Libertarian Think Tank

I’ve read Andrew Sullivan being right before, but his statement about William F. Buckley takes the cake:

 So the most influential conservative of his generation endorsed both the Vietnam and the 2003 Iraq wars, and came to regret doing both. I think one of the great divides within conservatism today is between those conservatives who think war can solve problems and that government needs to be “heroic” and those who are skeptical of both arguments. These past few years have persuaded me that war is in fact the natural enemy of conservatism - because it enlarges government and destroys freedom and fans those emotions that most cloud judgment. Pre-emptive war, without any plans for the aftermath, may perhaps be the antithesis of every conservative impulse known to history. Pre-emptive war to seize non-existent WMDs is almost a text-book example of conservatism repealing itself.

I plead guilty in retrospect, but am reassured that changing one’s mind in the wake of new facts is not a crime or a sin. It is a conservative virtue - and one that Buckley, alas, didn’t share with most of his successors. Can you imagine Hugh Hewitt ever conceding that he was once mistaken?

So do many of us, Big Sully.  The sad fact is that many Republicans won’t plead at all out of sheer pride. They could be helping to push this country in a Classical Liberal direction but no one has opened the door to that ethos. I don’t think Republicans really care about what their demagogue leaders do. I mean…they do, but only because those demagogues keep reminding them to. They need new demagogues. Libertarian demagogues. Someone who can use Bush’s cowboy attitude to promote devolution and self-governance. You would think that would go over.

This entry was posted on Monday, March 3rd, 2008 at 12:44 am and is filed under Conservatism -It's Not Just for the Right Wing, Good and Evil in the GOP, Liberty! It's not just for John Stewart Mill. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.