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Post 0

Saturday, October 11 - 1:56pmSanction this postReply
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This is not a surprise at all: The son of an amoral, opportunist NeoCon votes for Obama.

It's almost not even news.

Ed




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Post 1

Saturday, October 11 - 2:54pmSanction this postReply
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That is an astonishing column. His father spent a lifetime attempting to use his considerable intellect and polished erudition to support a free market while dancing around the not inconsiderable contradictions thrown up right and left, no pun intended, by Catholicism. It has to do terrible things to a good mind to do that dance.

Now, we read what his son wrote, and it speaks with stunning eloquence to the real values in the Buckley household - a snobbish, intellectual elitism - values even harder to justify than dear dad's religious burdens. Notice the hate of Palin and the adoration of Obama - not because of, but in spite of, their differences in character, values and principles.

While we've watched Obama throw so much under the bus of political ambition, we see little Christopher Buckley throw rational political principles, and good sense itself, under the bus of "One must write well and attend the proper schools" elitism.

Look up from your grave, WFB, and see what you have wrought.



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Post 2

Saturday, October 11 - 3:09pmSanction this postReply
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Ed, Buckley was not a neocon, not a liberal big government leftist "mugged by reality" and turned big government interventionist hawk. This point has been made to you endlessly. I begin to doubt your sanity.



Post 3

Saturday, October 11 - 4:13pmSanction this postReply
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Ted,

The reason I seem so crazy is because "they" are so good at hiding and dissemble.

:-)

I appreciate you being a sounding-board, though. If YOU think I'm crazy, then it's a statistical likelihood that many, many others do, too.

I will have to integrate that with further attempts at communicating this thing which I fear -- this thing which I feel will destroy our nation from the inside-out. If you had said nothing, I may have kept on chattering frantically like Chicken Little or Rumplestiltskin? -- which would have been no help in furthering my goal to save the country, and would have been awfully irritating to many, many others such as yourself.

Ed






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Post 4

Saturday, October 11 - 6:39pmSanction this postReply
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Ed, you have a bad habit. You pick a term "neocon" or "entangling alliance" which has an objectively verifiable conventional meaning, and, because you seem to like the sound of it, you adopt it as a buzz-word and run with it, like scissors at pool side, giddy and reckless as a child who thinks his second eye is expendable surpluss.

Read the article on the term Neocon at Wikipedia. Don't just cite it, or look at the letters, but read it. Neocon primarily means a leftist convert to certain conservative policies:

...a criticism against liberals who had "moved to the right". Michael Harrington, a democratic socialist, coined the usage of neoconservative in a 1973 Dissent magazine article concerning welfare policy. According to E. J. Dionne, the nascent neoconservatives were driven by "the notion that liberalism" had failed and "no longer knew what it was talking about."

Note that you will not find William F Buckley mentioned in this rathetr long and actually quite overly broad article. Buckley was a religious conservative two decades before the modern use of Neocon. Indeed, you will find his name in the article on Paleocons> at Wikipedia.

Your use of this buzzword here, like your insistence that animals don't form concepts in the animal consciousness debate, is based on words that you want to impose from the top down, not evidence that you want to integrate from the bottom up. You spent how much time insisting that animals do not copnceptualize, when the single explicit case of Alex the grey parrot proved your desired generalization utterly false. Yes, there is a huge distinction between human conceptualization and the limited abilities of some animals. But the reality of this difference depends on the facts, not the words you use to express your ideas. Words not connected to facts are floating abstractions. The insistence on buzzwords and top down arguments is rationalism, the bane of true objectivists.

I don't expect a reversal of your opinion of Bush, (mine opinion of him is probably worse than yours, and mine has evolved based on his actions, not my preconceptions) or an apology, or especially not an argument in response here. Just please understand what I am saying.



Post 5

Saturday, October 11 - 6:56pmSanction this postReply
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Ted,

Thanks, but no thanks, for that dissemble of definition by non-essentials.

And thanks, but no thanks, for your condescending and underhanded moralizing, too.

Ed




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Post 6

Saturday, October 11 - 9:08pmSanction this postReply
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Ted,

If you want to continue to criticize me for some sort of mangled "linguistic analysis" (i.e., argument over terms, not substance) -- then read my latest blog on Buckley first; and look for that fault in the way I define-away words in order to prop-up my conclusions there. I read a lot (as evidenced by the extensive links and quotations) -- so you can't keep saying I don't read things, but that I just argue semantics, instead.

