As the dog days of summer roll on, we today turn over this “At Large” to the late, great William F. Buckley Jr., who, over his storied decades as the standard-bearer for American conservatives, had a few things to say about the public policy pronouncements of your garden-variety, modern-day liberals.
To wit (and compiled by goodreads.com):
“I won’t insult your intelligence by suggesting that you really believe what you just said.”
“Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.”
“I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the Manhattan phone book than the entire faculty of Harvard.”
“Liberals, it has been said, are generous with other peoples’ money, except when it comes to questions of national survival when they prefer to be generous with other peoples’ freedom and security.”
“Back in the ’30s we were told we must collectivize the nation because the people were so poor. Now we are told we must collectivize the nation because the people are so rich.”
“The best defense against usurpatory government is an assertive citizenry.”
“The academic community has in it the biggest concentration of alarmists, cranks and extremists this side of the giggle house.”
“Truth is a demure lady, much too ladylike to knock you on your head and drag you to her cave. She is there but people must want her and seek her out.”
“Idealism is fine but as it approaches reality, the costs become prohibitive.”
“There is an inverse relationship between reliance on the state and self-reliance.”
“A conservative is a fellow who is standing athwart history yelling ‘Stop!’”
“[D]emocracy can itself be as tyrannical as a dictatorship, since it is the extent, not the source, of government power that impinges on freedom.”
“The largest cultural menace in America is the conformity of the intellectual cliques which, in education as well as the arts, are out to impose upon the nation their modish fads and fallacies, and have nearly succeeded in doing so. In this cultural issue, we are, without reservations, on the side of excellence (rather than ‘newness’) and of honest intellectual combat (rather than conformity).”
“The more complicated and powerful the job, the more rudimentary the preparation for it.”
And finally:
“Halfway through the second term of Franklin Roosevelt, the New Deal braintrusters began to worry about mounting popular concern over the national debt. In those days the size of the national debt was on everyone’s mind. Indeed, Franklin Roosevelt had talked himself into office, in 1932, in part by promising to hack away at a debt which, even under the frugal Mr. Hoover, the people tended to think of as grown to menacing size. Mr. Roosevelt’s wisemen worried deeply about the mounting tension …
“And then, suddenly, the academic community came to the rescue. Economists across the length and breadth of the land were electrified by a theory of debt introduced in England by John Maynard Keynes. The politicians wrung their hands in gratitude. Depicting the intoxicating political consequences of Lord Keynes’s discovery, the wry cartoonist of the Washington Times Herald drew a memorable picture.
“In the center, sitting on a throne in front of a Maypole, was a jubilant FDR, cigarette tilted almost vertically, a grin on his face that stretched from ear to ear. Dancing about him in a circle, hands clasped together, their faces glowing with ecstasy, the braintrusters, vested in academic robes, sang the magical incantation, the great discovery of Lord Keynes: ‘We owe it to ourselves.’
“With five talismanic words, the planners had disposed of the problem of deficit spending. Anyone thenceforward who worried about an increase in the national debt was just plain ignorant of the central insight of modern economics: What do we care how much we — the government — owe so long as we owe it to ourselves? On with the spending. Tax and tax, spend and spend … .”
Our elected officials would be wise to keep Bill Buckley’s words close at hand for easy reference on a regular basis.
Colin McNickle is communications and marketing director at the Allegheny Institute for Public Policy (cmcnickle@alleghenyinstitute.org).
