Posted on 05/29/2024 1:30:47 PM PDT by Pelham
...As a young man, I was struck by how masterfully Buckley built an entire movement and kept it going by force of personality. Even then, however, I was increasingly turned off by Buckley’s crusading anti-Communism—and that was long before he wandered off in a neoconservative direction.
I also became concerned with how Buckley lavished favors on his buddies on the left and the manner in which he inserted them into National Review, and then on his TV interview program, Firing Line. By the 1990s, Buckley made only feeble attempts to defend longtime friends and loyal employees who came under assault from the neocons and from those further on the left.
Buckley also left his magazine in reliably non-right-wing hands by the time he stepped down as editor. Although National Review has journeyed further leftward since Buckley’s departure, it would be ridiculous to pretend that he had nothing to do with that development. The magazine had begun to move leftward on social issues (though not in its crusading anti-Communism) while Buckley was still technically in charge..
...In Buckley’s case, however, his blunders were particularly catastrophic because he turned on his onetime friends and followers. He also left the conservative movement in very bad hands. Buckley joined with the neocons in purging from the pages of his magazine those who didn’t fit the new face of conservatism after the 1980s. Not surprisingly, his magazine became tedious reading matter, even while it continued to be funded by donors whom Buckley attracted.
We might ask ourselves if the conservative movement Buckley bequeathed to a now-sclerotic American conservative establishment would have been different if he had behaved more courageously during the second half of his life. It may be hard to dismiss entirely the effect of his questionable personal decisions, but...
(Excerpt) Read more at chroniclesmagazine.org ...
“The Birchers and leftover pre-WWII isolationists were just like the New Left... then this kung-fu virtue signaling would cause foreigners to slap their foreheads with the sudden realization that we were the good guys and “whirled peas” would break out.”
About twenty years ago I listened to a long recording by Robert Welsch, the founder of the society. I wondered what he would have to say.
I can tell you directly, what you write is nonsense.
can’t get there, to that site
“should-we-HAVE-gone-war- ...”
I recall very distinctly being surprised that WFB was not all in on the Iraq war beforehand, as that was the overwhelming prevaling ‘conservative position at the time.
so mebbe later as you surmise
“The publisher of NR and I often met for breakfast on Saturday.”
Would that have been William Rusher? I met him at a small NR event in Orange County CA in the early 1990s. I brought up the serious immigration problem already impacting SoCal and received a blank look of complete disinterest in return.
This was in the heat of the Prop 187 campaign and there is no way that the NR crew couldn’t have been aware of it. But like the RNC leadership they couldn’t care less about the transformation of the country that was occurring with California being ground zero.
“I once shook Bill Buckley’s hand. It was an honor meeting him. I was a NR subscriber for 25 years.”
I had the chance to meet Buckley too... I was impressed at the time but that faded as the years passed. I subscribed to NR from 1977 until maybe 1991. By then most of the writers that I respected had left or been cut loose.
What’s interesting to ponder is that in all of the years that I read NR, Buckley never wrote one article of substance. He basically acted as a host for the writers who made the magazine important.
I’ve heard that the really important presence at NR had been his sister, Priscilla Buckley, who acted as managing editor. The decline of NR paralleled her retirement from that role.
WFB had a great start to his career, and NR wrote honest and important material in those early years, but in the late 60s, the rot was starting to set in. In the end...WFB was indeed controlled opposition.
The “purges” WFB ran on many of the people who wrote for him and were employed by him were disgraceful.
Jack Fowler became the NR publisher in the Lowry era. He was a neighbor of mine in Milford Ct. We fell out when NR turned against the tea party. I cancelled my subscription when he put out the never Trump edition. It became very clear to me that NR owed its existence to the establishment so they catered to it.
“An honest liberal.’’ Now there’s a contradiction in terms.
“Depression is anger turned inward’’. Sigmund Freud.
Thank you!
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