Buckley, RIP

One of the last long-form pieces he wrote, I believe, appeared in our pages; it concerned the sale of his beloved boat, Patito. Here's how it ended:

... sailing can have so many rapturous moments, and there are accompanying pleasures. When you are in a harbor, there may be four congenial people around the table, eating and drinking and conversing, listening to music and smoking cigars, the wind and the hail and the temperature outside faced up to and faced down. Here, in your secure little anchorage, is a compound of life's social pleasures in the womb of nature. So, deciding that the time has come to sell the Patito and forfeit all that is not lightly done, and it brings to mind the step yet ahead, which is giving up life itself.

Few men were more ready to enter that undiscovered country, I would venture, than WFB. Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine; et lux perpetua luceat eis.

Comments

Ok, not to be a total jerk (RIP WFB) but are we really supposed to take this seriously? There's really no better way to embrace mother nature than sitting back with a glass of Dalmore and a Cohiba Red Dot aboard one's Hinckley! This is what demonstrates WFB's readiness to "enter that undiscovered country"....?
On the other hand, one of the more refreshing/amusing things about wfb was that he so brazenly embodied the conservative stereotype. Like I said, rip.

Posted by berger | February 27, 2008 1:41 PM

Classy tribute Ross. WFB RIP

Posted by Tom O'Gorman | February 27, 2008 1:42 PM

A giant. A giant I disagreed with almost without exception, but a giant nonetheless.

Posted by Freddie | February 27, 2008 1:48 PM

“Now listen, you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I will sock you in your goddamn face, and you will stay plastered.”

That is not offered as political comment, I just think it's hilarious

Posted by Jack | February 27, 2008 2:31 PM

Bill Buckley and Russell Kirk had the most to do with establishing conservatism as a respectable intellectual and political force in America. He managed to do this with sterling wit and intellectual depth. Fittingly he died at his writing desk this morning.

He was prescient in handing The National Review over to Lowry, Ponnuru, and Goldberg who are worthy though hardly comparable successors. With the loss of Buckley and his Yale classmate, Van Galbraith, a charming era has passed.

Posted by Peter Leavitt | February 27, 2008 2:34 PM

The world is a slightly better place. Hope the fire ain't to hot!

Posted by Don Quijote | February 27, 2008 2:40 PM

Ross: when a decent interval has passed, I do hope you'll see your way clear to writing that tell-all about the summer of skinny dipping.

Posted by Noah Millman | February 27, 2008 2:47 PM

Count me as a liberal who liked WFB. I grew up watching Firing Line and he always gave liberal guests their chance to make their arguments-- and in a longer form than the sound bytes that prevail on other shows.

For all my problems with the guy (and there were many), he made presented conservativism in an intelligent, intellectual fashion, and conservativism, which includes a lot of anti-intellectualism and rabble-rousing (like the guys on talk radio and the guy who introduced McCain yesterday), needed guys like Buckley who cared about ideas, including ideas he disagreed with.

This is a big loss for conservativism, and, despite my disagreements with him, for the country as well.

Posted by Dilan Esper | February 27, 2008 2:48 PM

Fine post, Ross. This is sad news.

Posted by Elvis Elvisberg | February 27, 2008 4:10 PM

WFB - an amazing life. RIP.

Posted by Richard Dulworth | February 27, 2008 6:13 PM

Am I just tired, or is there something grammatically amiss, or just missing, in the last sentence of the Buckley quote? Well, the sentiment is plain, at any rate. I had read this piece in the Atlantic and that last paragraph had stuck with me. A fitting sort of pre-valediction.

Posted by Maclin Horton | February 27, 2008 7:23 PM

To keep things in perspective, I think a link to Patrick Nielsen Hayden's remarks is called for, as is the quote he dug up:

“The central question that emerges…is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas where it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes—the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race.”

—William F. Buckley, National Review, August 24, 1957

Y'know, if conservatives could (somewhat deservedly) give Chris Bertram of Crooked Timber so much crap about what he wrote about Castro, it seems entirely fitting that liberals do something similar for those eulogizing WFB today.

Posted by Chris | February 27, 2008 10:25 PM

Chris,

Don't hold your breath...

You could also pull up some more recent quotes about South Africa.

Posted by Eric K | February 27, 2008 10:51 PM

Chris reminds: "“The central question that emerges…is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas where it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes—the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race.”"

At least Buckley wasn't still writing such things at the end of his life, or penning snide nonsense about "welfare duchesses with big TVs" or linking to white supremacists. At least I don't think he was. But his presence on the utterly wrong side of the civil rights question is certainly one of his greatest appeals to the right-wing of our own time, who had largely abandoned him on many other issues.

I'm glad his movement died before he did. When they finally took power they revealed the sickness that lies at the heart of the conservative soul, and now his magazine is the worst sort of fascist stroke mag - an obscene piece of filth pumped out by torture-loving maggots who have no real principles other than self-aggrandizement. Instead of an epitaph, his tombstone should have a plastic shield on it which contains the most recent issue of the degenerate rag.

Posted by TheBannedMoeLarryAndJesus | February 27, 2008 11:55 PM

Not all conservative types are racist.

In addition to that a few of you should look at the history of suffrage and feminist. Several of the advocates for women's suffrage were explicit that white women deserved the vote more than black men because they were "more advanced." Even in Buckley's early years Gallup indicates white liberals often viewed Martin Luther King Jr. with trepidation and it wasn't unheard of for them to agree whites were "for the time being, the advanced race."

Where liberals were better is in their belief that "the time being" could and should change. That the condition of blacks should improve. Buckley and other NR conservatives of that time believed such change should only come gradually if it must come at all. Also that there needed to be an "underclass" and that that class shouldn't be demanding. My guess would be Buckley would've been similarly clear at that time that white coal miners were in essence a "less advanced race" and their unions should not have much power. The real hardcore racist position, then and now, was based more in the view blacks are inherently inferior. Not inferior in a contingent way based on events in history.

Later Buckley rejected his previous view of Civil Rights.

Posted by Thomas R | February 28, 2008 12:50 AM

Can we please hold off on criticizing the man for a couple of months. I have always been violently opposed to the man's politics, but say no ill of the dead, and so forth.

Posted by Hector | February 28, 2008 1:02 AM

Thomas R writes: "Where liberals were better is in their belief that "the time being" could and should change. That the condition of blacks should improve."

This is totally wrong. Where "liberals" were better lies in the fact that they actually did something about their belief. Conservatives stood in the way. Conservatives are usually quite happy to tell other people that they should STFU and wait for their time to come. Today it's homosexuals, and every rational person reading this knows that in another generation the anti-gay nonsense conservatives are pushing will be as archaic as Buckley's "advanced race" bullshit is today (Steve Sailer and company notwithstanding).

