Buckley’s train blew up a long ways back. He’s been irrelevant for a very long time, his body carrying on without realizing that he actually died many years ago.

I still remember in college (quite a while ago) when I went to a talk by Buckley and thinking “never have I disagreed with something so much that was said so well”

the conservative faithful celebrate Buckley

Podhoretz and Buckley now inhabit opposite poles of post-September 11 American conservatism, and they stare at wholly different Iraqs. Podhoretz is the Brooklyn-born, street-fighting kid who traveled through a long phase of left-liberalism to a pugilistic belief in America’s power to redeem the world, one bomb at a time. Today, he is a bristling gray ball of aggression, here to declare that the Iraq war has been “an amazing success.” He waves his fist and declaims, “There were WMD, and they were shipped to Syria. … This picture of a country in total chaos with no security is false. It has been a triumph. It couldn’t have gone better.” He wants more wars, and fast. He is “certain” Bush will bomb Iran, and “thank God” for that.

Buckley is an urbane old reactionary, drunk on doubts. He founded National Review in 1955–when conservatism was viewed in polite society as a mental affliction–and he has always been skeptical of appeals to “the people,” preferring the eternal top-down certainties of Catholicism. He united with Podhoretz in mutual hatred of Godless Communism, but, slouching into his eighties, he possesses a worldview that is ill-suited for the fight to bring democracy to the Muslim world. He was a ghostly presence on the cruise at first, appearing only briefly to shake a few hands. But now he has emerged, and he is fighting.

“Aren’t you embarrassed by the absence of these weapons?” Buckley snaps at Podhoretz. He has just explained that he supported the war reluctantly, because Dick Cheney convinced him Saddam Hussein had WMD primed to be fired. “No,” Podhoretz replies. “As I say, they were shipped to Syria. During Gulf war one, the entire Iraqi air force was hidden in the deserts in Iran.” He says he is”heartbroken” by this “rise of defeatism on the right.” He adds, apropos of nothing, “There was nobody better than Don Rumsfeld. This defeatist talk only contributes to the impression we are losing, when I think we’re winning.”

The audience cheers Podhoretz. The nuanced doubts of Bill Buckley leave them confused. Doesn’t he sound like the liberal media? Later, over dinner, a tablemate from Denver calls Buckley “a coward.” His wife nods and says, “Buckley’s an old man,” tapping her head with her finger to suggest dementia.

The coalition of the aggrieved fringe everyone has spent the week giving him credit for building tossed him out like yesterday’s trash when they decided to believe what he published rather than what he thought.

I think maybe King Lear is more to the point than Col. Nicholson.

He was shameless. I wouldn’t worry about it too much.

Re: Charlotte Allen -

wow! that is some hysteria filled screed. What set her off? She seems to be channeling Henry Higgins on crack. As in–why can’t a woman be more like a man–only Allen says it with such venom. And K-lo agrees. No surprise there.

A study published in 1998 by the Johns Hopkins schools of medicine and public health revealed that women clocked 5.7 auto accidents per million miles driven, in contrast to men’s 5.1, even though men drive about 74 percent more miles a year than women.

It takes a lot of work to be this stupid.

She writes for Lingua Franca, First Things, the City Journal (the Manhattan Institute), the National Review, the Washington Monthly, the OpEd page of the WSJ, the shiny new rightwing Atlantic and Crisis.

Of course she’s fierce. It’s what she’s paid for.

Far from having a Col.Nicholson moment, WFBuckley would have whole-heartedly approved of Allen’s article. It reads like something word-for-word (except the references) from the National Review in 1959.
He would have been off-put by The Stupid at the Corner in the way Dr. Evil was pissed at Jurgen, Generalissimo, Rita, and Don Luigi, but the ideology is pure NR. (Assuming you know what I mean in distinguishing The Stupid from the stupid ideology.)

K-Lo hating other women? That’s a shocker. Why would a 40-something virgin, an unmarried, uni-browed, pudgy virgin no less – who senses her ovaries are shriveling up and drying like a tomato left in the sun too long, and who now realizes she is going to die a perpetually unmarried, pudgy virgin – why on Earth would she hate other women? You know, the ones who go out and have fun, date, drink, screw around, sometimes even get married and have kids…those slutty gals who actually enjoy life and don’t sit around listening to fatass Rush Limbaugh for 4 hours every fucking day, or furtively rub their wrinkled dry snatches every night in a tiny, cat-filled “bachelorette” studio apartment to images of hunky Mitt Romney (who married that high school sweetheart bitch of his) while K-Lo was lovingly giving herself to her real husband Jesus Christ amen…now why would she be bitter and hate other women?

Maybe if Obama wore a flightsuit with a stuffed crotch, K-Lo and Allen would be ’screaming and swooning’ for Obama too.

I’m not the only woman who’s dumbfounded (as it were) by our sex, or rather, as we prefer to put it, by other members of our sex besides us

I guess Charlotte comes from the Ace-Playdough and Bacon-school of thought.

I have to wonder if this will act as a green light for Derbyshire to go into work and give in to his long held impulse to start calling KLo “Consuela” and demanding that she empty his waste paper basket and then get the hell out of his sight.

OT, but teh movie Kwai bridge is modeled on the Firth of Forth Railway Bridge.

The Forth Bridge was the first great cantilever bridge, and is still one of the most elegant.

Maybe if Obama wore a flightsuit with a stuffed crotch, K-Lo and Allen would be ’screaming and swooning’ for Obama too.

Nah, there’d be hysterical screeching about the uppity Madingo Dictator wannabe.

The Horror…K-lo is only 32…