A Man and His Mag
On the morning of October 6, the White House held an event in honor of William F. Buckley Jr. and the magazine he founded 50 years ago. Here is a sampling of the remarks made on that occasion, culminating in those of the president.
JAMES L. BUCKLEY
Fortunately for Bill I have no anecdotal memory, so he will be spared the embarrassment of my reciting a litany of his youthful indiscretions. But what I can say is that being related to Bill is not an unmixed blessing. For example, shortly after I was elected to the Senate, Bill chose to appear on the television program Laugh-In, on which he asserted, among other things, that he would only fly on planes that had two right wings. Two days later, I received an angry letter from a lawyer in Buffalo who described himself as a former admirer. He went on to say that he was appalled to see my disgusting performance on Laugh-In in which I disgraced my office and embarrassed my constituents by acting the clown on that nauseating program. He acknowledged that some people might enjoy its indecencies, but trusted that they were in the minority.
Now, for someone in elective office, it’s a worrisome thing to lose even one admirer. So by return mail, with copy to Bill, I advised him that it was Bill, not I, who had appeared on Laugh-In, but added that I couldn’t help wondering why he had consented to watch a program of which he so strongly disapproved. I was rather pleased with my putdown until, three days later, I received my copy of the letter Bill sent my former admirer:
Dear Mr. _____:
It is typical of my brother to deceive his constituents. It was he, not I, who appeared on Laugh-In, just as you suspected. But his greatest deception remains undiscovered. It was I, not he, who was elected to the Senate.
So you are represented in the Senate by an honest and truthful man.
Yours sincerely,
Wm. F. Buckley Jr.
Bill published that exchange in National Review, and a Buffalo subscriber posted it on the bulletin board of a stuffy club to which my poor constituent belonged.
The question that people continually ask me is whether my other siblings and I knew, as we were growing up, that we had such a prodigy under our roof. The answer, of course, is no. We did realize that Bill was precocious (at age seven, for example, he wrote the King of England demanding that he repay England’s war debt), and his older siblings would tease him about the mouth-filling words he would occasionally use and, at times, misuse. But as the years went by, our amusement turned to awe as three of Bill’s signature qualities manifested themselves: an Olympian self-assurance, an unrestrained imagination, and the self-discipline required to accomplish whatever he set his mind to.
And when, with the self-assurance we have come to know, he decided the time had come to save the nation from liberalism, he had the imagination to see how this might be accomplished and the infinite self-discipline and determination required to bring it about. Bill proposed to save the Republic by founding a magazine that would lay the intellectual groundwork for a counterrevolution. And Bill proceeded to do precisely what he had set out to do: transform American politics. Not a bad accomplishment for a precocious younger brother.
Unfortunately, as the years went by, Bill developed the habit of commandeering his siblings’ services. My sister Priscilla had a promising career in journalism until he yanked her home from the United Press bureau in Paris to become his managing editor and nanny to a cantankerous group of editors. And he has had the most direct impact on my own life, beginning with a telephone call in the spring of 1965 when he called to announce a) that he had decided to run for the position of mayor of New York City on the strict understanding that he could not win, and b) that he required my services as his campaign manager. Now it happens that at that time I had never been involved in a political campaign of any kind and I have never had any talents as a manager. So it would be an exercise in the blind leading the blind. What Bill wanted was a buffer to protect him from the New York Conservative party’s amateur political strategists. And, as has always been the case, I yielded. It was a glorious campaign. As expected, Bill didn’t win, but I had been introduced to the fathers of the Conservative party who would later conscript me for a run for the Senate. And it seems I have been on one government payroll or another ever since.
I have had many blessings in life, but few that match the pleasure and privilege of having Bill for a brother.
Mr. Buckley is a senior judge on the U.S. Court of Appeals and a former U.S. senator from New York.
ROGER KIMBALL
One question that many in this room will have asked themselves over the years is, how does he do it? He is graduated from college and instantly incites apoplexy with his book God and Man at Yale. He founds National Review and at one stroke rescues American conservatism from parochial irrelevance and provides a platform for generations of conservative commentators.
