I was a young conservative during the Reagan years in college and grad school; I was routinely called a Nazi and a fascist and other names because I, like, voted for Reagan and read NR. So spare me your hurt feelings about how "liberal" became a term of derision.https://twitter.com/jwilliamhoffman/status/968241920186179584 …
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The test of your theory is what happens after 1991. I suppose we both remember the flood of sadness and many articles deploring the collapse of apartheid, right? That didn't happen. So what changed? Hint: you're on the wrong variable
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The test is right there in the text of Buckley's own logic: did he support SA because of the Cold war or because whites deserved to rule? Buckley could have chosen argument A. He chose B. No need for indirect extrapolation.
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Except no one was going to get out there and make the nakedly brutal case that SA blacks had to suffer for the Cold War. We didn't try that with Central America or the Greek colonels, either. because they'd have been crucified even *more* for such cynicism.
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Replying to @RadioFreeTom @jonathanchait and
You seem to be arguing that Cold War conservatives should have been right up front about their brutal school of realism; none of them were. It was not the language of Cold War debate. About the Philippines, or Taiwan, or ROK, or anywhere. We lauded them all.
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Being upfront about the brutality of governments we nonetheless needed to support was the entire premise of Kirkpatrick's "Dictatorships and Double Standards," to take one famous example http://reagan.convio.net/site/DocServer/ReaganMoments-Dictatorships_and_Double_Standards_-_Jeane.pdf?docID=1823 …
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I mentioned that in this thread earlier. And Kirkpatrick (whom I knew back in the 80s) was caricatured by the left as a morally defective gargoyle for writing it, and the argument was dismissed as disingenuous anyway. (Except by Reagan.)
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For the purposes of our discussion, isn't the relevant point that she granted the unattractiveness of right-wing authoritarian governments, rather than endorsing them like Buckley did S.A.?
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Exactly. Kirkpatrick was a Cold War liberal turned neo-con, very different from Buckley's Old Right position. 1/2
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