Or maybe they'll move on to "mixed-race Communists" now that Obama is running. Is there a low their pundits can stoop to that they won't applaud? This campaign may reveal the answer.

Posted by TheBannedMoeLarryAndJesus | February 28, 2008 1:09 AM

Hector writes: "Can we please hold off on criticizing the man for a couple of months. I have always been violently opposed to the man's politics, but say no ill of the dead, and so forth."

I don't believe I did say anything ill of him personally. But the magazine he left behind is just no longer fit for human consumption. I remember fondly the issue (long ago now) where he argued that the War On Drugs was an insane waste of time, though. As the Voice of Conservatism he had some good qualities. The current holders of that title have none.

Posted by TheBannedMoeLarryAndJesus | February 28, 2008 1:16 AM

A beautiful life. Consequential. Lived to it's fullest. God grant you fair winds, and following seas, on a vessel that never needs painting, WFB.

(In memory of a shouted conversation as his sailboat passed by us in LIS)

Posted by chris ford | February 28, 2008 5:57 AM

"Where "liberals" were better lies in the fact that they actually did something about their belief."

I know that, I meant that as basically implied. If this were 1957 I'd basically be a liberal.

On Buckley he did apparently reject his earlier hostility to integration. Robert Byrd was further on that spectrum than him before rejecting it. (He also referred to "white n****s" only a a few years ago) Yet his practically a beloved elder statesman of the Democrats. If he dies will you on the Left be willing to say he is probably a racist to the end who just changed for politically opportunistic reasons? The Republicans who championed integration in the 1950s how do you feel about them?

Posted by Thomas R | February 28, 2008 6:21 AM

"Today it's homosexuals, and every rational person reading this knows that in another generation the anti-gay nonsense conservatives are pushing will be as archaic as Buckley's "advanced race" bullshit is today"

I sort of doubt it. If you mean hostility to gays as people than perhaps. If you mean rejection of homosexuality as immoral than I doubt it. Sexual behavior is a great deal different than being black. In the 1920s some liberal types believed the bourgeoise notion of faithfulness in marriage would eventually be abandoned. Or at the very least that open-marriages would be as acceptable as remarriage after divorce or widowhood. It didn't happen.

Racial notions were largely a product of the Trans-Atlantic slave trade. Even then there were US states that never even had laws against miscegenation. The notion that homosexual sex is wrong is related to the entire Abrahamic tradition. It's also accepted in much of the religious tradition of Persia, India, and elsewhere. So you would need a large-scale transformation or collapse of much of the world's cultural traditions. Although many are working on that its success is mostly limited to the more post-Christian parts of Europe.

Posted by Thomas R | February 28, 2008 6:33 AM

"Can we please hold off on criticizing the man for a couple of months. I have always been violently opposed to the man's politics, but say no ill of the dead, and so forth."

Hector, I disagree somewhat - it's simply not the case that the punditry and blogosphere is going to say nice things about the guy now, hold off a few months, then return for a more nuanced view. If it were, I'd be willing to do what you suggest.

Instead, what we get is what we have - a single opportunity to recognize the man for what he was, good and bad, before he's largely forgotten and unmentioned in daily conversation. And I say, let's not let Buckley's well-deserved reputation for wordplay and intelligence entirely hide the fact that many of his argument, both as a younger man and more recently, were pretty damn awful.

And, Thomas R, I fully expect guys like you to say exactly what you're saying when Byrd passes; against that we'll have the positive accomplishments of his later years in the Senate, and people will be able to judge him for what he was, warts and all.

Posted by Chris | February 28, 2008 9:51 AM

I sort of doubt it. If you mean hostility to gays as people than perhaps. If you mean rejection of homosexuality as immoral than I doubt it. Sexual behavior is a great deal different than being black. In the 1920s some liberal types believed the bourgeoise notion of faithfulness in marriage would eventually be abandoned. Or at the very least that open-marriages would be as acceptable as remarriage after divorce or widowhood. It didn't happen.

This is a strange argument. In fact, liberals have succeeded quite a lot on sexual issues. Part of the argument for the sexual revolution was that people were doing a lot of this stuff anyway (as disclosed in the famous sex surveys of the 1950's) and it was silly to carry on with a sexual morality that so few people bought into anyway.

And it succeeded. Your typical young white American growing up before World War II probably felt that either sex should be reserved until marriage or maybe that sex was OK between two people who truly loved each other, that oral and anal sex were completely wrong, that homosexual activity was completely wrong, that people who fooled around "deserved" to get pregnant, and that all sorts of traditional conventions surrounding courting and dating were very important and worth maintaining. Of course, that typical white American probably disobeyed many of those strictures, but they believed in them.

Now, your typical young white Amiercan probably feels that sex is either fine within the context of any committed relationship or even in the context of casual sex, that at least oral sex and maybe anal as well are not immoral, that homosexuals should be able to have sex with each other on the same terms that heterosexuals do, that contraception is a moral good that allows people to mess around without getting pregnant (and perhaps that abortion is at least a necessary evil as well for the same reason), and that many of the old beliefs about courting and dating were silly and anachronistic.

I'd say that liberals scored a pretty clear rout on the sexual revolution. The fact that in some segments-- and only some segments-- of society it is still acceptable to trash gays and lesbians and call for laws to engender and/or permit discrimination against them is probably nothing more than the last rear-guard action to defend something that has been gone for at least 30 years.

My hunch is that Moe is right and that 50 years, the conservatives who so virulently opposed gay rights are going to be seen as the George Wallaces and Strom Thurmonds of our time.

Posted by Dilan Esper | February 28, 2008 1:17 PM

Ugh. I've read some of Hayden's anthologies -- he's a fine editor, and of course he has a point that Buckley was wrong about some important things.

BUT. This "dancing on the grave" stuff, left or right, seems horrid and malicious, a kind of demonic rite, to me. And the world of science fiction, particularly the liberal side (though the conservative-libertarians have their grave crimes here, too) seem to really like it -- a particularly nasty strain of SF alternative reality fiction takes some already unpleasant person, with much to burden their death (Nixon, J. Edgar) or some considerably less reasonable choice (like Eisenhower) and writes a savage "version" of reality that shows them behaving like Hitler or Mao. Even when the writing and ideas are strong, it has the stench of something foul about it. Leave the dead alone, or at least grant them something more human than good riddance -- unless they are Stalin or Mao or Saddam Hussein, bin Laden or the like, give them more justice than "good riddance." You who write will be dead soon enough, so will we all, and are not our own crimes dreadful things? Aren't our mistakes chains and weights?

