Dave Smith: I view Bill Buckley as one of, like, the great villains of the twentieth century.
Tucker Carlson: I couldn’t agree more! (laughs)
A recent article on Jacobin discussing Ben Shapiro’s exception to Dave Smith’s description of William F. Buckley, Jr as one of the great villains of the 20th century caught my eye a couple weeks ago. An interesting topic though it was, the analysis disappoints the educated conservative reader ever so slightly.
Any claim to the discovery of the so-called Shapiro-Carlson divide could hardly be considered profound these days. A thoroughly enjoyable video on the issue had existed on YouTube a few years back, which described a fledgling radical flank to the mainstream American Right that, while modest in its order of battle and its representing voices, has actually existed for quite some time. Before the divisions between the neoconservatives and the paleoconservatives emerged in the time that has passed since the Reagan era, there were such “movements” (many of which were to be defined post hoc) as the Old Right and the New Right, the latter being represented to a large extent by William F. Buckley, Jr and his colleagues writing for National Review.
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Why the distinction? It’s important to be familiar with the context under which conservatives view Buckley and his influence in the conservative movement.
A not-so-recent video by the Daily Wire, although by Michael Knowles rather than Shapiro himself, discussed Buckley’s legacy in an interview with Dr. Alvin S. Felzenberg. Among the topics discussed was his political evolution and his leadership role in the movement. Buckley’s career as a public intellectual had no shortage of conflicts, especially considering the importance with which he viewed the idea of a respectable conservative elite, one that can wield authority and use it to rid itself of what it sees as its weakest links.
Felzenberg: and [Buckley’s] most famous fight was with the John Birch Society, that had peddled conspiracy theories… the most famous of which was [Robert Welch’s] assertion that the American government was in the hands of Moscow… [and that] Dwight Eisenhower, [the] President of the United States, was a conscious agent of an international Communist conspiracy.
A description like this may seem familiar to a conservative in 2024. An emphasis of Buckleyite conservatism was respectability, whether in an optical sense or in a sense of civility. Buckley was a conservative who presented himself in a dignified and sophisticated manner, and anybody who has watched his old Firing Line showings should be familiar with his refusal to talk down to an audience.
Regardless, his principles also expressed themselves in what could be described as an excommunication of fringe figures from respectable consideration. Among the most famous exploits of Buckley and his National Review was this “standardization” of the conservative movement toward a respectable and optical ideological center. Much of their time and resources was devoted to lambasting those who were seen as outside the bounds of a respectable conservatism, and much of Buckley’s career was thus dedicated to attacking the radical anticommunists of the John Birch Society, attacking certain elements of the Old Right, such as “isolationists” and nativists, and attacking those who were perceived as racists and antisemites. He is thus credited with moderating the conservative movement during the Civil Rights era, and facilitating the creation of an interventionist conservative coalition during the most intense periods of the Cold War.
In effect, a Buckleyite conservatism was one that purged its ranks of their radical flanks, one that moderated its beliefs to the standards of the time, and one that closed its gates to those who were too far-right to be respected by liberals, while opening them leftward to ideologically licentious cold warriors whose introduction would prove to be one of the movement’s greatest subversions. In other words, the ways in which a “Shapiro conservatism” are viewed most negatively by farther-right elements of the conservative movement are mirrored and telegraphed by the very same rightward gatekeeping exercised by William F. Buckley.
An episode of the Firing Line from 1966, in which Buckley interviewed former ADL chairman Dore Schary, serves as an apt microcosm. Buckley spends much of the conversation attempting to reason with Schary, asking him why his work focused so much more on so-called extremism on the right, and overlooking such excesses on the left. The very first question presented to Schary, in fact, was “whether he has any plans for writing or producing a book called Danger on the Left,” just as the ADL had written one called Danger on the Right. This “left-right double standard” would be the theme of conversation for almost the entire rest of the interview.
And what an enduring theme such a hypocrisy would be, for decades later the conversation would remain the exact same, as the Shapiros of the world continue to decry “double standards” by leftists in ostracizing right-wingers while leftist “excesses” are ignored.
The verbal talents used by the likes of Shapiro and Buckley are greatly expended in the dissection of supposed contradictions, hypocrisies, and inconsistencies in the standards applied by the Left. Much energy is dedicated to arguing why the Right is, in fact, the less “racist”, “sexist”, and “antisemitic” side, and why the Left is, in reality, using such labels to haphazardly sully the reputation of right-leaning figures. In half a century, the ideological strain represented by these two figures has refused to accept the folly in engaging with the Left on their territory and on their terms.
By accepting to participate in a moral system created by the Left, and accepting the validity of an “anti-racist” Manichaeism perpetuated in Leftist social ideology, you accept that conservatism cannot exist on its own terms. Conservatism would, in effect, be relegated to a moderated and lagged form of social leftism, one that merely exists for obsolete thinkers to have redress in an otherwise fundamentally progressive political system. In the words of Lionel Trilling, whom Buckley’s beloved Russell Kirk tried so hard to refute:
the conservative impulse and the reactionary impulse do not, with some isolated and some ecclesiastical exceptions, express themselves in ideas but only in action or in irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas.
Russell Kirk would later be labeled an antisemite by the very same Neoconservative cold warriors that Buckley’s movement had welcomed in lieu of accepting the farther-right.
The divisions between the right wing represented by Ben Shapiro and the right wing represented by Tucker Carlson run much deeper than discussions concerning the role of the elite, and discussions concerning economics. The Buckley fracture fundamentally exists as a fault line on conservatives’ determination of the very set of ethics under which we all should be permitted, as right-wingers, to hold our conversations and to associate with the politically ostracized.
Does the 21st century conservative permit that Ben Shapiro gatekeep other conservatives by calling them antisemites?
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