William F. Buckley, Jr.: Patron Saint of the Conservatives

by John B. Judis

Possibly more relevant now than ever before, John B. Judis' William F. Buckley, Jr follows the life and times of the "Patron Saint of Conservatives."

From Simon & Schuster comes the definitive biography of William F. Buckley, Jr., the "Patron Saint of Conservatives," by journalist and writer John B. Judis. Get your copy of William F. Buckley Jr. today.

Genres: Biography, History, Nonfiction, Politics, Biography Memoir

528 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1988

About the author

John B. Judis is an American journalist. Born in Chicago he attended Amherst College and received B.A. and M.A. degrees in Philosophy from the University of California at Berkeley. He is a senior editor at The New Republic and a contributing editor to The American Prospect.

A founding editor of Socialist Revolution (now Socialist Review) in 1969 and of the East Bay Voice in the 1970s, Judis started reporting from Washington in 1982, when he became a founding editor and Washington correspondent for In These Times, a democratic-socialist weekly magazine.

He has also written for GQ, Foreign Affairs, Mother Jones, The New York Times Magazine, and The Washington Post.

In 2002, he published a book (co-written with political scientist Ruy Teixeira) arguing that Democrats would retake control of American politics, thanks in part to growing support from minorities and well-educated professionals. The title, The Emerging Democratic Majority, was a deliberate echo of Kevin Phillips' 1969 classic, The Emerging Republican Majority. The book was named one of the year's best by The Economist magazine.

Reviews

[Steven H · Rating 5 out of 5]

A PERCEPTIVE CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY (circa 1988) OF A CONSERVATIVE ICON

Journalist and writer John B. Judis has also written books such as 'The Emerging Democratic Majority,' 'The Folly of Empire: What George W. Bush Could Learn from Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson,' 'The Paradox of American Democracy: Elites, Special Interests, and the Betrayal of the Public Trust,' etc. This book was written in 1988 (Buckley died in 2008).

Judis suggests, "Buckley might have excelled as a student at Yale, but he was not interested in scholarship or even in the play of ideas. He liked debating with his professors in class, where the response was immediate, but even during his first two and a half years at Yale... he never read beyond what was assigned in class. He regarded his education as an instrument---as a means of buttressing his existing convictions and strengthening his hand in public debate." (Pg. 59) He adds, "Buckley rejected the conception of the university as an educational marketplace; he believed that the purpose of education was not to acquaint students with the means of discovering the truth, but with received truths and the means of defending them." (Pg. 85)

Of Buckley in the 1950s, he wrote, "Beginning with the assumption that the United States was locked in a life-and-death struggle with communism, Buckley ... opted for what amounted to a balanced authoritarianism. Their proposals for government loyalty tests would have entailed the abandonment of the civil service and its replacement by a docile bureaucracy hired and retain on ideological and partisan grounds..." (Pg. 107)

Of the Buckleys, he observes, "Not being able to have a large family [his wife's fallopian tubes had to be removed after an ectopic pregnancy] had few immediate but many long-term repercussions. While having only one child made it easier for the Buckleys to shuttle between homes... not having a large family deprived them of a certain stability and sense of self-worth. It threw them upon the world, making them more dependent for emotional sustenance upon a far-flung network of friends and associates and more dependent for self-satisfaction upon public acclaim." (Pg. 107)

He notes that "In the political divisions of the fifties, the magazine [National Review] lined up squarely with the southern segregationists." (Pg. 139) He adds, "Buckley, like his father, appeared to identify the world's darker races with both revolution and backwardness... Buckley was amused rather than troubled by the fury his opinions evoked." (Pg. 185) During his semi-serious candidacy for Mayor of New York City in 1965, Buckley in one of his campaign position papers suggested that the city institute a pilot program to "explore the feasibility of relocating chronic welfare cases outside the city limits." Judis comments, "However he tried to soften it, Buckley's proposal smacked of debtors' prisons and poorhouses. It reeked of a certain contempt and intolerance toward the poor---in this case the minority poor." (Pg. 252)

Judis's book is a very enlightening, critical, yet also sympathetic portrait; I only regret that there isn't a more updated version of it. (Lee Edwards' 'William F. Buckley Jr.: The Maker of a Movement fills the gap somewhat.')

