Duke Mu
Iconic Member
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Buckley was a Burkian, but also an elitist and prone to deep sarcasm. He was occasionally susceptible to bigotry, which he later regretted.I think you're overestimating Buckley and the National Review. For all his claims about cleaning up postwar conservatism, he had a long correspondence with George Lincoln Rockwell, one of the founders of the American neo-Nazi movement. And his so-called elegance is overrated. Just because he went to Yale doesn't mean he wasn't a piece of shit. Check out his 1957 NR editorial "Why the South Must Prevail" or his 1986 NYT editorial about AIDS, which concludes as follows:
Everyone detected with AIDS should be tatooed in the upper forearm, to protect common-needle users, and on the buttocks, to prevent the victimization of other homosexuals.
You have got to be kidding! That's exactly what we suspected all along! You are calling for the return of the Scarlet Letter, but only for homosexuals!
Answer: The Scarlet Letter was designed to stimulate public obloquy. The AIDS tattoo is designed for private protection. And the whole point of this is that we are not talking about a kidding matter. Our society is generally threatened, and in order to fight AIDS, we need the civil equivalent of universal military training.
I'm sure Sam Tanenhaus covers all this in his recent biography of Buckley.
Ironically, the point of the NYT AIDS article is correct in that during a pandemic without a cure or even a treatment, identifying those infected is crucial, including those giving blood, or drug users... the point of the article was that the military was performing massive AIDS testing, because many may become blood donors....and was being advocated INSTEAD of marking with a scarlet letter.
Iconically, like COVID the key was testing....and developing a vaccine or effective treatment. AIDS research was critical in the development of the mRNA vaccine for COVID. We know "traditional" vaccine strategies (live or dead virus) vaccines do not work, because the nation of China tried it and were forced into massive shutdowns in 2022 and 2023.