Recently, at John Birch Society's website, I was reading how Buckley was an ally of Robert Welch Jr., when he suddenly turned against him, and made scathing criticisms of the John Birch Society for the rest of his life.
The Buckley name sounded familiar. Suddenly, I remembered the Rothbard article from Myth of National Defense, where he mentioned a conservative called Buckley who criticised the libertarian movement for wasting too much time on privatising municipal garbage disposal.
John Birch Society. Rothbardian libertarians.
Why was this man wasting his time on fringe movements? Why was he criticising groups which have no large influence in the core politics in the first place?
Both the John Birch Society and the scattered Austrian thinkers used to be well regarded, writing for major journals and the like. The choice was between the Laissez-Faire Old Style Liberalism advocated by Mises, Hazlitt and few select others, and the Conservative movement that had risen against the New Deal. William F. Buckley was the new guy in town, but his "anti-communism needs a strong state" rhetoric won over the public. Hence, Neo Conservatism. (And the Neo-Liberals in Europe, who are similar to the Neo Conservatives from America in most respects)
So, while some people may say that Austrian thought is more popular now it has ever been before, one could argue the reverse also, Austrian theory is largely ignored academically and institutionally today, but had at least a small place at the table before. I actually shudder at the new arrivals waving the banner of protectionism in the name of Ron Paul. =p
Is the motto, "Can't beat Neo-Conservatism, must join with Paleo Conservatives to win!"?
To answer your question: Yes, Buckley saw Ayn Rand, John Birch, Rothbard, Mises (Not really that important anymore since he was largely inactive in his later years) as foes, and purged them. Back then, it actually mattered if major journals carried your views, as it was one of the few means one could launch discussions to a large audience. When the black out began, all schools of thought other than the Neo Conservative were put to rest. Ayn Rand's "Objectivist" cult did manage to get some popularity simply from her novels' appeal though, but many rememebr those days as bittersweet. Lot's of college students may have liked Atlas Shrugged, but they tend to remember Ayn Rand with a bittersweet taste in their mouth.
Hayek was the most state-friendly of the Austrians and thus was not black listed. Still, no one actually took his advice, save for some lip service on occasion.
I recommend Mises: The Last Knight of Liberalism; it is not just a biography of Mises, it is the entire history of the Austrian movement in one nice package. Go take a look.
This is apparently a Man Talk Forum: No Women Allowed!
Telpeurion's Disliked Person of the Week: David Kramer
Buckley and his editorial ilk were in cahoots with the CIA to forge public opinion via character assassination and propaganda. Operation Mockingbird, anyone...?
Hard Rain: Buckley and his editorial ilk were in cahoots with the CIA to forge public opinion via character assassination and propaganda. Operation Mockingbird, anyone...?
Or he is just an ass who liked to pass himself off as some defender of freedom, the American version of James Bond.
'Men do not change, they unmask themselves' - Germaine de Stael
Andrew Cain: Hard Rain: Buckley and his editorial ilk were in cahoots with the CIA to forge public opinion via character assassination and propaganda. Operation Mockingbird, anyone...? Or he is just an ass who liked to pass himself off as some defender of freedom, the American version of James Bond.
James Bond was one man putting his life on the line to prevent war. Buckley was one man not putting his life on the line to promote war.
Hard Rain:James Bond was one man putting his life on the line to prevent war. Buckley was one man not putting his life on the line to promote war.
Well he was a CIA agent or some nonsense. So he may have put his life on the line, I'm not sure, since I'm still living then I assume it is because he didn't tell me.
Checking the videos of this guy, although he was often quite rude and ill-mannered with guests, he still had a classy and sophisticated style, talking quite like a sexy villain from a movie, so I imagine women would have loved watching Buckley on television, as would have the men married to those women, so they could try to be like that.
I have very ambivalent feelings about William F. Buckley Jr.
First of all, he can be a very lucid and brilliant writer and has written some objective and important books, such as McCarthy and His Enemies.
And one must remember that he and his magazine, National Review, critisised many federally enforced expriments of social engineering such as Civil Right acts of 1964. And he had even courage to critisise the extreme militarism of some of his National Review pals a couple of years before he died.
