I didn’t know that Harding let Debs out of jail…it was a BS lockup anyway.

You know far more about Mellon than I do—my main concentration was on C.E. Hughes.  What was clear was that Mellon was TRYING to do what was best for the nation and working hard at it.

I have seen NO evidence of fluoridation doing anything other than reducing cavities.  I see no evidence in my 13 year old child, who was reading at 3 1/2 and has been through many, many classics already—and is a straight A student, and never had a cavity.  I see his classmates and so many seem bright and alert—and all drink our public water.

There have been similar complaints about chlorine causing cancer.  They are actually true. But the number of deaths and illnesses caused by removing chlorine from our drinking water was shown in Parugway to increase 10 to 100-fold.  So you either take a very small risk from chorine, or a HUGE risk from not taking them.

Hey! Did I mistype something—Must be my Flouride Toothpaste!

I like that Harding let Eugene Debbs out of jail. He had a fundamental fairness about him that Wilson never had. I do regret that my grandfather got involved in a little cock up having to do with Department of Interior. I’ll just leave that alone. Obscure family history. Ah’em!

As to Mellon, he proceeded to push for lower income taxes which had been raised during the Great War. He especially emphasized lowering the income tax on wages. The inner libertarian within me brisltes at the idea that wages from work should be taxed. Though I have no such qualms about taxing unearned income from AAA bonds. It was part of Mellon’s tax plan to tax lightly hard working investment capital, such as went into plant & equipment, while taxing more heavily lazy capital. I can appreciate the difference. One of Mellon’s creations, the ALCOA Corporation, lobbied heavily to put fluoride into the water as a health measure. The problem with eletrolyzing bound aluminum is not only do you have a cathode of purified aluminum, but you also liberate great quantities of fluorine. This now goes into our water. As a result we have a population with diminished IQ. BTW, the U.S. Public Health Service was under the authority of the U.S. Treasury. Mellon left Treasury in 1930, but his agenda lived on. As to Mellon’s leadership under Hoover, he pushed for institutions with underwater assets to sell their stocks, bonds, and other securities in ‘30 and ‘31. I think such a policy only worsened the blight. It would have been better if government took over the books for the distressed assets. From a free market stand point this sounds like utter heresy, but we had been living under the cartel of the Federal Reserve, so there was no true free market in capital anyway.  So you are left with the tools that dug the hole in the first place, which means you have to use those same tools to fill up the hole.

In yet another banking crisis involving Germany, the US bankers wanted helped from the American treasury to guarantee the American loans to German debtors. Mellon advocated for the bankers, and Hoover objected to American taxpayers bailing out the bankers.

I know this account of Mello contradicts my dim view of Mellon pushing liquidation securities by large institutions. To tell you the truth I haven’t made up my mind. I worry about the moral hazard of financial institutions relying on tax revenues or debasement of the currency to save their hides.

As to earlier policy by the Fed and Mellon’s influence over it at Treasury, I think Mellon knew all too well we were giving the British a subsidy in order to keep the pound at pre war levels at our detriment. This required that the United States should inflate its currency in comparison to the British currency. This would mean that world gold holders would favor putting gold into British banks as opposed to American banks. Mellon, who was under the influence of Benjamin Strong at Federal Reserve Bank of New York, would remain perfectly complacent over the gold drain. But this is nothing new. We melted down our silver coinage and exported it to Brittainia during the Great War so as support the British system when they were running out of hard money base on account of the war. I don’t think we got real value for that transaction either. It seems that the BoE was running the Federal Reserve as one of its branches. America was like a big healthy bull that attracted parasites. 
 
As to the war debts, I am in agreement with you that it seems the bankers and weapons makers got the best of all the belligerents. It figures that LBJ would still use old war debts as an old crusty, bloody shirt of sorts. I could guess that the French were turning in their Bretton Woods dollars for gold, and this could bring the debt issue up.

I’ll be on vacation for the next two weeks. It has been real.

As with the “Aztec Indians”,  Paracelsus, war IS the religion still of America…... be careful.

We are in agreement about Link. 

One of the little-known things about Harding was that as stupid and inept as he was, he was smart enough (or well-advised enough) to place smart, tough, knowledgable people at State, Treasury and Commerce—Frank Kellogg, Andrew Mellon and Herbert Hoover.

Kellogg was succeeded by one of the greatest SecStates we ever had, Charles Evans Hughes. Hughes professionalized and de-politicized the Foreign Service saying that HE was the only politician in the State Dept, and that he wasn’t a very good one.

