Strictly Right: William F. Buckley Jr. and the American Conservative Movement

Linda Bridges gives us the background on how Buckley and his magazine helped transform the American political landscape. In witty fashion shows how this individual could help save the world while having a lot of fun on the way. Young people may not realize how lonely and beleaguered conservatives felt forty and fifty years ago. Those were heady times for young conservatives as well as the rabble-rousers of the New Left. People took ideas more seriously back then, too, not just the slogans and PR cliches that are our diet today. Janis Starcs

There have been a number of books published in the last few years tracking the influence of "National Review" on the rise of the American conservative movement. And while all have their merits (at least, the two or three I've read so far all do), this was the most entertaining of the three. That's because in addition to being a history of "Buckleyite" or "National Review conservatism," so-called, it's also -- as the blurb on the back cover says -- "an affectionate portrait of the man who started it all." The authors are long-time NR writers and editors and close associates of WFB, and so they don't claim to have produced a work with the olympian distance and objectivity (real or feigned) modern historiography seems to require. "Strictly Right" is a candid, relaxed, and very personal look at a man, a magazine, a movement, and the close ties between the three. Fans of the man and the mag will certainly enjoy the authors' storytelling abilities and their recounting of interesting and half-forgotten episodes. Readers interested in the history of this form of conservatism would, I think, do well to pair this book with Jeff Hart's "The Making of the American Conservative Mind: National Review and Its Times" (2005) which, I think, does a better job placing NR in historical and political context (Bridges and Coyne cite "The Making..." in their bibliography). Hart is another NR insider, of course, and so his book too is fundamentally sympathetic to the people and ideas discussed. He, however, has a jaded view of the magazine's relevance to modern conservatism that -- at least to judge by this book -- Bridges and Coyne do not share. From uniting selected strands of the Old Right in the 1950s to charting a course between neocons and paleocons today (the authors devote several pages to David Frum's 2003 NR ukase "Unpatriotic Conservatives," which read people like, well, me, out of conservatism ... at least as David Frum defines it), Bridges and Coyne do a fair job showing how NR has shaped how "conservatism" has been defined and understood on the American political spectrum. When you get right down to it, though, this is a book about William F. Buckley, Jr. And in the absence of any full biography of the man since John B. Judis' "William F. Buckley, Jr.: Patron Saint of the Conservatives" in 1988, it's about the best look we've yet had at the man who can justly claim to have had as much influence as anyone on the political and cultural direction of America in the second half of the 20th century. The admiring tone of this book may put off readers not already sympathetic to man and cause, and certainly points out the need for a more scholarly volume or two on the subject. But conservatives and even libertarians -- particularly the young conservatives Hart argues are disconnected from their historical and philosophical roots -- should find much in these pages to appreciate and enjoy.

William F. Buckley Jr. has been at the center of the conservative movement for more than half a century. In fact, it is more than fair to say, WFB is responsible for the conservative intellectual movement in the United States. At a crucial time WFB provided a forum for a diverse set of talented writers and thinkers to come together in a new magazine that is perhaps the most important journal of ideas in the 20th Century. Buckley's dedication to anti-communism and the intellectual defense for the position he and his writers provided was important in the face of liberal intellectuals (anti-anti-communists) who saw anti-communism as nothing more than the boorish antics of McCarthy and others. Later NR became the journal in exile for conservatives after Goldwater's defeat. Even later NR became the house organ of the Reagan Revolution. Early on NR and WFB directly also challenged some of the less than pleasant strains of conservatism -- Birchers and Randian cultists leading to their ultimate peripheral status. WFB continued his influence with Firing Line, one of the few intellectually stimulating television debate shows (Firing Line was no Hardball or O'Reilly!). The book gives Buckley his due as we see the formation of NR to its maturation as indispensable read for Goldwater and a Hollywood actor turned Governor turned President. An enjoyable read.