This is the sort of kind and tactful encomium to the “dead leader” that one should expect from so genteel and scholarly a person as Jeffrey Hart: it entirely--and graciously--omits Mr. Hart’s differences with Bill Buckley regarding recent and regrettable occurences in our politics.

It’s impressive how ordinary, mealy-mouthed platitudes can be used to cover the obvious fact that the deceased made a career of silencing conservative and libertarian voices while elevating Trotskyite/Straussian treason to the level previously occupied by the old right philosophy favored by loyal Americans.

As to the gap left by Buckley, it has already been filled.  Just as water rushes to fill the space occupied by a finger in a glass of water, the rotten GOP has already closed around the space formerly occupied by one of its sleazy, dishonest spokesmen.

I hope to see these phony tributes to a phony, self serving traitor pass away soon.  The truth should be obvious; Buckley will not be missed by anyone who actually values truth in political discourse.  His neoconservative ilk may pretend to mourn his passing, but the rest of us aren’t required to do anything of the kind.

For God’s sake, Mr Roberts, cease your disgusting and dishonourable detraction towards the departed!

Sadly, Mr. Roberts is spot on.  I don’t know of any position Mr.
Buckley held which survived his yearning for celebrity.
Celebrity overtook gravity, as one of his ex-colleagues
put it. 

Militarism was Mr. Buckley’s one abiding conviction,
and it destroyed whatever remnant of consitutional
government we had left by the 1950’s.

My favourite memory of Buckley is when Jesse Jackson attempted to lecture him on the needs of Hispanics in the US and Buckley answered him in fluent Spanish.

Jackson was crushed.

I am grateful to Professor Hart for reminding us in this essay (and his fine history of NR) that at one time US conservatism was not a monolithic force.  Frank Meyer’s dream of “fusionism” (bringing together libertarianism and traditionalism) reflected the fact that there was more intellectual diversity on the right than anywhere else on the ideological spectrum.  Where else but the early NR could one find Rousseauvian populism (Kendall), Burkean traditionalism (Kirk), classical liberalism (Meyer), or Realpolitik (Burnham)all jostling against each other in the same magazine?

No single faction ever legitimately owned the conservative movement, a lesson to both neocons and libertarians.  May diversity reign!

But where is the Maistrian Catholic monarchism?

Then there was the (in)famous NR line: “Mater si, magistra, no.”

Fortunately, not being Catholic at the time, I missed the shocking implication of this statement when I read it and only thought it a neat pun on Cuba si, Yanqui no.

I don’t know for a fact (because I’ve never been inside of WFB mind), but I feel one of the strongest differences of opinion between WFB and the Encyclical “Mater et Magistra” was:

http://www.vatican.va/holy_father/john_xxiii/encyclicals/documents/hf_j-xxiii_enc_15051961_mater_en.html

<<34)...no Catholic could subscribe even to moderate Socialism. The reason is that Socialism is founded on a doctrine of human society which is bounded by time and takes no account of any objective other than that of material well-being.>>

This is in direct opposition to WFB’s insistence upon a strong State that stood in opposition to communism, by embracing socialism itself; fighting “fire” with “fire”.

Instead of using the water provided by an organic society, led by the Church and it’s Teachings (magistra), WFB took the position, presumably, that the water was best left alone to be used to purify society only after the fires of Soviet communism were put out by the fires of American communism (the state-corportist system under which we have lived permanently since the creation of the Federal Reserve Bank).

What we have ended up with is a landscape increasingly desolated by this “fire fight”, and our precious water being boiled and lost - that is, until it comes back to us in a rain storm.  The sensible thing to have done this whole time was to have used the purifying waters of the Church to extinguish the fires of socialism.

Even now I have squirreled away
that wonderful of all indictments
in the form of a cartoon depicting
Fidel Castro astride the island
of Cuba with the legend “I got
my job through the NY Times”
(courtesy of Herbert Matthews
no doubt)- Thankyou NR & Bill

A critic, castigating Mr. Buckley for using long words, asked him why he wrote “animadversion” instead of “disapproval.”

