William F. Buckley, Jr. is dead, and modern American conservatism has lost its chief intellectual spokesman and leader.
Buckley is one of the main reasons that I became a conservative. It wasn't just the influence of God and Man at Yale, Buckley's first and seminal book that made the case that Yale had abandoned its conservative Christian roots. Buckley had the novel idea that private colleges don't belong to their administration and faculty; these are the employees. Rather, colleges belong to the students who pay the tuition and who are there to learn. They along belong to the alumni, the living body of graduates who represent what the institution has produced; alumni also largely fund their alma mater and thus maintain their ties even when they have left.
I learned all this from Buckley, and our renegade newspaper The Dartmouth Review was patterned on Buckley's National Review. But there was more to Buckley than his books and writing. Interestingly Buckley never produced an important book after God and Man at Yale. His real influence was in who he was and what he represented. He was a suave, erudite and generous man, and he represented a conservatism that was witty, iconoclastic and fun. In my teens I had envisioned conservatives as stuffy and narrow-minded businessmen who upheld the status quo. Buckley showed me an irreverent conservatism that enjoyed life and fought to change the liberal status quo, especially on the college campus.
Before Buckley, there was no conservatism in America. The literary critic Lionel Trilling once famously remarked that America has a single political tradition and it is liberal. Conservatism, to the degree it exists, is only reaction. The conservative is not a man of ideas but simply twitches and barks in response to the inexorable march of liberal change. The conservative is against progress. Buckley himself played with this idea, and once described the mission of National Review as one of "standing athwart history, yelling Stop!" With this remark Buckley appeared to confirm the stereotype while in fact exploding it. An unthinking, unimaginative conservative would not have devised such a pithy, witty formulation.
Buckley may not have single-handedly invented modern intellectual conservatism, but he certainly made it respectable. He became the chief intellectual spokesman of the movement that culminated in Ronald Reagan. I never knew him well, although every few months I received an autographed Buckley book--typically about spies or sailing--in the mail. When Alan Wolfe launched his pompous and ignorant fusillade against my book The Enemy at Home, even suggesting that I was not a real conservative, Buckley rushed to my defense, noting that he was a far better authority on conservatism than Wolfe. In the end, it is these little kindnesses that you remember the most.
Today modern American conservatism is at the crossroads, and it's not clear what it's future will be. Oh, if only there were another young Buckley to gallantly lead the intellectual brigade. Still, what Buckley's movement accomplished, both through its intellectual and political successes, is nothing less than the transformation of American politics, even world politics. Buckley's life proves that ideas have consequences, and many of us continue to walk in the path that this far-seeing man cleared for us.
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How William F. Buckley Changed America
Posted Feb 27th 2008 1:11PM by Dinesh D'Souza
Filed under: Breaking News
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Reader Comments ( Page 1 of 13)
1. Hellloooooooooo!!!
Hey Dinesh, thank you for keeping us up to date on worldwide trends to re-live the days of faithful life and love.
It's a blessing. Amen.
mincpa at 2:19PM on Feb 27th 2008
2. A good eulogy of sorts for Bill Buckley. We will miss him.
Marlinj Brown at 2:25PM on Feb 27th 2008
3. its a sad day indeed,
the pedulum has swung so far to the left and its people like buckley who was a voice of reason amid the rocky and moral=less compass of intolerant liberals. yes buckley has always stood for whats right and reminded us of it even when the gnashing teeth of liberalism was clamping down hard on the american mind set. it still is. now we have one less voice with which to dispute the voracious lies and propaganda perpetrated by the liberal left who seek to turn america into a cesspool of immoral filth cloaked in psuedo-tolerance. when in reality the left only tolerates what it agrees with all else is hate and phobias of various slants according to the left. america has really crossed over the threshold of the civilty it once had when reason ruled. we now have thought police behind the hate crimes legislation just waiting in the wings to lock up the voices of reason. namely those who espouse conservatism. john adams would rollover in his grave to see what this country has become.with the ill-fated winds of liberalism blowing it will sadly take a major national catastrophe to right our sails from the decrepid stench called liberlism. there i said, and i dread the future of our once great country which has died at the gallows of liberalism cloaked in tolerance. sad day america
brian at 2:34PM on Feb 27th 2008
4. Thank you Dinesh! I was fortunate to hear Mr. Buckley speak at a Harvard baccalaureate when my nephew graduated from Harvard. I will always remember it as one of the highlights of my political growth as a conservative. He will be missed for his intellect and humor.
Mary Jean at 2:35PM on Feb 27th 2008
5. I'd rather see another Thomas Jefferson, espousing Democracy in the tradition of ancient Greece.
The Goddess Athena at 2:54PM on Feb 27th 2008
6. Buckley was a true intellectual, and a tough guy to get the better of. He cannot be replaced with the hacks of today.
This would have been a moving eulogy had you not mentioned your book.........again.
