{"id":44,"date":"2025-08-12T04:08:18","date_gmt":"2025-08-12T04:08:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2025\/08\/12\/the-sam-tanenhaus-bio-of-buckley\/"},"modified":"2025-08-12T04:08:18","modified_gmt":"2025-08-12T04:08:18","slug":"the-sam-tanenhaus-bio-of-buckley","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2025\/08\/12\/the-sam-tanenhaus-bio-of-buckley\/","title":{"rendered":"The Sam Tanenhaus Biography of William F. Buckley"},"content":{"rendered":"

I came across it at the local library but the sheer weight of the thing dissuaded me from checking it out.  I borrowed  Jake Tapper's light-weight (in both senses) Original Sin<\/em> instead. I cannot recommend it. William Voegli's review of Tanenhaus, William F. Buckley and the Conservative Future,<\/a> I can recommend.  It raises the question: Is Donald Trump the political heir of National Review<\/em>'s founder? <\/span><\/p>\n

Here are its final paragraphs. The bolded portions earn the coveted MavPhil<\/em> plenary endorsement.<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

The relationship between Buckley and Trump is also contested among conservatives. For critics like Brookhiser and Will, Trump\u2019s coarse manner is inseparable from the coarseness of his politics. Conservatism, they argue, must be reclaimed by men of character and intellect, like Buckley and Reagan. In his review of Buckley<\/em>, Brookhiser calls Trump a \u201cmalignant clown,\u201d whose prominence within conservatism is \u201cour problem,\u201d not Buckley\u2019s fault.<\/span><\/p>\n

There appears to be no clear solution to this problem, as restoring conservatism to its status quo ante-Trump grows increasingly implausible. And the awkward fact is that Trump, over one full term and the beginnings of another, has delivered on goals that conservatives had spent generations trying to achieve.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Consider affirmative action. Since Lyndon Johnson\u2019s 1965 executive order made it integral to federal operations, six Republican presidents\u2014Trump (as 45) among them\u2014held the Oval Office for a combined 32 years without rescinding it, despite a steady drumbeat of conservative criticism. In 2025, Trump (as 47) finally signed an executive order nullifying Johnson\u2019s.<\/strong> His action built on the Supreme Court\u2019s 2022 decision declaring affirmative action unconstitutional in college admissions\u2014a decision made possible by the three justices Trump appointed in his first term.<\/span><\/p>\n

Those same three were part of the six-justice majority that year to overturn Roe <\/em>v. Wade<\/em>, which conservatives had denounced for nearly half a century with little effect.<\/strong> And while the game is not over, <\/span>it exactly wrong in <\/span>The Death of Conservatism<\/em>. The good conservatives are the troublemakers: those who do not accept that it is indecent to disparage and impossible to reverse liberalism\u2019s advances. The bad conservatives are the acquiescent ones, Goldberg\u2019s Sherpas or Michael Anton\u2019s Washington Generals, whose <\/span>role<\/a> in our politics is \u201cto show up and lose.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Trump 47 has already done more to defund public broadcasting and the Department of Education than any of his Republican predecessors\u2014not to mention the conservative commentators who spent decades demanding just that.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

The growing number of conservatives who are pro-Trump, or at least Trump-tolerant, think that Tanenhaus got it exactly wrong in The Death of Conservatism<\/em>. The good conservatives are the troublemakers: those who do not accept that it is indecent to disparage and impossible to reverse liberalism\u2019s advances. The bad conservatives are the acquiescent ones, Goldberg\u2019s Sherpas or Michael Anton\u2019s Washington Generals, whose role<\/a> in our politics is \u201cto show up and lose.\u201d<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

In 1955, William F. Buckley launched National Review<\/em>\u2014and the conservative movement\u2014with the famous declaration that the magazine \u201cstands athwart history, yelling Stop.\u201d Within conservatism, there has long been debate over whether the yelling is the point, decrying the demise of civic and social virtues too good to endure in this benighted world, or whether the real goal is to effect some stopping. Due to changes that Donald Trump both causes and reflects, the stoppers are now ascendant over the yellers. While Sam Tanenhaus disapproves of this shift, his imperfect but valuable biography does little to dispel the suspicion that William Buckley would have welcomed it.<\/strong>  <\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I came across it at the local library but the sheer weight of the thing dissuaded me from checking it out.  I borrowed  Jake Tapper's light-weight (in both senses) Original Sin instead. I cannot recommend it. William Voegli's review of Tanenhaus, William F. Buckley and the Conservative Future, I can recommend.  It raises the question: … Continue reading “The Sam Tanenhaus Biography of William F. Buckley”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[64,27,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-44","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-conservatism","category-maga-matters","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}