The use of force from 1921-1926 in Central Europe was not military force (though we did occupy the Rhineland).  It was the massive war debts owed to us by France and the UK. France’s debt was on the order of $33billion—in 1925 dollars.  We steadfastly refused to accept that there was any link between the debt and the reparations owed by Germany at Versailles.  This debt was used as a hammer up until the 1960’s under LBJ!

Money and banking was the weapon of choice to exert our influence, and Kellogg and Hughes after him understood this intimately.  (BTW, Kellogg’s name is learned by schoolkids for the Kellogg-Briand Pact, a brilliant out-maneuvering by Kellogg to avoid bi-lateral treaty with Briand and France—Briand’s biggest failure)

We can agree to disagree on Germany’s chances of winning—but the German political leaders took the calculated risk in 1916 of resuming unrestricted sub warfare hoping they could end the war before the US jumped in.  No, they didn’t want war with the US.  Yes, they did plan an invasion, but that is given more credence than it deserves.  Simply, the German High Command was a VERY advanced and effective organization that ALWAYS planned ahead, and did lots and lots of contingency planning.  The JCS here now does the same thing as a matter of course. I’m sure there are invasion plans for Uzbekistan, Madagascar, Urugway, Belgium, and Antarctica—all contingency plans because IF you need them in an emergency, then it’s too late to plan them.

I find Arthur S. Link arrogant, and presumptuous. True, I only base this on one pronouncement of his, but I surmise the general trend of his world view conforms to his declaration in praise of Woodrow Wilson to “lay the foundations of a new world order.”(1) Wilson had been oft quoted in saying that he wanted “to make the world safe for democracy”. I find such thinking insufferable as it thieves from the American middle classes through usury, inflation and taxes to subsidize an enterprise that is unprofitable to most citizens. This project can only erode the American citizen’s right to a government that safeguards his livelihood and civil liberties. Bryzinski in one of his seminal works mentioned the need to soft pedal empire building as it works against the general welfare of the citizen.

As to Germany winning the Great War, I don’t think they had the logistics to conquer GB. I think they were aiming for a stalemate- <>idem quod antebellum</i> (As a side note, the Germans always seem to under estimate the analytics of the enemy when it comes cryptography.) The British were never in serious trouble by German blockades through U-boats. The British communicated as little as possible by wireless. Most British ship commications were done by flagmen using semifores. So it was always a mystery to a German u-boat commander where British routes lay. Britannia still ruled the waves. And this meant that German farmer was hindered by the British blockade of imported potash and ammonianates. The diet of the average German consisted potatos and bread. There were 240 strikes in 1916, which was apprecaibly higher than the 156 in 1915. The wheels were starting to come off of the German politcal-economy.

As to the Zimmerman telegram, I find it interesting that it was British intelligence that broke the code.  And I wonder if Zimmerman might have been a mole. I don’t see how it would have been in Germany’s interest to rouse the Americans into war. The telegram came right at the time that the British were tentatively approaching the Geramns about peace talks. It would be hard to find such a precise occurence of deus ex machina.

This intervention of American forces in Germany I had not known of. I do know that as general foreign policy, the actions of American governmnt are so compartmentalized that the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing. At the same time that American military forces were dispatched to the Soviet Union to ostensibly support the White Russiom counter revolution, AG Palmer was sending in the National Guard troops to stop “Bolshevikism” in the labor movement. What is left unsaid is that Americna forces in Russia were actually defending the new Russia’s trans-Siberian railroad from imprecations of the Japanese in Asia. While grateful Russion citizens in Vladivostoc were giving heart felt adieu’s to American Marines, the Soviet press was writing condemnations of capitalisitic America.

As to the Japanese in China, this was formerly a German concession that had been given over to the Japanese as part of the Versailles process. The Locarno Pact had been instrumental in planting booby traps such as this.

I, myself, have fallen into being egosyntonic or nombrillistic when it comes to divining the grand plans of the elites. Bloodlines among the eiltes are determined by intelligance and ruthlessness- a genius of psychopathy. There is also a tendency among the ruling classes to minimize the intelligence of the mass man as mere cunning or animal sagacity. It is a well known tendency of those who climbed their way through merit from humble beginnings to express false modesty or else risk being targeted for impertinence.

