I hate to sound like a geezer but after having listened to a bunch of people born in the 70s and 80s lecture me about what an asshole William F. Buckley was, I want to say one thing.
There is a qualitative difference between Bill Buckley and the conservatives of today. I know he had shitty political opinions and the reason I do is because he told me so. Buckley openly embraced racist, McCarthyesque views that he not only acknowledged but defended. Which made it possible to have meaningful, substantive debate between the left and the right.
That isn’t possible with today’s conservative leading lights, the Straussians who philosophically believe it’s their obligation to determine what you should think and then tell you whatever they need to in order to get you to believe it. Do they really think the surge is working? Fuck if I know, but it doesn’t matter — they think you should. If it keeps the fundies in line, big ups for intelligent design.
You can’t argue with them about what they really believe because they won’t acknowledge it. It’s all coded in a bunch of focus-grouped language about "school vouchers" and "no child left behind" and they never admit that what they’re really trying to achieve are orchestrated corporate raids on the public sphere. You’re stuck trying to pin down a moving target whose specialty is hypocrisy and bad faith as a matter of principle. It becomes impossible to have a dialog that doesn’t simply devolve into utter gibberish.
Buckley’s honesty, even in the defense of an ideology you might not embrace, was a whole lot easier to deal with than the intellectual hairballs being coughed up by the right today.
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Jane!
Honesty is what is missing from pundits nowadays. They just say what whomever pays them tells them to say.
Buckley was an honest man.
Fuckin’ A!
He did have a rather daunting command of vocabulary.
ill say it again,i cant understand the conservative mentality…no can do,and good eve Jane
Late Nite FDL: More Buckley
And definitely more cowbell
So true Jane. You cannot argue with someone selling snake oil. You can’t get a hold of em. They slip away every time.
more cowbell is always good.
eggzactly…..Glenn Beck makes 10,000,000.00$ a year,the train is off the trax
no such thang as too much cowbell
cowbell=$…?
You BTO fans make me nuts.
Evening Suz!
Digg it
Someone should stuff a sock in his mouf. Not that I would advocate violence or anything.
Welcome to Geezer City, Jane.
I too remember when conservatives actually had scruples.
P.S. You’re a junior geezer.
just taking care of business newton. i figured you would be all sad today since in 1998 Apple discontinued developing Newton computer
Thank you Jane. This is possibly one of the more important posts I have read on FDL since its nascent days. Although I agreed with nothing that WFB espoused politically, there was an intellectual integrity to him that is completely lacking in today’s RW movement.
America can be effectively governed by the principle of the “common good” when there is integrity ( a la Mr. Buckley) on both sides of the aisle.
* sniff sniff *
Evening all. Have to agree with Jane. Buckley was on many levels totally loathsome, but he was intelligent, coherent, and honest (none of which makes him any less loathsome). This stands in marked contrast to any and all of today’s conservatives, who have descended to the level of slime mold.
I believe in the law of the excluded middle. Either Buckly believed it, or he didn’t. Either way, he was an asshole. YMMV
The take home point of this post for me is that McCain has joined the new breed of reactionary over the last eight years. So the McCain old dog does not have enough integrity to resist new low tricks and is the worse and more dangerous influence because of that.
I have not read up on details of McCain’s history, and I am late to the political scoop (as usual). Some of the first comments in following post indicate how slimey McCain’s public funding stunt is, and how it another example of looting public till by the new conservatives. I also read that McCain discovered his reformer side after the Keating 5 scandal. That could either be a genuine conversion, or a cover. Last 8 years indicate it is the latter.
Ah, Reform
27 Feb 2008 08:55 pm
http://matthewyglesias.theatla…..p#comments
somebody actually mails him a check every week for what 200 grand
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHahahahahaahahahahaa
a jeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeebus
Dugg.
He also had a sense of humor which no neocon has.
Hiya Dr. Pause.
What made Buckley human, or even endearing, if you wish, back in the Dick Cavett years was that he was in the deservedly despised minority. Holding an unpopular position can be close to being a virtue in itself.
But let’s not go too far. He was a fucking scumbag, or, if you prefer, a reptile — almost literally, if you look at those goggle eyes, baggy neck and that constantly, furtively darting tongue. We should all breathe a little easier, and happier, knowing he’s dead, requiescat in pace.
im sorry i shall not cry for WBjr….he made hating look polished
That is exactly right. I remember watching some Firing Line shows when I was younger, including some with Michael Kinsley when I was a bit older. There was an *intellectual curiosity* there that is wholly absent in today’s conservative movement.
