Life is full of irony

Ironically, it is Larry Kudlow's obituary that touched me most.

I hope the National Review will forgive me for reposting it in toto:

"Wednesday, February 27, 2008

I Am Blessed to Have Known Him [Larry Kudlow]

When Rich Lowry called me a while ago to report the passing of Bill Buckley, I had to work hard to catch my breath and swallow this news. He was a great man. I am privileged and honored to have shared a part of his wonderful life over the past fifteen years.

I am very sad right now, and so is my wife Judy. She became a great friend of Bill’s and Pat’s, often sitting down with Bill at the piano at dinners in Stamford, or at our place in Redding. They talked a lot about art and classical music. When I phoned Judy this morning with the news she too was brokenhearted.

In the early to mid-1990s when I was on staff at NR — during the worst period in my personal life — Bill and Pat were like surrogate parents. Later on things got better for me and I grew even closer to them. It was wonderful.

At Pat’s memorial service in New York I cried with Bill as we embraced each other. So I am crying again right now at Bill’s passing.

He encouraged me to become a Catholic. He encouraged me to stay sober. He encouraged me to keep writing columns. He encouraged me stick with my new career in broadcasting. Sometimes he would call, out of the blue, and tell me I was making good progress and that he was proud.

Can you imagine? I’m the one who was proud — proud to be his friend and that he would take a moment of his time to call.

There are so many things I could say about our conversations and discussions and debates — about politics and the economy and so forth. But all of that will come later for me.

Right now my biggest thought — apart from the sadness — is how blessed I am to have been a small part of his remarkable life. His influence on me was enormous.

My deep condolence to Christopher and Priscilla and the rest of the family. I prayed earlier that the Lord Jesus Christ would take good care of Bill and Pat, who are now back together."

I think that's the most genuine thing I've ever read Larry write. I still can't believe he's gone. I'll be looking for Buckley titles the next time I'm out.

Sutherland's maxims

Maxim #1: Don't exceed your limit.

Maxim #2: If someone tells you not to exceed your limit, the tendency of most people is to see whether the've got a point or not.

Maxim #3: If you exceed your limit, and life goes to shit as a consequence, it's better to admit you're a fuckup, pick yourself up, and learn the lesson than it is to pretend that you don't know how to apply the brakes. Your bullshit will catch up with you sooner or later. Put on the brakes sooner rather than later.

Maxim #4: Threatening or in fact making someone's life a living hell for exceeding a limit generally just makes matters worse. It's makes cowards of the rule-breakers and cowards out of all us to admit that we may, in fact, be part of the problem.

Maxim #5: The only solution to this eternal paradox is that the lesson just had to be learned. It cannot be learned by anyone else. And it can't be learned by force. It just has to be learned. It is learned best by giving people and ourselves the space to fuck it up freely, to pick up, and to move on. Absent that, people often end up fucking it up for much longer than necessary, and sometimes to their grave. Somehow, despite our tendency to keep fucking up into perpetuity, we inch forward, with a little help from our failures and the lessons learned.

Maxim #6: If you're still not convinced, just keep fucking it up. You'll figure it out sooner or later. Repeat as necessary.

Maxim #7: If I turn out to be wrong, you are forewarned that I am full of shit, in which case Sutherland's single maxim becomes: Sutherland is full of shit. Which is most definitely true, completely independent, of the rest said here. So it's probably the safest bet for the gambling man.

If I'm wrong, there really is no hope for people. Either that, or this generation has miraculously figured out how to force goodness upon the world in a way that every past generation has failed. Somehow I think that's a enormous load of bullshit, pardon my French.

If I'm wrong, I'll find out soon enough. And if I'm right, you will too. One of us will keep fucking it up. And we'll figure out who's who sooner or later.

Some of life's best lessons are from our fuckups rather than from our successes. But when everyone's too busy trying to defend their honor, it's get kind of hazy trying to figure out which is which. Successes always get magnified. And the failures are probably mine. God knows I'm responsible for a huge number of them. And I've no honor left to defend. So either that makes me a wise man or an ass. And if you haven't seen my photo, I don't look terribly wise these days.

