To say that Bill Buckley caused a sensation, when he first
emerged on the scene with the publication of God and Man at
Yale in the spring of 1951, would be an understatement. Just
25 and a recent Yale graduate, he was well known on campus, having
been the editor of the Yale Daily News where his
editorials were debated, reviled, and praised. But, as wrote John
Chamberlain in his preface to the book, nearly everybody on campus
thought young Buckley was fighting a losing fight. He was, they
thought, on the side of the past.
Yale was in the throes of celebrating its 250th anniversary, and
was braced for a rousing good time and expecting praise from every
quarter. But the celebration would soon be upstaged by Buckley’s
first book, which reported that, contrary to what it was telling
its donors and trustees, Yale was not a Christian institution but
instead promoting socialism and collectivism. It noted that
academic freedom was a hoax as far as anything other than leftists
was concerned, and suggested that the alumni should begin to direct
the course of education at Yale instead of the administration and
faculty.
Within weeks after the book appeared, Buckley was a national
phenomenon, and the publisher was having a hard time keeping the
book in stock. Yale was, of course, outraged, as was the entire
liberal establishment. It was bad enough having such charges made
against Yale at all. But the fact that they came from a recent
graduate, the editor of the college paper, and someone whose wit
and debating skills exceeded those of the outraged made the entire
affair untenable. The liberal establishment fell obediently into
line and launched attack after attack against Buckley.
McGeorge Bundy, a Yale graduate who would later become a
confidante of LBJ and head of the Ford Foundation, was, at the
time, teaching at Harvard. In his review for the Atlantic
Monthly, which eventually became Yale’s official response,
Bundy accused Buckley of being a “twisted and ignorant young man”
and claimed that the book was “dishonest in its use of facts, false
in its theory.” Others blasted Buckley for his Catholicism which,
they said, was his motivation for attacking Yale. William Sloane
Coffin, Yale’s chaplain, sniffed that Buckley should have gone to
Fordham or some other suitably Catholic institution.
Buckley, in his first of thousands of confrontations with the
left, could not have been happier; every blast was opportunity for
a counterattack, each of which was more polished, more astute, and
more cutting than the original blast.
GOD AND MAN AT YALE was Buckley’s opening salvo. He never
let up. He told me, a couple of years ago, that he never had any
free and unfilled time — he was, he said, busy from the minute he
got up (early) in the morning until he went to bed (late) at night.
He had just finished, before he died, a book on Barry Goldwater, to
be published in May, and was working on another on Ronald Reagan.
He died at his desk.
Buckley became the heart and soul of the conservative movement.
It had no better advocate, no better promoter, no better
theoretician, and his contribution to not only conservatism but
American political life as a whole will remain unmatched for years
to come. But he was more than a philosopher, more than a
polemicist, more than a great writer. He was also a whole man,
whose humanness was best exemplified by three attributes —
attributes that made him the person he was: generosity, civility,
and friendship.
Bill Buckley was an enormously generous man. Although he was in
constant demand, constantly on the go, constantly in the news, he
always made time for people who needed a boost. Whenever I asked
his advice, or asked him to write a blurb for a book I was
publishing, or an introduction, he would take time from his busy
schedule to confer, or to write what I needed, always without
remuneration. When I was working on my book Upstream, he
gave me two days of uninterrupted time before my tape recorder in
what became one of the most valuable interviews that I did, full of
insights, stories, reminiscences and wisdom. Regardless of who he
was talking to or the topic, Buckley exuded civility and good
humor, often devastating some liberal with whom he was arguing with
the most impish smile imaginable. And although friendships probably
came naturally to Buckley, he worked on them as well, and the
result was simply an astounding collection of people whom he could
call friends.
Few people are so fortunate as to leave their mark on the world.
In Bill Buckley, the world has lost someone who certainly did leave
his. The conservative movement is fortunate to be able to claim him
as its own.
Alfred S. Regnery is publisher of The American
Spectator and author of the new book Upstream: The
Ascendance of American Conservatism (Threshold/Simon &
Schuster).