Buckley very often came up with the wrong answers, but he was honest about how he had reached his conclusions. That made debate possible.
Today’s conservatives have *merged* politics and religion. Policies are now a matter of faith. Policies are not something to be discussed or debated. They are to be asserted (ex: “global warming is a hoax!”). And rewards are handed out in the party based on loyalty, not results.
Some day I do want to see the clip, or at least read the transcript, of the duke out between Buckley and Vidal. Or was it Chomsky? Or was it an almost duke out?
Was that the 1968 Democratic convention? Then it couldn’t have been Chomsky -has he ever been allowed on US TV?
now Gore Vidal…………..class by himself imo
Hell yeah! Great post. I was born in the 70s and literally almost cried when I heard about Buckley’s death. He has been virtually ignored by even the Conservative wing of the punditocracy for many years. I believe so strongly in checks and balances in my own life, let alone politics, that we need people who can defend their positions making sure Liberals and Repubs alike are kept in line. Buckley was quite critical of the Neocons as well.
I long for a day of good, healthy debate within BigMedia again. America needs it.
His death signals an end of an era. It’s up to us to build the type of society we want, and I really do want a bunch of future William F. Buckleys leading the pushback against our soon-to-be DemocratIC-led society, rather than a cesspool of Limbaughs and Coulters. R.I.P. William.
Hey Wangdang. Watch out for that cowbell, I hear it can cause you to vote Rethug.
it was Vidal
As a young teenager, I used to like to watch Buckley on Firing Line. I did not have a clue about matters of ideology at that point, but I enjoyed his skill at argumentation.
Were I the same age today, I don’t think I would find much to admire in the current crop of clowns that speak for the right.
Hope they stopped payment, he won’t be needing it anymore.
Dude didn’t have it all wrong.
Buckley: Bush Not A True Conservative
ding. exactly what i was thinking but you said it so much better. thank you
It was Chomsky.
Chomsky, by the way, was on tv immediately once after 9-11 on a major network, where he argued with Bill Bennett. It was clearly before the MSM’s party line had been completely hammered out.
I have been wondering what cowbell is, too embarassed to ask. But NOHTING will make me vote pug.
wow, he couldn’t have been all asshole if he reaped bush’s scorn.
thanks newton
There is absolutely nothing to admire, or even marginally respect, about any of today’s so-called conservatives. I respected Buckley, even though I loathed him and do not mourn his passing.
cowbell per wiki
Not sure what I can say, or should say about WF Buckley today. But I have watched old clips of his debates/commentary during 60s and 70s with old liberals and progressive. Much more open debate on TV back then.
ON THE BEACH was on TCM tonite
i guess im just sick of the stupidity of war,and conservatives,and the whole damn establishment
I used to watch his show on Sunday nights on PBS. It was part of my regular routine…Buckley, then Nova, then Masterpiece Theatre. I didn’t agree with his positions but I liked to listen to him talk (wierd, huh?)
Which made him much more influential and dangerous. A nice face and disposition makes evil even worse. I have to agree with tristero, (disclosure, I am a geezer..64):
link
Did any one but me and snowbird watch the Pete Seeger special on PBS tonight?
It was forking amazing!
Christopher Walken!!
Chomsky on TV right after 9/11? Really.
Where can I find some clips, or a transcript? Do they exist?
Would love to see what they said.
Any clip or transcript of Buckley going toe to toe with Vidal/Chomsky?
Going to bed before I say something nobody will like, least of all Jane, regarding Tweety’s sendoff of Buckley on Hardball tonight.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=me6oxOS-thE
Christopher Walken at his best.
Any clip or transcript of Buckley going toe to toe with Vidal/Chomsky?
Now that would be worth popping corn for!
Vidal,called him a fascist(snicker)
I missed that, so it was controversial? (spelling be damned!)
Which is not far off the mark. Difference is, he was open about it and did not attempt to label the left as the true fascists.
No Shit? that doofus viral toad?
WFB-for a kid who knew the weekend was over when this guy positioned himself in his chair, he was unremittingly boring. I am sure that he was a man of character but what he stood for was not so nice, and his spawn are the ultimate evil fools, bound and determined to subject us to fear and control so they can be safe and distanced, and protected from the massive hordes with all their ill gotten gains.
It was a long time ago, but as I remember:
— It was much later than 1968, because I didn’t have a TV in that year.
— It was a duke out.
— Vidal kicked his snivveling ass, but that was my opinion as a hawkish liberal, in those days.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRjZR8j4-z4
here
I hate to admit it but I saw that show. It was crypto-fascist. IIRC.
