Buckley defined conservatism as the willingness to "stand athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who do."
And stop it did. The trend toward collectivism was, in large part, reversed, thanks to Buckley and National Review.
OH PLEASE!! Stopped? Reversed?
This year's field of candidates features on one side the two most hard-left Alinskyite trogs imaginable, and on the other a "compassionate" statist. This is a trend reversal?
What is a miracle is that the Leftward slide took so damned long. Here I agree with you, Bruce. WFB's contribution did slow the Progress of the disease.
We'll see a reversal when some of WFB's libertarian ideas are forged into legislation, when government actually shrinks as a percentage of GDP, when *AHEM* we elect a government that actually defends the First Amendment. *cough*
Bruce... Sir, I've been rude of late. Please forgive me. Look, I'll by a gas mask, don nitrile gloves and vote for, um, please don't make me say it?
Guys my age should act as gents. Buckley (nearly) always did.
Cheers.
Ran presumably you've been alive long enough to realize that the economy is significantly less centrally planned than it was in the decades following the New Deal, the draft is finished (remember Up From Liberalism?), and marginal income tax rates are way down. Personal freedoms have increased, not decreased.
Hillary is pandering to the activist left-wing in the Democratic Party, and Obama is about as left wing as McGovern was (remember him?), but neither has been elected President and neither has been able to do a thing to undue the network of free trade agreements that have been negotiated in the past two and a half decades. Moreover, before the primaries, Clinton was clearly a supporter of NAFTA.
Bruce, I'm only a naturalized citizen of 12 years or so, having been born and raised under the CBC. Thus my US historical context is limited.
I will add that six months or so into my visa here, I was quite taken by the ideas underlying the Constitution and the American reality.
Heh - Michelle Obama complained that "I've seen things get progressively worse" since she was a child... Well, yeah! The oncology of Progressivism will do that.
Dunno, Bruce... The First and Second Amendments are under unprecedented predations from a government class abetted by a complicit media juggernaut.
On the other hand, we swift-boated John F! Kerry and Dan Rather, Sulzberger has hoaxed a billion or two out of the Times share values and Huck is supporting the Fair Tax. There is hope.