Posted on 10/09/2008 10:43:52 PM PDT by Chet 99
Modern conservatism began as a movement of dissident intellectuals. Richard Weaver wrote a book called, “Ideas Have Consequences.” Russell Kirk placed Edmund Burke in an American context. William F. Buckley famously said he’d rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston phone book than by the faculty of Harvard. But he didn’t believe those were the only two options. His entire life was a celebration of urbane values, sophistication and the rigorous and constant application of intellect.
Driven by a need to engage elite opinion, conservatives tried to build an intellectual counterestablishment with think tanks and magazines. They disdained the ideas of the liberal professoriate, but they did not disdain the idea of a cultivated mind.
Ronald Reagan was no intellectual, but he had an earnest faith in ideas and he spent decades working through them. He was rooted in the Midwest, but he also loved Hollywood. And for a time, it seemed the Republican Party would be a broad coalition — small-town values with coastal reach.
In 1976, in a close election, Gerald Ford won the entire West Coast along with northeastern states like New Jersey, Connecticut, Vermont and Maine. In 1984, Reagan won every state but Minnesota.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Ronald Reagan was no intellectual,
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Stop posting crap from this loser.
Ronald Reagan was the consummate intellectual, he spent his whole life, reading and writing about issues and left a paper trail 100 miles long. Just because he didn’t pose and preen like the sub-intellect “intellectuals” like Al Gore, John Kerry, Peggy Noonan and David Brooks doesn’t change that fact.
Ronald Reagan was a brilliant man, stunningly brilliant and ahead of his time.
Read “Reagan in his own hand” for proof.
Who is this David Broks guy? He sounds like a schmuck...
He’s the NY Times “House Conservative”
No thanks.
Brooks can't serious. Ever hear of a guy named Barack Obama?
>>>>>Nobody so relentlessly divides the world between the “normal Joe Sixpack American” and the coastal elite.
Palin is merely pointing out the differences between those that want to retain traditional America, versus those who want us to become a colony of European socialism.
The left can’t stand any conservative.
Especially the highly successful ones like Ronald Reagan.
An interesting article from one who claims to be a conservative. I didn’t know much about him until recently, but of one thing I am sure- he has NO CLUE what it means to be a conservative and he doesn’t know how to “read” the landscape.
His assessment of how we have “lost” the banking community, for example, does not take into account the banking executives who have made sweetheart deals with DC leading to their protected thievery, and THAT was with democrats more than with republicans. The “loss” of certain groups had nothing to do with ideology and everything to do with self-enrichment. As to the lawyers? they were never conservatives and the left can have them.
Conservatives have an abiding love of our history and what we believe about human dignity and freedom and THAT is the difference between us and those who think that some humans are just more “evolved”. I would far prefer to stand with those who believe in God and are the “salt of the earth” than with those who are so grand in their own mind. It seems Mr Brooks doesn’t get this.
I wonder what WFB would think of this?
“I won't insult your intelligence by suggesting that you really believe what you just said.”
~~~ William F. Buckley, Jr.
No one in the Republican Party told the intellectuals to get lost: they told the intellectuals to stop slumming in the filth the Left had been selling as culture for the last 40 years.
It seems Brooks has decided whose parties he wants to attend...
Who still thinks Brooks is a conservative? Crickets chirping...
Obviously this snob is embarrassed in front of his liberal peers in Manhattan, that his party chose Gov Palin.
What a sleazeball.
Frankly, after listening to and reading both Reagan and Buckley for the last 30 years, I beleive Reagan to be twice teh intellect of WFB. Certainly twice as wise. Not because Buckley wasn’t highly intelligent, he was. But Reagan was even moreso, for he understood the world better and fought it in the trenches.
I have more knowledge in my big toe than Brooks will ever have.
Merely an observation.
FReegards!
Excellently well said!!
Forget terms like neocon or paleocon. The Republican party is divided between social conservatives and society conservatives. Society conservatives are embarrassed by the social conservatives that came along after Carter to take them to the party. Truth be told, they are still embarrassed by Reagan, and they detest the fact that Sarah, not Rudy or Mitt, has emerged as the leader that will bring the Republican Party out of the dung heap it has thrown itself into. With all due respect to the think tanks and wine sipping intellectuals, without leaders like Sarah, the conservative movement is all for naught. Wake up and smell the liberals. This government is rancid with their stink. Either Republicans get together to back those passionate enough to win, or we resign ourselves to being governed by the radicals on the left.
There are a number of “society conservatives”, especially over at the Weekly Standard, who love Palin.
Does one have be -
Does one have to be Jewish to be a “schmuck”?
I really get angry when people say Reagan wasn’t smart, here is a guy who was a true intellect, spent his whole life reading and writing in 10 times the quantity of the intellectual lilliputians who criticize him.
He had no time for sitcoms or nonsense, a true renaissance man, constantly savaged by morons who can’t write their way out of a paper bag. Peggy Noonan would have you believe she was his “brain”. Reagan was notorious for polishing the speeches written for him, he fought for “tear down this wall”, the State Department weasels and “advisers” kept telling him to take it out, he kept writing it back in. Peggy Noonan couldn’t amount to a pimple on his butt.
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