Anyone have the Robin Williams as William F Buckley clip?
You’ve got it exactly right, I think.
I always want to ask someone who’s parroting the party line where their Little Red Book is.
Here is the latest from Noam: http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174899
oh thank you!
Oh, that is fucking golden.
whenevah I feel low i play it.
I remember watching a few old reruns of Buckleys show. One in particular I remember is John Kenneth Galbraith comeing on and immediately start chewing out Buckley. Apparently Galbraith and Buckley were buddies. So Galbraith starts off something like:
“I saw your show last week and you should be ashamed. He didn’t know any economics and you duped the guy. Do you really think that that… I know you got at least a C- in economics, but… “
And Galbraith rips Buckley a new one.
And Buckely is all “You insouciant venom is indubidably most irrelevant to any trenchant critque of the forensic tactics I emply in my interlocuuuushhunnns, but charming nevertheless….” which Buckley then spun into Galbraith being an authoritarian. Or something along that line. Buckley seemed to rattle along like that using as high a syllable to word ratio as possible.
thanks, yes, saved for later viewing…
It’s pretty clear, though, that he reviled the “Conservatives” of today, and would wretch at the suggestion that they are true to Conservative doctrine.
Can’t fault a guy who steps into the ring and allows his point of view to be examined closely, no matter how whack. Find me a “Conservative” today who would allow that.
Just saying.
Yep.
Buckley passed from this earth looking at the conservative movement that he spawned in the same way Tiberius looked at Little Boots Caligula.
Heckuva job Bill.
-G
Today’s conservatives have adopted the Vince Lombardi notion of politics: “Winning isn’t everything, winning is the only thing.”
To combat people with that philosophy, regretably, we have to take a no-prisoners approach to combatting them.
attack! Attack! ATTACK!
Chomsky duke-out is in the Youtube above. Much of the Vidal/Buckley 68 stuff is also on YouTube.
He may have been articulate, and willing to argue, but … he spawned Dinesh D’Souza and Laura Ingraham and for that blech on him.
And no, I am not a child of the 70s or 80s. I was at school with Laura (though obviously we didn’t run in the same circles).
I found Tweety’s sendoff of Buckley rather revealing about Tweety. Apparently in his youth he was a genuine, starry-eyed drinker of the Republican koolaid that Buckley was selling.
Even though he poses as someone a little more “balanced” today, at times it is hard to see how much of that has changed
Racketeers all
Today’s conservatives are anything but. Have to agree with kudos for Bill on that front.
Thanks for the clips. I’ve already checked out the Buckley/Vidal tussle.
Also, it is that instance where Vidal called Buckley a crypto-Nazi that has boomerranged into the Goldbergian efforts at rewriting history in order to place the genesis of Nazism and Fascism on the shoulders of leftists and liberals.
Poor Doughy Pantload, all brownshirted up and no place to go.
-G
yes he brought hating into the parlor and out of the saloon
That is it, I guess. Buckley could neither falsify himself systematically before the world as the present crowd can, nor pretend that we all just lacked the capacity either to know the contrary truth or to call him on it if he tried. In this he was much more of a true gentleman than those unworthies who are going to be cloying our ears with their praise over the next few days. (And frankly, I have the feeling that they appalled him in the end.)
In a world that needs good sounding boards, he will be missed.
maybe there is still hope that he will get an invite to that redstater dood’s marriage to monica goodling.
brilliant
Tons of Buckley here.
Well, I agree with Jane Hamsher that it was always clear where Buckley stood. So, I guess that tells where Matthews stood as a youth.
But Matthews was an aid to some old liberal Congressman right? Tip O’Neill?
And the Matthews admits he voted for Bush in 2000?
Matthews obviously unstable in many ways.
another intense waste of air,and water
Inquiring minds want to know.
You just noticed this???
My image of Buckley is of him smugly thoowing his head back, batting his eyes, smirking, and pressing his finger tips together; and cluelessly announcing the defeat of his adversary, when he had no clue as to what was being discussed. That man was not an intellectual. He simply used 50-cent words to express two-bit ideas. And, that seemed to impress people. “Immanentizing the eschaton” my ass.
the malaria made him permanently DELERIOUS imo
i agree…greasy sob
The malaria made him liberal for about 2 seconds. Then he figured he was going to live anyway, and went for the paycheck instead.
yup,ya know that is one horrible disease,he should HELP Bill Gates foundation,rid the world of it
Thanks but that’s a little too much WFB for right now.