As to needless war, I recall the humble circumstance of the British recruits, who were about to do battle on the Plains of Abraham, just outside of Quebec during the 7 Years War. Many of them had fmailies that were thrown off land in Scottland by their own during the enclsure movement. Some were struggling menials in British factories. Or they had come from generations of Welsh miners. Poverty had provided wiling recruits. Both the dead of the French and the British were interred in mass graves at battle’s end like that provided for downed and infected cattle. I have seen figures soem goddess planted en face to some memorial to the Unkown Soldier. They are ubiquitous in England. I am unjaded American, who finds such memorials profane and sacriligious.

As to the waste of talent and genius that is demanded by war as some sort of offering to a bloodthirsty, pagan diety it is nothing new. It has been theorized that the short stature of Aztec Indians had been caused by the noble families culling commoners of tall, bright eyed opposition. War has provided a method to weed out the best from the restless masses so as to keep the advantages among the nobility.

As to G.W. Bush’s apparent idiocy,it is either a ruse or he may be a victim of some serious inbreeding. The Hapsburg line was notorious for producing homely and dim descendents. Princess Henrietta was one hirsuite Bourbon. The French king she was married off to took every opportunity to bed any woman that was not his wife. The Hapsburg jaw was another awkward looking feature that was prominent in that bloodline.

The Victorian era families of peerage were well noted for producing many ill and ill formed progeny. The great work of the noble few is to find out how to produce super man traits that would only known among themselves, while encouraging debased and dysgenic progeny among the vulgar masses.

As to the survival of the human race, the noble few have determined that they only need so few geniueses that may accidently be birthed by the masses as would keep the political system stable and predictable. There was been a great deal of centralization and standardization within the global system. so would it be very easy to rule with minimal numbers of prodigies. If you will study our present education system, you find that it has been molded to produce the least numbers of prodigies. That is why you will find that on a global basis that home schooling is under tremendous attack.

I find the present system abhorrent, and I can only suggest that the more independent of it you are the better you will fare. That is why when I hear the word “interdependence” “I reach for my gun.”

By Paracelsus, February 29: “Bryant had not made any distinctions between social and biological, and sought to argue from theology for the divine origins of humans. You have a good point. Nevertheless, in Darwin’s Descent of Man the argument was that talent and genius were inheritbale traits in humans….. Darwin felt that human sympathy had retarded the evolution of the human species through providing for the weak and frail, but he did not believe in actively influencing evolution, given the inhumanity of radical eugenics. ...”

Interesting points, Paracelsus, but something else happened in the journey of man upon this planet. The fact that it can be described as a “descent” is all the more palpable considering that, for countless millenia, the best breeding stock were usually uselessly slaughtered upon the battlefields. Not only the demographic of many countries been thus changed again and again but the genetic quality of the succeeding generations too…..  Where Have All The Flowers Gone? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f_ptqXqjsZw

Where have all the soldiers gone,
Long time passing,
Where have all the soldiers gone,
Long time ago,
Where have all the soldiers gone,
Gone to graveyards every one
When will they ever learn
When will they ever learn

What does that mean? Well, we are merely the shit that is left over after the passing arrogance of multiple ethnic cleansings which always sought to bring the best families to an abrupt end. Plenty of worthless peasants left, though. Thus, the insane, the idiots, the weak and the decrepit were left to regenerate….... you only have to look at the cretin, Bush, to see what direction things are headed, uhh.

“Talent and genius” may have been “inheritable traits” but the actions of man have squandered those genes ruthlessly. Even today, it is wealth and not genetics which predominate in selection. Bright minds are ignored if they are not from a country or family who have the means to see them advance. Many take a gruesome pleasure in denying a future to others…....

But it says something else about us that we have also cut ourselvs off from the source of our Enlightenment as well as having repressed it in others. It is not possible for the human race to survive without some intelligent souls. Whether they are doctors or teachers or simply spiritual beings like Jesus or Buddha, there is no future for us in following the animal’s methods of selection of our species - as we have done.

Sorry, I don’t have any quotes to offer. This was a looooong time ago, back in the early 60s. But my memory is clear as day about it. I’m sure that’s not going to be sufficient to dissuade you, but it will have to do.

Excuse my typos—I left an embarrassing number of them in this post.

Wow! Someone who is as interested in this period as I am.  I am less schooled the pre-War and War era than in the post-War era.

Arthur S. Link’s problem, as you probably know, was that he fell in love with Wilson, and had trouble seeing the flaws and misconceptions.  It’s generally acknowledged that Col. House was a dangerous ideologue who had not REAL clue of what he was doing or why it wouldn’t work…Sounds a lot like the neocons Bush relies on today.