In light of my experience with you, let me rephrase that: You can't keep coherently claiming that I'm arguing mere semantics over substance.

What's funny is that, in the animal cognition thread, I am the one who is bringing out the evidence of controlled, empirical investigations to the table -- and yet you offer a simple Wikipedia entry as if it were an argument, and make the baseless claim that I'm not looking at the evidence. The guy who is bringing the most empirical evidence to the table being blamed for not being evidence-based.

It would be funny if it was a joke.

Ed





Post 7

Saturday, October 11 - 10:32pmSanction this postReply
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I read the article. I don't understand the author's conclusion. It seems a non-sequitur. He acknowledges that Obama is a lefty, then says:

"President Obama will (I pray, secularly) surely understand that traditional left-politics aren’t going to get us out of this pit we’ve dug for ourselves. If he raises taxes and throws up tariff walls and opens the coffers of the DNC to bribe-money from the special interest groups against whom he has (somewhat disingenuously) railed during the campaign trail, then he will almost certainly reap a whirlwind that will make Katrina look like a balmy summer zephyr."

So what does he think a lefty is likely to do if not adhere to traditional left-politics? And prayer (secular or otherwise) is not likely to change that. What a strange piece of political commentary by a so-called "conservative libertarian"! It's left me scratching my head. I don't get it.

Glenn, since you posted the article, what's your take on this?

- Bill



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Post 8

Saturday, October 11 - 11:13pmSanction this postReply
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Bill,

It seemed clear to me. In his family he MUST have been raised in way that made having the 'right' education, the ability to write in a stylish fashion, and to display intelligence of a certain kind - all such as to be a sort of elite - was more important than any political principles. I can see no other explanation - he values Obama for these things and he clearly disvalues Palin, and McCain for choosing her. When he says he 'prays' [hopes] that Obama will change his spots and become conservative because it makes more sense, he is clearly in a state of denial and rationalizing. I can find no other reason for him to do that but what I mentioned.



Post 9

Sunday, October 12 - 5:01amSanction this postReply
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Bill,

What a strange piece of political commentary by a so-called "conservative libertarian"! It's left me scratching my head. I don't get it.

The reason that you don't get it may be because you were not meant to.

Think about it. That's the nature of the level of dissemble now required for altruist, collectivist, statist hawks to keep their movement/pressure group going. When Shadia Drury wrote about Leo Strauss and the new conservative movement, she made the explicit point that Strauss didn't make explicit points in defending his Plato-Hobbes-Machiavelli-Burke-Wilsonianism. Instead, he kept his writing unclear (on a surface analysis) and relied on implicit feelings that the reader would take away from reading him.

Think Ellsworth Toohey.

Now think of an "elite" cabal of Ellsworth Tooheys. Now take that picture in your mind and compare and contrast it to a group of republicans who have taken this country toward the kind of welfare-warfare statism we see on our news everyday (e.g., nationalization of industry, etc).

That's one possible explanation of why this piece left you scratching your head.

Ed
edit: When I say "warfare" statism, I mean either kind of war (war outside of borders, and war within)

(Edited by Ed Thompson on 10/12, 5:15am)




Post 10

Sunday, October 12 - 9:06amSanction this postReply
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Bill,

I took it to be about the lesser of two evils.  Buckley no longer thinks McCain is the right man, both for his personal failings and his pragmatic choice of Palin as his running mate.  He thinks that Obama has the right personality and the intelligence and education to potentially be a great president; and he hopes he's smart enough to do what Buckley thinks is the right thing.

Thanks,
Glenn




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Post 11

Monday, October 13 - 11:24pmSanction this postReply
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Glenn,

If Obama were smart enough to do the right thing, he wouldn't be a liberal democrat and wouldn't be spouting all of the political rhetoric that goes along with it. Your explanation certainly fits what Buckley says. The problem is that what Buckley says doesn't make any sense.

Bill



Post 12

Tuesday, October 14 - 4:04amSanction this postReply
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Bill,

You're right that what Buckley says doesn't make any sense when you attempt to integrate it with our now-stale assumptions of conservatives. It doesn't make any sense at all from that frame of reference.

Ed




Post 13

Tuesday, October 14 - 6:46amSanction this postReply
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Bill,

When you asked what my "take" was on Buckley's piece, I assumed you meant my "understanding" of what he meant.  That's what I posted.  Unlike Steve, I can't speak to his upbringing or his motives.  As I said, I understood him to be choosing Obama as the lesser of two evils and the smarter of two candidates.

