William F. Buckley, RIP

I'm not exactly sure how I should feel about the death of the father of modern American conservatism. I don't entirely buy into the idea that Buckley was a CIA Agent, as proposed by Murray Rothbard. But as nice and respectful as the guy was in life (or so most of the obituaries claim, I never met him so how could I say for sure?), the conservative movement he gave birth to (united by rabid anti-Communism interventionism abroad) has turned into a monster. How much should we hold Dr. Frankenstein responsible for the actions of his creation?

Reason's Robert Poole provides a lot of praise for Buckley in promoting libertarianism through the National Review.

By creating National Review in 1955 as a serious, intellectually respectable conservative voice (challenging the New Deal consensus among thinking people), Buckley created space for the development of our movement. He kicked out the racists and conspiracy-mongers from conservatism and embraced Chicago and Austrian economists, introducing a new generation to Hayek, Mises, and Friedman. And thanks to the efforts of NR's Frank Meyer to promote a "fusion" between economic (free-market) conservatives and social conservatives, Buckley and National Review fostered the growth of a large enough conservative movement to nominate Goldwater for president and ultimately to elect Ronald Reagan.

Yes, Buckley's National Review helped clear the way for Barry Goldwater and later Ronald Reagan. So what? Goldwater's campaign was a flop and in the end I think an objective assessment of Reagan's time in office would leave much to be desired by a libertarian. The alliance between economic conservatives and social conservatives meant giving up freedom and liberty on the social front. Such a concession was an unfortunate decision at a time when the focus should have been on expanding freedom and liberty for women and minorities. Buckley picked the wrong side on this fight by backing racism and segregationism.

The emphasis on anti-Communism was an absurd miscalculation of the threat posed by the Soviet Union. But it was brilliant from the perspective of trying to find an issue to stir up fear among voters. Even if Buckley was dismissive of the John Birch Society, his emphasis on uniting the factions of the Republican Party by opposing the Soviet Union at all cost fit into the John Birch agenda. Buckley is like an elitist member of the CCC scoffing at the KKK. Pushing out non-interventionists was a bad policy at a time in which someone, anyone, needed to speak up against the Cold War consensus that drove us into Vietnam.

Recalling Murray Rothbard's book "The Betrayal of the American Right," Lew Rockwell writes about the cost of this anti-Communism agenda.

"It is clear that libertarians and Old Rightists, including myself, had made a great mistake in endorsing domestic red-baiting, a red-baiting that proved to be the major entering wedge for the complete transformation of the original right wing," writes Murray. Instead of supporting freedom, the anti-Communist movement ended up acculturating Republicans to the imperial mindset. The moral priority of crushing a foreign government trumped every other issue.

At the same time, the libertarianism of the GOP's domestic agenda was supplanted by a belief that "big government and domestic statism were perfectly acceptable, provided that they were steeped in some sort of Burkean tradition and enjoyed a Christian framework." Fiery individualism and radicalism were replaced by a longing for a static, controlling elite of the European sort. Liberty was washed away.

Buckley's conservatism may have made some traditions of libertarianism respectful, but not those advocated by either Murray Rothbard or Ayn Rand. Milton Friedman made the cut, but if his negative income tax, school vouchers, and privatized Social Security accounts are all held up to be the standard of libertarianism, there should be no debate in calling Barack Obama a libertarian Democrat.

Civilian Conservation Corps? Commodity Credit Corporation? Central Coordinating Committee?

None of them seem to fit...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Conservative_Citizens

there should be no debate in calling Barack Obama a libertarian Democrat

I've lost a good bit of respect for Obama upon looking into his "Patriot Employer Act". On its face, it just looks ridiculous. Some leftist economists call it "the dangerous protectionism of Barak Obama", even as a commentator at the Economist thinks that this criticism goes too far.

I'm not too worried about this proposal in itself: it seems to be more symbolism than substance. However, the symbolism makes me sick to my stomach--it reflects a particular conception of how our society should be organized, one that I've previously called "proto-fascism".

Basically, it envisions that the employer-employee relationship as being similar to the guardian-dependent, and that it is the proper role of the state to enforce this relationship by policies that amount to the semi-nationalization of capital. It still needs several more elements to be full blown fascism (perhaps "progressive" is just this economic model linked to liberal social policies and political institutions), but this basic view of social organization has more in common with fascism than with socialism or liberalism, and it really bothers me.

if you are going to define that as meaning trending toward potential fascism. I guess it boils down to how you prefer your fascism served up, more geared to worker paternalism, social liberal policy(but with a healthy dose of group identity politics), or corporatism, supply-side tax cuts with increased militarism(and spending), and religious identity politics and social conservatism.

