...to Bill Buckley, whose Cold War-era hallucination of conservatism (e.g., blacks shouldn't have civil rights, government spending is Socialism except when it's an investment in Empire, corporations shouldn't have to follow laws or pay taxes) played a key role in helping to create half a dozen intractable real-world national and international crises. His charming, polysyllabic patrician demeanor and "genius for friendship" was eulogized by David Folkenflik on NPR this afternoon. (Click the "Listen Now" link at the NPR page if you can stomach it, but I don't recommend it.)"He drove the kooks out of the [conservative] movement," said Buckley's son, Chris. "He separated it from the anti-Semites, the isolationists, the John Birchers. He conducted, if you will, a kind of purging of the movement." Well, actually, no he didn't, Chris; he only got rid of the isolationists because they're not good allies when a guy is trying to intellectually justify turning a republic into an empire. And all those other "kooks"? They've been ruling us for 28 years.
I'm not a person who believes we are obligated to be polite about the dead if we strongly feel they were premeditated assholes who left the world a worse place than when they entered it. I will, at least, wish Mr. Buckley luck with his "genius for friendship" as he shakes hands with The Devil.
does this mean out-of-the-closet Gore Vidal finally beats his nemesis (or friend), in-the-closet (or acting-like-that) Bill Buckley?
ReplyDeleteMyself, I don't care who is in the closet or out of it as long as he's not a cheerleader for political sociopaths, bigots, or despots foreign and domestic. ---SM
ReplyDeletedon't forget his "uneducated people shouldn't be allowed to vote" thing.
ReplyDeleteI didn't know he thought uneducated shouldn't be allowed to vote. But in a sense I agree with him insofar as I think people who can't pronounce words containing the letter "r" correctly should be allowed to vote. I might agree to grandfather Ted Kennedy into the system, though.
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