You said:
If Obama were smart enough to do the right thing, he wouldn't be a liberal democrat and wouldn't be spouting all of the political rhetoric that goes along with it.
Obama is smart enough to know that the rhetoric is required for any politician to be successful.  He's also smart enough to know that the solution to a particular problem might not be a "liberal democrat" solution, just like the conservatives are smart enough to rally around the present quasi-nationalization of the banking system; not exactly a conservative republican solution.

Thanks,
Glenn




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Post 14

Tuesday, October 14 - 11:23amSanction this postReply
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I wrote, "If Obama were smart enough to do the right thing, he wouldn't be a liberal democrat and wouldn't be spouting all of the political rhetoric that goes along with it." Glenn replied,
Obama is smart enough to know that the rhetoric is required for any politician to be successful. He's also smart enough to know that the solution to a particular problem might not be a "liberal democrat" solution, just like the conservatives are smart enough to rally around the present quasi-nationalization of the banking system; not exactly a conservative republican solution.
Obama may be smart enough to know that a certain rhetoric will help him get elected, but that doesn't mean that he's smart enough to know what politico-economic policies are best for the country. He is less of a free-marketeer than the Republicans are. If your point is that the Republicans are sincere in supporting the quasi-nationalization of the banking system, then in that respect, they're no smarter than Obama.

Or are you suggesting that the Republicans are simply supporting expanded government control as political rhetoric in order to get elected and that, if elected, they would do the opposite? I very much doubt that that is their approach.

At any rate, why a conservative like Buckley thinks that a died-in-the-wool leftist like Obama would push for conservative solutions to our economic problems when even the Republicans aren't doing so is beyond my comprehension.

- Bill





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Post 15

Tuesday, October 14 - 12:46pmSanction this postReply
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"why a conservative like Buckley thinks that a died-in-the-wool leftist like Obama would push for conservative solutions to our economic problems when even the Republicans aren't doing so is beyond my comprehension."

Why does an alcoholic tell himself he will just have one drink, to loosen up, to take the edge off his hang-over, to be sociable, etc.? Because he needs some kind of rationalization to fit into the spot that should hold a rational reason explaining and justifying an action that he is motivated to take for reasons that can't be put out in the open.

Rationalizations, by their nature, aren't reasonable - only reasonable sounding - and they require one to look at motivation, if a deeper understanding is desired. And to find the underlying motivation, one looks for the more important principle that the self needs to fulfill.

Glenn states it is a lessor of two evils choice that Buckley is making, which is right as far as it goes, but his analysis of Obama being seen as willing to change his political principles from a near socialist to a near consrvative is asking a lot - it is asking for more than we have ever seen in the political arena.

What great evils have been revealed in McCain that would balance out this audacious hope for the impossible from Obama? "...his campaign has changed John McCain. It has made him inauthentic. A once-first class temperament has become irascible and snarly; his positions change, and lack coherence; he makes unrealistic promises, such as balancing the federal budget “by the end of my first term.” Who, really, believes that? Then there was the self-dramatizing and feckless suspension of his campaign over the financial crisis. His ninth-inning attack ads are mean-spirited and pointless. And finally, not to belabor it, there was the Palin nomination." Take a look at all of that. He is accusing McCain of inauthentic, changing positions, making unrealistic promises and running mean-spirited ads.... during a campaign. Give me a break! Has Obama not been less than authentic, changed positions, made unrealistic promises, allowed supporters and spokespeople to make mean-spirited statements?

All just hollow rationalizations. Read the article and you can see that the only real fire is in Buckey's hatred of Palin. And the only real warmth is for Obama's Ivey league education, his intelligence and literary and speaking style.

Anyone who grew up watching Buckley senior on Firing Line and reading his books has an edge in this. I still think my explanation is on target.



Post 16

Wednesday, October 15 - 4:13amSanction this postReply
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Bill,

... why a conservative like Buckley thinks that a died-in-the-wool leftist like Obama would push for conservative solutions to our economic problems when even the Republicans aren't doing so is beyond my comprehension.
Bill, just wake up, for Christ sakes. The difference between conservatives and liberals has become nothing but rhetoric now. Read Larry Elder's The 10 Things You Can't Say about America. Read John Stossel's Gimme' a Break. Better yet, read Shadia Drury's Strauss and the New Conservative Movement.

Statistically, they're (conservatives and liberals) all Machiavellians now. Conservatives keep to the standard rhetoric -- but manage to outperform liberals in fiscal irresponsibility and social engineering. And it's been that way for at least eight years (and it gets worse everyday).

It's getting late.

Ed




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