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Up From Liberalism
Portrays American liberalism as a hypocritical and decadent philosophy, criticizing the actions of such eminent liberals as Eleanor Roosevelt, Arthur Schlesinger, and others
234 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1959
86 people are currently reading
449 people want to read
About the author
William F. Buckley Jr.
183 books337 followersWilliam Frank Buckley, Jr. was an American author and conservative commentator. He founded the political magazine National Review in 1955, hosted 1,429 episodes of the television show Firing Line from 1966 until 1999, and was a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist. His writing style was famed for its erudition, wit, and use of uncommon words.
Buckley was "arguably the most important public intellectual in the United States in the past half century," according to George H. Nash, a historian of the modern American conservative movement. "For an entire generation he was the preeminent voice of American conservatism and its first great ecumenical figure." Buckley's primary intellectual achievement was to fuse traditional American political conservatism with economic libertarianism and anti-communism, laying the groundwork for the modern American conservatism of US Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater and US President Ronald Reagan.
Buckley came on the public scene with his critical book God and Man at Yale (1951); among over fifty further books on writing, speaking, history, politics and sailing, were a series of novels featuring CIA agent Blackford Oakes. Buckley referred to himself "on and off" as either libertarian or conservative. He resided in New York City and Stamford, Connecticut, and often signed his name as "WFB." He was a practicing Catholic, regularly attending the traditional Latin Mass in Connecticut.
Buckley was "arguably the most important public intellectual in the United States in the past half century," according to George H. Nash, a historian of the modern American conservative movement. "For an entire generation he was the preeminent voice of American conservatism and its first great ecumenical figure." Buckley's primary intellectual achievement was to fuse traditional American political conservatism with economic libertarianism and anti-communism, laying the groundwork for the modern American conservatism of US Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater and US President Ronald Reagan.
Buckley came on the public scene with his critical book God and Man at Yale (1951); among over fifty further books on writing, speaking, history, politics and sailing, were a series of novels featuring CIA agent Blackford Oakes. Buckley referred to himself "on and off" as either libertarian or conservative. He resided in New York City and Stamford, Connecticut, and often signed his name as "WFB." He was a practicing Catholic, regularly attending the traditional Latin Mass in Connecticut.
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Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews
May 30, 2020
It’s probably for the best that William F. Buckley Jr.’s breathless and rambling style does little to mask the same loathsome ideology that animates American conservatism in 2020. He writes, “human beings are not equal, cannot be made equal, and must not be deemed equal other than before the law;” which is not, shall we say, the most heartwarming of sentiments.
Buckley’s adoration of hierarchy is reminiscent of unspeakable authoritarian rulers such as Augusto Pinochet, Francisco Franco, and Antonio Salazar—all of whom Buckley explicitly praised, the latter in this very book. Look up Buckley’s authoritarian heroes in an encyclopedia, and you’ll often find a section debating whether they were technically fascists or just dictators. Cool!
The primary merit of Up From Liberalism is that Buckley identifies a few of the key problems with his left counterpart. Even today, liberalism is bloodless, procedure-driven, and civility-obsessed. But Buckley doesn’t follow these observations with a call to democracy and liberation from hierarchy as a leftist would. Instead, Buckley writes, “I see no fixed correlation between the democratic society and the just society; and certainly none between the stable society and the democratic society.” To Buckley, the will of the people is a frustrating annoyance unless it coincides with what he wants.
He gets very mad at Eisenhower for losing a debate with a communist (lol), and later can’t quote a liberal at length without inserting bracketed rants. But there’s only so much laughter to be had.
He naively declares that the elimination of social security would result in businesses giving that money to employees (via wages) or consumers (via price cuts), something history has shown to be pure fantasy. He decries academic freedom as a wastefully endless search, because we already have the most important answers. And worst of all, he speaks warmly of the sympathy conservatives should feel for southern whites suddenly expected to end segregation. Suspiciously absent is the corresponding passage detailing his sympathy for black Americans.
