Bill’s anniversary brings back many memories and reminds me of many things he wrote and said. Two specimens: God and Man at Yale was Bill’s intellectual and political debut. First published in 1951, it threw down a gauntlet whose relevance, and whose power to provoke, is far from exhausted. I won’t rehearse the argument of the book, but only note Pierce v. Society of Sisters, a 1925 Supreme Court case that Bill cites in the course of his discussion of academic freedom. In that case, the Court unanimously ruled that the state had the power to require that “teachers shall be of good moral character and patriotic disposition,” that “certain studies plainly essential to good citizen be taught,” and that “nothing be taught which is manifestly inimical to the public welfare.” (The Court also held that a state did not have the power to “standardize its children by forcing them to accept instruction from public teachers only.”) Shouldn’t we, I wonder, be making better use of Pierce v. Society of Sisters, both in what we require of our teachers and in the limitations we place on the state’s interference with the “high duty” parents and guardians in nurturing and directing the destiny of their charges?
In 1965, Bill ran for mayor of New York, the candidate for the Conservative Party against Abe Beame (the Democrat) and John Lindsay (the Republican). Asked what he would if he won, Bill famously quipped “Demand a recount.” But winning was never in the cards. Making a point, and clearing a public space for conservative opinions, was. Bill did those things. In a meditation on the campaign, he also offered a useful observation on the limited political efficacy of winning arguments.
A good debater is not necessarily an effective vote-getter: you can find a hole in your opponent’s argument through which you could drive a coach and four ringing jingle bells all the way, and thrill at the crystallization of a truth wrung out from a bloody dialogue–which, however, may warm only you and your muse, while the smiling parologist has in the meantime made votes by the tens of thousands.
The election of Barack Obama has precipitated a veritable cottage industry devoted to the question “Wither conservatism?” (In fact, it is a question that should have been precipitated by the nomination of John McCain as the Republican candidate.) We’ll continue to hear a lot about that subject in the coming months, and a good thing, too. Arguments need to be made. Positions formulated. Leaders encouraged. But Bill’s reflections on the difference between winning the debate and winning the election are worth keeping in mind. Intellectual principles are important. So is logical tidiness. But in the political realm, both depend upon another art–the art of rhetoric. By “rhetoric” I do not mean simple eloquence but rather what Aristotle meant when he defined rhetoric as “the art of persuasion,” which deploys logic and arguments in order to win the hearts and minds of its auditors.
This was something that Bill Buckley not only understood but exemplified in his life and through the many institutions he vivified with his intelligence, humor, and what the Greeks called thumos. It’s one of many reasons we have to celebrate his life on this, Bill Buckley’s 83rd anniversary.
No one writes with more eloquence than Roger Kimball. I so enjoy and admire his wonderful ability to capture a moment in history with his magnificent pen. Thanks so much, Roger, for this birthday remembrance of Mr. Buckley. We are so very lucky to have had him among us.
Great article. I can’t help but feel despondent about the prospect of WFB not being around in such turbulent political and economic times. His insights about life and politics was something that this world will never fully replace, and surely not by one man alone. I hope the party he left will always remember the words and actions of the their iconoclast, and take heart in the ideal that we are, at our root, a Conservative country. I pray that our party still remembers how to speak to the heart that yearns for the ideals that have shaped us into the country we are today and will steel us against the tides of turbulence that are to come.
It seems that of the three types of rhetoric Aristotle described, you mean we need more of Buckley’s appeal to Logos (or the logic/reason of a position) and less appeals to Pathos (emotion) and Ethos (character of the speaker). But then you refer to how we ought to “speak to the heart,” which implicates Pathos.
I agree we could us a Buckley in our day, but it is not, as many conservatives have posited, that we need a Buckley “for our time.” After all, classical conservatism is rooted in traditional understandings and resists change for its own sake.
What we really need, then, is someone to make the same appeals to logic and longstanding conservative principles in the face of today’s struggles–to remind us that we must stand our ground even now!
You make a good point, though, that the right reasoning will not necessarily lead us down the same path on every issue. In other words, the right answer won’t always “feel” right. It is only by resorting to principle and reason that we know with the full strength of our convictions that we are, in fact, right. And Buckley’s many words of wisdom will allow his ghost to guide conservatism for a long time to come if we’ll only revisit them regularly.
