Bill Buckley's Conservatism
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
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I can respect traditional, small government conservatives like Bill Buckley. His theory of government is fundamentally sound, although, as Keith Olbermann points out he made many mishaps such as advising that America should not have gotten involved in WWII. What I can not understand is these nutty neoconservatives, who want to spread democracy and have no respect for democracy. They want to spread it through wars which is a flawed construct to begin with. Then they champion democracy, while championing wiretapping, torture, non-accountability of government, no checks and balances, etc. They insist they are right because they believe they are right. Everyone else is a cynic or some foolishness. The whole movement is unAmerican and a cancerous sore on democratic principles.
Very well stated. Buckley may have been wrong on some big points, but he "evolved' to the point where he was more in lines with Democrats on personal liberties, the Iraq War, fiscal responsibility, and many other issues.
Other conservatives have come around to Democratic thinking on many issues. Cherishing our civil liberties and a non-belligerent foreign policy is a libertarian ideal as well, exemplified by Ron Paul. Even Pat Buchanon, of illegal immigrant fear and loathing fame, disagreed with the rationale for the war in Iraq and probablty would admit Bush's tax policies have created a fiscal crisis. John Dean has come around because he argues conservatives are basically authoritarians who have contempt for government procsses and a bipartisan spirit. At this point, I wonder why there are any conservatives at all remaining, given Bush's eight years of undemocratic misrule.
I can't speak to his "evolution," as I hadn't followed him in the last few years. I do recall, as is mentioned in Paul Krugman's latest book, that Buckley approved of Bull Connor's use of force, and even advocated deadly force against civil rights protesters in the Sixties. I wonder if he "evolved" on that after the 1st Parachute Regiment of the British Army slaughtered 14 Catholic civil rights protesters on the streets of Derry, in the North of Ireland, on Jan 30, 1972.
Perhaps not. He might have been an English descended Catholic, I don't know. In any case, it's a bit of a contradiction, I think, to have an attachment to heirarchical authority and an overarching respect for the individual.
He was also a snob, and hated the GI Bill because it gave people who weren't from the "right sort", but had the right stuff, the means to go to Yale.
MHainds. May I ask what you are drinking today. He was never in line with the democrats - not even close.
Keith Olbermann also claimed that Buckley advocated tattooing AIDS patients (then what, send them to concentration camps?), supported McCarthyism (hmm... witch hunts), and wanted to restrict democracy in this country by disenfranchising the uneducated (i.e. the poor).
If that's all true, it makes it a lot harder to pay respect to the man.
Yes, that it is true. All who jumped on that initial climate of fear surrounding the AIDS epidemic seemed to do so with a punitive spirit. I do not respect that at all and also was disgusted by McCarthyism and its apologists, including Buckley and Ann Coulter. Of course, not giving the uneducated a vote sounds like a different variation of the Republicans "southern strategy" to disenfranchise many black voters. I have heard Tucker Carlson make a similar reprehensible argument.
Anyway, I did not remember these specific things about Buckley until you reminded me. I guess what I was saying is that I can respect someone with a cohesive theory about small government conservatism, especially when it is contrasted with this nutty neocon, kool aide drinking logic that Bush and others have bought into. The neocon ideas are disastrous on the world stage and placing us in danger. Also, for what it is worth, Buckley's debate style was not to yell and cut people off which, in itself, is refreshing today.
Aforesti - it is all true and that is just a small portion of the hate he had for others. I am so sick of all of these posts here glorifying a man who was less than great and more detestible than anything. Just because he spoke well didn't mean he was nice and how quickly everyone seems to have forgotten.
I wonder how Buckley could stomach the garbage done as "conservative" rule. Couldn't have made the end of his life very easy.
Conservatives have shown that in their contempt of government they can not rule. Even our word choice indicates their failings, as we prefer usage of the term "rule" and not "govern." They have shown their fiscal policies are a timebomb waiting to explode, their foreign policies ceate unnecessary wars, they have no respect for checks and balances, an independent judiciary, a free press, or legislative processes. They have a "my way or the highway" approach in every aspect of government and in regard to friend and foe alike. What has kept them alive at all is their ability to smear opponents and alter the outcome of elections.
Karl Rove is enblematic of the modern conservative movement and not a thinker and advocate of fair play like William Buckley. Bush is hopefully the straw that broke the back of the camel of the American electorate. Hopefully, voters are finally starting to turn away from Republicans in droves. They may be relegated to a small Southern, minority party more interested in raising bigotry as an issue than any real issue. It seems even their evangelical base may finally one day leave their camp, as it spreads out into other issues of social justice besides their traditional focus on anti-abortion and hatred of gays.
Thus, Bush is a uniter and not a divider. He has united us in the Democratic camp.. Rove has realized his dream of one party rule, but in this case it is Democratic rule. Good riddens to them!
As today's Republicans increasingly ignored Buckley, they threw the true Conservatives overboard. Anyone, for that matter, who actually believed rhetoric should be tied to reality became "persona non grata." That's what initiated the process of my becoming a Democrat.
Of course Buckly was opposed to the Neocon agenda.
Buckly was a Conservative: Small government, personal freedoms, bill of rights; all that good stuff.
Anyone who thinks that Bushco and Party are conservatives either don’t understand the term or have been drinking the koolaid.
What a shame that McCain has become the new Neocon heir apparent instead of running on what used to be his core beliefs.
He could have finally taken the Party back to its' conservative roots instead of parroting the Whitehouse spin.
He was trying to make sure he doesn't go to hell. Maybe one his dead relatives visited.
Thank you for making that distinction. There is a big different between traditional conservatives and the neocons. I was not a huge fan of Buckley, but I do recognize an intellectual when I see one. R.I.P.
RHM www.thecandidacy.com
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