Why I Do Not Support National Review Conservatism

PO Box 130

West Shokan, New York 12494

December 7, 2012

Mr. J.P. Fowler

National Review

215 Lexington Avenue

New York, NY 10016

Dear Mr. Fowler:

I am in receipt of your fundraising letter of November 30.  I did contribute to National Review once or twice, but I have since concluded that the Buckley brand of conservatism has contributed to the nation's ongoing decline.  I have two chief reasons for reaching this conclusion. 

First, the lesser-of-two-evils voting strategy creates a Hegelian dynamic whereby a left-wing thesis confronts a conservative antithesis.  The conservative antithesis is an argument for no change, while the left-wing thesis is an argument for socialist change. The outcome is an incremental socialist (Democratic Party) or fascist (Republican Party) trend, and your lesser-of-two-evils voting philosophy has contributed to it.  American conservatism is unique because of William Howard Taft Progressivism, but it still leads to fascism.  Instead, there needs to be a pro-freedom thesis, or better yet, an elimination of the Hegelian model altogether because it is superstitious. At this point in history, only a radicalism alien to your Taft conservatism will be successful in reversing the totalitarian trend.

Second, your brand of conservatism does not aim to reduce or even to limit government, despite your and the GOP's protestations.  The expansion of government is an outcome of two interactive factors: the brokerage of coalitions of special interests and the unending availability of Federal Reserve Bank counterfeit.  The brokerage of coalitions inexorably pushes elected officials to expand government, and the Fed's unlimited monetary expansion power makes expansion possible.  You favor the Fed's unfettered monetary creation power, and you do not offer an alternative to democracy's brokerage of special interests, a brokerage recognized and heralded by Herbert Hoover, as William Appleman Williams describes in his Contours of American History.

I have concluded that I have as little common ground with your publication, William Howard Taft Progressivism , the GOP, and neoconservative fascism as I do with the Democratic Party and their more thuggish version of socialism. 

 

Please remove me from your mailing list.

Sincerely,

Mitchell Langbert, Ph.D.

Hasselbeck versus O'Donnell; Buckley versus Vidal

Jonah Goldberg of NRO finds ABC News's claim that Rosie O'Donnell's and Elizabeth Hasselbeck's debate on Barbara Walters' "The View" "harkens back to a Vietnam-era exchange between liberal Gore Vidal and conservative William Buckley."

Larwyn has provided the following link to the New Editor which has clips of both the Vidal/Buckley debate (which I recall took place in the summer of 1967 when I was a camper at Camp Woodcliff in Sawkill, NY) and the O'Donnell/Hasselback debate.

There are two similarities. Both debates are based on mistaken assessments and characterizations about, respectively, the Vietnam and Iraqi Wars. For example, Vidal claims that North and South Vietnam were one country, a mistaken claim that Mark Moyar debunks in Triumph Forsaken. Second, you had some people like Buckley and Hasselbeck both favoring the respective wars and Vidal and O'Donnell both opposing them.

However, there are two big differences. First, neither Buckley nor Vidal are as good looking as Hasselbeck but both are better looking than O'Donnell. Second, Buckley and Vidal are extremely articulate and are the products of education and refinement. In contrast, Hasselbeck and O'Donnell lack these characteristics.

Part of the problem with today's public discourse is that the educational system has failed to prepare Americans to express themselves coherently. The mass media, especially television, have contributed to this inability. College courses no longer require good writing. Opinions count more than learning. Self-esteem and self-indulgence take priority over self-discipline and education.

The difference between the Hasselbeck/O'Donnell and Buckley/Vidal debates is that in the 1960s the public required its television commentators to be well educated. Today, the public commentators are circus clowns.