The Way Back Quotes

“Nineteenth century industrial society had created a new class of slaves,”
― F. H. Buckley, The Way Back: Restoring the Promise of America

“Our schools and universities are like the old Soviet department stores whose mission was to serve the interests of the sales clerks and not the customers.”
― F. H. Buckley, The Way Back: Restoring the Promise of America

“Technological change, globalization, genetic advantages, even greed, are to be found everywhere, and can’t explain why we are more immobile than the rest of the First World. What those countries lack, however, is an elite with the clout of America’s New Class. The New Class is apt to think it has earned its privileges through its merits, that America is still the kind of meritocracy that it was in Ragged Dick’s day, where anyone could rise from the very bottom through his talents and efforts. Today’s meritocracy is very different, however.”
― F. H. Buckley, The Way Back: Restoring the Promise of America

“The natural aristocracy, said Jefferson, was one of virtue or talents, and he contrasted this with an artificial aristocracy founded on wealth and birth. The latter, he said, was a “mischievous ingredient in government,” which he trusted would be rejected in popular elections.5 All very well, replied Adams impishly, but “what chance have Talents and Virtue in competition with Wealth and Birth?” Or beauty, he added, no doubt recalling how he had been mocked as ‘His Rotundity.’ “Beauty, Grace, Figure, Attitude, Movement, have in innumerable Instances prevailed over Wealth, Birth, Talents, Virtue and every thing else.”6 Then there was the natural deference paid to eminent families.”
― F. H. Buckley, The Way Back: Restoring the Promise of America

“the enemies of promise.”
― F. H. Buckley, The Way Back: Restoring the Promise of America

“the needs of Americans take priority over the interests of non-Americans, that what is denied non-Americans must be paid for by what is given to Americans. That’s a lesson as old as the distinction between strangers and brothers in Deuteronomy, but it’s one that right-wing ideologues, with their desire for open borders and their willingness to ship jobs offshore, had failed to hear. They had a perfect fidelity to principle, but an indifference to fellow Americans. And that’s what was dead in conservatism.”
― F. H. Buckley, The Way Back: Restoring the Promise of America