He may have advised us, in the first issue of NR, to stand athwart history yelling Stop! But look how much he has instigated.
Recognizing the importance of debate to the health of our political culture, he starts Firing Line and for 30-odd years provides the most intelligent and entertaining forum for the exchange of ideas and exhibition of eccentricity in the history of television. He skis; he sails across the Atlantic, across the Pacific, to Canada, to Bermuda. He plays the piano and harpsichord, not just in the privacy of his living room but in concert halls. In his spare time, he runs for mayor of New York City — though not, I should point out, posthumously, as The New York Times Magazine seemed to imply last week when it ran the World’s Most Ghastly Photograph of Bill on its cover.
In addition to these sundry avocations, there are the central employments of speaking and writing. For many years, Bill averaged 70 lectures a year. That’s seven-zero. I pause to remind you that a year contains but 52 weeks.
And then there is the writing: the thrice-weekly column, the articles for NR and a galaxy of other magazines from — well, from The New Criterion to Playboy — how’s that for range?
The sage of Ecclesiastes observed that of the making of books there is no end. Bill obviously absorbed that verse at a tender age and regarded it as a vocation. How many books has he written, edited, introduced, been midwife to? Political and social commentary; memoirs and travel writing; essays, polemics, and a shelf full of novels — the list is long and daunting.
But this catalogue of achievement, impressive though it is, forms merely the integument of Bill Buckley’s activities. The core, I suspect, centers around a twofold conviction and an accident of temperament.
The conviction is, first, that liberty is essential to our humanity; but, second, that genuine liberty requires acknowledgment of what transcends and gives direction to our discretion — in other words, that genuine liberty requires faith and what one British jurist memorably called “obedience to the unenforceable.”
Bill’s embrace of liberty has made him, famously, the scourge of political tyrants who would trample upon freedom, and latitudinarian anarchists who would beguile us with counterfeit substitutes. Yet it is important, I think, to note that the withering lucidity of Bill’s rhetoric has sometimes obscured the fact that, unlike many able polemicists, he is a profoundly non- or even anti-ideological character.
He is conservative, yes; he has assiduously followed St. Paul’s directive to “speak thou the things which become sound doctrine.”
But Bill’s conservatism is fundamentally a creature of amplitude. Like Walter Bagehot, he knows that “the essence of Toryism is enjoyment.” And this brings me to that accident of temperament I mentioned a moment ago. I daresay that everyone in this room is, in one way or another, a beneficiary of Bill Buckley — his insight, his admonition, his infectious enthusiasm and unstoppable generosity.
Let me say a word about the element of admonition. It transpired one day that I had never heard of the remarkable controversialist Westbrook Pegler. Bill’s astonishment was profound — and unremitting. It was also effective. For I have since acquainted myself so closely with the works of Westbrook Pegler that I sometimes believe that I am Westbrook Pegler!
The author of Genesis tells us that God made the world and saw that it was good. To my mind, that is the imperative bulletin that Bill Buckley has been bringing us for decades. He has been graced with many talents; but he has been graced above all with a genius for friendship. I am immensely grateful for the benefactions of that genius. Thank you, Bill. Long may you flourish.
Mr. Kimball is co-editor and co-publisher of The New Criterion, and publisher of Encounter Books.
HENRY A. KISSINGER
For over 50 years, Bill Buckley has been a friend — a staunch support in every crisis and an inspiration amidst the political turmoil of the times.
It cannot be said that our relationship began auspiciously. What brought us together was a journal called Confluence that I — then a second-year graduate student — was editing. Its purpose was to reconcile European and American attitudes by inviting authors from both sides of the Atlantic to write essays on the same topic. Shortly after the publication of God and Man at Yale, I invited Bill to contribute. I cannot recall what possessed me to make this — in the Harvard context — foolhardy decision. I have no recollection of what I expected. In fact, there was no basis for forming any expectation because, in the 1950s, conservatives were an unknown species at Harvard. When I read Bill’s draft, all ambiguity vanished. By Harvard standards, it was beyond unorthodox, verging on the sacrilegious. So we turned the article down, preserving our prospects for Harvard tenure. It is not an action of which I am proud — though no doubt we found an elevated justification at the time.