America's Most Gangsta at 3:07PM on Feb 27th 2008
7. Why on Earth did you have to read a book to figure out that colleges work for the students and alumni?
Also, thanks for using pretentious words like "fusillade" and then not proofreading to catch "They along belong to the alumni". Did you mean ALSO? Because that's not even a typo, Dinesh. It's a completely different word.
I don't usually point that kind of thing out, but if somebody were silly enough to pay ME to write my opinions about everything, I'd sure as hell make sure I spelled all my words correctly.
Modern conservativism IS at a crossroads, between rationality and insanity. If it chooses the road that some people who post here have chosen, I'm moving to Cuba. It'd be safer there.
Strados at 3:13PM on Feb 27th 2008
8. FOR: brian at 2:34PM on Feb 27th 2008
What can I say but: "Gee, that says everything about liberals you need to know!". And in less than 250 words. I can't wait to see the responses from loony left. I'm sure your words will tip over the loony-bin!
Marlinj Brown at 3:40PM on Feb 27th 2008
9. strados,,
delta is ready when you are
brian at 3:43PM on Feb 27th 2008
10. DD says, "Bill Buckley... intellectual.. intellectual... intellectual... intellectual...intellectual.."
DD says, "Alan Wolfe... pompous.. ignorant.."
Gotta wonder how many times Buckley called anyone pompous or ignorant.
I know that I disagreed with just about everything that came out of Buckley's mouth.. but he seemed like a very nice man.
Unlike some quasi-intellectual sociopathic Bill Buckley wannabees.
not-pboyfloyd at 3:45PM on Feb 27th 2008
11. marlij,
glad you find my diatribe against the hackneyed left either right on or amusing. either way, my words do not convey the terrible place this country is at. when we turn right wrong and wrong right common sense dictates the cracking of the foundation. people and countries are wired to run on some moral compass. liberalism is moral-less and therefore we cannot even agree on the smallest of problems. there is no standard anymore. this is the legacy of the left. no standard. no standard for truth, no standard for morals, no standard for acceptable or unacceptable behavior. Buckley reminded us with keen insight that what made america great is what it stood for. now all we can trump is immorality and decadence and splash it all over the television while mind-less liberals viewers gawk at the trash they are being fed daily. just look at springer. look at all the afternoon talk shows. pure filth. yet we glory in it. we make it grand!! the liberal left has poisened the mind of america,period. cloaked in tolerance of coarse
brian at 3:52PM on Feb 27th 2008
12. floyd, you would disagree with common sense and morals. were i an atheist mindless liberal i would too!!! your only being consistent with your liberal view. cloaked in tolerance of coarse
brian at 3:53PM on Feb 27th 2008
13. I think that your head is cracked, brian. Since when did liberals have to take the blame for the drivel on television?
Why aren't you blaming superstitious retards like yourself for all the supernatural nonsense that is 'quality viewing' these days?
not-pboyfloyd at 4:05PM on Feb 27th 2008
14. 3. ... john adams would rollover in his grave to see what this country has become. ...
brian at 2:34PM on Feb 27th 2008
____________________________________
Funny you mention John Adams, who despised christianity and would probably never associate with the likes of you or Marlin. Fact of the matter is, this country is probably a long way off from what he intended, and it has nothing to do with liberalism.
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The United States of America have exhibited, perhaps, the first example of governments erected on the simple principles of nature; and if men are now sufficiently enlightened to disabuse themselves of artifice, imposture, hypocrisy, and superstition, they will consider this event as an era in their history. Although the detail of the formation of the American governments is at present little known or regarded either in Europe or in America, it may hereafter become an object of curiosity. It will never be pretended that any persons employed in that service had interviews with the gods, or were in any degree under the influence of Heaven, more than those at work upon ships or houses, or laboring in merchandise or agriculture; it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses.
-- John Adams, "A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America" (1787-88), from Adrienne Koch, ed, The American Enlightenment: The Shaping of the American Experiment and a Free Society (1965) p. 258, quoted from Ed and Michael Buckner, "Quotations that Support the Separation of State and Church"
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"... it will forever be acknowledged that these governments were contrived merely by the use of reason and the senses." Unfortunately, despite what John Adams hoped for, many 'Americans' like brian and Marlin are tearing down his hopes for this country day by day, stupid post after stupid post.
K at 4:10PM on Feb 27th 2008
15. brian,
Don't you know what DELTA stands for?
Don't Ever Leave The Airport!!!
Strados at 4:14PM on Feb 27th 2008