The Lesson of Mark Lilla and William F. Buckley

It’s a strange and disorienting experience to read Mark Lilla’s review of Sam Tanenhaus’s long-awaited biography of William F. Buckley in the current issues of the New York Review of Books. Long-time readers of this blog will know that many years ago, when Lilla reviewed my book on conservatism in the same publication, he excoriated me as a cretin—I don’t think that’s too strong—for flattening the fine distinctions, built up over the decades by conservatives and liberals alike, between conservatives and reactionaries and counterrevolutionaries. Several times in his review, Lilla held up Buckley as Exhibit A of the former type, the true conservative, as against my portrait of the conservative as reactionary counterrevolutionary. Even though I had direct evidence to […]