William F. Buckley, RIP
February 29th, 2008,
Picture: William F. Buckley and Minnesota College Republicans, 1986. That’s me on the right with my Wm. F. Buckley Signature Model clipboard and signed copy of Up from Liberalism.
“Complaint is profanation in the absence of gratitude.”
- William F. Buckley, Overdrive
William F. Buckley passed away two days ago. The conservative intellectual was one of the heroes of my youth. In those days – from the late 1970s through the late 1980s – I idolized a diverse pantheon that also included George Will, Bruce Springsteen, Woody Allen, and John McEnroe. Yes, I was odd.
As Will and Buckley’s names indicate, I was a conservative then, though with time and experience I now accept the labels liberal or progressive. Born in 1965, growing up in the Minneapolis suburbs, influenced by a father and other family members who voted Republican, reading U.S. News and World Report, and witnessing the rise of Ronald Reagan, I was drawn to the ideas of the conservative movement, particularly its anticommunism.
The maps in U.S. News left little doubt about the perils of the Cold War: there were the red areas controlled by the Communists and the blue areas of the freedom-loving West. This was, I learned, an epic struggle for control of the world and, ultimately, our own self-determination. Despite all that I’ve learned since then about American injustice and imperialism, I still accept the broad outlines of that outlook on the Cold War, and I do not regret that position.
Of course William F. Buckley was one of the most articulate defenders of the West. My strongest memories are of him as host of Firing Line, his one-hour show (later a half-hour) on public television, which I seem to remember was shown on Saturdays. I can still hear the notes of Bach from the show’s theme music, still see Buckley’s slumped form and animated eyes, still hear his carefully crafted words. I remember guests such as Malcolm Muggeridge and Mortimer Adler, as well as some of the liberals brave enough to match wits with Buckley and his guests toward the end of the show: people such as Mark Green, Michael Kinsley, and Christopher Hitchens. It seemed generous of Buckley to allow these youngsters to exchange ideas with him.
I got a kick out of Buckley’s clipboard, which he held in his lap and perused during his interviews. I even acquired my own clipboard and jokingly put a label on it: William F. Buckley Signature Model, or something like that.
For a youth interested in ideas and words, dissatisfied with the anti-intellectualism of everyday life, Firing Line was thrilling. It was the Buckley of television that I most adored. I cannot say I was as influenced by his writing. I was much more likely to encounter George Will in the newspaper op-ed section, and when I did read Buckley, I was not as spellbound as I was when viewing him.
In the fall of 1984, during my freshman year of college at the University of Chicago, I read Buckley’s autobiographical book, Overdrive, and on my dorm-room door I put the quote that serves as epigraph to this essay: “Complaint is profanation in the absence of gratitude.” A fellow student got upset by that and penned a response, and I wrote a response to that. I shared the exchange with Buckley and received a typed note of thanks.
And what do I think of Buckley’s quote now? Its truth would seem to depend on the context. Someone’s complaint about a particular situation may be justified even in the absence of gratitude; someone else might complain and take for granted many things for which they might be grateful.
I remember that as I read Overdrive, I was struck not only by the incredible pace and productivity of Buckley’s life but also by how distant his world was from mine. He went to expensive private schools, traveled in a chauffeured car, took ski vacations in Europe, and had in general a far more cosmopolitan upbringing and life. His conservatism derived in part from this tremendous privilege, while mine derived from the much more modest privilege of the middle class. Looking back, I detect a certain arrogance and superiority in my right-wing persona, which of course were present in Buckley to a much greater degree. Those attitudes remain a danger for conservatives today. Ultimately, I would become uncomfortable with this aspect of conservatism and would later identify and side with society’s underdogs.
After my freshman year, I transferred to the University of Minnesota and became active in College Republicans, eventually becoming chair of that group for one year. At one point a group of us attended a lecture by Buckley in Minneapolis, and I met the grand man and collected a signed picture and book.
By the end of my college years I had begun to stray from conservative orthodoxy. I became more interested in literature than in politics, and I avoided political activism.
There is much I could say about where my views today differ from Buckley’s. I will choose only one, because it remains an idea that is doing much harm in the world: that is the notion that less government is always better than more government, or the idea that government is the source of most of our problems, an evil thing. In fact government creates the conditions that establish and enable a society and its economy. It protects us from the greed and corruption of our fellow human beings. If, through rhetoric and policies (or the lack of policies), we undermine the capacity of the government to do those things, we put our social and individual well-being at risk.
Today conservatism is in crisis. On the brink of losing political power, it also seems on the verge of losing intellectual power. Nearly silent on the damage we are doing to the natural environment, it supports an unsustainable status quo—a status quo that is not so much natural or traditional as it is lavishly beneficial to a wealthy minority.
Conservatism will need someone like Buckley at some point in the future. His was not the loud jingoism of many radio talk show hosts, nor the vindictive sadism of many cable TV commentators and columnists. His political pugilism, while objectionable in many ways, was more intellectual and urbane. The conservative movement would do well to foster more like him. He will be missed.
