Tom's Journal - William F. Buckley Jr, dead at 82, made me the progressive I am today

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March 2nd, 2008

02:40 pm

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William F. Buckley Jr, dead at 82, made me the progressive I am today
Buckley was found dead in his study Wednesday morning in Stamford, Conn. This man defined conservatism, so how did he help solidify my progressive beliefs?

Early in my political thinking I believed I was a liberal/progressive person because the policies that benefitted me happened to match those of the Democratic party: equal rights for LGBT people, improved public education, no war, no nukes, funding for things I liked, etc. I didn’t have a theoretical basis that strung together all my favs... I saw the overlap between my favs and figured, oh, I must be liberal. In 1992 I read a piece by William F. Buckley, Jr. that explained the theoretical basis for Conservatism so clearly, and I was so disgusted, that it helped me form the thread that connects all the policies I liked.

The Buckley piece had been written decades earlier. It explained that since history is written by the victors, anything Conservatives do it justified as long as they win. Fuck fairness, fuck democracy, fuck concern for others. He didn’t directly say, “cheating is justified, lies are justified, dirty tricks are justified” but he was pretty clear that if we were supposed to have concern for fairness to others then those “others” darn well should have sided with the victors. His article was quite clear that you shouldn’t worry if something you are doing is unethical, unfair, or bad; just be concerned about whether you will be able to cover your tracks when rewriting history. If you’re going to be the one that writes the history book, nothing you did was cheating, lying, nor dirty. His clearest example was the McCarthy hearings (the so-called House Committee on Un-American Activities) which was based on falsehoods and lies, ruined the lives of innocent people, etc, etc. He claimed that if nobody had discovered the sham it was, we’d be sitting around today talking about how great it was and ignoring the innocent lives it ruined. McCarthy lied when he claimed he had huge lists of known communists in the government (the folder he was holding was full of blank sheets of paper), if he had gotten away with it, it would have justified everything. Thus, why be such a worry wart?

As defined by Buckley, the entire conservative movement is based on this morally bankrupt idea... and he’s proud of it, spent a life promoting it, and died believing he had made the world a better place by rebirthing the movement.

At that moment, I finally understood how Hitler could justify The Holocaust, how third-world dictators could justify genocide, how crazy militia and neo-nazis justify their hate, and many, many, similar terrible things I hadn’t actually understood that up until that point.

On the other hand, the progressive movement believes that the ends must justify the means. We are concerned with helping the common good. While taking this too far leads to an immobilized movement (“I can’t get out of bed because I may step on a bug and I don’t want to kill any living things!”), I’d rather risk a world that has less action but is ethical about what it does do, than one that lacks any kind of morals.

It’s a tug of war between too much and too little.

I believe the universe naturally tugs towards the evil. I certainly don’t mind being on the side that tugs the other way.

Rest In Peace, Buckley.

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