My favorite conservative is William F. Buckley. If I want right-wing bullshit to fire me up, I listen to Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly. When I want an intellectual challenge to my progressivism with the potential to make me think and actually reconsider some of my ideas I read Buckley. (Another feather in Buckley's cap: after Gore Vidal had repeatedly called him a "crypto-nazi" while the two were gigging as talking head pundit types for one of the major networks during one of the party conventions for the 1960 presidential election, Buckley told Vidal, "if you don't stop calling me a crypto-nazi I'm going to sock you in the goddamned mouth." This was on national television during prime time. I know I'd like to sock Gore Vidal in the goddamned mouth myself.) Today, Buckley seems to be just as confused about the cloud of dust left in the wake of the Lott purge as everyone else is. When Buckley is confused, rest assured, conservatism is in intellectual disarray. I think that if Buckley had understood the ouster of Lott to be the power play that it was, he would have supported it and been ruthlessly honest about it, perhaps assembling a great argument justifying it. But no. Here, Buckley gets a bit sour about the politics of race and the politically correct imperative. I suppose that I could shrug off Buckley's essay as diversionary pro-Bush propaganda, but generally WFB is pretty straightforward (in other words, he would never say, "We're not fucking the poor at all;" rather, he would say, "here's why it is very important that we fuck the poor...").

Looks like Bush and his band of rogues, brigands, and scoundrels are gonna get away with it without much consequence.

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