I was spared from reading “hometown newspapers” in the ‘70’s due to a thing called the Vietnam War. Then upon my return statesside in 1974, I was involved im The Cold War.
In those same years, I must’ve missed those “commentary sermons” because I was not a ‘church going kinda guy’ then.I dif manage to find a love, receive apprval for re-train in a different field, get married, finish tech schoool and move across country yto a new blossoming career, and still be a member of The Cold War.
My old foe, the Soviet Union, is dead, with many of The Soviet Pact states prospering and manifesting their own destiny, thank you very much.
There is a grandfather holding on to delusions of former grandeur, in both America and Russia. The Russian granddad has been attempting to ‘repatriate’ that which, like George Rex III, what he ‘lost’, by force. That is not a big war trigger for me, nor my tax dollars wasted. It is a tribal affair, with the invader now declaring ‘to defend Mmother Russia’.
All the old RINOs have been found lacking and defending ‘the old guard’ in manners that are soo “pre-millenial” that they do not work. The ‘youngbloods’ of Congress want to make changes, and some are more boisteruous and blathering than others, causing divisions that mean nothing but school yard fights.
I will close with this statement. I turn 71 this week, even with shoulxering maladies and frequent connections to dialysis machines, and can still put cognitive complete paragraphs into an online response, better than both the sitting President OR the cackling VP!
Come on, man, you you know know the thing!
Cackle ....culture ... the moment ... cackle!
I'm sorry, the resentment I sense in your description of the rebirth of American conservatism seems distorted by naive expectations of human nature and the type of war we must wage in these times.
We have a government--and a commentariat--of men, not angels or gods. The ones you cite, whose writings I remember from that time, wrote the truth, and did a very good job of it when no one else seemed to know how.
But the truth belongs to God, and we men can only discover and annunciate it when we can, according to our abilities. All the characters cited in your post were crucial in their time in inspiring the larger conservative revolt against the overreach of Big Fed and the middle-class Marxism that infected the news media and multitudes of "public employees" in Washington and in the states.
The voices of the conservative commentariat were fallible. They didn't all keep their eye on the ball after that period, and at in many cases failed to appreciate newcomers to the movement whom they considered uncouth. But to quibble over that fact and deny their achievements is to have an expectation of humanity that sounds, well, a bit like a liberal.
New battles often require new generals. But I owe much to Buckley, Kilpatrick, and Will in particular for their well-reasoned and timely lessons in the true American philosophy of government and Christian culture. Where their typewriters led them after that doesn't erase the good they did, and I'll always be thankful to them for speaking up and taking the arrows.
Carry on!