David Frum, A Buckley For Our TimeINSANE.
Frum is on a mission to penetrate Fox World with a message from reality.
by Jonathan Rauch
Saturday, April 10, 2010
In October 1965, William F. Buckley made it possible for American conservatives to come in from the wilderness and govern. In his magazine, National Review, he published a 12-page "special feature section" that read Robert Welch and his John Birch Society followers out of respectable conservatism.
Welch and the Birchers saw liberalism and communism as essentially the same thing. Their kookiness, according to Buckley, threatened to discredit both anti-communism and anti-liberalism. "Mr. Welch, for all his good intentions, threatens to divert militant conservative action to irrelevance and ineffectuality," Buckley wrote. "By the extravagance of his remarks, he repels, rather than attracts, a great following."
Buckley's gambit succeeded. The Birchers and their conspiracy-mongering were banished from the mainstream conservative coalition, and the stage was set for the reality-based critique of liberalism that brought Ronald Reagan to power.
The Birch Society nowadays is a trivial remnant (although it has a pretty spiffy website). But extremism, insularity, and anti-intellectualism are thriving within the conservative movement as they have not since the 1960s. Haven't you heard? Hillary Rodham Clinton and Benito Mussolini are essentially the same thing! President Obama is working to end the American Republic and impose European-style socialism! Why, he may not even be an American! (Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, the rock star of the Republican Right, said last year that Obama's citizenship is a "fair question." Sure. And, as Welch insisted, it's a fair question whether Dwight Eisenhower was a communist.)
If there is a Buckley today, his name is David Frum. "We've built a whole alternative-reality system," he said in an interview last week. "Conservatism is shrinking into a movement of cultural dissent."
WF Buckley loved Rush, and Frum hates him; ergo: Rauch is wrong.
Totally.
WFB contributed MIGHTILY to conservative thought in every medium. Frum has contributed zero to the advance of conservatism in the USA. ZERO. Nobody takes him seriously except leftists in the MSM who want a TALKING HEAD they can call a Republican who will trash REPUBLICANS.
McCain used to fit the bill. Now it's Frum - probably because the left is pissed at McCain for bringing Sarah Palin to the foreground.
Frum's strategy for "saving" the GOP is ILLOGICAL: We CANNOT make the USA more conservative by making the GOP less conservative.
REPEAT:
We CANNOT make the USA more conservative by making the GOP less conservative.
REPEAT: WE CANNOT MAKE THE USA MORE CONSERVATIVE BY MAKING THE GOP LESS CONSERVATIVE.
We need to get MORE Americans to realize that conservative principles are not only at the core of our Founding principles, but are the principles which inform the policies that actually work effectively, while leftist principles and policies do not — not anywhere or at anytime.
Private schools are better than public.
Social Security is a bankrupt PONZI SCHEME.
Medicare and Medicaid are bankrupt, and both are rife with fraud and extremely poorly run.
If gov't ran things better than private enterprise then we’d all be speaking Russian and driving Yugo’s! and China and India would’ve not reformed — or started feeding all their people and exporting products and well-trained well-educated people by the MILLION.
And North Korea would be better than South Korea.
And Cubans still be richer than Jamaicans — as they once were.
And so on.
Even the NYTimes’ Kristof admitted this week that blacks were better off living in Rhodesia than Zimbabwe.
Most recently, socialism caused the Housing Bubble and the housing crash and the financial crash.
FACE IT FOLKS: socialism is the biggest cause and “prolonger” of poverty in the world — and also the leading purveyor of genocide in the 20th Century.
If we REALLY want to make poverty history then we need to make socialism history.
Getting back to Frum and Rauch:
Watering down conservative values to attain more political support would not lead the USA to become less statist or less leftist; ergo: it would not help America grow and prosper.
Watering down conservative values will not yield the GOP more votes, either. Scott Brown was PRO-WATER-BOARDING and ANTI-OBAMACARE - it helped him win.
THEREFORE: Frum — by promoting a watered down squishy PC-GOP - is hurting not only the GOP but the future of the USA.
He’s effectively doing the work of Soros.
I think he should be ignored.
LET ME REPHRASE THAT:
Most people already ignore him; I see no reason for that to change.
A WORD ABOUT RAUCH: HIS ESSAY MAKES ME BELIEVE HE'S A BAD PERSON BECAUSE IN IT HE'S ESSENTIALLY SURREPTITIOUSLY TRYING TO EQUATE TEA PARTIERS WITH BIRCHERS AND RACISTS.
IT'S A FALSE CHARGE AND I DESPISE HIM FOR IT.
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