The great LewRockwell.com writer Charles Burris has some keen insights into the development of modern pro-government “conservatism.” As government grew throughout the twentieth century, a strain of “conservatism” arose which seemed to support this vast new growth of government programs while quibbling at the margins with tax rates, or advocating more imprisonment or ever-more-powerful surveillance.
“From the time before the American government’s formal entrance into World War II, establishment elites have fostered an ongoing series of elaborate intelligence operations based on psychological warfare and propaganda aimed at manipulating public opinion and attitudes in regards to the projection of American state power and interventionism.”
“For the past 70 years, “responsible public policy debate” has been confined to the narrow perimeters set by these establishment-sanctioned gatekeepers and mouthpieces.”
“It was “former” deep cover CIA agent Buckley and intelligence community veterans of the OSS and CIA (James Burnham, Wilmoore Kendall, Priscilla Buckley, and William Casey) who launched National Review, which became the premier publication of this phony “conservative movement.””
The CIA also founded Regnery Press, the largest “conservative” book publisher.
William J. Casey (future CIA DIRECTOR) drew up the incorporation papers for National Review, and served as its long-time legal counsel.
Years later, Buckley was outted as a CIA operative by former CIA agent William Sloane Coffin (Skull and Bones 1949). Coffin was a long-time colleague of George H. W. Bush (Skull and Bones 1948) when they both attended Phillips Andover Academy and later Yale together.
