Gottfried on Buckley

Paul Gottfried has a long article about William Buckley at Taki’s website. It’s not your typical Gottfried scourging of the neocons and their fellow travelers, since Gottfried liked and admired Buckley for many years (which I was not aware of), and much of that admiration and affection are expressed here, notwithstanding Gottfried’s criticisms of Buckley for his later apostasy from the movement he had founded. The conservatism of so many conservatives—not my own—was formed by Buckley that it is interesting to me to read about this.

And think of the range of Buckley admirers. The people who warmly speak of having been “thrilled” by his writings—again, an experience I’ve never had—range from the light-as-air enthusiast insider Jay Nordlinger to the bitter paleocon outsider Paul Gottfried, which suggests the breadth of the intellectual and political coalition Buckley was instrumental in forming.

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LA to Paul Gottfried:

I just posted a brief note on your Buckley article. I enjoy reading you in an affectionate and appreciative mode.

Paul Gottfried replies:

I should be grateful to my enemies for having developed the belligerent side of my personality. Most of my students never see it

Mr. Gottfried continues:

Your comments are entirely on target. Your remark about Buckley’s wide ranging appeal would hold for other figures as well, from Lincoln and FDR to a thinker like Martin Heidegger. My work on the German political and legal theorist Carl Schmitt suggested the same broad appeal for this figure. The reason such examples do not easily come to mind in our culture is the degree to which the contemporary West has been ideologically vulgarized.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 05, 2008 10:59 AM | Send