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April 27, 2005
Buckley Joins the Club
Alan Caruba isn't the only member of the official Right who gets it--"it" being the fact that George W. Bush ain't no conservative.
Here's William F. Buckley, Jr., from a column on whether, and how, Bush's faith, policies, and political support intertwine:
Wilfred McClay who is a learned senior fellow of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington, D.C., gave an arresting lecture in February called “The Evangelical Conservatism of George W. Bush; Or, How the Republicans Became Red.” By this last crack McClay means to associate Red with corporate political idealism. For instance, the socialists and the Communists (and the 1848 progressives, who chose the color red to distinguish themselves from the partisans of the existing orders, bland Whiters more or less content with the status quo).
And so to George Bush. McClay lists the energizing discontents of President Bush. “His ‘compassionate conservatism,’ his relatively favorable view of many Federal social and educational programs, his sensitivity to issues of racial injustice and reconciliation, his softness on immigration issues, his promotion of the faith-based initiative, his concern with issues of international religious liberty, his African AIDS initiative, and above all, his enormously ambitious, even seemingly utopian, foreign-policy objectives — [these] are positions that are best explained by the effects of his evangelical Christian convictions, and by his willingness to allow those convictions to trump more conventional conservative positions.” Mr. McClay darts off here to make different points, entirely engrossing: “It is strange that, of all the things liberals loathe about Bush, his religiousness seems to be at the top of the list. For it is precisely the seriousness of Bush’s commitment to his evangelical faith that has made him more ‘liberal,’ in a certain sense, than many of his party brethren.”
Buckley, interestingly, does not deny that Bush qualifies as a liberal; he merely takes issue with McClay's characterization of the role Christianity plays in Bush's liberalism (as do I, as one who would likely be characterized by many as an evangelical). Saith WFB:
The points listed in the Bush agenda are independently backed by many non-Christians, and indeed the most conspicuous of these, the ultra-Wilsonianism of Bush’s second Inaugural Address, is most reliably traced not to Christian impulses, but to a non-Christian expression of them. It is the neo-cons, most frequently identified as Jewish in orientation, who are primarily identified with such policies — so that we have arrived at exactly what, beyond that Jewish idealism and Christian idealism can and often do converge?
His conclusion: "Meanwhile, conservatives will keep our eyes on President Bush, and stop him before he campaigns for compulsory baptism."
Mr. Buckley, meet Mr. Caruba. Messrs. Buckley and Caruba, meet the rest of us who have been in the club for four years now.
Posted by Mike Tennant at April 27, 2005 03:51 PM
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