That's what I'm talking about

Finally, some goddamn substantive debate.

McCain, Obama tilt over al-Queda in Iraq

That's what I've been waiting for, motherfuckers.

"'I have some news. Al-Qaida is in Iraq. It's called `al-Qaida in Iraq,'' McCain told a crowd in Tyler, Texas, drawing laughter at Obama's expense. He said Obama's statement was 'pretty remarkable,'

Obama quickly answered back while campaigning in Ohio. 'I do know that al-Qaida is in Iraq and that's why I have said we should continue to strike al-Qaida targets,' he told a rally at Ohio State University in Columbus.

'But I have some news for John McCain,' Obama added. 'There was no such thing as al-Qaida in Iraq until George Bush and John McCain decided to invade Iraq. ... They took their eye off the people who were responsible for 9/11 and that would be al-Qaida in Afghanistan, that is stronger now than at any time since 2001.'"

Ah, the smell of honest debate. It's like hickory smoke on Kansas plain. Makes the mouth water.

And the debate goes on:

"Obama said he intended to withdraw U.S. forces from Iraq 'so we actually start going after al-Qaida in Afghanistan and in the hills of Pakistan like we should have been doing in the first place.'

While he praised McCain as a war hero and saluted his service to the country, Obama said the Arizona Republican was 'tied to the politics of the past. We are about policies of the future.'

Noting that McCain likes to tell audiences that he'd follow Osama bin Laden to the 'gates of hell' to catch him, Obama taunted: 'All he (McCain) has done is to follow George Bush into a misguided war in Iraq.'

McCain said he had not watched Tuesday night's Democratic presidential debate but was told of Obama's response when asked if as president he would reserve the right to send U.S. troops back into Iraq to quell an insurrection or civil war.

Obama did not say whether he'd send troops but responded: 'As commander in chief, I will always reserve the right to make sure that we are looking out for American interests. And if al-Qaida is forming a base in Iraq, then we will have to act in a way that secures the American homeland and our interests abroad.'

On Wednesday, Obama expanded slightly that he 'would always reserve the right to go in and strike al-Qaida if they were in Iraq' without detailing what kind of strike that might be — air, ground or both.

Throughout the primary season, McCain has repeatedly attacked Obama and Clinton for saying they would withdraw troops from Iraq.

'And my friends, if we left, they (al-Qaida) wouldn't be establishing a base,' McCain said Wednesday. 'They'd be taking a country, and I'm not going to allow that to happen, my friends. I will not surrender. I will not surrender to al-Qaida.'

He said that withdrawing troops would be 'waving the white flag.'"

And if you needed any clearer indication that Hillary Clinton, if she only had the n'oyve, would not add much to this discussion, here's a reminder:

"In the debate, Clinton did not answer the question about re-invasion of Iraq on grounds it contained 'lots of different hypothetical assessments.'"

Does Hillary Clinton every know what she fuckin' thinks about anything in this war? Or is she always merely a dupe and an agnostic?

Do you really want such a person to be your President?

If you do, you fuckin' deserve her.

I have to say that if Obama keeps talking the way he does and he can't begin to acknowledge the need to support the Iraqis until they give the clear signal that they do not need our help anymore or else give a stronger argument for why we should leave than I have heard to date, I will be voting for John McCain, at this point, in the election.

Obama better start putting that big thinking cap of his on and either convince me that staying is wrong - which he is far from doing, at this point - or figuring out how to break it to Democrats that he's going to stay until the Iraqis say they are ready for us to leave or I will be making my most confident vote for a Republican Presidential candidate in my lifetime.

Put that Havard education to use, Barack. You too, John.

The country is fuckin' counting on you.