But unfortunately he always tried to be socially accepted to the intellectual circles and that caused many times that he had to take very horrible positions in many issues. That caused him to hate everything that the "old right" promoted, such as isolationism and states rights. He was notoriously a militant war hawk and when his friend Frank S. Meyer reviewed favorably a book that was critical of Abraham Lincoln's stance on civil libertarian issues, Buckley simply banned all criticism of Lincoln.
Take a look at this Q&A article in New York Times with author of the forthcoming biography about WFB (I liked the Whittaker Chambers biography by Sam Tanenhaus). If Mr. Tanenhaus is right on what he says, this interview demolishes almost everything that I tought was good about Bill Buckley.
http://papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/27/qa-with-sam-tanenhaus-on-william-f-buckley/
Here is just one example:
Q: Did he [= Buckley] ever recant his opposition to the civil rights movement? —Chris
A: Yes, he did. He said it was a mistake for National Review not to have supported the civil rights legislation of 1964-65, and later supported a national holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., whom he grew to admire a good deal, above all for combining spiritual and political values.
Hmm I did not know that Buckley started National Review and I have a 2 year subscription and read it from front to back every issue I get. THE MORE YOU KNOW.
This thread should serve as a lesson to all libertarians. If you ever want a viable political movement, you should not attack your most successful natural ally of the last century. I see from the comment above that some people seem to lack historical appreciation of political movements... Something similar could be said to the shriller attacks on Milton Friedman, who, besides his pet project of Monetarism, was the free market's most influential and charismatic spokesperson in the second half of the 20th century. Buckley got stuff done on the biggest stage, remember - stuff most libertarians approved of wholeheartedly. That fact should be particularly biting for libertarians, especially the so-called Randians, whose contribution to national politics was Alan Greenspan.
Buckley was no statist. He was certainly for arming America, but he (and his protege Reagan) hastened the liberation of 100 million living under Soviet rule by presenting a very credible threat to their plans for world domination. Few people appreciate the wisdom of Truman for drawing a line in the sand. Buckley and Reagan did the same thing. If the West hadn't had a group of undermining group of confused leftist intellectuals urging us to make peace with the Evil Empire, countless lives would have been saved.
I'm aware of what Buckley apparently thought of Rothbard, and I won't excuse his obituary, which I found in particularly bad taste. However, that same disregard did not apply to many Miseans who wrote for NR in its earlier years (Hazlitt, I believe, wrote for them for years). I've also never read anything suggesting Buckley disliked Mises. As for Rand, personally, can you blame him? She apparently once said to him "You're too smart to believe in God." The man was a devout, articulate, and pious Catholic. Insulting much?
I'm one very un-influential person, but if could change one thing about the loosely affiliated libertarian movement, it would be to work towards something productive where you have a lot of sympathy - say, ending the Fed. Be strategic and take over a wing of the Republican party, and this agenda has a chance. That's a big enough goal. Fighting 90% of the nation at once, which I sadly observe too often, is about as practical as trying to re-establish Church rule over secular affairs. Good luck!
I would NOT encourage vicious attacks on the conservative mainstream, your best allies. (And if one is going to suggest that Buckley had attacked the libertarian movement unfairly at times, it may be true... but he had a lot more power and influence than any libertarian; power he assembled himself.)