He responded - Because that part of the sentence needed a five syllable not a four syllable word.

Mr. Capp, instead of knee-jerk denunciations of Mr. Buckley, why don’t you cite his actual criticisms of “Mater et Magistra”?

Will someone please immanentize jim’s eschaton?  He is very tedious.

http://www.americamagazine.org/blog/entry.cfm?blog_id=2&id=5BD878F9-5056-8960-3214F646041B8A7B

<<Buckley had argued that [Mater et Magistra] was too critical of American-style capitalism and called it “an exercise in triviality coming at this particular time in history,” adding that the Church might one day be as embarrassed by the encyclical as it was by the Syllabus of Errors.>>

Embarrassed by the Syllabus of Errors?!

I hope I don’t have to point out this is something obviously from the mind of a Modernist.

Mr. Capp,

First, you *still* have not bothered to find the actual text and to cite it directly.  Secondly, papal encyclicals may well be ill-timed and may not invoke magisterial authority.  It depends on the nature of the encyclical. 

Once again, Buckley himself might not personally have been embarrassed by the Syllabus.  Many in the Church were.  He might have meant that the encyclical woudl prove as embarrassing in the future as the Syllabus was to Church*men* at his time.  If he himself was embarrassed, yes, that would be a Modernist streak in him. 

But my major point was that you say that Buckley would be embarrassed by a linewhen have Buckley’s word on what in the encyclical irked him.  Just please try not to be so strident in these accusations that hinge on nuance.  Buckley was a nuanced man.

The stupid wrap-feature prevents me from reading much of what I write at the end of lines.  “"But my major point was that you say that Buckley would be embarrassed by a linewhen have Buckley’s word on what in the encyclical irked him.  Just please try not to be so strident in these accusations that hinge on nuance.  Buckley was a nuanced man.”

My major point was, why allege that something in the encyclical bothered Buckley when we have his words for it.  He probably praised the line in question about socialism.  You and he disagree about what qualifies as socialism.

Secondly, papal encyclicals may well be ill-timed and may not invoke magisterial authority.

Mr. Buckley’s letter to America is poorly written. Who the hell knows what he was trying to say?

That aside, all Papal Encyclicals are authoritative. It seems to me that you are questioning whether or not Papal Encyclicals are infallible or not, right?

Then there was the (in)famous NR line: “Mater si, magistra, no.”

Mr. Jones. I remember reading that crap in Nat Rev at the time. I also remember that his brother, F. Reid Buckley, writing from Spain to the “American Spectator,” publicly corrected him.

Bill Buckley, eh? what a guy. I remember when I first him back in ‘68. We were eating some boiled chicken and beets, when Bill turned around to me and said, as sweet as you please: “don’t have sex with her”. That’s always stayed with me and bill’s big American heart always will. He makes Karl Rove look like a fat bastard.

I am not Spartacus:

No, not all encyclicals are infallible, nor are all statements inside of all encyclicals infallible.  They are infallible only if and when the Pope is making a solemn ex cathedra statement within the context of an encyclical, or when the Pope is using the encyclical to pronounce ordinary magisterial teachings.  See the definition of papal infallibility from Vatican I and point out where it says:  all encyclicals are infallible. 

I have never read Buckley’s letter.  For all I know it is bad.  My point is that Mr. Capp makes allegations against Buckley without quoting him directly, or when he does quote him, the allegation doesn’t stick.

