Facebook Political Debate

It seems Facebook has been bringing out the political pundint in me. With it's ever-reaching and interconnected web of social contacts and opinion publishing tools, it has afforded me many opportunities over the past few weeks to engage friends, and strangers, in discussions and debates over various political and economic issues. While not the first, this is the first I am sharing.

A friend posted a link to an article about Christopher Buckley endorsing Barack Obama.

CB is the son of William F. Buckley, seen by many as the founder of the Right-wing Conservative movement, championed by his magazine, the National Review.

Read the article here. Then read WFB's mission statement for the National Review here.

My friend tagged the posted link by asking where I was, asking me for my opinion with a smirk. I shared it.

Since you asked...

Kathleen Parker couldn't have made the article more ridiculous if she tried.

Her argument:

WFB was a radical non-conformist, disgusted by the middle-of-the-road, luke-warm conservatives.

CB is just like his dad because he is a radical non-conformist, disgusted by the middle-of-the-road, luke-warm conservatives.

This is so off base it's silly!

Truth:

WFB was a radical non-comformist who saw the so-called "conservatives" and Reps being lazy and not doing anything to stem the Liberal Left tide. They were too close to the middle. He established a far-right stance. Some quotes, from 1955:

"The growth of government (the dominant social feature of this century) must be fought relentlessly... Read More. In this great social conflict of the era, we are, without reservations, on the libertarian side."

"...we are, without reservations, on the conservative side."

"The most alarming single danger to the American political system lies in the fact that an identifiable team of Fabian operators is bent on controlling both our major political parties (under the sanction of such fatuous and unreasoned slogans as "national unity," "middle-of-the-road," "progressivism," and "bipartisanship.") Clever intriguers are reshaping both parties in the image of Babbitt, gone Social-Democrat."

"The competitive price system is indispensable to liberty and material progress. It is threatened not only by the growth of Big Brother government, but by the pressure of monopolies, including union monopolies. What is more, some labor unions have clearly identified themselves with doctrinaire socialist objectives."

"No superstition has more effectively bewitched America's Liberal elite than the fashionable concepts of world government, the United Nations, internationalism, international atomic pools, etc. Perhaps the most important and readily demonstrable lesson of history is that freedom goes hand in hand with a state of political decentralization, that remote government is irresponsible government. It would make greater sense to grant independence to each of our 50 states than to surrender U.S. sovereignty to a world organization."

Before sharing the previous convictions, WFB finished his column with this:

"For we offer, besides ourselves, a position that has not grown old under the weight of a gigantic, parasitic bureaucracy, a position untempered by the doctoral dissertations of a generation of Ph.D's in social architecture, unattenuated by a thousand vulgar promises to a thousand different pressure groups, uncorroded by a cynical contempt for human freedom. And that, ladies and gentlemen, leaves us just about the hottest thing in town."

He established the National Review to fight the Liberal Left.

CB has endorsed Obama, designated the most liberal member of the Senate, and who adheres to the very ideas, systems, and strategies that WFB viewed as militant, and set out to thwart as best as possible.

WFB, like Regan, asserted that he did not leave the Rep party. The Rep party left him. He stood at the Right, and the Rep party drifted to the center.

This has happened again. I feel the same as Reagan and WFB did. The Rep party has abdicated its responsibilities and abandoned its core values, looking more and more like the Left it supposedly opposes.

CB is looking at a party that has drifted to the center, and Parker has the baseless audacity to say that he is following in his father's footsteps by jumping all the way to the left? Ridiculous!

Jesus was a radical who stood up against the Jewish leaders, leaders who had turned Judaism into a crushing burden. He trained his disciples to follow in his footsteps, to free people.

Then Peter, seeing Jesus' followers becoming lazy and content, not doing their job, and reverting back, did his best to imitate Jesus by standing up in a radical way, and siding with the religious leaders and the Roman gov't.

See! They're both alike because they did something radical! That would make Jesus proud.

Correction: CB quoted Ronald Reagan, calling him a real conservative. Makes it even crazier.

Basically, his reasoning is this: McCain and the Reps of the last 8 years are not enough to the right, so I will go all the way to the Left to solve the problem. I was on the Right, my party drifted towards the Left, so I will support the far Left.

The problem with McCain and the current Reps is that they are too often like the left with various issues. It makes no sense to go even further.