Posted on 07/22/2006 8:45:38 PM PDT by West Coast Conservative
President Bush ran for office as a "compassionate conservative." And he continues to nurture his conservative base — even issuing his first veto this week against embryonic stem cell research.
But lately his foreign policy has come under fire from some conservatives — including the father of modern conservatism. CBS Evening News Saturday anchor Thalia Assuras sat down for an exclusive interview with William F. Buckley about his disagreements with President Bush.
William F. Buckley's Stamford, Conn., home is a tranquil place that allows Buckley to think and write, and spend time with his canine companion, Sebastian.
"He's practically always with me," Buckley says.
Buckley finds himself parting ways with President Bush, whom he praises as a decisive leader but admonishes for having strayed from true conservative principles in his foreign policy.
In particular, Buckley views the three-and-a-half-year Iraq War as a failure.
"If you had a European prime minister who experienced what we've experienced it would be expected that he would retire or resign," Buckley says.
Asked if the Bush administration has been distracted by Iraq, Buckley says "I think it has been engulfed by Iraq, by which I mean no other subject interests anybody other than Iraq. ... The continued tumult in Iraq has overwhelmed what perspectives one might otherwise have entertained with respect to, well, other parts of the Middle East with respect to Iran in particular."
Despite evidence that Iran is supplying weapons and expertise to Hezbollah in the conflict with Israel, Buckley rejects neo-conservatives who favor a more interventionist foreign policy than he does, including a pre-emptive air strike against Iran — and its nuclear facilities.
"If we find there is a warhead there that is poised, the range of it is tested, then we have no alternative. But pending that, we have to ask ourselves, 'What would the Iranian population do?'"
Buckley does support the administration's approach to the North Korea's nuclear weapons threat, believing that working with Russia, China, Japan and South Korea is the best way to get Pyongyang back to the negotiating table. But that's about where the agreement ends.
"Has Mr. Bush found himself in any different circumstances than any of the other presidents you've known in terms of these crises?" Assuras asks.
"I think Mr. Bush faces a singular problem best defined, I think, as the absence of effective conservative ideology — with the result that he ended up being very extravagant in domestic spending, extremely tolerant of excesses by Congress, and in respect of foreign policy, incapable of bringing together such forces as apparently were necessary to conclude the Iraq challenge," Buckley says.
Asked what President Bush's foreign policy legacy will be to his successor, Buckley says "There will be no legacy for Mr. Bush. I don't believe his successor would re-enunciate the words he used in his second inaugural address because they were too ambitious. … So therefore I think his legacy is indecipherable"
At 81, Mr. Buckley still continues to contribute a regular column to the National Review, the magazine he started 51 years ago.
Oh I agree, it is politically impossible to stop socialism once it takes root in a democracy. It can only be done with outside intervention, but no one is left who could do that. Personally I do not like to terms Paleo-, and Neo-conservative. It's Orwellian nonsense, you are either conservative or you are not. By the very definition of the word you cannot have a “new-conservative,” or a “conservative movement.”
Perhaps, but I think it is more akin to the hatred of the old liberal intelligentsia to the fascists. Fascists in there day represented a reactionary movement that employed many of the same strategies that the liberal revolutionaries did, but for their own nationalistic bourgeois ideology. Indeed it is almost a matter of dogma to the old school libs that the second world war was a fight between liberal revolutionary socialism, and Nazi reactionary socialism. In their hearts the libs knew that the Nazis where their greatest threat, not because of their ideology, but because in form the Nazis were so much like themselves.
Looks like all the little tinky winky posters over at NR's "The Corner" are afraid to talk about Buckley's latest foot-in-mouth episode.
I think that nation building is a very non-conservative thing to do in general. Limited government has got to mean limited regarding building other governments too.
I'll concede with you that Buckley is brilliant...but about that other guy....ummmmm...nope.
> The Daily Kos losers are ejaculating over this guy.
Yes, and they also liked axing Harriet Miers and the ports deal. In these cases, they're right for the wrong reasons, because they're idiots.
