How William F. Buckley rescued me from lefty Bellingham
Through the pages of National Review one spring morning at Western Washington University, he brought me out of the darkness of liberal mush and into the light of conservative freedom.
Every modern American conservative - neo-con, paleo-con, whatever-con - is philosophically rooted in William F. Buckley Jr. and National Review, the journal of political thought he founded, such that our hearts are draped in black at the report of his passing at 82.
"All great biblical stories begin with Genesis," George Will wrote in National Review in 1980. "And before there was Ronald Reagan, there was Barry Goldwater, and before there was Barry Goldwater there was National Review, and before there was National Review there was Bill Buckley with a spark in his mind, and the spark in 1980 has become a conflagration."
Perhaps second only to the Bible in the life of this conservative, NR brought me to where I am today. As a baby boomer undergraduate at Western Washington State College in Bellingham (now pompously Western Washington University) in the late 1960s and early 1970s, I had answers to questions nobody bothered to ask. Filled with the hubris of youth and a burning sensation that came from a draft card tucked inside my wallet, I was as much "Hell no, we won't go" as anyone. Until, that is, I grew up and began reading National Review.
Moments of epiphany are remembered as if they were yesterday, so it's not surprising that at the instant I read of Bill Buckley's death, there I was again, a long-haired undergraduate wearing a white turtleneck and bellbottom jeans walking across the Western campus from the bookstore to Old Main reading my first-ever, just-purchased National Review and realizing that what I was reading reflected my thinking.
But in Bellingham? That could be dangerous. Western was second only to the University of Washington in radical chic. Being just minutes away from the Canadian border, it was nothing for Vancouver-based, Dennis Hopper look-alike (think Easy Rider) draft dodgers to slip back into the U.S. to preach to ant-Vietnam War demonstrators amassed before Bellingham's federal building.
It was de rigueur in those days to hate "The Man," support the Panthers, make love not war, smoke whatever (we didn't call it "Happy Valley" for nothing), and party at 1000 Indian Street for days on end. Western was rated by Playboy as the No. 2 party school in the U.S., second only to Iowa's long-since-defunct Parsons College. Those politics and that reputation drew me there, and I did my level best to live down to them.
But somewhere along the way, I fell under the tutelage of professors Gerard Rutan and Dick S. Payne in Western's political science department, and they introduced me to deeper obligations, which eventually led me to that fateful day to buy my first National Review. Since then, whether I've been a subscriber or not, NR and Bill Buckley have been a part of my life.
Starting with his seminal God and Man at Yale, a 1951 expose of liberal ideology at his alma mater, and followed by 1955's first edition of National Review, then the debate-format PBS program Firing Line, Bill Buckley brought classical conservative thought out of walnut-paneled men's clubs and bank board rooms to political respectability and influence, if not mainstream popularity. (That came with Ronald Reagan and Rush Limbaugh.) Before Marlon Brando, Bill Buckley was the Godfather.
An Ivy League classicist and traditional Roman Catholic, Buckley founded National Review to articulate the principle that "A Conservative is a fellow who is standing athwart history yelling 'Stop!'" Modernity for its own sake wasn't progress, it was excess, and atheistic communism was irreconcilable and anathema to both traditional American values and his deep faith.
Firing Line ran on PBS for more 1,500 episodes from 1966 to 1999. Befitting the harpsichordist he was, each episode was introduced with Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 2. The true conservative sees a natural order to the universe, and in Bach's contrapuntal composition, Buckley saw that order musically expressed.
The program was a debater's dream. Political glitterati of the day would joust with him, knowing that whenever he tossed his head back and touched his pen to his lower lip, they were toast. Like a rapier, his tongue shot out to surgically dismember whatever liberal foolishness faced him that day. His unique style made such a cultural impression that the Walt Disney animated film Aladdin features comic genius Robin Williams imitating him.
Bill Buckley's beliefs melded his faith, the libertarian economic principles of Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, and an abiding belief in American liberty and freedom. Even so, he could be a contrarian when his principles dictated, as he was on America's Iraq War effort and the overall administration of President George W. Bush. But Buckley never criticized with an eye toward defeat; he simply thought America could and should be better served.
Through the pages of National Review one spring morning in Bellingham, Bill Buckley brought me out of the darkness of big-government, weak-national-defense liberal mush and into the light of conservative freedom. Not that I became just a Republican, mind you, since the dominant Dan Evans wing of the Republican Party - more liberal than some Democrats – in Washington state was even then in constant conflict with the nascent conservative movement articulated by Buckley and personified by a rising star and our political patron saint, Ronald Reagan. Even today, vestiges of that tension can be found in Washington GOP politics. Ours is a big tent, but the main entrance can be found on the right.