Bill gave me my comeuppance during the controversy over détente when he said — in my presence — on Firing Line: “Henry Kissinger reminds me of an athlete carried around the arena to the applause of the multitude while someone else is winning the race.”
Despite unpromising beginnings, Bill and I became close friends. He has always been tolerant of deviant opinions, and his civilized urbanity that had vanquished such veterans of ideological struggle as Ken Galbraith found it easy to disarm a Rockefeller Republican — so much so that as time went on, Bill occasionally appointed himself my conscience. For example, he was part of the press corps accompanying President Nixon to China. While I was briefing the journalists on the Shanghai Communiqué, Bill respected our friendship too much to ask a hostile question. But he made sure to sit in the front row with a raised eyebrow that was not lowered once during an hour’s briefing.
Bill could leave me defensive amidst general adulation because I cherished his integrity, his warmth, his serenity, and his values. Having escaped a totalitarian society, I appreciated his resistance to the politics of manipulation. When Bill first appeared on the scene, the dominant agenda tended toward the homogenization of societies, without regard to history, culture, and circumstance. Bill’s message was that every society must tread a path partially charted in its past and that its future depends on the sustaining value it can draw from its roots. The dominant agenda treated society as a mechanism subject to continuous tinkering. Bill’s conservatism saw society as an organism requiring its own special nurturing. This is why conservatives strive to replace the tyranny of programs with a respect for the unknowable and an acute sense of responsibility for the possibilities of unintended consequences. The insistence on imposing perfection in a finite time is a cause of much of humanity’s suffering. Real conservatism believes in absolute values but is willing to reach them in imperfect stages. This humility — which in Bill’s case could be described as flamboyant — is the prerequisite to achieving the ultimate liberation of man and societies to evoke the best within them.
The most difficult challenge for any society is to chart the path between its past and its future. To travel that road, courageous guides are needed, not afraid to stand alone and capable of both battles and reconciliations.
Bill has performed this service for our society.
Let me conclude with a quotation from Winston Churchill:
“What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we are gone? How else can we put ourselves in harmonious relation with the great verities and consolations of the infinite and the eternal?”
Bill always has recalled us to the great verities. It has been a privilege to be his contemporary, an honor to be his friend.
Mr. Kissinger was secretary of state from 1973 to 1977.
GEORGE F. WILL
In his 40th-anniversary toast to his Yale class of 1950, Bill Buckley said: “Some of us who wondered if we would ever be this old now wonder whether we were ever young.” Those who were not young 40 years ago, in 1965, can have no inkling of what fun it was to be among Bill’s disciples as he ran for mayor of New York vowing that, were he to win, his first act would be to demand a recount.
Murray Kempton, the wonderful liberal columnist who later joined Bill’s eclectic legion of friends, wrote after Bill’s first news conference as a candidate that Bill “had the kidney to decline the customary humiliation of soliciting the love of the voters, and read his statement of principles in a tone for all the world that of an Edwardian resident commissioner reading aloud the 39 articles of the Anglican establishment to a conscript assemblage of Zulus.”
For conservatives, happy days were here again.
Back then, espousing conservatism was regarded by polite society, which was then soggy with that era’s barely challenged liberalism, as a species of naughtiness, not nice but also not serious. Bill, representing New York’s Conservative party, which was just three years old, won 13 percent of the vote. When the winner, John Lindsay, limped discredited from office eight years later, Bill’s brother Jim had been elected, on the Conservative line, U.S. senator from New York.
Bill soon turns 80 and National Review, which he founded in the belly of the beast — in liberal Manhattan — soon turns 50. It is difficult to remember, and hence especially important to remember, the slough of despond conservatism was in in 1955.
Ohio’s senator Robert Taft, for more than a decade the leading conservative in elective office, had died in 1953. Joseph McCarthy had tainted conservatism in the process of disgracing himself with bile and bourbon. President Eisenhower had so placidly come to terms with the flaccid consensus of the 1950s that the editor of U.S. News & World Report, the most conservative newsweekly, suggested that both parties nominate Eisenhower in 1956.
