The New Republic

The image, the allusion, is to the 1960s, a period that many on the right (from WFB to IK) will tell you was the catalyst for their sharp turn to the right because of the social disorder especially on college campuses. It's that fear of social disorder that the WS is using to agitate its readers. Of course, the "disorder" that most on the right found so objectionable wasn't so much the violence on college campuses, but rather the displacement of their own social order comprised almost entirely of white males.

- rayward

April 1, 2011 at 8:35am

And they are still pissed that the hippies looked like they were enjoying themselves having sex with those cute girls with the headbands and the raggedy skirts.

- ironyroad

April 1, 2011 at 10:25am

To be fair, TNR just LOVES to punch hippies, too. Just without the Mad magazine artwork.

- W_Bombay

April 1, 2011 at 11:45am

What nonsense is this about William F. Buckley's sharp turn to the right? He was a conservative, born and bred. He breathed it in in the very atmosphere of his home, where William Frank Buckley, Sr., his father, tutored his children in the politics of the right. When I began to correspond with WFB in 1975, he had already been a conservative forever, dating back to his youth. Also, as usual, you cramp complex events down into a tiny little box that is not even presentable. The late political philosopher, Allan David Bloom, among others, was genuinely shocked by the violence on college campuses in the 1960s (Cornell, in his case) and this had a profound effect of Bloom's intellectual and political development. But it is so much easier to make it all a racial matter.

- liberalref

April 1, 2011 at 11:53am

Which is why I wrote "from (meaning on the scale) WFB to IK". I admire WFB (more so since his son's biography), and believe his obsession with "order" was true to his "conservative" principles; IK was simply a fraud. Read my third sentence, it's the disorder that was the threat to the social order that WFB was most concerned about. The US social order was forever changed by the 1960s, much like the social order in Britain that was forever changed by The Great War. WFB and Duckie may have lived out their days as aristocrats in their East Side and Stamford mansions but the privileged world they knew and expected their descendants to inherit disappeared with the hippies.

- rayward

April 1, 2011 at 12:44pm

I think that any sentient person would read your locution as saying that WFB had migrated to the right, along with Irving Kristol. Also, Patricia Buckley was "Ducky" (not "Duckie") to William, as was William to her. This is quite amusing to me because my wife and I call each other "Duck," and I only learned about the Buckleys' use of Ducky after we were married two years ago in March and began using that pet name. Sometimes the Buckleys would shorten it to "Duck." As for the Buckleys lamenting the destruction of their patrician world, WFB took on the WASP elites. If he had simply been interested in maintaining his privileges, he would have joined those elites. But his conservatism meant a great deal to him, so he did not. I have bemoaned the low quality of thought out here many times, and while I certainly don't expect commenters to think like Jonathan Chait, at least they might profit from reading him and the rest of the magazine. But it doesn't seem to work that way. Lastly, you are one of the best at cramming as much misinformation as possible in a small space.

- liberalref

April 1, 2011 at 2:02pm

Penis posts. That's what I call those back and forth posts trying to get in the last word. It would save lots of time and web space if the penis posters would just post their size and be done with it. May the best man win.

- rayward

April 1, 2011 at 4:07pm

I was not attempting to get the last word. Rather, I was correcting error. The difference should be obvious.

- liberalref

April 1, 2011 at 5:50pm