WFB: Another one for the Ages

Buckley's gone. And our world is a lonelier. He Stood Athwart History -Kathryn Lopez

Up From Liberalism

When liberalism was dominant but hidebound in the second half of the last century, he pioneered a new direction that transformed American politics.

William F. Buckley Jr.'s death severs the last remaining link between contemporary American conservatism and its founding generation.

In 1950, the literary critic Lionel Trilling could assert "the plain fact" that there were no conservative ideas "in general circulation." That confidence would be ground away. In 1951, Bill Buckley made his name with "God and Man at Yale," which critiqued his alma mater for its hostilities to capitalism and religion. Four years later, Buckley founded National Review. He was 29.

In its fecund early period in the 1950s and '60s, National Review helped introduce a modern conservatism into American political life. Buckley and his talented stable of editors and contributors gave coherence and shape to what he called "a fusion" of traditionalism, anti-Communist internationalism and free-market economics. Equally important, the magazine worked to discredit fringe elements like the John Birchers, the Jew-haters and the Lindbergh isolationists.

Taranto does him  justice here

Buckley started National Review, with an understated founding statement:

Let's face it: Unlike Vienna, it seems altogether possible that did National Review not exist, no one would have invented it. The launching of a conservative weekly journal of opinion in a country widely assumed to be a bastion of conservatism at first glance looks like a work of supererogation, rather like publishing a royalist weekly within the walls of Buckingham Palace. It is not that, of course; if National Review is superfluous, it is so for very different reasons: It stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.

National Review is out of place, in the sense that the United Nations and the League of Women Voters and the New York Times and Henry Steele Commager are in place. It is out of place because, in its maturity, literate America rejected conservatism in favor of radical social experimentation. Instead of covetously consolidating its premises, the United States seems tormented by its tradition of fixed postulates having to do with the meaning of existence, with the relationship of the state to the individual, of the individual to his neighbor, so clearly enunciated in the enabling documents of our Republic.

As NR's editors note in paying tribute to him today, Buckley's and his magazine's influence proved far-reaching:

If ever an institution were the lengthened shadow of one man, this publication is his. So we hope it will not be thought immodest for us to say that Buckley has had more of an impact on the political life of this country--and a better one--than some of our presidents. He created modern conservatism as an intellectual and then a political movement. He kept it from drifting into the fever swamps. And he gave it a wit, style, and intelligence that earned the respect and friendship even of his adversaries. (To know Buckley was to be reminded that certain people have a talent for friendship.)

We knew Buckley a bit and agree with that assessment. In a Commentary essay, also published today on WSJ.com, Buckley tells the story of how he worked with Sen. Barry Goldwater to marginalize the John Birch Society--a delicate matter for Goldwater, who told Buckley that "every other person in Phoenix is a member."

We need Buckley. No one fills those shoes.

Comments

[Adam Stanhope]

You are aware, Pamela, that he hated Ayn Rand, are you not?

[Anthony]

I don't think people really understand that Mr. Buckley's fight against modern liberalism ceased a long time ago.

I had to ask myself this morning when I heard the news of his death, what he has actually done in the last ten years that I've become all to aware of the Liberal juggernaut on the American political landscape. I can't even remember his presence at all, I'm sorry to say during all this time the left has all but took over almost half of this country. Immigration, gay marriage, open borders...., every major issue had a proponent of note on the left, promoting, forcing and gaining real territory, while Buckley and the conservative movement slept.

All I recall, is his sophisticated sounding voice, and his tendency to widen his eyes whilst making a point.

Then, I came across this post, which also states what I thought about Buckley:

http://www.amnation.com/vfr/archives/010017.html

William F. Buckley, who founded National Review in 1955 and played the key role in creating the modern conservative movement, and who handed the reins of National Review to the intellectually callow boy reporter Richard Lowry in 1997 and so destroyed National Review and much of the modern conservative movement with it, passed away this morning at age 82. Long before the disastrous hiring of Lowry, Buckley' had dropped the principled confrontation with the dominant liberal ideology and culture of our age ("standing athwart history yelling Stop") that he had announced as the mission of NR in its first issue, and instead accommodated himself to that culture. This accommodation was tragic, first, because modern liberalism is much more leftist and destructive than the 1950s liberalism that impelled Buckley to create NR, and, second, because it allowed conservatism to be invaded and colonized--not least at NR--by the conservative-leaning liberals called neocons. NR's change of direction, the silence of NR about it, and its at least partial takeover by neocons, have been profoundly damaging to the conservative movement. And this, alas, is as much a part of his legacy as the founding of NR.

Also, after taking the affirmative side of the question, "Should immigration be drastically reduced?", at a Firing Line debate in 1995, Buckley never said anything about the subject again. Then in 1997 he fired editor John O'Sullivan because of pressure from leading neocons over O'Sullivan's support for immigration restriction. Buckley thereby greatly weakened conservative opposition to the immigration disaster that spells the end of America as we know it. This was the worst example of Buckley accommodating himself to the opponents of true conservatism.

So excuse me if I decline to join the obligatory chorus of praise for the great man. Indeed, since Buckley's political writings for the last 25 years have consisted of an endless series of mostly totally unreadable, incoherent columns that, with rare exceptions, said absolutely nothing about anything, least of all about conservatism, a cause to which he had long since lost any commitment while he pursued liberal mainstream approval in his main career, which was that of a celebrity, and since during that time he kept receiving extravagant encomia from conservatives for his considerable achievements of 30 and 40 and 50 years ago, all of which ignored the fact that he had not only stopped representing the movement he had founded but had betrayed it, he doesn't need any plaudits from me. The man has basically been the recipient of a rolling memorial service for the last 20 years, even while he was alive. Now we'll be subjected to a solid month of it. American conservatism is not an intellectual and political movement aimed at recovering the damaged tradition of our civilization; it's a flattery factory. Just as Buckley is endlessly worshipped for standing for something that he long ago stopped standing for, the so-called conservative movement endlessly congratulates itself for being something that it long ago ceased being.

So it is up those who still believe in true conservatism, or, as I call it, traditionalism, who are not celebrity seekers but are devoted to certain eternal truths and to America as a unique and consummate expression of those truths, to take up the conservative calling that Buckley long ago dropped. Which is to understand liberalism as an all-encompassing belief system that dominates our age and has profoundly harmed our civilization, and to oppose it as such, even if that means being unpopular and out of step with the mainstream. And we can begin such resistance by resisting the follies of the conservatives themselves, including their tendency to groupie-like hero-worship.

[Francis W. Porretto]

William F. Buckley. Thinker. Author. Polemicist. Publisher. Conservative icon. Mentor to many, friend to still more. Husband and father.

William F. Buckley. Patriot. A soldier of freedom who manned civilization's ramparts with weapons purchased with his own money, and in some cases fabricated with his own hands.

We will not soon see his like. Rest in peace, Mr. Buckley.