A couple of weeks ago, I bought a hardcover of William F. Buckley, Jr.’s Happy Days Were Here Again: Reflections of a Libertarian Journalist from NRO. As soon as I received it, I started reading it. Remarkably, I have been reading non-fiction for fifteen straight nights, without getting bored, crying, falling asleep mid-sentence, or eating my own hand just to amuse myself. In fact, I’ve intended to switch back and forth between this book and Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism, but it’s been so good that I find myself wanting to know what he says next. I’ll get to Jonah’s book soon.
Since I began reading this, every night I have read something aloud to Frank, who insists I must tell y’all these things. Nearly every one of the essays in the first part of the book has a line or paragraph in which Buckley correctly predicts the future. I’m going to start chronicling them here, to give us all a good laugh or a feeling of complete wigginess.
(From “The So-Whatness of Nuclear Winter” — April 1985):
The logic of Carl Sagan’s position is that we should engage in unilateral nuclear disarmament… that nuclear winter is more to be feared than Soviet hegemony, and therefore we must give up our arsenal. Richard Perle–and Ronald Reagan–tell us we can do better. We can avoid both Soviet hegemony and nuclear winter, as we have done for forty years now.
Dude. That totally held up. May not hold up for much longer where Russia is concerned, but the Soviet Union is not yet rebuilt, and I don’t think it will be the Soviets that will bring on our first nuclear winter. I’ll give you a bonus one today, since this is the premiere of The Buckley Prophecies.
(From “Jesse on My Mind” — May 1985) He is speaking of Jesse Jackson here, but substitute Jeremiah Wright in your head:
On reflection, the clearest sign of the enduring discrimination of white people in America against black people in America is our toleration of Jesse Jackson. If he were a blue-blooded WASP, he would be treated with… the special contempt by which democracies effectively stigmatize those who dwell in cuckooland…
Oh, but Jesse Jackson is a black leader… he is one hell of an orator, which was true of Gerald L.K. Smith, who was probably an even finer orator, and was a racist mess. Jesse Jackson so intimidated the San Francisco Democrats that they couldn’t even muster the resolution to vote a denunciation of anti-Semitism, for fear of offending Jackson, the anti-Zionist assembly and, one supposes, Jesse’s noisy fan Louis Farrakhan…
You are getting the point. They don’t protest because he’s merely a black preacher saying dumb things…
But as long as he moves about with the immunity that now protects him from the kind of ostracism he has so diligently earned, then one can say with meaning: There is true condescension in America for the black, and that condescension is strongest among the elite.
Yeah, I have to agree with that.
Stating an eternal truth in an era of lies can easily be considered Prophesy when the facts are forgotten in the noise, or noting where a given liberal philosophy will lead if left to its own devices. Prophesy, in the biblical sense, does not only mean predictions of the future but insight into God’s view of the present, and how it contrasts with the prevailing view of sinful cultures. They often consist of, “You are doing X now, even though you think you are doing Y, therefore God will do Z”.
Other good writers for this: C. S. Lewis, G. K. Chesterton, and in the present – Mark Stein and Rabbi Daniel Lapin.
P J O’Rourke’s “buy stocks until 2010, then buy Depends” reference to what would happen when the boomers started retiring and what it would do to the markets seems to be bearing out a bit early, too.
I always imagined someone reading aloud to Frank. Snark!
Jesse Jackson == Hemmoroid so large it had to get its own social security number.
I believe in GAWD. GAWD = Good Arguments With Distinction. I need no diety to know there is an ultimate underlying physical reality to the universe. That being the case its easy to see people can do X think they are doing Y and objective reality chaotic system outputs Z. In case there are any other conservative athiests who prefer the greater clarity of system engineering.
Sarah, I definitely see a growing fear of offending African Americans, exactly as Buckley says. Reports are circulating now of a woman who was beat up on her college campus by four black women who followed her because she was wearing a McCain pin. They called her a racist before hitting her over the head. Now I don’t think this is strictly an election phenomenon, so I’m certainly not going to blame it on the liberal illuminati, and I don’t want to focus on those exaggeratedly awful stories, but unless blacks and whites get to know each other on a personal level, get past their hate to find out of the token white person with a pin is really racist, racism may be inverted but it will never go away. We share responsibility for this change.
Dear A.B. …. just getting to know a black is not going to solve the type of behavioral problems that 4 guys beating up on 1 girl displays. Could you boot up your situational awareness please?
…. blacks are umpteen times more likely to be in prison on a per capita basis and that is not because of racism. That is because of any number things including those detailed in the book “The Bell Curve”. At the very least I think any normal person speaking on background will tell you they think blacks have trouble with impulse control.
Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings. AKA reality. Sugar coating this stuff is not going to help.
I liked Liberal Facism, but it is not a fluid read. Jonah left no stone unturned in his analysis. Buckley never succeeded in politics, because of his penchant for speaking the unadulturated truth.
Buckley = The original Wolverine.
GeeSus SOB ….I hated that movie with the high school kids running around colorado. Almost as bad as the Sarah Corner Cornicles TV ahem show. Oops I just puked.
I was thinking this morning about this Russia business.
And I was thinking that if I were Condi Rice, and I’d put all that effort going back and forth to Poland for years, I’d have to go and whip some as$ up there if Millhouse decides to go Pansy on the deal. She could take Michelle.
I also read Liberal Fascism. It was a good read, but to me it was alot of words to say not a whole lot. Props to the author for doin all the research though.
Condi Rice is not my favorite. I like Basmati more. Eat your Uncle Ben’s
I loved that book! I should warn you though… I have a fuzzily distinct memory of Buckley writing about pork barrelling and concluding that it would be reasonable for the richest states to pay a little more into the federal budget and the poorest to get a litte more. Kind of a state progressive tax. And I think it’s in that book. Buckley you socialist!
I think its a good idea if you want a way to end pork barrelling as vote buying theft but still shut up the people who are upset by that because now poor areas are going to have dying old people without magic federal money. Make a law that says that the people of any state that gets less than the average pork money or even federal spending overall gets a tax rebate to make up the difference. Suddenly everyone realizes that – guess what Virginia! – all that federal money comes from… the people… the people in the states. If it’s too hard to pass that, add in a shift so that the poorest 10 states get a rebate or federal spending cap that is 10% higher than average. And Obama won’t make it 50% higher for the 50 states poorer on average because the richest states are full of elitist liberals who won’t like the idea of their money subsiziding Jesusland.
I love Mr. Buckley. He says so eloquently what I in my stumbling, rambling and run on way have been saying for years. We miss you Mr. Buckley, sir.
So interesting to see the parallels of 23 years ago and now. The illuminati has survived that long and, if history repeating is doomed to happen again, it will likely continue to do so