We Can’t Takes it No Longer

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Brett Kavanaugh, Conservatism, Democrat Party, Elitism and Class, law, Lindsey Graham, National Review, President Donald J. Trump, race and culture, Republican Party establishment, William F Buckley

Unified Patriots by Vassar Bushmills

When his turn came to talk, had Brett Kavanaugh walked out to his desk, sat his notes down, then walked around the table and walked up to Dick Durbin and popped him square on the nose, he couldn’t have made his case more masterful.

He took off the gloves, which in the Republican world of Washington, no one ever considered an option anymore.

It’s Thursday, October 4. and the shock of the way Brett Kavanaugh made his case on Thursday, September 28, has still not worn off.

By Sunday, the Democrats were clearly no longer on offense. Kavanaugh was no longer an attempted rapist, a serious felony offender justifying many years in prison, (I’ve defended just such cases) but now a drunk…including some talk of being a bar brawler. Without using a shillelagh (stick) or driving a car recklessly, we’re now only talking about a misdemeanor, where jail time is rare indeed. Certainly no more punishment than Code Pink or Antifa gets for breaking up a congressional hearing.

Yes, though Kavanaugh has dropped from a felony rapist to a college kid who got loaded every weekend…but who always seemed to still get straight A’s anyway for seven straight years…and not those crip courses over in the Sociology Department either…the Democrats are still trying to keep the alleged violence of that original assault claim by portraying him as a violent drinker[…]

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Twitter Apologetics

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Conservatism, David Limbaugh, ELITISM AN CLASS. RACE AND CULTURE, Jr., Religion, Stalin, William F Buckley

Unified Patriots by Vassar Bushmills

The Well Tempered Claviar

I was married in March, 1968 and was able to leave my small one-room affair for a real apartment. With a TV even. We would live there until I finished law school in 1971. And it was there I discovered “Firing Line” on the local public access station. It was that show that introduced me to Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto #2 .

William F Buckley loved Bach.

It was in that same apartment that I watched WFB take apart Gore Vidal during the GOP and Democratic national conventions. You see, Buckley’s “National Review” was a child of the 1950s and the Cold War. I doubt if any man ever hated Joseph Stalin more than William F Buckley, Jr.

Although Stalin was just as dead as Adolf Hitler, unlike Hitler’s monument to himself, Stalin’s was still alive and kicking, Buckley (and most conservatives of that era) considered Stalinism to be a very real threat, the Vietnam War its latest iteration. A few right-wing baiters drew notice of this deference paid to Stalin (their secret hero) versus Hitler, so tried to paint conservatism as “Nazi”.  So when we are called “Nazi” today, it’s nothing new.

Gore Vidal showcased this tact in this memorable “discussion” with Buckley during the Democratic convention in Chicago. (Fireworks start at 10:02 mark.)

So I was a fan before I ever really seriously read WFB’s magazine. Thank Bach and his well-tempered claviar.

I read NR as often as I could get my hands on it, at the post library in Japan but didn’t subscribe until I came back to Arizona in ’76. Reader-friendly, if you liked an article and wrote to say so, the author would send back a short reply.

Including Buckley[…]

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Does Anyone Actually Teach Conservatism Anymore?

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Apologetics, Conservatism, Larry Schweikart, National Review, relevance, Richard Brookhiser, Teaching, The Framers, William F Buckley

Unified Patriots by Vassar Bushmills

The miracle of the Founding Fathers was not the Constitution so much that they created a document of self governance for people not of their class, and gave it away freely, no strings attached.

It was a gift!—but only, as Mr Franklin warned, “If we can keep it.”

This had never happened before in human history. I’m not even sure it had ever been contemplated before, but I’ll leave that for scholars to set the record straight.

This opening line opens up various forks in the road, several lines of inquiry, among them class as the Founders viewed it in the Colonies versus the rest of the educated world, and by comparison, in today’s world. Both are worthy of inquiry in light of what conservatism means today.

Then there is the nature of American specialness itself; our view of ourselves as exceptional, against the world’s majority view, held by its governments, based on at least 500o years of human history in which no idea even remotely resembling a government “by the people, for the people and of the people” could ever germinate and take root.

As I’ve written elsewhere, the “specialness of America” has always been viewed through two entirely different lens, one as a freak of nature, to be hated, and the other, as Man’s hope for liberty and rescue from a history of servitude to a master class.

This in turn begs yet another fork, the question: is America a miracle, and if so, from whose hands, the Founders or an Invisible Hand? Or maybe a collaboration? Billy Graham, who just passed away (RIP) believed in the role of an Invisible Hand, he even went so far to call it by Name. And I agree, only, it has been some years since some types of Christians have been invited to discuss this question with the intellectual right. As you know, on the key elements of liberty, I’ve even argued that Science and God are of one accord, than Man-the-animal needs and seeks it because it is survival-enhancing. But over the years I’ve noticed that the so-called intellectual right has never gone through that open door of inquiry.

