Posted on 08/20/2003 1:36:11 PM PDT by Korth
Sobran consorts with an extremely disreputable crowd like Sam Francis, the Rockford Institute, and the plain old garden variety anti-Jewish crackpot elements whom he encourages with his incessant Jew-bashing. I am acquainted with him and have been on a religious retreat with him. I admire his writing talent and wish he would get the well-chewed old slippers out of his mouth and start using his writing talent for things other than anti-Semitism and paleo-irrelevancy and offensive antiwar nonsense in time of war and his evident disappointment in not living in 1793 or something when the Federalists were in flower.
I assume, BTW, that you are not suggesting by the quotation marks that I have been critical of Keyes and that you were merely planting a customary false axiom as a member of paleopoliticalfarmers of America.
Sarcasm and condescension are not conducive to civil debate.
>BE: You parrot the Iraqi line. Hence: Baghdad Bob.
I had hoped for a more substantive answer. You know the facts about the Gulf War so what is your answer to the question "how do you define our actions?" If you don't think we cynically manipulated a regional dispute for our corporate interests and empire what do you think it was all about?
>BE: neo-Neville Chamberlainism is EVER going to be acceptable again as any kind of "conservatism."
So peaceful trade with all nations and not seeking monsters to destroy is now Chamberlainism is it? I reject your characterization as wrong and malicious but I guarantee that after several foreign policy failures that are costly in blood and treasure intervention for corporate benefits under the guise of do-gooderism and democracy will not be so palatable to any kind of conservatism.
>BE: Your ranting that assumes that actual conservatives have any use for the CIA
Bill Buckly was in the CIA as were a number of early NR members. What do you make of this little tidbit?-
"In 1952, a young "conservative" serving a one-year tour of duty with the CIA wrote an article for The Commonweal, a Catholic weekly. This man wrote:
"… we have got to accept Big Government for the duration — for neither an offensive nor a defensive war can be waged, given our present government skills, except through the instrument of a totalitarian bureaucracy within our shores....
"And if they deem Soviet power a menace to our freedom (as I happen to), they will have to support large armies and air forces, atomic energy, central intelligence, war production boards, and the attendant centralization of power in Washington — even with Truman at the reins of it all.
"That was 1952, and the writer of this article was calling for "Big Government for the duration" and "the attendant centralization of power in Washington" in order to oppose Communism. He wanted to fight Communism by adopting Marxism....Who do you suppose wrote those words? It was none other than William F. Buckley Jr."
Buckly and NR came as a wolf in sheep's clothing. It fractured and purged the right and reshaped the remainder to accept the establishment i.e. liberal world view of intervention, global wealth transfers, continuous war and domestic socialism all under the guise of national defense.
>BE:Ranting about US corporations and oil or the evil CIA does not suggest your conservatism.
I base my policy critiques on my core beliefs in maximum personal liberty, limited and localized government, the constitution - particularly that quaint little bit "to...establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our prosperity."
Does engaging in non-essential military action secure the liberty of military personnel or the nation as a whole? Losing one's life frivolously is not having your liberty secured now is it? To have one's life lost or body maimed or income confiscated purely for private businesses profits, for personal grandeur of a particular politician, to get votes in the next election or to get Moncia off the front page is a sin of the highest order and betrays the original purpose for the government.
Eisenhower warned us against the military-industiral complex (the speech originally included congress in the equation but that bit was dropped because informing the people that their representatives were tools of big business was too impolitic). Funny how Ike served that complex all his life but upon retirement saw fit to issue a warning. Seems he knew something. Like the less eloquent USMC General Smedly Butler who after retiring declared "war is a racket." He said he did not defend the US once in his career, he killed people to advance the interests of Wall Street.
>BE: Internationalism is another diplo-weenie scheme to tie the US down an restrict its freedom of intervention.
The difference between the "dipo-weenie" crowd and the "US free to intervene crowd" is like sects of Christians who disagree over baptism - should it be done as an infant or an adult - they are both Christians, they just differ on details. Likewise the intervention crowd both believe in intervention they simply disagree on who is top dog in the global government scenario.
>BE: In the last analysis, the air power, naval power and infantry power o the US accomplishes far more than a lot more useless diplomatic yak-yak.
Sounds like old fashioned gunboat diplomacy. Churchill, no paragon of virtue himself, did at least say "jaw, jaw is better than war, war." Your advice sounds like the callous and murderous "kill 'em all. Let God sort them out" mentality. Whoever does not agree with you is to be subjugated by force of arms? Real nice outlook on life, that.
No- In fact I would wager that his income and lifestyle have undergone transitions for the worse since the 1992 purging from NR. And the Left is always "anti war" no matter what (though they seemed to be very quite while Clinton was murdering people in Serbia and Kosovo for 78 days with dumb bombs at 15'000 feet.)