WFB would have considered Sarah Palin vacuous.
Am I the only one who was expecting an article about Wells Fargo Bank?
WFB was rather a disappointment later in life. I heard no support from him for the crucial work of people like Charles Murray.
And WFB never produced a masterpiece.
Ahh Bill….
“as a boy Buckley moved with his family from Mexico to Sharon, Connecticut before beginning his first formal schooling in Paris, where he attended first grade. By age seven, he received his first formal training in English at a day school in London; his first and second languages were Spanish and French, respectively. As a boy, Buckley developed a love for music, sailing, horses, hunting, skiing, and story-telling. All of these interests would be reflected in his later writings. Just before World War II, at age 13, he attended high school at the Catholic Beaumont College in England.”
Life was sooo tough…..but I liked him anyway even if I abhored his politics. He would have made a fine Monarchist…
I miss Bill. A lot.
As a kid I actually found Bill entertaining. In surfing channels between the Flintstones and Bugs I remember stumbling across Firing Line and thinking, “What is this?”
And Cackcon, while Buckley goal was Logos, his Ethos is what made his writing compelling. And Buckley avoided Pathos in his political writing (he saved that for topics like sailing and cocktails).
I would like to share the following recollection concerning WFB Jr.
I have the text of a letter I saved from a conservative newsletter that I
coedited in spring of 1962 in high school. At the time I wrote Mr. Buckley
questioning the meaning of a passage in his most recent book, “Up
from Liberalism,” in which he made the statement that all essential
knowledge had already been discovered. He wrote me back the following
reply. Since the subject touches on death itself, I can think of no better
time than to send it than at the first milestone after his passing.
Dear Mr. Smith:
In the passage you quote from Up from Liberalism I intended, indeed, to
refer to the religious truth that is our central heritage and to the moral
philosophy and human insight that derive from it. Sometimes this position
is referred to (in a phrase going back, I believe, to the days of the
Roman Empire) as “the morality of the last days” — by which is meant the
world-view of men who know that death is close. But in the long view, we
all stand sentenced to death, and whether it comes in 1995 or tomorrow
makes no difference. That is why the morality of the last days always
applies to what is “finally important in human experience.” All our
techniques of social welfare, all our science, all our comfort, all our
liberty, all our democracy and foreign aid and grandiloquent orations
– all that means nothing to me and nothing to you in the moment when we go.
At that moment we must put our souls in order, and the way to do that was
lighted for us by Jesus, and since then we have had need of no other light.
That is what is finally important; it has not changed; and it will not
change. It is the truth, which shall ever abide in the future. And if it
is “reactionary” to hold a truth that will be valid for all future time,
then words have lost their meaning, and men their reason.
Yours faithfully,
William F. Buckley, Jr.
I remember Mr. Buckley, when asked on perhaps his last Charlie Rose appearance, who now would be the sort of avatar that Mr. Buckley had been in the fifties, to roil and shake the body politic out of its stasis, he replied, with his trademark devilish smile, and I believe a certain seriousness, a young socialist.
I imagine he would be amused now to see Mr. Obama fulfilling his prophecy.
It’s strange to debate; but when I hear Fox News rip on Liberals in their “Ivory Towers,” I just know that they must be talking about…well…YOU.
You, of course, are not a ‘liberal.’ Rather, you attempt to sound educationally flattering and pull from Greek philosophers at least a few times a day.
Where is your defense of the intellect as attacked by those morons? You clearly value education as it has been gained by your mind; so why not denounce them; as opposed to being bogged-down in endless quips about dead friends and Barrack Obama?
I hate Obama as much as the next man; but as a fairly pure Objectivist; I have trouble citing the rationality of your arguments in any sense other than you admire certain people on the right; and disdain nearly everyone on the left. You are pundit, it seems, my friend; in that you only advocate one way but lack clear political philosophy beyond the whim of your character-acceptance.
Where are your underlying political convictions? Not once do you say capitalism in your arguments against this or that state intervention. As you play for a team; I cannot trust your opinion.
And if it’s all for that, and all for the money you gain by getting those dumber than you to play percussion at your tempo; why not just go into politics and receive lobby money? Wouldn’t it be a faster fortune than snarking on this comparatively tiny website and letting us observe your bow tie from a frozen frame?