Justin Raimondo is an idiot.
On Sat, Mar 26, 2011 at 2:29 PM, MJ <[email protected]> wrote: > *Reclaiming the American Right > * *The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement > * *by Justin Raimondo* > *The Old Right and the Future of Conservatism > *by Patrick J. Buchanan > > *Note from the editors: We reprint below Patrick J. Buchanan's Foreword to > the second edition of Justin Raimondo's 1993 book, *Reclaiming the > American Right The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement*. > > **W*hat happened to the American Right? What became of a movement once so > united and disciplined it could deliver the presidency, consistently, to the > Republican Party? > > That the old house is divided, fractured, fallen, is undeniable. The great > unifier, Ronald Reagan, is gone. The cold war that brought conservatives > together, is over. With the Berlin Wall down, the captive nations free, the > Evil Empire dissolved and subdivided, many on the Right have stacked arms > and gone home. Once there, they have discovered that we come from different > neighborhoods, honor different heroes, believe different ideas. To > understand the new rifts on the Right, scholars have begun to research its > history, explore its roots. Latest to do so is Justin Raimondo, who, in this > book, argues that conservatism is a cause corrupted and betrayed. His is a > story of heroes and villains, heresies and excommunications, faithfulness > and betrayal – a veritable Iliad of the American Right. > > Raimondo's book goes back sixty years to the days when the Old right first > rose in rebellion against the New Deal and FDR's drive to war. Believers in > limited government and nonintervention, the Old Right feared involvement in > a second world war would mean permanent disfigurement of the old republic, > and a quantum leap in federal power that could never be reversed. > > But history is written by the winners. > > And these men lost it all: jobs, careers, and honored places in their > nation's memory. But they never lost their principles. Garet Garrett, John > T. Flynn, Frank Chodorov – who has heard of this lost platoon of the Old > Right? They went down fighting and ended their lives in obscurity, resisting > the clamor to sign up for the cold war. > > Theirs, declares Raimondo, is the lost legacy. And the failures of > conservatism are traceable to the Right's abandonment of that legacy. > Beginning in the mid-fifties, the Right was captured and co-opted by the > undocumented aliens from the Left, carrying with them the viruses of statism > and globalism. > > First in from the cold, Raimondo writes, came the Communists, refugees from > Stalin's purges, from the Hitler-Stalin, and Moscow's attack on the Baltic > republics and Finland. First among these was James Burnham, ex-Trotskyist of > whom Orwell wrote that he worshipped power. Burnham went o the masthead of > *National Review* from its founding in 1955, to become grand strategist of > the cold war. He would be awarded the Medal of Freedom by Ronald Reagan > himself . . . but, Raimondo argues, Burnham was never a true conservative; > indeed, was barely tolerant of conservatives. A Machiavellian after > renouncing Marxism, Burnham preached "American Empire" as the necessary > means to combat Communist empire and was first to call for the creation of a > "democratic world order." > > A second wave of migrants was the neoconservatives. Though Trotskyist, > socialists or Social Democrat in their youth, by the mid-sixties they were > JFK-LBJ Democrats orphaned by a party dedicated to the proposition that > Vietnam was a dirty, immoral war. In 1972, they signed ads for Richard > Nixon, a man not widely cherished among their number in his Alger Hiss and > Helen Gahagan Douglas days. > > With Reagan's triumph, the neocons came into their own, into his government > and his movement. Raimondo echoes the Old Right journalist who calls the > neocons the cow-birds of conservatism, migratory fowl that wait for other > birds to build their nests and lay their eggs, then swoop down, barge in, > and kick the first birds out. If conservatism has failed, he writes, it is > "because a Trojan horse inside the movement has been undermining the fight > against big government. Since the mid-fifties . . . these interlopers have > acted as a Fifth Column on the Right: conciliating the welfare state, > smearing their Old Right predecessors, and burying the real story of how > they came to claim the mantle of conservatism." > > And today? "Two traditions stand head-to-head, contending for the future of > the . . . movement. One piously holds out the promise of enterprise zones > from South Central Los Angeles to Mogadishu, while the other dares utter the > forbidden phrase, *America First!*" Written in defense of, and in the > style of, the dead lions of the Old Right whom Justin Raimondo reveres, > *Reclaiming > the American Right* is not about olive branches; it is about conflict, > about taking back the movement, about taking back America. Richly > researched, beautifully written, passionately argued, *Reclaiming the > American Right* is targeted at the "new generation of conservative > theorists and activists [that] yearns to get back to first principles and > get in touch with its roots." Many will call this revisionist history of the > Right, but even those who work for consensus need to understand how those > who do not believe, feel and think. And the timing is perfect. For, > suddenly, all the new issues before us, Bosnia, Somalia, foreign aid, NAFTA, > intervention, immigration, big government, sovereignty, bear striking > resemblance to the old. > > http://antiwar.com/raimondo/book1.html > > -- > Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. > For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum > > * Visit our other community at > http://www.PoliticalForum.com/<http://www.politicalforum.com/> > * It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls. > * Read the latest breaking news, and more. > -- Thanks for being part of "PoliticalForum" at Google Groups. For options & help see http://groups.google.com/group/PoliticalForum * Visit our other community at http://www.PoliticalForum.com/ * It's active and moderated. Register and vote in our polls. * Read the latest breaking news, and more.
