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Thread ID: 14362 | Posts: 10 | Started: 2004-06-29
2004-06-29 10:42 | User Profile
PaleoconAvatar comment: What's Buckley's true legacy? What's really been "conserved" from say, the 1920s when Madison Grant warned Americans about their demographic future in The Passing of the Great Race, or even in the late 1950s and early 1960s when National Review sounded exactly the same as American Renaissance does today? Buckley's "conservatives" became part of the power structure. What has that gotten anyone? The only thing that's been conserved is the White Man's penchant for atomization and suicide.
June 29, 2004
National Review Founder Says It's Time to Leave Stage
By DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK
n 1954, when Ronald Reagan was still a registered Democrat and host of "General Electric Theater," the 28-year-old William Frank Buckley Jr. decided to start a magazine as a standard-bearer for the fledgling conservative movement. In the 50-year ascent of the American right since then, his publication, National Review, has been its most influential journal and Mr. Buckley has been the magazine's guiding spirit and, until today, controlling shareholder.
Tonight, however, Mr. Buckley, 78, is giving up control. In an interview, he said he planned to relinquish his shares today to a board of trustees he had selected. Among them are his son, the humorist Christopher Buckley; the magazine's president, Thomas L. Rhodes; and Austin Bramwell, a 2000 graduate of Yale and one of the magazine's youngest current contributors.
Mr. Buckley's "divestiture," as he calls it, represents the exit of one of the forefathers of modern conservatism. It is also the latest step in the gradual quieting of one of the most distinctive voices in the business of cultural and political commentary, the writer and editor who founded his magazine on a promise to stand "athwart history, yelling 'Stop,' at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who urge it."
In explaining his decision, Mr. Buckley said he had taken some satisfaction in the triumph of conservatism since then, though he expressed some complaints about President Bush's unconservative spending and some retrospective doubts about the wisdom of invading Iraq. But his decision, Mr. Buckley said, had more to do with his own mortality.
"The question is choose some point to quit or die onstage, and there wouldn't be any point in that," Mr. Buckley said, recalling his retirement from his television program "Firing Line" a few years ago. "Thought was given and plans were made to proceed with divestiture."
With characteristic playfulness, Mr. Buckley said that he had not disclosed the timing of the hand-over. He plans to give the trustees his shares at a private party tonight at an Italian restaurant near the magazine's East 34th Street office. "It is kind of a big event in my life," he said, sipping a glass of wine over lunch at the same restaurant last week. "I thought I might as well put a little bit of theater in it. When I leave this building a week from now, I will probably feel a little bit different."
Mr. Buckley, whose syndicated column will continue to appear in the magazine, said he did not expect changes in the contents of the magazine. Richard Lowry, the editor, will continue in that job. Mr. Rhodes, president of National Review, will become chairman of the newly formed board of trustees. The trustees will include Evan Galbraith, an executive of Morgan Stanley who was ambassador to France under Mr. Reagan, and Daniel Oliver, who was chairman of the Federal Trade Commission under Mr. Reagan and whose son, Drew Oliver, was an assistant editor at the magazine.
By virtue of his relative youth, Mr. Bramwell is the most notable of the five trustees. "I wanted somebody who is very young and very talented," Mr. Buckley said. "One likes to think in the long term."
A former officer of the Conservative Party of the Yale Political Union, Mr. Bramwell began writing for National Review two years ago as a Harvard law student. At a recent ceremony at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, he presented Mr. Buckley an award for contributions to the conservative movement along with an admiring, perhaps even Buckleyesque, appraisal of Mr. Buckley's literary style.
"By ironic periphrasis, arch understatement and surprising deployment of familiar and of course unfamiliar words, Buckley convinced his opponents that he knew something they did not, and what's more, that he intended to keep the secret from them," Mr. Bramwell said as he presented the award. "Thus did he waken their minds to the possibility that liberalism is not the philosophia ultima but just another item in the baleful catalogue of modern ideologies."
Not everyone shares this assessment of Mr. Buckley's work. Leon Wieseltier, literary editor of The New Republic, called Mr. Buckley's sometimes baroque style "genially ridiculous."
