spoke to him again and refused to attend any gatherings at which Buckley was present.
In my opinion, it was at this point that William F. Buckley realized that he had the power to excommunicate individuals from the inner circle of the conservative movement at the center of which he stood largely alone, at least for a time.
In 1962, Buckley wrote a 5,000 word “excoriation” of Robert Welch and the John Birch Society for alleged anti-Communist extremism.[“The Question of Robert Welch” National Review, February 13, 1962] True, many of the Birchers ideas were quixotic—in style as much as content. But the real object of Welch’s ire was the self-absorption of the American political establishment whose statist goals he believed were akin to a creeping Sovietism.
However, Buckley had no quarrel with the political establishment and always desperately sought their approval. The constant effort to maintain this high social status was also part of the project that Buckley founded in 1955; it just took a while for some of his colleagues to catch on to it.
So in order to maintain his social standing and his position as the de facto leader of the conservative movement, Buckley had to periodically purge some of his best writers; most notably Joe Sobran, whose only crime was offending the foreign policy views of some prominent neoconservatives.
Moreover, as patriotic immigration reform fell out of favor with the elites during the 1990s, those conservatives who championed it fell out of favor with Buckley. Subsequently, Buckley fired John O’Sullivan both for his immigration hardline and for committing the cardinal sin of upstaging him at a magazine social gathering.
Many NR readers were subsequently stunned when Buckley replaced O’Sullivan with the virtually unknown Rich Lowry as editor. But Lowry had two advantages: he never threatened to overshadow Buckley and he was dedicated to a soft approach on immigration.
For example, in 1995, John J. Miller wrote a pro-immigration puff piece for the Wall Street Journal using bogus data [Immigration’s Golden Door, May 25, 1995]. In response, Peter Brimelow wrote an article in National Review exposing Miller’s data as false. So what did Rich Lowry do as soon as he became editor? He dropped Peter Brimelow and hired John Miller to write on immigration in his place.
That was the turning point. National Review then began to quietly write patriotic immigration reform out of the conservative movement. In so doing, writers like John Miller and Ramesh Ponnuru would also accept the Left’s narrative that immigration restrictionism was motivated by white racism, and was therefore unworthy of debate.
In 1999, Ramesh Ponnuru attempted to portray Pat Buchanan as an illegitimate conservative and compared his emphasis on patriotic immigration reform to “identity politics for white people.” [A Conservative No More: The Tribal Politics of Pat Buchanan, October 11, 1999] Ponnuru even derided Buchanan’s millions of supporters as “peasants.”
In a letter to Jared Taylor written in August, 2000, William F. Buckley openly admitted that he no longer opposed mass immigration because it was not politically-correct:
It seems to me that the idea traditionally defended of endeavoring to maintain existing ethnic balances simply doesn’t work any more.
But for whom does patriotic immigration reform no longer work? For the elites, of course. Here Buckley admits that it was more important for him to maintain his status than to maintain his country.
This is a naked admission that National Review no longer stood athwart history yelling stop—and that that part of the project that William F. Buckley founded in 1955 was undeniably over.
Indeed, more to the liking of Buckley and fellow elites were writers like George Will who supported the open borders policies of George W. Bush and derided Tom Tancredo as a “fire-breathing bantam rooster” and even compared him to Al Sharpton.
Today, National Review is at it once again as they strive to banish Donald Trump from conservative respectability for the sin of championing the cause they abandoned long ago: patriotic immigration reform. Their recent “Against Trump” issue is a desperate attempt to assert a strength it no longer has.
In due course—one of Buckley’s favorite phrases—many conservatives like Phyllis Schlafly and Laura Ingraham have begun to wash their hands of National Review. And so it seems, have many of their readers, if the scathing dissents regularly left in the comments section of National ReviewOnline are any indication.
The central question of our time is not who is or what is conservative. The real question is the National Question. And Donald Trump has risen to that challenge better than any candidate since Dwight D. Eisenhower.
The truth is that Donald Trump has filled an enormous political vacuum—one that National Review has refused to acknowledge even though they helped to create it in the first place.
Many people have complimented me on correctly predicting last April that Donald Trump would run for President—and run on patriotic immigration reform. So let me make another prediction: If Donald Trump is elected President in 2016 it will mark the permanent end of National Review’s influence over the conservative movement in America.
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Other than the late, great reactionary Florence King, whom I suspect was kept around for entertainment and sales value, I don’t remember NR ever featuring many female writers at all. They sure could use some now, as it seems that on the “National Question” the ladies are carrying the ball– Mrs Schlafly, Miss Ingraham, Michelle Malkin, Ann Coulter…
My blood boils when I think of the smugness and the damage these people have done to America.
I begin to understand.
Je Suis Robespierre!
What about the old rumors that the CIA subsidized *National Review* in the early days of that mag?
… *National Review* conservativism being the ostensibly respectable alternative to the John Birch Society, which had unacceptably isolationist tendencies.
Excellent essay. One note, per your comment:
Any more, NRO ferociously censors their commentary, as bad as–if not worse than–say, HuffPo or NYT. I.e., if anyone goes snooping around NRO to find this “scathing dissent”, they will come up lacking. All of my polite dissents have been scrubbed from NRO memory (though not from my Disqus account). Just like with any other left-wing publication, the naif who wanders over there will believe everyone agrees with their POV.
iow while whites are engaged in internecine warfare over who is whiter and who hates immigrants more, Jews are eating their lunch and using US military and treasure to sow chaos and create refugees who migrate to Europe and USA.
these are conservatism’s intellectual elite??
Zeus help us.
The demise of NR is well deserved, and a long time coming.
I don’t know who owns it, but I’m sure they must have taken a pretty good hit in subscription cancellations over the past month. And yes, their comments sections are blood-stained.
I hope Trump become POTUS, and I hope Rich Lowry is lucky to get a gig at a community newspaper after NR becomes a historical footnote, if that. The man is no conservative, and he has real gaul posing as one.
As for Goldberg, Donaldson, and Ponnoru, they are all self-important dickheads, and not half as smart as they imagine.
Will blindly accepts the Left’s premise that people like Archie Bunker (as if his type were ever accorded the status of human beings) have feelings, beliefs, and rights that must also be accorded respect and tolerance in a just society. I believe that makes Will an intolerant bigot … so who’s calling for his columns to be silenced?
I admit to a twinge of nostalgia, as I was introduced to modern conservatism in the 1970s by National Review and subscribed to it for a number of years. But it is now sadly clear that it has rendered itself irrelevant to the real needs of Americans, largely because it cannot get past the race shibboleths of the 1960s. It is now the epitomy of “cuckservative.” For me the final straw was the removal of John Derbyshire from his position for writing the truth about blacks in another publication.
One is tempted to imitate the style of Prof. Glenn Reynolds: “Yes. Next question.”