This book is a gleaming gem in the crown of ideological evil that has produced the worst politicians of the past 50 years. William F. Buckley is grinning from hell, and I spit back into the void.
Buckley’s adoration of hierarchy is reminiscent of unspeakable authoritarian rulers such as Augusto Pinochet, Francisco Franco, and Antonio Salazar—all of whom Buckley explicitly praised, the latter in this very book. Look up Buckley’s authoritarian heroes in an encyclopedia, and you’ll often find a section debating whether they were technically fascists or just dictators. Cool!
The primary merit of Up From Liberalism is that Buckley identifies a few of the key problems with his left counterpart. Even today, liberalism is bloodless, procedure-driven, and civility-obsessed. But Buckley doesn’t follow these observations with a call to democracy and liberation from hierarchy as a leftist would. Instead, Buckley writes, “I see no fixed correlation between the democratic society and the just society; and certainly none between the stable society and the democratic society.” To Buckley, the will of the people is a frustrating annoyance unless it coincides with what he wants.
He gets very mad at Eisenhower for losing a debate with a communist (lol), and later can’t quote a liberal at length without inserting bracketed rants. But there’s only so much laughter to be had.
He naively declares that the elimination of social security would result in businesses giving that money to employees (via wages) or consumers (via price cuts), something history has shown to be pure fantasy. He decries academic freedom as a wastefully endless search, because we already have the most important answers. And worst of all, he speaks warmly of the sympathy conservatives should feel for southern whites suddenly expected to end segregation. Suspiciously absent is the corresponding passage detailing his sympathy for black Americans.
This book is a gleaming gem in the crown of ideological evil that has produced the worst politicians of the past 50 years. William F. Buckley is grinning from hell, and I spit back into the void.
August 10, 2020
I had this sitting around my house for a year--and it’s been sitting around everywhere since 1959--but it reads like it could have been written this morning. As the poet sings, astride his steel horse, “It’s all the same; only the names have changed.” Check out these passages:
“I think it is fair to generalize that American liberals are reluctant to coexist with anyone on their Right. Ours, the liberal credo tells us, is an “open society,” the rules of which call for a continuing (never terminal) hearing for all ideas. A close observation of the liberal-in-debate gives the impression that he has given conservatism a terminal audience. When a conservative speaks up demandingly, he runs the greatest risk of triggering the liberal mania; and then before you know it, the ideologist of open-mindedness and toleration is hurtling toward you, lance cocked” (55).
“A second marked characteristic of the liberal-in-debate-with-a-conservative is the tacit premise that debate is ridiculous because there is nothing whatever to debate about. Arguments based upon facts are especially to be avoided. Many people shrink from arguments over facts because facts are tedious, because they require a formal familiarity with the subject under discussion, and because they can be ideologically dislocatve. Many liberals accept their opinions, ideas, and evaluations as others accept revealed truths, and the facts are presumed to conform to the doctrines, as a dutiful fact will; so why discuss the fact” (62)?
“The typical liberal will go to considerable pains to avoid having to say, in as many words, that the people don't know what's good for them (the people are not to be thus affronted; and so the new line is that the people, in expressing themselves at the marketplace, are not expressing their own views, but bending to the will of Madison Avenue” (170).
“There was once a moral problem involved in taxation” (172).
Buckley tackles the academy, McCarthyism, the South, income taxes, Social Security as a philosophical more than an economic issue, and more in his perfect prose. I even came across a word I had never before seen: “agglutinated” (145). Recommended.
“I think it is fair to generalize that American liberals are reluctant to coexist with anyone on their Right. Ours, the liberal credo tells us, is an “open society,” the rules of which call for a continuing (never terminal) hearing for all ideas. A close observation of the liberal-in-debate gives the impression that he has given conservatism a terminal audience. When a conservative speaks up demandingly, he runs the greatest risk of triggering the liberal mania; and then before you know it, the ideologist of open-mindedness and toleration is hurtling toward you, lance cocked” (55).