There are a few small issues I have, but only with you determination about the War.  It’s not at ALL clear that Germany wouldn’t have won.  The 1916 sub warfare was designed to strangle Britain and get her out of the War before the US came in. When the US DID come in, it was NEVER an Ally but is described in all the documents as an “Associated” Power.

From the Paris Peace Conference to the system of treaties of the Locarno Pact of 1925, the US continually crossed swords with France who wanted to crush Germany and dominate the Continent.  It was the policies of Wilson and his Republican successors to frustrate France in this to bring Germany back into the community of nations as she was democracy.

They fully saw the Balance of Power as critical to American security which is why we were never an Ally but remained Associated.  In fact Germany, rather than resenting the US occupation of the Rhineland, saw it as a safeguard against French excesses.  When the French invaded the Ruhr Valley in January of 1923, Germany BEGGED us to keep occupying the Rhineland rather than withdraw, which we did, allowing France to SO overextend her resources that the Ruhr excursion was almost as big a screw-up as our Iraq invasion.

BTW, as you probably know, even though history teachers and uninformed journalists continue to spout the fallacy that America “withdrew” after WWI and became isolationist, nothing could be further from the truth.

Could you quote any JBS articles that specifically blamed Jewish people for monoplization, communist conspiracy or self defeaing policies of the United States government?

I grant that as true Bryant had not made any distinctions between social and biological, and sought to argue from theology for the divine origins of humans. You have a good point. Nevertheless, in Darwin’s Descent of Man the argument was that talent and genius were inheritbale traits in humans like swiftwness in stallions or hunting instincts in pointer dogs. Francis Galton used the ideas presented to birth the eugenics movement. Darwin felt that human sympathy had retarded the evolution of the human species through providing for the weak and frail, but he did not believe in actively influencing evolution, given the inhumanity of radical eugenics. As a side note, it should be noted that Galtons only marry Darwins, and Darwins only marry Galtons.

Before his discovery of the principles of natural selection, his contemporaries were discussing the findings of Malthus in regard to the surplus population of the poor. The British Whig Party was in the midst of providing support for the poor. So the seedbed for the eugenics movement was quite fertile.

As to my use of the word “lion” in Bryant’s case you could say I was anthropomorphizing the qualities of nobility and bravery upon lions, but I suppose one could be literal about the actual life of lions. Point conceded.

As to Wilson’s Anglophilia, I attribute this to the unhealhful miasma in the person of Edward Mandell House. To use s contemporary phrase, House was Wilson’s brain. It is often the case that U.S presidents are empty veseels to molded by their advisors. I standby my assertion that WWI was an unnecessary war for the United States to be involved in. If it were not for the almost infinite credit granting facilities of the newly created Federal Reserve, I doubt that America’s entry into this folly would been as easily effected. My opinons on the Great War are informed the libertarian historian, Jim Powell, who wrote the book, Wilson’s Folly. The war was opposed by such notables as Eugene Debs, and the Wilsonian viewpoint was quite a departure for the Democratic party which had been solidly anti-imperialist. I suppose you could call it “Nixon going to China.” The submarine attacks had little influence in dissuading Americans from non-interventionism. One of the largest minority groups in America were the Germans. The deciding coup de grace for America’s entry into the war was the intercepted Zimmerman telegraph to the Mexicans, where Germany would give support to Mexico to reconquer the Southwest in return for Mexico’s alliance with the Central Powers. It was understood that visiting a belligerent in wartime, especially if the ship was loaded with materiel was foolhardy, and most Americans held Germany blameless for the u-boat attacks. The government with the aid of Hollywood pushed a bigoted campaign against the German people as brutes behind war atrocities in Belguim. These stories were like the incubator story in Kuwait that got us involved in the first Persian Gulf War. The establishment sees no need to change the tactics as the old one tricks always work.

As to establishing a balance of power, if the WWI belligerents had been left to themsleves, there would have been negotiations to return the borders to the same status quo. There would been no victors and no reparations. THe British government had been seriously considering German proposals to a negotiated peace in 1916, before Wilson threw American forces into that maelstrom.

