On l'affaire Christopher Buckley, I suspect the truth of the circumstances under which he left National Review over his Obama endorsement lies somewhere between his own account and Rich Lowry's -- and I don't say that to accuse either of stretching the truth. Things like this happen, and people see the same set of facts two different ways. Misunderstandings happen. I am hesitant to endorse the Chris-as-martyr narrative; if Buckley fils really believes that he didn't leave the GOP, the GOP left him, then it seems plausible to me that he was looking for a reason to leave, and this dust-up with NR gave him an opportunity to get some publicity out of what he wanted to do anyway. OTOH, it's not like Chris Buckley needs publicity. He's rather successful in his own right.
All of which is to say: I don't really care. It's sad when friends have a rift, and I wish this hadn't happened, but ... I really don't care.
Nevertheless, I think Kathleen Parker is onto something broader in her column today defending Chris. Excerpt:
In 1955, when WFB announced his new magazine and explained the reasons for it, he described conservatives as "non-licensed nonconformists":"Radical conservatives in this country have an interesting time of it, for when they are not being suppressed or mutilated by Liberals, they are being ignored or humiliated by a great many of those of the well-fed Right, whose ignorance and amorality have never been exaggerated for the same reason that one cannot exaggerate infinity."
Fast-forward half a century, and the old is the new.
Radical conservatives are still having an interesting time of it, though these days they are being mutilated by fellow "conservatives." The well-fed Right now cultivates ignorance as a political strategy and humiliates itself when its brightest sons seek sanctuary in the solitude of personal honor.
The truth few wish to utter is that the GOP has abandoned many conservatives, who mostly nurse their angst in private. Those chickens we keep hearing about have indeed come home to roost. Years of pandering to the extreme wing -- the "kooks" the senior Buckley tried to separate from the right -- have created a party no longer attentive to its principles.
Instead, as Christopher Buckley pointed out in a blog post on thedailybeast.com explaining his departure from National Review, eight years of "conservatism" have brought us "a doubled national debt, ruinous expansion of entitlement programs, bridges to nowhere, poster boy Jack Abramoff and an ill-premised, ill-waged war conducted by politicians of breathtaking arrogance."
Republicans are not short on brainpower -- or pride -- but they have strayed off course. They do not, in fact, deserve to win this time, and someone had to remind them why.
Now, I'm not sure what Kathleen means by "the extreme wing," but I usually interpret that as code for "religious conservatives." It was not religious conservatives who caused the GOP to abandon all pretense of fiscal discipline. It was not religious conservatives who brought us the war in Iraq. It was not religious conservatives who brought us Jack Abramoff (though Ralph Reed had something to do with it). Mind you, religious conservatives rarely if ever stood up to any of this, but to say that the "kooks" brought about the collapse of the GOP is simply wrong. It was the Establishment that did it. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz -- these guys are not religious kooks. Neither is George W. Bush. And though he presents himself as a churchman, let no one be under the impression that Tom DeLay did what he did for the glory of the Lord. I am certain that in the wake of the coming disaster for the GOP, there will be an attempt to scapegoat the religious right, so that the Republican Establishment -- especially the national security and economic establishment -- can escape its own reckoning. We religious conservatives have to accept our share of the blame for what's happened, but we cannot let ourselves get scapegoated. The things we wanted most of all -- Supreme Court justices favorable to the things we believe in -- turn out to be the only undeniable triumphs of the Bush years, from a conservative point of view.
Anyway, here's what I think Parker gets right, and why it's important:
There is a conservative Establishment -- a political establishment, yes, but also a think-tank establishment and an opinion-leader establishment -- that has become ossified in its thinking and, over time, more interested in policing its heretics than in thinking creatively about conservatism and its application to the challenges facing our nation and our culture at this particular time. That establishment is dying. Something new will be born out of necessity. It will take time and effort, and lots of infighting, for this to happen, but happen it will. What else is there?
A few years back, I found myself riding in a car with some conservative greybeards who were talking about the early days at National Review, when WFB published writers of the Right who disagreed, sometimes sharply, with each other. The idea, they said, was to bring the sharpest, most creative minds of the countercultural (in those days) Right into the pages of the magazine to create a vital and viable future for authentic conservatism (as distinct from whatever it was that the GOP of the day was peddling). There is once again a need for that kind of freethinking audacity on the Right. It's the kind of audacity that can only happen when a movement is not interested in preserving its privileges and the power of its politicians, but in constructive thinking and arguing the world. To paraphrase Janis Joplin, freedom of thought is just another phrase for nothing left to lose.
November is likely to put the conservative movement in that position. And then we can begin anew. It will be an exciting time to be a conservative -- the most exciting time since WFB started out to change the world by taking on the dinosaur Establishment of his day -- and did. I'm only sorry he's not around to see it happen. But it's going to happen. Watch.
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Alicia,
Glad to be of service.
Now, if your iced tea was *sweetened,* then all is forgiven.
Actually, all is forgiven even if it's not.
Hope it's the same on your end.
; )
Hi, Rufus,
It is actually "lightly sweetened" - it's "Honest Tea."
Thanks for what you said. Have a nice weekend!
"What you will search in vain for is Daniel ever criticizing anything the liberals and the Democrats do."
Being a liberal means never having to say you're sorry (or you're wrong).
Quinn's Law #10: Liberals never think what they've done is wrong; they only think they haven’t done enough of it yet, or it is underfunded.
Liberals' Law #1 (in a series of 1): The only thing that is ever wrong is to tell a liberal that he or she is wrong. Also, everything conservatives do.
Rod, your excellent closing points of light illuminate one very real problem for the conservative movement and the GOP. When WFB, 50 years ago, welcomed contrasting points of view, there was a cultural premium placed upon learning. (Contrast with Palin’s ‘cultural warrior’ base) Today, many of those wielding clout within your party… what you’re calling the 'religious' wing… sees no learning necessary beyond the Bible. There lies a rub potent enough to season a slab of ribs.
I get the feeling that you are not exposing yourself the religious wing that I see on Channel 2 (Daystar) and CBN (21) vs. what you read, see and hear in church, examine online and in personal social life interaction. For anyone to be thinking that the so-called 'religious right' within the GOP is a like-minded monolith is naive on a good day, clueless on a bad one. And they claim to have elected GWB. This is no small part of the disaffection I see and hear around me when the subject of GOP defections come up.
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