Reminded me of this John Birch Society polemic on the neo-con
interlopers.
http://www.thenewamerican.com/tna/1996/vo12no16/vo12no16_invasion.htm
>..."But the Old Right still lives - at the Rockford Institute, the Ludwig
von Mises Institute, the John Birch Society, and in the pages of such
publications as Chronicles, Southern Partisan, and THE NEW AMERICAN."
http://thenewamerican.com/tna/2001/04-09-2001/insider/vo17no08_ins_buckley.h
tm
>..."Perhaps he knew that Buckley was indeed one of our nation's first neos,
a stance made obvious in an article the future top gun at National Review
magazine penned for Commonweal magazine in 1952. As the recommended way to
oppose Communism, Buckley on that occasion called for "a totalitarian
bureaucracy within our shores" and its "attendant centralization of power in
Washington." That is neoconservatism in a nutshell...If he's a
neoconservative, he has always been a socialist of the type that made him an
ideological bedfellow of socialist Leon Trotsky." HEH! Ike was a Commie too
said Robert Welch.
http://thenewamerican.com/tna/2001/08-13-2001/vo17no17_neoconservatism.htm
>..."The first neocon: Leon Trotsky broke with Lenin and Stalin over
Communist brutality and was himself eventually murdered by Stalin's agents.
But Trotsky, like today's neocons, always remained true to the idea of
international socialism...
The drive toward neoconservatism in America started quite a bit earlier. In
1952, a young "conservative" serving a one-year tour of duty with the CIA
wrote an article for The Commonweal, a Catholic weekly. This man wrote:
. we have got to accept Big Government for the duration - for neither an
offensive nor a defensive war can be waged, given our present government
skills, except through the instrument of a totalitarian bureaucracy within
our shores....
And if they deem Soviet power a menace to our freedom (as I happen to), they
will have to support large armies and air forces, atomic energy, central
intelligence, war production boards, and the attendant centralization of
power in Washington - even with Truman at the reins of it all.
That was 1952, and the writer of this article was calling for "Big
Government for the duration" and "the attendant centralization of power in
Washington" in order to oppose Communism. He wanted to fight Communism by
adopting Marxism. The element of neoconservatism seeking world government
wasn't in that revealing article. But it would come from this man later.
Who do you suppose wrote those words? It was none other than William F.
Buckley Jr. It was his initial contribution to neoconservatism, something he
slyly advocated at first but has more obviously favored throughout the bulk
of his career. He hadn't yet supported the United Nations, the other half of
the neocon agenda, but he would before too long.
Neocon Nexus
When Buckley was a student at Yale, the faculty member who influenced him
more than any other was Willmoore Kendall. Kendall had been a proud
Trotskyite socialist who had studied in England as a Rhodes scholar, served
in the OSS during World War II, stayed on when the OSS became the CIA in
1947, and then became a Yale professor. He and Buckley developed a
positively eerie relationship. When Buckley sought to avoid military service
after finishing Yale during the Korean War, Kendall sent him to James
Burnham, another Trotskyite socialist who had also seen service with the OSS
and then with the CIA. The plan was to have Buckley avoid serving in the
military by having him serve in the CIA instead.
These two men, Kendall and Burnham, hugely influenced Buckley and were part
of the initial team when the latter launched National Review magazine in
1955. And there were other ex-Communists and CIA veterans who also served
among the early members of the NR team. National Review was loaded with
Trotskyites and CIA veterans.
The critical contribution Buckley made to the neoconservative cause was his
taking the conservative movement away from reliance on the Constitution as
the standard for Americans and replacing it with an ever-shifting
conservatism - as defined by him. Before long Buckley would be excusing
others for advocating socialistic programs. Then he began advocating
socialistic programs himself. In 1971, he defended continued U.S. membership
in the UN when Free China was booted out and Communist China welcomed in. In
1974, he accepted appointment as a delegate to the UN General Assembly and
wrote a book about his experiences that dignified the existence of the UN.
In 1977, his syndicated column called for ratification of the UN's Genocide
Convention.
Coincident with Buckley becoming more obviously a neoconservative, Kristol
related how several top leaders of the Wall Street Journal had made their
alliance with the neocon movement. WSJ Editor Robert Bartley contacted
Kristol as far back as 1972, and Kristol's articles immediately began
appearing in the Journal. In time, the WSJ would become a cheerleader for
NAFTA, the World Trade Organization, NATO, and the use of U.S. forces in UN
operations. This is the other half of the neocon program, the
internationalist half.
In 1991, in an article he wrote for WSJ, Irving Kristol supplied details
about an invitation-only gathering of conservative Republicans. He delighted
in pointing out that the conference was sponsored by none other than Bill
Buckley. And he even more delightedly reported that most of the two dozen
conservatives who had arrived as "conservatives first and Republicans
second" had emerged from the gathering as "Republicans first and
conservatives second." They had been taken away from conservatism and made
Republicans first. And the meeting had been sponsored by Bill Buckley!
Kristol never mentioned who the two dozen attendees at this Buckley-arranged
conference were. But all of us have seen the Republican leaders in Congress
fade into rubber stamps for a variety of socialistic and internationalist
schemes in recent years. The reason? Republican leaders who were thought to
be conservatives have been captured by the neoconservatives. And numerous
policies and programs once deemed taboo by men who were labeled conservative
are now being supported by them. One problem remains: These men are still
being called conservatives.
In this very same 1991 article, Kristol announced that the major conclusion
reached by the new neocons at the Buckley-sponsored gathering was that
"President Bush is now the leader of the conservative movement within the
Republican Party." And this happened after Bush had demonstrated that he
wasn't a conservative himself. Perhaps the greatest indicator of President
Bush's neocon attitude was his use of U.S. forces and a UN resolution to
reinvigorate the United Nations during the war against Saddam Hussein's
Iraq. "Reinvigorate" was his word, not mine. And his constant use of the
term "new world order" said a great deal about what he was advocating."
Enough! <snip>
For a much more reasoned conservative intellectual history of the US
intellectual Right, from the Old, New and neo-cons sectors see Ronald Nash,
"The Conservative Intellectual Movement in America, " recently reissued by
ISI.
Michael Pugliese
----- Original Message -----
From: Steve Diamond
To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ; [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Friday, September 21, 2001 5:56 PM
Subject: [PEN-L:17520] Quote of the Week
"The federal government doesn't seem to understand that the enemy is
supposed to be terrorism, not capitalism!"
www.mises.org reaction to government intervention since WTC attack.
