Truth Really Matters

In his mid-twenties he was the conservative movement’s rising intellectual star; as one put it, its lone “shining light in the darkness.” Audiences were enthusiastic, filling up venues to hear him speak, at American Legion Halls, Knights of Columbus chapters, the Ad-Sell League of Oklahoma City (with a membership of 800 businessmen) . . . he drew a crowd anywhere. His manners, expressive features, laconic drawl, and captivating turns of phrase mesmerized listeners whether or not they really followed his arguments.

At a 1952 luncheon in Texas with business and professional leaders he focused not so much on the dangers of global Communism, but by two homegrown evil cabals, the American Association of University Professors and the National Educational Association. William F. Buckley Jr. declared, “You can reach into the White House and recall the President. You can oust your government representatives. But you cannot rout a professor whose teachings you consider antagonistic to your views.”

Nothing has changed, really, over the last 75 years, has it? In his 1955 prospectus for launching the magazine that would become National Review, he wrote, “The nearest thing to a ‘ruling class’ in America is the ‘opinion makers’ – newspapermen, publishers, commentators, educators, ministers, and members of the various professions.” He also noted that despite the basic conservatism of the American people, the opinion makers set the agenda for controlling the citizenry. It wasn’t a secret conspiracy, “but a coordinated duplicity of the like-minded.”

Today we talk about the “uniparty” and how “RINOs” continually undermine properly conservative initiatives. But American politics has followed the same ruts for many generations.

I recently read Sam Tanenhaus’ 2025 biography, Buckley: The Life and the Revolution that Changed America. I grew up in the 1950s and 60s admiring what I heard from William F. Buckley, Jr. My very middle-class family was conservative and Republican, my dad an elementary school teacher and my mom a corporate secretary. Dad often tuned in to Buckley’s talk show and resonated with his side of an argument, especially if Buckley debated some nefarious liberal. I was struck with the calm, the articulate ease, and yet the apparently determined underlying convictions displayed by Buckley, whatever the subject.

Accordingly, I became aware of the nation’s great political issues in my youth. For some years I subscribed to National Review and felt I benefited from its analysis. In my adulthood my worldview fleshed out in fully biblical hues. Over the years I’ve come to the conviction that REALITY is the REALITY grounded in Scripture and that everything under the sun – physical, rational, logical, spiritual, experiential, etc. – is properly and only understood from a biblical perspective. On this website I’ve tried to demonstrate that, albeit implicitly, by writing on a wide variety of topics from a Christian / biblical perspective. I’ve tried, at least.

When I saw Buckley’s bio on the shelves at B&N, I just had to get some questions answered. Was there a great cause that motivated him? Was he merely a secular conservative, a co-belligerent with Christian conservatives on selected issues? What else was in his life beyond his public, political persona? Just how “big” a guy was he?

I’ll give you my conclusions up front. He was a lifelong Roman Catholic, from his family’s heritage. Like many conservative Catholics I’ve known, his worldview was largely secular and his conservatism was common-sense secular. A committed Christian worldview should inform everything in life. A Catholic, in contrast, will pick and choose positions apart from God’s or Church’s doctrine. I believe almost every significant political question can be answered definitively, starting with biblical principles. The secular conservative finds different motivations. On the personal side, was there much to WFB beyond his public persona? I don’t think so and so I find myself disappointed there, too.

At the end of this essay I’ll opine on why secular conservatism will fail in America. I’ve already foreshadowed this by noting how the shape of battle hasn’t changed in 75 years, yet we are farther down the leftist, Satanic road than ever before. But let’s glean what we can from Tanenhaus’ excellent biography.

Why did Buckley work so hard to establish National Review? In the 1950s, as Buckley saw it, liberals controlled the political discussion, picked the topics, built the main-stream narratives to explain the topics, and platformed or de-platformed whom they would. Conservative voices existed, but were in the minority. College campuses were especially discouraging. “For every college teacher who urges conservative principles, there are one hundred who, openly or surreptitiously, expounded the philosophy of the Left.”

