New School Politics

If you're a first time visitor, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed, which will keep you up to date with all the latest New School Politics posts. Thanks for visiting!

Bill Buckley, the conservative writer, commentator, and founder of National Review, died yesterday at the age of 82 in the town neighboring my own. I have subsequently spent time reading more on the man and watching more of him. His prominence is owed to his unfettered defense of conservatism throughout the post-WWII era when the Left really dominated the zeitgeist and moderates, in the mold of Nelson Rockefeller, had a hold of the Republican Party. Today, American politics is centered noticeably further to the right in part because of Buckley’s promotion of figures from Barry Goldwater to Ronald Regan. And the fact that it is now hard to imagine the Nixons and Rockefellers of the world leading the GOP is a tribute to Buckley’s way with words.

In the second-ever issue of his brain-child, the National Review, he declared the magazines mission statement, which included its famous vow to “stand athwart history yelling, stop.” While this represents my own fundamental discontent with the philosophy of conservatism–for no philosophy can have merit by virtue of being the status quo–it appeals to both my romantic sense, by unequivocally promising to fight for a successful tradition, and my rational one, by standing for limited government and individualism at a time when collectivism was rising to the top of the intellectual order.

The doctrines of conservatism, which today is often cast as a three-legged stool consisting of aggressive national defense, traditional social values, and economic libertarianism, was different in many ways from what it was in 1955. Perhaps the biggest change from early Cold War conservatism, was the relative rise of the third prong, economic libertarianism, which Buckley was particularly known for. As a matter of fact, he claimed that he floated between the self-label of conservative and libertarian for some time during the latter part of his career. Additionally, he came out against the war on drugs later in life, but at the same time his reasoning was rooted in the impracticality of the fight rather than individual rights–hardly the essence of a true libertarian.

Politics aside, what remembrances seem to have concentrated on are the style of the man himself and his unmatched way with words. Watching him and hearing him and reading him, I gained a sense of an aura of refined elitism–and I mean that in only the best way–that arose from his able mind and own rebelilon against the liberal intelligentsia. His quick wit and sesquipedalian vocabulary were second to none and made his writing unmistakable.

Of all the obituaries I read today, here are the links to the five best:

from The New York Times

from Ann Coulter

from The Nation

and from the the two most Buckley-esque journalists left: Peggy Noonan and George Will

While the sources of these articles generally mix as well as water and vinegar, all of their memorials include great recollections of the man and are well done. The irony of the timing of Buckley’s death is that it coincided with the nomination of a Republican presidential candidate who is out of favor with self-proclaimed conservatives and who appeals to the center of politics, while the Democrats may be running on their most liberal platform in decades this year. The question remains: did Buckley die alongside the modern conservative movement for which he served as a fountainhead? I think that is probably overly-simplistic, but the question has been asked and is well worth asking. I anticipate that the American conservatism is still politically strong despite an unpopular president and will remain more like the party of Ronald Reagan than that of Gerald Ford in the years to come.

Popularity: 52% [?]

“…because her father is Janet Reno.”

Now before you castigate me for that admittedly off-color two liner, I must disclose that the ill-humor is not my own.

But, who’s is it?

Surprise: that joke was John McCain’s at a fundraiser in 1998 according to several newspapers, including the Arizona Republic. Many other prominent papers, as well as the Associated Press, alluded to but did not publish it, saying it was “too vicious to print.”

With the 2008 general election looking like it may shape up to be Clinton v. McCain, one can only wonder if that past predicament will come to light 10 years after the fact.

Popularity: 30% [?]

What?

Pravda liked it so much, they wrote about it. Maybe that should tell us something.

This is what his website says:

Edwards calls for a national effort to:

• Cut poverty by one third within a decade, lifting 12 million Americans out of poverty by 2016.
• End poverty within 30 years, lifting 37 million Americans out of poverty by 2036.

Needless to say this sounds ridiculous. The fact that Edwards’ plan for a Great Society or New Deal would only stagger economic growth aside, one has to question: how can he say that he (he says ‘we’ but we all knows he means ‘me’) will end poverty? Can poverty ever really be ended?

The point is that poverty is a reletive term and it depends on one’s standard for poverty. By the standards of the Middle Ages–when economic production remained litteraly stagnant for centuries–the Industrial Revolution “ended poverty”. By the standards of the Great Depression, America’s modern economic expansion “ended poverty”. In 2000 97% of Americans below the poverty line had color televisions, they would be considered well-to-do at least by the standards of 1950.

But no matter what Edwards’ standards for poverty are, one thing is for sure: “ending poverty” will require economic progress that no politician can achieve. The innovation and labor of the mind that future economic growth will require can only be achieved by free people motivated by the incentives of a free market just like was required every other time capitalism “ended poverty”.

Popularity: 26% [?]

From a recent George Will article:

Some mornings during the autumn of 1933, when the unemployment rate was 22 percent, the president, before getting into his wheelchair, sat in bed, surrounded by economic advisers, setting the price of gold. One morning he said he might raise it 21 cents: “It’s a lucky number because it’s three times seven.” His treasury secretary wrote that if anybody knew how gold was priced “they would be frightened.”

The president that Will is speaking of is of course Franklin Roosevelt. And keep in mind that this is the president who so many (too many) believe to be our greatest president.

Its not like anyone should be surprised at how trivial FDR behaved when fixing the price of gold–its not like he ever demonstrated restraint with economic intervention. But consider for a moment how the price of gold is determined today, in the free market: day to day, hour by hour, millions of investors buy and sell the commodity on their own volition, by their own intelligent judgment, risking their own savings that they earned because they estimate that their endeavor will in the end reap them the greatest reward. In economics people talk about “supply and demand” and “the invisible hand” as if they were vast and mysterious concepts removed from individual, day to day activity just like government price controls. But the reality is that is completely incorrect. Supply and demand is the manifestation of the sum of the day to day decisions of all individuals.

Now compare that alternative to the reality under Roosevelt. If the free market is a sort of economic democracy–where all people can vote (and ultimate have the freedom to choose whether or not to buy or sell at a given price) with their wallets on what the price should be–then an economy where prices are controlled by the government is economic tyranny where the price is determined for all on the whim of an autocrat. During the 1930s FDR served as economic dictator over breakfast in bed.

Popularity: 26% [?]