Bill Buckley
Bill Buckley died Wednesday at 82 at his home in Connecticut. He was the most influential public intellectual of his generation in this country, maybe the world.
More than anyone, even Goldwater or Reagan, he was the father of modern conservatism, which was as much an intellectual as a political movement from 1955, when he founded the National Review, to 2000 when, under Bush and DeLay, the movement foundered in a sea of law breaking, war mongering and greed.
I got to know Buckley a little in the 1990s, debating him on his show, Firing Line. The show, the longest running with a single host in TV history, was civil, substantive and high minded; in short, the opposite of everything political talk shows have since become.
Off camera he was witty and articulate and also gracious and warm. A couple of years after the show went off the air I was running for Governor of Connecticut and bumped into him. He put his hand gently on my arm and said, softly, "I will vote against you with the deepest affection."
Buckley evolved over time from one who insisted the constitution forbade us from ending segregation, to one who supported civil rights laws and a national holiday for Martin Luther King.
But the underlying tenets of his thought, grounded in his Roman Catholicism and equally fervent beliefs in free republics and free markets, remained consistent.
It didn't always keep him close to the leaders of his party or of the movement he had led. On the National Review website, Buckley identified himself as a "libertarian conservative," a designation that separated him, ever so slightly, from the excesses of his crowd.
He saw Viet Nam as a mistake and parted company with Bush over Iraq. He sailed to international waters to try marijuana before calling for legalization. His lovely book Nearer My God reveals a real spirituality, as opposed to the hateful, hypocritical swill peddled as religion by his party. Sam Tanenhaus, author of a much anticipated biography, says Buckley couldn't bear Ann Coulter.
I first met Buckley a decade before our Firing Line encounters at a reception for an ailing Mike Harrington, socialist and author of 'The Other America.' Harrington truly regarded Buckley as a friend. So did John Kenneth Galbraith. So did most liberals Buckley knew.
Buckley loved debate. Unlike today's cowardly conservatives, he debated the best minds he could entice on to a stage. He never used his opponents as props or punch lines for fixed fights. He liked them. Loving his own ideas, not just hating theirs, left room for liking them.
What a long sad fall from Bill Buckley to Bill O' Reilly. I'm not part of the crowd that says if we can just get along everything will be alright. But I am part of the crowd that thinks learning to get along better will help.
To get out of Iraq or into a new health care system will require some hard fighting, but also some hard thinking and most of all reasoned arguments to persuade, if not the opposition, certainly the public.
If you want to see how far we are from having that kind of debate, watch an old episode of Firing Line and then watch a random hour of live cable television. That's how far.
Bill Buckley raised an army against a liberal establishment. Like Barry Goldwater, he often dissented in later years from a conservative establishment he helped create.
The political debate Buckley launched is over, many of its old categories defunct. To shape a new debate we'll need at least a few people with the intellect, humanity, civility and great good humor of Bill Buckley. I hope we find them.
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There used to be Republican leaders who supported the arts, used wit and logic in arguments rather than scorn and name-calling, and were not dominated by backwoods televangelists who misuse pulpits and words.
Today's Republicans are too-often veiled, reflexive haters who scorn even elements of their own party. Karl Rove pushed the party into the hands of anti-gay, anti-libertarian sheep and their shepherds. What they don't understand, they simply ignore or legislate against. If the war on drugs is going badly, you stay the course if you are a Republican. If No Child Left Behind doesn't work to educate people, perhaps so much the better for a party that relies on credulity and false logic. If the war in Iraq causes more problems than it solves, you stay the course.
"You" means, however, the children of others who do not have the connections to win in court, people who've lost jobs because of unfair trading practices, and the sons and daughters of Americans who still believe in military service. Most Republican leaders' believe in you serving, not themselves or their kids.
Buckley was a supporter of legalized marijuana, so to the divide and conquer dominant Republican "culture", he was a flake instead of an icon. Hillbilly Republicans everywhere, Bill Buckley's nowhere. Our loss.
"I will vote against you with the deepest affection" I doubt anything could sum up Bill Buckley any better than that statement. I disagreed with most of what he stood for, but I loved to hear him debate his beliefs. He was a true gentleman, and true intellect.
The difference between him and today's rabid attack-dog neocons is not as stark as night and day - it's more even than that.
