Two Years After His Death, Buckley's Message Lives On

Two years ago today, William F. Buckley moved on to the great Firing Line in the Sky where he is, no doubt, still debating the wisdom of turning over the Panama Canal with the Gipper. Buckley’s legacy lives on, not only in the remarkable generation of writers that he spawned after he first dared to stand athwart history and yell stop but, in an odd sort of way, in the manner in which some of the liberals he defied over the course of five decades seem to pine for the great man’s genteel ways.

On a personal note, Buckley was one of the two great influences in the creative life of this particular – not particularly humble – correspondent. The other was that irascible Chicago newspaperman/Everyman: Mike Royko. It’s difficult to imagine an odder couple, but Buckley and Royko shared at least a couple of common characteristics. One took them on at one’s peril (and very few ever successfully did so) and neither could be neatly constrained within an ideological box. Royko was classically liberal, but he openly scorned the liberal elite. Buckley became the symbol of the conservative movement, but he refused to let the movement define him, cutting his own path through the ideological jungle when necessary, most famously when he argued for the legalization of many illegal drugs. Agree or disagree, both Royko and Buckley were thinkers, and honest thinkers to boot, who had a knack for expressing their thoughts with the kind of panache that left their readers breathless in awe.

Buckley rose to prominence at a time when liberalism seemed to have seized the intellectual high ground. The Kennedy years featured “big thinkers” like Ted Sorenson and McGeorge Bundy, scholarly types who would usher in a new “enlightened era” for America following what the liberal elite thought of as parochial drudgery the nation endured during the Eisenhower years. Buckley’s erudite fusion of conservative and libertarian thought was the natural counterweight to the progressive movement that flared to prominence in the sixties, even after dreams of Camelot were snuffed out by an assassin in Dallas. Bukley’s role in reinvigorating the conservative movement is well documented and can not be over estimated. It’s impossible to claim cerebral superiority when your biggest critic displays a bigger cranium than you.

Eventually, Kennedy’s paternalistic liberalism inevitably gave way to a new, more dangerous populist manifestation on the left, which would be embodied by a heretofore obscure peanut farmer from – of all places – the deep South. Jimmy Carter’s dismal, failed presidency provided Buckley and his movement all the room needed to elect a true conservative to the highest office in the land. The rest, as they say, is history.

Your average journeyman writer, like yours truly, is grateful for the opportunity to somehow stumble across the occasional pithy quip that both neatly sums up the point one is trying to make in an memorable, entertaining manner. For Buckley, that kind of succinct, compelling brilliance seemed to be second nature. Consider but a few timeless examples:

Back in the thirties we were told we must collectivize the nation because the people were so poor. Now we are told we must collectivize the nation because the people are so rich.

I’d rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.

Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.

Truth is a demure lady, much too ladylike to knock you on your head and drag you to her cave. She is there, but people must want her, and seek her out.

Here is he, in debate with the linguistician and leftist philosopher, Noam Chomsky. This was in 1969, but it might as well be Periclean Athens:

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Some of today’s liberals, or progressives, or whatever they call themselves now, profess to miss Bill Buckley. There are good reasons for that. Buckley was an intellectual and, by definition, only a fraction of Americans are inclined to delve deeply into the subtleties of deeply thoughtful, intellectual debate. The liberals of 2010 are more than willing to confine their arguments with conservatives and libertarians to this higher ground, because – ultimately – they know that battles fought on that lofty plateau don’t shape popular opinion all that much. Today, in this age of mass communication, “branding” and sound-bite quality PR campaigns, the majority of the common electorate are influenced by messages equally common.

That’s why progressives so despise Andrew Brietbart, Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck and those who emulate their style. They speak in terms that the Everyman understands, breaking down complex policy issues into digestible bits that may not always represent all of the nuances involved, but rather serve as a rebuttal to the equally-flawed populist narrative that created the “issue” in question to begin with.

Buckley spawned and inspired a new generation of conservative and libertarian thought. Today, intellectuals like Thomas Sowell and Bill Bennett carry the conservative message forward with devastating, well-researched analysis. At the same, brilliant writers like Jonah Goldberg, Michelle Malkin and Charles Krauthammer, to name but a very few, have built upon that work in terms accessible to everyman. And let’s not forget Mark Steyn, who falls into a category all his own. Steyn is equally at home crushing progressive dogma under the weight of polysyllabic verbiage that sends readers scrambling for their dictionaries as he is employing locker-room humor to undercut their message and he generally employs both techniques in the space of a few paragraphs, sometimes in the same sentence. He is the intellectual’s anti-intellectual.

All of them, indeed all of us here at the “Big” sites, owe a debt of gratitude to the erudite, charming conservative warrior from New York. Buckley wasn’t only successful in yelling “stop!” to history, he jump-started a movement that – in the long run – is unstoppable. Two years after his death, his ideals and ideas remain as powerful and relevant as ever. We miss you Bill and, on behalf of conservatives and libertarians everywhere, allow me to say it once more: thank you.