Some time before his passing, a coup was mounted at NRO and Buckley himself and others were exiled from the magazine he founded. He had begun to question the wisdom of Mideast wars and had long supported marijuana legalization, mounted critiques that the neocons treated as treason. His columns were no longer carried by the magazne. NRO had become little better than a propaganda outlet
Make that “…who…was kept around for entertainment and sales value,…”
Matthew Richer’s ZionCon references discredits his opinion – the ‘National Review on Line’, a Zionist propaganda forum, and George F. Will, who works for Israeli Hasbara media outlets like Fox News, Newsweek, and The Washington Post.
The first to cry “wolf” on Will’s ‘shifting sands’ was no other than another Zionist warmonger, Peter Wehner, who took his old buddy to task in his article, “Will’s Loss of Nerve” for the Jewish magazine ‘Commentary”, published on September 1, 2009, by saying: “Mr. Will’s shifting stands on these wars is vertigo-inducing. To understand just how much this is so. Will was not just in favor of the war (Iraq), he was as passionate and articulate champion of it as you could possibly find…..Will applauded bringing instability to the Middle East and countries like Egypt…. Will also predicted ‘a fairly quick end to Iraqi conflict’. However, as the war draged-on, Will came to believe the Iraq war was a grave error….”
https://rehmat1.com/2009/09/09/iraq-afghanistan-the-zionists-shifting-stands/
Tried telling that to Joe Webb, but he claims that addressing the racial issue has higher priority over addressing the Zionist issue. It’s based on a short-run/long-run kind of argument. Not sure I agree.
The larger issue is that the COLD WAR ANTI-COMMIE Crusade was a death sentence for the Historic Native Born White American Majority. First came the integration of the US Military….Afterwards, school busing, and the 1964 Civil Rights Act…all three social policies…are a direct consequence of The Cold War…We had to show that we were morally superior to the RUSSKIES.
Of course, the passage of the 1965 Immigration Reform Act was a direct consequence of the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act for Blacks. If the 1965 Immigration Reform Act had not been passed, Barack Obama would not have had a snowballs chance in Hell of ever being elected POTUS in 2008 and 2012…And Native Born White Americans would still be a 90 percent racial majority in the US in 2016. In fact, if America had not gone into Cold War mode against Russia, Barack Obama’s Kenyan father would never have been allowed into the US. Barack Obama’s father was allowed into the US through a NATO foreign student program. This is also the reason why the Turks own all our gas stations in the US…They are the chain migration beneficiares through the Turkish science,math..engineering grad students who were allowed into US Universites in the 1970s through the same NATO Scholars Program.
The Soviet Union-Russia was not an existential threat to millions of Native Born White Americans. JFK and the reprobate Kennedy Family was the number one existential threat to the continued existence of The Historic Native Born White American Majority.
The passage of the 1965 Immigration Reform Act was Teddy’s permanent monument of demographic annihilation of The Historic Native Born White American Majority to his War Criminal brother JFK.
God Bless the late Russian Naval Commander Vitali Akhipov!!!..For he saved The Historic Native Born White American Majority from the Irish Catholic Monstrosity JFK.
This is the proper context in which William F Buckley and the NR should be understood in terms of.
“He had begun to question the wisdom of Mideast wars and had long supported marijuana legalization….”
That’s what I remember about Buckley. That and the wonderful way he looked down his nose so that you knew his mighty brain was working. Marijuana legalization? He was insufficiently pompous and stuffy (like George Will) to be a real conservative.
Being a card carrying member of the white working class, all I can say about the National Review is who cares?
There is something really obscene about guys who have done nothing in their lives, except talk and write, being critical of someone who has spent decades not only doing but doing on a mega scale, employing thousands, turning Manhattan and NYC around, etc., etc…
I hope NR, WSJ,… the whole conservative establishment, die a quick death. Not for humane reasons, but the sooner they get out of here the better the country will be.
NR and NRO have made themselves irrelevant. Lowry is still a callow youth whose lack of ability is covered up by strategic banishments and the hiring of people with even less ability than him. It was condign punishment that Lowry eventually turned on the man that made him.
Unapologetic, I disagree with you one minor point. Goldberg isn’t one tenth as smart as he think he is. I remember back about 2002, 2003, when Goldberg was trying to carry out an argument with the Paleoconservatives. Gottfried had Goldberg spitting and spluttering, and energetically making a fool of himself. It would have been hilarious, if it hadn’t also been very painful watching a reasonably intelligent man being taken down several notches with so little effort. I swapped several emails with the man trying to get him to shut up, but he was simply too arrogant.
After NR goes away, and it will since it’s founding function has been abandoned, the people that write there will have a hard time writing anywhere else. Krikorian will probably do OK, but I can’t think of anyone else that will. People like Lowry, Goldberg and Ponnuru will richly deserve their banishment to oblivion.
White Guys
If you allow yourselves to become a racial minority on Historical Native Born White American Living and Breeding Space…..meet your new Hindu Brahman Masters:Ramesh Ponnuru and his Species…Brahmans such as IIT Grad Vishod Khalsa who view you guys as SUBHUMAN!!!!
Was Fantasy “WHAT STUD” Football really worth it?
The Genocide of White Males is happening in real 2016 time…even Noam Chomsky has recently admitted this last week in Huff Post….
NR was was a thoughtful and worthwhile read when Buckley was alive. Much of NR’s influence came, rightly, from staunch opposition to Soviet communism during the Cold War and its opposition to leftist cultural rot.
Today, Buckley’s successors haven’t got the Soviets to rail against, and frankly, NR and the conservative movement have utterly failed at halting the cultural rot. Abortion, pornography, homosexuality, affirmative action, Third World immigration, government debt and welfare have all become as American as apple pie. NR’s editors have basically come to accept all of that. What have they got left? Nothing, really, but neo-con interventionism and anti-Putinism.
I haven’t read National Review in over ten years. There’s nothing there.
Buckley (rot in hell) and Will are sniveling rodents sent into conservative America by its enemies as a fifth column to undermine the pillars and rot the intellectual foundations of conservatism from the inside out.
Hard to even imagine more contemptible scum. They’re like those Jewish kapos who strode the camps with clubs beating any inmate who looked at the guards crosswise.
like those Apache scouts who showed the US cavalry where their tribes were hiding out, they happily betray their own for shinny trinkets
and they would urge us all to get on our knees like they are, and worship their master
It’s worth mentioning that the same neocon weeds who choked out all other forms of life via National Review did the same thing to mainstream conservative discussion over in the UK in their Spectator magazine and Telegraph papers. I think an American guy in Rupert Murdoch’s talent pool, named Irwin Steltzer (sp?) played a big role in this. They “make a desert and call it peace” wherever they go.
I have found that NRO deletes scathing dissents, but usually allows milder stuff….but the person doing it is an ignorant moron. One comment I filed was just a quote from a famous Shelley poem…gone….
“named Irwin Steltzer (sp?) ”
You mean, (((Irwin Steltzer)))
Just for the record,Buckley has been an OSS and CIA asset over the years.
Points from Russ Baker’s book about the Bush dynasty “Family of Secrets”, page 23.
1. In 1950 at Yale, Buckley was recruited for the OSS by philosophy instructor and covert operations advisor James Burnham.