Mr. Wieseltier added: "It is a kind of antimodern pretense, but of course he is in fact a completely modern man. His thinking and his writing have all the disadvantages of a happy man. The troubling thing about Bill Buckley's work is how singularly untroubled it is by things."
But Mr. Buckley's voice has always been singular. He was not much older than Mr. Bramwell when he founded National Review. The son of an oilman, Mr. Buckley was already famous for his first book, "God and Man at Yale" (1951). Conservatism in the United States was close to its 20th-century nadir, marked by Dwight D. Eisenhower's defeat of the conservative Robert Taft for the 1952 Republican nomination.
The first issue of National Review appeared in 1955. As Mr. Buckley tells it, he became chief editor in part because deferring to a young man was unthreatening to many venerable contributors. "It was easier to allow them to accept a 29-year-old than to select among themselves who will be boss," he said.
William J. Casey, who later became director of central intelligence under Mr. Reagan, incorporated the magazine. Mr. Buckley retained ownership of all the voting stock. National Review has never made a profit, Mr. Buckley said. It makes up any shortfalls each year with contributions from about 1,000 to 1,500 donors, and every other year it sends a solicitation to its subscribers in an effort to add names to the "A list" of regular donors. Mr. Buckley will continue to write the fund-raising letters, he said.
As for conservatism today, Mr. Buckley said there was a growing debate on the right about how the war in Iraq squared with the traditional conservative conviction that American foreign policy should seek only to protect its vital interests.
"With the benefit of minute hindsight, Saddam Hussein wasn't the kind of extra-territorial menace that was assumed by the administration one year ago," Mr. Buckley said. "If I knew then what I know now about what kind of situation we would be in, I would have opposed the war."
Asked whether the growth of the federal government over the last four years diminished his enthusiasm for Mr. Bush, he reluctantly acknowledged that it did. "It bothers me enormously," he said. "Should I growl?"
Still, he professed more than a little pride at the country's rightward drift during his years in control of National Review. "We thought to influence conservative thought, which we succeeded in doing," he said.
2004-06-29 12:00 | User Profile
It's not clear to me when Buckley joined up with our Collective Enemy, but it was clear that he had gone over to the (crypto) Trotskyites when "Seach for Anti-Semitism" came out, and PJB, SF, Sobran and others were drummed out of the "conservative" movement.
I suspect that Buckley was a Trotskyite from the beginning, but of course I can't prove that. But how in the world does one be a conservative all one's life and then end up under the control of mediocre Trotskyites like Jonah Goldberg?
I can only assume that he was in with "them" from the McCarthy era forward. I suspect that Buckley is not in fact a traitor - it's just that we didn't never understood where is true loyalties lie.
Walter
2004-06-29 19:14 | User Profile
I think Buckely quite consistently advanced a post-Vatican-II agenda based around giving center stage to 'we're all in this together.' After all, why worry about giving a voice to the concerns of Irish- and Italian- Americans, when one can make the country hospitable to millions of Catholic coming out of the 3rd world; and generally sell out America to the desires of the global majority?
2004-06-29 19:21 | User Profile
[QUOTE=darkstar]I think Buckely quite consistently advanced a post-Vatican-II agenda based around giving center stage to 'we're all in this together.' After all, why worry about giving a voice to the concerns of Irish- and Italian- Americans, when one can make the country hospitable to millions of Catholic coming out of the 3rd world; and generally sell out America to the desires of the global majority?[/QUOTE]
Darkstar: I don't think he was ever a Catholic.
I suspect that he was recruited by Max Schachtman at a young age and tasked to do exactly what he did - divert the wave of indignant white reaction that was coming from their subversive efforts into kosher-safe channels.
I'd be interested to learn who funded that rat bastard. He did more than any other man alive to neuter the conservative movement, and to finally kill it off.
Like I say, he would be a traitor if he actually started out as a conservative, but after all that's happened that seems unlikely. He may have been the most effective and indeed loyal agent ZOG has ever had.
It will come out some day, I would venture to guess, after it's too late to matter for anything.
Walter
2004-06-30 02:46 | User Profile
Buckley has not formulated a serious essay -- on anything -- in years. His syndicated columns are probably ghosted, at least in part.