I'm not a good man, but I don't think I indulge in this kind of post-mortem savagery or rejoicing, never mind that some celebrated writer used to lick Stalin's boots. Let the dead have their peace, unless our anger is personal or it is the universal loathing at rapists, murderers, and devils. Damn Pinochet if you like, but have some mercy on the rest of us, for God's sake.

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | February 28, 2008 1:48 PM

There's something inherently "illiberal" (whether done by left or right) in the larger sense of liberal -- generous, humane -- in this equating a man's (wrong) views, except in very extraordinary cases, with his person, and saying "Good riddance" at death. It's totalitarian, and seems to me to (not to get hysterical) a kind of indication that Neilsen Hayden's core thoughts are sympathetic to the idea of liquidating his "enemies." They are bad people, and good riddance to them. Give him a government instead of an editor's pen, and he'd fill the mass graves. This stench comes from many on the right, of course, at times -- but it's worse (left or right) in people who don't get paid for it, somehow.

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | February 28, 2008 2:31 PM

By the way, I agree with Marquis that there's good reasons for the tradition that we not speak ill of the dead, at least until a decent interval has passed.

That said, I think a lot of the liberal criticism of Buckley, at least from responsbile quarters, has not fallen into that category. It speaks ill to the dead to say "good riddance" or "he was scum" or "I hope he burns in hell". But, for instance, posting his horribly racist writings on civil rights in the 1950's and 1960's or his defenses of Joe McCarthy and indicating how wrong the guy was isn't the same thing at all.

We shouldn't trash the recently dead. But it's perfectly appropriate to make valid criticisms of them.

Posted by Dilan Esper | February 28, 2008 2:52 PM

No argument. I think right after death it is humane to try to find SOMETHING good to say, even if you mostly disagreed -- particularly if, as in Buckley's case, by almost all reports, he was a warm, generous and (if you will) bit splendid and outrageous man. Goodness knows I don't love the ideas of Galbraith, or (to pick someone with more personal vices) Bertrand Russell, but to ignore their good qualities as men in a just-post-portem analysis would be wicked.

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | February 28, 2008 3:37 PM

Nothing wrong with noting where the recently deceased fell short, assuming the spirit behind it is generous.

but some views we hold today, both ones we're committed to and ones we don't even think about, will be thought amusing or repellent in 40-50 years by our grandkids. and maybe by ourselves, too.

Posted by chris | February 28, 2008 4:31 PM

I didn't have anything good to say about Reagan after he died, because I can't think of a single position of his that I would have supported. So when he died, I didn't say anything one way or the other. (It helped, I suppose, that I was in a country where not many people knew who he was.)

I think that it's fair to be critical of a person's opinions after their death- but only after a decent interval. Let the family and friends mourn for a while, and if you can't find something nice to say, then that's fine- just don't say anything.

Posted by Hector | February 28, 2008 5:11 PM

because I can't think of a single position of his that I would have supported

After the early California years, Reagan was (I think quite sincerely) pro-life.

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | February 28, 2008 5:25 PM

Marquis,

Yes, I almost included a tip of the hat to his pro-life stance. I decided against it because REagan was one of the three governors (along with Rockefeller of NY, another Republican) who actually approved the legalization of abortion _in advance of_ Roe v. Wade. I suppose he changed his mind later on, so I should give him credit for that.

Posted by Hector | February 28, 2008 6:38 PM

Dilan you're basing a great deal in "probablies." For one I know of at least some evidence that indicates people in several regions of the country, before the 1950s, viewed oral sex about as casually as they do now. Many things they did then they used euphemism for like "petting." I know by abecdotes that in some places young men watching either other masturbate wasn't even seen as gay or particularly unusual. (In fact I mentioned something about men reporting homosexual behavior more then and this older man was irate because they "didn't tolerate queers." Although he then seemed to indicate it could be true if you counted mutual masturbation, but that that wasn't really gay)

For another I wasn't talking about pre-marital sex, but adultery. Intellectuals in the 1920s often took a blase view of it or even hoped it'd be fully accepted. In the sexual revolution it was also believed "open marriage" would soon be seen as okay. This didn't happen. You're not going to find some big majority of youngsters saying they can still sleep-around after marriage. (Well maybe you personally can, but what I mean is it wouldn't be a representative selection) In fact a fair percent of people still oppose children being born out of wedlock. America has not gone as revolutionary as you want. It's just hypocritical, but that's true of most every society that's ever existed. It's the price of having any ideals in the first place.

Posted by Thomas R | February 28, 2008 7:07 PM

Hector,

I think Reagan should get some points for being a serious convert on the matter, who probably did some of the lifting in putting it on the Republican agenda in a visible way, though like most presidents he wasn't an outright activist. Abortion and the Conscience of a Nation was pretty close, though, no?

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | February 28, 2008 7:52 PM

Thomas R writes: "I wasn't talking about pre-marital sex, but adultery. Intellectuals in the 1920s often took a blase view of it or even hoped it'd be fully accepted. In the sexual revolution it was also believed "open marriage" would soon be seen as okay. This didn't happen. You're not going to find some big majority of youngsters saying they can still sleep-around after marriage. (Well maybe you personally can, but what I mean is it wouldn't be a representative selection) In fact a fair percent of people still oppose children being born out of wedlock. America has not gone as revolutionary as you want."

Oh, come on. Pretending that there hasn't been a vast sea change in sexual morality over the past century is just absurd, even when it comes to adultery. You have serial adulterers like 9iu11ani, McCain, and Gingrich either running for president or seen as possible contenders in the so-called "family values" party, and people barely bat an eye. People oppose children being born out of wedlock, in large part, because they don't want to pay to support poor kids. How many girls nowadays are being "sent to the country" to give birth nowadays? How many are being forced to give kids up for adoption? It's just not the same country.

As for your belief that homo-hating will still be the norm in the next generation, I'm guessing you're not familiar with how much this has changed among people much younger than you are. Newsflash - even a hardcore fascist like Dick "Torture Is A Sacrament" Cheney publicly welcomes his out-of-wedlock two-mommy grandson into his family and not a single Baptist preacher drops dead from shock. This isn't a change that's going to be reversed any time soon.

Posted by TheBannedMoeLarryAndJesus | February 28, 2008 8:14 PM

TMoC writes: "I think Reagan should get some points for being a serious convert on the matter, who probably did some of the lifting in putting it on the Republican agenda in a visible way, though like most presidents he wasn't an outright activist."

Or he was a cynical opportunist who saw it as just another wedge issue. I guess it's possible that he had some big change of heart on an issue like that as he approached 60, but it didn't work so well for Mitt Romney. In any event Saint Reagan's "pro-life" views didn't extend to nuns and peasants in El Salvador, that's for sure.

