Re: Buckley throws in the towel on Iraq
Marvin Gandall wrote:
Dennis Perrin writes:
Didn’t WFB tell Lingua Franca before its demise that if he were a young today, he’d be a socialist, maybe even communist? There’s long been a weird fascination with the sexy world of socialists by public members of the right, doubtless colored by the likes of Burnham and Chambers in their early ranks. Buckley’s resisted this since forever, but in recent years he’s clearly loosened up. For whatever that’s worth.
Of course, this is a virtual cliche among conservatives, especially among their intellectuals. I think it was Churchill who reputedly said “a young man who isn’t a socialist hasn’t got a heart, and an old man who is a socialist hasn’t got a head”, which seems to be the sentiment Buckley is echoing.
It’s more than that - the more thoughtful ones seem a little disillusioned with their success. Corey Robin’s fascinating piece from the Feb 2001 Lingua Franca (archived at http://www3.iath.virginia.edu/lists_archive/sixties-l/2776.html) has these great quotes from Irving Kristol & Bill Buckley:
Irving Kristol’s dictum: “Capitalism is the least romantic conception of a public order that the human mind has ever conceived.”
The end of the Soviet Union “deprived us of an enemy,” says Irving Kristol, the intellectual godfather of neoconservatism. “In politics, being deprived of an enemy is a very serious matter. You tend to get relaxed and dispirited. Turn inward.” Notorious for his self-confidence, Kristol now confesses to a sad bewilderment in the post-communist world. “That’s one of the reasons I really am not writing much these days,” he says. “I don’t know the answers.”
Kristol adds, “American conservatism lacks for political imagination. It’s so influenced by business culture and by business modes of thinking that it lacks any political imagination, which has always been, I have to say, a property of the left.” He goes on, “If you read Marx, you’d learn what a political imagination could do.”
And the capper from Chairman Bill:
At the end of our interview, I ask Buckley to imagine a younger version of himself, an aspiring political enfant terrible graduating from college in 2000, bringing to today’s political world the same insurgent spirit that Buckley brought to his. What kind of politics would this youthful Buckley embrace? “I’d be a socialist,” he replies. “A Mike Harrington socialist.” He pauses. “I’d even say a communist.” Can he really imagine a young communist Bill Buckley? He concedes that it’s difficult. The original Bill Buckley had the benefit of the Soviet Union as an enemy; without its equivalent, his doppelgnger would confront a more complicated task. “This new Buckley would have to point to other things,” he says. Buckley runs down a laundry list of left causes, global poverty, death from AIDS. But even he seems suddenly overwhelmed by the project of (in typical Buckleyese) “conjoining all of that into an arresting afflatus.” Daunted by the challenge of thinking outside the free market, Buckley pauses, then finally says, “I’ll leave that to you.”