Comments:
Posted Thu, Feb 28, 8:33 a.m. inappropriate
Give me a break.: Just as John the Baptist prepared the way for the Messiah, so Bill Buckley prepared the way for Ronald Reagan; without the one, there wouldn't have been the other.
Somebody needs to invent a version of Godwin's Law that makes void any argument in any essay/blog post/message board diatribe that compares politicians to religious heroes.
Tell me, please, that you have the intellect and imagination to have written something about Buckley that didn't compare him to Jesus' predecessor and that this was a flagrant and desperate plea for attention.
Posted Thu, Feb 28, 8:49 a.m. inappropriate
Buckley: Perhaps interestingly, I arrived at Western in the early '80s as a Reagan Republican who had no real memory of Vietnam but who had a copy of William F. Buckley's Up From Liberalism in my back pocket. Gotta tell you, that didn't play well at Fairhaven College.
As I've grown older, I've increasingly veered to the left and become more and more disenchanted with the politics of shouting down others, which comes from both sides of the aisle.
This country could use a lot more folks like Bill Buckley. I don't mean his political bent, but rather people who prefer honest, intellectual and witty debate vs. yelling and ranting.
Posted Thu, Feb 28, 9:06 a.m. inappropriate
http://youtube.com/watch?v=-AzjZrtqCIw&feature;=related
Posted Thu, Feb 28, 9:26 a.m. inappropriate
In the End His Legacy Was Lost: Buckley dying of emphysema is a metaphor for the choking death we are witnessing of the conservative movement he started.
Poor man lived too long. He lived to see the conservative movement he started taken over by the Limbaughs, Coulters and religious whackos, assorted haters and bigots, the George Allens, Malkins and Dobsons. That must have been difficult for him.
Posted Thu, Feb 28, 9:56 a.m. inappropriate
More than a conservative, an anti-collectivist: As a libertarian by nature, I found Buckley's religious attitudes maddeningly un-intellectual (Ayn Rand once complained to him "You are too intelligent to believe in God!"), but it was so wonderfully refreshing to hear someone who could make cogent arguments, as well as engage in lively banter, abandon the liberal conceit that leftward is forever forward. As I suspected, it is exactly the bible-thumping segment of the conservative movement that is threatening its destruction. Buckley couldn't bring himself to face this in his later years, and that's too bad. The basis of conservative as well as libertarian philosophy is personal freedom coupled with personal responsibility. By substituting personal freedom with unenlightened adherence to scripture, and personal responsibility with biblical dictates, many of the religious right are becoming what they beheld in the atheistic left: Non-questioning dispensers of dogma. Buckley may come to be revered more by libertarians than conservatives in the near future. Then the Conservative movement will be ready for another Buckley to lead them out of the darkness. I give it a generation.
Posted Thu, Feb 28, 10:34 a.m. inappropriate
RE: In the End His Legacy Was Lost: Clueless in Seattle
Posted Thu, Feb 28, 11 a.m. inappropriate
RE: In the End His Legacy Was Lost: Name-calling, the hallmark of the modern conservative.
Posted Thu, Feb 28, 11:10 a.m. inappropriate
Beware the legends: Western was rated by Playboy as the No. 2 party school in the U.S., second only to Iowa's long-since-defunct Parsons College.
I know this isn't what the article is about, but I just can't stand misinfo, especially after you oddly critique Western as "pompous" for their name change (and I did get my MA there, so I'm a bit protective as well).
The fact is, Playboy publishes no such annual list. They have only twice compiled a list of Top 20 Party School, in 1987 and 2002, and WWU made neither list. This is an oft-passed-around urban legend - check out snopes.com.
Just gives me an excuse to tune out a Buckley-ite.
Posted Thu, Feb 28, 11:47 a.m. inappropriate
Name calling: As with every other misdeed, name-calling is not the exclusive province of the left, right or center. But it always amuses me that the "You're too smart to believe in God crowd" gets so intensely outraged at peope who don't share their very narrow and misguided point of view. In casting such aspersions as "As I suspected, it is exactly the bible-thumping segment of the conservative movement that is threatening its destruction," are you also indicting the "bible-thumping" people from Barack Obama to Hillary Clinton to JFK to the millions of people in all walks of life who believe in God and Christ resurrected? Or are people like Barack and Hillary just adopting their religion as part of an appeal to as many people as possible, and if so, what does that say about them?
