Conservative Donnybrook

I’m a guy who likes to get to the bottom line, to simplify things. Here’s an article discussing four papers that is crying out for my brand of simplification.

You can entirely skip the first three paragraphs which are mainly a catalog of how smart the author of the papers is. The first paper’s topic analyzes the effects of political assassination on countries. The second paper discusses the effect that individual leaders have on a nation. The third paper discusses the effect of centralized coordination of corruption in a nation. And, finally, the fourth paper analyzes whether it reduces corruption to manage spending projects from the top.

It is the first two papers that I’d like to summarize. As I read it, George W. Bush is going about the process of democratization all wrong. Apparently, when autocratic leaders are assassinated, the countries they were running tend to become more democratic. So, instead of invading all these countries in the Middle East, we should just be rubbing out their leaders, thereby Bringing Democracy to the Region™. At least, that’s the message I get from the first two papers.

I’d like to see him do some research into whether in cases where Democracy fails to take hold after a single assassination, does it help to bump off the successor? I mean, is the process of Democratization iterative?

Share This

Here is a classic debate from Firing Line history where Buckley demolishes Noam Chomsky and makes him look stupid. Charmingly.

Buckley’s line toward the beginning of this exchange where Buckley offers to take up Chomsky’s digression and then peeks over at him with a bit of a wink and sparkle in his eye is priceless.

Chomsky debate: Part I and Part II

And, as it turns out, this seems to be fairly topical.

Share This

There are people whose passing affects one even though he has never met them. Ronald Reagan was one. Pope John Paul II was another. Today, we mourn the passing of William F. Buckley, Jr.

My “acquaintance” with him came about as a subscriber to the magazine he founded in 1955, National Review. One of the things I discovered early on is that if you waited long enough to renew your subscription, you’d eventually receive a letter from Bill Buckley coaxing a renewal out of you. As a result, I would always wait for the Buckley letter before I would send in my renewal since they were always a treat.

I also remember him from his television show, Firing Line. It was always entertaining when he’d get an opponent on the ropes. You’d see his eyebrow arch slightly and knew that the poor sap was about to find himself skewered by a superior intellect with consummate debate skills.

As our readers on CD may have noted in the past, we certainly see ourselves as standing on the shoulders of WFB. We cribbed his famous phrase, bastardized it, and used it as a tagline for our website, “Standing athwart history, yelling incoherently.”

The world is a little poorer for Bill Buckley’s passing. R.I.P.

Share This