I do agree that Buckley was more honest. I’ve read enough to convince me that Bill Bennett wants to eliminate public education in the US. He is reported to have said as much in private when discussing legislation (I think when he was working for some GOP administration). But I don’t think he would ever place himself in a position to actually forthrightly state his position and debate it on open fair ground. (If anyone knows that he has, please correct me.)
But I have watched WFB very forthrightly state debate and defenc nonsense that extreme. I remember him on TV (I think it was the Galbraith show) asser that the marginal utility of wealth increases, so the rich should be taxed at a lower rate than the poor to maximize utility. He did with oodles of syllables too.
That may be a reason why the reactionaries are losing. They are getting weaslely. Think if Bennett just came out and said US needs to get rid of public education. That would nail it. Who would people believe, Bennett, or Adams-Hamilton-Jefferson-Madison? No contest.
I don’t think that is accurate. I’ve met many intellectuals in my life who, despite their great curiosity and their ability to think, can never quite come up with a conclusion that is different than what they wanted to believe in the first place. It’s not dishonesty or fakery. I believe it is self-delusion.
Tweetie is pragmatic in his insanity. He goes with who is in power and who shows him attention.
Sadly Dough.
-G
OK, bedtime for me. Anyone who missed Pete Seeger tonight, try to find the rePETE. It was, in fact, fucking awesome. Politics and music, my favorite mix! Love it even more when a banjo is involved.
Was he in infantry or airborne?
Buckley that is.
g’nite wangdang
i can no longer listen or watch him,visceral reaction
Well, I’m a little tipsy, and having deep thoughts tonight. I will syllable them up a bit, might be more impressive.
ya kill me
Actually the real Godfather of the Neocons, and the antecedent of modern conservatives everywhere, was Barry Goldwater. Now there was a slimy, psychotic fanatic. Buckley was an enabler and gave intellectual heft (such as it was) to many of their ideas, but Goldwater was the standard bearer.
Gambling pusbag Bennett was more than willing to collect federal dole while working for as the Sec. of Education though.
Scumbag deluxe.
-G
Vidal called Buckley a “crypto nazi”, then corrected himself and called him a “crypto-fascist”. Buckley called Vidal a “queer” and threatened to beat him up. ’twas in ‘68 around the time of the Democratic Convention. i remembered it as having been on Dick Cavett but I wouldn’t trust my memory. facts checked w. Wiki (for whatever that’s worth).
Buckley had manners (aside from the use of queer as an expletive) generally. I didn’t like many of his ideas but he was obviously intelligent and witty. he was a superior mind to most, if not all, on the right today. i will refrain from crude descriptions of him. i’ll reserve those for the neocons and fuckwad’s minions
I was just reading about some of the things Buckley was so very, very wrong about in the 50’s and 60’s and beyond, maybe. But I’ve never been fond of conservatives who rehash the errors of leftists from 50 years ago to the exclusion of anything else, so I don’t see the need to do that now.
I felt smarter for listening to Buckley. He had a royal feud going with Vidal and Mailer – that was riveting stuff – grand, high-brow gossip.
I disagreed with him a good bit but he didn’t stoop to the cheap tricks of today’s National Review writers – who sneer about liberals being like fascists and the day’s work was done. He had a fascinating series of pieces on the decriminalization of drugs a few years back. That’s not a popular subject even now, with anyone. As he became more critical of Bush and Iraq, the magazine he founded buried his columns deeper and deeper and made him harder and harder to find.
I never deluded myself that he found liberalism to be more attractive as he aged but I always thought he would be a fascinating guy to meet. And I’ve found it increasingly sad to see what his magazine has become. He never faked what he was – he never pandered down to people and pretended to be a fake “common man”. He celebrated elitism happily, which could be a little irritating, But it was far better than pretending to be something he wasn’t.
So I feel a loss, I feel for his family and friends. I wish there more like him, where we could have conflicts but at least feel smarter after the argument was done.
The grave-dancing needs a rest tonight. Remember that every man has a family and friends that grieve when he passes. Sometimes right, sometimes wrong.
Thank you.
I was born, raised, and educated in the tradition of Irish Catholicism, of which a certain flavor of conservatives are a part. In my experience, Irish Catholic conservatives are congenetal royalists. They cling to the hierarchical nature of the Catholic church and they need a top-down sturcuture to reassure then need for order. They are misfits in a democratic society.
ever read the Little Foxes?
I only regret the loss of any kind of intellectual content or pretense of honesty in the conservative movement. I loathed Buckley in the 60s and 70s and loathe him now, but at least he was light years better than anybody among the modern conservatives.
Deftly put.
Thanks.
In my experience, Irish Catholic conservatives are congenetal royalists.