American Renaissance's James Lubinskas wrote a devastating article which tracked the leftward drift of Buckley and National Review on matters of race. (see [url="http://www.amren.com/009issue/009issue.html"]http://www.amren.com/009issue/009issue.html[/url] )
Like fellow "conservative" icon Ronald Reagan, Buckley was all hat and no cattle.
2004-06-30 04:09 | User Profile
If we can't call people Catholic who go to Catholic mass regularly, who are confirmed in the Church, and who push the pro-life issues endlessly--who can we call Catholic? Just the Pope?
Let it not be said that we Protestants are without our own 'conservative' wayward sons. We certainly have them: they run the Christian Zionist, immigration-lobby-pandering 'Moral Majority.' But I still think they--unlike the Buckelites--are not a lost cause. (Perhaps I am just prejudiced in my favorable view of that lot.)
[QUOTE=Walter Yannis]Darkstar: I don't think he was ever a Catholic.
I suspect that he was recruited by Max Schachtman at a young age and tasked to do exactly what he did - divert the wave of indignant white reaction that was coming from their subversive efforts into kosher-safe channels.
I'd be interested to learn who funded that rat bastard. He did more than any other man alive to neuter the conservative movement, and to finally kill it off.
Like I say, he would be a traitor if he actually started out as a conservative, but after all that's happened that seems unlikely. He may have been the most effective and indeed loyal agent ZOG has ever had.
It will come out some day, I would venture to guess, after it's too late to matter for anything.
Walter[/QUOTE]
2004-06-30 08:20 | User Profile
[QUOTE=darkstar]If we can't call people Catholic who go to Catholic mass regularly, who are confirmed in the Church, and who push the pro-life issues endlessly--who can we call Catholic? Just the Pope?[/QUOTE]
I have my doubts about this Pope.
He did so many great things, that I can't help but to admire him.
Yet, at the same time, he's a real NWO booster, supports strongly an expanded role for the UN even as the UN tries to kill the Church, kissed the Koran, prayed in a Synagogue, and said nice things about Voodoo.
One possible theory is that he's a Mason. The charge has been leveled against John XXIII. This is the "sed vacante" theory - the seat is empty. The idea is that if John XXIII was in fact a Mason, then he wasn't de jure the Pope, because it goes without saying that a Mason can't be a Catholic and a non-Catholic can't be the Pope.
I'm not advancing that theory, but at the same time I can't dismiss it out of hand. Its explanatory power is simply too great.
Walter
2004-06-30 21:14 | User Profile
Buckley is being praised by all the B-List Jews of the opinion world, for obvious reasons.
For me, Buckley was like a Hunter Thompson figure: an object of interest not so much for what he said, but for the man, the image. I have trouble remembering any original idea, rigorous analysis or thoughtfulness from him on any topic. About the most I remember was the cheekiness of his opposition to the ban on marijuana. His columns near the end were pointless messes loaded with affected language crap. Looming bigger was the Connecticut dashabout with the thorough education and the proper manners and the quasi-British accent. My dad used to play golf with his sister (there are many Buckley siblings). I once saw him give a speech at the Pierre in NYC, and I couldn't understand a bloomin' word. I couldn't tell if it was age or alcohol slur or slouch, but never mind --- it was the great WFB. He was a celeb.
Does WN need such a celeb? I can hear the snorts from some. Maybe it couldn't hurt, and help a little. Personality goes a long way. Just an errant thought.
Once Linder that Buckley WAS saying in the 50s what we are saying now, and today, he says the exact opposite. I think that's a good summation of the man.
2004-06-30 21:57 | User Profile
There were always rumors that NR was CIA-financed, though this was never established factually to my knowledge. The suggestion was that the CIA propped up a phony pro-Cold War right to suck the life out of the old Taft wing of the party. If that was the objective, it was certainly successful.
Buckley started out as an agency operative, of course.
2004-07-01 04:33 | User Profile
The only thing Buckley ever really believed in was anti-Communism. Every other rightist cause was secondary and, if necessary, could be sacrificed for the sake of the struggle against Big Red. Buckley welcomed the neocons into conservatism because they were Cold Warriors. The fact that they shared little else with the Right was unimportant. And so, after the Soviet Union collapsed, Buckley lost his raison d'etre. He dithered while Podhoretz, Goldberg & Co. took virtual possession of [I]National Review[/I].