“A second marked characteristic of the liberal-in-debate-with-a-conservative is the tacit premise that debate is ridiculous because there is nothing whatever to debate about. Arguments based upon facts are especially to be avoided. Many people shrink from arguments over facts because facts are tedious, because they require a formal familiarity with the subject under discussion, and because they can be ideologically dislocatve. Many liberals accept their opinions, ideas, and evaluations as others accept revealed truths, and the facts are presumed to conform to the doctrines, as a dutiful fact will; so why discuss the fact” (62)?
“The typical liberal will go to considerable pains to avoid having to say, in as many words, that the people don't know what's good for them (the people are not to be thus affronted; and so the new line is that the people, in expressing themselves at the marketplace, are not expressing their own views, but bending to the will of Madison Avenue” (170).
“There was once a moral problem involved in taxation” (172).
Buckley tackles the academy, McCarthyism, the South, income taxes, Social Security as a philosophical more than an economic issue, and more in his perfect prose. I even came across a word I had never before seen: “agglutinated” (145). Recommended.
March 5, 2011
Great stuff, with some datedness.
February 22, 2008
A Classic from one of the founders of American Conservatism!
May 5, 2012
Inability to articulate yourself. This is a historical problem that some conservatives have struggled with in the past, as explained in the book I was just privileged to finish reading entitled Up From Liberalism by William F. Buckley, Jr. Buckley was a literary master, and his intellectual defense of basic American principles will be treasured for generations to come. But, what is striking about Up From Liberalism is his critique of the failure of conservatives to articulate themselves back in the 1950s. Anyone following the tradition of Edmund Burke would do well to heed Buckley's warnings against rhetorical incompetence. It is highly refreshing to read the prose of any writer who can order the English language towards lucid thought. It is not a coincidence that the celebrated novelist, John Dos Passos, was delighted to write the Foreword for the book. Passos writes -
"THE FIRST DUTY OF a man trying to plot a course for clear thinking is to produce words that really apply to the situations he is trying to describe. I don't mean a fresh set of neologisms devised, like thieves' cant or doubletalk, to hold the uninitiated at arm's length. We have seen enough of that in the jargon of the academic sociologists which seems to have been invented to prove that nobody but a Ph.D. can understand human behavior. Plain English will do quite well enough, but the good old words have to be brought back to life by being used in their original sense for a change."
In his 1959 Preface, Buckley writes -
"As to the conservative movement, our troubles are legion. Those who charge that there is no conservative position have an easy time of it rhetorically. There is no commonly-acknowledged conservative position today, and any claim to the contrary is easy to make sport of. Yet there is to be found in contemporary conservative literature both a total critique of liberalism, and compelling proposals for the reorientation of our thought. Conservatism must, however, be wiped clean of the parasitic cant that defaces it, and repels so many of those who approach it inquiringly" ...
http://redemptiosehnsucht.blogspot.co...
"THE FIRST DUTY OF a man trying to plot a course for clear thinking is to produce words that really apply to the situations he is trying to describe. I don't mean a fresh set of neologisms devised, like thieves' cant or doubletalk, to hold the uninitiated at arm's length. We have seen enough of that in the jargon of the academic sociologists which seems to have been invented to prove that nobody but a Ph.D. can understand human behavior. Plain English will do quite well enough, but the good old words have to be brought back to life by being used in their original sense for a change."
In his 1959 Preface, Buckley writes -
"As to the conservative movement, our troubles are legion. Those who charge that there is no conservative position have an easy time of it rhetorically. There is no commonly-acknowledged conservative position today, and any claim to the contrary is easy to make sport of. Yet there is to be found in contemporary conservative literature both a total critique of liberalism, and compelling proposals for the reorientation of our thought. Conservatism must, however, be wiped clean of the parasitic cant that defaces it, and repels so many of those who approach it inquiringly" ...
http://redemptiosehnsucht.blogspot.co...
November 12, 2016
This delightfully jagged and concise volume is profoundly dated on many levels. However, the fundamental issues addressed by the Young WFB are entirely germane to today. If anything, the core of this book is thoroughly relevant to today's political discourse. Buckley's style is an immense pleasure to ingest Regardless of your view of his ideology, his writing is incisive and insightful fun.