Posted by TheBannedMoeLarryAndJesus | February 28, 2008 8:24 PM

"You have serial adulterers like 9iu11ani, McCain, and Gingrich either running for president or seen as possible contenders in the so-called "family values" party, and people barely bat an eye."

I think you're exaggerating. Dobson and many of the Huckabee voters are clearly "batting an eye" at McCain's history. The three wives of Giulliani did hurt him with "values voters."

In addition what a person will accept in a politician is different than what they accept in life.

"As for your belief that homo-hating will still be the norm in the next generation"

I said that hatred will decline. It's possible to believe something is wrong without hating people who do it or desire it. Maybe this is impossible to understand from a secular-humanist perspective, but I hope not.

A person is made up of many qualities. I don't think they should be defined solely or even mainly by their sexual desires. I wouldn't define myself that way. (My desires are mostly private, but I will admit they are not necessarily 100% hetero) Homosexuals like autists or the bipolar should be loved and treated as whole people. That doesn't mean everyone has to agree on how they should best deal with their desires.

And I know liberal thought enough to know this will read as "Hate the gays, hate the gays, hate the gays" to you. However I'm not saying anything about them I wouldn't say about myself. I'm not perfect and I do things I think are wrong. I just don't let those define me or make me redefine centuries-old morality to suit my desires.

Posted by Thomas R | February 28, 2008 10:13 PM

Thomas R quotes and writes: ""You have serial adulterers like 9iu11ani, McCain, and Gingrich either running for president or seen as possible contenders in the so-called "family values" party, and people barely bat an eye."

I think you're exaggerating. Dobson and many of the Huckabee voters are clearly "batting an eye" at McCain's history. The three wives of Giulliani did hurt him with "values voters.""

I don't think I'm exaggerating at all. Adlai Stevenson's status as a once-divorced man was oce seen as a serious political liability. Public serial adulterers like McCain and 9iu11ani and Gingrich wouldn't have been able to run at all in that time. Now they do, and apart from the true wackaloons no one sees it as something that can really bar them from serving or prevent them from winning an election. Dumbya's daddy had a decades-long affair and even when the story came out it barely registered in the public mind. Clinton had Gennifer Flowers - again, just the wackos cared. Take a look at Rush Limbaugh's pathetic and disgusting personal life and see how little such things matter now, even to the crowd that spends the most time yapping about them. Sure, Rush is a lying junkie with three divorces who goes on sex vacations with bootleg Viagra, but he's one of their own on torture and "the gays" and shooting Mexicans at the border, so they don't care about his super-sloppy personal life.

"And I know liberal thought enough to know this will read as "Hate the gays, hate the gays, hate the gays" to you. However I'm not saying anything about them I wouldn't say about myself. I'm not perfect and I do things I think are wrong. I just don't let those define me or make me redefine centuries-old morality to suit my desires. "

No, it doesn't sound like hatred to me. But the bulk of current conservative cant about homosexuals (and a lot of other people as well) certainly does.

It sure sounds to me like you've redefined "centuries-old morality," though. You're not exactly delivering "Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God" here.

Posted by TheBannedMoeLarryAndJesus | February 28, 2008 10:47 PM

For another I wasn't talking about pre-marital sex, but adultery. Intellectuals in the 1920s often took a blase view of it or even hoped it'd be fully accepted. In the sexual revolution it was also believed "open marriage" would soon be seen as okay. This didn't happen. You're not going to find some big majority of youngsters saying they can still sleep-around after marriage.

Thomas, if you measure progress by the goals of free love advocates and swingers, sure, those goals weren't met.

But I would suggest to you that this is a much bigger indictment of the right wing than the left wing. You see, the sexual revolution wasn't all about free love-- it was about increasing options for women and stripping away tired moral codes that people didn't recognize anyway. And it succeeded. But right wing critics of it swore at the time that any laxing of standards of sexual morality would lead to widespread free love and adultery and polyamory and everything else. And it didn't happen.

Now, of course, those same voices are telling us that recognizing gay marriage will cause the same harms. The question is when are conservatives going to be treated as what they are, the totally clueless homophobic prudes who cried wolf.

Posted by Dilan Esper | February 28, 2008 10:59 PM

It's possible to believe something is wrong without hating people who do it or desire it.

I've said this before. I do believe that it is possible to believe homosexual conduct is immoral and not hate gays and lesbians.

But the test of that is support for equal rights for gays and lesbians. People who think that sodomy laws that threatened to throw gays in jail should have never been struck down, that there should be no laws to protect gays from being fired or denied the right to make contracts because of their sexual orientation, that we should continue to kick gays out of the military, and that we should continue to deny the thousands of legal benefits that we afford to straight married couples to committed gay couples cannot claim this mantle.

A person who simply morally disapproved of gays, but didn't hate them, would support and crusade for full equal rights of gays while also making clear he or she had the right to disapprove of their behavior. There simply aren't very many such voices out there.

Posted by Dilan Esper | February 28, 2008 11:04 PM

"I don't think I'm exaggerating at all. Adlai Stevenson's status as a once-divorced man was oce seen as a serious political liability."

The pendulum swings on this. Grover Cleveland basically admitted that they couldn't prove illegitimate child was his because the mother was the stopping point for both him and his buddies. At times adultery has been condemned for ordinary men, but seen as a sign of manly virtue in politicians. The people who might find McCain's adultery amusing would nevertheless reject it as morally inferior. Men are like that. They might find tomcats amusing while also thinking it's an immoral and shallow way of life.

"You're not exactly delivering 'Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God' here."

Why would I, I'm not a Calvinist. Besides that there's a difference between modification or clarification and complete overthrow. Past severity can be seen as inappropriate without rejecting the underlying view that the action remains acceptable or unacceptable. The Papal States had an executioner, now the Catholic Church believes the death penalty should be limited to "cases of absolute necessity: in other words, when it would not be possible otherwise to defend society." The Catholic Church does not condemn all past use of the death penalty or say it's never valid in any situation. It's simply that such a severe punishment is increasingly unnecessary and that in the present it is needed in only a few or no cases. (US bishops close the door on the "only a few" part, but the Church does not revolve around the opinions or actions of US bishops. I'm intensely grateful for that.)

Likewise other religions were deemed to be in error on one point or other and that is still believed. However past severity on error is now believed to have encouraged an excessively uncharitable view to erroneous people. I suppose similarly past severity on homosexuality is seen as encouraging an uncharitable view of homosexuals. This change does not make error or homosexuality right.

