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TechnoratiWilliam F. Buckley was a smart man, that's for sure.
He could throw around more ten dollar words than his beloved Catholic church has sinners (even excluding the priesthood). He knew all the right places to ski and the proper wines to drink while listening to this concerto or appreciating that symphony. A product of privilege right down to the French boarding schools he attended, Buckley was as sophisticated, erudite and insightful as they come.
Except on the subject of politics, that is - which just happened to be his life's great work.
And aren't we lucky for it?
Buckley is often credited with being the father of the modern conservatism (pardon the oxymoron) in America. It is said that before he founded the National Review in 1955, there essentially was no such movement in the country. It is said (no less than by Reagan himself), that the line is drawn directly from Buckley to Goldwater to Reagan. (For some completely inexplicable reason, conservatives usually leave off Gingrich and Bush the Younger from that genealogy.)
Buckley was an astute observer of the human condition, despite keeping, shall we say, a certain polite distance from most of the poor humans who happen to find themselves stuck in that sometimes challenging condition. He was once asked by NPR's Terry Gross whether being raised in European boarding schools and being a member of Yale's notoriously elitist Skull and Bones Society hadn't left Buckley a trifle, um, out of touch with real people (the hoi polloi, that is, as they're referred to at the Club)? Au contraire!, he skillfully parried. Buckley did a lot of reading and therefore understood people quite well!
So well, indeed, that he came out in support of segregation during the era when the civil rights movement was the most important, the most consuming, political question of the day. So who do you think history will judge to have gotten this question right, eh? - Martin Luther King or Bill Buckley? One could say that Buckley's position was just about the most spectacular example ever recorded of the missing of a historical train. There was Ol' Bill (who actually didn't even have the excuse then of being old), standing on the (whites only) platform, watching the Morality Express go whooshing by.
But then, wasn't missing just such trains precisely the point of conservatism?
Buckley certainly thought so. In the essay with which he launched the National Review, he committed it and the conservative movement to the project of "stand[ing] athwart history, yelling Stop".
Yep, that's actually a bona fide quote from the man himself. If that sounds a bit anachronistic as the grand rallying cry for a modern political movement, you're - ahem - still not getting it, I'm afraid. The thwarting and reversal of progress is precisely the point of conservatism.
After all, progress is scary. Progress is difficult. Progress is messy. And progress means having to share.
So Buckley launched a movement to yell "Stop!", and they all did, and they were grandly successful, as a matter of fact. For three decades now conservatives have ruled America and stopped progressive change in its tracks. Moreover, they have worked assiduously to undo those achievements that so many of us took for granted as the very markers of civilization itself.
Sometimes they have only wanted to unravel history a couple of decades worth, as when they oppose civil rights, women's rights or environmentalism. Sometimes it is more on the order of a century, as when the seek to dismantle social safety net programs like Social Security and Medicare. Sometimes their handiwork goes back several centuries, as when they find First Amendment ideas such as separation of church and state to be troublesome, or when they object to that whole pesky checks-and-balances thing. But sometimes it is the work of an entire millennium they wish to unravel, as they rip up the inconvenient notions of democracy itself, expressed as far back as Magna Carta.
So, how 'bout it folks? Anybody here excited to return our society to the gleaming days of the twelfth century? Watch where you step in the street! I mean, um, the latrine. Well, what's the difference, anyhow? And monarchy is really not so bad after all, you know - once you get used to it. It only has a bad name because it gets treated so unfairly by the liberal press. You know, like George W. Bush.
So let's do it, huh?! Back we go!
All you nice Negroes out there, I'm afraid we're going to need to ask you to use that other drinking fountain from now on. Sorry about that. Careful with your chains too, if you would please. And ladies, I think you remember your proper position in conservative society, do you not? That's right. Take off your shoes - you won't be needing them anymore. Now assume the position. Careers? Oh, that's a laugh. Political equality? Such a comedian! Family planning? How's your rhythm?
We won't be bothering with environmental stewardship anymore, either. (Or, more accurately, I should say we won't be bothering with pretending to bother with environmental stewardship anymore.) When your grandkids ask why it seems so awfully toasty on Spaceship Earth these days, just tell 'em Bill Buckley sent you. But be sure to be nice to them, since you'll be hitting them up, cap-in-hand, every week, the demons of Social Security and Medicare having finally been vanquished by heroic conservatives. That begging thing you'll be getting good at in your twilight years is what nice right-wingers like to call 'self-reliance'. Bully for you - you're finally off the government dole!