Hey Caper:

http://www.skullandcrossbones.org/articles/skullandbones.htm

<<THE story of Skull and Bones begins in December of 1832. Upset (according to one account) by changes in the Phi Beta Kappa election process, a Yale senior named William Russell and a group of classmates decided to form the Eulogian Club as an American chapter of a German student organization. The club paid obeisance to Eulogia, the goddess of eloquence, who took her place in the pantheon upon the death of the orator Demosthenes, in 322 B.C., and who is said to have returned in a kind of Second Coming on the occasion of the society’s inception.>>

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phi_Beta_Kappa

<<It is believed that Phi Beta Kappa grew out of an older William and Mary organization, founded in 1750, named the Flat Hat Society; notably, Thomas Jefferson was a member. Phi Beta Kappa was, of necessity, a secret society. To protect its members, it had all of the attributes of most modern fraternities--an oath of secrecy, a badge or key, mottos in Greek, an initiation and a handshake.>>

Flat Hat Society:

<<The F.H.C. Society’s initials likely stand for the Latin phrases “Fraternitas, Humanitas, et Cognitio” or “Fraternitas Humanitas Cognitioque” (two different renderings of “Brotherhood, Humanity, and Knowledge").>>

Proof positive of Skull and Bones links to older “Masonic” secret societies.

You claim to be at an Ivy League School.  Are you a member of one of these societies?  Does your conscience, as a Catholic, bother you?

If you belong to a secret society, it should.

If you belong to a secret society, I suggest you dismiss yourself from it immediately and join the Knights of Columbus.

Caper, it’s pitiful you can’t do your own research.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Huntington_Russell

<<[William Huntington Russell] was the founder of a secret society that would spawn three United States Presidents, Skull and Bones. From 1831 to 1832, Russell studied in Germany. It has been suggested while there, he was initiated into a German society that inspired Skull and Bones. Confirmation of this came when the Skull and Bones meeting hall was broken into and materials were found that refer to Skull and Bones as the Yale Chapter of a German society. The German “Illuminati” was outlawed as effected by an edict of the Bavarian government in 1785 and it is assumed that they then became a truly secretive underground organization.>>

The commenters at this site are divided between conservatives (who place a value on the civilization of Europe and who accept the idea that white men might retain control of their historic territories), and neoconservatives (who place a value on the civilizations of both Europeans and Jews and yet deny that white men should retain control of their lands but that Jews must retain control of theirs).

The anti-gentile double-standard is encouraged by many of the bloggers here, who support Israel’s right to exclude non-Jews but attack any Euro-nationalist party that would exclude Jews (though not Muslims - so infact there’s a triple standard in play).

It’s easier I find not to be racist. Let the Jews and Arabs have their lands free of us, but let us be free of them also.

And lest there be any doubt, Buckley is precisely as much to blame for this endemic ‘conservative’ racism as is Taki - but no more. Both are cowards, both are objectively anti-gentile, both are mere pawns in the game.

Forrest,

You will have to listen to John P. Sousa and, depending upon
your age and constitution, march to it at least once a week…
unless the imams prefer mariachis.

to hell with this pompous, self serving, friend betraying, closet liberal, zionist truckling, social climbing assclown.
Buckley has made this world a better place by leaving it.

...and the reading material will be limited to:

von Mises, Rothbard, and Gottfried.

No, wait…

Forrest, you prove my point. When white men suggest they ought to be entitled to equal rights, the racist-anti-racists call them Nazis.

Forrest,

That’s why cryptos like Sid and Caper hang around this site, i.e., to keep the conversation within PC bounds. We’re not supposed to notice the obvious link between who the neocons are and Israel, and who the cultural Marxists are on the left. We’re not allowed to make the connection.

BTW, what happened to the other article that was posted above this one earlier today? Did it go down the memory hole?

And what happened to Mr. Patrick Foy?

Some serious editing over the weekend...nice job....sedulously smug seminarians all...what strength, what courage, what faith...totalitarianism has always had generous uncles and doting aunts...who to this very day enjoy equisite health...resulting in an abstraction...the ETAT...that now has all the characteristics of personality, character, conscience & growth....you, in the meanwhile,… are nothing more than narrowing, collapsing function...having disappeared in cogs,digits & dots...Amerika is now nothing more than a boa constrictor...gorging on rabid porcupines...Bon Apetite, let the good times roll!!!