Homosexuality is seen as a disordered state which encourages a desire to an evil. However the same can be said for a whole host of things people encounter every day. The Church, at times, I think "picks on" this disordered state too much. Being a recovered alcoholic also tends to mean you still have a desire to an objective evil. (Drunkenness, drinking alcohol is not itself a sin) However it seems like Catholics are more loving to alcoholics, simply because they deem their sinful desires "less gross." I find that irrational and unfair. Although there's not much benefit in changing that I guess. Telling Catholics to treat homosexuals with the kind of compassion they would give drunks or fornicators is not exactly going to win them points with liberals or conservatives. Pity.

Granted that's a lot of Catholic talk, but this is about Buckley so I think that's appropriate.

Posted by Thomas R | February 28, 2008 11:45 PM

Marquis,

No, I was being uncharitable to say that about Reagan. He was right to convert to the pro-life cause (a bit late, but whatever.) I used to be (rather ignorantly) pro-choice before I became a Christian, so I do give points to anyone who undergoes a similar change of heart. I suppose there was a bit of good even in St. Ronald of Bakersfield.

Moe,

Isn't it at least possible, in theory, that Reagan could have been wrong about El Salvador, Nicaragua, and every other foreign policy issue, and yet be right about abortion? The numerous Catholics who were active in protesting against Reagan's foreign policy no doubt thought so. I have no doubt that the aforementioned nuns and peasants who were the victims of Reagan's foreign policy thought he had it right on abortion. Hell, even the Sandinistas, who had more cause than most other people to hate Reagan, refrained from legalizing abortion during their 11 years in power, despite pressure from Nicaraguan 'feminists'.

Dilan,

I'm afraid you are misunderstanding the idea of 'love the sinner, hate the sin.' It certainly doesn't rule out the idea of using even the coercive power of the state to try to compel the sinner to repent. Please read St. Augustine's 'Commentaries on the Letters of St. John' for details. The important question, according to St. Augustine, is not whether or not you use coercion against someone, but rather whether the coercion is for your good, or for his own. One can love someone even while punishing him with all the coercive power of the state, as long as that power is used for his own moral reformation and not for your own gratification.

I don't personally believe that sodomy ought to be illegal, at least in 21st century America, and I believe in general that gays ought not to be discriminated against other than in the matter of marriage. But it would not be incompatible with the idea of loving the homosexual, to embrace government repression of homosexuals _for their own good_. The medievals said that they loved all men, even the heretics, as they burned them at the stake _for their own good_, and for my part I am willing to accept that they acted in good faith, however wrong they may have been by our lights.

Posted by Hector | February 28, 2008 11:51 PM

Thomas R quotes and writes: ""I don't think I'm exaggerating at all. Adlai Stevenson's status as a once-divorced man was oce seen as a serious political liability."

The pendulum swings on this. Grover Cleveland basically admitted that they couldn't prove illegitimate child was his because the mother was the stopping point for both him and his buddies. At times adultery has been condemned for ordinary men, but seen as a sign of manly virtue in politicians."

With Cleveland it wasn't adultery since he wasn't married at the time. Seems like a non sequitur in the context of this discussion. 9iu11ani announced himself as a proud adulterer in a press conference and then tried to boot his wife and kids out of their home so he could shack up with his latest chippy. It's a behavior that led him to be the betting favorite going into the primary process, lots of "family values party" morons lining up to endorse him, Pat "Diamond Mine" Robertson included. To say this doesn't illustrate a huge shift in American values seems completely wrong to me.

"I suppose similarly past severity on homosexuality is seen as encouraging an uncharitable view of homosexuals."

Ya think?

Posted by TheBannedMoeLarryAndJesus | February 28, 2008 11:58 PM

"But the test of that is support for equal rights for gays and lesbians. People who think that sodomy laws that threatened to throw gays in jail should have never been struck down, that there should be no laws to protect gays from being fired or denied the right to make contracts because of their sexual orientation, that we should continue to kick gays out of the military, and that we should continue to deny the thousands of legal benefits that we afford to straight married couples to committed gay couples cannot claim this mantle."

I agreed with Lawrence vs Texas striking down such laws. I also agree the government shouldn't discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. However that we must say the union of two men, the union of two women, and the union of a man and woman are all identical I no longer think makes any sense. I was open to it at one time, but it just doesn't seem logical.

The state is not required to defend some point of feminist, or other, theory about human nature. The idea remarriage after divorce is wrong is also not something it needs to get into. We should figure out what kind of union works best for the different situation of homosexuals and then proceed with that. I don't think playing "let's pretend men and women are totally interchangeable in all things" is a necessary idea. Which is what you'd basically being do by saying SSM is identical to OSM. I think Andrew Sullivan sort of takes the tack we should pretend that anyway, because he seems to concede that homosexual relationships have differences from heterosexual ones, because it's necessary for assimilation. However "necessary for assimilation" can be a justification for all kinds of bad ideas. Still if the people of the state decide they want it I think it should be allowed. Some kind of same-sex union is fine by me. So long as their adoption rights are the same as that of same-sex siblings and not the same as a married couple.

Also on the private level I think organizations have every right to discriminate on religion, mental illness, sexual orientation, or other behavioral issues. If some Baptist organization refuses to hire me than that's fine by me. If this leads the post office or other civil services to be gay-dominant that's also fine by me.

Posted by Thomas R | February 29, 2008 12:02 AM

Hector wrote: "But it would not be incompatible with the idea of loving the homosexual, to embrace government repression of homosexuals _for their own good_. The medievals said that they loved all men, even the heretics, as they burned them at the stake _for their own good_, and for my part I am willing to accept that they acted in good faith, however wrong they may have been by our lights."

Sure - they were sadistic, murderous fanatics, but let's give them a pass because they "acted in good faith." No thanks. Even in their own time most people were decent enough not to take part in such sickening activities - just as in our time people seem to find ways to avoid being brutal prison guards or CIA torturers.

Posted by TheBannedMoeLarryAndJesus | February 29, 2008 12:46 AM

"One can love someone even while punishing him with all the coercive power of the state, as long as that power is used for his own moral reformation and not for your own gratification." Hector

Umm yes, but I think this might be going a great deal further than what I mean.

Intentions certainly matter, but the end results I think have some importance to. There was a song by Enigma that had the line "I love, I'll kill you but I'll love you forever" and I have no doubt there are people like that. For example the Spanish Inquisition in some ways can be seen as an act of love. Jews were tortured into confessing, their sins were forgiven, and then they were killed to avoid backsliding. So they were, as far as they knew, almost assuredly sending them to heaven. More assuredly then they could know their own salvation. Reportedly women would weep during witch burnings out of joy for the fact the woman was "saved" by her suffering and would see God. I've heard of cases where a delusional man annihilates his entire family because he believes doing so releases them to Heaven. Likewise I imagine some of the anti-clerical regimes forced priests into marriage felt it was a loving thing to do as it opened these "lonely men" up to physical love.

