A gutterbucket of words.....

I do not really know what words I will put down on the page now. I am something of a sesquipedalian myself. The death of William F. Buckley Jr. on Wednesday struck a nerve. I have always leaned more to the left, but Buckley`s beliefs in unbridled enterprise harnessed sympathy with me. I grew up in a very conservative environment in Dallas Texas in the 1960s. The spirit of free enterprise was ever an object of affection. This was at the height of the cold war, and the threat of international communism was perpetually on the horizon. William F. Buckley Jr. was the consummate Cold Warrior who helped to propel the career of Barry Goldwater, who believe it or not, was to the right of Richard Nixon. Yea, for me this is astonishing! I`m reminded of the Johnson TV spot from the 1964 presidential election. 5,4,3,2,1…then a nuclear explosion. Yes, we probably would not be here now if Goldwater had been elected. His words often echo through my head and chills appear: “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.” Indeed, this means for me that the end justifies the means. I think not. The same argument is being made now in Iraq, that if we can lay a beachhead of freedom and democracy, then the loss of a few citizens that were getting in the way anyway, is of no consequence. En contrar, my fare weathered friend! “It keeps eating,… New York like any metropolis is an organism that changes, mutates, building sprout-like chromosomes on the DNA of the streets.” Erica Bain-The Brave One. These words echo the pariah of communism throughout the world. Castro was a thorn in the side of the US and Che Guevara spread revolution pandemically throughout Latin America. Claims have been made that Buckley forged the conservative foundations that led to the emergence of Reagan and Bush, and therefore helped to end the Cold War. I don`t buy this, but it`s a good theory. The Soviet economy imploded basically…but this was due to the Afghanistan war. The Iran to Contra scandal once again showed that the Reagan administration was willing to let the end justify the means in order to squelch the Sandinistas in Nicaragua. This is at best contemptible, and Oliver North is no hero. After all this was funded by the sale of arms to Iran and the sale of drugs too to provide the funding. Come on…this is worse than Watergate, and now Daniel Ortega is back in power anyway. But Buckley did offer a level of eloquence and sophistication that is non-existent today. Fred Barnes and Bill Crystal and the folks at Fox are mere shadows to Buckley, who was very persuasive to people on the left, like Norman Mailer. Bill O`Riley is a wildcard for the right and does nothing but help us liberals with his quasi-patriotism and altruistic Bush trumping shallowisms. Boycott Fox my fare weathered friends! The sooner people turn it off, the better the country will be. No, conservatism rolled over dead once it lost William B. Finally, Bush will leave us too, another mutant byproduct of the ‘conservative coalition’ that has helped to cripple our economy, put us in debt, bog us down in a quagmire of Afghanistan and Iraq, make the rich richer and the poor poorer…Buckley too was against the War in Iraq! What does that tell ya? I greatly respect the man and will peruse some of the volume of his words. The current outcome of events was not of his design.