TheAgitator.com
William F. Buckley, Jr., RIP
Wednesday, February 27th, 2008“Marijuana never kicks down your door in the middle of the night. Marijuana never locks up sick and dying people, does not suppress medical research, does not peek in bedroom windows. Even if one takes every reefer madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value, marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could.”
–William F. Buckley, Jr.*
The guy got some things wrong, but he got a lot right (in both senses of the word).
Conservatism would do well to return to turn away from the ugly populism that currently has the movement by the throat, and move toward Buckley’s more elitist-tinged skepticism of power. Buckley was intellectually honest, engaged his opponents fairly, and was willing to admit when he’d been wrong (see his change of position on the drug prohibition and the war in Iraq, respectively). More importantly, he was no party hack. He was beholden to ideas.
Buckley leaves an enormous legacy, but to the detriment everyone, the right left Buckley years ago. Where Buckley stood athwart the tide of history and beat it back with wit, sophistication, and argument, we today get best-selling Regnery screeds from lowest-common-denominator clowns like Ann Coulter, Dinesh D’Souza, and Glenn Beck. Where Buckley mistrusted government and aimed to slow the world down, he’s been usurped on the right by the likes of William Kristol and David Brooks, men who want to use government to remake the world in their own image. Where Buckley flourished in cosmopolitan Manhattan and took delight in life’s finer things, modern conservatism has grown disdainful of the marketplace of culture, commerce, and ideas abundant in urban areas (witness the last election, where many on the right weirdly smeared John Kerry as a “latte-sipper”–real Americans apparently drink Maxwell House). In fact, today’s Bush/neocon-right is often contemptuous of commerce itself, sometimes calling the voluntary, unchecked exchange of goods, labor, and services–a pure free market–”ugly” and “crude.”
The 15-year GOP assent to power from 1980 to 1994 gave rise to rightist thinkers more inclined toward activist government, just one that was active promoting conservativism. With Republicans at the helm of the federal government, limiting government’s scope and reach no longer seemed like such a good idea. So old right thinkers like Buckley lost influence in favor of big government neocons like Kristol, who gave quarter to grand dreams like an imperial presidency, using the federal government to promote conservative values through intervention in areas like health care and the public schools, remapping the Middle East, and other ideas that require too great a belief in the competence and benevolence of bureaucrats and politicians for sensible rightists like Buckley.
I didn’t agree with Buckley on everything, of course. But he represents a time when conservatives and libertarians shared quite a bit of common ground–indeed when both philosophies largely sprang from the same well of ideas and influences. I don’t think that’s the case anymore.
Rest in peace.
(*Note: Via the comments, it looks likes there’s some dispute over the origin of this quote. Pete Guither has more, as well as links to lots of other good stuff from Buckley over the years.
Thank you for a very nice and thoughtful post.
Buckley was my hero growing up, for many of the reasons stated above. He was intellectually honest, he was erudite in his criticism, and above all; able to distinguish fallacious argument based on ideology rather than fact or clear thought.
To have him as a hero, in a house with a very left leaning father, made for good back and forth, and though I have stayed on the left, I continued to read NRO at least until he relinquished control.
I loved watching Firing Line as a high schooler, picking up fancy words, but also seeing how a good argument was framed, not in heated name calling, but in a linear concise manner, which put his guests on edge, but also made them dig deeper if they were going to hold up to his level of thought process. I liked his Blackford Oakes spy novels too.
Radley,
Best WFB obit by a libertarian I’ve read today. Spot on.
[...] Radley Balko [...]
“ascent to power”
—-
Well written.
[...] Radley Balko [...]
[...] ideas without an agenda other than the truth. WFB was a master. I can’t say it better than Radley, so I’ll shamelessly quote him [...]
Great post. He was, and still is, one of my ideological heroes. I don’t agree with everything, but he was honest and a great thinker.
[...] 2008 William F. Buckley is dead? Posted by teageegeepea under Uncategorized I just saw this at the Agitator. I personally can’t forgive Buckley for all the people he “kicked off [...]
Is there a good reference for that quote? The web attributes it to p j orourke, buckley, and someone from norml.
> Where Buckley stood athwart the tide of history and beat it back
> with wit, sophistication, and argument….
Not at all. Buckley *talked* while the left *acted*.
Beck nails it right on the head: http://www.two–four.net/weblog.php?id=P3588
Buckley should have signed wearily, got out of his chair, and popped Vidal’s nose like a grape under a hammer, then walked out of the studio. — Instead, his legacy was to create two generations of conservative “commentators” who sat on their big fat butts in front of microphones and keyboards, and did nothing but call our the play-by-play in flowery language as the Left grabbed the world by the throat and bent her over the rail.
Radley, regarding, the quote you use at the top of your post, Pete Guither, says that it does not actually belong to William F. Buckley himself. He simply made it famous.
http://blogs.salon.com/0002762/2008/02/27.html#a2721
Regardless, may you R.I.P. Mr. Buckley
I was reminded of opposition to the “war on drugs” by the post about him on Hit & Run. I revised some comments I had made about him. Your post was great.
Radley,
That was the most eloquent reminisence of William Buckley Jr I have read. Thank you- he will be missed- I am waiting to read what Gore Vidal has to say. Their debates were the pinpoint of 1968.
Please excuse, the unnecessary use of commas, in my previous, post.
Well done, very heartfelt post, Radley. Rest in peace, Bill.
Right-wingers often leave my speechless, buy Schneider you win a special award.
The first part of the award is for living in a magical fairyland where liberals have had significant power for the past decade. As far as I can tell Clinton’s power got checked mid-term, and no liberals had power thereafter.
The second part of the award is for taking your absurdist fairy-land dream of liberal oppression and spewing all over an obituary with it.
Thank you, right-wing Schneider, for reconfirming my belief that the vast majority of self-identified GOP members are not just completely out of touch with reality (as evidenced by the first part of the award) but that you’re also an enormous cock.
[...] For a pretty great overview of the importance, Reason pulls it together kind of nicely, and Radley Balko hits a lot of notes that went through my [...]
The author of that quote was a man by the name of Richard Cowan,
who was director of NORML from 1992-1995, and who know operates a superb website devoted to marijuana issues at
http://www.marijuananews.com
“Conservatism would do well to return to turn away from the ugly populism that currently has the movement by the throat, and move toward Buckley’s more elitist-tinged skepticism of power”
Exactly right!
While usually, esp. for a man of Buckley’s stature and achievement, it is in the natural order of things to more celebrate his life than to morn his death there is nevertheless a sad note to Buckley’s passing, and that is the conservative movement he started proceeded him to the grave.
Well, I can’t agree that Buckley’s conservatism and libertarianism had a lot in common. It is true that up to the late 70s there were a number of people who still believed in the ideological ideals of the American Revolution and who called themselves “conservatives.” But that is never what Buckley meant by that term. What he meant by conservatism was exactly what Edmund Burke and every British Tory following him has meant by “conservatism” : a strong adversion to rational and consistent reasoning about political or economic topics, a belief that the unwashed masses must be kept in their place by a self-appointed class of autocrats, a profession of the importance of religious values and public morals [but with the understanding that these "noble lies" are not to be taken serious by such autocrats who, obviously, are above such things], and, last but hardly least, a substitution of rhetoric for thought.
[...] head of the conservative moment. Yet the comparison to Buckley is instructive. As Radley Balko put it in an obituary, Buckley was intellectually honest, engaged his opponents fairly, and was willing to [...]