So I don't doubt that psychotic behavior can come from a place of love, but I wasn't really intending to defend oppression or psychosis as such.

Posted by Thomas R | February 29, 2008 2:04 AM

Thomas R writes: "For example the Spanish Inquisition in some ways can be seen as an act of love. Jews were tortured into confessing, their sins were forgiven, and then they were killed to avoid backsliding. So they were, as far as they knew, almost assuredly sending them to heaven. More assuredly then they could know their own salvation. Reportedly women would weep during witch burnings out of joy for the fact the woman was "saved" by her suffering and would see God. I've heard of cases where a delusional man annihilates his entire family because he believes doing so releases them to Heaven. Likewise I imagine some of the anti-clerical regimes forced priests into marriage felt it was a loving thing to do as it opened these "lonely men" up to physical love.

So I don't doubt that psychotic behavior can come from a place of love, but I wasn't really intending to defend oppression or psychosis as such. "

I would hope not. Wanna show love? Give them a pamphlet and buy them lunch. Want to indulge your psychosexual bloodlust and experience the worst human nature has to offer? Torture them and then burn them to death. To posit that anything can be a "loving act" as long as you scream "Jeeeeee-suuuussssss!" loud enough whie you're doing it seems like the most disgusting sort of rationalization to me.

I think Hector is looking for love in all the wrong places.

Posted by TheBannedMoeLarryAndJesus | February 29, 2008 2:22 AM

Thomas R.,

I have no love for the Inquisition, I think it was a terrible institution, and I'm not even Catholic. But to compare them to schizophrenic psychopaths is unfair. The medieval executioners of heretics were perfectly sane, and acting on the basis of a line of thinking that had deep theological support going back to St. Augustine (although to be fair he had opposed the death penalty.) _Granting their premises_ (which I don't, at least not all the way), what they were doing was perfectly reasonable. They were wrong, but they weren't insane, nor were they psychopaths.

I don't think the execution of heretics after long and elaborate trials (however _wrong_ it was) can be fairly called 'psychosis'. Unless you hold that all violence and use of force is a psychotic act. Is everyone who defends, say, abortion, or the Iraq war, also psychotic?

Posted by Hector | February 29, 2008 7:29 AM

Poor word choice. I also omitted a part of the one song lyric. (It was "I love YOU, I'll kill you but I'll love you forever") I essentially meant "psychotic behavior or oppression" and at the end of the closing sentence I do use both.

Also I wasn't using the term in an entirely clinical fashion, still I think it's possible some of what I mentioned was psychotic anyway. In the case of witch trials literal psychosis was plausibly involved in at least some cases. (Either on the part of the prosecutors or the victim or both) There were certainly cases where witch trials involved people who seemed to have clearly distorted perceptions and paranoia. People in that era did have some sense of what madness was, but some of these witnesses or prosecutors might be what you'd call "higher functioning psychotics." Or their psychosis was a temporary condition caused by moldly bread. Either way if they said they'd long suspected their neighbor was out to get them and that the neighbor somehow made a deformed goat appear people would sometimes buy it. (I say "sometimes" because people weren't universally credulous even then) The Spanish Inquisition is more of a reach and probably wasn't psychotic in any clinical way.

Posted by Thomas R | February 29, 2008 9:52 AM

"There's something inherently "illiberal" (whether done by left or right) in the larger sense of liberal -- generous, humane -- in this equating a man's (wrong) views, except in very extraordinary cases, with his person, and saying "Good riddance" at death. It's totalitarian, and seems to me to (not to get hysterical) a kind of indication that Neilsen Hayden's core thoughts are sympathetic to the idea of liquidating his "enemies." They are bad people, and good riddance to them. Give him a government instead of an editor's pen, and he'd fill the mass graves. This stench comes from many on the right, of course, at times -- but it's worse (left or right) in people who don't get paid for it, somehow."

Good lord, that's a rather extraordinary claim, Marquis. It shouldn't really need to be said, but there are light years of difference between what Nielsen-Hayden's saying here and suggesting he'd actively murder his political enemies, given the chance. I'd go so far as to say that what you just said about PNH is far worse than what he said about WFB.

And to those who are basically saying that WFB's qualities as a warm, generous man somehow excuse the kind of stuff he wrote throughout his career... quite the opposite, actually. The fact that he sold hateful rhetoric with a charming exterior actually makes the damage he did that much worse, as witnessed by a big chunk of the conservative punditry basically saying "well, yes, he had a bad record on civil rights and suggested involuntary tattoos for AIDS victims... but he was such a NICE man, really, and look what he wrote about the joys of yachting!"

The dead are beyond care or worry; nothing we say now will harm or comfort WFB, the person, one way or another. That being the case, I'm not willing to let the man's death cover up his failures any more than I'll excuse them because of his wit or intelligence.

Posted by Chris | February 29, 2008 11:39 AM

"I think that it's fair to be critical of a person's opinions after their death- but only after a decent interval. Let the family and friends mourn for a while, and if you can't find something nice to say, then that's fine- just don't say anything."

Hector, I think it's important to qualify the difference between a random acquaintance having distasteful opinions, and someone like WFB not only having evil political views, but actively and successfully propagating them on a wide scale.

Likewise, it seems nonsensical to talk about sparing family and friends during their period of mourning - the vast, vast majority of us only knew WFB through his public persona, and that's what's being discussed here. I'm not cornering a guy's widow and kids at his wake and haranguing them about what an asshole he could be; I'm trying to give some balance to what would otherwise be an unblemished public hagiography of WFB by conservatives.

Posted by Chris | February 29, 2008 12:00 PM

Hector writes: "I have no love for the Inquisition, I think it was a terrible institution, and I'm not even Catholic. But to compare them to schizophrenic psychopaths is unfair. The medieval executioners of heretics were perfectly sane, and acting on the basis of a line of thinking that had deep theological support going back to St. Augustine (although to be fair he had opposed the death penalty.) _Granting their premises_ (which I don't, at least not all the way), what they were doing was perfectly reasonable."

This is the same anti-reasoning that guided Pol Pot's crew of killers, the architects of the Holocaust, and (yes, on a smaller scale) the Bush administration bastards who disgraced our country by making torture and wholesale abuse of prisoners official US policy. I can see a medieval Hector tearing up with the beauty of "deep theological support" as he tears the eyeball ot of the head of some Jew or heretic on the way to "saving" his victim. Ah, the humanity!

That he can't understand that sadists and ghouls would be the ones who would seek such positions out is bizarre. That he defends them is depressing. I'm very glad that Hector will never be in a position to take part in a theocratic rule of this or any other society.