April 13, 2018
Instructive
This book has aged well. Its lessons are still with us, in different forms.
Concise, smart, realistic and optimistic.
I recommend buying the kindle edition so that you can look up words as you read. Odds are, you'll need to.
This book has aged well. Its lessons are still with us, in different forms.
Concise, smart, realistic and optimistic.
I recommend buying the kindle edition so that you can look up words as you read. Odds are, you'll need to.
May 21, 2024
After reading half of this book, I feel three urge to call for the resistance to Buckley's basic message, which he sums up by saying that in a society where political freedom is the status quo, people must be restricted to a limit range of political liberties that they may exercise and this is because, he contends, the institutions whereby Democratic freedom are made real is manifestly a mirage and a delusion. I feel I have read and understood more of world literature in 2024 than he had when he wrote this in 1959 and furthermore, I have come to realize the extent to which democracy as an ideal is worth fighting and dying for, which he confesses he does not believe in. However, although I consider his ideological opinion to be unsound, it is with great dissatisfaction that I note that a bad sign for our economy is see in the fact that we are now borrowing to cover the cost of interest on our national debt while, at the same time, a major A.I. developed says he thinks this advance of this technology makes the implementation of a Universal Basic Income a necessity for the majority of Americans. I can only give this book one star.
August 7, 2017
The biggest problem with this book by William F. Buckley--movement Conservatism's godfather--is not its substance but rather its time. The book hasn't aged well. Buckley spends most of the text writing on matters that are either irrelevant today or clearly decided (e.g. McCarthyism to the former and school desegregation to the latter). The book hits its stride toward the end where Buckley puts on a brief philosophical argument for his politics, but that comprises less then ten percent of the overall text.
Unless you want to take a deep dive into the history of conservative thought in America or are really into political debates of the 1950s, I would give this a pass.
Unless you want to take a deep dive into the history of conservative thought in America or are really into political debates of the 1950s, I would give this a pass.
June 17, 2025
thoughtful and relevant
This book is frequently described as William F. Buckley’s most influential work and for good reason. Despite being first published in the 1950’s, this book continues to be a relevant and prophetic analysis of the temptations, sources, and objectives of liberalism in America. Through thoughtful insight and practical application, Mr. Buckley gives readers necessary food for thought and intellectual infrastructure to oppose the tendency towards paternalism and nannyism inherent in the liberal ideology. A worthy read by anyone interested in conservative political thought.
This book is frequently described as William F. Buckley’s most influential work and for good reason. Despite being first published in the 1950’s, this book continues to be a relevant and prophetic analysis of the temptations, sources, and objectives of liberalism in America. Through thoughtful insight and practical application, Mr. Buckley gives readers necessary food for thought and intellectual infrastructure to oppose the tendency towards paternalism and nannyism inherent in the liberal ideology. A worthy read by anyone interested in conservative political thought.
August 26, 2021
Witty, aggrieved tone, which manages to draw attention to liberal hypocrisies of the time. In the following decades his side lost all battles to all but his Keynesian foes. Partly because some of the causes were not defensible but on issues where Buckley was right his clarity seems to have been futile.
November 6, 2021
Boring. Not what I was looking for
December 30, 2021
80% of the book is very time period specific (the 1950s.) However, the rest of the book was quite good and arguably timeless.
May 4, 2023
lol - racist asshole
October 29, 2023
This is one of those “know your enemy” books.
August 14, 2008
This book had been sitting on my shelf for years after it sat on the livingroom shelf at our house and my dad finally decided to get rid of a bunch of books. I wish I could say I learned a lot in reading it but in all honesty, it was so tailored to the time in which was written (post-McCarthian late 50s) that most of the references were lost on me. I got some things out of it but it was a rough book to get through.
June 1, 2009
Excellent.
January 22, 2025
The more things change, the more they stay the same.
July 7, 2020
You can't say they didn't warn us....
Displaying 1 - 20 of 20 reviews