Buckley famously ridiculed the idea of governance by experts when he said, “I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University.” I would support that sentiment even today, although I would prefer Boston be replaced by Miami or Oklahoma City.

Buckley saw the challenge as “superhuman,” requiring a rebuild of the nation’s intellectual life. Particularly, Buckley wanted to go on offense, pick his own topics and expound truth, rather than continually, perpetually, agonizingly, play defense. This problem also continues today.

Bill Buckley was born in 1925, just a few months after my dad’s birth. He was one of ten siblings, who were dear to each other throughout their lives. WFB Sr. was an oilman, cycling through booms and busts, but overall, gifted the family with a rich, privileged life, usually in Connecticut, but the family also spent time in Mexico, Europe, and South Carolina. Bill was homeschooled, along with several siblings and joined by several neighborhood kids.

Bill embraced his family’s Catholicism in his youth. At age 14, in his first political act, he joined the America First Committee, an isolationist group horrified that the U.S. might be dragged into Europe’s war (WW2). At 15 while a student at Millbrook, a private school, he reveled in debating the America First cause, particularly with Allan Horne, a British student who championed Churchill’s drive to persuade Americans to get into this ‘war to save civilization.’

Here’s an example of a debating point Bill used to caution Americans from leaping onto the British bandwagon: “England’s navy, our so-called first line of defense, has threatened the shores of this country four times in the last one hundred and fifty years.” He also chided the Brits as “the most belligerent nation in the world . . . a country that has fought 92 wars in the last fifty years.” We might recoil at these sentiments today with our historical perspective vis-à-vis WW2, but you’ve got to credit young Bill with feistiness. His style exemplified ferocity in attack. He was naturally combative, seeking to fluster his opponent and grab the attention of his audience.

In his senior year, his teacher / advisor assessed his mind as keen, analytical, with great potential, a mind “almost too sharp for his own good.” His brother Jim was more genial, more likable, the teacher noted, while Bill “is more the cold, calculating and self-seeking person.” But he praised Bill’s academic excellence, his conscientious performance, and his community service, an important aspect of life at Millbrook.

In 1944 Bill joined the army and was assigned to Fort Bragg, North Carolina. His fellow inductees were generally older, poorer, and far less educated, a culture shock for Bill, provoking severe loneliness at first. But soon, he wrote, “it’s odd how very well I get along with these boys. They know I have a good education, but they don’t resent it because I don’t inflict the fact on them.” Many were grateful for his help in writing letters and advising on a variety of other topics. He wrote to his parents, “Most of them are wonderful boys, once you got past the terrible language and horrible ignorance.”

Moving to Fort Benning, Georgia, Bill completed the infantry school and OCS, receiving his commission as a 2nd LT on May 11, 1945, four days after Germany surrendered. Not long after, in 1946 after two years in the army, his dad coerced him to start college – Yale. Tanenhaus writes, “By the time he and Yale were finished with each other, neither would be the same.”

Bill’s grades were excellent at Yale, so good in Spanish that he was hired as an instructor, in which he carried a salary until after graduation. He flopped in physics – after the first lecture he looked at a classmate and they both burst into laughter: neither had understood a single thing the professor said. He joined the debate team and excelled.

The luminous prize for Buckley at Yale was to win the chairmanship of the student-run newspaper, the Yale Daily News, founded in 1878, the nation’s oldest college daily. The top job was awarded after a fierce competition, publishing news stories, selling subscriptions and advertising space, and serving the upperclassmen. He sought the prestige of the chairmanship, but even more the privilege of writing the daily editorial column. Bill won – Tom Guinzburg, who placed second, later said, “He was the most impressive figure, the most visible figure in our class.”