Still, in all the years Man has trod this earth there has not been known to recorded history any other rising of a nation of peoples who became their own masters. As the lawyers would say, America was a “case of first instance.” And that was 231 years ago, and with our success, you’d have thought that at least some of the rest of the world would have stood in wonderment at what these people in America had wrought, and decided to try it out themselves. True, they paid lip service to many of our institutions, even adopting many of our terms, such as “Democratik”, a popular label from the mid-20th Century, to appease their masses. (“Hypocrisy is the price vice pays to virtue.”) But at no time did those states ever cut the ties between their ruling class and the ruled. In fact, some of the most virulent forms of governance known to history were brought forth in the two centuries since the founding of America, in part because of America’s mere existence and the threat it posed to autocracy’s 5000 year winning streak. (For proof, follow the genesis of modern masters candidates’ theses in the American academy, largely blaming all of society’s ills on the manner of our Founding.)

[…]

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When Men who Could Read Played Football

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football, Frederic Remington, William F Buckley, Yale

Even though the following illustrations are before our time, remember when real men played football and they didn’t whine about it?  They just played the game and took whatever was thrown at them…like men.

Vassar Bushmills

For William F Buckley, Jr RIP

WFB was a Yale man. Frederic Remington, the famous Cowboy & Indian artist also was a Yale man. He was also a football player there, before 1880.

His football art is offered here to remind people of how the game was once played by young men, when the men wore almost no protective gear, student athletes who could read and write, and who always stood for the national anthem, wherever, and whenever played.

I hope WFB saw these at one time or another.

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The Missing “Buckley-Factor” in Publius Decius Mus’ Historic Essay

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2016 Election, Ben Shapiro, Buckley-Factor, Donald Trump, Flight 93 Election, NeverTrumpers, Publius Decius Mus, William F Buckley

While it appears that some NeverTrumpers may vote for Donald Trump in the coming presidential election, whiffs of desperation permeate the air from those doubling down on their anti-Trump and damn those illiterate Trump supporters aka the “alt-right” aka “basket of deplorables” attacks, determined to take a nation over the edge of the cliff by any means necessary, not for love of country or conscious, but to legitimize their self-worth and enrichment.

Unified Patriots by Vassarbushmills

If you haven’t heard, a fellow (I assume) named Publius Decius Mus penned an anonymous, 10-page essay at the Claremont College website, entitled the “Flight 93 Election“ It’s a near-masterpiece, even historic.

It’s also long, but not above anyone’s head, even millennials, if they only put their whole minds to it. It’s what you might call a 4-dotter, where paragraphs are connected by the author with logic, one to the other, completing a nearly complete picture of the Trump candidacy and what it means to the nation and conservatism, and finally, with William F Buckley’s assistance, the constitutional position of the average American.

The essay is an explanation, more than an attack, on the position held by the #NeverTrump crowd, but as you can imagine, many took offense anyway. Clearly, Publius Decius Mus’ logic isn’t shared universally.

Nor was it, for my conservative tastes, complete. As a unified theory, it missed a point, which I will raise below, after I’ve dispensed with the teat-fittery, for you see, whether intentional or nor, Publius Decius Mus’ arguments are generationally based, between a group that has largely been around, and have the benefit of experiences millennials, and most Gen Xers, can’t claim. That’s a pure statistical reality. We’ve been around more.

So, when Rush Limbaugh brought this essay to the general public’s attention last week, it caused a firestorm of controversy, while also possibly producing an unstoppable wind-change in the election itself, in that it depicted the reality of a Hillary Clinton victory in November in stark, even harsher terms than anyone (other than me) has portrayed to them. So while some have complained loudly and bitterly I believe that many anti-Trumpsters are edging closer to voting for him anyway, based on PDM’s Flight 93 metaphor.

(While I have argued virtually every point raised by PDM for several years, his presentation is immaculate, chalkboard perfect in connecting dots; a thing I could never do as well, especially without lapsing off into profanities, which explains why I understand the teat-fitter of the NeverTrumpsters as well as I do.)

But amidst this sea-change, there is some cause to believe that Ben Shapiro may have shifted course in the other direction, against Trump, which is teat-fittery writ large, and why I detour to mention him. He may be arguing against his own logical inclinations. At least, my son, who follows Ben more closely than I do, and, being closer to the same age…32 to 45…believes, and Ben has led him to think, that he will hold his nose (God, how many times have we been asked to do that since 1992?) and vote for Trump anyway….

Continue Reading – The Missing “Buckley-Factor” in Publius Decius Mus’ Historic Essay