Buckley and Posner

Dennis Perrin dperrin at comcast.net
Mon Jan 20 11:15:20 PST 2003



> One of his triumphs as an ideologue was to finesse the right-wing
> split between the free marketeers and the traditionalists. Most
> people on the right don't like to talk about how capitalism
> undermines Trad Vals . . .


> Doug

Buckley personally, and NR generally, were appalled by Ayn Rand's version of free marketism, underlined by her pro-abortion, atheist viewpoints. So there's that. But Buckley's main triumph, as Judis points out in his book, was to steer conservatives away from the anti-Semitic ravings of the 1950s American Mercury crowd (for whom the young Buckley toiled) and the conspiratorial elements among the Birchers, and toward a more state friendly, mainstream conservatism, (God, nation, family) punctuated, of course, by Buckley's various manias and conceits.

Gore Vidal tried to pin the anti-Semitic tag back on Buckley in their televised spats on ABC during the '68 conventions, and in an entertaining but sputtering piece in the Sept. 1969 Esquire. Buckley retaliated many years later in a book about anti-Semitism where he found former NR columnist Joe Sobran not guilty of the crime, but Vidal positively awash in Jew hatred, citing GV's antipathy to Israel and his infamous attack on Podhoretz and Decter in the Nation ("A Cheerful Response," March 22, 1986).

Just a year or so ago in Lingua Franca, Buckley, perhaps as a joke, said that if he were starting out today, he'd be a communist or socialist of some kind. Wonder what his take would be on the ANSWER crowd.

DP



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