From the book by Murry Rothbard called the Betrayal of the American Right
Rothbard:The individualists and laissez-faire liberals were stunned and embittered, not just by the mass desertion of their former allies, but also by the abuse these allies now heaped upon them as “reactionaries” “fascists,” and “Neanderthals.” For decades Men of the Left, the individualists, without changing their position or perspectives one iota, now found themselves bitterly attacked by their erstwhile allies as benighted “extreme right-wingers.” Thus, in December 1933, Nock wrote angrily to Canon Bernard Iddings Bell: “I see I am now rated as a Tory. So are you—ain’t it? What an ignorant blatherskite FDR must be! We have been called many bad names, you and I, but that one takes the prize.” Nock’s biographer adds that “Nock thought it odd that an announced radical, anarchist, individualist, single-taxer and apostle of Spencer should be called conservative.” But the intriguing point is that, as the far larger and more respectable conservative groups took up the cudgels against the New Deal, the only rhetoric, the only ideas available for them to use were precisely the libertarian and individualist views which they had previously scorned or ignored. Hence the sudden if highly superficial accession of these conservative Republicans and Democrats to the libertarian ranks.Thus, there were Herbert Hoover and the conservative Republicans, they who had done so much in the twenties and earlier to pave the way for New Deal corporatism, but who now balked strongly at going the whole way. Herbert Hoover himself suddenly jumped into the libertarian ranks with his anti-New Deal book of 1934, Challenge to Liberty, which moved the bemused and wondering Nock to exclaim: “Think of a book on such a subject, by such a man!”A prescient Nock wrote: Anyone who mentions liberty for the next two years will be supposed to be somehow beholden to the Republican party, just as anyone who mentioned it since 1917 was supposed to be a mouthpiece of the distillers and brewers.3In fact, the individualists were in a bind at this sudden accession of old enemies as allies. On the positive side, it meant a rapid acceleration of libertarian rhetoric on the part of numerous influential politicians. And, furthermore, there were no other conceivable political allies available. But, on the negative side, the acceptance of libertarian ideas by Hoover, the Liberty League, et al., was clearly superficial and in the realm of general rhetoric only; given their true preferences, not one of them would have accepted the Spencerian laissez-faire model for America. This meant that libertarianism, as spread throughout the land, would remain on a superficial and rhetorical level, and, furthermore, would tar all libertarians, in the eyes of intellectuals, with the charge of duplicity and special pleading."[Continues on with William F. Buckley, pg 185]In the light of hindsight, we should now ask whether or not a major objective of National Review from its inception was to transform the right wing from an isolationist to global warmongering anti-Communist movement; and, particularly, whether or not the entire effort was in essence a CIA operation. We now know that Bill Buckley, for the two years prior to establishing National Review, was admittedly a CIA agent in Mexico City, and that the sinister E. Howard Hunt was his control. His sister Priscilla, who became managing editor of National Review, was also in the CIA; and other editors James Burnham and Willmoore Kendall had at least been recipients of CIA largesse in the anti-Communist Congress for Cultural Freedom. In addition, Burnham has been identified by two reliable sources as a consultant for the CIA in the years after World War II.Moreover, Garry Wills relates in his memoirs of the conservative movement that Frank Meyer, to whom he was close at the time, was convinced that the magazine was a CIA operation. With his Leninist-trained nose for intrigue, Meyer must be considered an important witness.Furthermore, it was a standard practice in the CIA, at least in those early years, that no one ever resigned from the CIA. A friend of mine who joined the Agency in the early 1950s told me that if, before the age of retirement, he was mentioned as having left the CIA for another job, that I was to disregard it, since it would only be a cover for continuing Agency work. On that testimony, the case for NR being a CIA operation becomes even stronger. Also suggestive is the fact that a character even more sinister than E. Howard Hunt, William J. Casey, appears at key moments of the establishment of the New over the Old Right. It was Casey who, as attorney, presided over the incorporation of National Review and had arranged the details of the ouster of Felix Morley from Human Events. "At any rate, in retrospect, it is clear that libertarians and Old Rightists, including myself, had made a great mistake in endorsing domestic red-baiting, a red-baiting that proved to be the major entering wedge for the complete transformation of the original right wing. We should have listened more carefully to Frank Chodorov, and to his splendidly libertarian stand on domestic redbaiting: “How to get rid of the communists in the government? Easy. Just abolish the jobs.”11 It was the jobs and their functioning that was the important thing, not the quality of the people who happened to fill them."It was Kirk, in fact, who brought the words “Conservatism” and “New Conservatism” into general acceptance on the right wing. Before that, knowledgeable libertarians had hated the word, and with good reason; for weren’t the conservatives the ancient enemy, the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Tory and reactionary suppressors of individual liberty, the ancient champions of the Old Order of Throne-and-Altar against which the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century liberals had fought so valiantly?And so the older classical-liberals and individualists resisted the term bitterly: Ludwig von Mises, a classical liberal, scorned the term; F.A. Hayek insisted on calling himself an “Old Whig”; and when Frank Chodorov was called a “conservative” in the pages of National Review, he wrote an outraged letter declaring, “As for me, I will punch anyone who calls me a conservative in the nose. I am a radical.”
