Athwart History
The current issue of National Review features a symposium on the continuing relevance of Bill Buckley's famous 1955 editorial in which he pledged to stand athwart History shouting "stop." The editors invited me to contribute: my response follows below.
It’s a memorable phrase. But think how much worse a place the world would be if Bill Buckley had actually succeeded in calling a stop to history in 1955. Vienna would still be occupied by Soviet troops. The federal government would still regulate prices on everything from natural gas to brokers commissions. Racial segregation would remain American practice. People would continue to die unnecessarily of cigarette smoking or in unseatbelted automobile accidents. The country would be poorer, more regulated, less innovative, less educated. All in all: There’s been a lot of progress since 1955.
And much of that progress is due to the very movement Bill Buckley created. Conservatives talk about tradition. Despite that talk, over the past half century conservatives have mostly worked to change America – and for the better.
No matter how much things improve, however, the predominant conservative outlook remains pessimistic. Buckley’s friend Whittaker Chambers famously said that in moving from communism to conservatism he was leaving the winning for the losing side. Richard Weaver warned that the West had been in more or less uninterrupted decline since the 14th century. James Burnham, Ludwig von Mises, Russell Kirk: few of the founding fathers of modern conservatism were exactly blithe spirits.
Among Bill Buckley’s greatest gifts to conservatism was the gift of his temperament. In life, he was a man of infectious cheerfulness. That cheerfulness shines through in his famous publisher’s letter, which begins by outlining all the reasons that NR cannot succeed and ends by promising that it will. Can we who learned so much from Bill Buckley not learn this as well?
True, the news is mostly bad these days. America is governed by leaders determined to veer far and fast to the left, to build a hugely bigger government and to step back from the struggle against dangerous enemies abroad. Yet for all our problems, our situation is better in almost every way than was the situation of 1955. Let us study history and learn optimism. Stop? No – forward!