2. He introduced Buckley to CIA Officer E. Howard Hunt also a Yale man.
3. Buckley was Skull and Bones at Yale and as were the Bushes and Allen Dulles.
4. After graduation he went to work in the CIA’s Mexico station under Hunt which fact he
acknowledged in 2005.
Here is a key takeaway from the book about the intelligence community’s view of the Presidency.
“Presidents were viewed less as elected leaders to be served than as temporary occupants to be closely monitored , subtly guided, and where necessary, given a shove.” (page 182)
Although this quote was written about JFK and Nixon, it will also impact Trump, should he win.
The NR became neocon central, and anything but conservative in their liberal nation building ways. One stick to mark their grave will do.
If they represent “conservatism”, then, perhaps, we are no longer conservatives.
We need a new name. How about previous conservatives, or, original conservatives.
Not sure about Michelle Malin. She founded Hot Air (HA), an intellectually dishonest cesspool of RINO leftism, piss poor writing and non-existent editing, which she sold to some RINO organization that has continued HA’s downward spiral.
A circular target would be better. It would give me something to aim at while I piss on their grave.
Taboos maintain the walls of power and privilege. Trump weakens taboos, therefore threatens vested interests. He opens up the narrative and inspires others to say and do like him. Power is maintained not only by what is said but by fearsome rules of what cannot be said. After all, glastnost and the overton window/wall in the USSR undermined communism in the USSR of the 1980s.
Trump isn’t open borders on immigration but open borders on the narrative. His style and brashness are like ‘barbarians at the gates’ for the ruling Jewish elites. He is like the uppity Negro who finally looks in the eyes of his massuh and says NO. Jewish massuhs cannot tolerate the white man looking directly in the eye and saying NO to them. Jews cannot stand uppity whites. Chutzpah is reserved for them only. Ironically, Trump is like Jack Johnson, and he keeps knocking out all these ‘great goy hopes’ put forth by Jews. Romney is the latest one of the ‘hopes’.
As for genteel respectable gentile conservatives, they lost all legitimacy since they lacked the balls to speak the truth about globalism and its threat to Americans. Just like German upper class sold their souls to Hitler to keep their status, gentile conservative elites sold their souls to Jewish globo tyrants to keep theirs. Respectability with integrity and courage is worthless. It is all look, no substance.
Respectability is only as good as the real face it is masking. Conservative Establishment wears a respectable mask but lacks integrity and principles. It’s all about lobbying for privilege for themselves without any regard for nation as a whole.
Didn’t know that The Buck was S&B at Yale but I knew he was connected with the CIA in some fashion. I used to be an inveterate reader of NR but haven’t read it in years. Buckley and the increasingly antic George Will effectively banished Pat Buchanan from The Movement back in the Nineties as a consequence of Buchanan’s opposition to both unbridled immigration and AIPAC (remember his description of the US Congress as “Israeli Occupied Territory?”). Buckley may have already then have been in his cups (I heard him interviewed on a talk show back in the early Nineties and he was barely coherent). Now he’s gone. Small “c” conservatism has since been replaced by “Conservative Inc.” Pretty sad.
Open borders on immigration destroys a nation. Open borders on the narrative/discourse destroys privilege and power that maintains itself by making people feel that it is ‘bad form’, ‘sinful’, or ‘odious’ to say certain things(that usually speak truth to power). When Jews were rising and challenging Wasp power, they were for open borders or open barbs on the narrative controlled by wasps. But now that they got the power, they fear open borders discourse free of censorship and taboos. They are now for closed borders on discourse. PC is enforced through means legal, economic, cultural, and political not so much to protect the ‘weak’ but to protect the powerful Jewish elites from scrutiny and accountability.
Trump stands before the Overton Window/Wall and says ‘tear down this wall’. It is the one wall — along with the wall in Israel — that Jews don’t want torn down. Without taboos, Jews will be flooded with criticism of their power, privilege, and abuses since they are the kings of the hill.
We must say ‘closed borders against invasion and open borders for speech’.
Alt Right and white patriots don’t mind sharing Trump with the Jews. After all, Trump is pro-Israel.
But Jews mind sharing any candidate with the Alt Right or white patriots. They must totally own him. Jews will not share.
What does that tell you?
Alt Right and white patriots don’t mind if Trump will be good for both Jews and whites. But Jews want someone who will be good for Jews only and bad for whites.
I’ve decided to use “Libertarian Nationalist.” It has the virtue of being fairly self-descriptive, while clearly not including the antinationalist left-libertarians and neocons, but also indicating a healthy respect for America’s tradition of freedom.
[It’s really not proper behavior to use multiple handles when commenting. Pick a single handle and stick to it, or use Anonymous or Anon for other comments.]
Not only that, but NR seems to have dropped their wonderful cartoonist, Baloo.
National Review: Standing athwart history yelling “please don’t call me racist”
” Just like with any other left-wing publication, the naif who wanders over there will believe everyone agrees with their POV.”
The same goes for Jayman and Razib, here.
Intellectually dishonest.
What did Ann Coulter call these guys at National Review? Girly boys.
Everyone they fired or smeared is one worth honoring, including Joe Sobran, Pat Buchanan, Peter Brimelow, Paul Gottfried and John Derbyshire.
Good riddance to all of that filth.
Dr. X said: What have they got left?
Hunsdon said: They’ve always got Israel.
Political Correctness and Pop Culture. Taboos and Tattoos.
What America has become.
February 22, 2016 The Age of Authoritarianism: Government of the Politicians, by the Military, for the Corporations By John W. Whitehead
History may show that from this point forward, we will have left behind any semblance of constitutional government and entered into a militaristic state where all citizens are suspects and security trumps freedom.
https://tenthamendmentcenter.com/2016/02/24/the-age-of-authoritarianism/#.VtCLNZ3D-XY
Is this like a Counter-Cuckture?
Trump reminds me of the 70s all over again.
It was a time of movies like
ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST (albeit based on an early 60s book).
THE LONGEST YARD
BAD NEWS BEARS
THE LAST DETAIL
CHINATOWN
AMERICAN GRAFFITI
BILLY JACK
CONVOY
Anti-Estab movies.
They were follow-ups to 60s films like BONNIE AND CLYDE, THE GRADUATE, IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT, COOL HAND LUKE, and EASY RIDER.
The rebels were the youths, the blacks, the oddballs, the outsiders, the nutballs, the outlaws, etc.
It was seen in relation to Nixonian Conformity and the Man.
And yet, they didn’t simply appeal to the Liberals or the Left.
They even appealed to rightwing populism.
And some movies like DEATH WISH, DIRTY HARRY, and THE FRENCH CONNECTION — even PATTON — played on a combo of counterculture and right-wing themes.
These ‘right-wing’ heroes were rebels and mavericks against the System that was increasingly seen as controlled by the Liberal Establishment. Stallone later ran with this white-man-as-underdog in ROCKY and RAMBO movies.