March 1st, 2008 at 4:16 am
What a fine entry, Bill.
I appreciate the way you place yourself in relation to Buckley — he the eastern bigshot, you the young middle class midwesterner who’d found a model. Something of the same attachment formed in me to Mailer in my 20s. It’s valuable to look back on these models, our old enthusiasms, and see what remains of them in us. (Sorry, but I think Mailer, for all his faults, looks better and Buckley the worse in retrospect. I’ll let you know again in 10 years — let me get a bit older and crankier first.)
Contrary to your charitable view of the man, Buckley in my eyes bears responsibility for the neocons who inherited his precious movement — and our government. He sounded better and sometimes knew better (he backed the Iraq war but also later admitted it didn’t work). Yet he was their trailblazer, then later their enabler. Buckley made the ugliness of empire and the brutalities of inequality wear the perfume of reasonableness. Had it not been for him spritzing the ideology all those years, the trogs who now run things might still be in the dark where mad old Goldwater was kept.
My lasting image is of him melting down on-air in his debate with Gore Vidal during the Chicago Democratic convention. You could not oppose the Vietnam War: it meant you were akin to a Nazi sympathizer, as he painted Vidal. That was the great man: red-baiter, war enthusiast, on the side of truncheons at home, for imperialism (he’d call it “aid”) abroad. He kept the Cold War myths warm, kept up the Brahmin patter that made it seem respectable to go on slaughtering Vietnamese and sacrificing American troops. This still left him time to oppose the Civil Rights movement and sneer at pop culture (he thought the Beatles were especially talentless).
To his credit he engaged his opponents, and if it was mostly done in snooty repose it at least was some form of dialog — more than we have now, anyway, with our masters and their shoe polishers. Here he is on one occasion meeting his match in Noam Chomsky:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYlMEVTa-PI
March 3rd, 2008 at 11:53 am
Richard, well said, as usual. With the man now gone, I pulled my punches, and you are better informed about the topics you mention. His position on the civil rights movement during the 1950s and 60s seems especially sad, or maddening, take your pick. I don’t know whether he ever repudiated those earlier positions on that issue.
March 6th, 2008 at 11:19 pm
Very interesting reflections — and quite a wonderful photo in a My Brush with History way. Conservatism’s focus on self-reliance has seemed to be based on an insistent pretense that there is a level playing field, despite the quicksand and bomb craters that surround the elite’s own manicured greens. I’ve actually never read any Buckley, but my interest has been rather piqued by the recent coverage. There is always a place in the intellectual firmament for those who defend their principles with cogent reasoning and courtesy, rather than bombast and invective.
March 7th, 2008 at 12:29 am
Very thougtful and articulate - even touching - piece, Bill.
This is the first comment on Buckley’s death that I’ve read, for the following reason:
I blame him for the reactionary and hateful “Dartmouth Review,” which greatly detracted from my college experience.
Sure, Buckley seemed effete and polished (although why did an American speak with that accent?) But the groundlings he encouraged at my college did a lot of damage: homophobic, xenophobic, racist, misygonistic, anti-semitic, alcoholic. These Dartmouth Review kids were even anti-anti-apartheid. Some of them now spew poison from national media platforms.
But, at the beginning, I was generally complicit. I also thought my (deserved) place among America’s prosperous and privileged was assured. I voted for Reagan in ‘84.
But at that point I was not able to comprehend how conflict in Central America actually affected the people who lived there. And I didn’t know that “free trade” didn’t really mean that everyone had an equal shot at a piece of the pie. Nor that a proportional tax cut leaves a lot more money in the millionaire’s pocket than in my working mom’s. (Nowadays, Rawls’ “veil of ignorance” strikes me as a much better way of looking at the world.)
Eventually, though, Iran-Contra shocked me out of belief in Reagan’s circle. And, of course, the last few years of a federal government run by Dartmouth Review-types has been nothing short of disastrous. (It is not the size of government at all that matters, but how well - and for whom - it is run.)
As a beacon trying to light the way forward, I don’t think Buckley worked out well.
March 7th, 2008 at 12:39 am
Oh! I should also mention Allan Bloom’s “The Closing of the American Mind”, a conservative bestseller on academia from that period.
I probably would still agree with large swathes of this serious work, but I think the relevant point now is this: Today, no one on the right would even bother to write such an erudite defense of Western Culture. Because the contemporary right-wing in America has no use for culture, period.
First of all, there’s no money in it. Secondly, I believe the right has realized that when you wield brute power, there is no need to worry about such things as facts, correct English usage, testable hypotheses, even proper accounting methods; you just take what you can while you can, without concern for academic study or cultural expression.
The American Right no longer cares for debate and discussion, as some of its members did in the 1980’s.
March 7th, 2008 at 4:30 pm
Penny and Chris, I appreciate your thoughtful comments.