...and Ike could certainly have done better in the containment/rollback of communism area. Cuba was lost on his watch, and if he had stood up to the Russkies in Hungary, they'd have folded like a four card flush.
For the record, I hate communism, I hate the UN, and I think a number of presidents and candidates were, if not out-and-out Communists, at least way too parlour pink for my tastes - FDR, Jimmy Carter, Mcgovern, Obama, etc, etc....
I agree with every last bit of that^^^.
It still doesn't require Eisenhower to be a closet commie. Those who make such accusations discredit themselves, as did the leader of the JBS back in the day.
WFB wasn't necessarily a "conservative movement" guy. He was William F. Buckley.
His contribution to Reaganism was no greater than Rand's, though these contributions came about differently.
He was religious. She was anti-religious. Seems that there's more conflict between people who think in similar ways, but have one or two glaring differences, than between people who are different in most ways. This goes double if they're both somewhat full of themselves.
I am reminded of the Pirenne Thesis: "Without Mohammed, Charlemagne is inconceivable."
Without WFB,
Goldwater in inconceivable.
Without Goldwater,
Reagan is inconceivable.
Without Rand,
Alan Greenspan is inconceivable.
And that's as far as you can trace her influence on Reaganism.
That's the deal: Rand & WFB did
not think in similar ways. They came to their conclusions by wholly different routes. It should be no surprise that when Rand pushed her philosophy to its logical conclusions, it would repel traditional American conservatives.
