William F. Buckley vs. Ayn Rand: Ayn Rand's Revenge

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

William F. Buckley vs. Ayn Rand: Ayn Rand's Revenge

by Joseph McHugh

June 7, 2009

American Chronicle

This is not a good article for Buckley lovers. With this thought in mind, I started reading. From the article:

I normally do not read or comment on gossipy biographies of famous people, especially written by their family members who may be a bit too bitter to be objective. But the just published memoir by William F. Buckley Jr.´s son Christopher about his parents´ deaths piqued my interest.

. . .

Buckley´s antipathy towards Rand first manifested itself publicly in the pages of his magazine, National Review, when "Atlas Shrugged" was published in 1957. He had Whittaker Chambers pen a bizarre review which mischaracterized her views. (Robert Tracinski has written a great dissection of this "review" see "A Half-Century-Old Attack on Ayn Rand exposes the Dark side of Conservatism.") Chamber´s review missed its target, but at least it contained philosophical arguments.

But Buckley´s own attacks on Rand were emotional and personal; he barely addressed the substance of her arguments, preferring instead to sneer at her personally along with his liberal friends.

I chuckled. But something didn't sound right. I read on...

But while Buckley would ridicule Rand on a personal basis for alleged personal shortcomings, his son´s book reveals a portrait of Buckley not so flattering.

He remained married to a woman who was a pathological liar and who could be viciously rude even to houseguests. But maybe we can´t blame Buckley so much for this. His son reports that Mrs. Buckley wasn´t even speaking to her husband a third of their time together. So much for Catholic family values.

Buckley himself is exposed as a self-absorbed ass, abandoning his son at his college graduation, walking out early and not returning because he was "bored." According to his son, Buckley routinely relieved himself in public outside car doors while the cars were moving. The younger Buckley´s portrait is of a father willing to take liberties with the truth, including in biographies. He´s even revealed as a petty thief.

Woah theyaah!

This ain't journalism. This is a lot of smears against Buckley without any examples, even calling him a petty thief. This sounded like the way ARI does scholarship.

My warning bells were going off in a steady crescendo and then I got to the following part. Voila, there it was:

Rand had little time for this small man. He apparently was frightened of her.

Philosopher Harry Binswanger, a close associate of Rand´s, had this to say publicly after Buckley´s death: "… Ayn Rand told me that in the years following her public condemnations of Buckley, he sent her more than one letter ´crawling on his knees´ (her words) trying to get her approval and/or a rapprochement. Needless to say, he failed in this attempt."

This is the traditional orthodox Objectivist wet dream: someone begging on their knees for approval and Rand or the Randian insider denying it.

Gimmee a break!

I have no love for Buckley, but I do have a love for unbiased truth. If I had any doubt at all left, the following quote sealed it:

And unfortunately, Buckley´s insecure rants against Rand retarded the intellectual progress of the right for decades.

Rants against Rand held back the "intellectual progress of the right" throughout the entire country "for decades"? Rants against Rand?

Not ideas?

Dayaamm!

It was tough to finish this article. If the reaction to Obama & Friends in the mainstream media is going to be this and more of this, we are lost lost lost...

This is worse crap than the liberals do. At the very least, it is fuel for the MSNBC-level epistemology.

Does anyone know anything about the American Chronicle? Is this the way it normally does journalism?

Michael

[Brant Gaede]

I gave up on Buckley when he proposed Eisenhower run as the veep candidate on a Goldwater ticket in 1964 as a way for Goldwater to get elected ass-backwards. I knew then there wasn't any intellectual substance to him, just pretensions.

A few years later I read a long Esquire article he wrote in an attempt to spring a murderer from a New Jersey prison. It was a lot of babble so I figured the guy was guilty. He did manage to get him out of prison even though the murderer had to plead guilty to a lesser charge and get credit for time served. He then went to California and was arrested and convicted for, I think, kidnapping, attempted rape or rape and attempted murder. The ass's name was Smith, somebody Smith. Got a long sentence. I hope he's still in prison or dead.

Norman Mailer did the same damn thing as Buckley. His protege murdered a young waiter-trying-to-be-an-actor in Greenwich Village. Maybe Buckley and Mailer had some kind of intellectual/elitist competition going on. I hope he's dead too. If the two murderers are dead all four are. Goodbye!

