William F. Buckley, R.I.P.: Rest In Peace, Praise, or is it Privilege?

When a man dies a frame is put around his life. We have the whole picture, the beginning, the middle and the end. The encomiums that followed Buckley's recent death were remarkable, tributes filled with praise from left and right for his engaging personality, his willingness to challenge liberal orthodoxies, his success as a conservative polemicist and as a light fiction writer, and as one of the founders of the modern conservative movement whose voice was best expressed in his National Review. Clearly, this was an exceptional man, a renaissance man who played the harpsichord, read widely, sailed boats, and appeared on Johnny Carson and PBS as he charmed the world. Today, the New York Times has yet another love song to Buckley sung by a charter member of the neo-con choir that brought us that other hit tune, "War, War, War in Iraq" by William Kristol; his tribute to Buckley entitled "The Indispensable Man."

Yes, Buckley was a man who helped change the course of his country's history through the force of his ideas, and the power of his will -- backed up by a fine education, an excellent, witty, mind, true charm, and a ton of old family money. His views helped usher in the years of conservative government, the deregulation of industry, and the redistribution of the nation's wealth so that the poor got poorer, the rich got richer, and life got a whole lot nastier for most Americans.

What was left out of the panegyrics was the fact that the man and his movement were invariably wrong; his views were often bordered on bigotry if not actually plunging into hatred; and his ideas brought us to where we are in 2008, trying to end a misbegotten and lost war, struggling to clean up the deregulated rubble and the economic hash that George W. Bush, the demented inheritor of the Buckley philosophy has made of this country.

While believing that he was on the side of God and his Angels, Buckley, more than any powerful man of his time did the Devil's work by cheering on those who eventually brought his country low, believing as he did so that his far right views were in the best interests of America, America being William F. Buckley and his precious, privileged world. I say this as both a progressive who has watched Buckley over the years with fascination as one watches a serpent (an image aided by the way his tongue would dart during a heated discussion), and as one who has lived long enough to see the consequences of the movement that Buckley started; consequences that will have a negative impact on the future of my grandchildren and the world, long after my life ends.

Just a few of the William F. Buckley top 100 hits. He began his career by railing against the liberal academic tradition in his famed "God and Man at Yale" calling for a fair representation of conservative views in that university, a polemic that managed to attack the core notion of academic freedom, sending college administrator's scurrying about to find some qualified right wing academics, no easy task.

He ardently defended Joseph McCarthy and the red baiters of the late '40s, '50s and '60s, helping to destroy the lives of many innocents caught in the crossfire, as well as helping to assault free speech. One can draw a line, albeit a wobbly one, between the McCarthy era with its crazy accusations of Communism against any who disagreed with him, and the composition of our Supreme Court today with its contempt for the rights of the individual, favoring those of government and unregulated industry.

More egregiously, Buckley ardently supported the segregated South during the Civil Rights movement; his was the wealthy Northerner's defense of the embattled white man in Selma, rather than becoming the ally to those who were fighting not just for their rights but for their very lives. Some of his statements during this period will not be quoted here out of respect for the dead, and the living.

In a debate with Gore Vidal in which the ever provocative Vidal called Buckley a "crypto-Nazi," Buckley replied, "Now listen, you queer. Stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I will sock you in your goddamned face." It has been my experience that people who use words like queer to describe others -- even in the heat of an argument -- more often than not pepper their private conversation with "kike" and "nigger." But I will give him a pass on that one, he was provoked to such nastiness, and the man was more often a study in cool. Let's go on, but I promise not too long. He threw his weight behind the candidacy of Joe Lieberman against the excellent Lowell Weicker in Connecticut -- adding to the near perfect record of his misjudgment. This is only a blog, not a book, but the rest is all out there for anyone who wishes to read beyond the glowing obituaries, and look closely at the man who helped to bring us the deregulation by government that has so messed up this country, and placed it in the hands of a few owners, not the people to whom it belongs.