For those who fancy themselves Burkean, remember his statement that: All that it takes for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
As to von Hayek, on the one hand, no one distributed more "free" copies of Road to Serfdom that Young Americans for reedom which, trust me, was an organization with hardly a paleowhatever in sight and one that you would denounce as thouroughly neo, but, of course, YAF was simply conservative. On the other hand, time marches on and issues wax and wane. Road to Serfdom is timeless but von Hayek's agnosticism or atheism would not resonate well in conservatism as presently constituted any more than Irving Kristol's does. It was more often an attribute of, well, marxists and nazis. Nonetheless von Hayek saw very clearly through the central planning smog and is permanently in a place of high honor among genuine conservatives. So is Kristol for other reasons. I know of no movement (i.e., actual) conservative who does not honor and admire Coolidge for his wit, for his backbone and for his common sense.
Whatever their flaws and the were many in both cases, both TR and FDR were great presidents. Not conservative presidents as to domestic policy, but great presidents nonetheless. No one had to wonder whether FDR would wimp out in WWII. You can imagine how much he and MacArthur must have disagreed earlier on but he put no restraints on the war-making efforts of MacArthur. He made the unfortunate choice of Eisenhower to command SHAEF in Europe with resulting diplo-backside kissing placing Ike's shackles on Patton. FDR also made the mistake of recognizing the soviets and regarding them as more than temporary allies and Yalta, well, Yalta!!! He also employed Alger Hiss and godfathered the UN. FDR, however, did everything possible to prove Admiral Yamamoto's thesis and warning to his superiors: You have awakened a fearful giant! Battlefield results speak for themselves.
TR built the Great White Fleet and sent it around the world to show the colors. He engaged in gunboat diplomacy. He responded to the lovable Berber terrorist, The Raisuli, who demanded X dollars ransom or Perdicaris dead with the appropriate response as to Perdicaris alive in short order or The Raisuli dead. He even had the class not to track The Raisuli down after Perdcaris was recovered. He was a relentless patriot and one of the most remarkable men ever to hold the office. Hmmmm, Tommy Tancredo or Ron Paul OR TR. I'm going with TR.
Both TR and FDR are admired DESPITE their domestic policies and not because of them. On the other hand, what should FDR have done? Watch Americans starve in the streets? Crush the unions as criminal syndicalists? Kept prohibition? Told Americans that it was their own d. fault and their suffering was only justice? Start a relief program for bankers having difficulty handling the fees of their foreclosure lawyers?
Is Phyllis Schlafly a socialist? Dan Quayle? Bill Buckley? Jim Buckley? Bill Rusher? Jack Kemp? The Club for Growth? Grover Norquist? Ronald Reagan?
Conservatism is the antithesis of the cramped, unimaginative, neo-isolationist, antiwar, antidefense, beaujolais guzzling, white wine and brie consuming, self-annointed culterati who admire quaint little cultures like Serbia whose spasms of local atrocities have produced so much more in the way of history than could be consumed locally as George Will has written. Colorful little "cultures" to be sure but not very conducive to the well-being of families.
What you broadly reference as neo-cons are social revolutionaries????? Even the actual neo-conservatives (the aging New York intellectuals who rejected the left) are not that and have not been for a very long time.
Your first link also included Dwight Eisenhower and Herbert Hoover as Republicans rendered obsolete by history and reality. Why did you only mention Goldwater, von Hayek and Coolidge? Kristol did group Ronald Reagan (lions, and tigers, and bears, oh my!) with TR and FDR but you overlooked that.
Your post is an uncommonly silly post except among the paleowhatevers. Whatever that ideology of yours may be, it died several decades ago and is not likely to resurrect.
You keep on omitting Kristol's reference to Ronald Reagan as a "neo-conservative" 20th Century hero, according to Kristol. Why? And why no ellipsis to tip people off to the omission?
If the United States engages in evil in foreign policy (See the regime of the Arkansas Antichrist) like reducing American sovereignty, agreeing to Global Warming Treaties, agreeing to the jurisdiction of ANY foreign or "international" court ANYWHERE over American officials or military policy, if we fail to act against China if it invades Taiwan, etc., you can count on me to aggrssively dissent but NOT in league with the enemies of Western Civilization such as Justin Raimondo or the usual gang of foreign policy malcontents who ran the recent anti-war efforts. Many paleos like Fleming and Raimondo seem to subscribe to the theory that: America is always wrong. In that, they are like those labeled San Franciscio Democrats by the brilliant Jeanne Kirkpatrick. Those who act like San Francisco Democrats can expect to be labeled unpatriotic whether they like it or not because IT IS TRUE. Fleming started selling Dixie Tricks CD's and organizing pro-French (Pro-Axis of Weasel) stuff on the Chronicles website as soon as Chirac and Villepin began their despicable two-faced anti-American charade.