Such changes might have been hard to get through Congress, but that's only if one existed, of course! But - the present farce notwithstanding - having a Congress would mean having democracy, which conservatives never supported at the time it was being born. Just like they never supported American independence from the British Empire, the abolitionist movement against slavery, the social safety net, civil rights, women's rights, gay rights or environmentalism - at least until decades later, when it was safe (and supererogatory, as Buckley might say), if they did all. Anyhow, governing is so much easier now that the unitary executive idea has migrated from slogan to metaphor to rationale to monarchy.
And hasn't it all just turned out dandy? See how thrilled Americans are with their conservative movement! See how record-breaking are the levels of support for King George! See how they rally behind his nice war in god's name! See how all the king's policies and all the king's men command the loyalty of his subjects! See the people in this election season filling the streets and ardently clamoring for "Stasis Now!" - the very words boldly printed upon their placards! See them reviling the notion of change at every juncture! See them at campaign rallies, desperately seeking to stand athwart history, heroically trying to shout out "Stop!", valiantly attempting to build a bridge to yesterday!
Yep, William F. Buckley was a smart man alright. One can't help but think that he saw the handwriting on the wall, block letters growing every day more boldly vivid and fluorescently bright such that they have now taken over and indeed become the wall.
Conservatism has ruled America for three decades now, and never more than in the last seven years. Backward, deceitful, polarizing, warlike, arrogant, racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, destructive, intolerant, ignorant, lethal and incompetent - it's just plain ugly, isn't it? Ergo - as you might have said, Bill - Americans have awakened sufficiently from their Buckley-induced stupor to now join the rest of the world in embracing this ideology about as much as they might welcome a whopping good case of leprosy. And with roughly the same results if they did.
Eighty-two years old, one can't help but think that smart Bill Buckley got out while the getting was good, just months before the election that would seal forever the fate of his destructive little life's project.
They say he died at his desk, about to write another essay. Maybe it was entitled "The Achievements of My Life As A Conservative". And maybe it was sitting there staring at that very, very blank page that killed him.
David Michael Green is a professor of political science at Hofstra University in New York. He is delighted to receive readers' reactions to his articles (dmg@regressiveantidote.net), but regrets that time constraints do not always allow him to respond. More of his work can be found at his website, www.regressiveantidote.net.
27 Comments so far
Show AllAt least Buckley had the good sense to call Gore Vidal a "queer" and suggest he go back to looking at gay pornography instead of calling every conservative a Nazi fascist. I liked the man. He at least elevated conversation when he spoke or when he wrote. I will miss him.
DMG writes:
"conservatives [ ... ] never supported American independence from the British Empire,"
That may have been the only one they were ever right about.
elkitz writes:
"It's too bad we had to wait 'til he was dead to have this discussion…"
Or conversely, that we had to wait this long 'til he was dead. Either way, you are correct. It's too bad.
Buckley may have been who J.K. Galbraith had in mind when he said:
"The modern conservative is engaged in one of man's oldest exercises in moral philosophy; that is, the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness."
One area where he was correct was in the "War on drugs".
Prof. Green does fail to point all the "successes" of conservatism - dismantling of social programs and resurgent imperialism. But after 3 decades, we can now evaluate their result, and compare/contrast the US to industrial countries which resisted this neo-oligharchism. If we do, we will find that it is time to start calling these programs at every opportunity, the "failed agenda of the conservatives", just as Mccain, yesterday evening repeated the conservative mantra of "the failed programs of the 1960's".
Of course, there was nothing "failed" about the programs of the 1960 - poverty was declining, good-wage jobs were plentiful, and, for a couple years anyway, the US was chastized by Vietnam had greatly reduced it's meddling in other nations affairs, and consequently, there was an era or relative peace.
But, unfortunately, we won't be hearing phrase "the failed policies of Reagan-Bush (and Clinton)" from our Democrat politicians anytime soon; Obama called the 1960's a time of "excesses" - conceding the fight to the conservatives from the start!
And, until they do, with few exceptions - Kucinich in Cleveland, Mike Doyle here in Pittsburgh, I won't be putting my support behind a Democrat.
Dress a pig in fine clothes, and sent him to the best schools, and you still get a pig--albeit a well-dressed and educated one.
Another fine essay by DMG! Good riddance, Bill! Conservatism has been a sham wrapped in regressive ideas, the antithesis of conservation, driven by recklessness and reactionary ideas and military bankruptcy.