Buckley succeeded at Yale despite the fact that he was Catholic (there were quotas on admissions for Catholics and Jews at Yale) and politically conservative. Bill was never a snob – he didn’t care what prep schools his classmates came from, but he did care about what they thought and believed in politics and religion, in issues that mattered. He was also generous. When the Spanish Department’s budget was short, he offered to give up his salary so a fellow instructor could keep his full salary. Enough money was found anyway.

Buckley and his buddy Brent Bozell did substantive work at Yale. A new leftist political party, the Progressive Citizens of America (PCA) denied they had connections to the Communist Party. Buckley and Bozell documented linkages between twenty-one officers of the PCA with various Communist front organizations. They teamed up with the FBI to create a report they published in the News.

It’s interesting to note that the issues at the top of the PCA agenda included price and rent controls, a minimum wage bill, and nationalization of certain industries. Just the same issues preached by Zohran Mamdani in his NYC mayoral campaign in 2025.

In contrast, conservative hallmarks – actually what modern conservatism is about politically – include individual freedom, especially free markets, private ownership, minimal government, low taxes, secure borders, and a host of moral issues such as sanctity of life (no abortion, no euthanasia), sanctity of marriage, public decency, traditional (biblical) marriage, and so on. My essay on Thomas Sowell’s book (September 1, 2025) speaks to the economic issues; for example, the utter insanity of trying to force price and wage controls.

1948 saw the greatest presidential election upset in the 20th century, Truman’s victory over Dewey. Buckley lamented the Democrat’s win, writing about it in a way still relevant: “The so-called conservative, uncomfortably disdainful of controversy, seldom has the energy to fight his battles, while the radical, so often a member of the minority, exerts disproportionate influence because of his dedication to his cause.” Bill insisted, though, “I am dedicated to my cause.”

Politics is, of course, just a portion of the spiritual war that has raged since the Fall of Adam and Eve in the Garden. Apathy in the conservative electorate is paralleled by apathy among American Christians. Consider how small the minority is that has driven gay marriage laws, abortion, trans ideology, drag queen story hours, and other moral depradations that have crushed the culture in recent generations. What if the Christians had been as dedicated to biblical causes? Yet Christian apathy continues. If over the last 50 years, Christians had simply focused on the Great Commission, the moral climate would be far different. How big a remnant would it take, an obedient and dedicated remnant, to provoke God to turn this country’s politics around? Merely ten would have saved Sodom and Gomorrah. God used one reluctant preacher to turn the Assyrian empire on its head. A dozen simple disciples of a Jewish rabbi turned the world upside down two thousand years ago. Why not stir up a handful of Christians today and see what God might do?

Bill Buckley was bold as Chairman of the News. His predecessor had written a series on the theme, “What Makes a Course Good?” Bill launched a series, “What Makes a Course Bad?” targeting a sociology professor, Raymond Kennedy, who used his course to attack Christianity, Roman Catholicism in particular. Buckley called out Kennedy’s prolific use of ridicule and slant. Bill wrote that Kennedy was entitled to his atheism, but overstepped in expounding it from a classroom pulpit, setting himself up as the leader of “a cult of anti-religion.”

The editorial produced an uproar. It was accepted that the News might criticize administrative policies, but Buckley had named a specific professor. Letters critical of the editorial poured in, which the News dutifully published. Buckley’s reputation on campus suffered somewhat from this experience, but he got the favorable attention of many outside the campus. Eventually Buckley would publish (in 1951) his first book, God and Man at Yale, which still serves as a thoughtful critique of academia’s animosity toward Christians (of any variety).

One of the most celebrated quotes from that book: “I believe that the duel between Christianity and atheism is the most important in the world. I further believe that the struggle between individualism and collectivism is the same struggle reproduced on another level.” Another: Yale was Exhibit A in “one of the most extraordinary incongruities of our time: the institution that derives its moral and financial support from Christian individualists and then addresses itself to the task of persuading the sons of those supporters to be atheistic socialists.”