The Great War saw the unconstitutional innovations of Wilson put into use. Everything from sedition laws, to emergency powers and pricing boards. The war caused misallocation of investments in agriculture that hurt many farmers in the post war period. The emergency powers set up an unhealthy precedent for further emergency rule in the future as well as overweighting the executive branch of goverment with dictatorial decrees. FDR would later use these powers to unjustly confiscate the property of American citizens in addition to abrogating private contracts. These powers would later accrete to the nightmare we have now.

I do not blindly seek to end the welfare/warfare state as we know it for we are all dependent on it in some degree, but I would like to give an awareness to the depotic elements of such a system.

As to the faults of Bryant, I would like to use the old quote by the English bard, “Our faults do not lie within our stars, but within ourselves.”

This posting is actually quite correct and you know more about Bryant than I do.  Bryant was the force that united the Populists with the Democrats in 1896.

What is clear here is that Bryant had NO concept that Social Darwinism has no scientific relation to Charles Darwin’s theory.  Social Darwinism was the predecessor to Nazism and the idea of “races” in conflict.  His concern with Social Darwinism was perfectly valid.  But seeing a predatory man described as a “lion” Bryan would have destroyed lions on the veld.

Wilson was an Anglophile.  This was despite the British stopping, searching and seizing American shipping. Nearly as many Americans wanted to see the UK lose as wanted to see Germany lose—and Germany, until 1916, wisely played into that.  But returning to unlimited sub warfare gave Wilson his opportunity.  Could we have avoided WWI? I doubt it.  Ultimately, we entered the war for the right reason: To re-establish a balance of power in Europe, where England and France wanted to CRUSH Germany and split power between them.

Bryan, like Pierre Salinger, allowed himself to fall in love with an idea that made him look stupid and bigoted, forever casting a sour note over his otherwise important and significant career.

Darrow and Bryan had been allies fighting for the working man and the downtrodden against big businesses, repressive government, and special interests, but as Henry Drummond says to Matthew Harrison Brady in ITW “You moved away, Matt, by standing still.”

In his inflammatory memoir “God, Man, and the Secular Establishment” published in 1955.The faux blueblood and demi-Boston Braham came to vivid life before the eyes of an unbelieving American Liberal Establishment; more professional provocateur and intellectual troublemaker, than actual thinker. Flush with inherited wealth, he did devote himself to fulltime publishing and wholesale self-promotion as Conservative Thinker, Wit , and part time Littérateur. He had everything but real talent.

As a debater on his television show “Give and Take”, he gulled his “guests” into conversations about the issues of the day. It was billed as “debate” but practiced as a sequential humiliation of the “guest”, whether Liberal Intellectual, Philosopher, Poet,
Writer: accomplished by a barrage of assertions that never seemed to end, of course, without adequate time to respond with any real cogency. This, accompanied by a widening of his eyes, a self-satisfied grimace, and an unseemly licking of his lips. A beast devouring his prey, with unalloyed gusto

Paracelsus, you know not of what you speak. Welch may have made a public display of rejecting anti-semitism (it would be PR suicide to do otherwise), but believe me, their literature and message to JBS members was unabashedly racist and anti-semitic. My grandfather was a member, God rest his soul, and I saw their newsletters and argued with him about JBS philosophy. You could barely slip a piece of paper between Nazis and JBS-ers, and that piece of paper was only the mention of the term “socialism.”

JBS was right-wing conspiracy theory on steroids.

Wiliam Jennings Bryant was earnest and principled man. The Scopes trial did much to ruin his reputation. Much of the opposition to Darwinism had to do with Darwin’s theory being applied to politics and business in order to justify a predatory world order. To quote Bryant, “The Darwinian theory represents man reaching his present perfection by the operation of the law of hate - the merciless law by which the strong crowd out and kill off the weak. If this is the law of our development then, if there is any logic that can bind the human mind, we shall turn backward to the beast in proportion as we substitute the law of love. I choose to believe that love rather than hatred is the law of development.”

Not many people are taught about Jennings’ stand against the bellicose Woodrow Wilson. For a while Bryant served as Secretary of State to Wilson. In the fullness of time Wilson proved more biased and belligerent toward the Germans before America’s entry into the Great War. After the sinking of the Lusitania, Wilson lost all pretenses to neutrality and pacificism. Bryant resigned in 1915 in protest to Wilson’s designs toward entering the war on the side of the British.

Bryant had a life long animosiy toward railroads, trusts and banks. He had a life long symapthy for the common man. And he was a passionate anti-imperialist. That Scopes trial ruined the old lion’s reputation. If you watch the movie, Inherit the Wind, the ruination of a good man comes across. It would have been best if Bryant showed better judgement, and perhpas Darrow could have pulled a few punches, but that was not who these men were. They were old knights of convictions.