Let's all go to YouTube and watch Bill vs. Gore Vidal and Bill vs. Noam chomsky! The good lefties are having the last laugh on the aroogant corpse of that sniveling, uppity, interrupting, Buckley and all his pseudo-conservatism.
He was a fascist pig
We are better off as humans
without him.
Buckley laid out the right-wing's path in his first book, which attacked higher education, which had just begun opening to the hoi polloi. Because his professors were not reactionary, Buckley thought them radical & revolutionary. The destruction of the American educational system, under the guise of "traditional educaiton", followed the old Jesuit maxim on education.
Buckley was for ever-increasing military budgets. He not only was for the invasion of Vietnam by U.S. forces, he was in favor of dropping nuclear weapons on the north.
He was for the maintenance of colonial rule in Africa, and considered the subsequent history of de-colonized Africa proof that he was right, that the dark people needed the continued governance of the lighter-skinned ones.
He was for Franco, Marcos, for El Salvadoran and Honduran death squads, whom he equated with 'freedom fighters'.
He was for his Church when it meant being virulently anti-communist. He was wholly against it when it meant opposing war, especially nuclear weapons, and when the hierarchy called for the wealthy nations to share their wealth with the nations they had historically exploited. He had one child, because like so many, he & his wife practiced the birth control that publically he deplored as part of the sexual revolution.
I began reading Buckley in 1978, and read every back issue of the magazine from its inception, and every new issue until 1993.
Buckley's problem was that he could only be an enfant terrible -- even an aging one -- by being on the right & by posing as a white knight in the great historical struggle.
Very informative discussion by David M Green on what Buckley really did for this country, or rather against this country. His arrogant attitude helped set the stage for the last seven years of destruction, and others, such as Goldwater and Reagan were also instrumental in developing the great "conservative religion" that put us where we are now. Real conservatives believe in saving and taking care of what we have, not destroying everything for the benefit os a few.
It's too bad we had to wait 'til he was dead to have this discussion...
I've been waiting for this article. Buckley stood out with his erudite voice and twinkly blue eyes. Several readers have also nailed this "fellow" well. I remember the cruel, heartless policies he extolled.
Any Government, social movement, or whatever will only lead to the downfall of a nation or people if it does not serve the interests of that group as a whole, which is presently being proved in America. So-called conservatism, as one poster has pointed out really amounts to social and economic Darwinism. It is not really survival of the 'fittest,' but the most ruthless and vicious, and ultimately leads to violence, social unrest, and often war. For anyone willing to look, history has proved this over and over.
He did admit, during that interview with Terri Gross, that he felt he never lived up to his father's standards or to his own potential. He allowed his intellect to get bogged down in prejudices and elitism.
But there's no law against that and, without people taking him seriously, he couldn't have achieved what he did.
He was a rich-kid de clase political Hugh Hefner. Sired by Edmund Burke out of a gender slave with excellent 'breeding'. He was a tribute to his class. Empty and merciless Brahmin ideas of wealth and privilege expressed in lugubrious and portentious phrases wrapped like pigs in a blanket with latin, french, and german. Cultured swine is still pig. Gore Vidal called him a Fascist in 1968 at the DNC and I tend to agree. Pity Bill didn't live long enough to have his head cut off like the rest of his cousins.
As a small correction. "Buckley is often credited with being the father of the modern conservatism (pardon the oxymoron) in America. It is said that before he founded the National Review in 1955, there essentially was no such movement in the country."
The sources of Mr. Buckley's support have included our Ruling Caste since before he was born. What they required was a pretentious voice for their razor teeth social darwinist values, someone a little more public than Leo Strauss. BY the mid-60's they had nearly lost America and they were becoming moribund as a class thank you very much - The Roosevelt Legacy - that placed the richfilth ANIMALS on a leash for 35 years. Produced the greatest distribution of wealth ever seen in the history of the human species. And the richfilth organized the "Take Back America" program.
Richfilth are snarling rabid animals and FINALLY after far too long, America appears to be waking up, maybe a little. Regrettably the seed corn has already been stolen by the snarling rabid animals - BECAUSE AMERICA WANTED TO BE THEM and they don't share.
America never minded Slavery as long as somebody else got to be the slave. And frankly, White Aryan Male Supremacy - intimately tied to human slavery and gender slavery - has always had a strong connection to the core American Master/Slave Plantation Society. Oh yeah, its all in there, and its ugly all the way down.
Vote early, vote often, they never count'em the first time.
Pieces of 8.
