Opinion: In today’s pages: Buckley, TB, and Colbert
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National Interest editor Jacob Heilbrunn examines the late William F. Buckley’s legacy:
A year after graduating from college, Buckley pioneered the depiction of American liberals as a smug, self-satisfied elite in his famous 1951 book, ‘God and Man at Yale.’ At National Review, he brought on a passel of former Trotskyites turned conservatives, such as Willi Schlamm and James Burnham, who churned out essays attacking the news media and universities as being filled with doctrinaire liberals. Sound familiar?Ever since, conservatives -- whether it’s Ann Coulter or Dinesh D’Souza -- have continuously denounced traitorous liberal elites. But they are bargain-basement Buckleys.
The editorial board has its take:
It was an irony of Buckley’s career that after he boosted so many Republican presidents, they invariably disappointed him. Richard Nixon signed the Clean Air Act and imposed wage and price controls; Ronald Reagan left office with the Department of Education intact; George W. Bush vastly increased Medicare benefits and plunged the country into a war that Buckley turned against long before that became an acceptable conservative position.
Elsewhere on the editorial page, the board says the Democratic candidates are wrong to vilify NAFTA, and asks U.N. member states, especially Russia and China, to pledge more money to fight drug resistant tuberculosis.
On the Op-Ed page, columnist Rosa Brooks looks at the new revision of the Army Field Manual. U.C. San Diego’s James H. Fowler says the ‘Colbert bump’ is real. And columnist Patt Morrison explains how lawmakers, activists, and backfiring corporate gluttony saved the California redwoods.
Readers discuss the editorial board’s claim that Congress should ignore the issue of telecom immunity. Laguna Niguel’s Richard Brock says, ‘The Times misses the crucial issue animating the retroactive-immunity-for-telecoms debate: whether we are a nation of laws in times of peace and equally a nation of laws in times of war.’