Why Posts on Individual Freedom?

I have been posting on individual freedom, individualism, etc., because this is a basic value upon which virtually all Americans from left to right agree, at least as an abstract principle. It is only when one looks into the details of political opinions that one finds that 'individual freedom' in the abstract does not translate into the same concrete set of political and social recommendations. For example, it seems to me that if one truly values individual freedom then one must endorse a pretty strong policy of civil liberties as defined in the bill of rights. In the abstract pseudo-conservatives like William F. Buckley endorse civil liberties; however, in God and Man at Yale he advocated an end to academic freedom as we know it and endorsed a policy of indoctrination for undergraduates in the 'truths' of morality and political economy as he viewed them as a Catholic and an Adam Smith lover (see documentation of this in John Judis' biography of Buckley). Moreover, Buckley's support for McCarthy and McCarthyism also demonstrated his lack of a robust view of civil liberties. Indeed, Buckley's views regarding both academic freedom and McCarthyism demonstrated that he does not at all support the free exchange of ideas in freedom of speech when it comes to matters where he believes his views are 'right', and thus indoctrination is the policy he supports in many cases. I'm not sure how this differentiates him from Stalinists who also endorsed indoctrination of the 'party line.'

Peter Viereck, A True Conservative

I'm discovering more about Peter Viereck, who died May 13 of this year at 89 and was an authentic American voice of conservatism. Viereck, to our great misfortune, was shouted down in the 1950s by the hateful, extremist rhetoric of William F. Buckley and his band of right-wing radicals. Viereck published the first book of the New Conservatism in 1949, Conservatism Revisited.

In a 1962 preface to a reissue of Conservatism Revisited Viereck wrote of himself and Clinton Rossiter (author of Conservatism in America):

we broke with the majority of current self-styled American conservatives (pseudo-conservative radicals of the right, in our view) over... issues of nationalist thought-control. The same pseudo-conservative rightists who discriminate against Negroes, despise the groping new governments of Asia and Africa, and stir up authoritarian nationalism against U.N. internationalism, these same thought-control rightists are also avowed disciples of Burke.... But Burke held a freedom-loving central position... [he] fought against the Negro slave trade and against imperialist oppression of India.

Viereck's mention of "pseudo-conservative rightists who discriminate against Negroes" is a reference to the probably no longer remembered fact that William F. Buckley wrote consistently in favor of a states' rights defense against racial integration. In the August 24, 1957 National Review Buckley wrote (John Judis, William F. Buckley, Jr., 1988, pp. 138-9):

The central question that emerges...is whether the white community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not predominate numerically. The sobering answer is Yes--the white community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race....

Viereck's charges of 'thought-control nationalism' (McCarthyism) and 'authoritarian nationalism against U.N. internationalism' hit the bullseye; it is these baneful influences, aggressively fostored by the radical right, which have too much dominated U.S. political discourse since World War II and have unerringly led us to the 'thought-control nationalism' of the George W. Bush administration. Oh how much better off we would have been had the saner beliefs of Peter Viereck prevailed.