I long for the day when, integrity, honesty, true compassion, and humanity, will be the qualities that are demanded, and received, from our elected officials, and the M.S.M.
I remember the days, when a man's, or woman's word, and a handshake, were gold. We've come a long way, and unfortunately we made a wrong turn, somewhere along the way.
But the problem is those days never existed for everyone. In these days you're talking about where people could trust each other, could a black man really trust a white man to keep his word? Could a woman trust a man? I could go on but I hope you get my point; there was no time in our history where life was good for everyone, and it disserves our future to obsess over a lost past that never existed. We should instead strive to inject into our lives now what we wish we had, and think only about what we will be, not what we were.
Right, only white men do untrustworthy things. Thanks.
Blacks, almost perfect angels.
Women, perfect angels.
Gotcha.
Mr. Curry,
You wrote, "Buckley loved debate. Unlike today's cowardly conservatives, he debated the best minds he could entice on to a stage. He never used his opponents as props or punch lines for fixed fights. He liked them. Loving his own ideas, not just hating theirs, left room for liking them". I wonder Mr. Curry, where is the William F. Buckley on the left, the self hating, America hating, never met a free government handout they wouldn't take, cowardly progressive, socialist, liberal, left. The answer is, there are none. Because they love their idols, ideology, their qualities of hate and loathing, and hating anyone with a different idea other than their own. Liberals are not about making the world a better place, but shouting down the ideas that are not their own no matter if they are right and good for the people of this country. Liberals choose to live in the vast emotional wasteland and not participate in the free exchange of ideas for the betterment of mankind and the world. Maybe someday their will be a William F. Buckley on the left but today there is not, the best they can manage is someone like a Bill Maher or Michael Moore.
A textbook case of projection Bondaroid.
You made Mr. Curry's point beautifully
I sense a bit of 'projection' from your letter? We often project into others what is deep inside us. As Christ once said, remove the log in your own eye instead of throwing stones, or something along those lines. Wow, talk about generalization. Americans are individuals who may lean towards liberalism or conservatism, or are in the 'center'. I am so tired of the simpleton labels: Liberal Vs. Conservative. I have both very conservative and liberal views on different issues. I hope we can soon get away from these divisive and simplistic labels Mr. Bondaroid! I have chosen to 'participate in the free exchange of ideas for the betterment of mankind and the world' without villifying those with other views! Being able to agree to disagree without condemning others is our only hope in this world. Mr. Buckley had the dignity and wisdom to do just this...
Really?
Did you ever hear or read Gore Vidal, Kurt Vonnegut or Mark Twain?
Or, more among the living than Vidal, how about Noam Chomsky - you may hate what he has to say, but I've never heard a hateful work uttered in anger come from his mouth.
Or try Sam Smith at the Progressive Review prorev.comm) . Or Joe Bageant for that matter at joebageant
Good God Bondaroid at least be a little better read before you shoot your mouth off about 'hate'.
So if I were to call your ideas "self-hating, America-hating" and "cowardly", would you say that I was filled with "qualities of hate and loathing, and hating anyone with a different idea other than their own", or "shouting down the ideas that are not their own". Do you see now the fallacy of your argument?
Mr. Buckley himself would be rolling his eyes at you for spouting your strawman crap.
I rarely agreed with anything he said, but clearly he was possessed of great humanity and great humor -- how else to explain his son, Christopher Buckley?
RIP Bill
Buckley was and is part of the split between conservatives and academia which occurred in the 1960s. Conservatives became anti-academia, though that hasn't served their interests as the elite one-percent, putting them on the wrong side of Western culture and making them ill-equipped to challenge the supposed liberalism of pop culture and mass consumerism.
The other part of this split-- the side of academia-- suffered a kind of identity crisis after the departure of conservative intellectuals. In order to fill the gap, universities turned to the teaching not of text, but post-modernist social theories related to race, gender, sexual orientation and, of course, Marxism. Some of this has been enlightening and has helped us break out of the constraints of Eurocentrism but most of it hasn't been about the art itself.
The current distrust (even loathing) of "elitist college professors" among radio talk-show conservatives, National Review online writers, and others in that world which is known by that ugly word "blogosphere," is rooted in Buckley's attitude toward academia, and is one more example of how we are still fighting the social battles of the 1960s and need new political voices who help us unite around a common vision of America that embraces classical thought and promotes diversity at the same time.