But the intriguing point is that, as the far larger and more respectable conservative groups took up the cudgels against the New Deal, the only rhetoric, the only ideas available for them to use were precisely the libertarian and individualist views which they had previously scorned or ignored. Hence the sudden if highly superficial accession of these conservative Republicans and Democrats to the libertarian ranks.Thus, there were Herbert Hoover and the conservative Republicans, they who had done so much in the twenties and earlier to pave the way for New Deal corporatism, but who now balked strongly at going the whole way. Herbert Hoover himself suddenly jumped into the libertarian ranks with his anti-New Deal book of 1934, Challenge to Liberty, which moved the bemused and wondering Nock to exclaim: “Think of a book on such a subject, by such a man!”A prescient Nock wrote: Anyone who mentions liberty for the next two years will be supposed to be somehow beholden to the Republican party, just as anyone who mentioned it since 1917 was supposed to be a mouthpiece of the distillers and brewers.3In fact, the individualists were in a bind at this sudden accession of old enemies as allies. On the positive side, it meant a rapid acceleration of libertarian rhetoric on the part of numerous influential politicians. And, furthermore, there were no other conceivable political allies available. But, on the negative side, the acceptance of libertarian ideas by Hoover, the Liberty League, et al., was clearly superficial and in the realm of general rhetoric only; given their true preferences, not one of them would have accepted the Spencerian laissez-faire model for America. This meant that libertarianism, as spread throughout the land, would remain on a superficial and rhetorical level, and, furthermore, would tar all libertarians, in the eyes of intellectuals, with the charge of duplicity and special pleading."[Continues on with William F. Buckley, pg 185]In the light of hindsight, we should now ask whether or not a major objective of National Review from its inception was to transform the right wing from an isolationist to global warmongering anti-Communist movement; and, particularly, whether or not the entire effort was in essence a CIA operation. We now know that Bill Buckley, for the two years prior to establishing National Review, was admittedly a CIA agent in Mexico City, and that the sinister E. Howard Hunt was his control. His sister Priscilla, who became managing editor of National Review, was also in the CIA; and other editors James Burnham and Willmoore Kendall had at least been recipients of CIA largesse in the anti-Communist Congress for Cultural Freedom. In addition, Burnham has been identified by two reliable sources as a consultant for the CIA in the years after World War II.Moreover, Garry Wills relates in his memoirs of the conservative movement that Frank Meyer, to whom he was close at the time, was convinced that the magazine was a CIA operation. With his Leninist-trained nose for intrigue, Meyer must be considered an important witness.Furthermore, it was a standard practice in the CIA, at least in those early years, that no one ever resigned from the CIA. A friend of mine who joined the Agency in the early 1950s told me that if, before the age of retirement, he was mentioned as having left the CIA for another job, that I was to disregard it, since it would only be a cover for continuing Agency work. On that testimony, the case for NR being a CIA operation becomes even stronger. Also suggestive is the fact that a character even more sinister than E. Howard Hunt, William J. Casey, appears at key moments of the establishment of the New over the Old Right. It was Casey who, as attorney, presided over the incorporation of National Review and had arranged the details of the ouster of Felix Morley from Human Events.
"At any rate, in retrospect, it is clear that libertarians and Old Rightists, including myself, had made a great mistake in endorsing domestic red-baiting, a red-baiting that proved to be the major entering wedge for the complete transformation of the original right wing. We should have listened more carefully to Frank Chodorov, and to his splendidly libertarian stand on domestic redbaiting: “How to get rid of the communists in the government? Easy. Just abolish the jobs.”11 It was the jobs and their functioning that was the important thing, not the quality of the people who happened to fill them."It was Kirk, in fact, who brought the words “Conservatism” and “New Conservatism” into general acceptance on the right wing. Before that, knowledgeable libertarians had hated the word, and with good reason; for weren’t the conservatives the ancient enemy, the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Tory and reactionary suppressors of individual liberty, the ancient champions of the Old Order of Throne-and-Altar against which the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century liberals had fought so valiantly?And so the older classical-liberals and individualists resisted the term bitterly: Ludwig von Mises, a classical liberal, scorned the term; F.A. Hayek insisted on calling himself an “Old Whig”; and when Frank Chodorov was called a “conservative” in the pages of National Review, he wrote an outraged letter declaring, “As for me, I will punch anyone who calls me a conservative in the nose. I am a radical.”
