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Building Buckley

Submitted by Clarendon on Wed, 09/09/2009 - 11:52
in

Patrick Ruffini wonders if we can have Buckley back. The short answer? No. That yacht has sailed off into the sunset, and William F. Buckley won't be coming back. If we want a new Buckley, it's up to us to build one. Frankly, we're failing... not only to build the next Buckley, but to build a conservative movement of our own.

You know, William F. Buckley was 30 years old when he started National Review. He was 35 when Young Americans for Freedom was founded at his home in Sharon, Connecticut. He was 41 when he started Firing Line. People my age (I turned 35 not too long ago) remember Buckley as an older man, and we forget that the leaders we grew up with were our age when they started the modern conservative movement in the 1950's.

 

And what have we done with ourselves? Our generation specializes in creating insubstantial things; blog posts that become outdated hours after they're posted, commentaries that lose their meaning when the trolls in the comments get ahold of them, appearances on television and radio that go from an already too short 6-7 minute appearance to a YouTube'd 30 second soundbite (often taken out of context). It's hard to build a Buckley when our media seems designed for Tila Tequila, but ultimately we can't use that as an excuse. We have plenty of reasons to give for our failures, but those excuses don't absolve us of our responsibility to take charge of the conservative movement.

Patrick Ruffini says it's time for a return to Buckley's "elite conservatism". The only problem is we don't have anyone that can pull it off. The spread of pop culture has made intellectualism a thing of the past. Bill Maher is what passes for intellectual entertainment these days, for God's sakes. The star of such classics as "D.C. Cab" and "Amazon Women on the Moon" is one of the leading intellectual lights in pop culture for our generation. Can you imagine trying to package the pure erudition and intelligence (with a healthy dose of elite snobbery) of a reincarnated Buckley in a package that mass audiences would consume? We need to focus less on Buckley's elitism and appeal to middlebrow culture and focus more on what Buckley was able to create out of whole cloth.

It's sobering to realize that it's time for your generation to step up and take the lead, but the sooner we all realize that the better off we'll be. It's not enough for us to work for the message men. We have to set the message as well, and just like Buckley, we have to create something truly new and different for our time. Saying it is easier said than done, and I know all too well how difficult it is to go from being a Z-list member of the chattering class to shaping the conservative philosophy. I won't even pretend to have the answers as to how best to go about building our new conservative movement. I only know it's our time, our place, and our responsibility.

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Comments

 You can start by getting rid

Submitted by In between on Wed, 09/09/2009 - 12:52.

 You can start by getting rid of Blimpball, Shamity, Beck, and Levin. They talk all day about God and country and/or the sky is falling and they have no answers. They are a worthless bunch that said nothing for 8 years of failed ideologies and deficits and debt. It ruined the republican party and I will never believe the crap from these people again.

But we won't get rid

Submitted by Clarendon on Wed, 09/09/2009 - 13:24.

But we won't get rid of them until we have a new stable of radio and television stars who are able to generate an audience of their own.  Ideally online networks like PJTV would be developing young stars, but I think it's a mixed bag to date. 

I agree and disagree

Submitted by Farfennugen on Wed, 09/09/2009 - 17:58.

 There needs to be new voices in the GOP.  The current ones have made me leave the party.  But to slam Bill Maher for past movies is not fair.  Have you seen any of Reagan's old movies?  He is considered intellectual entertainment because he has big names on both sides of the issues.  I like good debate.  Not whining and conspiracies.  Voices that provide solutions and honest debate will help our country.

The Intellectual Reagan?

Submitted by Clarendon on Wed, 09/09/2009 - 18:23.

Farfennugen,

I'd disagree with calling Reagan an intellectual.  A very smart man, certainly, and a man who understood big ideas.  Still, Reagan the politican wasn't a public intellectual, and I'd say his movie career would have stood in the way if he had tried to pass himself off as one. 

The above four posts brought to you by...

Submitted by JakeMountain1 on Thu, 09/10/2009 - 10:01.

a trio of Democrat trolls.

Telling the GOP what to do and what not to do, with a few gratuitous and baseless smears tossed in for good measure.

If we wanted or needed this kind of insight, we could get it at the Daily Kos.  Thanks guys, but your comments are deemed "No Sale".

I can assure you

Submitted by Clarendon on Thu, 09/10/2009 - 10:30.

I can assure you Jake, that I'm not a Democrat troll.  What I am is a 35-year old conservative, living on the outskirts of D.C., at the edge of the chattering class, who recently had the dismaying realization that my generation needs to get on the stick and start asserting ourselves more in the party.  I want to give people like Jon Henke and Patrick Ruffini the serious consideration that their ideas deserve, and this was my response. 

I think you're confusing trolling with non-homogenous thought... which, frankly, is part of our problem these days.

 

In perfect agreement

Submitted by Orthovector on Thu, 09/10/2009 - 11:21.

Clarendon is right and In between is flat wrong.  One doesn't build a movement by getting rid of anything, but by building on whatever strength is there.  And Rush, Levin, Beck, much as they bother me, are serious strengths.  After all, who did WFB 'get rid of' in building the movement from the beginning?  (Later on, he pushed the fringe crazies like the Birchers out, but only after there was something to push them out of!)

 Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, and

Submitted by In between on Thu, 09/10/2009 - 12:23.

 Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, and Levin were no where to be found with the idiocy of the Bush administration. Yep, they can dish it out, but they can't take it. Even a guy who filled in for Limbaugh said the deficits were good, as well as Cheney. 

