On Sun, 21 Feb 2010, SA wrote:
I know you know much, much more about this history than I do (as does Doug). So I challenge you mainly hoping you'll make clear what I still don't understand.
> Not true! One of NR's most important historical roles was reading the
> Birchers, the Randers, and the (George) Wallaceites out of the conservative
> movement.
The Randers are not part of the right? They still are today. They seem like they've always been a permanent fixture.
And yes, the NR famous engaged the John Birch Society. But weren't they based on a bunch of grouplets that basically became the Goldwaterites -- who became the organizational backbone of the new right? And wasn't there a lot of overlap with them and the Wallicites? (I thought their main difference was over whether or not to form a third party and whether make peace with the hated Nixon in 1968. Didn't Wallace and Goldwater basically win the same same states?)
I know this is the NR's own story, that they drummed out the crazies. But AFAICT, although they argued with everyone, all they drummed out was the extreme anti-semites and racists -- because they would discredit the movement. But that's not only setting the bar low, it's letting all the other crazies in -- and laundering them.
And this seems to go back to the very beginning, when Buckley and Bozell wrote a book defending the McCarthyites, the original conspiracoid right wing crazies who drove politics to the right. They chided them for mistakes of crude style, but defended them as righter than their opponents, the anti-McCarthyites. In fact as profoundly right where their opponents were profoundly wrong. And that's quite a leap when you are defending about conspiracy theorists.
AFAICT, for Buckley and Bozell, so long as it wasn't blatently racist, conspiracy thinking was essentially a problem of style, an excess of enthusiasm, that could be overlooked. You could still defend it for having good principles. Which in practice meant it was okay if if they were helping the right side and not making racial slurs.
This style of attacking small points in order to defend the main thrust of absolute crazies seems to me the soul of the NR stance. And the essence of the relation of Republican media and party elites to their conspiracoid wing to this day.
So from the outside at least, it seems as if you are giving NR too much credit as a model for your own practice. It wasn't their astringency that built a crazy right. (That would have removed the crazies, which they clearly and obviously never did.) It was their indulgence.
This seems virtually the opposite of your own stance.
Michael