| Gore Vidal: Not Vital to the Public Policy Discussion |
For a rich, liberal elitist to boast about speaking truth to power is like a robber claiming that he won the discussion after carrying away the substance of another at the barrel of a gun.
Yet for nearly his entire career in the public eye, that was Gore Vidal's claim to fame.
The outspoken liberal, and enemy of flag-bearing conservative William F. Buckley, has died, and to the end his supporters end up detracting him in the same throw:
In a world more to his liking, Vidal might have been president, or even king. He had an aristocrat's bearing — tall, handsome and composed — and an authoritative baritone ideal for summoning an aide or courtier.
Elitism and challenge to the status quo do not necessarily go well together. His admiration for one of the most statist and failing of presidents, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, signals his bias:
During the days of Franklin Roosevelt, one of the few leaders whom Vidal admired, he might have been called a "traitor to his class." The real traitors, Vidal would respond, were the upholders of his class.
From alphabet soup agencies to immense subsidies to the farm industry to attacking political enemies through the IRS, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was one more progressive elitist who wanted to expand the concentrated power of an intellectual class at the expense of everyone else, galvanized by the offensive notion that he and his experts "knew better."
Vidal's admiration for FDR is not "talking truth to power", but using power to control the truth.
I am certain that the "crypto-fascist" — in truth, the Real Free-speaking Freedom Fighter — William F. Buckley is dancing on the streets of gold now that his "Talking Points" rival is dead and buried in his own crypt of defunct progressivism and inane, insane statism.