In Memoriam; William F. Buckley: It Tastes Awful. And It Works. February 29, 2008

Picture: William F. Buckley in 1969, the wink that brought down Noam Chomsky.

The day before yesterday marked the passing of William F. Buckley Jr. He was 82 years old. Though few probably know much about him, his influence on American politics is undeniable. While I do not condone all of Mr Buckley’s views, political or otherwise, I believe that the movement Buckley created was essential in helping the United States to come to grips with many of the failing domestic policies of the 1960’s and 1970’s. His doctrine of pragmatic conservatism is the one which modern leaders such as Sarkozy and Harper take their lead from and the members of the current American presidential administration should have had tattooed on the palms of their hands from day one.

In 1955 Buckley made his first mark on history by founding the National Review, a nationally syndicated conservative magazine that now has a circulation of over 150,000. He stood in stark contrast to his intellectual colleagues, who during the mid-twentieth century were rushing to the Democratic Party which was undergoing a progressive revolution in the north east. At the time, the conservative movement lacked a scholarly voice to communicate its ideas. Mr. Buckley and the National Review were more then happy to fill that void.

1964 marked the first time that the Republican Party nominated a presidential candidate whose ideas outweighed his political ideology. The nominee was Arizona Senator Barry Goldwater. Goldwater was seen an intellectual philosopher-politician whose famous quote, “extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice” became the rallying cry of the Republican Party. In typical fashion of nearly all academically driven people, he lost in a landslide to President Lyndon Baynes Johnson of Texas. Goldwater’s defeat created the space necessary for Richard Nixon, the anti-communist ideological Neanderthal, to rise again to dominate his party during the 1970’s.

Pragmatic conservatism finally found its standard bearer in a handsome Californian actor turned governor (I know who you’re thinking of, it’s not him), by the name of Ronald Reagan. After narrowly failing to defeat then President Gerald Ford for the Party Nomination in 1976, he succeeded four years later in riding on a tidal wave of discontent that Americans had with the stagnating economy, high oil prices, and seemingly incompetent presidential administration (sound familiar?) of Jimmy Carter. Reagan was part of a larger movement, along with Margaret Thatcher and Brian Mulroney, that took the west away from the welfare state and towards the neo-liberal laissez faire economic policies that continue to have a strong bearing on politics today. Though admittedly, Reaganomics exacerbated the outsourcing of jobs from the United States and hurt millions of working class families, it put the United States on the right track by reviving the nation’s entrepreneurial spirit thus leading to the tech boom of the 1990’s.

Like a nasty cough syrup, Buckley’s brand of conservatism tasted awful but succeeded in ending the disease of stagflation. As for today’s world, until the Republican Party can reject the ideologues, warmongers, and corporate interests that have dominated Washington politics in the last seven years, it will fail to fulfill its mandate, which is to serve conservatives in the United States of America (and not the other way around). There is little doubt in my mind that the Republicans will get shelled in this upcoming election (you heard it here first) and will continue to lose support unless the leadership agrees to follow the lessons of pragmatic conservatism that Buckley taught them.

-optionaltoaster

PS: Happy Leap Day

The politics of Upstate New York: “Aubertine Upsets Barclay to Win Special Election” -MSNBC February 28, 2008

For those of you who don’t know (and it’s ok if you don’t), New York State’s 48th Senate District held a special election two days ago. Such was the significance of this election that I just now remembered it was taking place. Actually, it is a big deal and it says something important about the social and political demographics of the North Country and even more significantly, how what was seen as an inevitable win went terribly wrong for Republican Assemblyman Barclay due to his horribly mismanaged campaign and allowed for his Democratic opponent, Assemblyman Darrel Aubertine to slip in a narrow 52%-48% victory.

First, a Civics lesson. In the United States, the governments of the individual states operate for the most part as microcosms of the federal government. Power is split between the executive (President/Governor), legislative (State Legislature/Congress), and judicial (Supreme Court/State Supreme Court) branches. In New York, the State Legislature is split between a Senate and an Assembly, not at all dissimilar to the United States Senate and House of Representatives, respectively. Demographically, if New York were to be divided into halves, it would be split between the largely urban liberal Democratic downstate and the more rural conservative Republican upstate. The small area between Dutchess and Suffolk Counties comprises about 60% of the state’s population, most of whom live in Yonkers, New York City, and Long Island. I come from Jefferson County which is a stone’s throw from the Canadian border on the eastern bank of Lake Ontario. To understand where the 48th Senate District is, you should take a highlighter and draw a thick line from Ogdensburg down to Fulton. Everything that is yellow is part of the “Fightin’ 48th”.

