
 |
|
May 24, 2013
May 22, 2013
John Thorne:
They launched the 'Arab Spring' but now yearn for the good old days of a strongman
May 20, 2013
Richard A. Serrano: Is Meir Kahane's assassin now a changed man?
Melissa Healy: Genetic copies of living people from embryos no longer science fiction
Jewz in the Newz by Nate Bloom : Jews Inducted into Rock Hall of Fame; Anton Yelchin co-stars in New "Trek" film; Kutcher (but not Kunis) visits Israel; Jewish TV Star Praises Jewish Rap Star
The Kosher Gourmet by Cathy Pollak: WARNING: This WALNUT CAKE WITH PRALINE FROSTING, perfect for afternoon coffee, is addicting
May 13, 2013
Rabbi Nathan Lopes Cardozo: Why the giving of the document that would permanently change the world could only be done in desolation
David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church
May 10, 2013
Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be
May 8, 2013
Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas
Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate
Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility
May 6, 2013
May 3, 2013
Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell
Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine
April 29, 2013
Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust
Mark Clayton: Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots?
Kim Murphy: Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed
Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA
April 26, 2013
Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty
April 24, 2013
|
| |
Jewish World Review
March 3, 2008
/ 26 Adar I 5768
The prince of polysyllabism
By
Jonah Goldberg
| 
|
|
|
|
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
William F. Buckley died this week at the age of 82. He was, among other things, the founder of National Review (my professional home for the last decade), architect and leader of the modern American conservative movement, host of "Firing Line" (where he was the longest-serving television host in history), renowned author of some 50 books which included spy novels, political polemics, histories, biographies, sailing memoirs and countless animadversions of an acutely sesquipedalian flavor, as the peripatetic proselytizer of polysyllabism might say harpsichord recitalist, syndicated columnist, esteemed lecturer (he gave some 70 speeches a year for decades), adventurer, father of acclaimed novelist and journalist Christopher Buckley and husband to philanthropist Patricia Buckley, one-time New York City mayoral candidate (when asked what he would do if he won, he responded, "Demand a recount"), mentor to countless young conservatives and inspiration to millions more.
In short, his life was richer and more packed than an overburdened sentence, such as the above.
In the inaugural issue of National Review, he set out to "stand athwart history, yelling Stop."
That rallying cry has always earned the scorn of liberals and leftists who believe in their bones that they are the servants of Progress, and that Progress is something you can't stand in the way of. (Alas, it has also elicited rolling eyes and titters from a new generation of self-described "compassionate conservatives" who believe that the government is there to love you.)
Still, it was the Marxists who best articulated this conviction that with every page ripped from the calendar, humanity was closer to the ideal of universal collective endeavor. They spoke of cold impersonal forces of history moving inexorably toward a utopia where, it just so happened, people like them would be in charge.
But Marxism was merely one expression of this conviction, which had stained the American soul well before Buckley was born. For example, in 1892, James Baird Weaver, the Populist Party's presidential nominee, spoke for coming generations of Progressives, reformers and activists when he proclaimed, "We have tried to show that competition is largely a thing of the past. Every force of our industrial life is hurrying on the age of combination. It is useless to try to stop the current."
A generation later, Harry Garfield, the president of Williams College and director of Woodrow Wilson's Fuel Administration, giddily announced: "We have come to a parting of the ways, we have come to the time when the old individualistic principle must be set aside." Now, he gushed, "we must boldly embark upon the new principle of cooperation and combination."
In 1932, Stuart Chase, the man who reportedly coined the phrase "The New Deal," lamented that the Russians were having all the fun remaking the world. New Dealers spoke of creating a new "religion of government" whereby citizens took it on faith that collectivism was the natural order.
By the mid 1940s, no less than Franklin Roosevelt insisted that the old Bill of Rights, which denied the government the power to meddle in the affairs of men, should be supplanted by a new "economic Bill of Rights" that would hasten the historical rush to collectivism.
When Buckley graduated from Yale, he penned a blistering critique of his alma mater,
complaining that it had come to take this collectivist tide for granted, particularly since Yale had abandoned Godly faith in favor of the cold, impersonal forces that seem to go hand-in-hand with atheism (perhaps because those who believe that God is dead consequently believe that man must play God to his fellow men).
Just the year before, renowned literary critic Lionel Trilling had proclaimed in The Liberal Imagination that, "in the United States at this time Liberalism is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition." Conservative impulses, he insisted, "do not express themselves in ideas but only in action or in irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas."
This, then, was the History with a capital H, bequeathed to it by Hegel and Marx and a thousand other false prophets that Buckley set about to stand athwart, and eventually to thwart. For Buckley and his band of happy warriors, collectivism in its brutal forms in the Soviet Union was anathema, but collectivism in its genteel form here at home was also folly. "You cannot paint the Mona Lisa by assigning one dab each to a thousand painters," Buckley said.
In his battle with those who believed the Earth moved in one direction, he was the Hercules pitted against the Atlas of collectivism. Few were more successful in the battle. He did not merely "part the Red Sea," as Ronald Reagan once told him, "you rolled it back."
There were so many facets to Buckley's talents, it seems absurd to try to sum them up. A joyous heart, an omnivorous mind, a fearless stomach for battle: this was the anatomy of "WFB." There will never be another. He was, as he might say were he not so modest, a hapax legomenon in the book of life.
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
To comment on JWR contributor Jonah Goldberg's column
click here.
Jonah Goldberg Archives
© 2006 TMS
|
|

Arnold Ahlert
Mitch Albom
Jay Ambrose
Michael Barone
Barrywood
Lori Borgman
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Richard Z. Chesnoff
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
Christine Flowers
Frank J. Gaffney
Bernie Goldberg
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Argus Hamilton
Victor Davis Hanson
Betsy Hart
Ron Hart
Nat Hentoff
A. Barton Hinkle
Jeff Jacoby
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
Ch. Krauthammer
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Ann McFeatters
Dale McFeatters
Dana Milbank
Jeanne Moos
Dick Morris
Jim Mullen
Deroy Murdock
Judge A. Napolitano
Bill O'Reilly
Clarence Page
Kathleen Parker
Star Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Sharon Randall
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Heather Robinson
Debra J. Saunders
Martin Schram
Greg Schwem
Culture Shlock
David Shribman
Roger Simon
Lenore Skenazy
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Ben Stein
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Dan Thomasson
Bob Tyrrell
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Byron York
ZeitGeist
Mort Zuckerman

Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Baloo
Lisa Benson
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
John Branch
John Cole
J. D. Crowe
Matt Davies
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Glenn Foden
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Walt Handelsman
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holbert
David Horsey
Lee Judge
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Chan Lowe
Jimmy Margulies
Jack Ohman
Michael Ramirez
Rob Rogers
Drew Sheneman
Kevin Siers
Jeff Stahler
Scott Stantis
Danna Summers
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters
Dan Wasserman

Tech Q&A
Mr. Know-It-All
Ask Doctor K
Richard Lederer
Frugal Living
On Nutrition
Bookmark These
Bruce Williams
|