That explains Chris Matthews, then. :) Lots and lots of Republican voters today are royalists. They LOVE the idea of Bush doing anything he damn well pleases. They believe the Constitution reads in its entirety: “White male wealthy Christians control everything.”
consevative movement in a nutshell=
ive got mine…yall can just stfu
DrDick..what the heck. I grade on a curve.
I hope to get the same favor back, someday.
thank you for saying that so clearly. very well said :)
Agree but ‘yall can just stfu’ is not an order, which seems to be preferred grammatical mood.
For a good laugh, just imagine William F. Buckley Jr. debating “the true meaning of conservatism” [or any topic, for that matter] with the Doughy Pantload. Godzilla meets Bambi.
doesn’t there need to be a finger pointing in there as well? (/s)
That’s OK. I wrote that before your post was up. I will behave myself.
Darth Cheneys words on the Senate floor iirc…he is an eloquent conservative
I love Lillian Hellman. Pentimento.
Point taken.
My, as a kid view, is that he always looked like he saw someone throwing something at him and I always wondered how he could sit like that.
the fact he uses that word is part of the reason i changed to fork instead.
More like Godzilla meets earthworm.
OK. It is bedtime for Bonzo here. Take care and enjoy.
powerfull,and i also remember in Zorba the Greek,all the cackiling witches,waiting for his paramour to die,so they could steal all her earthly posessions…death is not always loving and spiritual
g’nite dr (pause) dick
When the conservative movement has people like Buckley doing the talking, as opposed to Goldberg, then there’s a discussion to be had.
Today’s conservatives joke about keeping one liberal behind as a museum specimen. That, I hope, isn’t shared here. There will be people who have honest beliefs about taxation, spending, foreign policy, social issues, etc. that I completely oppose. That’s a good thing.
As I’ve said at John Cole’s place, I look forward to the day when he’s on the other side in political arguments. It’ll be a good sign that a healthy polity has returned.
(What’s that line: the first generation makes the fortune, the third finishes pissing it away?)
Today I’ve been reading mutliple assertions that the despised departed erudite advocate for the worst men in suits can do had renounced the purulent progeny he created in the National Review and the American conservative excresence movement.
Proud to say I’ve not immeresd myself myself in the oozing life work of someone who wrote to praise McCarthy and later to suggest “Negroes” bombed the church in Birmingham, but….
such a search as I could tolerate failed to reveal this striking departure from his previous decades of interviews and writing.
Has Buckley ever made such a clear renunciation, or is just now coming through on the Ouija Board in his post-portem?
How do we know Buckley renounced the later cons?
its just a powerful word made ugly by his intent…he means to be an evil Dick
True.
The difference is strange. Catholic conservatives of Buckley’s generation believe that the royal privileges come from God, Almighty. Protestant, conservatives believe that our founders intended this to be a “Christian Nation,” so the Bible contains all that we need to know about running our country. It’s a way different notion.
Hi Ron. I fully agree.
It looks like that damn Obama is up to his tricks again.
Attacking Pakistan with missiles!
Someone get a fainting couch and a cold glass of water for Team McCain.
-G
*Link to Al Jazeera
If the conservative movement had adhered to the high standards of WFB it would have still failed. Maybe taken longer but failed.
they are killing this country with their pedal to the metal crony capitalism
Talibans and Kings.
fork.
post-mortem
(post-portem is for Hitchens)
I grew up in a family that idolized Buckley, but I was never aware of his support for segregation until today. My bad.
I have no problem with the scathing criticism in the thread by many commenters whom I respect a lot. Buckley did enormous damage. Some FDLers may recall some of the obits/hitpieces that followed Steve Gilliard’s passing. The refined white supremacists who wrote the worst of those didn’t get the memo that the rules change on the day someone passes away. Jane, I support you 100% for focusing on Buckley’s civility, relative to other neocons.
must put car in garage,it stalled today on a VERY steep hill …oh shiiite
nite,nite,all you wunnerful libs
Hey -
That’s our gig!
I don’t think he ever denounced or renounced conservatism. But it looks like he still felt that there was room for reasoned debate and disagreement within the movement. But the world he had helped create had passed him by and had become a cult. So he would argue and debate, his ideological progeny did not really understand what he was doing with this “disagreement” stuff, and the yungins whispered that he was senile.
The Group News Blog has a post up about WFB’s passing and mentions the stuff about when Gilly passed:
wesgpc yungins whispered that he was senile.