--Brant

[studiodekadent]

One thing I will always remember about Buckley is how he deliberately refused to define conservatism. He more or less described it as having a skeptical attitude towards totalistic ideological systems, and then he tried to justify this by distorting the arguments of Edmund Burke and Frederich Hayek as if they were attacks on any individual attempt to think for themselves (which is not true. What Hayek attacked was the idea that an individual consciousness could intelligently design a macro-level social order using a rationalistic method). The irony of this "skepticism towards totalistic ideological systems" approach is that this position is postmodernist (and there are postmodernist readings of Russell Kirk, too). As Neitzsche said, "systems are nice to look at but impossible to live in," and this attitude is inherited by both postmodernists and Buckley-esque conservatives.

And since Buckley refused to give a specific definition of Conservatism's intellectual content (in order to make a broad coalition), we have a definition-vaccum. So, everyone tries to have their own type of conservatism and argue it's better than the others. Which one ended up gaining control of the label? The religious type. We all know how the story proceeds from there.

I agree that the article MSK discusses is not the best piece of Journalism, but my sick Schadenfreude about Buckley at least makes it somewhat pleasurable to read. And I like Christopher Buckley (the man that invented Nick Naylor!), so I would have to read his biography of his father before I am in a position to judge the accuracy of the article's characterization of Chris's allegations.

[Chris Grieb]

I gave up on Buckley when he proposed Eisenhower run as the veep candidate on a Goldwater ticket in 1964 as a way for Goldwater to get elected ass-backwards. I knew then there wasn't any intellectual substance to him, just pretensions.

A few years later I read a long Esquire article he wrote in an attempt to spring a murderer from a New Jersey prison. It was a lot of babble so I figured the guy was guilty. He did manage to get him out of prison even though the murderer had to plead guilty to a lesser charge and get credit for time served. He then went to California and was arrested and convicted for, I think, kidnapping, attempted rape or rape and attempted murder. The ass's name was Smith, somebody Smith. Got a long sentence. I hope he's still in prison or dead.

Norman Mailer did the same damn thing as Buckley. His protege murdered a young waiter-trying-to-be-an-actor in Greenwich Village. Maybe Buckley and Mailer had some kind of intellectual/elitist competition going on. I hope he's dead too. If the two murderers are dead all four are. Goodbye!

--Brant

Brant; The name of the guy Buckley helped get out of death row was named Edgar Smith. He is still alive in prison the last I checked. I became disillusioned with the case when Smith said he would plead guilty to get out of prison. There are people who exonerated every month through the Innocence Project these cases where the person turns out be guilty after spending a huge amount of time denying their guilt really hurt. Mailer did do much the same thing.

Edited June 9, 2009 by Chris Grieb

[Rich Engle]

Buckley=major toolbox

I cry thinking about how many trees died for the sake of his shitty books. I think that basically he beat on Rand because she had all the things he knew he would never have. I can read decent conservative authors with no problem, but he is not decent. He was a duplicitous ass-clown. I didn't do a dance when he died, but I sure didn't have one of those sad moments when you find out another Great One passed.

[Barbara Branden]

I interviewed William Buckley in preparation for writing The Passion of Ayn Rand. I was, of course, aware of his decades-long attacks on Rand and on what he called "her desssicated philosophy." I asked him if Whittaker Chambers' review of Atlas was representative of his own opinions. "I never read the book," he replied. "When I read the review of it and saw the length of the book, I never picked it up. I think I read all her other novels. I didn't read her philosophy books. . . . One of these days I'll probably get around to reading Atlas Shrugged."

So much for the integrity and the commitment to first-hand judgment of William Buckley.

Barbara

[Chris Grieb]

I don't think Buckley ever got around to reading Atlas.

It is worth noting that Buckley and National Review have reprinted the Atlas Shrugged review. I think they still like it.

[Guyau]

Michael,

Thank you for the notice of this refreshing piece by Joseph McHugh. Yes, the psychologizing parts belong to chaff to be blown away. Do you know how to obtain the article by Robert Tracinski mentioned by McHugh?

Buckley seemed to be really worried about Rand's potential to persuade people to favor capitalism decoupled from theism. But he also seemed to be in a turf war. He would portray himself as a founder of the modern libertarian movement, which was absurd and an infuriating running together of libertarianism and conservatism. The founders of modern libertarianism (whether or not they liked being a founder) were Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged), Murray Rothbard (Man, Economy, and State), and Robert Nozick (Anarchy, State, and Utopia).

Buckley's dancing on Rand’s grave was despicable. I despised him.

[BaalChatzaf]

Buckley's dancing on Rand's grave was despicable. I despised him.

Wm F. Buckley Junyahhhh was a snotty git and it is very easy to despise him. His son Christopher is smarter and a lot easier to take.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[Chris Grieb]

Baal; I don't like "kiss and tell" books about anyone. The people are dead so they can't defend themselves.