Not a damned one of the quotations about Skull and Bones says that any of the societies that led to its founding plotted against civil societies or against the Church.  Not a damned one of them *proved* any connection to either the Illuminati or to the Masons.  Not one says that S&B;takes Eulogia as anything other than an allegory. 

I do not belong to any organization that plots against the Church or against the state.  I belong to Phi Beta Kapp.  I was initiated at a Catholic school.  During the initiation, we were told explicitly that the organization is not, was not, neve has been masonic. 

Do the Knights of Columbus take blood oaths?  Or is that a secret you can’t tell me, the uninitiated?  Good grief. 

I am perfectly willing to *speculate* that the Skull and Bones was influenced in its origins by some German secret society.  But to allege that Buckley was the conscious agent of some malign conspiracy on the grounds that you advance is just speculation.  You seem to treat it as fact, as though it meets standards of proof.

Er, I meant that I am willing to speculate that S&B;has been influenced by an evil secret society—the German connection seems unproblematic.

“Proof positive of Skull and Bones links to older “Masonic” secret societies.

You claim to be at an Ivy League School.  Are you a member of one of these societies?  Does your conscience, as a Catholic, bother you?

If you belong to a secret society, it should.

If you belong to a secret society, I suggest you dismiss yourself from it immediately and join the Knights of Columbus.”

You see, Mr. Capp?  You can’t construct an argument.  You haven’t
proven that F.H.C. was Masonic, you haven’t proven that Phi Beta Kappa
was Masonic (it isn’t), you don’t know what the German secret society
was about (who says that it plotted against the Church or state?!),
the connection to the Illuminati is just a conjecture.  You don’t have
any firm basis for claiming that the secret societies in question are
Masonic, that they plot against the Church, or that they plot against
the state.  As for the Knights of Columbus, are THEY a “secret society”? 
If so, then not all secret societies are malevolent!  So just to prove
that a society is secret proves nothing.  The canon you cited requires
that the societies plot against Church or state!

“We’re not supposed to notice the obvious link between who the neocons are and Israel, and who the cultural Marxists are on the left. We’re not allowed to make the connection. “

Good grief, “traditionalist,” when have I ever commented on that?  I am basically playing devil’s advocate here.  Why?  Because I get sick and tired of people
dispensing with evidence and reason and then when someone calls them
to task they engage in the ad hominem, “You must be a neocon.” No, but
I demand evidence and right reason.  If you can’t hold out against
the devil’s advocate, then you simply aren’t in command of the material
or of your argument.

Fifth and last post for this morning:  almost no one here has brought up the really disturbing aspects of Skull and Bones’ ritual.  In the initiation, one of the characters dresses up like a Devil and another as a Pope.  Different members have nicknames based on names of devils.  Not just skull and bones imagery (as Mr. Capp points out), but actual human bones and skulls.  Lying in a coffin, which is part of the Masonic ritual (Mr. Capp, are skulls and bones involved in the K of C initiation?  or can you even tell me that?).  In good conscience, I could not join the Skull and Bones.  The members seem worldly and one would have to “do favors” for them.  But, to get back to the point, William F. Buckley has died.  In the case of a man who has gone to his maker, you’d better have some precise arguments sfor why you think he joined an evil organization, or that an organization he joined plotted against the Church or the state.  Mr. Capp’s arguments (most of them) come up wanting.

I can’t understand why so many column inches and bytes are being wastes on this fraud,fake and phony.He was, at best a shallow and over-rated intellectual.Pl. read his (in)famous editorial in the NR in 1957 .It is available on Counterpunch.