Mere projection on their part-the protest doth too much but give its attributes to those who mouth the words
Out-fucking-standing.
wesgpc, i greatly respect your comment here, but i can’t figure out how we can know that these
were Buckley’s beliefs unless we can find that he spoke or wrote them. I’m not trying to put the onus on you, but I’d be curious to read the quotes.
Interesting quote about Buckley’s view of the Iraq war:
“According to Buckley, the war in Iraq was “anything but conservative. The reality of the situation is that missions abroad to effect regime change in countries without a bill of rights or democratic tradition are terribly arduous.” He added: “This isn’t to say that the Iraq war is wrong, or that history will judge it to be wrong. But it is absolutely to say that conservatism implies a certain submission to reality; and this war has an unrealistic frank and is being conscripted by events”.[19] In a February 2006 column published at National Review Online and distributed by Universal Press Syndicate, Buckley stated unequivocally that, “One cannot doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed.” Buckley has also stated that “…it’s important that we acknowledge in the inner councils of state that it (the war) has failed, so that we should look for opportunities to cope with that failure.”[20]”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_F._Buckley
Just came in to turn off the cumputer, and leave you with this.
Why does this make me think of marymccurnin?
I do not believe the conservatives in power have anything in mind but the looting of our treasury. They are nothing but heartless wankers that steal from children to line their own hot pockets.
to kirk murphy and others:
I am not making stuff up out of whole cloth here. I am going by reports of his debates with fellow National Review people and neo-cons. There is one well-known undercover report from a contentious ship-cruise where it was Buckley against rest of the ship regarding Iraq war.
I think Buckly was wrong 80% or 90% of the time, and stayed that way. But I do think he allowed disagreement. I also remember a long time ago National Review would arrange to have opposing views debated in its pages, something I have not seen in a long long time. But I forget whether he was still editor.
You are way too kind.
Yikes!!!!
the only thing they are conservative about is their money. tis so much easier to spend the little peoples’ money on their ideas, games, and wars.
Greenwald wrote about this today:
http://www.salon.com/news/feat…..7/buckley/
i was thinking it was going to be a camel but no……
Magic word in bold. These folks are not. They are thieves and radicals, and as ashamed as the true “Conservatives” in the US should be, its nothing compared to the shame the Left should feel for letting it happen.
Yes, on our watch.
Wow. Thanks.
i was thinking it was going to be a camel but toe……
I should just buy Bic disposible monitors.
“no you can’t” McCain is definitely up with that idea. He is going with less jobs more war, paid for with on pemanent tax cuts for the rich. So, he is plenty eager to spend the little folks’ blood and money.
neuro, thanks for that quote.
that is illustrative of some quick intellectual foot work.
So the philosophy/movement didn’t fail; the failure was never part of the philosophy/movement to start with.
Buckley must have known the true believers said this after the Soviet Union failed.
Never really truly Marxist.
exactly. the no you can’t folks claim to be conservatives but really are lying thieves in conservative clothing, gaming the system to profit themselves as much as possible.
His progeny knew, as did he some say, that his principles would not stand up to rational debate. Vidal and Chomsky handed him his ass.
wesgpc, just to calrify: i’m not suggesting you are making stuff up. i am trying to trace the extant data about Buckley’s split. thanks for helping point me to the source(s)
Matthews is not a principled person, imo. He will go wherever the wind blows to increase his ratings. Since his ratings are dwindling, he’s going to go the way of KO, and try to ride his shirttails.
Must be sad, not to own any integrity.
AMEN, Jane –
William F Buckley was a Lighthouse –
Modren Conservateves, are assholes — disguised as assholes . . .
On the cruise
Good point. It would be interesting to plot a timeline of Buckley’s expressed sentiments regarding the Iraq war.
I do remember WFB and National Reveiw being with the war party for a long time. In that batch of clips from his show I saw some time ago, I remember him arguing with somebody (Ron Dellums maybe?) that the US should not be afraid to use tactical nuclear weapons. We were to squeamish about it and it harmed the US’ ability to protect the national interests and keep foes afraid and at bay.
And this was during the last gasps of the Soviet Union when it was pretty clear to most reasonable people it was an economic and military cripple (except for them pesky intercontinental thermonuclear tipped missiles, which tend to be equalizers if you have enough of them). So why was he so eager for US using that kind of violence? Why would we even need to think that way at all?
So, sorry I misspoke above. I meant to say I disagreed with him 90% to 95% of the time.
They are stupid little pricks.
little being the operative word here imho
thanks, That is the piece I was thinking of. There are a couple more like that. Kind of sad for Buckley (in a theatrical sentimental Kabuki way), but itis more scary regarding what a serious threat the movement conservative and neocon crowd present to everyone.
