60 Years Later, Buckley’s Warning Rings More True Than Ever

(Thomas Mitchel/4thSt8.com) – “Ripped from the headlines!” was the old movie trailer line touting this or that flick about political intrigue.

Today, as we read the headlines about bailouts, entitlements, quantitative easing, demands for income equity, taxes on the rich, welfare for the poor, job killing regulations and the like, it is no solace to read William F. Buckley’s seminal tome “God & Man at Yale,” first published in 1951, the 50th anniversary edition picked up at 80 percent off at the Border’s going-out-of-business sale — itself a portent of the litany of despair.

In writing about the academic embrace and enthrallment with Keynesian economics and soft-core socialism at his alma mater Yale and elsewhere, Buckley was so prescient about the objectives and means of the current administration:

“Marx himself, in the course of his lifetime, envisaged two broad lines of action that could be adopted to destroy the bourgeoisie: one was violent revolution; the other, a slow increase of state power, through extended social services, taxation, and regulation, to a point where a smooth transition could be effected from an individualist to a collectivist society. The Communists have come to scorn the latter method, but it is nevertheless evident that the prescience of their most systematic and inspiring philosopher has not been thereby vitiated.

“It is a revolution of the second type , one that advocates a slow but relentless transfer of power from the individual to the state, that has roots in the Department of Economics at Yale, and unquestionably in similar departments in many colleges throughout the country.”

Take today’s poll:  Who should Herman Cain endorse in the Republican Presidential Primary?