Did Rand Paul just destroy the neocons?
I hate to jump the gun here, but I think Rand Paul just destroyed the neocons in a guest post at National Review. He took their Wilsonian noses and rubbed them up against quotes from their own hero, William F. Buckley, founder of National Review. UPDATE: NRO has added a poll.
You’ll want to read the whole thing but here are some choice parts:
The knives are out for conservatives who dare question unlimited involvement in foreign wars.
Foreign policy, the interventionist critics claim, has no place for nuance or realism. You are either for us or against us. No middle ground is acceptable. The Wilsonian ideologues must have democracy worldwide now and damn all obstacles to that utopia. I say sharpen your knives, because the battle once begun will not end easily.
Conservatives who want to read libertarian conservatives out of the movement should reread some old copies of National Review first…
In an interview with George Will on This Week in October 2005, Buckley was asked the following question: “Today we have a different kind of foreign policy. It’s called Wilsonian. And the premise of the Bush doctrine is that America must spread democracy because our national security depends on it. And America can spread democracy. It knows how. It can engage in nation building. This is conservative or not?”
Buckley responded: “It’s not at all conservative. It’s anything but conservative. It’s not conservative at all, inasmuch as conservatism doesn’t invite unnecessary challenges. It insists on coming to terms with the world as it is, and the notion that merely by affirming these high ideals we can affect highly entrenched systems.”
In his 2005 interview of Buckley, George Will put in his two cents about some conservatives’ belief that the Middle East could be remade in America’s image. “Conservatism seems to be saying government can’t run Amtrak, but it can run the Middle East,” he argued…
Read more: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/376307/buckleys-realist-foreign-policy-sen-rand-paul
So is Buckley a member of the Hate America First Club? Pardon me, while I dab some Grey Poupon on my ears whilst listening to the ol’ Firing Line theme song by Johann Sebastian Bach: