What Would Bill Buckley Do?

THE NATIONAL REVIEW FOUNDER'S FLEXIBLE APPROACH TO POLITICS DEFINED CONSERVATISM AS WE KNOW IT.

- STEPHANIE SLADE

HOW WOULD WILLIAM F. Buckley Jr., born 100 years ago in November, feel about the Trumpian takeover of the American conservative movement? Because Buckley lacked a solidly reasoned ideology, that question turns out to be almost impossible to answer with assurance.

The National Review founder identified at times as both a libertarian and an individualist, helping to found a group then called the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists (which now goes by the more ideologically null Intercollegiate Studies Institute) and subtitling one of his essay collections Reflections of a Libertarian Journalist. He also defended the far-from-libertarian dictators Francisco Franco and Augusto Pinochet. He was a tough-on-crime proponent of the death penalty but a supporter of the legalization of drugs and gambling. He was a vehement anticommunist willing to sacrifice freedom at home in order to defeat what he saw as a greater threat to freedom abroad.

Under his leadership, National Review criticized the so-called imperial presidency. In a long article laying out an agenda for the 1990s, Buckley himself warned about “executive usurpation” of Congress’ rightful powers. “A strong executive can be a necessary, galvanizing force,” he wrote. “But the executive’s authority cannot be supreme, let alone unchallenged.”

The same article argued against tariffs on both practical grounds (they make the country that levies them less competitive) and humanitarian ones. “To mobilize against the economic ascendancy of poor nations by attempting to exclude their products from the home market is inhibiting not only to the United States consumer but also to prospective economic growth in lands inhabited by—fellow human beings,” he wrote. “Tariffs are a form of economic warfare, and it is fortunate that the arguments against protectionism blend prudential and moral considerations.”