Libertarians for Ron Paul

Dr Jeffrey Hart was a long time associate of William F. Buckley, Jr and here pens an appreciation of Buckley’s clear view of the Iraq mess - a view which was at odds with the National Review line on the war.

“Buckley published three syndicated columns about Iraq, all of which were reprinted in National Review. The first argued that it is doubtful that an effort “hugely greater in scale and more refined in conception” would produce the desired result. When no weapons of mass destruction were found, Buckley speculated that this rationale for the invasion, now discredited, would not matter if all ended well. But as the 2004 presidential election approached, he compared the evident quagmire to the French defeat by a brutal insurgency in Algeria.”

“In these pieces, Buckley diverged sharply from the generally optimistic view of Iraq taken by National Review.”

“But the conviction hinted in the columns only hardened during the last year of Buckley’s life, when he arrived at a tragic view of the Iraq War. He saw it as a disaster and thought that the conservative movement he had created had in effect committed intellectual suicide by failing to maintain critical distance from the Bush administration.”

Full column @ http://www.amconmag.com/2008/2008_03_24/article1.html 

“There used to be an organization for people who believed in a truly limited government — limited taxes, limited spending, limited interference in individual lives and limited intervention in foreign affairs. That organization was known as the Republican Party. But the only one of those beliefs that still motivates the G.O.P. establishment is limited taxes. In 2008, people who still hold all of them joined the Ron Paul Revolution.”

“The real significance of the Paul campaign is not the ubiquitous bumper stickers and lawn signs or the online fund-raising records ($6 million in one day, plus another $4 million, hilariously, on Guy Fawkes Day) but the mirror Paul held up to the modern Republican Party. When his fellow candidates denounced big government, Paul was there to remind them that President Bush and the G.O.P. Congress had shattered spending records and exploded the deficit. When they hailed freedom, Paul asked why they all supported the Patriot Act and other expansions of executive power. And when they called themselves conservatives, Paul asked what was so conservative about sending thousands of young Americans to try to transform the Middle East.”

Full article @ http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1724358,00.html?cnn=yes

William F. Buckley,Jr died yesterday, at the age of 81. He devoted much of his life to creating a conservative movement committed to limited government and individual freedom. David Boaz of The Cato Institute reflects on Buckley’s movement, and how modern conservatives have become cheerleaders  for big government: http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9245

Mr Boaz notes that “Bill Buckley had come to recognize the degraded state of American conservatism. In 2006, he deplored Bush’s “absence of effective conservative ideology — with the result that he ended up being very extravagant in domestic spending.” And he noted the failure of Bush’s expansive, interventionist foreign policy.”