Bill Buckley’s Son is Voting for Obama; Some Grumbling about McPalin is Coming From Other Surprising Quarters
(posted by Mona)
Chris Buckley, in a fascinating essay “apologizes” to his departed father, and essentially states that John McCain in particular, and the GOP in general, have become ugly kooks, of the sort his father had meant to purge from the conservative movement. Chris — an author of books and articles in his own right, including the back page of National Review — cites a number of reasons for his abandoning McCain, for whom he once wrote speeches:
My [NR] colleague, the superb and very dishy Kathleen Parker, recently wrote in National Review Online a column stating what John Cleese as Basil Fawlty would call “the bleeding obvious”: namely, that Sarah Palin is an embarrassment, and a dangerous one at that. . . .she has to date received 12,000 (quite literally) foam-at-the-mouth hate-emails. One correspondent, if that’s quite the right word, suggested that Kathleen’s mother should have aborted her and tossed the fetus into a Dumpster.
And, in explaining why his essay is not appearing in National Review, my emphasis:
Dear Pup once said to me sighfully after a right-winger who fancied himself a WFB protégé had said something transcendently and provocatively cretinous, “You know, I’ve spent my entire life time separating the Right from the kooks.” Well, the dear man did his best. At any rate, I don’t have the kidney at the moment for 12,000 emails saying how good it is he’s no longer alive to see his Judas of a son endorse for the presidency a covert Muslim who pals around with the Weather Underground. So, you’re reading it here first.
Besides, while having his disagreements with Obama, the non-social-conservative Chris finds the Democratic candidate possessed of commendable qualities:
I’ve read Obama’s books, and they are first-rate. He is that rara avis, the politician who writes his own books. Imagine. He is also a lefty. I am not. I am a small-government conservative who clings tenaciously and old-fashionedly to the idea that one ought to have balanced budgets. On abortion, gay marriage, et al. I’m libertarian.
(At least Chris had returned to the bosom of Holy Mother Church before his parents died; he spent a dissolute youth not practicing the One, True Faith.)
It’s happening all over, folks. The excesses of McPalin – the increasingly fiery and dangerous climate of violence that they are purposefully stoking – are well documented and turning off sane folk everywhere. See, e.g., Empywheel’s excellent compendium of the disgusted at her post, Bipartisan Concern about the Dangers of McPalin’s Hate-Mongering.
October 10th, 2008 at 9:19 pm
Empywheel has put out a really good article. Thanks for the link. Really strong stuff in there.
October 12th, 2008 at 10:09 am
“You know, I’ve spent my entire life time separating the Right from the kooks.” Well, the dear man did his best.
Buckley certainly used NR to drum various people out of the conservative movement. Whether they were all kooks is a matter of opinion — he kicked out the Birchers, yes, but he also kicked out the libertarians and the anti-war Old Righters, folks who to my mind were less kooky than those he kept in.
October 12th, 2008 at 10:38 am
One of the kooks Buckley failed to boot out of the movement was himself. For example:
Buckley on race, in National Review, 1957:
The central question that emerges … is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not prevail numerically? The sobering answer is Yes — the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race. It is not easy, and it is unpleasant, to adduce statistics evidencing the cultural superiority of White over Negro: but it is a fact that obtrudes, one that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropologists. … [T]he South’s premises are correct … It is more important for the community, anywhere in the world, to affirm and live by civilized standards, than to bow to the demands of the numerical majority.
Buckley on totalitarianism, in Commonweal, 1952:
We have got to accept Big Government for the duration — for neither an offensive nor a defensive war can be waged, given our present government skills, except through the instrument of a totalitarian bureaucracy within our shores. … And if they deem Soviet power a menace to our freedom (as I happen to), they will have to support large armies and air forces, atomic energy, central intelligence, war production boards, and the attendant centralization of power in Washington — even with Truman at the reins of it all.
Ah, but at least he purged crazy individualists like Murray Rothbard, Ayn Rand, John Flynn, and Isabel Paterson from the movement! Otherwise they might have made the movement look bad ….
October 12th, 2008 at 9:03 pm
I often disagree with David Bernstein, but I like him I remain unimpressed with claims of dangerously extreme political rancor.
I agree with Larison that Chris Buckley’s failing is in being INSUFFICIENTLY critical of McCain.
October 12th, 2008 at 11:15 pm
Roderick: I agree with much that you wrote. It is more accurate to say WFB expelled the anti-Semites and the more febrile conspiracy theorists. (I”m not a Rand fan, and agree with some of the criticisms the early NR ran about her.)
Old Man Buckley’s getting desegregation wrong was a common error, and not just among conservatives of that era; it was not so much “kooky” as simply immoral and wrong.
In any event, I think Bill’s son Chris has a point that his dad did try to render up NR as a thinking conservative’s magazine, and what the conservative mvmt has become now is greatly what pere Buckley was trying to exterminate.
October 12th, 2008 at 11:24 pm
TGGP: There is something to be said for Larison’s position, but really, candidate McCain has been acting like a fiend and….picking Sarah Palin?