[Mb-civic] Buckley: The Right's Practical Intellectual - E. J. Dionne - Washington Post

[William Swiggard]

Buckley: The Right's Practical Intellectual

By E. J. Dionne Jr.
Tuesday, October 11, 2005; Page A17

It is time that I confess to an illicit love. I am now, and have been 
almost all my life, an admirer of William F. Buckley Jr.

The skeptical conservative might say it's easy for a liberal to like 
this elitist Yale grad who uses big words, hangs with the likes of John 
Kenneth Galbraith and has led a rather glamorous life. I'll admit to 
admiring Buckley's love of life, to enjoying his novels and to sharing 
his respect for Galbraith. But I'm not a fan of big words, Yale grads, 
glamour or elitism.

And it's not easy for any liberal to agree with Buckley's support long 
ago for Joe McCarthy. (His novel about McCarthy was better). It's hard 
to credit his views in the civil rights era or to identify with his many 
knocks on that courageous liberal Republican, former senator Lowell Weicker.

Still, I will always respect this columnist, editor, novelist, lecturer 
and organizer because he undertook a mission and carried it out with 
real genius. He knew conservatism needed a serious intellectual life if 
conservative ideas were to be considered by those outside the right's 
faithful remnant. That's why he founded National Review magazine, which 
is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. He knew cranks were bad 
for the movement. He knew that deep splits among conservatives -- 
between internationalists and isolationists, libertarians and 
traditionalists -- had to be resolved.

Buckley felt no compunction about challenging liberal elites on their 
own ground. He fired plenty of shots at liberal dominance of academe, 
beginning with his first book, "God and Man at Yale." In the process, he 
pioneered the most effective form of conservative jujitsu: a movement 
devoted to the interests of the wealthy and powerful casting itself as a 
collection of populists challenging liberal snobbery.

Buckley was determined to rid the right of the wing nuts. He was, to his 
everlasting credit, the scourge of an anti-Semitism that once had a hold 
on significant parts of the right. He also blasted the strange 
conspiracy theories of the John Birch Society. But most important were 
Buckley's efforts during the 1950s to resolve conservatism's 
contradictions. These exertions made it possible for Barry Goldwater and 
then Ronald Reagan to turn the remnant into a mighty political force.

Buckley dumped isolationism, not so hard since many former isolationists 
were happy with an aggressive American foreign policy as long as the 
enemy was Soviet communism. More difficult was resolving the 
contradiction between anti-government libertarians -- their primary love 
was individual freedom -- and the traditionalists who believed in 
government's role as a promoter of virtue and community.

One of National Review's primary tasks was dealing with this doctrinal 
conundrum. Frank Meyer, Buckley's friend and magazine colleague, came up 
with what is known as "fusionism." It was an attempt to fuse the two 
forms of conservatism into one.

Libertarians needed to learn that the freedom they revered was insecure 
absent the cultivation of personal virtue and a moral order hospitable 
to liberty. Traditionalists were not to confuse the legitimate authority 
of tradition with the illegitimate power of big government. The United 
States was fundamentally a conservative society, the theory went, so our 
country was a place in which liberty was conducive to a reverence for 
tradition.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/10/AR2005101001204.html?nav=hcmodule
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