How William F. Buckley Changed America

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How William F. Buckley Changed America

Posted Feb 27th 2008 1:11PM by Dinesh D'Souza
Filed under: Breaking News

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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Reader Comments ( Page 4 of 13)

Previous 15 Comments | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | Most Recent | Next 15 Comments

46. is aol a piece of crap ? or is it me

brian at 10:33PM on Feb 27th 2008

47. May Mr. Buckley rest with the Saints in Light in Peace. I am a Russian Orthodox Christian priest. Mr. Buckley was, indeed, an erudite, civilized, polite and well-spoken advocate for conservatism. It is too bad that conservatism is now being represented by the vulgar, self-serving, rude, ignorant polemicists such as Dinesh, Limbaugh, the Blonde Bimbo Coulter, the vulgar and disgusting Bill O'Reilly, and other outrageous bigots and ignoramuses. Dinesh, you not only aren't in the same league as Mr. Buckley, you are not worthy to tie the man's shoes. I am a Progressive, but have always had respect for Mr. Buckley and Mr. George Will, who have presented arguments with which I strongly disagree, but have logic, reason and courtesy behind them and in them. That Dinesh is claiming to be a successor of such people with his polemic, ignorance of history and culture, self-serving patting of himself on the back again and again, shameless hawking of his tomes, straw-man arguments, and one-sided views, would be laughable if it were not tragic. Oh for the good old days when Ronald Reagan and Tip O'Neil could go "at" one another in a politics and go golfing together afterwards. Oh, for another Gerald Ford who was always respectful of his oppents and one of the finest men I have had the privilege of knowing. For another Barry Goldwater who embodied TRUE conservatism. Instead we get these blowhards and their ditto-headed followers who think that chanting the word "liberal" makes an argument for them, and who are primarily interested, not in true conservatism, but in making more of the dollars that the ignorant and easily swayed have already paid them too much of. And, Dinesh, my offer still stands. Even though I am a Christian Priest, I will play "devil's advocate" and debate you anytime you'd like and show how hollow and useless your arguments for Christianity truly are. The only argument for Christianity is that it is True...all the rest are the sin of Intellectual Pride.

Father John at 1:29AM on Feb 28th 2008

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brandon at 10:45PM on Feb 27th 2008

49. No, brian, it's you that's a piece of crap.

brandon at 10:46PM on Feb 27th 2008

50. brandon,

good to hear form you and how is it with you this fine evening?

brian at 10:56PM on Feb 27th 2008

51. brandon,

i see that you have been playing with your lincoln logs on line are you having fun yet?

brian at 10:57PM on Feb 27th 2008

52. Brian and his ilk equate liberalism with being an apologist for Jerry Springer and tabloid television. Ironically, shows like the Springer show demonstrate in a very clear way the utter vulgarity and bankruptcy of free market capitalism when it is taken to its amoral extreme, i.e., if it sells, it is worth putting out into the culture. These folks conflate liberal POLITICS (in the main, a belief in a positive role for the state, rather than a minimalist one) with a personal credo of libertinism. The two are not the same thing. Many political 'liberals' are quite conservative and traditionalist in terms of how they conduct their personal lives.

As for Buckley, many of his ideas were pernicious and his manner supercilious, but I found him entertaining to watch.

Gary Math Professor at 11:22PM on Feb 27th 2008

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brandon at 11:17PM on Feb 27th 2008

54. Well, shite, brian, it just doesn't work here. It was a big finger. For you. Happy Easter.

brandon at 11:18PM on Feb 27th 2008

55. For you, brian. With love.

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brandon at 11:22PM on Feb 27th 2008

56. William F. Buckley was a good man. Too many (probably the majority) of Republican men today have sex with other men or try to diddle little boys. Mr. Buckley would never have tolerated that kind of nonsense.

Robeson at 11:37PM on Feb 27th 2008

57. "Intellectual" and "the movement that culminated in Reagan" are mutually exclusive terms.

However, I liked Buckley. He was witty, urbane, charming, and he dug Beat poetry (which means he had an open mind).

Amelie at 12:05AM on Feb 28th 2008

58. It is kinda funny to hear an indian hindu like Dinesh Dsouza talk about american conservatism.

Javaid Khan at 1:02AM on Feb 28th 2008

59. I was told that there is a special blog on a STD dating site named http://www.stdpal.com. He helped many positive friends here, so one of them created this blog for him to show their well-wishing.

h at 1:11AM on Feb 28th 2008

60. Well said Father John!

Dennis at 7:01AM on Feb 28th 2008

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Mo Rocca appears on a bunch of shows, including CBS News Sunday Morning (with the indescribably wonderful Charles Osgood), The Tonight Show on NBC, and NPR's Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! He's a sometime judge on Iron Chef and was featured on Telemundo's Amore Descarado. Last year he starred on Broadway in the 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. His expose "All the President's Pets" was published by Crown in 2004.