With the death of William F. Buckley, Jr., conservatives have been eulogizing him as a pivotal figure in the history of their movement. President Bush declared, "His legacy lives on in the ideas he championed and in the magazine he founded -- National Review."
Not exactly. As Buckley headed into his final years, he became vehemently opposed to the crusading, neoconservative stance that the younger generation at National Review adopted in championing the Iraq War. Indeed, both Buckleys, William F. and his brilliantly talented son Christopher, became acidulous critics of President Bush and vice-president Dick Cheney. The elder Buckley declared that if Bush were serving in a parliamentary democracy, he would have to resign, if not impeached. And Christopher, writing recently in the Washington Monthly, noted that he hopes the GOP loses in 2008: "Who knew, in 2000, that "compassionate conservatism" meant bigger government, unrestricted government spending, government intrusion in personal matters, government ineptitude, and cronyism in disaster relief?"
What lies behind this disenchantment? A book that has not received the attention it deserves, and that goes a long way toward explaining why conservatism has become shipwrecked, is Jeffrey Hart's recent history of the National Review, The Making of the American Conservative Mind. Hart, a longtime contributor to the magazine, makes two important points. The first point is that Buckley wasn't a radical conservative. He didn't believe in trying to destroy the Eastern Establishment; instead, he wanted to reform it. Hart's second, and related, point was that Buckley's devout Catholicism meant that he shunned evangelical Christianity. Buckley believed in hierarchy and tradition and authority, not in personal revelation. He was no fan of the southern evangelicals who wanted to carry on their own little crusade to renew America. Hence the distaste among older, Catholic conservatives such as Buckley and Hart for George W. Bush. According to Hart, Bush "a southern evangelical and moral authoritarian," has championed policies based on a belief that "many moral issues [are] within the sphere of government." Unconservative, in other words.
But what Buckley hated most of all was the rise of neoconservatism within the GOP. (something I also touch upon in today's Los Angeles Times). Buckley didn't believe in a Wilsonian crusade that consisted of fighting wars to create peace. Instead, he viewed such bellicosity as a recipe for another Vietnam, which is what Iraq has become. As Buckley fell out of step with the movement he had helped create, he himself was treated as though had lost it, as the British writer Johann Hari has shown, on a National Review cruise last summer. Buckley's sin was to chastise Norman Podhoretz for clinging to the delusion that the Iraq War was about weapons of mass destruction.
No, Buckley never became a (gasp!) liberal. On the contrary, I suspect that his politics are, in many ways, most closely carried on by the American Conservative, which is published by Patrick J. Buchanan--and whom Buckley essentially expelled from the mainstream conservative movement on grounds of anti-Semitism. But that's another story for a different day.
For now, it's enough to note that Buckley deserves laurels not simply for his elegant flair and tolerant temperament, but also his contempt for radical ideologues on the right--the unhinged types who are now whining that John McCain isn't conservative enough because he has the temerity to recognize that global warming is actually taking place and needs to be stopped. Or who, as the indispensable Spencer Ackerman shows in the Washington Independent, are using an organization called the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies to sponsor a spinoff called Defense of Democracies to lambaste Democrats for not supporting Bush on spying wiretaps. In other words, a neoconservative organization supposedly devoted to supporting democracy is subverting it in America itself.
These are the kinds of zany ideological excesses that Buckley ultimately recoiled at. He didn't try to edit reality. He lived in it. It's something that conservatives of whatever stripe might want to think about emulating before they charge off on another misbegotten crusade.
Jacob Heilbrunn, a senior editor at the National Interest, is the author of They Knew They Were Right: the Rise of the Neocons
William F. Buckley was born wealthy and never forgot his origins. He devoted his life to defending the tenuous position of the over privileged and up trodden. Buckley's deliberate speaking style and use of obscure vocabulary were a rhetorical asset; by the time listeners had worked out what he said he had moved on to a fresh topic. Buckley recanted some of his more extreme positions late in life, a convenient application of his Catholic faith. He died wealthy.
http://www.newslampoon.com/rest_in_peace.htm
My own case is illustrative. As an older American, I have voted over the years for many Republicans. I voted for Republicans for president, senator, congressman, and governor. I will continue to vote for the candidate who I think is best qualified to represent what I believe is best for me, my family, America, and the world. Today, at least on the national level, there is not one single Republican who I would choose to vote for over any of the Democrats who are running for office.
