A Moderately Happy Birthday, Bill Buckley! by Paul Gottfried

By Paul Gottfried

[Recently by Paul Gottfried: The Neoconservative Vision) Parallel Lives: William F. Buckley vs. Samuel T. Francis]

William F. Buckley, the former conservative pundit, celebrates his 81^st birthday today (November 24). His eightieth birthday last fall provided liberal journalists with an opportunity to praise someone who, according to Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne, had saved the Right from extremism. According to Dionne (Buckley: The Right's Practical Intellectual Washington Post, October 11, 2005, A17), echoed a few days later by a Goldberg variation in NRO (Golden Days, October 27, 2005), Buckley had made heroic efforts throughout his career "to rid the right of the wing nuts." In fact, according to Dionne, Buckley became " the scourge of an anti-Semitism that once had a hold on significant parts of the right. He also blasted the strange conspiracy theories of the John Birch Society. "

But, contrary to this puff piece, Buckley had vented much of his youthful bile on Murray Rothbard, Ronald Hamowy, and other predominantly Jewish libertarians. These figures had disagreed with Buckley’s stated willingness to support an ever-growing public administration designed to prosecute the Cold War.