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The son of conservative icon William F. Buckley has parted ways with the magazine his father founded for committing a heretical act by National Review magazine standards: endorsing Barack Obama.
In a column today entitled Sorry, Dad, I was Sackedon www.TheDailyBeast.com, Christopher Buckley, a well-known author who also who wrote the back page column for National Review magazine, writes that the uproar over his endorsement last week of Obama over Republican John McCain prompted so much backlash that he offered his resignationand the magazine accepted.
Christopher Buckley, in an exclusive for The Daily Beast, explains why he left The National Review, the magazine his father founded.
I seem to have picked an apt title for my Daily Beast column, or blog, or whatever its called: What Fresh Hell. My last posting (if thats what its called) in which I endorsed Obama, has brought about a very heaping helping of fresh hell. In fact, I think it could accurately be called a tsunami.
The mail (as we used to call it in pre-cyber times) at the Beast has been running Id say at about 7-to-1 in favor. This would seem to indicate that you (the Beast reader) are largely pro-Obama.
As for the mail flooding into National Review Onlinethats been running about, oh, 700-to-1 against. In fact, the only thing the Right cant quite decide is whether I should be boiled in oil or just put up against the wall and shot. Lethal injection would be too painless.
I had gone out of my way in my Beast endorsement to say that I was not doing it in the pages of National Review, where I write the back-page column, because of the experience of my colleague, the lovely Kathleen Parker. Kathleen had written in NRO that she felt Sarah Palin was an embarrassment. (Hardly an alarmist view.) This brought 12,000 livid emails, among them a real charmer suggesting that Kathleens mother ought to have aborted her and tossed the fetus into a dumpster. I didnt want to put NR in an awkward position.
Since my Obama endorsement, Kathleen and I have become BFFs and now trade incoming hate-mails. No one has yet suggested my dear old Mum should have aborted me, but its pretty darned angry out there in Right Wing Land. One editor at National Reviewa friend of 30 yearsemailed me that he thought my opinions cretinous. One thoughtful correspondent, who feels that I have betrayedthe b-word has been much used in all thismy father and the conservative movement generally, said he plans to devote the rest of his life to getting people to cancel their subscriptions to National Review. But there was one bright spot: To those who wrote me to demand, Cancel my subscription, I was able to quote the title of my fathers last book, a delicious compendium of his NR Notes and Asides: Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription.
The Audacity of Nope
by Christopher Buckley
One feels almost unpatriotic, entertaining negative thoughts about Obamas grand plan. But it is far from clear that spending oceanic sums of money is the right corrective.
That was, as Tom Lehrer would say, the week that was. President Barack Obama gave his first State of the Union speech. Governor Bobby Jindal gave his first and possibly last Republican response. The president presented a $3.6 trillion budget, and announced that we are getting out of Iraq but not really. And Rush Limbaugh gaveas he put it, fun intendedhis first nationally televised address to the nation.
Just remember the apothegm that a government that is big enough to give you everything you want is also big enough to take it all away.
Hold ontheres a typo in that paragraph. $3.6 trillion budget cant be right.The entire national debt iswhatabout $11 trillion? He cant actually be proposing to spend nearly one-third of that in one year, surely. Let me check. Hmm. He did. The Wall Street Journal notes that federal outlays in fiscal 2009 will rise to almost 30 percent of the gross national product. In language that even an innumerate English major such as myself can understand: The US government is now spending annually about one-third of what the entire US economy produces. As George Will would say, Well....
I wouldn't call that article an endorsement per say. it wasn't an excoriation so I guess in a Dimocrat's mind it's an endorsement.
I wouldn't call that article an endorsement per say. it wasn't an excoriation so I guess in a Dimocrat's mind it's an endorsement.
Are you referring to the column in October?
I wouldn't call that article an endorsement per say. it wasn't an excoriation so I guess in a Dimocrat's mind it's an endorsement.
Are you referring to the column in October?
no, sorry the one from march 3
Are you referring to the column in October?
no, sorry the one from march 3
That one was a form of 'buyer's remorse.'
no, sorry the one from march 3
That one was a form of 'buyer's remorse.'
A lot of people have that
And Pays the Price:
Buckley Is Out at National Review After Obama Endorsement
The son of conservative icon William F. Buckley has parted ways with the magazine his father founded for committing a heretical act by National Review magazine standards: endorsing Barack Obama.
In a column today entitled Sorry, Dad, I was Sackedon The Daily Beast, Christopher Buckley, a well-known author who also who wrote the back page column for National Review magazine, writes that the uproar over his endorsement last week of Obama over Republican John McCain prompted so much backlash that he offered his resignationand the magazine accepted.
Washington Wire - WSJ.com : Buckley Is Out at National Review After Obama Endorsement
And Pays the Price:
Buckley Is Out at National Review After Obama Endorsement
The son of conservative icon William F. Buckley has parted ways with the magazine his father founded for committing a heretical act by National Review magazine standards: endorsing Barack Obama.
In a column today entitled Sorry, Dad, I was Sackedon www.TheDailyBeast.com, Christopher Buckley, a well-known author who also who wrote the back page column for National Review magazine, writes that the uproar over his endorsement last week of Obama over Republican John McCain prompted so much backlash that he offered his resignationand the magazine accepted.
Washington Wire - WSJ.com : Buckley Is Out at National Review After Obama Endorsement
but I will admit to a certain sadness that an act of publishing a reasoned argument for the opposition should result in acrimony and disavowal,
You have to remember folks conservatism is a form of psychosis and as such requires patience and care of the person who is coming around to see the light.
Just the other day a fourteen year spoke at CPAC demonstrating the symptomatic identity of brain washing in his constant repetition of slogans. Nazi youth, communist youths and Maoist youth all go through similar transformative episodes and most come back to the world of girls, music, cars, fun, hunting, games, and sports.
Please recall, Buckley grew up in an atmosphere of total control and it will take time to clear his head of all the slogans. Humans often fall back into fantasy and easy cliches until they are able to build up a rational and inquisitive personality. Let's wish him luck on his journey to reason.
Neo-Cons, act much like totalitarians of every age - it's my way or the highway.
What nitwits ALWAYS FAIL TO UNDERSTAND is that one benefits from having and listening to the opposition.
A vocal opposition is the check and balance of the rational mind.
Free speech isn't merely a nice idea for those hoping to do well, it's crucial for a vibrant society to allow unwelcomed ideas to come to the forum of ideas.
Failure to honestly evaluate the critcism of the opposition is foolish and counterproductive.
Why?
Sometimes we are just wrong!
Sometimes, we cannot see the forest for the trees.
Sometimes we are blinded by the sycophants which rally around us simply because we are in power.
Truly great leaders listen to their detractors. They listen and consider their critiques even more closely than they listen to those telling them they they are on the right path.
Fools, dicatators and tryrants never understand that managment skill.
That is why, when leadership become totalitarian, that leadership has doomed itself.
If the only voices you are willing to listen to are those who agree with you, then GROUPTHINK will make you deaf to the warning rumbles of discontent that will be brewing beyond your range of hearing.
Honorable men can disagree honorably.
Only tyrants cannot stand honest criticism.
And a deaf leader cripples himself by denying himself one of his most valuable tools to help him manage.
