Alan Bock on Buckley

Nick Gillespie | February 28, 2008

The OC Register's Alan Bock writes about William F. Buckley, Jr.:

His intellectual independence shone through from time to time, as in his early understanding that the drug war was unwinnable and socially corrosive, and his realization fairly early on that the Iraq war was a disaster, something the war-addled folks to whom he turned over National Review have yet to come to grips with. I don't know whether it is a commentary on present-day conservatism or present-day cable news that it is difficult to imagine a program of civil discussion like "Firing Line" from the current batch of angry shouters and rude dealers in the ad hominem that pass for conservative (and most liberal) talkers today.

Bock also knocks Buckley for his Murray Rothbard obit while concluding "there's little doubt that he had an enormous impact on the history of this country."

Whole thing here.

Bock blogs at the OCR's always interesting Orange Punch blog (he's there along with Steven Greenhut and Mark Landsbaum) and has his own thang over at alanbock.blogspot.com.

Comments

|2.28.08 @ 9:12AM|#

I realize that it is totally off the subject - but how did you guys at Reason manage to miss this little tidbit about Kosovo that I found over at Freemarketnews.com?

HERE

I think it would be real interesting to know who owns the US-registered Albanian Macedonian Bulgarian Oil Corporation - the owner-operator of the proposed trans-Balkan or AMBO pipeline. No wonder the Bush administration was so quick to recognize Kosovo's independence.

|2.28.08 @ 9:18AM|#

WFB is a dead conservative so it is now safe for liberals everywhere to talk about how wonderful he was compared to current living conservatives. It's the same shtick every time a well known conservative dies; see the recent new found love for Reagan as an example. When Reagan was President and mattered, he was a war mongering senile old man hell bent on killing the homeless and starting World War III. Once the guy got Alzheimer's, he was Mr. Wonderful and so much better than the evil conservatives of the day.

The Wine Commonsewer|2.28.08 @ 9:41AM|#

John, you are so oh right on.

The Wine Commonsewer|2.28.08 @ 9:42AM|#

it is now safe for liberals everywhere to talk about how wonderful he was

Except for Joe, of course.

The Wine Commonsewer|2.28.08 @ 9:45AM|#

SASOB, interesting link. More interesting to me though is to speculate on how quickly GWB (and the rest of the West) would recognize, say, California if it were to declare itself independent of the US. Better, yet, Texas, cuz it once was an independent country.

|2.28.08 @ 10:35AM|#

SASOB, interesting link. More interesting to me though is to speculate on how quickly GWB (and the rest of the West) would recognize, say, California if it were to declare itself independent of the US. Better, yet, Texas, cuz it once was an independent country.

Thanks, TWC.

I know people here in Texas who would be only too happy to see Californicate leave the Union. ;-)

As for Texas, a few years back there was a small fringe movement afoot here that wanted to get the state to secede and declare as a republic. It didn't go over too well with most of the locals, and certainly not with the powers that be. Last I heard the authorities were chasing down one of the conspirators out in the West Texas or New Mexico desert. I never heard whether it was they or the rattlers and buzzards that got him.

The Wine Commonsewer|2.28.08 @ 1:46PM|#

I'd be happy even if they just split Californicate in two. Makes sense to me.

There was a movement afoot a while back to split it into three pieces. Roughly So Cal, the Bay Area, and the rural farm country, gold country, wine country.

Would have made for a strange shape, but if you look at the culture So Cal is very different from No Cal and the foothill and farm country more closely resembles the likes of Willy, Waylon, and Hank than it does Jerry Brown or Babs Boxer.

|2.28.08 @ 1:50PM|#

As for Texas, a few years back there was a small fringe movement afoot here that wanted to get the state to secede and declare as a republic.

I'm pretty sure its just folklore that Texas reserved the right to secede when it joined the union. As the only sovereign nation to join the United States, though, it might well have done so.

There's also some folklore that Texas reserved the right to split into five states, each with two Senators of its own. Not sure about that one.

|2.28.08 @ 2:24PM|#

It didn't go over too well with most of the locals

Probably because most of the locals used to live in Cali, they didn't come here for independence...

Gene Berkman|2.28.08 @ 7:17PM|#

David Boaz at The Cato Institute has an excellent column on Buckley and the Conservative Movement: http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9245