Andrew Sullivan on Bill Buckley

Andrew Sullivan has an excellent obituary for William F. Buckley that I think does a nice job of summing up some of the best of Bill Buckley's contributions to conservativism and to the world.

"I cannot pretend to have been much influenced by William F. Buckley Jr. Nonetheless, even for those of us who were not in America the 1960s and 1970s, when his most remarkable work was done, he still existed as an emblem of a thinking, rational, non-doctrinaire conservatism. He helped many understand more deeply that left-liberalism is a profoundly unsatisfying account of human nature and human history. He helped remind us that communism was as evil as socialism was mistaken. By legitimizing the concept of a conservative intellectual, he helped deepen and broaden conservative thought.

He lived long enough to see this precious inheritance grotesquely squandered by the conservative establishment he helped build. Like many of us, he came to see the administration of George W. Bush as in some ways the deepest, darkest betrayal of conservative values, and the hideous hateful movement that sustained it unthinkingly as part of the problem rather than the solution. But he was surely not surprised. A skeptical, thinking conservative knows that in time, great, abiding ideas can ossify into ideology and ideology can become propaganda and propaganda can degenerate into toxic factionalism. It is part of human nature and human history. There is no reason why conservatism as a political movement should be immune from its own critique of all such movements. He was polite about this, of course - much politer than many of us. But he had enough intellectual integrity not to disguise it either.

What did he know? That there will never be heaven on earth; that there will never be an end to poverty or bigotry or discontent. That there is more wisdom in tradition than we might first believe, and freedom is indispensable for tradition to shift and adapt and move responsively to changing human needs and wants. That ideology is always and everywhere a lie. That government is best when small and adept and aware of its own limits. That a society that seeks to extirpate transcendent religious truths is as doomed as one that regiments itself according to divine will.

These truths were once unspeakable heresies. That they have survived at all in mass democracy is a small miracle. But Buckley knew that all that conservatism needs to survive is the freedom to think and a willingness to rethink and an eagerness to debate. These virtues he exemplified. May we all try to recapture them in his vast, choppy wake."

And he adds this video of an old Buckley, Chomsky debate, discussion which is really just fascinating only being introduced to both of these men well into their old age.



Though I do admire Dr. Chomsky's brilliance in this discussion, I must say that I find Noam Chomsky clever by half, much of the time, and quite wrong on many issues of international outlook, especially in his assessments of imperialism and terrorism, much too sympathetic to the claims of left wing oppressors and would-be oppressors and much too unsympathetic to the aims of democratic peoples and governemnts.

I am much more sympathetic to Bill Buckley's argument in this discussion that democratic governments, and the American government, in particular, have made a imperfect but well-intentioned and forgivable efforts to use their power for good purpose (even when Americans legislate who may have puppies, I must add, though I certainly do not approve of them doing so). But it is brilliant to watch these two engage in this level of engaged, thoughtful discussion.

If Presidential campaigns operated like this, the world would be a much better place.

Goodbye, Bill

Conservative author Buckley dies at 82

It's ironic.

In college, I mocked Bill Buckley as the supreme stereotype of picksniffian conservativism, a right-wing that looked down its nose at the rest of the uncivilized world.

It was not until long after that I recognized that, for all of my disagreements with him, William F. Buckley was one of the strongest minds of his time.

There are many Bill Buckley columns I enjoyed. One of the columns that finally secured my confidence in him was his piece giving his reluctant approval to Lawrence v. Texas, ruling sodomy laws unconstitutional. There are many issues of federalism and original intent, and other reasons, I'm sure, that a conservative could make to object to that ruling, some of which might find some sympathetic audience with me.

But, Bill recognized, as did I, that the fundamental issue of the liberty of what people do in their own private life was, when all is said and done, their own business.

And that is when I knew that Bill Buckley had a conservativism that I could respect.

Goodbye, Bill. You will be missed.

I will pick up books with your name on them, I'm sure, and remember when I could look forward to reading some new thought on any number of important issues that you had to offer.

Godspeed.