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Buckley's son "fatwahed"
Buckley?s Son Leaves National Review
By Patricia CohenChristopher Buckley, the author and son of the late conservative mainstay William F. Buckley, said in a telephone interview that he has resigned from the National Review, the political journal his father founded in 1955.
Mr. Buckley said he had ?been effectively fatwahed by the conservative movement? after endorsing Barack Obama in a blog posting on TheDailyBeast.com; since then, he said he has been blanketed with hate mail at the blog and at the National Review, where he has written a column.
As a result, he wrote to Richard Lowry, the editor of the National Review, and its publisher, Jack Fowler, offering to resign, and ?this offer was rather briskly accepted,? Mr. Buckley said.
Mr. Buckley said he did not understand the sense of betrayal that
some of his conservative colleagues felt, but said that the fury and
ugly comments his endorsement generated is ?part of
the calcification of modern discourse. It?s so angry.? Paraphrasing
Ronald Reagan?s quote about the Democrats, Mr. Buckley added, ?I
haven?t left the Republican Party. It left me.?
Re: Buckley's son "fatwahed"
While I do not condone any type of hate mail in any way, I am not sure why he is surprised. People will be angry (and some will not be able to speak of that anger in a responsible way) when they see someone they look up to-or looked up to in the case of his father. He abandoned all they hold dear in an op/ed that was endorsing a candidate he did not agree with because he feels he will not be able to complete his agenda? He is certainly free to do so, but to act so bewildered by it is a bit out of touch.
I will agree with his sentiment on the current Repub party---they have left many of their ideals behind (fiscal conservatism being the biggest).
I wouldn't say he's entirely bewildered, he wrote the op/ed outside the NR because he knew it would generate this kind of response and didn't want people canceling their NR subscriptions because of it. I think he's surprised that he was forced to leave the NR for writing something in another publication. At any rate, I've never read him before but I'm instantly a fan. He's hilarious. Just his description of the hate mail has me in stiches:
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 Kathleen?s mother ought to have aborted her and tossed the fetus into a dumpster. I didn?t 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 it?s pretty darned angry out there in Right Wing Land. One editor at National Review?a friend of 30 years?emailed me that he thought my opinions ?cretinous.? One thoughtful correspondent, who feels that I have ?betrayed??the b-word has been much used in all this?my 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 father?s last book, a delicious compendium of his NR ?Notes and Asides?: Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription.
Within hours of my endorsement appearing in The Daily Beast it became clear that National Review had a serious problem on its hands. So the next morning, I thought the only decent thing to do would be to offer to resign my column there. This offer was accepted?rather briskly!?by Rich Lowry, NR?s editor, and its publisher, the superb and able and fine Jack Fowler. I retain the fondest feelings for the magazine that my father founded, 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.
My father in his day endorsed a number of liberal Democrats for high office, including Allard K. Lowenstein and Joe Lieberman. One of his closest friends on earth was John Kenneth Galbraith. In 1969, Pup wrote a widely-remarked upon column saying that it was time America had a black president. (I hasten to aver here that I did not endorse Senator Obama because he is black. Surely voting for someone on that basis is as racist as not voting for him for the same reason.)
My point, simply, is that William F. Buckley held to rigorous standards, and if those were met by members of the other side rather than by his own camp, he said as much. My father was also unpredictable, which tends to keep things fresh and lively and on-their-feet. He came out for legalization of drugs once he decided that the war on drugs was largely counterproductive. Hardly a conservative position. Finally, and hardly least, he was fun. God, he was fun. He liked to mix it up.
So, I have been effectively fatwahed (is that how you spell it?) by the conservative movement, and the magazine that my father founded must now distance itself from me. But then, conservatives have always had a bit of trouble with the concept of diversity. The GOP likes to say it?s a big-tent. Looks more like a yurt to me.
While I regret this development, I am not in mourning, for I no longer have any clear idea what, exactly, the modern conservative movement stands for. Eight years of ?conservative? government has brought us a doubled national debt, ruinous expansion of entitlement programs, bridges to nowhere, poster boy Jack Abramoff and an ill-premised, ill-waged war conducted by politicians of breathtaking arrogance. As a sideshow, it brought us a truly obscene attempt at federal intervention in the Terry Schiavo case.
So, to paraphrase a real conservative, Ronald Reagan: I haven?t left the Republican Party. It left me.
Yeah, I find his op/ed well-written (I even agree with some sentiments) and if this statement holds true:
President Obama will (I pray, secularly) surely understand that traditional left-politics aren?t going to get us out of this pit we?ve dug for ourselves. If he raises taxes and throws up tariff walls and opens the coffers of the DNC to bribe-money from the special interest groups against whom he has (somewhat disingenuously) railed during the campaign trail, then he will almost certainly reap a whirlwind that will make Katrina look like a balmy summer zephyr.
his possible Presidency might not be harmful or intolerable, but....how will that sit with his supporters? I guess that is not for him, or me, to worry about, but, then, who will the other contenders be for the Dems in 2012 for I am sure he would not win re-election.
But that was?sigh?then. John McCain has changed. He said, famously, apropos the Republican debacle post-1994,
I agree with this statement as well with regards to McCain (but I am sure the many readers of NR will not and, no matter where he writes his op/ed, will find him). McCain has lost his way--too worried about going after the elusive independent voter rather than sticking to his convictions and having them follow-as many probably would.
I often say I'm a Republican without a party.
And this is precisely why I like and respect the Buckleys so much. There is something to be said for viewing politics as something other than a zero sum game to be won at all costs and with no compromise.