Posted by TheBannedMoeLarryAndJesus | February 29, 2008 12:16 PM

Homosexuality is seen as a disordered state which encourages a desire to an evil. However the same can be said for a whole host of things people encounter every day. The Church, at times, I think "picks on" this disordered state too much. Being a recovered alcoholic also tends to mean you still have a desire to an objective evil. (Drunkenness, drinking alcohol is not itself a sin) However it seems like Catholics are more loving to alcoholics, simply because they deem their sinful desires "less gross." I find that irrational and unfair. Although there's not much benefit in changing that I guess. Telling Catholics to treat homosexuals with the kind of compassion they would give drunks or fornicators is not exactly going to win them points with liberals or conservatives. Pity.

Let me put it this way. I'd never deeply praise you for talking about gays that way. But I do think you are onto something that one way that conservatives who are NOT gay bashers could establish their bona fides on this issue is by being more forceful in their condemnation of those conservatives (especially religious conservatives) who ARE gay bashers. It's hard to take "love the sinner hate the sin" rhetoric seriously where not only is there all this legal discrimination against gays and lesbians but there are also so many preachers and other talking heads who harp on it disproportionately as if it is the cause of all our problems and one of the worst possible sin, etc.

So it would help a lot if conservatives were to say that from now on gay bashing in this manner is going to be unacceptable and is going to get one condemned and ostracized in the same manner that saying racist things gets one condemned and ostracized.

Posted by Dilan Esper | February 29, 2008 2:03 PM

I'm afraid you are misunderstanding the idea of 'love the sinner, hate the sin.' It certainly doesn't rule out the idea of using even the coercive power of the state to try to compel the sinner to repent.

Hector, you are confusing a religious definition of intolerance with an objective one. I don't really care that Catholics and conservative Christians THINK they are "loving" homosexual sinners by discriminating against them and depriving them of benefits and threatening to throw them in jail. That may fly in the next life, but in this life, that constitutes a form of hatred and bigotry.

Posted by Dilan Esper | February 29, 2008 2:05 PM

I agreed with Lawrence vs Texas striking down such laws. I also agree the government shouldn't discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation. However that we must say the union of two men, the union of two women, and the union of a man and woman are all identical I no longer think makes any sense. I was open to it at one time, but it just doesn't seem logical. The state is not required to defend some point of feminist, or other, theory about human nature. The idea remarriage after divorce is wrong is also not something it needs to get into. We should figure out what kind of union works best for the different situation of homosexuals and then proceed with that.

Thomas, you are pretty far along on this (even though I disagree with some of the particulars). If a substantial part of the conservative movement could get to where you are on these issues, I might accept their "love the sinner, hate the sin" rhetoric. But they aren't there yet.

Posted by Dilan Esper | February 29, 2008 2:07 PM

Dilan and Moe,

I'm not sure why Thomas R., or myself, should feel in any need of your stamp of approval on our beliefs. Indeed, if I found one day that you were agreeing with what I said about cultural or religious issues, I would be worried.

'Love the sinner, hate the sin' is a religious concept inherently and must be interpreted in a religious context. And since the life beyond is eternal, that life is ultimately of great importance.

To take a related example, I would not quibble if the Egyptian or Syrian government decided to shoot Muslim Brotherhood activists for subversion. That doesn't mean that I hate Islamists, quite the contrary. One can love someone even while imposing pain or death on them _for their own good_. Not only CAN one do so, but one is REQUIRED to. The theory, on which such could be justified, would be that the Muslim Brotherhood types are so mired in error that only extreme suffering can cure their souls of their moral sickness and make them worthy of heaven. Redemption through suffering is a basic Christian premise, and you cannot deny it without denying Christianity.

Do you think that Dismas the repentant thief would have turned to Christ and received the greatest promise ever made, if he hadn't been hanging on a cross? Was his being crucified not, in a sense, the greatest thing that ever happened to the guy? Is it not possible that some of these unfortunate Islamists might discover the same thing as they stand on the scaffold?

I'm not arguing for its valididty in any specific case, but I am saying that you ought to accept the premise of redemption through sufferong, and the related argument that loving someone does not rule out using the full coercive power of the state against them.

Posted by Hector | February 29, 2008 3:12 PM

Hector hitlers: "I'm not arguing for its valididty in any specific case, but I am saying that you ought to accept the premise of redemption through sufferong, and the related argument that loving someone does not rule out using the full coercive power of the state against them."

If your thinking represents one of the sweet by-products of redemption, Hector, then I am certainly glad that I don't think I have anything to be redeemed from.

I guess Romans scourging filthy desert prophets weren't just animals inflicting pain - they were engines of potential holiness. Thank you, sir! May I have another?

Posted by TheBannedMoeLarryAndJesus | February 29, 2008 4:00 PM

I'm not sure why Thomas R., or myself, should feel in any need of your stamp of approval on our beliefs. Indeed, if I found one day that you were agreeing with what I said about cultural or religious issues, I would be worried.

It's not a matter of whether I approve, Hector. It's the fact that you and many other people with religious objections to homosexuality SWEAR you hate gays, but your actions speak louder than your words.

I'm sorry, "I want to throw them in jail, get them fired from their jobs, get them kicked out of the military, get them evicted by their landlords, and ensure they can't receive hundreds of government benefits with their life partners that straights can receive with their life partners because I love them" is not a credible statement.

Posted by Dilan Esper | February 29, 2008 5:58 PM

"I want to throw them in jail, get them fired from their jobs, get them kicked out of the military, get them evicted by their landlords, and ensure they can't receive hundreds of government benefits with their life partners that straights can receive with their life partners because I love them" is not a credible statement.

I would like local communities to be able to set their own standards of conduct in matters sexual, for employers to define for themselves what constitutes acceptable self-disclosure and acceptable office manners in their own enterprises, for landlords to decide for themselves what sort of conduct is permissible on their property, and for communities to be networks of families rather than jumbles of user-defined associations, most particularly associations demarcated by sexual perversions.

Posted by Art Deco | February 29, 2008 6:22 PM

I don't need Dilan's approval either, which should be obvious judging by past discussions, but I am more interested in discussing what's relevant to our time and place. Also what's fitting with Christian compassion and reason. I'm willing to agree that a greater severity on disorderly behavior might be necessary in more chaotic or less advanced societies. I don't think I'd go so far as Hector, but I can perhaps imagine a society where jailing homosexuals would be understandable. (Although I can also imagine a society where putting all people like me in institutions would be understandable) However I don't feel a need to shift to discussing such times or places. It seems like a distraction.

