Buckley Quotes

“Hayek also thought that any collectivist system would inevitably give rise to cries for greater equality. It was simply not possible in a collectivist system to advocate for any other principle of distributive justice. Efforts for greater equality, however, would incite the lower middle class to seek more at the expense of the established middle class and unsuccessful professionals to seek more at the expense of successful professionals. It was the resentments of these groups, Hayek argued, that provided much of the fuel and many of the recruits for fascism and National Socialism.”
― Carl T. Bogus, Buckley: William F. Buckley Jr. and the Rise of American Conservatism

“Rossiter said that conservatism had a “high duty to maintain its historic links with American liberalism,” and vice versa. “The American, like his tradition, is deeply liberal, deeply conservative,” Rossiter wrote. “If this is a paradox, so, too, is America”
― Carl T. Bogus, Buckley: William F. Buckley Jr. and the Rise of American Conservatism

“When a conservative once decides, as many articulate conservatives seem to have decided in explosive America, that the best of all possible worlds was here yesterday and is gone today, he begins the fateful move toward reaction and ratiocination that turns him from a prudent traditionalist into an angry ideologue.”
― Carl T. Bogus, Buckley: William F. Buckley Jr. and the Rise of American Conservatism

“Like Kirk, Viereck was a communitarian who was offended by libertarian romanticizing of the individual pursuit of wealth in an environment of pure laissez-faire.”
― Carl T. Bogus, Buckley: William F. Buckley Jr. and the Rise of American Conservatism

“Libertarians are individualists while Burkeans are communitarians. Libertarians believe individuals should be unshackled to achieve what they can and that society’s wealth is the sum total of individual achievement. Communitarians believe that no individual truly achieves alone. Everyone stands on the shoulders of those who have come before—those who created the nation in which he lives, the institutions that nurtured him, the schools that educated him. Moreover, our success depends on the social structure in which we live and work. The entrepreneur could not succeed without all that society provides: a transportation system, a monetary system, police and fire protection, and on and on. As communitarians see it, the entrepreneur benefits not only from his own education but also from the education of his customers because without successful customers he would have no market for his goods.”
― Carl T. Bogus, Buckley: William F. Buckley Jr. and the Rise of American Conservatism

“Burkeans and traditional conservatives are, in a sense, societal Darwinists (as opposed to social Darwinists) who believe our institutions—governmental and private—have evolved over time to serve us well. Things that have not served society well have been discarded; things that worked well have been retained and refined. Because our lives are too short to allow the individual to acquire great knowledge, we must stand on the shoulders of our ancestors and work with contemporaries to assemble a collective wisdom. All of this is summed up by the aphorism The individual is foolish but the species is wise.”
― Carl T. Bogus, Buckley: William F. Buckley Jr. and the Rise of American Conservatism

“One might think that someone as smart as Buckley would have the good sense to shut up, but good sense is not something Bill Buckley had in great supply when he entered the army.”
― Carl T. Bogus, Buckley: William F. Buckley Jr. and the Rise of American Conservatism

“Memoirs of a Superfluous Man was a libertarian manifesto. In it, Nock railed against statism and collectivism in all forms. He drew no distinctions among different forms of government. “Communism, the New Deal, Fascism, Nazism, are merely so-many trade-names for collectivist Statism, like the trade-names for tooth-pastes which are all exactly alike except for the flavoring,” Nock wrote.41 The problem, as he saw it, was that governmental power will inevitably be turned against the individual. “In proportion as you give the State power to do things for you, you give it power to do things to you; and the State invariably makes as little as it can of the one power, and as much as it can of the other,” he explained.”
― Carl T. Bogus, Buckley: William F. Buckley Jr. and the Rise of American Conservatism

“We are experiencing hyperpartisanship. Paradoxically, it is confusion within each camp—not certainty—that fuels the vehemence. It is because each side can’t see its own compass clearly that makes it so distrustful and defiant whenever the other side suggests a direction.”
― Carl T. Bogus, Buckley: William F. Buckley Jr. and the Rise of American Conservatism

“Libertarians believe in the transcendent importance of the individual while traditional conservatives stress the importance of the community. Libertarians want the free market to be as unregulated as possible while traditional conservatives believe that big business, if unconstrained, can impoverish national life and threaten freedom. Libertarians believe a strong state threatens freedom while traditional conservatives believe that a strong state—properly constructed to ensure that too much power does not accumulate in any one branch—is necessary to ensure freedom.”
― Carl T. Bogus, Buckley: William F. Buckley Jr. and the Rise of American Conservatism