“Buckley’s an old man,” tapping her head with her finger to suggest dementia.
My take@146 on these morons
Now now, let’s be sensitive to the Scostmen among us. It was established on a recent thread that caber toss is derived from the fact that Scotsmen have, um, rather little, little Scotmen down there under the kilt.
Spoiled rich kid… no Mr. Buckley was beyond that he was from the extremely priveledged class…an arrogant rascist…he seemed to have no humane feelings for humanity. I did not share his vision of America. The blather here on a progressive site on degrees of conservatism…when we are struggling for more progressive liberals strikes me as inane. Conservative criticism of new neocon republican thuggery is only to elevate their own jaded social philosphy that the poor earned their poverty.
Eat shit and die Fuckley and the rest of your selfish egocentric priveledged class, Praising bastardism by a progressive is trolling for eletism. It suck and I am very dissapointed in the entertainment of this subject as good subject matter.
Giving up the Panama Canal was pretty stupid strategically.
tis only from the cold that the wee one be wee
Very well said. I was thinking the same thing. What a quantum leap from the radio schucks today or garden variety conservatives on the street who like Saxby Chamblish say “The surge is working” but couldn’t argue how to save their lives. Charlie Rose is running an hour of his interviews with Buckley tonight.
Buckley got a way with a fair amount of BS because he could speak intelligently. But you have to give the man credit for being interesting, mentally energetic and completely unafraid of higher thought. Best of all, in my opinion, he had a good sense of irony. Show me a person without a sense of irony and I’ll show you a person on whom you shouldn’t bother wasting much breath. (Irony deficiency has reached life threatening levels in the neocons.)
A little humanity, please.
The man is not yet cold.
ok wangdangdoodle – I see your Bambi and raise you’re travestry with some divine ballet. ;~)
http://tinyurl.com/3btepz
Many of the ideas Buckley had were repugnant, but at least I give him credit for being able to argue them in an interesting way and articulately. The word sophistry comes to mind sometimes with Buckley, but one Buckley is worth 100,000 Limbaughs or Hannitys or O’Reillys in my book.
thanks for the linky, margot!
Jane -
Perlstein’s piece in case you hadn’t caught it yet.
http://www.ourfuture.org/blog-…..role-model
yeah I know, gonna have to work on the link thingy
Good lord, she must be made out of rubber bands and only weighs three and a half ounces. That was truely beautiful.
Stalin was…Hitler was…Mussolini was…not nice to put it mildly
Buckley was so so self indulgent is his arrogance the establishment that spawned and coddled him also spawned GW Bush.
Th American aristocracy, very old money driven, very upper crust driven. Buckley fawned on himself, If this was not a Buckley good point thread I would not comment…whether he is “…a yet warm corpse and yet unburialble” Will Shakespeare. Conservative are the living dead.
Take the stock market…which they largely own…WSJ Rupert Murdoch and Fox News spew. The market shows all indicators are pretty much negative, commodities the stuff needed to produce goods are all time high, energy all time high, capital cruch, housing the worst evah, transport downn…yet amazingly the market is rising therefore the “economy is good”.
Bullshit: housing equities are way down and going down, 100 million homes are in trouble, the environment is about to go permanetly South.
A fucking ultra conservative rascist gets kudos!!!
Nothing Progressive about any of this. Did he give a rats ass about the common man nevah. Spare me this man knew exactly what he was doing, took great trouble to define it. The streets of America are full of families without medical care 50 million living in poverty. Buckley should rest well. His specious argument tend to define the human condition and his legacy is poverty.
I just read the Greenwald piece and came back to post it, so thanks.
It’s very well done. I didn’t remember it was a mere eight weeks between Howard Dean comparing Iraq to Vietnam with the resulting RW outrage and Buckley saying “One can’t doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed”.
The same people who are currently over at National Review, emotional and swearing the magazine will forever be a tribute to the Great Man, buried his columns when he flipped on Iraq, as I said before. I remember it well because I was curious how they’d react to party gospel being dropped on its head that way.
I shouldn’t have been surprised, I guess, but by and large, they ignored it and him. That says a lot about Buckley and the state of conservatism as the present time.
SPECTACULAR Mary, one of the BEST of the year!
AND when Mark Twain was discussing the death of someone he didn’t like he said
“well, I didn’t attend the funeral, but I sent a nice letter saying that I approved of it.”
That’s COLD.
“Welcome to Geezer City, Jane.
I too remember when conservatives actually had scruples.
P.S. You’re a junior geezer.”