I agree strongly with johnston296 at March 4th, 2008 1:43 p.m. "We can do better than this." The piece is not worthy of David Michael Green, whom I think of as an astute, cogent thinker and writer who speaks with convincing clarity and specificity. Pieces like this are at best amusement for the already convinced; they will certainly not persuade anyone who supports any of the positions that Green attacks. There's too much work to be done to waste talent like Green's on amusing the convinced. I do quibble with johnstone296 on one point -- Edmund Spenser's Faerie Queene deserves, in my view, its reputation as a great work of poetry.
My first choice for president was Kucinich, but I would enthusiastically vote for Buckley over any of the three current candidates.
Thank you yet again DMG. For me, Buckley is and always was the classic example of the Educated Fool. I always thought this since I first saw him on 'Firing Line' on Public TV in the 60's. At that time, I thought he was merely a kook. Little did I know what was to come - the kooks actually running My Government. Thanks for making it simple, DMG - broad brush though you were.
take two authentic geniuses, bill buckley and lenny bruce, and compare them to their direct descendants, bill o'reilly and andrew dice clay. in both cases, within one generation we've thrown out the transformative content and kept the vitriolic packaging. we seem to spiral from woodstock down to altamont no matter what we try.
As a kid, I used to think that William F. Buckley, with his rolling eyes, anteater tongue and multi-syllabic vocabulary was a comedian just as a lot of people today think that Rush Limbaugh is a comedian or at least an entertainer. :)
"standing athwart history, yelling Stop".
for a "smart" man, Buckly was astoundingly stupid. How does one stop "history"?
Wasn't he the basis for the character "Thurston Howell the Third" from Gilligans Island?
Unfortunately if the Cons (con, as in against) are successful, they WILL stop any more history from occuring. Not much history occurs on a burned out shell of a planet.
Hopefully, they are more likely standing athwart the railway tracks of history, yelling stop, then getting run over by the train of progress.
Good riddance to an arrogant, elitist, pretentious, overly-entitled, self indulgent over-aged fratboy. I wonder if the worms will be able to discern the rancid flavour of his regressive convictions?
"It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God" (Mark 10:25).
rot in hell, Buckley
Although, like many conservatives, Buckley rejected the new conservatives, the reality is that he was rejecting the consequences of his own actions and ideas. To research what passes for "intellectual" in movement circles is a ride in a spooky conspiracy funhouse where ideas pop up and shriek and then pass away as the next bogus goblin hops out.
The whole term "conservativism" bugs the shit out of me... we should call it by what it really is... "corporatism"
Frankly, this is off-putting. Can't we focus on the facts (those that don't get reported). This type of rhetoric is never going to convince those who espouse Buckley-ite views--it will only drive them away. To wit, "He could throw around more ten dollar words than his beloved Catholic church has sinners (even excluding the priesthood)." Or, "Buckley was an astute observer of the human condition, despite keeping, shall we say, a certain polite distance from most of the poor humans who happen to find themselves stuck in that sometimes challenging condition."
How about keeping our political commentaries focused on the facts that can win folks to our side: Bush's flagrant violations of the Constitution with "signing statements"; reports from Gitmo that don't get much press attention; Israel's withholding of water from the Palestinians; we know the whole litany of issues--as we see them discussed on this site--but most people don't. But most people read a screed like this and turn off their critical faculties--"just another crazed leftie."
We can do better than this. Buckley was so wrong on so many issues. But this piece reminds me of reading Edmund Spenser's _Faerie Queene_, a piece of propaganda celebrating Elizabeth I. It slams the Catholic Church, but ultimately serves only to affirm the already-convinced.
Well said...well, in a way. You rightfully skewer the horrendous spin-offs of political conservatism. Thank you.
However, the world has a right to specifics. Do you have a fairly comprehensive list of the actual specific issues on which Buckley hung his hat? It would be interesting to see which specific conservative lines he espoused, besides the anti civil rights stance in the 50's and 60's.
Also, does he deserve a broad brush smack for all of conservativism's negatives?
Thanks for brushing aside the fond reminiscences of erudite yet good ol' just plain Bill Buckley and pulling aside the bedcurtains to reveal conservatism in all its elitist, power-entrenched, old world vainglory. No valid argument for conservatism exists, no matter how well-phrased; conservatism is just plain wrong. Let's hope the American voter finally gets the idea.
"He could throw around more ten dollar words than his beloved Catholic church has sinners (even excluding the priesthood)."
_________________________________________
Shouldn't that read "even including the priesthood"?
What a tender moment in hell when Bill Buckley is reunited with Franco, Reagan, the South American death squads and all the others who have savaged the human race in the name of "traditional values."