Buckley couldn't help notice that inferior intellects pass readily through the academic sieve process. So many pretentious, overly respected professors, so little time for free-thinking.
I don't think that Buckley was the sort of Catholic who admired the Catholics we have put in charge of the Supreme court. They might use some of his philosophy, but what they don't use makes all the difference.
With such a sharp, practical focus on philosophical and political issues that he felt informed each other, he must have died a little every day nuance and subtlety lost ground to gross ideologues on the right just as he had seen happening on the left.
I once heard somebody say that Buckley likely wrote ''God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of 'Academic Freedom,' '' because some professor at Yale had dared to give him a 'B'.
I had and have no reason to believe that remark, but it did and does make me laugh.
SamanthaJane:
The Republican Party is and always has been driven by the wealthy, elitist, well-educated and self-serving American aristocracy. The triumph of the Republican Party has been getting working class people on their side. They did so by taking a page from Benito Mussolini's playbook. Il Duce used the phrase "useful idiots" to describe people who support fascism in spite of its obvious lack of economic benefits for them. This was why I was rooting for Huckabee to win the Republican nomination. Finally, the people who have aided and abetted the social elite -- a class of people they all believe to be liberal Democrats -- would finally have one of their own driving the bus. How apt. Alas, Wall Street trumps Church Street everytime.
The passing of intellect is most remorseful at a time when even independent thought is frowned upon. He will leave a void that sadly, won't be filled. I seldom agreed with him but loved his thought and speech pattern as it showed true and complete thought and definitely not an echo chamber. Bush and his neoconmen have dragged our nation into a national psyche of stupidity of good and evil with a dose of "nuke 'em". We have no orators, we have no intellectuals in our gov't. where they are needed most. Everitt Dirkson and Mr. Buckley were a glimpse of an age of intelligence and honest debate gone forever. They will seldom be missed by the war drumming, power mongering rabble that captured their party. They are now, and always will be, missed by me and everyone who admires thought and expression.
The reality is that William F. Buckley is just like modern conservatives. It is the modern liberal (progressive), or whatever the hell they want to call themselves tomorrow has become totally unhinged. Following the lunacy of Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan and the troll like behavior of John Stewert, todays liberals have lost touch with reality. "Hate America", "Blame America" and calling our military men and women murderers is the policy of today's liberals.
"We surrender" is the plea of Democrats to the world. Apparently this self-hatred strengthens America's positon in the world according to the logic of todays liberals.
William F. Buckley can rest in peace. Unfortunately, until the danger of radical islam is confronted in this world, we can not.
America owes a lot to William F. Buckley.
We could start with our 9 trillion dollars of debt.
We could go on to the Military Industrial Complex that Ike warned us about.
We are spending 500 billion on our military not to count the extra 200 billion that is off-the-books for Iraq and Afghanistan. Do you feel safer? Well do ya punk?
The politics of fear have brought us universal scorn around the world.
We are spending over 2 trillion dollars a year on health care while having 50 million American with no insurance and millions more under insured.
Yes conservatism was Buckley's baby and he should be given all the credit.
The purpose of America is liberty, not security (social or otherwise). Liberty exists in inverse proportion to the size of government. Both parties (and huge numbers of the American public) have aligned themselves against liberty.
Typical knee-jerk response from the other side. This guy was vilified by his own community for his dovish stances on the Vietnam and Iraq wars, yet you still need to drag his name through the mud along with the likes of Coulter and O'Reilly? This is the problem with too many of the most vocal people in the liberal and conservative communities: you fail to recognize the ability of people to distort someone's ideas to fit their own idiotic agendas. Is Jesus responsible for people who kill in his name? No. Is William F. Buckley responsible for wars made in the name of conservatism? No. They just had ideas, other people exploited them, that's it. Take your useless vitriol and blind contempt elsewhere.
Michael Moore makes great movies...t
Cindy Sheehan is a mother that lost her son...that
Jon Stewart is one of the best on television
Radical Islam isn't going away. What are you going to do? Kill every Muslim in the world?
