Posted on 01/22/2016 10:38:17 AM PST by Albion Wilde
So the National Review Magazine Cartel of buffoon pundits, believe they are the chosen few, better and above, we the people...sorry, not so, or true!!! They think they are all legends in their own time....fact is: the only legend they are, is in their own ego driven minds!!! Let me remind these pompous fools and faiilures....that it is we, the people, that choose our leaders with our votes, not your thoughts & guidance!!! Hang it up...deadbeat losers!!!
“GO DONALD J. TRUMP”
Likewise!
It is. Appreciate your having read it. Blessings...
Well said!
Bless you!
This is the biggest pile of bullshit ever to appear on Free Republic.
Exactly so. One has to ask, what is their value? The more intellectually pure, the more impotent.
Many thanks...
Very much so.
On the other hand, given where WFB Jr. was in the last years of his life, I wouldn't necessarily assume he'd be that enthusiastic about Ted Cruz either.
So I'm not sure that the current crew betrayed Buckley's legacy. Where they are now has something to do with the malaise that he was in in his last years. Buckley was pretty disillusioned in his last years. For one thing, he wasn't as confident about the Iraq War as his associates at the magazine were.
He also didn't have the fight in him that he once did. It seemed like the good fight and the hard work of getting a movement started were in the past. It was clear that he couldn't go on forever, but just what to do and where conservatism should go in the future were unclear.
Buckley would probably have rejected Trump, as he did in his 2000 article, but for outsiders -- people who aren't movement conservatives or Buckley's ideological associates -- Trump 2016 looks a lot like Buckley for mayor 1965, an eccentric millionaire with controversial ideas making a big splash in the political pond.
You could see a tension in Buckley between the thinker who valued intellectual depth and consistency, and the provocateur who wanted to shake things up and bring about change, and that conflict is still alive today, even after WFB Jr. has passed from the scene.
Trump supporters stand firm DO NOT listen to this garbage, and ALWAYS remember what the BASTARDS said about Reagan, just about the SAME thing and NO I am not comparing Trump to Reagan just the political discourse!!!
Thanks for the article. There is a very apt response to it in the comments:
ChrisZ * 3 hours ago
It's great to have Buckley's unforgettable literary voice on this site again; I read the whole piece aloud to myself in my best WFB impression, and relished reciting the line about Burr and Hamilton and their "conclusive encounter in Weehawken." Just beautiful.I miss having someone of his wisdom and perception around today, to guide us. The truth is that we conservatives have been in mourning since the loss of WFB, Reagan, Thatcher, Solzhenitsyn, John Paul II, Neuhaus, Kristol ... it's painful to continue the list. No one of their maturity and accomplishment has arisen to take their places, and we as a movement (and as a country) are suffering for it.
Buckley was right to caution against the demagogue as the candidate who promises the voters Nice Things. But what do you call it when the voters have asked for an uncomplicated and reasonable thing, and the elected officials refuse to deliver it--even lie about it as candidates? That seems to be our situation today, regarding immigration. For at least the past 15 years, the majority of Americans have wanted a more restrictive, rational, and controllable immigration regime. Some of us cast votes for candidates whom we thought would advance that cause. But nearly to a man, and regardless of party, they were unresponsive, and even went so far as to subvert the existing immigration laws of this country.
The terrible result for public policy has brought us to the present impasse. The success of Trump's candidacy from the very beginning was predicated on his promise to build the wall, and that promise has sustained him throughout the subsequent antics of all the candidates (including himself). At any time during the past seven months, any one of the Republican alternatives could have embraced the Trump program on this issue, and effectively ended the major rationale for Trump's candidacy. But every one of them proved too feckless, too coopted by special interests, to do so. So they will lose, and Trump will win.
I think WFB would have understood the dynamic in play here, even if he disagreed with it; and I like to think he would have appreciated Trump's ascendancy as a vindication of democracy--not in it's noblest or prettiest aspect, certainly, but in its blunt assertion that the will of the citizenry should prevail in large questions of national consequence.
Masterful expedition Albion Wilde!
One thing that differs sharply from the time Buckley set out that theory -- almost 50 years ago -- is the burgeoning and ubiquity of the media, particularly the 24/7 news cycle that demands sensationalism, and failing to get enough, creates it. Trump is actually a better candidate because in addition to his other skills as a developer of complex projects, he is already tempered by, and hardened to, the media game.
He’s getting better at it with time.
This was a really good editorial, and I hope you’ll write more. But Please be sure to call them an editorial on the news activism page so they’ll get the views they deserve.
And just yesterday you insisted that I never ping you again, and I cordially expressed regret and bid you farewell; and to the best of my knowledge, I did not ping you to this. If I did, I regret inconveniencing you so distressingly. If I did not, what are you doing here posting to me, sitetest? FR courtesies only extend one way?
Many thanks.
All this baloney about “the establishment supports Trump” is completely debunked and the opposite confirmed by National Review. They are RINO, GOPe, elite establishment. And they HATE Trump. Now, that’s logical and true, and CONSISTENT (I like consistency) despite the cognitive dissonance of those who want to say Trump is supported by the GOPe or they prefer him over Cruz. That’s a smoke screen and a false meme that’s been sown and spread about online.
Pray AMerica wakes
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