And if really "God is dead" as Time magazine once so famously declared, why are there thousands upon thousands of scientists who not only believe in the divine but continue to find evidence, beyond all doubt, that we are not mere accidents of nature? For example, how can you reconcile the fact that scientists ackowledge there is no code known to anyone anywhere that was created by "accident", with the existence of the genetic code?
I too attended Western in the early 70s and went through a transformation, though it took me much longer, and I think Chruchill had it right, "If you're not a liberal at 21 you have no heart, and if you're not a consevative at 50 you have no brain."
Posted Thu, Feb 28, 12:35 p.m. inappropriate
RE: Name calling: Religion is a matter of faith. Government is not. Government does not flow from religion any more than architecture flows from poetry. I always hesitate to call myself an atheist because most people that do so are assertively anti-religious, and I am not. I don't think a manger scene in the town square hurts me one bit - unless I'm told my taxes have to pay for it along with a whole host of other wasteful government programs. The strength of the Conservative movement that Buckley helped found was that it was based on the proposition that a calm analysis of problems, not an emotional hope for a utopian outcome, would yield the best methods for addressing that problem. That's not religion. Buckley, a devout Catholic, didn't vote for Kennedy. Today, McCain is excoriated by the religious right for not being in lock step with the fundamentalist crowd. What is it about religious conservatism that so often shuns the least worst alternative in favor of a utopian impossibility? This isn't the "big tent" Republican party that people like Buckley, Goldwater and Reagan fostered. In this case, rightward hasn't always been forward, because like the left, it assumes that conservatism can survive without a philosophical underpinning forever tested by rational, intellectual inquiry into what the best solutions are.
Posted Thu, Feb 28, 2:09 p.m. inappropriate
name calling cont.: Breneman: There is no "lock step" among the so-called "religious right" or "fundamentalist crowd" any more than there is among liberals or "progressives."
One thing William F. Buckley and many others including our current Presidential candiates have shown is that words matter, so when I read someone who "hesitates to call (himself) an atheist" and then excoriates "the right" (and the right only) for demanding "lock step (Hitlerian, Stalinist, etc,)" adherence to certain principles, it reminds me of the line Jim McDermott used to love to quote so much "if it walks like a duck...(etc.)." Your bigotry betrays itself.
But since its against people who, among other things, try to aspire a moral code, it's okay by your and others' standards. Just like so many who paint themselves as so accepting, so expansive in their view of "live and let live," yet are so quick to badmouth anyone of the (gasp!) Christian faith who believes that there really is right and wrong, good and evil in this world.
And if you want rational, intellectual inquiry, ask a mathematician to calculate the statisitical probability that everything in and around you, from the incredible workings and design of every cell, proton, organ and heartbeat of your body to the immense capacity of the human mind, to the galaxies and beyond, is merely the result of "accident" versus the likelihood that it was created.
Posted Thu, Feb 28, 2:44 p.m. inappropriate
RE: name calling cont.: "Your bigotry betrays itself."
I must have lost track here. Who is the one in this exchange that's name calling?
Posted Thu, Feb 28, 3:06 p.m. inappropriate
Lost track: dbreneman: Indeed you lost track. Look at your previous posts, that include, along with the perjorative "religious right," these non-judgmental terms -- Post #1: "the bible-thumping segment of the conservative movement", "unenlightened adherence to scripture," "non-questioning dispensers of dogma"; Post #2: "emotional hope for a utopian outcome", "in lock step with the fundamentalist crowd". Regardless, may the Lord bless you...
Posted Thu, Feb 28, 4:39 p.m. inappropriate
Let's get back to the topic at hand. Thanks.
Posted Thu, Feb 28, 5:11 p.m. inappropriate
Eyman and Buckley: soulmates: Well, Scott, let me say you have a well-written, entertaining piece. That, however, is as far as my compliments can extend. I think your most excessive reach is mentioning folks like Eyman, Wilbur, and Rossi in the same breath as William Buckley. Their collective IQs don't approach Buckley's range. Eyman in particular is a buffoon, a self-promoting huckster who really has no sincere guiding political philosophy. I don't think Buckley would have claimed him as either an intellectual or ideological heir. Buckley, I will grant you, was a smart and witty guy. Moreover, at least in his later years, he did not have the meanness that characterizes contemporary conservatives. That may not have been the case earlier in his career; he did and said some things, particularly with regard to civil rights in the 50s and 60s, that were not very admirable. Nonetheless, I can understand your sense of loss. I'll lift one to him.
Posted Tue, Mar 4, 11:14 p.m. inappropriate
Buckley was a Cuttlefish: "The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink."
George Orwell