William P: Buckley was no statist. He was certainly for arming America, but he (and his protege Reagan) hastened the liberation of 100 million living under Soviet rule by presenting a very credible threat to their plans for world domination. Few people appreciate the wisdom of Truman for drawing a line in the sand. Buckley and Reagan did the same thing. If the West hadn't had a group of undermining group of confused leftist intellectuals urging us to make peace with the Evil Empire, countless lives would have been saved. I'm one very un-influential person, but if could change one thing about the loosely affiliated libertarian movement, it would be to work towards something productive where you have a lot of sympathy - say, ending the Fed. Be strategic and take over a wing of the Republican party, and this agenda has a chance. That's a big enough goal. Fighting 90% of the nation at once, which I sadly observe too often, is about as practical as trying to re-establish Church rule over secular affairs. Good luck! I would NOT encourage vicious attacks on the conservative mainstream, your best allies. (And if one is going to suggest that Buckley had attacked the libertarian movement unfairly at times, it may be true... but he had a lot more power and influence than any libertarian; power he assembled himself.)
The fall of the Soviet Union was definitely not caused by militarism, unless you want to claim that the military arms race forced the Soviets to struggle to keep up, but if that is the case you cannot say it "saved" 100 million lives. Especially considering the military budget may have gone to other things, even then it is simply not the case. There was very little Western influence in the Soviet Union, the revolts were internal.
If anything, we should credit the peoples within the Soviet Union for rising up spontaneously, not take some silly stance that our noble philosopher kings pressured the Russians into just giving up the fight. If you recall, desperate reforms were taking place in the Soviet Union long before Reagan. You cannot say containment worked, it did not stop the spread at all, but it did kill a lot of people.
As for allying with the conservatives? So we can get some half-assed legislation passed? No thanks.
The Soviet Union perished precisely because it was intent on imperialism. Let the empires bleed themselves dry.
William P:Few people appreciate the wisdom of Truman for drawing a line in the sand.
Truman lifted policies from communist writings. Some line that is.
Just watch Buckley vs Chomsky on youtube for a perfect presentation of Buckley's totally neo-con stance of American world wide responsibility.
Caley McKibbin: Just watch Buckley vs Chomsky on youtube for a perfect presentation of Buckley's totally neo-con stance of American world wide responsibility.
Here's something even better.
Here's the editor of the National Review writing communist articles under a different name.
http://marxists.org/history/etol/writers/burnham/index.htm
Pardon my harsh language, but can you believe shit like this? I don't like to go so far as alleging neoconservatives to be a front of a Marxist international movement, but here you have a foremost CIA-based neoconservative writer also doing articles for Marxist publications. What the fuck am I seeing here?
EDIT: Look at this article by this neoconservative James Burnham http://marxists.org/history/etol/writers/burnham/1936/09/party.html
Socialist Program for Labor Party Tyler and others who agree with him make much of the danger of isolation. They complain that if we do not “take the lead in the formation of a Labor party” – which is impossible to begin with – we won’t have the kind of Labor party that “we want.” But none of them has ever clarified to himself or to any of the rest of us what this can possibly mean – what kind of Labor party we can possibly “want”; and of course they never ask whether we could get it even if we knew what we wanted. Tyler is not satisfied with a Labor party merely because it comprises and is chiefly influenced by the bulk of organized labor (which is the only actual test of a “genuine” Labor party). He must, then, refer to its program. But there is only one program toward which revolutionary socialists have any allegiance whatever: the program of revolutionary socialism. A program three-quarter revolutionary is not at all necessarily better than one which is one-half revolutionary: the former may well be more difficult to expose, may look much more like the real thing and therefore constitute a greater obstacle to revolutionary development. If by chance socialists were participating in a programmatic convention of a Labor party, their only duty would be to put forward the full program of revolutionary socialism; and if this were rejected, their task so far as program went would be over.
