Posted on 08/19/2003 1:23:35 PM PDT by Antiwar Republican
Meet Warren Buffett’s Daddy Bill Kauffman From The American Enterprise, July/August 2003, p. 48 Warren Buffett, the legendary investor whose taste for hamburgers and life in Omaha, Nebraska gives him a reputation for Middle American eccentricity in the world of high finance, is just another colorless gray-pinstriper when compared with his father: Rep. Howard Buffett (R-NE), who half a century ago was perhaps the most radical and principled Republican member of Congress. The Buffetts were pillars of Omaha. Howard Buffett was a stockbroker, "gentle and sweet-natured," in the words of Warren's biographer Roger Lowenstein. His politics, though, were to "the right of God," cracked one local banker. Buffett was elected to Congress in 1942 with a pledge to keep FDR from "fasten [ing] the chains of political servitude around America's neck." He marked himself an oddball by returning a pay raise to the Treasury and by subjecting each piece of legislation to a simple test: "Will this add to, or subtract from, human liberty?" Very few House bills passed Howard Buffett's test. In four non-consecutive terms representing Omaha in the U.S. House of Representatives, the radical backbench Republican compiled an almost purely libertarian record. He opposed whatever New Deal alphabet-soup agencies and Fair Deal bureaucracies emerged from the black lagoon of the Potomac. As the historian Joseph Stromberg has written, "the only [current] member of Congress who bears comparison with Buffett is Ron Paul," the Texas Republican and courageous naysayer. Buffett was also a strict isolationist, denouncing NATO, conscription, the Marshall Plan ("Operation Rathole"), and the incipient Cold War, which he believed would enchain Americans in "the shackles of regimentation and coercion...in the name of stopping communism." Foreign aid was a Buffett bugaboo. The story is told that as the family drove past the British Embassy late one night, Howard, seeing the lights still on, quipped, "They even stay up late to think of ways to get our money." Buffett summed up his views of America and the world in a speech on the House floor condemning the Truman Doctrine: "Even if it were desirable, America is not strong enough to police the world by military force. If that attempt is made, the blessings of liberty will be replaced by tyranny and coercion at home. Our Christian ideals cannot be exported to other lands by dollars and guns. Persuasion and example are the methods taught by the Carpenter of Nazareth, and if we believe in Christianity we should try to advance our ideals by his methods. We cannot practice might and force abroad and retain freedom at home. We cannot talk world cooperation and practice power politics." Dissent must be its own reward; seldom does it bring promotion. Howard Buffett retired from politics after losing the 1954 Republican Senate nomination to Roman Hruska, who would achieve immortality in 1970, when he defended Nixon's doomed Supreme Court nominee G. Harrold Carswell from charges of "mediocrity" with the immortal effusion, "Even if he were mediocre, there are a lot of mediocre judges and people and lawyers. They are entitled to a little representation, aren't they?" Even his critics conceded that Howard Buffett was no mediocrity. To The Nation, he was "an able young man whose ideas have tragically fossilized." In retirement, he had the good fortune to befriend an energetic young economist named Murray Rothbard, who would in time become the Happy Warrior of the libertarian movement. For years, Rothbard touted the wisdom of Howard, the Buffett who was neither billionaire nor beachbum wasting away again in Margaritaville. Congressman Buffett's son, while revering Pop as a tower of integrity and honesty, seems not to have inherited the old man's libertarian streak. Warren Buffett is a liberal Democrat whose favorite political causes are legalized abortion and population control. But surely the father bequeathed the son a confident contrariety, for if Warren Buffett lacks Howard Buffett's politics, he shares his disdain for the eastern citadels of commerce and power, choosing to live in his hometown of Omaha: a radically decentralist act of which Rep. Buffett would have heartily approved.
(Do you think liberty-minded people are born that way, or is it a factor of their upbringing? If so, what did Howard do wrong so I can avoid his mistake?)
Just like Hillary....
That is exactly like Hillary. It seems that there alot of baby boomers who act that way.
I think it's fair to say that's what the '60s were really all about.
He became a liberal after he started making a lot of money.
The idiot is also leaving billions to pro abortion groups to keep the women's right to do what they want with their own body.
This makes me feel like God is smiling at me.
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