Secret societies are by their very nature anti-Christian, even if not actively plotting against throne and altar. Jesus said He did nothing in the darkness, but all was said and done in the light of day.

like Mr Chesterton & others have said....."christianity has not been tried & found wanting...it has been tried & found...too difficult”....the rest follows…

thank the Almighty Father...that the Nazarene....didn’t have to read...Paul, Augustine, Acquinas....Hart & Buckley....

hah yes, Mrs. Bloom...at last, the apotheosis of man....

“Secret societies are by their very nature anti-Christian, even if not actively plotting against throne and altar. Jesus said He did nothing in the darkness, but all was said and done in the light of day.”

What Our Lord did in regard to public revelation is relevant to how private, human institutions behave how?
Governments maintain secrets, too.  Does that make govt. “Top Secret” classifications morally wrong? 
Human beings keep secrets from one another.  How does this become “by its very nature anti-Christian” when
several people keep secrets together?  I’m not denying it, but I am asking for justification for the claim.

Church canon law concerns *only* societies that plot against Church and/or state, secret or not.  There is no
excommunication simply for belonging to a secret society. 

Do you say that the Knights of Columbus are inherently anti-Christian?  I believe they have secret initiations,
an oath, degrees, etc.

Also, that wikipedia source on S&B;contains a logical fallacy.  It says that S&B;is part of a German secret
society.  Okay.  It says that the Illuminati *may* have gone secret after being banned.  Okay again.  But what
evidence is there that the actual German secret society that spawned S&B;was in fact the Illuminati?  That
article does not provide evidence, it provides innuendo. 

The article might as well have read:  “S&B;was formed from a secret society.  The Illuminati went secret after
being banned.  The Jesuits at one point were banned during roughly the same time period as the Illuminati.  Ergo the Illuminati and the Jesuits have something in common.  Ergo Skull and Bonesmen work for the Jesuits.”

To Caper:: You are one earth bound sparrow… Your infatuations, incantations, intoxications....and other deformed aspirations for infallibility are nothing short of text book....get a wife, get a life...go blow on the dying coal of your heart...you procure phantoms like shit procures flies...your fears are indespensible.

And, Jim, you do not know how to write without . . . too . . . many . . . ellipses.

To Caper::: let’s try you out....please address...the impact of the Scholastics at Salamanca...on the result...of Hobbes, Locke & Hegel(the Amerikan political experience)...or, confirm // contradict.... Avicenna & Averroes as the “motive” of modern “christian” thought…

Jim, I will concede to you this truth:  I do need a better way to spend my time.  If I had a family of my own, believe me, I hope I wouldn’t waste my time on blogs.  For all the contempt I’ve shelled out to you in the past, you occasionally hit the nail on the head.  Okay? 

However, do you notice that the rest of us do not write in short, cryptic remarks with multiple ellipses?  You really would win better responses, and more attention from others, if you observed standard rules of composition.  For instance, your challenge above is not composed in complete sentences.  I actually could not reply to you, for your meaning is unclear.  The impact of (insert name) on the result of (insert name)?  Averroes and Avicenna as a “motive”—how are authors “motives”? 

May we make peace?  Would you forgive me for past times when I’ve dumped on you in my un-Christian lack of patience?  Would you please let me argue my points, too, or answer them with reasoning instead of ad hominems?

And, yes, I do recognize all the names you listed.  But what does “impact of so-and-so on the result of so-and-so” mean?  How do people have results on the impacts of others?  What you write is unclear.  Peace.

To Caper:: YOU ARE A DISGUSTING, COWARDLY JESUIT....and just so you know....for future reference...Descartes killed both Aristotle & the Holy Spirit...your kind of quy...me thinks...you harrie the confused geese...Life is now purified & perfected...it’s just not pure or perfect...go figure....Reason is a Grammar..

I don’t know how I’m a coward, Jim.  Know that as a solemn and absolute vow, I shall never read another one of your posts ever again.  You spurn even the olive branch.

To Caper:::You Sir, are Emerson in a skirt & a shawl…