[Michelle]

The founders of modern libertarianism (whether or not they liked being a founder) were Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged), Murray Rothbard (Man, Economy, and State), and Robert Nozick (Anarchy, State, and Utopia).

Aren't you forgetting Hayek and von Mises, two of the most influential thinkers of the last century?

Edited June 11, 2009 by Michelle R

[Rich Engle]

I'm just glad to have the impression that BB doesn't like him either.

Always good to hear it from the big dogs.

Let's all take a healing moment and remember how fun it is to have her grace OL.

rde

[algernonsidney]

While I disagree with Peter Brimelow's xenophobic rants, I found his obitauary for Buckley to be a joy to read:

http://www.vdare.com/pb/080228_buckley.htm

[BaalChatzaf]

While I disagree with Peter Brimelow's xenophobic rants, I found his obitauary for Buckley to be a joy to read:

http://www.vdare.com/pb/080228_buckley.htm

Apparently there was less to Wm. F. Buckley Junyahhh than met the eye.

Ba'al Chatzaf

Edited June 13, 2009 by BaalChatzaf

[Reidy]

1. Where are Buckley's letters to Rand?

We know that she saved letters from her twenties on, aware that people would want to read them some day. During his lifetime he would have had veto power over publication. If his son is executor, he presumably has this power now, and, to judge from what he's already put into the public domain, I should think he'd be glad to authorize publication.

If these letters exist, Berliner (editor of her collected letters) would have seen them. Even if he couldn't get permission from Buckley, he could have said on the record that they exist and that Buckley had declined permission. He did something similar with Hospers.

2. Has Binswanger ever said this himself, publicly? Has he ever seen the letters?

3. Has anybody from the Buckley circle attested to these rapprochement attempts?

Pending satisfactory answers to these questions, count me among the skeptics.

[Chris Grieb]

Reidy; You make excellent points and I would count myself a skeptic also. Thanks!

[Rich Engle]

I'll tell you how much of a toolbox Buckley was.

Hunter Thompson was an endless critic of Buckley, mainly because he could see him for what he was. When Hunter died, Buckley wrote an obit called "Death of a Comic," which was an inferior, plagiaristic lift of Thompson's obit for Nixon called "He Was A Crook."

Even a coffinbreathed blowbag like Buckley should have known that HE of all people would (as if anyone could ever, in the first place, that is) be the worst choice as far as an emulator of Thompson's writing style. But he tried, and it is about as funny as when a white man tries to do a Chris Rock nigger joke. As short as it is, it still has that trademark Buckley thing: almost be able to say something nice, and real, but then catch yourself and go back to being a curmudgeon.

cur⋅mudg⋅eon  /kərˈmʌdʒən/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [ker-muhj-uhn]

–noun a bad-tempered, difficult, cantankerous person.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Origin:

1570–80; unexplained; perh. cur- repr. cur

Yeah, he was a real cut-up. I bet even the worms didn't bother trying to get him.

Edited June 13, 2009 by Rich Engle

[Guyau]

The founders of modern libertarianism (whether or not they liked being a founder) were Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged), Murray Rothbard (Man, Economy, and State), and Robert Nozick (Anarchy, State, and Utopia).

Aren't you forgetting Hayek and von Mises, two of the most influential thinkers of the last century?

As I recall, Hayek’s views were better suited to conservatism than to libertarianism. But I have not studied such things in many years. Here is one fairly recent paper concerning Hayek and libertarianism: Mere Libertarianism: Blending Hayek and Rothbard by Daniel Klein.

Von Mises was not a libertarian in the modern sense of the term, as noted here.

The economics of Von Mises was entered into the modern movement (1960’s forward) mainly by Rothbard’s text. Rothbard was a proponent of individual rights, whereas typically, economists are utilitarians. The two perspectives can be harmonized to some extent with game theory.

[studiodekadent]

As I recall, Hayek’s views were better suited to conservatism than to libertarianism. But I have not studied such things in many years.

Hayek was a libertarian and he was NOT a conservative. Some people allege that Hayek's belief in evolved institutions and traditions is somehow conservative, but please remember that Hayek did NOT believe these institutions and traditions necessarily deserved to be kept in perpetual stasis by force of law. Nor was Hayek against human reason. He opposed the idea that a priori deduction from first principles could construct a utopian social order, but he manifestly believed individuals operate by their reason and operate in an intentional, teleological way. I have actually dealt with both of these claims in the Masters thesis I am currently writing.