Sorry, we can't have a one sided world. Bush left this country and foreign policy in a mess. And these guys could not tell the truth. We saw the true republicans with right wing rhetoric that destroyed this country. 

If you want strength, then invest in your country, in your people, and in the future. There is no future with neoconism, corporate fascism, militarism, and religionism. The democrats can be just as bad, but let's call it for what it was and let us repair the country for what it should be, and you are not going to get it with stupid ideologies.

Fertile Ground

Submitted by Pachydermata on Thu, 09/10/2009 - 12:40.

 I doubt Bill would have fared well in the current media mix. A majority of Firing Line's 33 years were spent on the Public Broadcasting Service. There he drew an audience from across the political spectrum, one attracted by the high level of intellectual discourse and subject matter. Ratings were apparently of little importance, though the show was always popular by PBS standards. But the very notion of mouthing talking points for sycophantic ditto-heads to goose the ratings would have been abhorrent. The current crop bears no more resemblance to Buckley than a carnival barker to Cicero. Its not just finding the next Buckley but also finding a platform where he/she can BE the next Buckley.

Fertile Ground has a great point.

Submitted by Brendan F Kelly on Thu, 09/10/2009 - 13:13.

Fertile Ground is right, Firing Line would never make it on the air on Fox News... (in fact that would be a tremendiously funny satire piece if someone would write it, think of a faux memo from Rupert Murdoch talking about what has to be changed on Firing Line before he would pick it up.... " Can we can this Buckley guy?  You need a thesarius to understand him! That won't play well.  At least get him a co-host who has legs and tits?"

That being said, Camile Pagilla had a great point yesterday in Salon, (of all places)  when she said "First of all, too many political analysts still think that network and cable TV chat shows are the central forums of national debate. But the truly transformative political energy is coming from talk radio and the Web -"

http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2009/09/09/healthcare/

The difference between Buckley isn't that he was a snob, he actually WAS a genuine intelectual. Not only had he read the Great Books, he assumed those around him had as well.  If he were to say "I find the self-obsession of the inside the beltway chattering class akin to Emperior Vallentinian II's assination of Flavius Aetius" it wasn't to show off how much smarter he was, it was because it was an appropriate analogy.

I can remember thinking in the late 1970s that what the Conservative movement needed was someone who could take the serious thought of Buckley and popularize it... my (rather inappropriate) phrase was "we need to put  a centerfold in National Review".  Talk Radio and Fox News has done that, and perhaps all to well. Now it is now all about the centerfold and nothing about the articles.

Now we need less populisim in the movement and more serious thought.

More importantly, I think we need to recognize Talk Radio and Fox as what they are, something to fill air time between ads for the mortgage minute guy and Gold-line. At one time this was understood, and your talk host would be excited and honored to get someone like Newt Gingrich as a guest, becuase they would be able to update the audience on what was really happening, and what was going on, and offer serious insight. Now the shows are all about the demi-gogic  hosts views and not about insight or serious discussion of policy issues.

As such I think the serious discussions should move to the web, (as they appear to have been) and I also think that there should be some move to repudiate the Michael Savages of the world. There is no need for the elected leadership of this country to be taking their cues from talk show hosts who's only tallents are a loud mouth.

 

 

Buckley Would Lament

Submitted by Allen on Thu, 09/10/2009 - 21:26.

Elite conservatism? Buckley challenged the liberal intellectual elite but he spent a lot of time taking his message to the masses. Buckley became a political force when he ran for Mayor of New York as the candidate of the New York State Conservative Party. He took conservative ideas and principles and mobilized the masses.

Buckley understood the truth of Weaver's observation that ideas have consequences.

Buckley spent as much time on the streets as he did behind a typewriter.

Buckley also extended a helping hand to all conservatives. He would not spend a moment discussing or dissing Beck, Limbaugh, or any other conservative. He would help them if he could.

 

Today, it is not the elites that are leading the nationwide movement against Obama. The elites have been missing in action. We are living through the mobilizing of a mass movement against big government. We are seeing blue collar and white collar folks taking to the streets. This movement is growing because it is bigger than any potential leader. In some respects this movement is contrary to the elites who declared the end of any small government policies. Brooks, Frum, etc. helped Obama win and then encouraged us to abandon the Buckley ideas that extolled small government. Challenges to these big government conservatives were Levin, Limbaugh, and Buckley.

Half Measures No More

Submitted by russ on Sat, 09/12/2009 - 23:54.

When was the last time the GOP did anything bold? 1984's Contract with America?  And look what transpired: 40 consecutive years of Democrat Party dominance in the House of representatives was suddenly terminated and a Democrat president was forced to move toward the center of governing policy.  Bold agendas based on proven principles work and always will.

The recent highly dispersed Tea Party movements clearly demonstrate that the heart and soul of America wants us to return to basics, post haste.

The GOP needs to either rise to the occasion or it will become irrelevant as motivated conservatives seize the initiative and organize a new political home for themselves.  Its survival time folks. Half measures are not gonna get it done.

Just for starters, how 'bout calling for a Constitutional Convention complete with a series of proposed articles that would return the country to government based on founding principles in general and Federalism in particular.

Imagine: a country that once again extolls personal responsibility, self-reliance, a strong family and community, prudence, personal ethics and restraint, and free speech - even during elections - perhaps even term limits, the line-item veto for the President and a minimum of two-year budgeting for congress.

What are we waitin' for? Let's roll!

 A bold agenda would be to

Submitted by In between on Sun, 09/13/2009 - 08:56.

 A bold agenda would be to invest in your country, in your people, and in the future. And get away from failed ideologies.