Ironically, the so-called Reagan Era of the 80s did wonders for the Lib Establishment. Reagan’s pro-business and pro-order policies paved the way for super-revival of Liberal Democratic cities during the Clinton Era of high incarceration rates and pro-‘free trade’ policies that made the Liberal urban gentry and entrepreneurial class richer than ever. And the restoration of the culture of Order paved the way for Liberal use of PC and other means to make us more orderly in the ways that would please Steven Pinker.
So, the Libs really had no more use for genuine counter-culture antics and rebellion.
There is a lot of sex and violence in Pop Culture but they are all so industry-controlled, groomed, manufactured, and engineered. They are not genuine and real, as with Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison.
The likes of Miley Cyrus and Nikki Minaj, gross as they are, are purely the product of the industry. They were made that way by the industry.
In contrast, there was genuine anarchic threat in movies like THE LONGEST YARD, ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST, and BAD NEWS BEARS, huge topic of discussion among kids at school.
Back then, many Boomer Libs(still young and idealistic and a bit rough) were willing to throw caution to the winds and let the mob run free. There was no PC though plenty of lefty politicking. But there was also good deal of un-PC stuff all over.
But PC has seriously suppressed genuine free speech. There is SJW rage, but SJW are toy radicals manufactured and engineered by boomer and X-er college professors.
They are to radicalism what Rubio is to conservatism. Robotic.
The Lib Elites are no longer interested in BAD NEWS BEARS style antics since they totally rule everything. This is especially the case since the main rulers of Lib Elites are Jews, and Jews are very nervous about the gentile masses becoming restless and stampeding against Elite Power.
So, the very Lib Boomers who might have cheered for the inmates of THE LONGEST YARD in the 1970s are probably secretly cheering for the prison authorities when they see the movie today. To them, Trump seems like the Reynolds character leading an unruly mob who are only to happy to storm the gates.
That the white conservative middle/working class are now the face of rebellion against the Establishment of both parties goes to show how much this nation has changed.
The Jewish Elites have been promoting ‘white guilt’, ‘diversity’, ‘open borders’, ‘multi-culturalism’, etc as the New Official Creed of America. Of course, this elitism doesn’t favor all non-whites. Instead, it just favors some token non-whites for elite world so that the elites can show off their ‘progressive’ credentials. With the likes of Fareed Zakaria by their side, they sneer at the gentile masses as low and vulgar. And even though the globalist elites are the ones lording over blacks and Mexicans, they use ‘diversity’ narrative to fool non-white have-nots into believing that they are being held back by the middle/working/lower class whites who are ending up with nothing. Divide-and-rule over gentile dummies. The fact that some blacks are beginning to listen to Trump is a sign that some are waking up to fact that their main enemies are not ‘white trash’ but the globo elites who push immigration to send blacks to the back of the bus in favor of yellows/browns and homos.
The question is… is Trump pulling an act or does he have the gall to run the longest yard?
Good accounting on chain migration of Turks and others.
If and when obituaries for NR are written, the critical issue of its subsidization by the CIA needs to be assessed and as thoroughly aired as possible. Rather than “standing athwart history, yelling Stop”, as claimed by its founder, opposing ‘big government’, it is probable that its primary purpose was to support the growth of the military-industrial-governmental apparatus in opposition to the Soviet Union. Those purged in the early years were men on the right who had doubts about this program, such as Welch and Murray Rothbard. ‘Heretics’ purged in later years, including Pat Buchanan, Joe Sobran, M.E Bradford and others up to John O’Sullivan and Peter Brimelow, had offended against the Neoconservative money cabal, to which Buckley had submitted by the early ’90’s. Did the Neocons take over as the financial underwriters at that time? And who underwrites the magazine today?
The paleocons at Chronicles magazine have been battling for an authentic conservatism for decades. The ideas of the Old Right never died. Check out
Revolt from the Heartland: The Struggle for an Authentic Conservatism
Joseph Scotchie
Transaction Publishers, 2002 – Political Science – 135 pages
0 Reviews
“Joseph Scotchie wishes to tell the story of what he terms an “underfunded, mostly unknown movement” known as the “paleoconservative” or “Old Right” which, he argues, has “provided the intellectual firepower behind the troubled populism of the 1990’s.” And Scotchie is not afraid to ask hard questions.” –“The Review of Politics”
“An essential and valuable contribution to American intellectual history in the last decade of the last century.” — “The American Conservative”
The dominant forces of American conservatism remain wedded, at all costs, to the Republican Party, but another movement, one with its roots in the pre-World War II era, has stepped forth to fill an intellectual vacuum on the right. This Old Right first rose in opposition to the New Deal, fighting both statism at home and the emergence of an American empire abroad. More recently this movement, sometimes called paleoconservatism, has provided the ideological backbone of modern populism and the opposition to globalization, with decisive effects on presidential politics. In “Revolt from the Heartland,” Joseph Scotchie provides an intellectual history of the Old Right, treating its main figures and defining its conflict with the traditional left-right political mainstream.
As Scotchie’s account makes clear, the Old Right and its descendents have articulated an arresting and powerful worldview. They include an array of learned and provocative writers, including M.E. Bradford, Russell Kirk, Richard Weaver, and Murray Rothbard, and more recently, Clyde Wilson, Thomas Fleming, Samuel Francis, and Chilton Williamson, Jr. Beginning with the movement’s anti-Federalist forerunners, Scotchie traces its developments over two centuries of American history. In the realm of politics and economics, he examines the anti-imperialist stance against the Spanish-American War and the League of Nations, the split among conservatives on Cold War foreign policy, and the hostility to the socialist orientation of the New Deal. Identifying a number of social and cultural attitudes that define the Old Right, Scotchie finds the most important to be the importance of the classics, a recognition of regional cultures, the primacy of family over state, the moral case against immigration. In general, too, a Tenth Amendment approach to such recurring issues as education, abortion, and school prayer characterizes the group.
As Scotchie makes clear, the Old Right and its grass-roots supporters have, and continue to be, a powerful force in modern American politics in spite of a lack of institutional support and media recognition. “Revolt from the Heartland” is an important study of a persisting current in American political life.
Joseph Scotchie is the author of “Barbarians in the Saddle: An Intellectual Biography of Richard M. Weaver” and the editor of “The Paleoconservatives: New Voices of the Old Right” and “The Vision of Richard Weaver,” all available from Transaction. He is also the author of a biography on the novelist Thomas Wolfe.
“”Joe Scotchie’s terrific new book solves a Great American Mystery. Why do our conservative intellectuals attack one another more viciously than they do liberals? Why does the splintered movement-Old Right, Neoconservative, New Right, and Beltway Right-behave like old communists who would rather purge each other than carry out the revolution? Why, if a member has some success, as when Pat Buchanan won in New Hampshire in 1996, do the rest attack him until they have assured his defeat? It’s an incredible story and you have to read the book to find the answer””-William J. Quirk, Professor of Law, “University of South Carolina”
“”As an immigrant, I have always regarded the American conserative movement as the flower of democracy, the real reason for the Free World’s victory in the Cold War. But flowers do not grow to the sky and the historic conservative movement is clearly now dead. In this remarkable and erudite account, Joseph Scothie investigates the new shoots that are coming up, traces their roots, and analyzes their future-and America’s.””