Hayek also published an article entitled "Why I Am Not A Conservative." That may be something you should look at.

[Rich Engle]

That's all cute but it doesn't matter. He was a nasty curmudgeon.

[Michelle]

The founders of modern libertarianism (whether or not they liked being a founder) were Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged), Murray Rothbard (Man, Economy, and State), and Robert Nozick (Anarchy, State, and Utopia).

Aren't you forgetting Hayek and von Mises, two of the most influential thinkers of the last century?

As I recall, Hayek’s views were better suited to conservatism than to libertarianism. But I have not studied such things in many years. Here is one fairly recent paper concerning Hayek and libertarianism: Mere Libertarianism: Blending Hayek and Rothbard by Daniel Klein.

Von Mises was not a libertarian in the modern sense of the term, as noted here.

The economics of Von Mises was entered into the modern movement (1960’s forward) mainly by Rothbard’s text. Rothbard was a proponent of individual rights, whereas typically, economists are utilitarians. The two perspectives can be harmonized to some extent with game theory.

Your argument against von Mises in that thread is weak.

It is beside the point anyhow. Von Mises added far more to free-market economic theory than Rand ever did. To include Rand and exclude von Mises because you dislike his support for the draft is ridiculous.

Same goes for Hayek.

Rand was good at popularizing libertarian ideas, but this does not make her an essential figure in the development of libertarian theory.

Edited June 14, 2009 by Michelle R

[Barbara Branden]

MIichael, rhe article you excerpted does seriously underrate Buckley, but it is not whollly inaccurate.

"Buckley´s own attacks on Rand were emotional and personal; he barely addressed the substance of her arguments, preferring instead to sneer at her personally... "

This is certainly true. Check some of the articles he wrote over the years. There is almost no intellectual content -- which I suppose is not surprising, since he had read almost none of her work.

"He remained married to a woman who was a pathological liar and who could be viciously rude even to houseguests. But maybe we can´t blame Buckley so much for this. His son reports that Mrs. Buckley wasn´t even speaking to her husband a third of their time together. So much for Catholic family values. . . . Buckley himself is exposed as a self-absorbed ass, abandoning his son at his college graduation, walking out early and not returning because he was "bored." According to his son, Buckley routinely relieved himself in public outside car doors while the cars were moving. The younger Buckley's portrait is of a father willing to take liberties with the truth, including in biographies. He´s even revealed as a petty thief."

Here, McHugh seems merely to be summarizing material from Christopher Buckley's book. Such a summary is legitimate, if it is accurate.

'Philosopher Harry Binswanger, a close associate of Rand´s, had this to say publicly after Buckley´s death: 'Ayn Rand told me that in the years following her public condemnations of Buckley, he sent her more than one letter ´crawling on his knees´ (her words) trying to get her approval and/or a rapprochement. Needless to say, he failed in this attempt.'"

This is wildly exaggerated but not wholly false. As I remember it, shortly after they met, Buckley from time to time sent Rand postcards written from night clubs, where clearly he'd had too much to drink; they were barely intelligible, but the gist appeared to be a desire for a rapprochement. Rand did not answer them.

Barbara

[Chris Grieb]

Barbara; Why did Buckley keep reprinting the Chamber's review of Atlas? He must have realized that there could be no improvement in the relationship until he made amends for the piece of garbage.

[Rich Engle]

This is wildly exaggerated but not wholly false. As I remember it, shortly after they met, Buckley from time to time sent Rand postcards written from night clubs, where clearly he'd had too much to drink; they were barely intelligible, but the gist appeared to be a desire for a rapprochement. Rand did not answer them.

That's about the funniest thing I've read all week.

You need to write a tell-all book, Barbara.

But seriously, I agree with your statement about his general lack of intellectual content. On the other hand, there were a few moments in his work where he could shine. But I always took him as "Toohey-like." I remain convinced this is why he was so bitter, love-hate with AR: because she was an innovator.

Agree? What was his demeanor like when you interviewed him?

Thanks,

r

[Barbara Branden]

Chris: "Barbara; Why did Buckley keep reprinting the Chamber's review of Atlas? He must have realized that there could be no improvement in the relationship until he made amends for the piece of garbage."

By the time Chambers' review was published again, Buckley would have known there was no possibility of a rapprochement. I cannot imagine what sort of an apology for that review could possibly be adequate.

Rich: "What was his demeanor like when you interviewed him?"

Somewhat to my surprise, he was cordial, apparently forthcoming, even friendly. And he said not one word about Rand that was insulting, or even critical.

Barbara