The life, legacy and death of Bill Buckley

By Dylan Hales

William F. Buckley, the founder of National Review magazine, died today at the age of 82. Though it is undeniable that Buckley is one of the three or four most important figures in the post-WWII conservative movement, it is equally undeniable that Buckley is in large part responsible for the degradation of the populist impulse of the American "Old Right". While it is impossible to imagine a conservative movement in this country achieving the visibility and successes it did minus Buckley, it is also impossible to imagine the emergence of a dominant bureaucratic elitism at the vanguard of conservatism without Buckley’s influence.

Though early National Review published writers like Russell Kirk, Richard Weaver and James Burnham, it also went out of its way to literally write dissidents out of the movement. The irony is that much of the time these "dissidents" were in fact the very men who had built the rock, which Buckley built his house on. Furthermore the "expulsion" of Murray Rothbard, Joe Sobran, the John Birch Society, et. from the conservative movement, via National Review, elevated the magazine to the level of house organ for the conservative wing of the American establishment. Buckley and co. came to represent "consensus conservatism", the bastard cousin of the "consensus liberalism" that had wrecked the agrarian spirit and non-interventionist tendencies on the American Left. Not coincidentally the conservative version had the same result on the American Right.

While Buckley was an early advocate for a fusionist politics on the right that would combine libertarianism with traditional conservatism, the end result was the subordination of principle to ultra-pragmatism. National Reviews obsession with the communist menace, allowed for a narrow tunnel vision on foreign affairs that would open the movement doors wide open to the eventual neoconservative takeover. For years many movement figures have suspected that Buckley regretted this deviation from his traditionalist, "Old Whig" perspective, but it was not until after the failures of Iraq had become apparent that Buckley made any such views public.

Despite all of his faults, Buckley was a brilliant polemicist, with a sharp wit. He had a way of making converts out of the seemingly unconvertible. Though Buckley’s conservatism was a perversion of the original American Right, it goes without saying that he was capable of popularizing certain viewpoints that were not going to get play otherwise. Though he was inconsistent on this point, it is fair to say that "small government, less taxes" as a conservative mantra, was pushed into the mainstream via the efforts of National Review and William F. Buckley.

Prior to the birth of National Review, Buckley was most well known as the author of "God And Man At Yale". The book was a visceral attack on the anti-traditionalist elitism run wild in one of Americas most well respected institutions of higher learning. According to Buckley the barbarians were inside the gates and were wrecking our culture and country with "intellectualism" as their cover. Buckley was right, but deep down he was also one of them. At elitist, intellectual, snob, who came to represent the worst aspects of the "natural aristocracy" that is such a big part of conservative lore.

In his earlier days Buckley had been a proud member of the America First Committee and a major critic of the managerial state. Before all was said and done he was calling for totalitarianism on U.S. shores (literally) to defend the world from a far off foreign power, and playing the role of gatekeeper of "respectable" opinion on the right. From AFC to PC policeman. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.