You are absolutely correct that this "proto-fascism" is rampant in our politics. I only mentioned Obama because I had thought him to be immune to it.

It's hard to find a good word for this semi-ideological attitude (as for any comprehensive ideal for social organization). Perhaps it is more accurately "neo-feudalist", in the sense of a socio-economic system structured around heirarchical instututions, culminating in the state. Fascism would be a type of neo-feudalism, but of course, there was a lot more to fascism than just neo-feudalism. Fascism (or maybe just Nazi-ism) had a strong sense of cultural protectionism, along with the non-democratic state. In those respects, the Republicans are much closer to fascism than Obama (or Democrats in general).

Anyway, this neo-feudalism seems to be a rejection of both the liberal and socialist ideals, which are based on social equality. That saddens me.

Adam,

I think protectionism is merely a characteristic of the European variety of fascism. You are right in saying that fascism is merely a modern form of feudalism. The ruling class has decided that it is in its own interest to take a smaller slice of a larger pie. They get more in absolute terms and the common masses are much happier about their own welfare.

Fascism is an economic system that gets implemented only if it has enough popular support. In Europe that method of building up support was hyper-nationalism and the idea of living space. We tend to identify an economic system with the reasons people gave for supporting such economic systems. We tend to confuse fascism with nationalism and genocide and we tend to confuse the New Deal Policies with getting out of the depression.

The economic system of the left and right are converging on fascism. Their arguments are different. The left argues for compassion. The right argues for national interests. Their conclusion is that the government should control many means of production.

Protectionism as a program to appeal to the masses only works when you're dealing with a country that is competing with cheap labor internationally. A country that IS the home to cheap labor would of course be able to promote free trade with little protest from the masses. A country in a time period in which the large populated countries, the Chinas and Indias, are too behind technologically to compete would also still be able to promote free trade.

for libertarian-conservative fusionism than Buckley. I have read 2 ends of the extreme today in terms of the Obits, wherein LRC calls him 'Father NeoCon' and The Liberty Papers praises Buckley's role in fashioning the libertarian movement. I'm going to have to split the difference between those 2 viewpoints.

Former conservative turned anarchist Joseph Sobran who used to work at National Review summed it up 4 years ago when Buckley turned over the reigns of the magazine to the young turks, lamenting it as a sad farewell.

As it stands today, the National Review has nothing in common with libertarianism. I think even Buckley would have conceded that point in his final days.

However, I'm a little confused by the last sentence...are you comparing the libertarianism of friedman to that of Obama? I'm going to have to disagree there. Friedman, although a nominal republican, eschewed the conservative label, calling himself a (classical) liberal, was opposed to both Gulf wars, favored drug legalization, played a huge role in ending the military draft(what he called his greatest achievement), and was generally a social liberal.

My point is that if Rand and Rothbard are thrown under the bus and Friedman is upheld as the respectable libertarian, his support of government as a minarchist and even government meddling would come close to the soft paternal statism of an Obama.

but many of Friedman's positions that might be viewed as "meddling" were probably not his ideal positions, but were "compromises." However, i have more or less come to accept this valid critique of minarchism, even in the case of Friedman, because this is the type of graph you're likely to end up with.

Friedman's Ideal Position--->No government (for a given issue)--->Friedman conceptually proposes a compromise on an issue to be more politically viable---> it's taken up as legislation-->special interest groups and legislators re-work Friedman's orginal compromise--->Special interest, corporatist legislation--->it's amended x years later to be distorted/tilted even more for the political class.

So, true, Obama might view "meddling" as ideal government and Friedman might view "meddling" as a compromise, but the end result is the same. Objectively, it's hard to argue against that point. Nevertheless, philosophically and intellectually, Friedman's contributions to libertarian thought were enormous. But in the end, Friedman's son David, might have the better ideas, although his influence comes nowhere close as that of his fathers.

I don't think that Friedman begins with an ideal position of no government. He actively promotes government in law and order, and in other areas like monetary policy.

income tax, school vouchers, social security. Milton's son is an anarchist, but Milton obviously never went that far in his libertarianism(his libertarianism being the classical liberal version).