If I had to choose between Huckabee and McCain, I think I would choose Huckabee. He seems to be enough in touch with every day people that he does not think that perpetual warfare is a viable alternative to cooperative peace.
He's a nice cordial, squirrel-fryin' wacko, and all the more dangerous for his deceptive geniality.
As for Buckley, too few recall that he opposed voting rights legislation for Black Americans. A clever, charming bigot is still a bigot.
I support the Democrats now for the same reasons that Buckley railed against Bush and company. The new neocons and Christian Conservatives are NOT true conservatives - big government, intrusive policies, stupid spending.
Buckley hated Bush's politics and methods. He stood for real conservatism and he also believed in tolerance, something direly missing from Republican politics today.
20 years ago Buckley and others like him convinced me to vote for Reagan 2x.
It was the right choice then, and Reagan turned out to be a great president.
We need another leader with courage, conviction, and balls. It's been too long.
Buckley was brilliant, and a voice that America needed to hear, and still needs to hear.
Thank you Mr, Buckley for all of your honesty, reality and grace.
Rest in peace sir.
BTW, the person who said "everyone is a democrat until the grow up" (grammatically incorrect) is nothing but a partisan idiot.
For someone who's being revered for his decorous deportment and civility when debating, the collective memory is apparently too short to recall his debate with Gore Vidal which resulted in Buckley famously losing it and threatening to punch Vidal in his "goddam mouth" thereby showing the world that his frosty good manners were just part of a very thin facade that was finally shattered by an expert.
Good riddance to one who was disdainful of anyone who couldn't claim to be descended from one of the original "robber barons" and his disgraceful exploitation of undeveloped countries. We need fewer Buckleys!
Long before the democrats joined with the republicans in the late 70's to further demonize marijuana and create the drug czars office (fuck you very much Chip O. & Joe Biden) Buckley was illuminating the lies of our government and modern day prohibitionists!
Though he was deeply religious he rarely fell into the religious (or government) trap of non-critical thinking in favor of dogma & dictates!
When it came to our Rights, Liberties, and Freedoms he was a true patriot... he believed they were god given & like Lincoln didn't believe another man had the right to tread on them.
The mask is off, so I'll never be a conservative again unless it's to counterbalance a foolish excess of liberalism. I'm now and forever more a populist. Civiliization is about ensuring everyone can have a decent life. If you take away the law of the jungle then you have to make provisions for those who can only survive by the law of the jungle. If you run an economy that takes away jobs, you have to make provisions for those who can't find another.
After McCain is defeated in Nov (practically a given), I can hear Limbaugh, Coulter , and Hannity chastize him for not being conservative enough. They have an excuse all set to go, rather than looking at where they have taken the party.
The mainstream press seems determined to ignore the role cigars played in Buckley's emphysema and untimely death, a role Buckley bitterly bemoaned in a widely-circulated column he wrote just 3 months ago:
"Half a year ago my wife died, technically from an infection, but manifestly, at least in part, from a body weakened by 60 years of nonstop smoking. I stayed off the cigarettes but went to the idiocy of cigars inhaled, and suffer now from emphysema, which seems determined to outpace heart disease as a human killer.
"Stick me in a confessional and ask the question: Sir, if you had the authority, would you forbid smoking in America? You'd get a solemn and contrite, Yes."
--Buckley, William F. Jr., "My Smoking Confession" NY Sun, Dec. 3, 2007.
http://www.nysun.com/article/67349
Don't expect Rush to mention this; in fact, he (as well as Joe Lieberman) extols Buckley's cigar dinners.
I suggest nylaw 13 ask Buckley's family if anyone agrees that 82 years was enough. Buckley certainly didn't feel that way.
A man in Buckley's position had years left to have fun, to contribute to society and to be close to his family and grandchildren.
(I certainly disagreed with his contribution, but he was better than the neocons today--who seem to argue to nylaw13's high standards..)
I always did wonder though, how he came off calling his detractors "Elitists". He, his cultural milieu and his lifestyle were nothing if not elite. I'll have to read one of his novels one day. Suggestions, anyone?
May he RIP.