Patrick Nielsen Hayden on William F. Buckley

Patrick writes:

Making Light: William F. Buckley, dead:

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 where it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes--the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race. --William F. Buckley, National Review, August 24, 1957

There's your "refined, perspicacious mind" for you. The one that, we're told by [the New York Times], "elevated conservatism to the center of American political discourse." Racism and power-worship--and, from first to last, uncompromising defense of the idea that society should be structured into orders and classes.

Comments

[Doctor Jay]

"Racism and power-worship--and, from first to last, uncompromising defense of the idea that society should be structured into orders and classes."

Yeah, but he's the kind of guy you'd like to have a sherry with.

[Neil B.]

This may be another indication of WFB's character: on page 185 of How to Win Arguments by William A. Rusher (1981), Rusher quotes some advice by various commentators in response to a list of questions. Note #5: "When an arguer is caught in a mistake, what is his best course?" Buckley's response: "When an arguer is caught in a mistake his best course of action is to trivialize its significance." Michael Harrington said, "Admit the mistake quickly and openly." Harold Miller: "Admit it. ..." Daniel Patrick Moynihan: " ... a person of any integrity admits it right off." Pat Buchanan indicated one should try to press on in similar vein to Buckley.

[mario]

anon--

In what context (other than "XXX says the following:...") could the above quote reflect positively or even neutrally or even only moderately poorly on Buckley? It's a preposterous argument; this is not a smear, but historical, documented truth--and what's more, an article signed by Buckley himself.

[Robert Waldmann]

Devastating Brad. Now where did I read that quote before ? Ah yes here
http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2005/10/from_national_r.html.

Am I saying that I know your archives better than you do ? Would I dare ?
Yes.

[David Lloyd-Jones]

.



When I first moved to New York in 1968 (apart from my guerrilla visits, when I usually slept on Abbie Hoffman's couch at 30 St. Mark's Place) I found Bill Buckley was my neighbour on East 68th. I in a rat-hole borrowed apartment, he with the four storey pied-a-terre.

We passed in the political firmament from time to time. I once lit his (Canadian) wife Pat's cigarette, at the David Lewis debate, and we exchanged a few words on the subject of Say's Law. I cheered the notion of the Buckley Bikeway when he ran for Mayor -- not least because the way it was designed the mid-town bike-off was in front of my office. Pat was a fine woman, and when she died a few months ago one instantly knew that it was a ferocious blow to Bill's life, and one felt for the man.

Everybody agreed that Bill was a Good Guy. Me too.

As it happens I've read Goering's best biography (that by my friend the somewhat unfashionable and sadly sometime anti-Semitic David Irving), so I know that Goering was a Good Guy, too.

Goering, as Speaker of the, uh, suspended Reichstag, head of the NASDAP, (and unlike Buckley a genuine war hero), engineered the cashiering of General von Brauschitsch, a fine soldier and a decent man. He helped unleash the real evil of the Hitler state, which, if asked, he would not have approved of himself. Except they're all friends here. Hardy-hardy-har.

Hardy-hardy-har, we're all goodfellahs here, so what if some or our friends go overboard sometimes?

Pass the Chablis, Christopher. Make sure you vacuum up the dope on the yacht. We're all re-creating conservatism, here, right? Buncha Trots want wars all over everywhere. Well, maybe they're friends of Whittakers's.

When Brent Bozell suggested that The State should bulldoze Martin Luther King, Jr.'s, non-violent protesters with all available violence, Buckley greeted Bozell's rant in roughly the following terms: "Bozell has adduced a sophisticated systems-analytical view of society to show how conservatives should look upon King."

Here's the deal: Bill Buckley was a nice guy, de mortuis nihil nisi bonum; his works, however, are a stench upon the land.



.

[Jeet Heer]

Come on, Brad: I expect greater generosity from you. None of us should be judged as the sum of our worst moments. Buckley was a racist in the 1950s but that was in the context of 1) living in a racist country and 2) having White southerners as parents. Fun fact: Buckley's siblings once burned a cross at a Jewish resort. But it is important to remembert that like much of the country Buckley had a change of mind during the course of the 1960s and he came to accept the Civil Rights revolution. For a conservative he also had interesting and unconventional ideas, about legalizing drugs, for example. And he died a critic of the Iraq war.

Plus, Buckley was a great magazine editor: he put out a journal that featured Arlene Croce, Joan Didion, Garry Wills, Hugh Kenner, John Leonard, and many other fine writers.

Would you judge the heroes of liberalism simply by their worst moments: FDR for the internment of the Japanese-Americans, say, or Bill Clinton for not intervening in Rwanda? Or on an intellectual level, J.K. Galbraith for his occasional blitheness about the Soviet Union?

Buckley was a complicted, interesting man. John Judis fine biography (written from the point of view of a committed social democrat) does justice to him, in a way that your comments don't

[tedb]

William Buckley is generally seen as one of the fathers of modern American conservatism. Please explain to me why the wingers constantly refer to Democrats as elitists.

[Dan'l]

And don't forget advocating nuclear attack on China's biggest cities in the late 1960s. What, 15-30 million civilians killed?

Publishing Garry Wills, or even opposing the Iraq war (as did Buchanan) doesn't even this stuff out.

[Jon]

To quote the most inflammatory and egregious prose out of an entire lifetime of work is unfair. A fairer person would have put it into the context of the man's body of work. I am disappointed.

[Jon]

To quote the most inflammatory and egregious prose out of an entire lifetime of work is unfair. A fairer person would have put it into the context of the man's body of work. I am disappointed.

[jonp72]

I'm surprised that your tone is shocked...shocked when you state that Buckley engaged in "from first to last, uncompromising defense of the idea that society should be structured into orders and classes." The idea that people should be sorted into hierarchical orders and classes is a core idea of what conservatism is, at least according to Russell Kirk's Six Canons of Conservatism in The Conservative Mind. I don't agree with this, but let's not be shocked that a conservative actually believed in a core belief of conservatism.

[Adult]

I remember when on wag commented on Mr. Buckley's valedictory for Ayn Rand. Mr. Buckley always saved his most bitter vitriol for Miss Rand who somehow had become his symbol of all he hated most. IT was an extraordinary thing for the level-headed and generous (even to his enemies) Mr. Buckley.

It was shortly after her passing and the piece in question had run in the National Review. "You have invented a new literary form, Bill," the commenter wrote in Buckley's letters page, "the attack obituary."

Here we see another example, this time directed at Mr. Buckley himself.