Get a grip. No one is blaming America. The military are not murderers. It's our leaders that are to blame and they are the murderers.
Did you even read the article? Specifically, the part where it says William F. Buckley opposed the Iraq War? How does that make him "just like modern conservatives", again?
You're exactly the kind of person, who makes ad hominem attacks, chooses to characterize entire groups of people by their most vocal (and unelected) advocates, and completely fails at even considering their opponent as having a valid point, that William F. Buckley detested. If you knew half of what you were pretending to talk about, you'd know that already. Please leave this discussion to people who actually know what they're talking about and stop polluting the world with your partisan nonsense.
"The reality is that William F. Buckley is just like modern conservatives. It is the modern liberal (progressive), or whatever the hell they want to call themselves tomorrow has become totally unhinged."
lollll...B
lolllll...
DerekRC, you're hilarious!
Your post is obviously tongue-in-cheek, because anyone posting that and meaning it would be a complete moron. I'm onto you and your subtle irony.
Well done.
Too bad the GOP has gone with the Right Wing radio style over the last 20 years.
Sad there is NO ONE to replace him-all the so called 'conservatives' now are all blowhard assholes with no intellect. He may have planted the 'seed' of conservatism but it's grown into frankenfood.
William F Buckley was a wonderful American and unlike the so-called "conservatives" today, they are not a hair on his ass. If today's conservatives were cut from the same cloth as Mr Buckley the country would be a much nicer and warmer place. But unfortunately the Nazi goose steppers took over the conservative mantle and just ran it into the ground...k
Even as a liberal democrat, I always loved watching Firing Line, and reading Mr. Buckley's editorials. Perhaps I felt a kinship with his Catholicism, but I always felt that he gave an honest viewpoint that, while mostly at odds with mine, represented an alternative type of patriotism.
It is a shame that he passed from this world during the ugly reign of the current version of faux conservativism that clearly caused him anxiety as evidenced by his later writings on the Bush presidency.
Wonderful reminscence and poignant observations. Can we hope to read a eulogy from Gore Vidal?
William F. Buckley, Jr. became a part of my intellectual life during my "second tour" at Harvard, after taking four years to go and save the world in North and South Carolinas, Georgia, Mississippi and Alabama.
Those four years as a student and community organizer had deeply taught me to extend myself, mentally and emotionally, to touch the lives - and to begin to understand the experiences, beliefs and feelings - of others.
This is the behavioural key to being an effective organizer, and we are watching this attribute play out in the person and the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama. But my first radical exercise of this facility came after my organizing days, with my weekly interactions with Bill Buckley, on Firing Line, back in Cambridge.
It was radical because I instinctively disagreed with just about everything that Buckley seemed to believe. It was exercise because his erudition and his humanity engaged me when I might have been repelled.
It is one of my life's happier ironies that my weekly engagements with Buckley helped to prepare me, decades later, to better understand and appreciate what Barack Obama - and we - are doing now.
I actually think that Buckley would have enjoyed knowing the effect that he is having on this Democrat in 2008.
Thank you, Bill.
Rest in peace.
Oddly enough, Chris Matthews' account of his teenage admiration for Buckley, followed by a later evolution away from conservatism, also applies to me. Growing up in Atlanta in the 50's and 60's, my impression of Buckley was that he was a sophisticated, intellectual guy who had a pipeline to absolute truth. Of course, Buckley did nothing to suggest otherwise, but at least he was not plagued by false modesty.
And what a vocabulary Buckley had! As a snobbish preppie spelling champ, I imagined I might one day be able to string big words and abstruse concepts together just like Buckley, so that I could verbally crush my opponents without their even understanding what I was saying. (Sort of like Scalia might do versus Clarence Thomas, except that Thomas would never try to argue with Scalia...)
I eventually came to believe that Buckley's pipeline was probably not connected to any god I cared to worship, but I really have to give him credit for stretching my mind at a time when it needed stretching. James Joyce said that his Jesuit teachers taught him how to think, but they failed at teaching him what to think. I might say something of the sort about Bill Buckley.
I'm sure he will be remembered fondly at the next Deer Island function.
Though I never or hardly ever, to be sure, agreed with Bill Buckley's political opinion, his magnificent ability to frame debates and usage of the English language..
May his noble spirit rest in peace.
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