-Peter Brimelow, author of “Alien Nation: Common Sense About America’s Immigration Disaster”
“”With truly masterful precision, Joe Scotchie illuminates the myriad dissident strains of American Conservatism which knocked at the doors of power at the end of the Cold War before meeting a fateful rebuff. He tells the story of those distinctive Right wing intellectuals who said “no” to an imperial foreign policy, mass immigration, and a globalized economy. While this band lost the key internecine battles of the 1990s to Newt Gingrich the neoconvervatives, and the politics of Clinton-bashing, in Scotchie’ eloquent account their struggle for a conservatism rooted a sense of measure and respect for the American past retains all its piquancy for the decade to come.””-Scott McConnell
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I don’t recall The Spectator (which I was reading regularly) having sold out to the neo-cons and am not in a position to speak about the Telegraph. Of course Murdoch has never had anything to do with either of them so maybe your memory is playing tricks on this subject. I recall the Spectator giving plenty of space to the Blair government’s suicide-of-David-Kelly scandal, and Taki, the arch palaeo, is and was a regular columnist….(also in the Telegraph I think).
Why don’ they change it to Global Review?
It is now anti-national.
National Review: Standing athwart history yelling “I’m for sale to the highest bidder”
Buckley’s admired the Jewish Neocons anti communist stance and the intellectual power they brought to NR. In the end they took control and now dominate. Most did not notice Sobran’s departure and the Birch Society was considered fringe. This is now changing with theAlt Right and the power of the internet.
Taki is still a Spectator regular.
I’ve been amazed that the National Review has not shut down there websites comment section, as a solid majority of the comments have countered there opinion. Additionally I’ve noticed the pro National Review neocon’s seem to be particular devoid of wit, humor or any understanding of satire. It’s almost child’s play, although enjoyable to counter there arguments.
I have tried to come up with a nickname for “these guys at National Review” and arrived at:
NROdnik
It borrows the acronym NRO and also alludes to the Russian Narodniks, would-be revolutionaries drawn from the middle and upper classes, who tried but signally failed to rouse the peasantry to their cause. The American people today have about as much use for neoconservative propaganda as Russian mouzhiks had for the proto-Trotskyism of the the narodniki.
Anyone who wishes to use my coinage is welcome to do so at his pleasure. It would be rewarding to see it become widespread.
Clyde………one of the things that worries me about POTUS Trump is that he wants to import a “small” number of nonwhite elites to generate economic opportunites for White Americans. This experiment was already performed…NATO SCHOLARS PROGRAM….and now it seems that all the Gas-Service Stations in the Northeast are owned by Turks. Pocono PA is now being colonized by Turkey.
Here is my immigration policy:0 nonwhite legal immigrants forever!!!!!!!!!!. Followed by a steady reclamation of Native Born White American Living and Breeding Space.
There is no economic case for race-replacing The Historic Native Born White American Working Class across the US. A very severe labor scarcity should not be used as an excuse to race-replace Our People across the US…POTUS Trump would scream “LABOR SCARCITY” IMPORT THE LEGAL IMMIRANT ASIANS.” Severe labor scarcities are wonderfull for real wage growth!!!..POTUS Trump would deprive the White Working Class of this very great economic benefit.
It was a good magazine, once. But it’s always been prone to Soviet style purges, and those purged are invariably on the right. The axing of the anti-open borders writers in the late 1990’s was the most significant example of this and since that time NR has not deserved to be called “conservative’ at all. You’ll find nothing in the magazine that you won’t find in Commentary and The Weekly Standard, which don’t bother professing to be conservative.
That’s brilliant!
I’ve been trying to get someone besides me to refer to Barack Obama as “Cannigula.” I think it would be perfect, especially considering his 2008 Greek columns thing, but so far it hasn’t taken.
I can’t say I’ve noticed any intellectual power on display by any neo-cons, inside or outside of National Review. Virtually all their writers are neo-cons, and they are uniformly puerile and deeply dishonest.
Yes, I know quite well that the Spectator was Conrad Black’s baby back then, not Murdoch’s, and yet there was Irwin Steltzer and some other Jewish-American oddball named Douglas Davis or something. It seems as though the Spectator and Telegraph Group were nominally in Black’s hands back then but were really just the plaything of Murdoch and his Weekly Standard dream team. If you continued to enjoy the magazine during this shift well then that’s fantastic.
The NR conservatives fail to understand that American politics is mostly about denigration. Cheap sound bytes, scandals, accusations of violating social taboos and so forth. It’s like high school.
They can preach reasoned conservatism all day, but that’s not going to destroy the enemy.
Buckley, Reagan, and other conservative heroes are really not ideologically strong enough to oppose equality. You need the more flexible, vicious mindset embodied by young men, and therefore the answer always comes back to nationalism.
Actually NR was never implicated in that scandal. However, It turns out that Billy Kristols’s dad, Irving Kristol, was on the receiving end of CIA subsidies for the London based magazine Encounter, founded by Stephen Spender and Irving Kristol in the mid 50s. Irving Kristol and Spender insisted that they were unaware of the source of the funding. They were told the funds were from an American millionaire funneling the money through a foundation, at least according to their account. However the CIA cultural, anti-communist front group called the Committee for Cultural Freedom was a pet project of James Burnham before he left the CIA to help Buckley found the National Review. Buckley called Burnham “indispensable”.
Raymond Aaron was another European public intellectual tainted by this CIA covert funding campaign. I’m sure there are others all over Europe, Latin America and everywhere else.
When one thinks about it, wouldn’t it be odd for the CIA and the people employed by the various foundations (Ford, Rockefeller, Carnegie) to develop a whole tool-kit of political manipulation techniques for foreign countries and not apply them back at home in the USA? That really is expecting a superhuman level of good sportsmanship. You’re right to bring this up when we’re discussing just what exactly Buckley’s legacy really is.
I’ll pass “Cannigula” on to a friend of mine, and give you in trade his nickname for B. Hussein – “Uncle Ream Us.”
My friend also suggested “Old White Joe” for Biden, but I prefer “Joey Hairplugs” in his case. It sounds like the name of a supporting character in a gangster movie, which suits his position in the administration.
Dextral-governmentalism and sinistral-governmentalism would be appropriate for the two major political belief systems.
Libertarians have a very dissimilar moral compass compared to conservatives and so-called left-libertarians.
With straight face, can you say this to Trump supporters?
was buckley the first wasp to bow to the jews allowing jewry (we hide one group of em behind “neocon”) an easier route to takeover?
buckley certainly distinguished himself by stabbing joe sobran, a real conservative and greater intellectual, in the back, front, top of the head.
buckley is catholic
catholics have an uncomfortable relationship with both wasps and jews
Not quite. Jr. was an Anglo-maniac and his Catholicism was only nominal and largely a facade. A poor facade I might add.
Buckley’s Catholicism was ancestral. How genuinely felt it may have been, only the man himself knew. One of the points made by Peter Brimelow in his Buckley obituary at Vdare (there’s a link to it in the article above) is that Buckley was a social climber, who wished all his life for acceptance among the elite. He was born at a time when the WASP elite described by Digby Baltzell was still in the ascendancy, and Irish Catholics were still not completely welcome in the “best” circles.
