Young Turk Turns Eighty
George Will in a wonderful piece in his column today celebrates the 80th birthday (today) of the man who brought back the ideas of limited government, constitutionalism and personal freedom, and revived a conservative movement that was less than moribund in 1950.
William F. Buckley WAS that young Turk, a man who, in a vast wasteland of liberalism, leftist fellow travelers and communists, stood up to it all and said STOP! Liberalism was not the dominate ideology by that time, but the only one. Embraced by "me too" Republicanism, there were few souls willing to cast their fate against the wind. Ayn Rand, Henry Hazlitt, Ludwig Von Mises, and just a smattering of others fought the intellectual fight not only against the inroads that modern liberalism had made into the freedoms guaranteed by the constitution, but the positive case FOR capitalism and individualism.
Those in the above paragraph were mostly fighting the good fight in academia, or, as in the case of Rand, in popular fiction, where the dicta of free markets and free minds had difficulty finding popular understanding.
And then along comes Buckley, standing athwart history, yelling Stop! In the face of what Lionel Trilling had essentially described as the "end of history", William F. Buckley was about to launch a popular counter to the accepted "wisdom of the day".
Lionel Trillings famous observation, made in 1950, is worth recalling:
"In the United States at this time liberalism is not only the dominant, but even the sole intellectual tradition. For it is the plain fact that nowadays there are no conservative or reactionary ideas in general circulation... the conservative impulse and the reactionary impulse do not... express themselves in ideas but only in irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas".
Almost alone at the time, Bill Buckley set upon to change all this. And with the introduction of National Review Magazine in 1955, he gave a reinvigorated movement a solid rock of intellectual ammunition to call upon. The ideas of our founding father's were back, and the warriors were taking no prisoners.
It was a heady time, the late 50's and early 60's. The two most popular speakers on college campus' were Ayn Rand and Barry Goldwater. Perhaps, the brain and the brawn of individualism and freedom. Without Buckley, there would have been no Goldwater movement, and despite its prematurity, without Barry Goldwater there would have been no Ronald Reagan. And without any of the above, with Buckley as the intellectual drummer, there would be no libertarian movement.
Bill Buckley is today, more a libertarian (small l) than a conservative. Tragically, with opportunity within its actual grasp, the Republican Party has killed the conservatism that William F. Buckley labored decades to revive. With all branches of government in the hands of those who promised to not only stop its very growth, but to even gut its grotesquerie, the party is no longer a conservative party. It has become what it had always condemed; a party, where if only the right people can be put in place to run things, can manage large government well. That cannot happen. It has not. Power does corrupt.
Buckley continues. Vigorously promoting the same brand of freedom he sought fifty years ago, he remains a great hero of those true small government conservatives and libertarians. And perhaps someday, either through the Republican Party or the Libertarian, the ideas of the original intent of our founding fathers will once again be revived.
Thank you, Mr. Buckley for keeping them alive till now.
Joe Postove
William F. Buckley WAS that young Turk, a man who, in a vast wasteland of liberalism, leftist fellow travelers and communists, stood up to it all and said STOP! Liberalism was not the dominate ideology by that time, but the only one. Embraced by "me too" Republicanism, there were few souls willing to cast their fate against the wind. Ayn Rand, Henry Hazlitt, Ludwig Von Mises, and just a smattering of others fought the intellectual fight not only against the inroads that modern liberalism had made into the freedoms guaranteed by the constitution, but the positive case FOR capitalism and individualism.
Those in the above paragraph were mostly fighting the good fight in academia, or, as in the case of Rand, in popular fiction, where the dicta of free markets and free minds had difficulty finding popular understanding.
And then along comes Buckley, standing athwart history, yelling Stop! In the face of what Lionel Trilling had essentially described as the "end of history", William F. Buckley was about to launch a popular counter to the accepted "wisdom of the day".
Lionel Trillings famous observation, made in 1950, is worth recalling:
"In the United States at this time liberalism is not only the dominant, but even the sole intellectual tradition. For it is the plain fact that nowadays there are no conservative or reactionary ideas in general circulation... the conservative impulse and the reactionary impulse do not... express themselves in ideas but only in irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas".
Almost alone at the time, Bill Buckley set upon to change all this. And with the introduction of National Review Magazine in 1955, he gave a reinvigorated movement a solid rock of intellectual ammunition to call upon. The ideas of our founding father's were back, and the warriors were taking no prisoners.
It was a heady time, the late 50's and early 60's. The two most popular speakers on college campus' were Ayn Rand and Barry Goldwater. Perhaps, the brain and the brawn of individualism and freedom. Without Buckley, there would have been no Goldwater movement, and despite its prematurity, without Barry Goldwater there would have been no Ronald Reagan. And without any of the above, with Buckley as the intellectual drummer, there would be no libertarian movement.
Bill Buckley is today, more a libertarian (small l) than a conservative. Tragically, with opportunity within its actual grasp, the Republican Party has killed the conservatism that William F. Buckley labored decades to revive. With all branches of government in the hands of those who promised to not only stop its very growth, but to even gut its grotesquerie, the party is no longer a conservative party. It has become what it had always condemed; a party, where if only the right people can be put in place to run things, can manage large government well. That cannot happen. It has not. Power does corrupt.
Buckley continues. Vigorously promoting the same brand of freedom he sought fifty years ago, he remains a great hero of those true small government conservatives and libertarians. And perhaps someday, either through the Republican Party or the Libertarian, the ideas of the original intent of our founding fathers will once again be revived.
Thank you, Mr. Buckley for keeping them alive till now.
Joe Postove
posted by Mr. Liberty at 1:36 PM
2 Comments:
That was then: the right acknowledged standing on the shoulders of giants. This is now: A few too many purporting to be of the right---enough of whom now hold one or another level of State power, alas---stand on the shoulders of giants for no purpose more noble than to pee down their collars. They've proven the prescience of Mencken's Law: that democracy is that form of government by which the common people know what they want and deserve to get it, good and hard. More's the pity.---Jeff
Another look at democracy is when the boobs and the rubes realized they could vote themselves the keys to the treasury, then freedom was finished.
joe
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