Right on yellowdogD, BUCKLEY STILL goes to whatever HELL is for his writing/action/politics AND PARTICULARLY the National Review, (Gore Vidal does not).
NOT approving of a pre-emptive war YOU created just gives you a BIGGER rock to roll up and down the same hill FOREVER…(gnashing of teeth etc. from the “Christianists”)
Sweet dreams “Conservatives, Ex-Conservatives and junior geezers”.
Aw, give it a rest. I liked “God And Man At Yale” and “Up From Liberalism” when I was thirteen because those books seemed moderate and reasonable compared to the neonazi bullshit I was raised with. All he ever was was the advance man for the horrors we’re living with today. Do you really think that if we had 4,000 Buckleys in place of the 4,000 worst reThug assholes we have today that there’d be no Iraq war? no Afghanistan war? that they’d be holding bipartisan chats in Central Park with Jane Fonda and Barbra Streisand? He was just the smooth talking block captain of the time. He spawned monsters. Enough already with the misty eyed reminiscences of the ancien regime. Jesus wept. He was a vicious little prick.
yes – Buckley was ‘qualitatively different’ than, say, Bill O’Reilly. His threat of physical violence to his guest (”I’ll smash you in the god-damned face”) bears no resemblance at all to the right-wing tv hosts of today.
And Buckley’s entire interview/talk with Chomsky has him repeatedly lobbing one dishonest argument after another, false dichotomies, grand prounouncements of facts and certainties – all of which are false and uncertain-at-best — yes, all of this dishonesty and badgering is so honest, it makes me want to weep a tear of nostalgia for that saint, William Buckley.
listen, if you want to kiss the dude’s ass – do it, but don’t try to invent some new world where where FDL readers are supposed to buy into some re-invention of Buckley as someone who was ever honest about anything. it really is weird to come here and read this shit. i’ve watched that interview 10 times – Buckley’s performance as apologist for u.s. government terror is as morally reprehensible as it is dishonest.
the guy talked pretty. he was an ivy league asshole that you wanted to be like. he was witty, chewed on his pencil, raised his eyebrows like that comedian – whatever – fine – but don’t bring that ‘qualitatively different’ and ‘honest’ bullshit up in here. gd.
p.s. firefox commenting seems broken again.
A brief blast from the past: the excellent New Republic article on the National Review’s Wingnut Cruise, and the onboard fight between Buckley & Norm Podheretz over Iraq.
The strangest thing I heard about Buckley was in an interview of David Brooks on NPR, (how lame), where Brooks goes on to describe Buckley as, among other things as “handsome.” Ewwww! He was smart, articulate and biting, but handsome? Huh? Makes you wonder about Brook’s sexuality and taste. Oh, I forgot, he’s a conservative republican…..they have none. Never mind.
I am 51 years old. I probably heard WFB for the first time when I was 11 or 12 years old, and I could tell then that he was an equivocating pile of shit. I heard him try to sneak around answering questions, and I heard him out and out lie. I also found it very odd, even as a youngster, to think that people thought that he was very smart, when you never heard Buckley string more than 4 or 5 words together without saying ‘uh’ several times. He was an inveterate, condescending gasbag, and a lying gasbag, to boot.
Buckley in 2005 on AIDS/HIV – in the pages of his National Review:
A well-educated proto-fascist with a great vocabulary -
But a proto-fascist to the end.
(h/t Roger Ailes: JoeMcCarthy and Bull Connor, Meet Your New Roommate)
Hey, Firedoglake, I just knew there would be truth-telling here!! Few people are even willing to look at WFB’s racist side in the early days or even his gasbag days.
I watched him lots in my childhood(I’m 68) but turned feminist, liberal and a civil rights worker in the 60’s and never turned back to what I see now as my parents moderate roots. Even they evolved when they moved from Philadelphia to Wisconsin to Arkansas when they retired. They got to know the Clinton’s really well personally in Arkansas and voted for him twice. I have already voted for Obama in Texas. I want REAL change, although it is hard to turn away from Hillary.
“All he ever was was the advance man for the horrors we’re living with today. Do you really think that if we had 4,000 Buckleys in place of the 4,000 worst reThug assholes we have today that there’d be no Iraq war? no Afghanistan war? that they’d be holding bipartisan chats in Central Park with Jane Fonda and Barbra Streisand? He was just the smooth talking block captain of the time. He spawned monsters. Enough already with the misty eyed reminiscences of the ancien regime. Jesus wept. He was a vicious little prick.“
What he or she said!
Jane, I really think the world of you, but we’ll have to agree to disagree on this one. (Born in the fifties, BTW.)