Buckley’s entry in the Social Register provides a list of his associations. He was a member of the Bohemian Club of San Francisco, the New York Yacht Club, the Century Association, and the Knights of Malta. His wife’s university and class are not listed (suggesting that she did not attend a school among the group recognized in Social Register listings), although his status as an alumnus of Yale, class of 1950, is shown.
This information tells us the extent to which Buckley was still excluded from the remaining institutions of the old WASP ascendancy, as recently as 2007. He did not belong to those dependent upon ancestry, such as the Society of the Cincinnati, Sons of the Revolution, Society of Colonial Wars, or Mayflower Descendants – he would not have qualified. Perhaps more tellingly, he was not a member of any of the great New York City clubs, such as the Knickerbocker, Metropolitan, Brook, Links, Racquet, Union League, or Union. Was the reason that he had no desire to join one (somewhat unlikely given his propensity for social climbing) – or that he couldn’t pass the membership committees?
NR is a pro israel neocon rag. Of course it’s leading the charge against Trump because he opposes more middle east wars for israel’s benefit. Wait until Trump brands Hillary as the warmonger that she is. Having voted for the disaster in Iraq she led the charge against Libya and wanted to do the same in Syria.
In short, policies and platforms make absolutely no difference when a “conservative” casts his ballot. All that matters is whether a candidate is committed to white nationalism.
Of course, even if you buy into that idiotic and racist notion, does anyone believe Donald Trump means a word he says? You believe he’s pro-life now? That he’s not the same guy promising to confiscate your guns a few years back? That while he hammered Mitt Romney four years ago for being mean to the Mexicans, he’s now a tight borders guy himself?
It’s contemptible that you hold the racist positions you do, but it’s pathetic you honestly believe Donald Trump shares your positions.
Pat Buchanan loves Trump because he’s a peace loving candidate who’ll get us back to isolationism. Of course, most of Trump’s low info fans love him because he’s going to smash ISIS and because he wants to kill terrorists’ families. Get the feeling at least one of those propositions is wrong?
None of those clubs–with the possible exception of the Knick–are all that exclusive any more. I don’t know about the 1950s–maybe Buckeley would not have been able to gain entry then. But certainly by the 80s, no problem.
I agree with you about the clubs’ relative lack of exclusivity today – but, up through perhaps the mid-1960s, they were more exclusive. I do not have a long enough run of Social Register volumes to see when Buckley joined the ones listed in the year before his death. I wonder if he joined the Bohemian Club as early as the 1950s – the waiting list was long, even then.
It is interesting to compare Buckley’s Social Register entry with that of his close contemporary as a socialite/celebrity/author, George Plimpton. Plimpton listed (in 2002): Racquet, Brook, Century Association, River, and Devon Yacht. Sarah (Dudley) Plimpton, his second wife, is a member of the Cosmopolitan Club and retains membership in the Devon Yacht Club.
Of course, Plimpton was a real WASP. The Ameses (his mother’s family) were a distinguished Massachusetts family (and Mayflower descendants). Their wealth and social prominence had been established generations before a Buckley set foot in the United States. George was also politically liberal.
Surely keeping Bill Buckley out of WASP New York clubs back in the 1960s must rate as one of the hollowest victories imaginable, considering the state of WASPdom today?
I used to hang on its every word but I think after Buckley’s rambling essay on anti-Semitism (or was it carburetor maintenance?) I just lost interest.
American Spectator the same. I’d wait for it at the mailbox during Whitewatergate but eventually let my subscription lapse. No real reason I can recall. I read somewhere that they’d become open border advocates and emailed them twice to inquire if that was accurate before re-subscribing. They never bothered to reply. Offhand, I still can’t say that they are but then it’s not hard to know where Vdare stands (he says with understatement). The fact that I can’t say about AS is probably the long and the short of it right there. I have a feeling that their gathering financial difficulties probably nixed a more aggressive position in favor of the national question but then not every potential financial contributor is a sellout, so there’s that.
Chronicles has remained the bright jewel it’s always been.
That is very insightful. I never thought of it that way. Western politicians almost to a man have not been able to muster the courage to say, “So what?” to anyone. Always the scramble was to placate the foreigner and his precious sensibilities.
I don’t know that Buckley was “kept out” of those clubs. He was, however, not in them, for whatever reason. It is curious that a man of his wealth and pretensions, with offices in New York and a principal residence in nearby Connecticut, did not belong to any of them, even though he was a member of the Bohemian Club in San Francisco, all the way across the country.
This discussion originated in a previous commenter’s remark that Buckley was a WASP, which he was not. He was an Irish Catholic, the son of a self-made father, and according to Peter Brimelow, a lifelong social climber anxious for acceptance in what he thought was the best society. Brimelow suggests (persuasively, in my view) that his self-appointment as an arbiter of “respectable” conservatism was born of the desire to distance himself and his magazine from what he referred to as “those people” – in other words, elements of the American right with whom he was embarrassed to be associated by the cosmopolitan and sophisticated circles in which he craved acceptance.
sorry about the wasp-catholic distraction.
was buckley one of the first republicans to bow to jewry aiding jewry’s toppling wasps and catholics?
in addition to sobran, how many more of his betters did buckley backstab thus aiding jewry/neocons?
I would wager that more than half of the NR staff will vote for Hillary this time..
“This discussion originated in a previous commenter’s remark that Buckley was a WASP, which he was not. He was an Irish Catholic, the son of a self-made father, and according to Peter Brimelow, a lifelong social climber anxious for acceptance in what he thought was the best society. Brimelow suggests (persuasively, in my view) that his self-appointment as an arbiter of “respectable” conservatism was born of the desire to distance himself and his magazine from what he referred to as “those people” – in other words, elements of the American right with whom he was embarrassed to be associated by the cosmopolitan and sophisticated circles in which he craved acceptance.”
Exactly.
Craw,
I was mainly thinking of Jr.’s political positions not his private life. (Stunningly beautiful Anglo wife by the way.) He was openly contemptuous of ‘ethnics’ at home and Continental Europe abroad. His politics lined up fairly closely to typical WASP concerns and interests.
“His politics lined up fairly closely to typical WASP concerns and interests.”
It seems to me there’s too much variation in those “concerns and interests” to characterize any of them in particular as typical. Sir Peregrine Worsthorne, in his book In Defence of Aristocracy, remarks that the American elite (which was certainly WASP up through at least the mid-’60s) has been politically divided since the 1930s.
And in any event, as Brimelow makes clear, Buckley was an outsider to the WASP elite, both by religion and by ancestry. He craved entrée into that circle, and that explains much of his behavior. Whether he ever really achieved it is questionable. Money opens many doors, but not all of them.
Actually, I think the Brook is still very exclusive, just no longer really WASPy.
The Union is very exclusive, but in a sort of you’ve-made-it UES kind of way. They’ve long admitted Jews, for instance. The Union Club more than the others was always more about money than position. Several of the NYC clubs were founded by members pissed off that the Union was too loose with its membership rolls.
