Paul:
I don’t know William Buckley’s work, and I don’t know if what Mr Kimball’s words adequately represent it.
“Individualism” and “collectivism” are modern notions that can’t be discussed in the context of monotheistic religions without allowing for a mutatis mutandis and quotation marks.
However, you surely know that in Christianity the central concern is personal salvation and the person’s relationship with God, the person’s fight with evil in his own heart, which extends to doing good for the community with service and prayer. It has its own form of extreme “individualism,” eremitism, cave-dwelling, complete isolation, surviving alone on prayer and meager resources, in the “wilderness,” away even from the monastic “collective” seen as a barrier to a personal communication with the Trinity (Monasteries throughout Eastern Christianity still have monks who leave the enclave to find salvation on their own).
Saint Simeon Sylites decided to get up on a pillar and live his life there because he was annoyed by the intrusion of the “collective” in his life which disturbed his prayers and his particular and very egocentric communication with God.
Don’t you ever again dare imply that Christianity is “collectivistic” or even “communist.”