Posted on 06/10/2006 1:19:53 PM PDT by CWOJackson
I've spent most of my life independently avoiding labels, but I've come to the firm conclusion that I'm a Happicon. I just can't be miserable all day. I remember watching my grandpop and a few of his friends sitting around complaining about how America and society had gone down the toilet. Just didn't seem like the way I wanted to go through life...but I have to admit, a lot of people around here bring back good memories of him.
I had my ultimate laugh last night though. I brought up the subject of "New England Clam Chowder" and one of the borderbots was actually able to link illegals into it.
Now that is world class misery.
Buchanan? Sobran? Yuk!
She's mildly attractive, but she doesn't do it for me. As mentioned earlier, I do like boobs and hers don't cut it for me. There's also something about her voice that gives me the creeps.
Oh, and Manhattan clam chowder is in every way superior to New England. Commie.
I shouldn't have tried. (Ditto on her voice....)
Back around 1945-55 we can see the rebirth of a number of different views of conservatism. We see the economic views that were far ranging -- Hayek, von Mises, Friedman, the Austrians and others were not in agreement as to how these would be articulated on the political and social side. We see the start-up of libertarian ideology by their great articulators at the same time we see Russell Kirk showing the constant strain of Edmund Burk through many lines of the cultural heritage of conservatism. We see Richard Weaver holding that Burke is too situational and that a full articulation is needed or the two divisions will be fighting forever.
We even have one of the great proponents of a meeting of the minds Frank Meyer and his "fusionism" was a leading light at Nation Review from whence this article arises.
His leadership on the issue was disparaged but it did make many "make nice".
In his last book of collected essays, Russell Kirk recounts how he and others of his era were called the Neo-conservatives first the era marking the close to the old Robert Taft political conservatism and Kirk then rises to the defence of Irving Kristol against disparagement with that same term in the 90s by saying that Kristol, Kirk and Hayek are all probably best described by that term of Hayek's, "old whig."
Also in the 90s, the rhetoric at the time of Kirk's funeral and memorials talked of the two great streams of conservatism, the white nile and the blue nile, and how like the river nile they came from some of the same sources, but by different paths they wound there way to the same destinations at the end.
This article personalizes the six decade distiction very unjustly and makes the matter worse than it needs be today.
We have the last two issues of Modern Age dealing with the little understood positions of Richard Weaver, himself the proponent of a middle way to conservative Rhetoric. This article is proposing that the ordering of Virtue and Freedom as proposed by John Milton is, as Russell Kirk proposed, the best intellectual source of middle ground.
This article does little but mislead and then falsely fill us in on the last twenty years of infighting with more blame assignment.
It serves no real purpose but to try and make the author appear "in-the-know."
Thanks. Bump.
Oh, by the way, if you can leave the lingering gunshots from Mannasas behind you for a while, read my 146 in light of the article (the whole thread is typical of this squabble) and tell me if you have read the two parter in Modern Age and can confirm my take on its view of Weaver and Milton.
148 was meant for you
Great post. I wish had your ability to say alot so briefly, which is the opposite of what was done in the lead article for this thread. You reduced the entire discussion to the essentials.
Not to discrete his effort but the author does an outstanding job of laying bare many of the Paleocons in their own words and deeds. I think I'll stick with him.
I agree Buchanan isn't a Nazi. But he seems to enjoy tweaking people by making them wonder if he's one:
"Cui Bono? For whose benefit these endless wars in a region that holds nothing vital to America save oil, which the Arabs must sell us to survive? Who would benefit from a war of civilizations between the West and Islam? Answer: one nation, one leader, one party. Israel, Sharon, Likud."
I think David Frum is absolutely correct that
"The echo in that previous paragraph of the Nazi slogan "Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer" is unlikely to have been unintentional."
Why Buchanan is so anti-Israel, I don't know. Defending a guy accused of being a vicious Concentration Camp guards might just be a desire to see an inncoent guy not be railroaded. But when he makes comments like the above, isn't it his fault that people think the worst?I mean, he's deliberately trying to provoke a reaction with comment like that, right?
Anyway, I think Rdb3 is right, Hayek's critique of European "conservatism" is in favor of what we call today American conservatism is great: http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig6/hayek1.html
He's still upset about his great-uncle who died at Auschwitz.
(Some good did come of it, though. Immediately afterwards, the protective railings of all guard towers were inspected and reinforced.)
While I certainly understand if this offends Nazis, I don't really give a rat's ass.
One might entertain that theory if one could find other examples of expressed concern on his part about a possibly innocent convict.
However, there just aren't any.
There are Neo-Con purists that never met a weapons system application that wasn't needed tomorrow or a country that didn't need our guidance. There are ideological libertarians that want the ghost of John Stuart Mill to replace the Constitution and for state government to be replaced by the local sewer district committees. There are Randian Objectivists that are awaiting Aynn's resurrection on the White House Lawn.
Lastly, there are people that would like to think of themselves as generally conservative, but want the media and Hollywood to like them and become McCain realists.
As the Pope said of Islam...I find them deficient. The vast bulk of principled conservatives find the pundit infighting like so many little Trotskyite fiefdom revolts. What is that expression of Tony Snow's? Be Reagan.
When I see the likes of pat buchanan, writing an article bemoaning at length that our forces killed innocent women and children in Pakistan, and never once mentioning the fact that the target had been some top terrorists and the women and children were unfortunately collateral deaths, screw that...be Patton.
They have their faults, but they haven't gone off the deep end like the fringeoids discussed in Frum's essay.
For example, Keyesters don't carry their social conservatism to the point of disdaining America as "decadent" and "deserving" terrorism in response (as Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson notoriously did in the wake of the 9-11 Massacre).
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