Robert Welch disavowed and denied any connection to anti-semitism. Welch’s organization embarrassed people like Averell Harriman, who could not explain his actions in regard to the Soviet Union. The problem for Buckley was that the Birchers were correct on many things, and explaining the discordances away would be embarrassing. In the 1960’s the US export permits provided the USSR with precision equipment to manufacture ball bearing. These ball bearings would be used to in nuclear intercontinental missiles. The JBS knew of these things and tried to publicize it.

http://reformed-theology.org/html/books/best_enemy/chapter_01.htm

Exactly, big government propelling a big military can only reduce economic competition as well as giving monopolies on new technologies to a favored and connected elite. Buckley was an advocate for this system of granting of charters of monopoly to a select and favored few. DARPA warped the priorities of the economy. It had all the horrid features of British mercantilism.

Only initially!  It was overturned on appeal…

Still, thanks for the chuckle!

You are mistaken—anti-semitism was NOT one of WFB’s many faults (unlike too many posters here).  Buckley pushed BACK against the then conservatives, like the John Birch Society who WERE anti-Semitic, refused to associate with them, and spoke out against them.  If he did NOTHING else positive, it was the Buckley Conservatives that pushed the John Birch Society to obscurity.  Is ANYONE still a member of the moronic dinosaur? (named after some poor slob who got killed in either WWI or WWII—I don’t remember)

As a libertarian, I saw William F. Buckley as far more damaging to the cause of liberty than any Soviet communist or Islamic extremist.

Buckley spearheaded the “Big Government Conservative” movement that started in the 1950’s in opposition to traditional conservatives who called for smaller, less intrusive government and non-interventionism in foreign policy.

Buckley stated openly, in the 1950’s, that the United States, in order to defeat Soviet Communism, had to become more like them: that is, we had to reign in civil liberties, grow the military to elephantine proportions, and intervene in every corner of the globe.

His “intellectual” heir? George W. Bush—a simpering nitwit presiding over the bankrupting of America through the Welfare/Warfare state. The existential dead end of “Big Government Conservatism” is upon us; we are about to experience an economic depression and complete loss of credibility abroad.

Nice work, WFB.

Of course, he was a CIA snitch, to boot.

This guy was a thoroughly revolting human being, all the way down to his snooty, fake-Brit linguistic style. In terms of writing style, he used sesquipedalia to make himself look intelligent, hiding behind big words rather than addressing big ideas.

This conspiracy researcher sees no good in Obama, because is part of a dialectic that is strangling and obtrusive to liberty. I see no good coming from his adminstration that is networked so tightly to the establishment with members from Skull and Bones, the CFR, and the Trilateral Commission. That said, I must point out all the other front runners have the same disadvantages. The only reason we have a republic is that the people would see too easily the agenda of a monarchy, therefore they now have the illusion of choice.

Buckley was a conservative, the real thing.

What we have today, masquerading as “conservatives,” are a motley of greedhead opportunists, bitter fascistic ideologues,  revanchists and redneck buffoons.

Jesse Jackson did appear on Firing Line.  You can probably find that show at youtube.

Jesse Jackson did appear on Firing Line.  You may be able to find it at youtube.

Calling the kettle black, unless it agrees with your simple minded agenda. Sheep supporting Obama, is just your supporting something that is not supported by the majority, so that makes the majority sheep.  Great argument, your phony contingent is easily bashed because your arguments have feet of clay.

W.F. Buckley was an interesting man to listen to.
I’ve always had a hugh crush on him and he will be missed.

I have always wanted to watch a debate between Mr Buckley and Jesse Jackson, would anyboby understand a word either of them said?

ITW:

“If you don’t know what “Inherit the Wind” refers to…It’s a fictionalized play…about the Scopes Trial and Clarence Darrow’s BRILLIANT defense of Scopes against the forces of ignorance led by William Jennings Bryan.”

Yes, but don’t forget: Darrow lost.  (I only note this in observation; I am not suggesting anything else.)

Peace.

