[Mb-civic] The movement that William Buckley created is being spoilt by success

Sun Nov 20 19:34:16 PST 2005

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Lexington

St Bill of the right
Nov 10th 2005
>From The Economist print edition

The movement that William Buckley created is being spoilt by success

THESE days American conservatism is such a hydra‹a monster with heads
everywhere from the White House to Congress and from the Supreme Court to
the fourth estate‹that it is easy to forget the two most important things
about the beast's origins. First, it is a relatively youthful creature.
While ³liberals² have been around since Benjamin Franklin was a boy,
conservatives were born with the baby boom. Second, it has remarkably few
begetters, certainly for such a permissive age. The most important, Ronald
Reagan, died last year. The second most important, William Buckley,
celebrates his 80th birthday this month.

A harpsichord-playing east-coast patrician whose list of favourite saints
would surely include Moritz and Tropez might seem an odd figure of worship
for a populist, often downright plebeian, movement rooted in the strip-malls
of the West and the South. Yet, more than anybody else, it was Mr Buckley
who rescued conservatism from obscurity and ignominy. When he founded the
National Review in 1955, Eisenhower's Republican Party was as adamantly
middle-of-the-road as it was middle-brow. As for right-wing activists, most
were certifiable: convinced that Eisenhower was an agent of communism (the
John Birchers), that Barry Goldwater was a pinko (the Conservative Society
of America), that the Jews were the roots of all evil (the Liberty League),
and, often, all of the above.

Mr Buckley steered conservatism out of Crackpot Alley, driving out most of
the obvious lunatics and building a creed on three solid pillars‹support for
free markets, traditional values, and anti-communism. He also added an
element of glamour. American conservatives might like to pretend that
they're Rambo types who are happier hunting their lunch than having it
served up for them at Balthazar, like Jean Kerry, Hillary von Clinton and
rest of the cursed liberal elite. In fact, they've always liked a little
class (just look at their taste for dynasties) and in Mr Buckley they found
a perfect emissary‹a man who spent half his time denouncing fancy-pants
intellectuals and the other half partying with them.

Yet there was substance there as well. For all his dapper ways, Mr Buckley
did as much as anyone to create the current polarisation of American
politics. ³Middle of the road qua middle of the road is politically,
intellectually and morally repugnant,² he once wrote. And he devoted himself
to redefining the Republican Party as a party of conservative orthodoxy.
This meant harassing Rockefeller Republicans and other patrician squishies
who ran the party until the Reagan revolution. It also meant helping to
create a conservative counter-establishment that could produce a constant
supply of young firebrands.

Mr Buckley clearly succeeded beyond his wildest dreams. Throw a stone in
Washington and you have a better than even chance of hitting a conservative
intellectual. Switch on cable-television and you are lucky if you can escape
seeing a conservative pundit. Buckley-admiring conservatives are supposedly
in the majority in both Congress and the White House: George Bush recently
gave an encomium to the great man at the White House to celebrate the 50th
anniversary of the National Review.

But how much of a price have conservatives paid for their success? How much
of their intellectual vitality have they lost in pursuit of partisan
politics? And how much have they been caught up by an historical process
that they had originally sworn to bring to a halt? If the problem for the
right in Mr Buckley's youth was marginalisation, the problem today is
success.

Behold the conservative pundits. Would the younger Buckley have welcomed the
space given to loudmouths such as Sean Hannity (author of ³Let Freedom
Ring²) or Ann Coulter (³Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the
War on Terrorism²)? Mr Buckley once wrote that ³conservatives in this
country...are non-licensed non-conformists². But what is ³non-licensed²
about people who are paid gigantic sums to spout away by conservative
publishers and broadcasters? And what is ³non-conformist² about churning out
the same tired talking points about how liberals are traitors and fools and
conservatives are patriots and geniuses?

Winning the world, losing their soul

This is not to say that American conservatives are any worse than Michael
Moore and the ³I Hate Republicans² crowd. The problem is that they are all
much of a muchness: bit-players in a pundit industry that can't tell the
difference between political debate and a Punch and Judy show. And such
knockabout stuff has a way of debasing anyone who takes part in it. For
instance, Jonah Goldberg is a bright young right-winger who writes for the
National Review with the same wry wit as Mr Buckley. But Amazon.com informs
us that his forthcoming book, ³Liberal Fascism², argues that ³liberals, from
Woodrow Wilson to FDR to Hillary Clinton, have advocated policies and
principles remarkably similar to those of Hitler's National Socialism.²

And conservative pundits are people of adamantine principle compared with
conservative politicians. Remember those Republican promises back in 1994 to
clean up Washington? The Republican majority is now every bit as
scandal-plagued and spending-addicted as the old Democratic majority, if not
more so. Discretionary spending has grown by 36% in real terms since 2001.
The number of pork projects in appropriations bills has grown from 2,100 in
1998 to 12,999 in 2005. Talk about winning the world and losing your soul.

Fifty years ago Mr Buckley demonstrated that the right could not galvanise
American politics unless it was first willing to put its own house in order.
Today it desperately needs another bout of spring cleaning. Being spoilt by
success is better than being spoilt by failure: just ask any British
Conservative. But spoilt is spoilt nonetheless.