Good Time(ing) Bill: William F. Buckley and the Damage Done

We won’t be bothering with environmental stewardship anymore, either. (Or, more accurately, I should say we won’t be bothering with pretending to bother with environmental stewardship anymore.) When your grandkids ask why it seems so awfully toasty on Spaceship Earth these days, just tell ‘em Bill Buckley sent you. But be sure to be nice to them, since you’ll be hitting them up, cap-in-hand, every week, the demons of Social Security and Medicare having finally been vanquished by heroic conservatives. That begging thing you’ll be getting good at in your twilight years is what nice right-wingers like to call ‘self-reliance’. Bully for you – you’re finally off the government dole!

Such changes might have been hard to get through Congress, but that’s only if one existed, of course! But – the present farce notwithstanding – having a Congress would mean having democracy, which conservatives never supported at the time it was being born. Just like they never supported American independence from the British Empire, the abolitionist movement against slavery, the social safety net, civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights or environmentalism – at least until decades later, when it was safe (and supererogatory, as Buckley might say), if they did all. Anyhow, governing is so much easier now that the unitary executive idea has migrated from slogan to metaphor to rationale to monarchy.

And hasn’t it all just turned out dandy? See how thrilled Americans are with their conservative movement! See how record-breaking are the levels of support for King George! See how they rally behind his nice war in god’s name! See how all the king’s policies and all the king’s men command the loyalty of his subjects! See the people in this election season filling the streets and ardently clamoring for "Stasis Now!" – the very words boldly printed upon their placards! See them reviling the notion of change at every juncture! See them at campaign rallies, desperately seeking to stand athwart history, heroically trying to shout out "Stop!", valiantly attempting to build a bridge to yesterday!

Yep, William F. Buckley was a smart man alright. One can’t help but think that he saw the handwriting on the wall, block letters growing every day more boldly vivid and fluorescently bright such that they have now taken over and indeed become the wall.

Conservatism has ruled America for three decades now, and never more than in the last seven years. Backward, deceitful, polarizing, warlike, arrogant, racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, destructive, intolerant, ignorant, lethal and incompetent – it’s just plain ugly, isn’t it? Ergo – as you might have said, Bill – Americans have awakened sufficiently from their Buckley-induced stupor to now join the rest of the world in embracing this ideology about as much as they might welcome a whopping good case of leprosy. And with roughly the same results if they did.

Eighty-two years old, one can’t help but think that smart Bill Buckley got out while the getting was good, just months before the election that would seal forever the fate of his destructive little life’s project.

They say he died at his desk, about to write another essay. Maybe it was entitled "The Achievements of My Life As A Conservative". And maybe it was sitting there staring at that very, very blank page that killed him.

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