RSS Feed MenuNational Review Online has done its readers a service by creating the weekly “NR Originals” newsletter, featuring weekly reprints of classic NR articles. I highly recommend it – this week more than ever – because it highlights the ways in which conservative thought generally, and that of its modern founding father William F. Buckley specifically, evolved over time.
This morning’s installment includes the obituary of Harry Truman (it’s uncredited, but given that it was a presidential obituary, it is not unreasonable to presume that WFB wrote it, or at least approved it). Although it specifically focused on Truman, one particular line really jumps out at me, on the subject of Dean Acheson (all emphasis mine):
The skill and courage with which Truman and Acheson met this enormous challenge — articulating the Truman Doctrine, intervening in Greece, launching the Marshall Plan, feeding Berlin with an air-lift for most of a year — have earned him a lasting place in history.
What’s remarkable about that line is that it gives partial credit to Acheson for four achievements that WFB specifically denied Acheson in one of his very first public writings. In that 1952 Freeman essay, WFB argued, in his response to McGeorge Bundy, that Acheson did not clearly deserve credit for any of them; WFB even cast doubt on the very merits of the Truman Administration’s achievements themselves:
[Bundy] then catalogues, primarily by quoting at eneverating length from Mr. Acheson’s public statements, the standard list of postwar Administration counter-measures to Soviet imperialism. They are, briefly, the stand of the United States in the United Nations on the evacuation of Soviet Troops from Iran; the promulgation of the Truman Doctrine for Greece; the Marshall Plan; the Berlin airlift; the North Atlantic Treaty; the Korean War. Many of these programs took place before the appointment of Acheson in January of 1949, yet he is identified with most of them because he gave them his support first as Under Secretary of State and then as a private lawyer. Now, each of these “anti-Communist” measures, with an exception or two, is controversial at least to the extent that the question arises whether it was best exploited, or most shrewdly designed, or most carefully selected from among alternative measures to enhance the strategic position of the free world as against the Soviet Union. For example, was the airlift the most fruitful means of countering brazen Russian aggression in Berlin? Was the administration or the constitution of the Marshall Plan as effective as it might have been? Has our behavior in Korea been intelligent, and has it worked maximum damage, militarily, economically, politically and psychologically, to the Soviet Union?
Those criticisms were published in The Freeman in 1952. NR’s Truman obituary ran only two decades later, in 1973. In that stretch of time — which was hardly marked by ideological convergence among the Left and the Right — WFB came to recognize that his youthful criticisms of Truman and Acheson were misplaced. When the time came to reconsider past positions, with his youthful (qualified) support of Senator McCarthy firmly behind him and the influence of Whittaker Chambers’s prudence and pragmatism becoming all the more evident in WFB’s writings, WFB was not afraid to publicly change his mind.
Reflecting on this, I can’t help but wonder: which of our conservative leaders today are willing to critically review and reconsider their previously-announced positions? Which conservatives’ positions and decisions of the last thirty years are subjected to serious, open reconsideration on the Right?
DFL // Jan 29, 2010 at 1:27 pm
1. Free trade as an absolutist ideology.
2. Exorbitant defense spending twenty years after the end of the Cold War.
3. The Flat Tax.
4. School vouchers, school prayer and the Pledge of Allegience.
5. Fealty to the the CIA and FBI.
6. Disrespect for conserving the environment, the land and the forests.
WillyP // Jan 29, 2010 at 3:59 pm
DFL // Jan 29, 2010 at 1:27 pm
1. Free trade as an absolutist ideology.
– Free, voluntary trade vs. state-sponsored privilege. Yes, I do view that as an absolute good.
2. Exorbitant defense spending twenty years after the end of the Cold War.
– Military spending as a % of GDP is quite low, historically speaking. This comment, therefore, is a non sequitur.
3. The Flat Tax.
–Fine. Would you consider a consumption tax to replace the income tax? I’d take it, assuming it was a FLAT consumption tax.
4. School vouchers, school prayer and the Pledge of Allegience.
–School vouchers – i.e., giving people back their tax money to help them find better education for their children. Gee, how awful us conservatives are! School prayer is only a big issue because the libs insist on destroying private education with poor public schools. And still, public school prayer was commonplace at one time. As for the Pledge of Allegiance, uh, it’s you libs who want us in government schools in the first place. We’re pledging an oath to the system that forcibly educates us, by law. Please, think before you write.
5. Fealty to the the CIA and FBI.
I don’t think this accurately describes conservatives, so I’m not going to respond.
6. Disrespect for conserving the environment, the land and the forests.
Private property best conserves resources. Unlike you libs, we believe in upholding the property rights of citizens, and also not telling people whether they can or cannot cut down their own trees, hunt on their own land, and utilize the fruits of the earth.
How about some lib alternatives, DFL? Care to offer them up for scrutiny?
ProfNickD // Jan 29, 2010 at 4:07 pm
Well, this process has already begun. Over the last ten years conservatism morphed into something called “neoconservatism” and advocated:
* an unmitigated growth in government spending;
* “nation building” overseas;
* stricter environmental regulations and a bizarre fascination with European environmental policies overall;
* and a displacement of traditional values by specifically religious values, in some cases.
The current conservative climate is clearly backpedaling on these decidedly progressive positions in favor of more Goldwater-Reagan conservatism.
Which is to say, of course, actual conservatism.
I don’t believe neoconservatives are the evil schemers that Leftards make them out to be — they’re just not conservatives. I think the current conservative movement is beginning to recognize this fact.
sinz54 // Jan 29, 2010 at 6:06 pm
Most politicians don’t like to admit they could ever have been ideologically wrong.
That’s true of both political parties.
So when they lose an election badly, they tend to blame it on the media or the chicanery of the opposition party or the alleged stupidity or ignorance or bigotry of the American people. (It’s always fun to contrast what a political party says about the American people right after the party loses an election badly, with what they say about the American people right after they win an election.)
Carney // Jan 31, 2010 at 3:21 pm
Calls for “growth” and “admission of past wrong” are more credible when they also explicitly provide for, and praise, movement to the right.
Otherwise they are just another adjunct of the massive, overwhelming leftward pressure inflicted by the media, lobbyists, beltway establishment, etc.
sinz54 // Jan 31, 2010 at 3:39 pm
Carney: Calls for “growth” and “admission of past wrong” are more credible when they also explicitly provide for, and praise, movement to the right.
“ProfNickD” has a good point.
Neither Goldwater nor Reagan was in favor of armed nation-building, as many of today’s neoconservatives are. The neo-conservative theory that we needed to topple Saddam to create a democratic Arab Muslim state in Iraq as a showpiece for the rest of the Arab world is not something that conservatives prior to the Kristol family would have endorsed.