[haetmonger · Rating 3 out of 5]

Buckley spoke each year at [Young Americans for Freedom];s convention to affirm his link to the organization that he had helped create. Held in September 1964 at the Commodore Hotel in New York City, the convention, as YAF's chairman Robert Bauman saw it, was meant to charge up the delegates for the fall [1964 Presidential] campaign. But Buckley had other things in mind.

Standing at a podium draped with a huge American flag, Buckley declared that "we do not believe in the Platonic affirmations of our own little purities. Our intention is to take the clay God gave us, and mold it into a better world." He then turned to

the role of the conservative movement . . . when to no one's surprise more than our own, we labor under the visitation of a freedom-minded candidate for the Presidency of the United States. I say labor, because the nomination of Barry Goldwater, when we permit ourselves to peek up over the euphoria, reminds us chillingly of the great work that has remained undone; a great rainfall has deluged a thirsty earth, but before we had time properly to prepare it. I speak of course about the impending defeat of Barry Goldwater.

As a sepulchral hush fell over the audience, Buckley drove his point home:

Our morale is high, and we are marching. But the morale of an army on the march is that of an army that has been promised victory. But it is wrong to assume that we shall overcome; and therefore it is right to reason to the necessity of guarding against the utter disarray that sometimes follows a stunning defeat: it is right to take thought, even on the eve of the engagement, about the potential need for regrouping, for gathering together our scattered forces.

Buckley explained his own reasons for assuming Goldwater's defeat:

. . . any election of Barry Goldwater would presuppose that the fiery little body of dissenters, of which you are a shining meteor, suddenly spun off nothing less than a majority of all the American people, who suddenly overcome a generation's entrenched lassitude, suddenly penetrated to the true meaning of freedom in society where the truth is occluded by the verbose mystifications of thousands of scholars, tens of thousands of books, a million miles of newsprint; who suddenly, prisoners all those years, succeeded in passing blithely through the walls of Alcatraz and tripping lightly over the shark-infested waters and treacherous currents, to safety on the shore.

The students listened, disbelieving, and some of them began to weep. "These were kids who came and expected to be told, 'You are going to win, here we are going to win the battle for the Lord,'" Bauman said, "and here they were told that that wasn't the case, and that we weren't going to win the battle for the Lord."

But Buckley, aware of the impression his words were making, continued to drive home his point:

The point of the present occasion is to win recruits whose attention we might never have attracted but for Barry Goldwater; to win them not only for November the third, but for future Novembers; to infuse the conservative spirit in enough people to entitle us to look about us, on November fourth, not at the ashes of defeat, but at the well-planted seeds of hope, which will flower on a great November day in the future, if there is a future.

Afterwards, many in the audience were so stunned that they didn't clap. YAF's leaders decided not to publish the speech in their magazine until after the election itself. But Buckley's speech had exactly its desired effect on Bauman and other top YAF leaders. They began thinking about November fourth.

[Jonnie Enloe · Rating 4 out of 5]

revealing of Buckley's personality and wit. Author does excellent of revealing real man.

[Kevin · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this a more compelling read than the new Tanenhaus bio. While Judis is also not a conservative, it doesn't seem to intrude as much until the Reagan chapters. The theme is how Buckley went from radical, almost reactionary, enemy of the liberal establishment to building a conservative movement my political and coalition maneuvering, to a celebrity that had become part of the establishment in some sense.

The early influence was his family and his faith but also a group of intellectuals and writers that he helped popularize and publish. National Review became the foundation in important ways for the conservative movement. But there was always the danger of rigid ideology and kooks and conspiracy theories from undermining the movement. At the same time there was the challenge of finding politicians and leaders who could actually implement policy. Judis views Whitaker Chambers and James Burnham as having influenced Buckley into a more pragmatic and practical approach to politics. But having been burnt by his experience with Richard Nixon, Buckley pulled back from direct involvement to a degree even as Reagan seemed to be the victory conservatives had been working for for so long.

The last chapters reflect a kind of melancholy where Buckley is famous but less influential; close friends with the sitting president but less directly involved in policy and politics. So much has shifted that even Reagan induces doubt in Buckley.

Tanenhaus provides so much detail for the early life of WFB but falters after 1976. Judis is more balanced but can only take the story so far. Still, I enjoyed reading this biography and think it holds up pretty well; if less so in the Reagan years.

[Steve Fink · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lays out conservative philosophy. A great read! The prose is moving as well as the ideas.

[Maija · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's all about what happens on page 376.