National Review demurred. When it nailed its colors to its mast and set sail upon the choppy seas of American controversy, one novel on the bestseller list was Sloan Wilson’s The Man in the Gray Flannel Suit. It voiced the 1950s worry about “conformity.”
National Review’s premise was that conformity was especially egregious among the intellectuals, that herd of independent minds. National Review is one reason that the phrase “conservative intelligentsia” is no longer, as it was in 1955, an oxymoron.
In 1964, National Review (its circulation then was 100,000) did what the mighty Hearst press had often tried to do but had never done. National Review had determined a major party’s presidential nomination.
Barry Goldwater’s candidacy was essentially an emanation of National Review’s cluttered offices on East 35th Street. Which is why an audience of young Goldwaterites took it so hard when, two months before the 1964 election, Buckley warned them that bliss would be a bit delayed. He said:
“The point of the present occasion is to win recruits whose attention we might never have attracted but for Barry Goldwater; to win them not only for November the third, but for future Novembers; to infuse the conservative spirit in enough people to entitle us to look about us on November fourth, not at the ashes of defeat, but at the well-planted seeds of hope, which will flower on a great November day in the future, if there is a future.”
There was a future. It arrived 16 years later.
Bill is the author of more than 4,000 columns, and still adding two a week. He is the author of 47 books, 18 of them novels. He was the host of the Firing Line television program for 33 years. For 50 years he has been a public speaker, often making as many as 70 lectures and debates a year. He has been an ocean mariner, a concert harpsichordist — Bill’s energy reproaches the rest of us.
He is married to a woman who matches his mettle. His proposal to her, made when he called her away from a card game, went like this:
He: “Patricia, would you consider marriage with me?”
She: “Bill, I’ve been asked this question many times. To others I’ve said no. To you I say yes. Now, may I please get back and finish my hand?”
In his memoir Miles Gone By, Bill recalls the story of an American GI who asked a caretaker at Windsor Castle to explain the secret of the Castle’s splendid lawn. The caretaker replied: You make a very shallow furrow before planting the grass. Then you carefully water it — for 700 years.
Liberty is like that, and Bill, head caretaker of America’s political lawn, understands the patience required for its cultivation.
Bill, so young at 80, was severely precocious at age seven when he wrote a starchy letter to the King of England demanding payment of Britain’s World War I debts. Seventy-three years on, Bill’s country is significantly different, and better, because of him. Of how many journalists, ever, can that be said? Only one.
Mr. Will is a syndicated columnist.
GEORGE W. BUSH
Editor’s Note: Below is a transcript of the president’s remarks, which were in part off the cuff.
I’m here to escort William F. Buckley Jr. To lunch. (Laughter.) But first I’ve got some things I want to say. It’s an honor to celebrate the 50th anniversary of National Review, and soon to be the 80th birthday of our honoree. You probably think this is a — the Yale Scholars Association meeting. (Laughter.) Actually, Bill Buckley did have an influence on me when I followed him at Yale. You might remember one of his famous quotes — the job of conservatives was to stand athwart history, yelling Stop. That’s the approach I took to most of my classes. (Laughter.)
I also do want to throw a little bouquet to him, and let him know that all I’ve learned about the English language . . . (Laughter.)
At any rate, it’s good to welcome the Buckley family. Thank you all for coming. It’s such an honor to have you all here. You’ve got a great family, and you’re a family of public service and a family that has stood strong for what you believe, without wavering. I appreciate Dr. Kissinger, and Dusty Rhodes, and Ed Capano as well. It’s good to see you all.
The interesting thing about Bill Buckley’s career is he’s a — obviously, not idle. He likes to do a lot of different things. He was an author, an editor, a spy, a novelist, a sailor. . . The most important thing he did was to contribute to the realm of ideas for America. He was an entrepreneur. He kind of gathered up some dreamers and decided to do something. A lot of times dreamers don’t do anything, they just sit there and dream. He decided to do something, and he formed a magazine that helped move conservatism from the margins of American society into the Oval Office. That’s a significant contribution.