Our last State Senator, Jim Wright (R-Watertown), has held his seat uninterrupted for fifteen years. According to AP, the seat has been held by a Republican for over a century, maintaining the fragile control that the Republicans have had over the State Senate since the 1960’s. Barclay’s loss means that the Republicans hold a 32-30 majority in the Senate, while the Democrats maintain their 106-42 (out of 150) super-majority in the Assembly and control over the Governor’s mansion. Governor Elliot Spitzer and the New York State Legislature rose briefly to the attention of the national media (and by that I mean Lou Dobbs) when they began issuing driver’s licenses to illegal immigrants. Barclay’s firm opposition to Spitzer’s decision was praised by his fiscally conservative, libertarian leaning electorate. Given that Barclay and Aubertine were nearly identical on all of the issues (low taxes, more jobs, better schools) this and the mere fact that his name is followed by an “R” (Republican, for my Canadian friends) should have made him a shoe-in with the largely Republican North Country voting bloc. This was not so, however.

My conversations with voters in the 48th Senate District reveals that they were mostly turned off to the prospective of electing Barclay due to his choice of campaign tactics. From the very beginning, Barclay was running attack ads against Mr. Aubertine despite the endorsements of State Sen. Wright and United States Congressman John McHugh (R-Pierrepont Manor). In American politics, there are three rules that one should always adhere to, the second of which Barclay should take a lesson from:

1. Do not call your opponent a liar.

2. Do not attack your opponent if you are the front-runner.

3. Do not say anything bad about John McCain or Barack Obama (Goodbye Mitt Romney and Hillary Clinton).

I did not vote in this election. The entire time I was home my absentee ballot application sat on my desk. I was torn between my frustration with Assemblyman Barclay and my desire to maintain the balance of power in Albany. I’ll admit though, when I read the results my first emotion was a positive one, so maybe Aubertine’s victory was what I wanted. Whatever.

Anyways, what we should learn from the lessons of this election is that the very nature of a campaign can have a huge impact on the results. Aubertine will no doubt be challenged in the future so he should take advantage of these next few years to build up his own name, all the while not being afraid to stick one to Albany and the downstate machine in the name of dairy farmers, steelworkers, and squirrel-eaters district wide.

-optionaltoaster

One of Mr. Barclay’s early attack ads:

Ahem… February 28, 2008

*Taps Mic*

Umm… Hello? Is this thing on?

Good. Here I am. I have a half an hour before I need to leave so I am going to use this time to outline what purposes, goals, and aims (three words that mean the same thing) I have for this blog. I have had too much on mind in the last year and not enough time to verbalize it all. Usually when I start talking it is with purpose and conviction, though the former quite often gets trumped by the latter and I find myself in awkward situations where people are staring back at me or avoiding eye contact all together. Just yesterday I decided that I want to form a running club here at Queen’s University. This happened while I was walking to class and thinking about how poorly I had been paying attention to my physical well-being since graduating from high school. If you are a former runner you know exactly what I mean. As soon as you quit, you actually start to see your body physically change from a lean, low-BMI, carb burning string bean into a butternut squash. Nobody was around to here my idea so I resolved to go running that evening as a compromise.

However, telling somebody your ideas is often fruitless unless that person cares about what you have to say at that given moment in time, rather than crushing your dreams with some sort of rebuttal. When a monologue turns into a true dialog, we witness that which separates us from nature: the exchange of ideas for the betterment of the individuals. In those rare and sweet instances where a dialog turns into a discussion, you can see into the other person’s soul. Discussions usually occur unexpectedly and with the people we don’t try to hold close to our hearts, making them all the sweeter.

I was never the kind of person who did things for the sake of doing them. I don’t go to rallies, write poetry, or take my laptop into public places so people can see that I know how to type. I don’t pay money for other people to make my coffee or feel like I should be ashamed of my nationality. I have no desire to create a blog because it is hip or because it is expected of a white protestant middle-class American university student like myself. Instead I see the purpose of this as a conversation starter. I promise that I will not hide behind my LAN line. What you read here will be exactly who I am, what I believe, and what my convictions are (three phrases that mean the same thing!). The highest goal for educational institutions should be teaching people how to think, not what to think. Likewise, the purpose of a web log (a “blog” if you will) is not to be a means for discussion, because that is impossible. Rather it should provoke people to speak face to face. If I write something objectionable or noteworthy, confront me on it. This is how we make ourselves into better people. Disallowing ourselves to be numbed by the anonymity of the internet is a worthwhile goal. However, whether or not this leads to anything is up to me and you, but it’s worth my free time.

Thirty minutes are up. Time to go.

-optionaltoaster