Thursday, 02.28.08
William F. Buckley, RIP
University of Texas
Aweigh
July/August 2004
William F. Buckley gives up sailing.
A proposition
November 2007
William F. Buckley on the American idea.
An emblem of thinking conservatism
27 February 2008
Andrew Sullivan remembers a giant.
Firing line
27 February 2008
In their first and only meeting, Clive Crook debated on WFB's side of the house.
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world; the point is to change it." So wrote Karl Marx, and William F. Buckley Jr. was no Marxist. But few American intellectuals have lived up to Marx's injunction as completely and impressively as Buckley. He was the intellectual paterfamilias to a movement that rose from obscurity to govern the United States, and a man whose efforts -- both as the founding editor of National Review and as a tireless proselytizer in books and essays and television interviews -- helped make once-unfashionable ideas seem first plausible, then persuasive, and finally obvious to countless Americans. There probably would have been some sort of successful right-of-center movement in late-twentieth century America without Buckley, but his Catholic-libertarian perspective shaped it, and it owed its immense success in no small measure to his wit and charm and indefatigability.
Liberals tend to find kind things to say about men of the Right only once they're old and out of the arena, the better to contrast the decent conservatives of yore with the supposed right-wing pygmies of the present. But in Buckley's case the contrast is accurate, so long as we make it bipartisan: He was a giant, and no contemporary commentators, be they left or right or something else entirely, can hope to live up to the example he set, or the enjoy the impact he had. He didn't quite stop history, as he vowed half-jestingly to do, but he did manage to change it, and he will cast a long shadow over political journalism, and our politics in general, for as long as American history runs onward.
Mayor BuckleySam Tanenhaus recounts Buckley's quixotic bid for New York's mayoralty, an effort that anticipated many of the themes that would eventually lead to conservative triumphs. |
"A conservative is never wrong" [rolls eyes]Taki Theodoracopulos remembers Buckley as a "second father." |
RIP, Brother JonathanJohn Derbyshire proposes remembering WFB by keeping his charming, generous, thoughtful, and humorous style alive at the magazine he founded |
Spare MeTanenhaus remembers a man who would rather talk about anything other than politics. |
Standing athwart history, so you don't have toBuckley's movement was on the wrong side of history in so many ways, writes James Wolcott. But he forced liberals to grapple with premises and emerge stronger in the end. |
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Sam, you're being an idiot. There is no comparison between the moral liability of Karl Marx and Adolf Hitler. One wrote books. THe other is responsible for World War II and the Holocaust. Also, radical egalitarianism predates Marx, so blaming him for Stalin and Mao is a bit iffy, though not entirely unfair. Think of The Terror in France or the Revolutions of 1848, about which Marx was writing and hence can hardly be said to have caused. Also, Marx's basic assumption about human nature--that everything is about power and that power today is about money--is one that many economists seem to share. I agree that this is idiotic--it discounts the idea of honor, for one--but it's hardly the same thing as viciously violent German Nationalism.
"The central question that emerges . . . is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not prevail numerically? The sobering answer is Yes — the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race. It is not easy, and it is unpleasant, to adduce statistics evidencing the cultural superiority of White over Negro: but it is a fact that obtrudes, one that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropologists." This was from an Editorial from your magazine, the National Review, in 1957.
All any anyone needs to know about this guy
While Marx was right about some things, so was Hitler. It's a little strange that in the lead paragraph of your obituary for a person, you mention the person first, whose failed philosophies that lead to the death and misery of millions, rather than the person who spent a lifetime fighting against said failed philosphies.
Marx did a good job analyzing the nature of power, wealth, etc. His understanding of human nature, his predictions, and therefore his conclusions were so fundamentally screwed up it lead, arguably, to as much pain and suffering as Hitler. Some might say worse given the length of WWII vs. the USSR and continuance of other communist states today.
When Al Gore dies, will someone start out the obituatry, "Adolf Hitler believed in protecting the environment, Al Gore had that in common with the Furher...."
Posted by sam | February 28, 2008 3:01 PM