Yes, Buckley was later to regret his position on Civil Rights. He was smart enough and fair enough to acknowledge his errors, in itself no small accomplishment given the enormous number of errors in judgment that he had made in the course of his long life. He was to look with distaste on his monster baby, George W. Bush, and his misbegotten war, and he was to find comfort in the company of men and women who did not share his radical conservative views. He was also to become the father of Chris, one of the wittiest writers of our time, no mean accomplishment, and both Buckley and his wife participated in important charity work that brought comfort to the suffering. But the obituaries do a disservice to Buckley, who deserves better; better being an honest account of his disastrous views as well as his political triumph in helping the far right come to power. Bill Buckley, rest in peace but please, not in deregulated praise or privilege.

Comments

[Karen Russell - Huffpost Blogger]

Mr. Yellen - Thank for your this informative and illuminating post! I love the "watching the serpent" observation. He was a powerful creep and a bigot who used his power to change the course of American history for the worse. I still am a fan of his son's writing though.

[madnana]

I was always saddened that a man as witty and intelligent as Buckley utilized such tortured logic to create excuses for oppression. I will not miss him. He could always be counted on to dismiss the concerns of anyone who had any progressive tendencies with his rapier-like tongue. I confess, however, I always enjoyed watching him joust with Gore Vidal. I really wanted to admire him. His intellectual dishonesty just would not permit it. I know nor care anything about the fate of others in the hereafter and I do hope he rests in peace. If there is an anthropormorphic God, I bet there are some interesting debates going on and that Bill is losing badly.

[shaggles]

Fortunately it's been a couple of decades since Buckley has had any direct influence. I don't think this posthumous apothiosis we're witnessing in all the obits will mean much to the average American.

[normathumb]

Buckley is proof that being clever and ploite isn't the same as being correct. All he did was to dress up the same small ideas espoused by the crackpot coalition of vulgar and rude stupid white trash, giving them a veneer of respecability. He thought he was conservatism. The chickens came home to roost and he found himself supplanted by the likes of Bill "Shuddup" O'Rielly, the bombastic Rush Limbaugh and the pinched mind of Sean Hannity. Yes, conservatism has come a long way. I hope he was discomforted by it. I hope he payed attention as Bush misunderestimated the language and the Constitution. I hope he cringed when Bush announced he had read "three Shakespeares". I hope he knew his responsibility in all this. Careful what you ask for, Bill, you just might get it.

[SamThornton]

Buckley was the Sultan of Snide, the Prince of the Pusillanimous, the Capo of the Crazed Obsession.

See also, http://tinyurl.com/2jocmo.

[madnana]

Wow! That's great! I think Buckley might even have appreciated the elegance of that insult. I know I do.

[oldpotsmuggler]

I can't remeber how old I was when I frist thought of Buckley "this guy sucks" but it was in the early sixties. And until his death he never got any better.

The knock on WFB (and George Will to a lesser extent) is that rednecks were so much easier to despise before he came along and gave them a kind of intellectual cover. The rank and file were clearly a bunch of stupid bigots, and then he started spewing the same things in 75 cent words and being a stupid bigot all of a sudden gained a certain legitimacy. The entire foundation of "modern conservatism" was clear garbage and was so before WFB, during the sixties, and into today, but his huge vocabulary intimidated most people into believing that there was something there that they were just not bright enough to quite understand. And of course there wasn't.

Buckley was ashamed to have conservatism represented by uncouth idiots like GWB, Limbaugh, Hannity, O'Reilly and their ilk because the things coming out of their mouths are just so inelegant. But what I'm not sure he ever understood is that they make conservatism sound so bad because that's just what it is. In the real world you can't give people an excuse for being mean and greedy and expect to have things come out well, and pandering to what's base in humanity is reaping exactly the harvest that I, as an unsophisticated teenager, feared.

[jmpurser]

A man born to outstanding privileged with undeniable gifts who spent both in life long service to the ideal of making things better for the poor little rich boys.

[desmirl]

He was America's prototype CHICKENHAWK, a man who finished college just in time for the war in Korea--but managed not to get involved. When Vietnam came along, Buckley heaped scorn on those who opposed the war, never mentioning that he had been TOO YELLOW to fight in Korea. Buckley had no honor, no REAL sense of patriotism, only ill-conceived bombast against those who disagreed with his Neanderthal views.