Tyler and others who agree with him make much of the danger of isolation. They complain that if we do not “take the lead in the formation of a Labor party” – which is impossible to begin with – we won’t have the kind of Labor party that “we want.” But none of them has ever clarified to himself or to any of the rest of us what this can possibly mean – what kind of Labor party we can possibly “want”; and of course they never ask whether we could get it even if we knew what we wanted. Tyler is not satisfied with a Labor party merely because it comprises and is chiefly influenced by the bulk of organized labor (which is the only actual test of a “genuine” Labor party). He must, then, refer to its program. But there is only one program toward which revolutionary socialists have any allegiance whatever: the program of revolutionary socialism. A program three-quarter revolutionary is not at all necessarily better than one which is one-half revolutionary: the former may well be more difficult to expose, may look much more like the real thing and therefore constitute a greater obstacle to revolutionary development. If by chance socialists were participating in a programmatic convention of a Labor party, their only duty would be to put forward the full program of revolutionary socialism; and if this were rejected, their task so far as program went would be over.
Lew Rockwell did an interview on anti-war radio about Buckley right after his death. It isn't flattering. For instance, Rockwell accuses Buckley of specializing in the "attack obituary" recalling Buckley's remarks about Rothbard after his death.
William P: Buckley was no statist. He was certainly for arming America, but he (and his protege Reagan) hastened the liberation of 100 million living under Soviet rule by presenting a very credible threat to their plans for world domination. Few people appreciate the wisdom of Truman for drawing a line in the sand. Buckley and Reagan did the same thing. If the West hadn't had a group of undermining group of confused leftist intellectuals urging us to make peace with the Evil Empire, countless lives would have been saved. I'm aware of what Buckley apparently thought of Rothbard, and I won't excuse his obituary, which I found in particularly bad taste. However, that same disregard did not apply to many Miseans who wrote for NR in its earlier years (Hazlitt, I believe, wrote for them for years). I've also never read anything suggesting Buckley disliked Mises. As for Rand, personally, can you blame him? She apparently once said to him "You're too smart to believe in God." The man was a devout, articulate, and pious Catholic. Insulting much? I'm one very un-influential person, but if could change one thing about the loosely affiliated libertarian movement, it would be to work towards something productive where you have a lot of sympathy - say, ending the Fed. Be strategic and take over a wing of the Republican party, and this agenda has a chance. That's a big enough goal. Fighting 90% of the nation at once, which I sadly observe too often, is about as practical as trying to re-establish Church rule over secular affairs. Good luck! I would NOT encourage vicious attacks on the conservative mainstream, your best allies. (And if one is going to suggest that Buckley had attacked the libertarian movement unfairly at times, it may be true... but he had a lot more power and influence than any libertarian; power he assembled himself.)
the cato forums are that way ->
Jackson: William P: Buckley was no statist. He was certainly for arming America, but he (and his protege Reagan) hastened the liberation of 100 million living under Soviet rule by presenting a very credible threat to their plans for world domination. Few people appreciate the wisdom of Truman for drawing a line in the sand. Buckley and Reagan did the same thing. If the West hadn't had a group of undermining group of confused leftist intellectuals urging us to make peace with the Evil Empire, countless lives would have been saved. I'm aware of what Buckley apparently thought of Rothbard, and I won't excuse his obituary, which I found in particularly bad taste. However, that same disregard did not apply to many Miseans who wrote for NR in its earlier years (Hazlitt, I believe, wrote for them for years). I've also never read anything suggesting Buckley disliked Mises. As for Rand, personally, can you blame him? She apparently once said to him "You're too smart to believe in God." The man was a devout, articulate, and pious Catholic. Insulting much? I'm one very un-influential person, but if could change one thing about the loosely affiliated libertarian movement, it would be to work towards something productive where you have a lot of sympathy - say, ending the Fed. Be strategic and take over a wing of the Republican party, and this agenda has a chance. That's a big enough goal. Fighting 90% of the nation at once, which I sadly observe too often, is about as practical as trying to re-establish Church rule over secular affairs. Good luck! I would NOT encourage vicious attacks on the conservative mainstream, your best allies. (And if one is going to suggest that Buckley had attacked the libertarian movement unfairly at times, it may be true... but he had a lot more power and influence than any libertarian; power he assembled himself.) the cato forums are that way ->
Yeah, and if that little nugget which shows that certain neoconservatives are actually Marxists, and who are known to have said that they make compromises to what they say in order to slowly be able to push their main agenda, then the worst thing any libertarian can do is ally with these people.
