Thomas Jefferson And Wm. Buckley Jr.

For those of us who believed history was more or less a straight line from the Magna Carta to Thomas Jefferson to William F. Buckley Jr. or Milton Friedman, the passing of William Buckley is quite a sad blow. There is comfort in all the kind words, most of which seem to say that Buckley's main contribution was to save conservatism for America starting in about 1955 with the publication of his magazine. They might have pointed out too that even the billions in Europe, Asia, and India would have thanked him for much of the freedom and prosperity they are enjoying now if they understood that the track of history ran along side Mr. Buckley.

Interestingly, the kind and knowing words have almost unanimously claimed that a large part of what Buckley did was purge conservatism of racism, anti-Semitism, and the John Birch Society, but they utterly failed to say what was left after the purge? It is certainly true that he did cleanse the philosophy of its errant elements, but far, far more importantly, he revitalized Jefferson's thinking about the freedom that had completely defined and dominated American intellectual life prior to The Great Depression and WW 2. It is no exaggeration to say that without Buckley, we would not have been able to reach back into our history, through those two usually cataclysmic events, to the Jeffersonian America that had been the greatest country on earth. This was because many simply didn't want to reach back to see what they had come to think of as the foundation for depression and world war.

Until Buckley came along, conservatism was widely considered, dead; having been discomposed by Karl Marx's recycled theory of a benevolent state despotism - a theory which still enjoys widespread acceptance; especially in academia - the Depression, and World War 2, all of which involved very liberal gov't involvement in our lives to an extent never imagined by our ingenious, freedom-loving, founders. Lionel Trilling, an obviously disaffected American, proudly announced after WW 2 that there was "no important conservative voice anywhere in America". What he meant was that Jeffersonian anti-Federalism, and the conservative social values that naturally attached to it, were thoroughly beaten, and the door to a brave new American socialism was wide open. It is no wonder that in such an extreme environment people like Joe McCarthy went to extreme lengths to protect the conservative American values that eventually triumphed over socialism to save the world.

Much of pre-war history is left out of the Buckley saga, I think, in large part because Buckley wanted us to properly appreciate that modern American intellectual history was to start with him. And that was fine with us, ......for the most part; notwithstanding Jefferson and his disciples who always had waged a very feroc