Anyway as for "gay bashing" the dignity of the homosexual person I think is accepted by more religious conservatives than Dilan might believe. People like Phelps who preach hatred for homosexuals are scum and many churches despise him. Still bigots are also people with some level of human dignity. If a person has enough good in him or her one can still hope any hatred they hold toward gay people, or any other group, will end or at least abate. I would be very unwilling to cut out people from my life because they hate homosexuals. That hatred is certainly bad, but I'm not willing to see them as defined by it to the exclusion of any other quality. (Phelps is slightly different in that he seems to define himself by his hatreds and can be so judged)

Posted by Thomas R | February 29, 2008 7:18 PM

Artie Deco writes: "I would like local communities to be able to set their own standards of conduct in matters sexual, for employers to define for themselves what constitutes acceptable self-disclosure and acceptable office manners in their own enterprises, for landlords to decide for themselves what sort of conduct is permissible on their property, and for communities to be networks of families rather than jumbles of user-defined associations, most particularly associations demarcated by sexual perversions."

Translation: Artie thinks, "It takes a village to bash a homo." And he'd love to live in that village.

Posted by TheBannedMoeLarryAndJesus | February 29, 2008 7:40 PM

"Redemption through suffering is a basic Christian premise, and you cannot deny it without denying Christianity." Hector

Well yes, but generally the cases you mean are when the suffering is caused by the nature of life or is accepted by the victim as just. The repentant thief said to the condemned man who mocked Christ, "thou art under the same condemnation? And we indeed justly: for we receive the due reward of our deeds." So the suffering was, in his own opinion, just. In addition "redemption through suffering" here clearly did not mean suffering equates to redemption as the other one wasn't redeemed. The story does not say that the instrument of this suffering is good. The Romans are not praised for the torment.

There's a pretty big distance between dealing with a penance you accept as just, learning from the suffering in this life, and being tormented for reasons that make no sense to you. Virtue by coercion was generally rejected. "Of what use is cruelty? What has the rack to do with piety? Surely there is no connection between truth and violence, between justice and cruelty." Lactantius 308 AD. Changes occurred in part because the Church became established so rebellion against it also had civil ramifications on public welfare and order. This is no longer the case and even when it was things like witch-trials or the Spanish Inquisition were at times condemned by Popes. (And Anglican archbishops)

Posted by Thomas R | February 29, 2008 9:29 PM

"This is no longer the case"

I should say it's no longer the case in general. A new religion that believed in *public nudity and tax evasion would probably face legal problems today.

*Somewhat intentional choices. A few Medieval heresies believed in public nudity and rejected paying the tithe. In the nineteenth century some of the Doukhobors also believed in rejecting governments and nudity laws.

Posted by Thomas R | February 29, 2008 9:33 PM

Thomas R.,

Well, yes. I don't think that suffering can help spiritual development unless it's either a) deserved as punishment for a crime or b) part of the nature of life like sickness or death. In this case, of course, I don't believe that legal sanctions against most forms of homosexual behavior would be just, nor would they be effective (because most homosexual people today would not see them in the light which they were intended). I believe I stated above that I don't think that homosexuals should be discriminated against.

But you would agree, I assume, that one can _in principle_ see punishment and coercion (when justly deserved) as an act of love. I don't support the Inquisition, and especially not the fact that it involved torture, but I don't think it was as unreasonable of inexplicable as people like Dilan seem to assume. I was more arguing against Dilan's view that _in principle_ coercion and punishment are not loving acts.

Posted by Hector | March 1, 2008 9:09 AM

"But you would agree, I assume, that one can _in principle_ see punishment and coercion (when justly deserved) as an act of love."

I don't think I ever denied that one can see punishment and coercion as an act of love. One can see all kinds of things as acts of love.

Can punishment and coercion actually be an act of love? I suppose. Does that make it right? It depends, but there might be some cases where it is. I could see how coercion or punishment might be necessary to reform a drug addict. And from their I can see how people in different eras could see a heretic or a witch or a homosexual as similar.

My problem is I didn't think it was necessary to discuss what may be loving depending on time period or cultural perspective. Granted as this is the Buckley discussion I guess the relevance could be in not judging say his past segregationism by modern standards. Although if so it wasn't very clear. Mostly it just seemed like a tangent.

Posted by Thomas R | March 2, 2008 12:49 AM

Anyway as for "gay bashing" the dignity of the homosexual person I think is accepted by more religious conservatives than Dilan might believe. People like Phelps who preach hatred for homosexuals are scum and many churches despise him.

Thomas, since we are hearing this week about Farrakhan and Hagee in presidential politics, it might be a nice time to say something about this.

I have no doubt that many on the right don't like Fred Phelps. I have no doubt that at least some social conservatives honestly bear no animosity towards gays and lesbians.

But there's an issue about policing here. Every movement has a responsibility to police itself. Indeed, getting back to topic here, one thing Buckley did with conservativism is that he enforced a pretty hard line against anti-semites and John Birchers. He didn't just prTivately criticize them or not agree with them. He publically called them out, made clear that he rejected their support, etc. Exactly what is being demanded of Obama and McCain.

Well, I don't think the right wing does that with gay bashers. AT ALL. Quite the contrary. The conservative movement, as far as I know, NEVER criticizes gay bashing, and NEVER criticizes people who openly discriminate against gays. And the reason is quite simple-- there's a lot of people in the movement and the coalition with horribly bigoted views about gays and lesbians, and the cost of calling them out is seen as too high. Not so much Fred Phelps, but certainly people like Lou Sheldon and Pat Robertson and various Southern preachers who have pretty big congregations who contribute to and vote for Republicans.

And that's one more reason why conservatives can't so easily escape the charge of bigotry. People who truly cared about eliminating gay bashing would call these people out, and make life very unpleasant for gay bashers the same way life is made unpleasant for anti-semites and anti-black bigots. It hasn't happened yet.

Posted by Dilan Esper | March 2, 2008 8:40 PM

I do find that troubling. This might be like the "silent" element of Muslims who don't agree with terrorism, but don't speak out against it.

Part of this could be because they believe they can't afford to go against the larger names you mention. They don't like them, but they feel they need their support on certain issues.

Another is that going against them doesn't help the image of social conservatives. If a group of social conservatives distances themselves from Pat Robertson they're just deemed to be enlightened people who must not really be social conservatives at all. I remember a person telling me "you're not a conservative, you're a good person" and that's sort of the response they'd get. Now with Catholics and Orthodoxers it might be a bit easier as we're clearly different. So we should be more able to distance from such people.

Why don't Catholic and Orthodoxers do so? Well again on some issues we would need the support of the more Troglodytic among the Evangelicals. This is unpleasant, but liberals have their own bargains too. However to some extent I think we do. For example Catholics often do not side with these people on the death penalty or gambling. Pat Robertson is not a popular figure among conservative Catholics I know. (Exempting some charismatics) And I'd say more, but I think a storm might be brewing here.

Posted by Thomas R | March 2, 2008 10:22 PM