Remember that by the standards of those times, it was not even normal to consider bombing nations abroad pre-emptively as even a viable solution to anything. It is, in fact, a form of neurosis and expression of sociopathy, and these are the guys who desensitized the public into thinking these things normal.
Prateek Sanjay: Jackson: William P: Buckley was no statist. He was certainly for arming America, but he (and his protege Reagan) hastened the liberation of 100 million living under Soviet rule by presenting a very credible threat to their plans for world domination. Few people appreciate the wisdom of Truman for drawing a line in the sand. Buckley and Reagan did the same thing. If the West hadn't had a group of undermining group of confused leftist intellectuals urging us to make peace with the Evil Empire, countless lives would have been saved. I'm aware of what Buckley apparently thought of Rothbard, and I won't excuse his obituary, which I found in particularly bad taste. However, that same disregard did not apply to many Miseans who wrote for NR in its earlier years (Hazlitt, I believe, wrote for them for years). I've also never read anything suggesting Buckley disliked Mises. As for Rand, personally, can you blame him? She apparently once said to him "You're too smart to believe in God." The man was a devout, articulate, and pious Catholic. Insulting much? I'm one very un-influential person, but if could change one thing about the loosely affiliated libertarian movement, it would be to work towards something productive where you have a lot of sympathy - say, ending the Fed. Be strategic and take over a wing of the Republican party, and this agenda has a chance. That's a big enough goal. Fighting 90% of the nation at once, which I sadly observe too often, is about as practical as trying to re-establish Church rule over secular affairs. Good luck! I would NOT encourage vicious attacks on the conservative mainstream, your best allies. (And if one is going to suggest that Buckley had attacked the libertarian movement unfairly at times, it may be true... but he had a lot more power and influence than any libertarian; power he assembled himself.) the cato forums are that way -> Yeah, and if that little nugget which shows that certain neoconservatives are actually Marxists, and who are known to have said that they make compromises to what they say in order to slowly be able to push their main agenda, then the worst thing any libertarian can do is ally with these people. Remember that by the standards of those times, it was not even normal to consider bombing nations abroad pre-emptively as even a viable solution to anything. It is, in fact, a form of neurosis and expression of sociopathy, and these are the guys who desensitized the public into thinking these things normal.
the dsm-v discussion boards are this way <-
This thread on Buckley is, alas, not as informed as it could be. I would recommend to all of you a book by George Nash on the modern conservative movement -- or if you like Up from Communism by John Diggins, for a deeper appreciation of the movement Buckley assembled and led. The term fusionism is critical -- for it underscores his effort to 1) oppose communism as a threat to the West and the feedom loving world (Chambers, Burnham, Eastman) 2) embrace free enterprise economics (Friedman, Mises); 3) promote traditional values (Kirk, Eliot, etc.)
Were there tensions between these groups. Of course. Buckley was not tempted toward isolationism because Communism and fascism did not allow it -- and would not have left the United States to its own path. Capitalism as a destructive force relative to tradition alarmed Kirk and others, who felt that free enterprise had to be tempered by deeper concerns of a transcendental and environmental nature. Yet, free enterprise compromised too much by statism would bring the machine of prosperity and economic strength to a standstill. I would encourage you to read, however self promoting, a book I have written on line called Crossing Swords: William F. Buckley and the American Left. It consists of 10 chapters on Buckley's running debates with the left on a variety of these issues. It can be found on intellectualconservative.com here.
http://www.intellectualconservative.com/2008/12/05/crossing-swords-buckley-in-perspective/
Finally, I was interested to read that Mises was run out of the conservative movement by Buckley. Could you point me to the source -- I have watched and read just about everything on buckley and I don't recall him ever saying a negative word about Mises. He did, however, have concerns about Rand and Rothbard.
Buckley, as this thread shows, links already given, and arguments already gave, in my opinion, was a stooge.