Wouldn’t that create some sort of hysteria hyperloop?
Not sure if this is still the same thread as in the first post, but: William F. Buckley, Jr.
My understanding is that the current parties were basically dismantled and put back together during the civil rights era, and Buckley was a key architect of the Republican’s reformation as a cohesive party. With all that ugliness at its core now also on the surface.
Buckley didn’t lead them down this road to nonsense though.
You can read his later stuff, back in the the early 2000s, and he was flat out saying stuff like, “hey guys, as conservatives we are supposed to care about REALITY. This Iraq stuff isn’t working real well. We can’t just pretend it is, and hitch the entire ideology to this war.”
Yeah, Buckley would be stunned at today’s GOP, IMHO.
Except the white supremacy bit – he openly advocated that in the 1950s. (Granted, one’s views can evolve over 40 years.)
Yeah, that’s one thing I wasn’t really aware of previously when I was younger, and probably his greatest shame.
But ultimately, Buckley was what the modern conservative movement sorely lacks… An intellectual.
He was actually able to formulate coherent arguments. Certainly, he sometimes relied on his oratory skills more than raw logic, but he wasn’t just totally full of shit like the modern GOP is.
He actually had some base of principles upon which he was operating. Modern conservatives have absolutely no principles at all.
It’s a joy to watch Buckley and Vidal square off on Youtube. Is there anything even remotely equivalent today?
I see the anti-intellectualism of today’s Republican Party as being caused by that party’s eagerness to be a safe harbor for racism and fundamentalism - the ugly core of Buckley’s conservatism. That may have been a lesser pillar of the party in favor of traditional conservatism in some people’s views, but I find it hard to argue that there isn’t a relation just because those members with those same anti-intellectual views have built themselves up to be the majority voice of the party over the decades that they’ve been welcome there. It would be nice to claim the current state of the Republican Party is some sort of abberation, but then you have to figure how to justify the presence of all these complicit politicians who have been around for so long.
A couple months ago somebody (probably PBS) did a 2 hour show on the Vidal-Buckley debates. I didn’t remember those, only their later TV personas. They really hated each other as a result of those debates (although I think that Vidal went into them despising Buckley and Buckley left them hating Vidal).
The Baldwin vs. Buckley debate was good.
The mere fact that such debates existed paints a stark contrast between then and now. Can you imagine such debates taking place now? Where you have two educated people speaking coherently for long periods at a time?
Putting aside the pure nonsense of Trump’s inability to string together a complete sentence, even with “real” politicians there is rarely a level of complex discourse that you saw in those older cases.
Yeah, one-on-one interviews and <gag!> panel shows are the best we get these days, but they’re obviously made-for-tv and typically replete with facile sound bites instead of reasoned debate.
I also say Newt Gingrich. The country was getting over Reagan/Atwater, and then Newt came along and got Republicans to act like a parliamentary party, outside the American tradition. The damage from that snowballed and Trump is just one manifestation.
There seems to be a fair amount of he was great except he hated minorities stuff for some of these guys. I don’t understand how anyone can overshadow that giant asterisks; I really don’t.
That statement by @Gordon_Cameron, about Buckley openly advocating white supremacy… I don’t think that actually happened, did it?
I mean, I know that he actually specifically DENOUNCED the white supremacists, and groups like the John Birch society, saying that they had no place within conservatism. So I’m not sure what statement Gordon is talking about.
Now, he did hold views which I think are bad in retrospect, in that he supported temporary segregation. But this was not based on a view that whites were inherently superior, but rather that the black population of the time was less well educated as a result of the previously suffered ills. Not a good perspective, still, but as far as I know he did not support white supremacists, and as I said, specifically called them out.
He also softened his position on segregation by the 1960’s, because he was disgusted by the white supremacists’ actions under leadership of folks like Wallace.
So white supremacy would have been okay if the leadership had been better?
Look, I understand these guys had qualities people admire, but when you can dismiss parts of the human race as not being equal, oppose civil rights and spout separate but equal garbage we know didn’t work, not a theory but in practice did not work… I just question the defense of someone like that. This isn’t some ancient history we’re talking about here; you look at the date in the corner of your monitor and realize these individuals are not long gone. They took the wrong stance and if the world was shaped to their views it would be horrific today.
And of course, I say that knowing full well that racist attitude is clearly very strong in the GOP, today.
From National Review’s infamous 1957 “Why the South Must Prevail” editorial, written by Buckley hisself:
[T]he White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race.
and
The South confronts one grave moral challenge. It must not exploit the fact of Negro backwardness to preserve the Negro as a servile class. It is tempting and convenient to block the progress of a minority whose services, as menials, are economically useful. Let the South never permit itself to do this. So long as it is merely asserting the right to impose superior mores for whatever period it takes to effect a genuine cultural equality between the races, and so long as it does so by humane and charitable means, the South is in step with civilization
And, no, context does not improve those quotes.
Calling out everyone who had racist views pretty much makes the founding fathers some pretty terrible people. I don’t think many are willing to go that far.
I remember from watching that program on Buckley and Vidal that Buckley hated Vidal afterwards for Vidal’s attacks on Buckley’s attitudes towards race and women. Buckley felt Vidal went to far. But I do admit to not remembering any specifics.
Read what I said about about the time frame here. I am talking about the 60s. I specifically mentioned how not long ago these individuals are… which does not apply to founding fathers.