Constant Conservative

I was saddened to hear that Bill Buckley’s son Chris recently endorsed Barack Obama. Jay Reding addresses the reasoning behind the decision, and does a good job of putting in in perspective:

His critique of McCain is that somehow McCain has become “inauthentic” and his case for Obama is that he has a “world class intellect.”

Plenty of other wrongheaded individuals were brilliantly smart—and even though Sen. Obama is unquestionably smart and capable, he represents the antithesis of everything conservatism stands for. Conservatism is an ideology that desires limited government—Obama supports an even more dramatic expansion of government that what we have seen in the last eight years. Conservatism rejects cults of political personality—and yet Obama is skating by largely on the force of his personalty than the substance of his ideals. Conservatism rejects immanentizing the eschaton—that might as well be Obama’s campaign slogan.

Hmm. I wonder if I could use “Making sure we don’t immanentize the eschaton” as a tagline. Maybe not.

Reding follows that with a very good, and timely, close:

Conservatives made the mistake of putting their trust in a politician rather than in their ideas [sic] over the past ideas. Making the same mistake again won’t be any better for the country.

Intelligent people often find themselves on the wrong side of history. One wonders if that may not be the case with a junior senator from the state of Illinois.