Western Civilization ought not to be identified with today's socialist and squeamish imitation of long-dead Europe. Robert Taft the Elder warned right after WWII that Europe was dead, had had its chance at freedom and spit the bit and that the US should make its future friends in the Third World. No one ever accused him of being a neo.
Henry's rhetoric never suggested that it issued from a man cowering in the corner reading poetry while guzzling wine and getting all weepy over the possiblity that there might actually be, well, WAR, with people getting hurt and all and profits being interrupted and, gee, its better to be nice than not nice and can't we all just get alooooong?????
Self-government has to do with rejecting international restraints on sovereignty, national restraints on state limited sovereignty of the Tenth Amendment kind and government that meets its responsibilities against domestic criminals and foreign threats, pre-emptively rather than waiting to be whacked first, particular after we have been whacked before. I do not care for democracy when it elects the Arkansas Antichrist or if it were to elect Mrs. Antichist. I love democracy when it elects Ronaldus Maximus. I prefer democracy to oligarchy because democracy's errors are more easily correctable. Read Ortega y Gassett's Revolt of the Masses but be SURE to also read the far more recent Christopher Lasch's Revolt of the Elites.
Sound instututions include the United States Army, the United States Navy the United States Marine Corps, the United States Air Force. We could use something like a State Department operated by patriots for a change. Maybe a patriotic spy agency that works for the United States and does so efficiently. The Roman Catholic Church, for all its flaws in this country under leftist stooges, is a sound institution as guaranteed on the Highest Authority. Many other churches are sound institutions as well. Homeschooling is a sound institution. A handful of schools are as well. There is a grave distinction between liberty and libertinism and more so with Randian self-indulgence. The Knights of Columbus are a sound institution.
If you fail to recognize the contribution of people like Norman Podhoretz, Midge Decter, the late Sidney Hook, Gertrude Himmelfarb, and, yes, Irving Kristol, the late George Meany, the late Daniel Patrick Moynihan, whatever their flaws and omissions, to many aspects of liberty, you are simply wrong.
You said that you did not understand plain English. I suggested the obvious remedy.
I define our actions as useful and ovedue even if the immediate beneficiary was the less than admirable leadership of Kuwait. Also as insuffiecient under Daddy Bush since we did not squash Saddam once and for all when we could easily have done so. If that meant fewer platoons of Arabs on our side, so what? Also Iraqi oil can pay for the invasion of Iraq over time and for rebuilding now.
You may have misssed it, unlike most o the world and akll of the conservatives but Neville Chambderlain was a cowardly cretin whose obsessions with trade and pacifism over morality enhanced the damage of WWII. Churchhill was a politician in a more liberal England. Jaw, jaw is most certainly NOT preferable to war, war, if the result is the oportunity for the enhancement of the armament of the enemies of our way of life.
Seeking monsters????? The monsters seek us. 9/11/01 was not the first time for this particular set of pus pockets. Gunboat diplomacy is the only kind that works for those with the gunboats.
"Peaceful trade with all nations" aka GATT and WTO violates an essential social compact here and is the treason of economic elites against the working people of this country. When enough are unemployed and impoverished to scrape the last nickel out of 3rd World slave labor, those elites will be the first to complain of the political backlash.
Bill Buckley was indeed in the CIA. So was William Sloane Coffin, Jr. and many Coffin-like weasels who much better characterize that agency's performance than does Buckley's brief service. Many family oil wells of Bill's father were confiscaed. The suggestion that Bill is a socialist is beneath contempt, looney tune libertarian notions notwithstanding. <> Instead of a string military, you would have preferred that, if Stalin's successors should ever reach Peotria with armies, a good lecture from the Libertarian Party or the noble resistance of the Peoria Chamber of Commerce would be an effective substitute for military force whacking the Russkies where they live first? Have I got that right?
Buckley and NR came in and purged the right? What right??? Seventeen halfwit semi-anarchists remembering the good old days before Hoover got elected? Ayn Rand????? The JBS?????
Eisenhower with the leftists favorite rant against the "military-industrial complex" was a conservative????? At a minimum we know that Robert Welch would not agree. OK, maybe Buckley was a little unfair to the JBS but they were getting a bit carried away.
Smedley Butler, a two-time Medal of Honor winner in Latin American interventions who went native after the fact and joined the leftist critique of what were Monroe Doctrine and TR Corollary exercises? Many things but not conservative any more than the more recent anti-American retired officers like Admiral LaRocque.
Also, since we abolished the draft hich was agross violation of liberty, we have established a professional military. Those who sign up know what they are signing up to do. Kill people and break things that respectively need killing and breaking. There are rumors that there are safer occupations. Nonetheless our military, not as well-compensated as they ought to be, do a fine job.
Personally, I see a lot more similarity between the cower in the corner sniffling crowd and the diplo-weenie crowd. Both essentially are working the peace at any price side of the street. Neither are remotely conservative. Our military is. Intervention and pre-emptive action is.
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