Years ago, I watched Firing Line as a sort of sport. Buckley’s nasally delivery and sleepy gaze, appropriately directed over an upturned nose at his usually-liberal guest, his studied erudition and I’m-a-lot-smarter-than-you-are grin used to drive me up a wall. Of course I hated his political philosophy, too. So with each guest, I hoped that he or she (were there ever women? I don’t recall any…Hmm) would put him to shame, break his snooty nose, in a debating sense. I’d be rooting, like I root for sports teams. Alas, except for very few guests (Allan Ginsberg and Gore Vidal come to mind – another “hmm”: both homosexual), he always “won.” I loved to hate that guy.

But over the years, as I watched political discourse go down the tubes (pun intended), I’ve come to appreciate his work much more. He really did pick strong guests who would stage thoughtful, well-informed debates. You learned from this “sport.”

I’ve also read that he was a great and true friend, much beloved, of a lot of people, including pillars of liberal intellectualism. A great guy, they say. That may be true, but I still remember his public persona as obnoxious.

That said, I truly hope that he rests in peace.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tRjZR8j4-z4

Unlike a previous generation of Republicans(Robert Taft), Buckley advocated the increased the power of the federal government through foreign intervention and military Keynesianism. Such a policy can only support monopolization and cartelization of heavy industry through the military procurement system. A continuous war state can only encourage a trend toward unconstitutional government and unsound money. He provided the fertile intellectual ground for the neoconservative movement. As you can see from the debate video, Buckley would like to ostracize the opponents to the Vietnam War. Military socialism is the cause of Buckley, and that cause is invidious to constitutional government.

My favorite Bill Buckley momements were when he debated Germaine Greer, he was a gracious looser and tried to loosen up a bit after that. Smoking pot outside the territorial limits of the USA on his Yacht.

Ironically Mr. Buckley helped progressives think through their positions, and come up with better reasons for them, and for that alone he will be missed.

Too bad, todays’ conservatives haven’t done the same, thinking through their positions that is.

For too many a political movement is just the waving of a banner, and the avoidance of the hard work of “political thought” necessary to understand the results of your positions.

Ironically for progressives to succeed, they will need an intellectually strong opponent, who makes victory all the more sweeter.

So Buckley was wrong—but unlike Chimpy McFlightsuit and Darth Cheney—and Sen. McCain, WFB RECOGNIZED it and realized that Bush failed in Iraq, WHY he failed in Iraq, the Bush’s hubris caused that failure and prevented Bush from recognizing that failure and acting to ameliorate it.  WFB was a thinking man.

So instead of attacking my appropriate defense of WFB’s qualities, DC, you sink to the gutter and attack me.

If you don’t know what “Inherit the Wind” refers to, that’s typical of your ongoing ignorance.  How hard is it to Google it?

But, since that seems beyond you: It’s a fictionalized play by Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee about the Scopes Trial and Clarence Darrow’s BRILLIANT defense of Scopes against the forces of ignorance led by William Jennings Bryan that want, to this day, to teach the Bible instead of science, and in many states are doing that to our kids.

It was made into a movie in the early ‘60’s by Stanley Kramer starring Spencer Tracy, Frederick March, Gene Kelly, Claude Akins, Dick York, Noah Beery, and Harry Morgan.

William Buckley was also a member of the CFR, and the Bilderbergers as well as Skull and Bones. His magazine The National Review continuely ran deficits. Where did the money come from to keep it afloat? Please look up Buckley in the index of the book of America’s Secret Establisment by Anthony Sutton if you are curious of the source material.

In my high school public speaking class we were required to watch Firing Line w/ William F Buckley. Okay, it was the 70’s!  The show was so long and boring with ‘big words’ that most of us ignored THAT mandate. In any case I loved that class and haven’t shut up since. Thanks Mrs. Anderson. It has cost me a few jobs ( blacklists are still out there only less official ) and a few ” friends”.  Blogs and comments on the ‘net are so damn easy and painless. Why not tell your loved ones and friends and coworkers in person how you really feel and think and maybe we won’t end up with criminal misleaders like George W and Dick Cheney ever again. I love progressives and peacemakers but sometimes they are so damn cowardly!  ( and don’t tell us you are just shy ) Lets hope Obama is the real thing.

For people like Buckley, Iraq WAS a failure, ITW. They wanted it to be a success, though…....

That is quite a different thing from not wanting to invade very country on Earth….....

Obviously, your pet ego still prevents you from doing your own thinking entirely.

Why wait for others before you dare to be ALIVE…...???

BTW, what is this ‘wind’ that you say you’ve inherited, Inherit The Wind? Indigestion?

