[DManA]

Don’t worship the person, embrace his principles.

[Old Teufel Hunden]

Jonah is right,

Revere the leaders of the past and pay proper homage to them. But don’t opine for the old days. March on and move forward!!

[Cheburashka]

The best conservatives are always dead; the worst are always alive and influential.

---

The Lefties wish all conservatives were dead, so they could miss them. Unfortunately for them, the live ones keep getting in the way of the Lefty agenda.

Make a Lefty happy: Die!!! Die!!! Die!!!

[agere_contra]

Buckley was a great man, and we owe him an enormous debt.

That said, most FReepers are better conservatives than Buckley. We are standing on the shoulders of a giant.

[r9etb]

A conservative populism is sweeping the land, and although I think it is for the most part justified and beneficial, you cannot expect millions of people to get very angry -- deservedly angry -- and expect everyone to behave as if it's an Oxford seminar.

Sorry, Jonah -- the problem is that you're trying to invoke an either/or condition. Either intellectual depth, or an angry sort of populism.

You mentioned "long on generals, short on troops," and that's a fair knock against the old conservatism.

Worse, though, is a movement that's long on troops and lacking generals. (Although, actually, if election results are any guide, modern conservatism is not long on troops, either.) In that case you get what we've got now -- an unfocused sort of anger, and a bunch of single-issue groups at war with each other as much as with the left. There is no core strategy -- something that relies on the generals more than the troops.

To continue the military metaphor, that's a perfect setup for a defeat in detail: "the tactic of bringing a large portion of one's own force to bear on small enemy units in sequence, rather than engaging the bulk of the enemy force all at once. This exposes one's own units to a small risk, yet allows for the eventual destruction of an entire enemy force."

Is that not exactly what's happening today?

Here is where conservatives need to swallow our pride(fulness) and look at what animates the long-term success of the left: they've got both generals and troops.

Unlike conservative populists, the left is not afraid of intellectuals; and unlike conservative intellectuals, the generals and troops on the left actually tend to work with each other.

But I'm not sure that conservatives are ready for that, yet. The current tone is definitely anti-intellectual.

[trisham]

William F. Buckley was a great man. Imho, Goldberg misses the mark here.

[rdb3]

For starters, no one confuses Breitbart for Buckley -- first and foremost, Breitbart himself -- and the only people making that comparison are those wishing to indict contemporary conservatism for one reason or another.

It does get tiresome.

Runaway Slave

[HowlinglyMind-BendingAbsurdity]

1) There is nothing wrong with nostalgia every now and then.

2)Conservatives are genuinely lacking strong leadership right now.

3) The period of the "conservative movement" from the late 1950s into the 1980s was a special time in which the genius of figures like Buckley and Reagan had an impact on American culture in a way which you do not exactly see repeated by certain so-called "conservatives" right now.

4) Some would argue (and have argued) that the old National Review had a conservative edge which has been tamed to some degree. American society has also changed, so the culture that produced Buckley and Reagan has also been disappearing. That is more obviously the case for the Catholic Buckley as the Church has changed even more dramatically. It would be an understatement to say that, at least as far as conservative matters go, things have gotten a little less coherent and a little strange on the Right in church circles. Leadership is lacking there as well. If there is a voice one could point to there who immediately generates an audience, it would be interesting to know the name.

The next conservative will need the Catholic vote.
Will he get it?