And so he did have a glimmer, but still lacked the born-again biblical worldview which sees that the real war is between God and Satan for the souls of men. The ‘principalities and powers’ representing demonic forces infest and drive earthly leaders in politics, media, culture, business, and academia. It’s all one battle, so don’t get too frustrated if you have no political influence beyond your one vote. Pass out a Gospel tract and you fire a shot in the same spiritual war that we see played out on the political and cultural world stage. Do your part and trust God to work elsewhere, too.

In 1949 Buckley gave a speech to 400 conservative luminaries at a Manhattan hotel. He made a pitch for spreading conservative activities among university campuses: “We need today a brigade of intellectuals. These must work in the colleges. They must stem and turn the tide of collectivism. They must preach American principles and natural rights and divine sanction. There is no other way to check the cancerous growth of collectivism and pragmatism.”

Eventually, in 1960 Bill Buckley would help found Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), which worked to establish student chapters on campuses across the nation, providing ideological homes for conservative students and taking up various causes to influence young people. YAF eventually merged with Young America’s Foundation (YAF) which continues today. TPUSA and YAF seem to have significant similarities in ideology, organization, and strategies, but TPUSA has certainly captured the momentum in recent years for leadership among conservative youth. Throughout Bill Buckley’s life, he saw the campuses as the most important fields of battle.

Buckley never hesitated to go for the jugular. James Wechsler was the editor of New York Post, and had published extensive attacks on Senator Joe McCarthy, who became infamous for his efforts to root Communists out of the U.S. government. Buckley was invited onto a TV talk show in 1953 to discuss Wechsler’s new book, The Age of Suspicion. Before going on camera, the two chatted amiably, but when the program started, Buckley attacked: “You are dishonest. In your book you say you never smear anyone, but you smear someone nearly every day in your paper, which I consider the dirtiest paper in New York.”

Wechlser was shocked. Later, he said, “You allow yourself to become amiable and mellow, and suddenly you discover he’s practically calling you a traitor.”

Buckley launched National Review in 1955, with mission statements featuring their opposition to “coexistence with communism”; they also opposed the “identifiable team of Fabian operators . . . bent on controlling both our major political parties – under the sanction of such fatuous and unreasoned slogans as ‘national unity,’ ‘middle-of-the-road,’ ‘progressivism,’ and ‘bipartisanship’”; NR opposed “world government, the United Nations, internationalism,” all these the enemies of U.S. sovereignty.

The same battles rage today – replace ‘internationalism’ with ‘globalism’ and the rest of the list is timeless. Refreshingly, Buckley saw these issues as battles to be won, not to be compromised upon. Rush Limbaugh echoed this throughout his career. Rush had no interest in negotiating or compromising with the leftists intent on destroying the country. He insisted they must be ‘defeated.’

Buckley’s mission-focused battle-cry illustrates my earlier point. At times in his career, like in his first book, he identifies the synergy between communism and anti-theism, but usually, as above, we see the issue framed in entirely secular, political terms. To the dedicated Christian, though, we must start with God and His word, and interpret the political controversies as derivative of the spiritual war between God and Satan. The biblical foundation provides clarity, along with gumption for the battle. To be relentless in the cause of righteousness, we must put on the armor of Ephesians chapter 6. I believe that secular conservatives get no direct help from God. Leftists, though, do get help from Satan and his minions.

National Review was a money-loser for many years. Buckley always managed to muddle through with financial problems, by earning and by fund-raising, but he was not good at business. It was Buckley family money, 6 million dollars of it, that helped sustain the magazine through its first 25 years. Starting in the 1970s he added a significant income stream – he wrote a series of best-selling spy novels, one which reached number four on the New York Times best-seller list. Along with lecture fees ($10K per) and other media streams, his income hit a steady 2-3 million per year.

Bill Buckley never sought political power for himself, although he did run for mayor in New York City once, with no prospect of winning. He sought cultural and intellectual influence, quite successfully, in his syndicated column “On the Right” for 46 years and in his TV talk show, Firing Line, which fascinated my dad and myself long ago.