Let the dead bury the dead!!!

did you quit watching PBS? if so, why?

gotta agree with everything you said. he could never have appealed to the right wing, tobacco chewing, beer drinking swine,currently taking their orders from rush. buckley actually had a brain.

What are you angry about? That WFB was a talented, articulate, and capable defender of Conservatism? 

How DARE you!

I disagreed with damn near EVERYTHING William F. Buckley said about politics, but have the DECENCY to give the man his due for his brains, his logic, and, ultimately, his integrity.

This is Mr. Conservative who said “Iraq is a FAILURE!”  and who said “Legacy? George Bush has no legacy!”

If every Conservative was as thoughtful and logical as WFB, this country would be a far, far better plasce.  Instead for every Buckley, there’s a thousand commentators who are knee-jerk ditto-heads and the drooling hate-mongers, like Rush Limbaugh and Anne Coultergeist.

At least Buckley was a THINKER, goddammit!

One less brain to be replaced by one more robot.  How can that be good?

Buckley debated IDEAS and win or lose he stood by that.  For that I respect him and hope he rests in peace.

Plus, he was damned good entertainment, better then the limbaugh/coultergeist slobs out there now.

Strange that the pic is from the NY Times yet they didn’t use anything like it themselves…. is it at all characteristic of Buckley, uhh….??? http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/27/business/media/27cnd-buckley.html?em&ex=1204261200&en=080c25f3d51bfbdc&ei=5087

Aslo nice that Truthdig quoted from a subscription-only story at the LA Times…....

Buckley was the author of a series of novels featuring the character of CIA agent Blackford Oakes…...

Anyone who writes stories in which he sees himself as “the ultimate cold war warrior” is hardly a person who is worthy of molding a nation’s philosophy. Its also an unworthy position for any journalist, uhh.

Marvellous how easily people are sucked into the old game of “risking his life for the country he loves” by people who have no intention of ever doing such themselvs…....

One of the reasons, of course, is that they never actually see “risking” as eventually becoming “sacrificing” and all the while they are quite willing to sacrifice the lives and happiness of countless millions of others ‘in far-flung lands’.

So that IS how the wars of invasion occurred in Korea and in Vietnam….. as well as in Iraq and in Afghanistan…...

Mike Mid-City:

“One should never speak ill of the dead, if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything.

William F. Buckley Jr. is dead.”

***

We must have a common ancestor.

When I first read this morning that Buckley had died, I muttered under my breath, good. Then I scolded myself with your exact words!

He may have been erudite and witty, but he was also maddeningly conceited and self-aggrandizing. [Kinda like Bill O’Reilly, only O’Reilly isn’t particularly erudite or witty.]

Little wonder he held great appeal for so many republicans. Even the thought challenged need their intellectually elite. And it helps if that intellect and elitism is so far above their common understanding of things like fairness and moral versus amoral, they dare not question the obvious superiority.

But free speech is free to all. Even Buckley. And he profited handsomely from the gift.

He recently renounced Bush as not being a true conservative. [Perhaps he knew the end was near] Listening to the dutiful praise of Buckley wailing up from the congress, I found myself wondering if any of those Bush huggers knew that.

***

“Yep, if you can’t say anything good about someone’s death, don’t say anything.

William F. Buckley Jr. is dead.  He is in the hands of his Maker, good.”

“Firing Line” was a great program.  On tv today it isn’t permitted to have real debates or discussions between people of divergent viewpoints.  There is only the party line.  That would be a good name for todays discussion panels on tv: “The Party Line.”

Although I disagreed with virtually everything that Buckley stood for politically and economically, I have enormous admiration and respect for the way he raised the level of verbal discourse, and for his belief in linguistic precision and the importance of speaking and writing correctly.  In this particular regard, he and Orwell could have been brothers.

Peace.

You know it is said that conservatives are born that way, if you believe in God you can blame it on him or her, but I would rather blame it on people like Buckley.  The KKK, criminals and Methodists, are the same stead, just people who follow lemmings over the cliffs. Enlightened thought is absent and not far behind is common sense.

On the ranch when something is dead or maybe close, the buzzards circle over and divide up the booty, this reminds me of conservatives. 

What can you say about people who may be born to be that way?

I’m sorry, but I just cannot shed tears for someone who was instrumental in contributing to a political environment that made it OK to elect people like Ronald Reagan and George Bush, père et fils (apologies to GV).

How delicious that Buckley and his ideas are withered and withering while Gore Vidal lives on.  Viva Vidal!