The American Crisis: Defined
Journal Entry #11
…American political conflicts are not generally fought on the battleground of ideas. The thoroughly non-Ideological Man is usually designated as steward of the American political community. This is partly a good thing, because everyone knows that ideological totalism can bring whole societies down, as it did Hitler’s, and permanently terrorize others, as Communism has done. The danger comes when a distrust of doctrinaire social systems eases over into a dissolute disregard for principle. A disregard for enduring principle delivers a society, eviscerated, over to the ideologists.

America, most historians teach us, has sought to avoid the extremes, to be flexible without resembling Silly Putty; to be principled without being arch. I think our country is not clearly enough avoiding the former extreme. I think she is in danger of losing her identity- not on account of the orthodoxy that we are being told in some quarters threatens to suffocate us; but for failure to nourish any orthodoxy at all. I think the attenuation of the early principles of this country has made America vulnerable to the most opportunistic ideology of the day, the strange and complex ideology of modern liberalism. I think, moreover, that disordered and confused though it concededly is these days, conservatism is the only apparent rallying point...- William F. Buckley, Jr., Preface, 1959; Up From Liberalism

It is entirely fitting and proper to linger for a short spell, over the words and thoughts of one of America’s foremost philosophical laborers: Bill Buckley, Jr. Most will argue- not unreasonably- that he was a Conservative thinker, but I regard him rather as simply a thinker; an extremely profound one at that. Both for his intellectual penetration and honesty, to say nothing of his humor, he has few peers. He was truly a man for the times.

The moral and intellectual confusion in the years following World War Two would surely have been far worse were it not for his tireless pursuit of truth. Together with his fidelity to the enduring principles sustaining the American Republic, Bill Buckley was much more than merely an observer. His insistence that we should always remember to feed our souls as well as our brains placed him head and shoulders above all the other commentators of the American scene in the Cold War era.

In his Baccalaureate Address to St. Joseph’s College in June, 1952, Bill Buckley challenged his audience to consider the dangerous turn American education and society had taken in the post-War era. “There is not enough room, however, for the New Social Order and religion. The New Order is philosophically wedded to the doctrine that the test of truth is its ability to win acceptance by the majority. Economically, the New Order is egalitarian; politically, it is majoritarian; emotionally, it is infatuated with the State, which it honors as the dispenser of all good, the unchallengeable and irreproachable steward of every human being.”

“It clearly won’t do, then, to foster within some schools a respect for an absolute, intractable, unbribable God, a divine Intelligence who is utterly unconcerned with other people’s versions of truth and humorlessly inattentive to majority opinion. It won’t do to tolerate a competitor for the allegiance of man. The State prefers a secure monopoly for itself. It is intolerably divisive to have God and the State scrapping for disciples…”

“…You graduate into a turbulent and confusing and perverse world situation which, because so many men have forgotten the lessons of Christ and because so many men have turned their back on Him, seriously threatens the international ascendancy of evil: a physical war against Christian civilization, and an intellectual war against the foundations of our spiritual faith.”

In conjunction with William F. Buckley’s incisive thought and his voluminous writing, is the constellation of writers, philosophers, historians, and economists to whom he introduces the reader. One of these, the historian Russell Kirk, observed that since the eighteenth century Enlightenment, “At least five major schools of radical thought have competed for public favor since [Edmund] Burke entered politics: the rationalism of the philosophes, the romantic emancipation of Rousseau and his allies, the utilitarianism of the Benthamites, the positivism of Comte’s school, and the collectivistic materialism of Marx and other socialists.”

Beginning with our next journal entry, we shall study more closely these five major schools of radical thought; not least because philosophical elements of all these schools of thought continue to significantly influence- and threaten- our polity and society. Also, we would do well to nourish, as Americans, some degree of orthodoxy and reinvigorate the early principles of our country. As reason- and faith- would seem to recommend; as William F. Buckley, Jr. would certainly advocate, were he still with us today.