What Is It We Wish to Conserve?

[John81]

What Is It We Wish to Conserve?
By Patrick J. Buchanan
Tuesday - October 25, 2011


A conservative's task in society is "to preserve a particular people, living in a particular place during a particular time."

Jack Hunter, in a review of this writer's new book, "Suicide of a Superpower: Will America Survive to 2025?" thus summarizes Russell Kirk's view of the duty of the conservative to his country.

Kirk, the traditionalist, though not so famous as some of his contemporaries at National Review, is now emerging as perhaps the greatest of that first generation of post-World War II conservatives -- in the endurance of his thought.

Richard Nixon believed that. Forty years ago, he asked this writer to contact Dr. Kirk and invite him to the White House for an afternoon of talk. No other conservative would do, said the president.

Kirk's rendering of the conservative responsibility invites a question. Has the right, despite its many victories, failed? For, in what we believe and how we behave, we are not the people we used to be.

Perhaps. But then, we didn't start the fire.

Second-generation conservatives, Middle Americans who grew up in mid-century, were engulfed by a set of revolutions that turned their country upside down and from which there is no going home again.

First was a civil rights revolution, which began with the freedom riders and March on Washington of August 1963 and ended tragically and terribly with the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968.

That revolution produced the civil rights and voting rights acts, but was attended by the long, hot summers of the '60s -- days-long riots in Harlem in 1964, Watts in 1965, Detroit and Newark in 1967, and a hundred other cities and Washington, D.C., in 1968 that tore the nation apart.

Crucially, the initial demands -- an end to segregation and equality of opportunity -- gave way to demands for an equality of condition and equality of results through affirmative action, race-based preferences in hiring and admissions, and a progressive income tax. Reparations for slavery are now on the table.

In response to this revolution, LBJ, after the rout of Barry Goldwater, exploited his huge congressional majorities to launch a governmental revolution, fastening on the nation a vast array of social programs that now threaten to bankrupt the republic, even as they have created a vast new class of permanent federal dependents.

The next revolution began at teach-ins to protest involvement in Vietnam, but climaxed with half a million marchers around the White House carrying Viet Cong flags, waving placards with America spelled "Amerika" and chanting, "Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh -- the NLF is going to win."

Well, the NLF didn't win. It was crushed in the Tet Offensive. But the North Vietnamese invasion of 1975 did. Result: a million boat people in the South China Sea, a holocaust in Cambodia and poisoned American politics for decades after that American defeat.

By the time Vietnam ended, many in the antiwar movement had become anti-American and come to regard her role in history not as great and glorious but as an endless catalogue of crimes, from slavery to imperialism to genocide against the Native Americans.

The fourth revolution was social -- a rejection by millions of young of the moral code by which their parents sought to live.

This produced demands for legalized drugs, condoms for school kids, a right to terminate pregnancies with subsidized abortions and the right of homosexuals to marry.

The first political success of the integrated revolutions came with capture of the Democratic Party in 1972, though Sen. George McGovern was crushed by Nixon in a 49-state landslide.

The conservative triumph of the half-century was surely the election of Ronald Reagan, who revived America's spirit, restored her prosperity and presided over her peaceful Cold War victory. Yet even Reagan failed to curtail an ever-expanding federal government.

Did then the conservatives fail?

In defense of the right, it needs be said. They were no more capable of preventing these revolutionary changes in how people think and believe about God and man, right and wrong, good and evil, than were the French of the Vendee to turn back the revolution of 1789.

Converting a people to new ways of thinking about fundamental truths is beyond the realm of politics and requires a John Wesley or a St. Paul.

The social, political and moral revolutions of the 1960s have changed America irretrievably. And they have put down roots and converted a vast slice of the nation.

In order to love one's country, said Edmund Burke, one's country ought to be lovely. Is it still? Reid Buckley, brother of Bill, replies, "I am obliged to make a public declaration that I cannot love my country. ... We are Vile."

And so what is the conservative's role in an America many believe has not only lost its way but seems to be losing its mind?

What is it now that conservatives must conserve?

[swathdiver]

All those riots in the 60s were orchestrated by American Communists and paid for by the Soviets. In fact just about every event mentioned in the article was fabricated by the Communist Party. Today's demonstrations across America are no different.

A free society that tolerates subversion will be free no more.

[Salyan]

Do you have proof for that statement, swath? I don't mean to be rude, but you seem to hate communists so very much that everything becomes their fault. I hate it as well, but I don't blame all the evils of the world on it. Just sayin'...

[John81]

Do you have proof for that statement, swath? I don't mean to be rude, but you seem to hate communists so very much that everything becomes their fault. I hate it as well, but I don't blame all the evils of the world on it. Just sayin'...

If you dig into the history of the "civil rights movement", MLK, Rosa Parks and such (you will have to dig past all the PC garbage), you will discover the KGB was working with the American Communist Party to fund, train and direct MLK, RP and the CRM. Rosa Parks was specifically trained to do what she did on the bus that day. After her training she had been looking and waiting for the opportunity to put it in action. The whole story about her being just a tired little black woman that had had enough and decided to stand up to the man was directly from the communist training camp she attended.

The main reason President Reagan had to be pushed so hard to sign the totally bogus MLK holiday into federal law was because he knew MLK was either a communist sympathizer or a communist himself. President Reagan was denied access to any of the files that would explain MLKs actual position and to the end he didn't like that he had signed that holiday law because of just how communist MLK and his crowd would one day be shown to have been.

If you have access to, or can find some online, some of this information was known during the 60s and the conservatives who tried to stand against the CRM spoke openly of it. Naturally the media and the liberals in both political Parties worked hard to paint them all as racist haters (not much has changed since then!).

Also, records released from the KGB since the fall of the Soviet Union clearly show their involvement in funding, influencing and training the CRM. Anything to weaken America from within was a worthy goal of the KGB.

Some of this stuff has been posted on OB before.

[swathdiver]

Do you have proof for that statement, swath? I don't mean to be rude, but you seem to hate communists so very much that everything becomes their fault. I hate it as well, but I don't blame all the evils of the world on it. Just sayin'...

Decades of research. I hate evil and pray for the salvation of communists. Communism was designed for the express purpose of separating man from God. Godless people and those weak in faith have knowingly or unknowingly (these are the most effective) carried out the Communist agenda in the United States and rotted this nation from the inside out. There's something seriously wrong with a nation that allows 28% of it's college faculty to be communist sympathizers and that was in 1950! Today it's 90%.

If there's something specific you'd like information on it would be my pleasure to provide you with documentation.

[HappyChristian]

salyan, have you ever read the Communist Manifesto? It is an interesting document...and its planks are definitely at work here in America...and have been for a number of years. Here is a site that lists the ten planks and how they are manifest here in America:
http://www.uhuh.com/nwo/communism/10planks.htm

Communists are agitators (as are socialists). This occupy nonsense that is going on has the approval of the communist party (I think the American Communist party is the one who said that recently) and of the socialist party here in America because social change can in the areas they want change can only come through revolt against the "rich" and taking that money away to "share" it amongst the proletariat and the bourgeoisie (lower and middle classes).

Do I blame all the evils in the world on them (I know you didn't say I did, I'm just talking)? No. But I do believe that they and their philosophies were and are a major factor in troubles around the world. Between communists and jihadists, there's a peck of trouble coming to this hemisphere.