He influenced the significant Republican candidates of his era, notably Goldwater, Nixon, and Reagan, and wrote substantively on politics right up until his death. When Reagan was elected President, 60 Minutes ran a segment on Buckley. Morley Safer narrated, “Buckley and the National Review have plenty to celebrate these days. The magazine has survived for twenty-five years, and in just two days time there will be a conservative in the White House. It would be going too far to say Buckley put him there, but it would be fair to say that Ronald Reagan rode to victory on a political philosophy that Bill Buckley has been offering up for more than two decades.”

Even though Buckley had helped and supported Nixon on his way to the presidency, and even though Buckley’s endorsement had enabled Kissinger to get the job of National Security Advisor for Nixon, Buckley was usually loyal to principles over people. Long after the famous diplomatic visit of Nixon and Kissinger to China in 1972, Buckley wrote, “Kissinger and Nixon went to Peking like barbarians approaching the Manchu emperors. They set a pattern of deference bordering on obsequiousness which has run through Western approaches to China ever since.” Buckley never lost his revulsion for the evils of Communism.

When Buckley knew he was close to death, he affirmed his Roman Catholic beliefs and expressed assurance he was on his way to Heaven. His memorial Mass was attended by 2,200 mourners, including many celebrities, politicians, and journalists. Luke 6:26 comes to mind. Tanenhaus writes, “For almost half a century, millions of Americans could confidently say who had been the country’s greatest conservative: William F. Buckley, Jr.” I find it tragic that he never saw through the fallacies of Catholicism and, therefore, never found salvation.

One piece of evidence I’ve observed over the years that speaks to the un-truth of the RC faith is that even serious Catholics have no burden for the salvation of souls. I’ve shared the Gospel with many Catholics, but many have refused to engage, typically with a terse “I’ve got my own religion,” followed by a quickly slammed door. If they really believed the entire RC package, shouldn’t they be concerned about my soul? Shouldn’t they try to convince me that I’ve missed it? I’ve seen this with my own relatives . . . I’m the only one I know that came out and found a biblically-grounded salvation.

Some Catholics claim to affirm salvation by faith / grace and may even profess to agree with Ephesians 2:8-10, that salvation is by faith, apart from works, but that we are born again to produce good works – good works is the result of salvation and not the prerequisite. But they will agree that the vast majority of Catholics in the pews are trusting their own supposed righteousness, and don’t understand this biblical principle. Yet they have no burden, and certainly show no practice in conveying the necessity of repentance and faith to their pew-mates to help them graduate to Heaven and miss Hell. If you are genuinely saved, you must have a burden for the lost.

Bill Buckley certainly espoused and fought for conservative principles, many of which are consistent with biblical truth, including a small government, low taxes, free markets, individual liberty, the sanctity of life both for the unborn and for the aged. But he worked almost entirely on the political aspects, employing practical and traditional arguments, rather than boldly standing on God’s word as the ultimate authority. Yes, it is reasonable to employ practical, consequential arguments in the political sphere. But the holder of a Christian worldview gives credit to the Author of reality-based arguments and proclaims that the hearers had better pay attention to what the Creator has to say about it.

Why haven’t conservatives ‘won’ at this point in history? Why does the culture continue to slide, and in many ways has already crashed at the bottom of the moral cliffs? In the West, especially America, I blame us, the Christians, who, like Buckley, enjoy life just a little too much, get excited about political issues but not so much the salvation of souls, and get distracted by the American good life, rather than focus, sacrifice, and work relentlessly to execute the Great Commission.

How much of an obedient ‘remnant’ would it take for God to transform American politics? Do you think God will even allow MAGA to make a political and economic revival while God is excluded? I would hypothesize that God is far more likely to ‘rescue’ America because a few thousand Christians get serious, rather than because a hundred million get conservative.

• drdave@truthreallymatters.com