Perhaps it’s time for American conservatives to start listening (again) to William F. Buckley?
A great article at CNN.com: Where the right went wrong.
Fifty years ago, when a 29-year-old Yale graduate named William F. Buckley Jr. funded National Review magazine, conservatism was a small insurgency, fighting the dominant tide of liberalism that had governed the United States for a quarter century.
Today, the right is politically dominant. The president is an avowed conservative; so are the vast majority of Republicans who control the Congress. The courts have moved to the right; conservative voices are prominent in the media; and three Americans call themselves conservative for every two who say they are liberal.
Yet now, at what should be the floodtide of conservative power, many on the right are expressing open, even passionate disagreement with what has been done in their name. (Watch what’s angered the right — 1:34 )
“I believe that as a movement we have veered off course into the dangerous and uncharted waters of big government Republicanism,” said Mike Pence, a three-term representative from Indiana.
[…]
The discontent includes the sharp growth in government spending — including the kind of domestic spending conservatives have long deplored — to the growth of “pork-barrel” projects once seen as an emblem of how big government politicians hold power.“They have increased the amount of government spending by a degree that no Democrat would ever dream of getting away with,” said columnist Andrew Sullivan.
Be sure to watch the video and check out CNN’s Broken Government website.
In the video one sees Reagan define the principal conservative value (regarding economics). One I completely agree with: “Government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.”
Look at the facts. Or these (h/t Mikkel). That says it all, doesn’t it.
In the comment section of the thread I link to above, I left this comment:
Once Joe and I were e-mailing each other about this [fiscal conservatism, small government] and I wrote something like “what I don’t understand is how conservative Americans can be disappointed in Bush et al. when they didn’t vote for a (real) conservative in the first place. Bush is not a conservative, nor Cheney, nor Rumsfeld, nor… How the heck could one expect them to implement conservative policies?”
This summarizes my view on this best. Conservative Republicans in Senate have probably abandoned their principles as to be able to ‘win’: partisan politics, unity was all that mattered for a long time. They abandoned their conservative principles and they will most likely pay for it within a few weeks. More importantly for Americans, though: the US as a whole will pay for it. Literally.
As some kind of strange joke, the GOP seems to have just one thing left: a pitiful attempt to rally the conservative base by some good old-fashioned gay bashing. Whatever happened to the conservatism Barry Goldwater represented? Where has it gone?
Whatever happened with conservatives a la Buckley? Don’t they have any political power / influence?
Here is a nice book. I suggest my conservative cousins in America read it.
PAST CONTRIBUTOR.