The amazing thing is that sometimes it’s hard to be a leader because you hear all kinds of voices. He certainly heard different voices when he formed National Review. He had an eclectic group of people. That’s a Yale word. (Laughter.) He had voices that included ex-communists who knew better than most the threat posed to America by the Soviet Union. He had voices such as free-marketers who knew that markets could deliver better results than bureaucracies. He had voices from the traditionalists who understood that a government of and by and for the people could not stand unless it stood on moral ground. They were all different — represented a different strand of conservative thought. Yet, when they came together under the conductor’s baton, they made beautiful music. Congratulations for being a leader. (Applause.)
Wenn Photos
I’m sure it’s hard for some of the youngsters — unfortunately, that doesn’t include me anymore (laughter) — to imagine the day when the only conservative game in Washington, D.C., was Bill Buckley and National Review. And today we’ve got, of course, an abundance of conservative columnists and radio hosts and television shows and think tanks and all kinds of organizations. I guess in an intellectual sense, you could say these are all Bill’s children. And like children, they grow up and go their own way. But I’m confident that the faithful advocates of the free-enterprise system, like those at National Review, regard the competition they have created as a good thing. I certainly hope so.
It’s hard to believe that in 1955, the Soviet Union was in full power, that Ronald Reagan was a Democrat — and the truth of the matter is, Bill, I was more interested in Willie Mays than I was in you. (Laughter.) But a lot has changed in a brief period of time, when you think about it. Many of the more important changes of the 20th century happened because National Review stood strong, and that’s a fact — that’s a fact of history.
I’m glad to know that the people of National Review aren’t resting on their laurels. A sign of a good leader is somebody who can lay the foundation so that people are able to carry on. I think that’s going to be a legacy of Bill Buckley. He didn’t just show up and create something that cratered, he created something that stood the test of time and grew.
The people of National Review are determined to leave their mark on this new century, and we appreciate it. You got a lot of readers here in the West Wing. My admonition is to keep thinking, to keep writing, and keep working.
I found another Buckley quote interesting — when he wrote, with characteristic modesty, that did National Review not exist, no one would have invented it. (Laughter.) I think it’s more accurate to say that only Bill Buckley could have invented National Review. And that’s a tremendous influence on American life that can be explained only by the appeal of human freedom — this great understanding of the power of freedom to change societies and to lift up people’s lives.
It is an honor to be here to thank you for your service. I want to thank you for leaving us a magazine and a group of thinkers that will help make the advance of liberty over the last 50 years look like a dress rehearsal for the next 50 years.
May God bless the Buckley family. Thank you for coming.
http://nrd.nationalreview.com/article/?q=N2RjNzc4ZjM2YzkxMzhiNWE4NTZlZjRkZWFlMTI5ZjA=
n 1954, when he was 28, William F. Buckley Jr. founded National Review to bear the standard of a fledgling conservative movement defined by three commitments: to fight Communism, to diminish the federal government and to uphold traditionalism in social affairs.
William F. Buckley Jr. was the single person most responsible for creating the conservative movement. The modern conservative synthesis was formed under his tutelage during the 1950s and 1960s at the editorial meetings of the magazine he founded, National Review, crafted with a diverse and thoughtful crew that included Frank Meyer, Russell Kirk, Whittaker Chambers, James Burnham and many other creative intellectuals. But Buckley was the center.
The program has retrogressed so far that President George W. Bush could famously demand that “when someone hurts, government must act.” Unfortunately, when government acts, it needs bureaucrats and bureaucracy. Consequently, President Bush has increased domestic government employment more than any other post World War II president, although all of the others have tried. His final (and labeled his most frugal) budget for 2009 seeks an increase of 26,000 additional federal employees. It is true that it is predominantly for homeland security but increases have been across the board, over time in every department except Treasury.
While Bill Buckley’s program has not succeeded, his analysis remains even more relevant than when he first wrote because people are more dependent. It is too late to turn to Mr. Buckley, however. He is now gone to his God, obedient to the end, still subservient to the wisdom of his ancestors. He was, in fact, the most generous person I have ever known. But he cannot help us any longer.