>Dennis Perrin writes:
>
>>Didn't WFB tell Lingua Franca before its demise that if he were a young
>>today, he'd be a socialist, maybe even communist? There's long been a
>>weird fascination with the sexy world of socialists by public members of
>>the right, doubtless colored by the likes of Burnham and Chambers in their
>>early ranks. Buckley's resisted this since forever, but in recent years
>>he's clearly loosened up. For whatever that's worth.
>====================================================
>Of course, this is a virtual cliche among conservatives, especially among
>their intellectuals. I think it was Churchill who reputedly said "a young
>man who isn't a socialist hasn't got a heart, and an old man who is a
>socialist hasn't got a head", which seems to be the sentiment Buckley is
>echoing.
It's more than that - the more thoughtful ones seem a little disillusioned with their success. Corey Robin's fascinating piece from the Feb 2001 Lingua Franca (archived at <http://www3.iath.virginia.edu/lists_archive/sixties-l/2776.html>) has these great quotes from Irving Kristol & Bill Buckley:
>Irving Kristol's dictum: "Capitalism is the least romantic
>conception of a public order that the human mind has ever conceived."
>The end of the Soviet Union "deprived us of an enemy," says Irving
>Kristol, the intellectual godfather of neoconservatism. "In
>politics, being deprived of an enemy is a very serious matter. You
>tend to get relaxed and dispirited. Turn inward." Notorious for his
>self-confidence, Kristol now confesses to a sad bewilderment in the
>post-communist world. "That's one of the reasons I really am not
>writing much these days," he says. "I don't know the answers."
>Kristol adds, "American conservatism lacks for political
>imagination. It's so influenced by business culture and by business
>modes of thinking that it lacks any political imagination, which has
>always been, I have to say, a property of the left." He goes on, "If
>you read Marx, you'd learn what a political imagination could do."
And the capper from Chairman Bill:
>At the end of our interview, I ask Buckley to imagine a younger
>version of himself, an aspiring political enfant terrible graduating
>from college in 2000, bringing to today's political world the same
>insurgent spirit that Buckley brought to his. What kind of politics
>would this youthful Buckley embrace? "I'd be a socialist," he
>replies. "A Mike Harrington socialist." He pauses. "I'd even say a
>communist." Can he really imagine a young communist Bill Buckley? He
>concedes that it's difficult. The original Bill Buckley had the
>benefit of the Soviet Union as an enemy; without its equivalent, his
>doppelgnger would confront a more complicated task. "This new
>Buckley would have to point to other things," he says. Buckley runs
>down a laundry list of left causes, global poverty, death from AIDS.
>But even he seems suddenly overwhelmed by the project of (in typical
>Buckleyese) "conjoining all of that into an arresting afflatus."
>Daunted by the challenge of thinking outside the free market,
>Buckley pauses, then finally says, "I'll leave that to you."