The Union League is partisan/ideological: you have to be a Republican. In the main lounge, there are portraits of all the Republican presidents but not one Democrat. (Harvard and Yale have all their president-graduates, which is not a short list in either case.) I would be shocked if Buckley was refused by the ULC. More likely he just didn’t choose to join, for whatever reason. Maybe he didn’t like the location. Thought it was quite close to his office (150 East 35th, for about 30 years at least).
Covert CIA funding is always assumed to “taint” the recipient but there it is not certain that funds are only paid to writers on condition that they contort their opinions. In Aaron’s case his writings seemed excellent on their face and if CIA funds were allegedly paid to him and he thereby became more independent that was a good thing.
Covert funding is always subject to being revealed and when it is the recipient will always be behind the power curve in trying to argue that his opinions were not dictated by the (per se nefarious, infamous, execrable, demonic) CIA, say. The fact of covert funding becomes the “taint” even though there is not necessarily an actual purchase of a change of opinion.
That disposes, I believe, of the earlier problem of CIA funding of propaganda. Whether there is an ongoing propaganda war financed by the Ford, Rockefeller, and Carnegie foundations is an interesting area for exploration. Similarly, we have the problem of extraordinary media concentration in six giant entities. The supposed distortions of the CIA pale in significance compared to what is being sluiced into the public mind through these six sewers.
In the wake of the uproar instigated by Sen. Church, I believe the CIA decided no longer to support journalists. That was a healthy reform though bear in mind that whatever had gone on before should be seen in the context of massive Soviet efforts to have its propaganda planted around the world by willing journalists. Personally, I’m not inclined to reach for my smelling salts at the discovery that the CIA fought fire with fire. Would that the American government today showed some willingness to combat communism and socialism. Those were different times and the danger posed by the Soviets was not something that could be ignored.
If the topic of subornation of opinion and politics is on the table, and it should always be, it would be interesting to ask:
1. Hillary what in particular in each of her recent speeches could be worth a quarter of a million a pop,
2. the Democrat Party what it promised in return for the 1996 contribution by James Riady of Djakarta,
3. Newt Gingrich what he promised in return for Sheldon Adelson’s support in 2014,
4. Marco Rubio what, if anything, he has received from Sheldon Adelson and, if something, what he promised in return for Adelson’s support, and
5. the LDP of Japan why it supported Craig Spence who was discovered to be running a “call boy” ring patronized by civilian and military officials in Washington in the 1980s.
Even though the transfers of money were,are, or will presumably matters of public record (with the exception of no. 5 perhaps) the fact of transparency does not dispose of the problem of subornation. And nos. 1 and 3 are as fresh as the morning dew.
Finally, there is sometimes an assumption that readers of opinion that are disadvantaged by not knowing the existence or extent of support that a writer enjoys. That may be true if one reads a few sources not knowing about funding that has distorted the opinion of the author. But no serious student of a certain topic can reasonably base his or her opinion on a limited number of sources. On crucial points, even questionable works have to cite evidence for what the author argues and competing views can be, and will have to be, considered for the reader to form his or her own opinion.
The problem with our media today is that they are so uniform in their opinions and the volume of questionable opinion is so great that superior ideas are just overwhelmed by the tidal wave of propaganda. From the western German border all the way to San Diego there is a remarkable unanimity of opinion on the wonderfulness of immigration and the inevitability of foreigners assimilating into any and all Western countries.
“Denigrating your opponents—rather than simply challenging their arguments—is a standard tactic of the Left. Conservatives—that is, real conservatives—are supposed to be above that.”
Lol, left, right, centrist, doesn’t matter; nobody practices this ideal anymore.
Will you tell us exactly how much the Jews paid you to write this piece of propaganda?
Many people have complimented me on correctly predicting last April that Donald Trump would run for President—and run on patriotic immigration reform. So let me make another prediction: If Donald Trump is elected President in 2016 it will mark the permanent end of National Review’s influence over the conservative movement in America.
I submit even if Trump doesn’t become President NR, under Lowry’s leadership, will become irrelevant to the Conservative movement. It has already happened.
Two quick points:
1) That’s all fine as long as the Americans really do know better than the rest of us how to run our own countries.
2) Whatever purpose these Cold War, postwar arrangements served in the past, they’re now being used by one political faction to nail their rivals, even back in America:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/mar/06/donald-trump-angela-merkel-territorial-global-ulrich-speck
Notice the author of the piece is a German think-tanker of the Carnegie, Euro-Atlantic, “senior guest fellow chair” sort. The term “blowback” has been overused but it may fit here. Perhaps it fits but I don’t think that’s the best way to understand this. I think instead we’re now being presented with this clear distinction between globalists and patriots that has existed for at least the last century. I also think Bill Buckley and his National Review had as a core function the job of throwing smoke on this distinction. I think he was doing this on behalf of the globalist faction and at the expense of American patriots. By the way, by “globalists” I do not mean “Jews”. If I meant that I’d say it.
You’re exactly right. I am automatically scrubbed from any Disqus posts on NRO, i.e., no dissents allowed at all. I now refuse to even read it. During the mid 1980s I had a paper subscription to NR.
That was then. This is now.
I was never a fan of Buckley — the needlessly pompous language (“incorporealization not being a human characteristic ….” Was one I remember) and the need o be considered among the cultural elite of the NYC crowd seemed more important to him than any principals he may have had. I recall a 1970 playboy interviewing which Buckley said being one of Nixon’s confidants was “a sensual experience Playboy readers should know about.”
It seemed to me that WFB and others — like his brother in law Brent Bozell –tried to promote the R. Catholic Church as the official religion of the conservative movement.
It was learning that back in the 60s WFB was palling around with Norman Mailer, as vile a cretin as ever oozed into American public life, that ended my respect for him. That and the appointment of Richard Lowry as editor. It was not just that it was a betrayal of the cause of the historic American nation, but that the magazine became palpably more boring, predictable, typical.
I didn’t mean to imply that Americans know better than the rest of us how to run anyone’s country.
In fact, when in Vietnam I thought it strange that I was an “adviser” to my Vietnamese counterparts when I really knew very little about how my own country was run. Of course, adviser mean military adviser though issues of local politics got mixed in with military matters. Regardless of that experience, I just cannot understand any American official now purporting to instruct foreigners on how to live. To be honest, I do have many thoughts about what would make the Muslim world a better place but have zero interest in trying to persuade any Muslim on how to live. I just want them out of MY country where they presume to tell ME how to live. If they bristle at American sanctimony where THEY live I understand completely. Folks are going to do what they’re going to do regardless, as 14 years after 2001 and billions of seemingly fruitless warnings about Islam and immigration attest.
I agree completely with your point about Cold War, postwar arrangements. The realities of all Western nations have been starkly revealed after we could all step away from the Cold War. It was a worthy endeavor but some seriously diseased thinking took root over the course of the entire century. Exactly what are the realities of the West today occupies the attention of a great many smart people. Suffice it to say that attempting to come to grips with, at a minimum, the deliberate, conscious betrayal of Germany and Europe by Merkel necessarily involves an examination of her behavior with insights from the study of paranoia, schizophrenia, and megalomania.
