Thoughts on WFB
William F. Buckley, the closest the right got to having its own George Plimpton (1), is dead. SJ can see that the writer had fun with this, and was also surprised that WFB suffered from diabetes. That disease is a misery and needs its own publicity crew as cancer and AIDs have. We would not wish it on anyone and hope WFB spent his final days in what comfort can be wrested from it with friends and family around him.
Still, SJ cannot help but remark the fact that it is appropriate that the founding gadfly of modern conservatism excelled as a debater and a bon vivant, not as someone who thought. The late Norman Mailer pins the butterfly to the wheel here ; it would have been perhaps unseemly to quote Gore Vidal, who spared enough time for this fellow in his day. It is time to admit that modern conservatism is a sophism, more guerilla war than proper campaign, and not interesting as thinking. The greatest work of modern conservatism, Oakeshott's Experience and its Modes is as antitheoretical as work of philosophy can be imagined.
The one possible aspect of interest of modern conservatism, the tactics and strategy of the movement itself, were thought through by Gramsci in his Notebooks under the idea of hegemony, and have been elaborated upon by Stuart Hall, Ernesto LaClau, and Chantal Mouffe, all figures of the left. Like most religiously inflected thinking, modern conservatism reasons with a conclusion in mind, and indeed when it reaches an aporia, that conclusion is invoked to end debate. True thinking begins at the edge of the aporia, though this sort of work is not for the faint of heart, of head or people who aspire to be politicians (which may be redundant). In truth, modern conservatism's wispiness will be revealed or rather will dissipate into mists of time, and only occasionally held up like the Aztec sacrifice as an example of barbarism of a previous age.
Nevertheless, farewell and fare thee well!
(1) Close, but no cigar. Plimpton had no ideology and didn't need one because he simply identified the best that was being thought and said in his time. (And if you don't believe that, imagine modern letters without The Paris Review; if you can, then you need to do your homework.) Without ideology--colloquially understood in the US as a marketing plan--there would be no National Review. We do praise WFB for giving space and time for writers better than he, and it does appear that he helped trim away some of the more benighted atavisms indulged in by modern conservatives--the same atavisms that the jackboots of the Reich indulged in--but there is barely a shred of intellectual integrity around his legacy. A fun life, for sure, but one that we see as wasted mostly on triviality and the boring games of the wealthy.
Still, SJ cannot help but remark the fact that it is appropriate that the founding gadfly of modern conservatism excelled as a debater and a bon vivant, not as someone who thought. The late Norman Mailer pins the butterfly to the wheel here ; it would have been perhaps unseemly to quote Gore Vidal, who spared enough time for this fellow in his day. It is time to admit that modern conservatism is a sophism, more guerilla war than proper campaign, and not interesting as thinking. The greatest work of modern conservatism, Oakeshott's Experience and its Modes is as antitheoretical as work of philosophy can be imagined.
The one possible aspect of interest of modern conservatism, the tactics and strategy of the movement itself, were thought through by Gramsci in his Notebooks under the idea of hegemony, and have been elaborated upon by Stuart Hall, Ernesto LaClau, and Chantal Mouffe, all figures of the left. Like most religiously inflected thinking, modern conservatism reasons with a conclusion in mind, and indeed when it reaches an aporia, that conclusion is invoked to end debate. True thinking begins at the edge of the aporia, though this sort of work is not for the faint of heart, of head or people who aspire to be politicians (which may be redundant). In truth, modern conservatism's wispiness will be revealed or rather will dissipate into mists of time, and only occasionally held up like the Aztec sacrifice as an example of barbarism of a previous age.
Nevertheless, farewell and fare thee well!
(1) Close, but no cigar. Plimpton had no ideology and didn't need one because he simply identified the best that was being thought and said in his time. (And if you don't believe that, imagine modern letters without The Paris Review; if you can, then you need to do your homework.) Without ideology--colloquially understood in the US as a marketing plan--there would be no National Review. We do praise WFB for giving space and time for writers better than he, and it does appear that he helped trim away some of the more benighted atavisms indulged in by modern conservatives--the same atavisms that the jackboots of the Reich indulged in--but there is barely a shred of intellectual integrity around his legacy. A fun life, for sure, but one that we see as wasted mostly on triviality and the boring games of the wealthy.
posted by RobCrowe at
12:17 PM
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