I don't defend Bill Buckley's life. As a son of a blue collar New Yorker I always found him willing to talk down to the masses, but his intellect and his dedication to conservative ideals, which he helped create, can never be in question. In 1965 my HS Engish teacher took me and several other students to meet and talk with BB. I've met many true intellects since, but never one to surpass Bill Buckley.
WFB knows a thing or two about purges (and engaged in them at the right times imo).
What's more, WFB was hardly shy about engaging in such behavior when he was twenty-something (and still isn't, since he's effectively attempting to purge the President), so turn about would certainly be fair play... IF (and this, not the age of anyone who disagrees with WFB, is the heart of the matter) he is right on the merits.
Bill Buckley certainly appears libertarian in most respects these days as opposed to conservative; maybe he'll clear up where currently he stands in a future column or book.
Buckley is an icon, a faded icon, but an icon still; when his focus was on the campus he was the first to warn us of the indoctination and insularity among the intelligensia and a few of us listened, but now, when that battle has been largely abandoned, we have no need of hermit pundits nor their sage advice.
The Vietnamization of Irag continues apace and come election day, we will see a massive move to withdraw "with grace."
Buckley's just now figuring this out? Bush has never been a conservative.
Like Tony Blair did?
Gawd, Buckley makes a grandiose, sweeping statement that it entirely at odds with the reality in Iraq.
But you did bring it up. And you brought it up to cast accusations at me; i.e. I'm associated Buchanan (not true mind), therefor I'm associated with Nazis or must believe in Nazi ideology. If not that, what possible reason could you have had for bringing up Buchanan?
...and its founder thinks Hitler was a great man and that the 'Zionist lobby' on Capitol Hill is the real mover and shaker behind the Iraq War. The shoe fits, sport
What shoe? And fits who? And why is it relevant to our argument?
'Neoconservative' has become a somewhat pejorative term used by those such as yourself as a codeword for 'influential Jewish conservatives'. While not Jewish myself, the God I worship identifies Himself as Jewish, so my sympathies naturally lie in that direction.
So what, now I'm an anti-Semite now because I used the term? I used the term neo-conservative, and paleo-conservative because they are current and a lot of people use them here on FR. Now maybe you don't like the term neo-conservative but a lot of the neo-cons have accepted it and use it to describe themselves. As for my use of the term paeo-conservative, I'm referring to people like Buckley, whom this thread is about, I'm not sure I would include Buchanan along with him. In any case I'm not interested in Buchanan and I don't see what he has to do with any of my comments. Personally I do not subscribe to either the neo-conservative or the paleo-conservative camps, and I certainly don't subscribe to Buchanan's particular take on conservative.
Further, I've often heard folks on this forum refer to Hitler's national socialism as a localized hybrid of international socialism, a kind of sister to the Soviets. It would be pretty to think so, but Hitler's Nazis and Saddam's (and Assad's) Baathists don't derive their ideas from anything written by Marx, which has traditionally been the means by which one identifies socialist/communist parties and powers. Hitler's National socialism, for example, was a bastard child of Nietszche and racial/tribal/Folk-centric traditions heavily infused with militarism and antisemitic paranoia.
I did not claim that Nazism evolved from Communism. Marx was not the first socialist. National socialism and international socialism have different solutions to the problem of human society but they are both the same in that they do both try to fix man, and do approach the problem similarly. One did not evolve from the other so much as that they both evolved as logical solutions to the problems inherent in the dialectics of the revolutions of the 19th century. They are both populist ideologies. Both replace God with man, and both accept similar progressivist formulas.
Barry Goldwater syndrome.
You contend that what has been come to be called the "Neo-Conservative" movement is not populist?
As for the origin of the terms I'm unfamiliar with who coined them, but it seems to me that they both probably predate Buchanan. I use the terms broadly, in the same sense as they are used by opponents of the two positions, in the interest of objectivity. That is; neo-conservatism is a combination of an aggressive Wilsonian foreign policy with a watered-down socialist take on domestic issues, and is typified by the more progressivist elements of Nixon's supporters and specifically the presidencies of Reagan and W. Bush. Similarly I use “paleo-conservative” in the same sense as the neo-cons use it. That is, anyone who basically disagrees with the modern movement and where it is going. This includes backsliders who seem to be supporting a more pragmatic approach to the war on terror.
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