Diana West’s book, American Betrayal, is a noble effort to pull back our blinders on the extent of communist penetration of the U.S. government, which is ongoing. (Her criticism of our COIN strategy in Afghanistan is also dead on, which is relevant to my points above about our instructing the world.)
The Guardian article makes me bristle as “openness” and “interconnectedness” are terms that are indicative of egregious intellectual dishonesty. Neither of these was absent from modern Western history and nationalists do not reject these out of hand. That said, “globalism” is a useful shorthand for “non nationalist” and hence indicates lunacy. It is not self evident that sacrificing sovereignty is ipso facto a great good. The opposite of the term, “nationalism,” points to the true intent of the globalists– destruction of nations and their peoples in favor of “pure wind” to borrow a phrase from Orwell. Globalism is “not nationalism,” it is an empty and dishonest term, and it is intended to destroy centuries and centuries of laws and customs painstakingly built up/
Buckley’s actions may have facilitated the globalists but I think the idea that Buckley craved being a social somebody makes the most sense. His excommunication of Sobran was premised on the latter’s supposed anti-Semitism. Buckley’s rambling, vague essay on the subject was just odd and suggests he was alarmed by having NR associated with Sobran’s supposed anti-Semitism. To what extent Buckley reacted as he did as a preemptive matter or because of Jewish pressure of some I do not know and cannot say. He was undeniably running scared on that issue. How this might have improved his social standing isn’t clear to me. Not my issue.
Agreed that “globalism” is not a Jewish phenomenon. A great many people have been cheerleaders for surrender of sovereignty, debasement of citizenship, multiculturalism, diversity, mass immigration, a borderless world, and cheap wages for foreigners who are, supposedly, to save our Western retirement systems from imploding and causing us a spot of bother.
Iffen, my services as a Jewish apologist do not come cheap. If you must know, I demanded — and got — a nickel a word and four new snow tires.
Good. Nice to know that you set a good price and didn’t let them Presbyterian you down.
Absolutely an excellent comment, Unz should put it as the #1 comment in every section for a while.
I appreciate the criticisms med of Buckley in this article. Yet, there is a little troll in my head, that keeps arguing that conservatism today needs another WFB. For years Buckley hosted “Firing Line”, an in depth hour long exploration of a particular issue. To compare “Firing Line” to what is currently offered on Fox News is to compare Chesterton to Joel Osteen.
There may have been a certain ugliness to the way in which certain figures were read out of the conservative movement at WFB’s initiative. But the question remains: Could an influential movement include the likes of Welch, Rand, or Murray Rothbard.? Conservatism attracts its share of kooks and cranks, a certain level of self-policing is necessary.
At the end of the day, Buckley was articulate, erudite, and kind (for evidence on the last pioint read the column Joe Sobran wrote immediately after Buckley’s death). It is a shame that this generation of conservatives doesn’t seem capable of producing a comparable personality.
this generation doesnt have any conservatives. just neos for war and greed and cruelty.
earlier conservatives were christian. today’s crop of neos are the opposite. they are every sin and proud of it.
Well, I must say, William Buckley did remain loyal to traditional conservative principles when he appointed Rich Lowry as his successor at NR. Supposedly, he is reputed to have said that appointing David Brooks to that position was out of the question in light of the fact that he was Jewish. Upon hearing that report, Brooks is supposed to have been upset. I imagine he must have regretted abandoning his deep felt socialist principles back in his 20’s and only getting a free ride on Buckley’s expensive yacht in exchange. (According to an obituary in Slate: “Christian piety and anti-communism were Buckley’s twin pillars, the former to such an extent that Buckley ruled out David Brooks, his onetime protégé, as a possible editor of National Review on the grounds that Brooks was Jewish. Buckley wasn’t willing to sacrifice National Review’s identity as a publication whose mission was at least partly theological.” http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/obit/2008/02/william_f_buckley_rip.html)
I find it highly ironic that his treasured icon, “The National Review,” was taken over by a Jewish sect, neoconservatism, after he relinquished the reins.
” Conservatism attracts its share of kooks and cranks, a certain level of self-policing is necessary.”
I appreciate your defense of Bill Buckley, and I agree with many of your observations, but I must take exception to the line above. You seem to equate politics with religion, which is exactly what the neoconservatives did to the Republican Party, those formerly very liberal, even Trotskyite “conservatives” who held no principles even remotely close to traditional conservative positions dictating to a people that had no relationship to what constituted a “true conservative.” Really ludicrous when you stop and think about it. It would be like me assuming the right to dictate to the Catholic Church what a “true Catholic” should be, when my only connection to the R.C. Church was that my ex-wife was a Catholic (and not an especially good one in my wholly secular opinion fwiw).
NR’s smear of Buchanan as an “antisemite” in 1992 was the first step in the collapse of the magazine.
BTW, I liked National review in the 1980’s and 1990s but WFB’s column’s in the back were usually the dullest part of the magazine.
Well as a response to all your obvious hatred of ‘the jews’ – you do realize/know that many, many Europeans are actually of Jewish origin, because the Jewish peoples of hundreds of years ago shelved their Jewish identity and absorbed themselves into the host community – ‘disappeared’ themselves for survival, even went as far as Scotland to escape persecution, so many of us actually have strong jewish roots – my own family via 2 grandparents were jews, which I had no idea about until 5 years ago – many, many Europeans have the exact same history – hah – that is so amusing – so maybe you will relax a little and realize you are just another human with a motley background and MAY discover to your total discomfort that you also have the ‘dreaded genes’ – a very comical story surfaced recently of a leader of an anti-semite mid-western kkk group was discovered to be half-jewish and the group threw him out – I fell over laughing !!!
Wow. Where to begin with this, Groovy Battle poster? Maybe a simple question- how does JFK not qualify for the seemingly sacrosanct “Historic Native Born White American Majority”? He seems to hit all necessary criteria, unless “Historic” is to be read as no familial immigration history. But, then, such a reading would be a pretty large disqualifier for most in that “Majority”, no? As for the article itself, this is a well written if confusing rant- who really cares whether or not George Will is qualified to speak about whether others are paying proper homage to the legacy of William F. Buckley? If the author wants to position Trump as the true heir to the immigration principles WFB once stood for, great. But I do not think Trump actually cares whether or not such a link can be made. The fact that he shares such close-mindedness with a now fading memory of an outspoken rabble rouser (intellectual or not) matters little in 2016. As abundantly clear within these comments, the issue is whether or not Trump’s rhetoric has found root in the dangerous categorizations such as the unwieldly and ultimately self-defeating “Historic Native Born White American Majority” tag spun above. To me, the rights recognized in the Constitution as to “all men” being created equal and having equal rights is paramount. Others (and I’m looking at you, Groovy Battle for Blair Moutain [sic])seem to think that it is more important to still decry the integration of the US armed forces. God help us.