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Wednesday, March 5, 2008 - 7:58pmSanction this postReply
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Thank you for this wonderful description of your association with William Buckley.

I found especially interesting your observation that American conservatives are primarily interested in the ideas of the Founding Fathers, as opposed to simply preserving the values of the past of whatever character. Although I often feel disgust with powerful strands of statist thinking that seem to dominate conservatives today, I am nevertheless frequently reminded of the truth of your observation. For example, listening to conservative talk show hosts who are less doctrinaire, more populist, and more statist--Michael Savage and Jerry Doyle, to name two--one can still easily discern persistent and strong sympathy for the ideas that inspired the American Revolution: smaller government, self responsibility, the value of economic freedom. Of course, these commentators understand these ideas only vaguely and apply them inconsistently, but their connection to the ideal of individual liberty is unmistakeable. 

William Buckley was a huge hero to me when I was young. After I discovered Ayn Rand, I was surprised (but not dumbfounded) by Buckley's hostility to her. For example, Whitaker Chamber wrote a review of Atlas Shrugged in "National Review", in which Chambers stated that Rand had a totalitarian bent to her ethical value system, one that shrieked "To a gas chamber, go!" In the early ninties, I wrote a couple of pretty good letters to the editor of Buckley's magazine, protesting their enthusiastic support for the Gulf War of GHW Bush, and commenting on their snide review of a new release of Rand's book Objectivist Epistemology. Of course, my letters fell into file 13.

Despite such grating philosophical differences, I always enjoyed seeing Buckley speak, and reading--or scanning--his writing. As you point out, Buckley elevated the conservative movement in the USA to a higher intellectual plane, since most conservative writers had been flung into oblivian by the 20 year rule of Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman. The conservatives who hung grimly on through those years, despite the blackout imposed by the press, public schools, and university system, were not intellectuals. But they were stubborn, brave and honest. Buckley imparted glittering intellectualism to conservativism. But he also did much to reshape the vulnerable and soft remnants of the conservative movement, from one that sought to defend individual liberty, to a movement willing to sacrifice that liberty for wars of National Greatness.


Post 1

Wednesday, March 5, 2008 - 10:04pmSanction this postReply
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Nice reminisce, Tibor! You wrote:   
We argued about God and about whether Ayn Rand had philosophical and literary merits.
I'd be interested in hearing on what basis Buckley thought there was a "god," and to what extent he had actually read the philosophical and literary works of Rand...


Post 2

Thursday, March 6, 2008 - 2:18amSanction this postReply
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Buckley wrote to me once saying he accepted Kant's defense of God as implied by the existence of morality.  This is a fallacious argument but widely embraced--given that morality is indisputable, God must exist as its origin.

Post 3

Thursday, March 6, 2008 - 7:09pmSanction this postReply
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Tibor: "Buckley wrote to me once saying he accepted Kant's defense of God as implied by the existence of morality. This is a fallacious argument but widely embraced--given that morality is indisputable, God must exist as its origin."

Tibor,

What do you think it is inside people that can make their reasoning so faulty?

Michael

Post 4

Thursday, March 6, 2008 - 9:35pmSanction this postReply
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Well, fear of death, for one. Peer pressure, for another. Some measure of plausibility, also.

Post 5

Saturday, March 8, 2008 - 7:56amSanction this postReply
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The first time I ever saw Ayn Rand in person (Feb. 1968) Buckley’s name came up and I don’t think I’ll ever forget it. Rand was giving lecture 17 of the Basic Principles series. During the Q & A, some woman (girl, really, she seemed quite young) asked Rand what she thought of William F. Buckley’s FIRING LINE show. Well, Rand got a little offended and told the girl that she didn’t answer obscene questions. Then she caught herself and told the girl that even though she might not have intended to offend, she should consider the context. The girl sat down and that was that. At that time I wasn’t aware of the Chambers’ obscene review of ATLAS in Buckley’s NATIONAL REVIEW. When I found out, I thought, “That’s a black mark against Buckley.

Years later he redeemed himself, at least slightly. I was reading an article by him in PLAYBOY and he was telling about his penchant for always knowing his favorites, in all kinds of different categories. Since this was a column on food, Buckley stated that his favorite restaurant on earth was Paone’s in New York city. So on my next vacation in New York I tried it. Incredible. In talking with Mr. Paone I found out he was from the Pittsburgh area (my home.) He had been in New York for decades and I told him he must enjoy Broadway. But he said he had never seen a play—too busy with the restaurant.

RIP William F. Buckley

Fred

Post 6

Sunday, March 9, 2008 - 6:26amSanction this postReply
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Peter Brimelow wrote a nice little article on Buckley. Much of it is from personal experience.

http://www.vdare.com/pb/080228_buckley.htm

(Edited by Chris Baker on 3/09, 6:28am)


Post 7

Sunday, March 9, 2008 - 12:49pmSanction this postReply
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Peter Brimelow's piece reeks of personal animosity so it cannot be trusted.  This obsession with the immigration issue also rubs me the wrong way, having come to the USA as an immigrant when the issues wasn't so topical. (Isn't Brimelow himself an immigrant from Canada?)  I agree with Buckley on Pat Buchanan's apparent despicable bigotry, by the way, though I am no expert on these folks, only having formed impressions from reading them here and there, now and then. Buckely seemed to me gracious but also kind of bipolar--he like many who get to be famous had strong prima donna traits that could produce tantrums (not unlike AR).

Post 8

Sunday, March 9, 2008 - 2:53pmSanction this postReply
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Buckley wrote to me once saying he accepted Kant's defense of God as implied by the existence of morality. This is a fallacious argument but widely embraced--given that morality is indisputable, God must exist as its origin.
Not to belabor the issue, as no one here would agree with Kant, but I'm reminded of Socrates' response to Euthyphro, "Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods." Anyone who thinks about this question for one minute (and I doubt that Buckley, a man of scholarly credentials would not have confronted it), cannot help but see the problem.

If the moral is loved by God, because it is moral, then morality exists independently of God. Conversely, if something is moral simply because it is loved by God, then anything God loves, from acts of kindness to sadistic brutality, is moral, and I doubt that even Buckley would subscribe to that notion. Most people who believe that murder is bad, believe it not because of God's arbitrary will or desire, but because they regard it as objectively wrong -- wrong independently of anyone's will or desire.

In the Old Testament, God commits a number of atrocities. He orders Moses to stone a man to death for working on the Sabbath. He orders the Israelites to slaughter millions of defenseless men, women and children in the conquest of Canaan. He kills every firstborn child in Egypt. He orders King Saul to butcher thousands of children and babies in the genocide of the Amalakites. He orders the Israelites to capture and mass-rape 32,000 young girls of the Midianite tribe after killing their families. He strikes dead 50,000 innocent people at Beshemish for merely looking into the ark of the covenant, and, during the flood of Noah, he drowns nearly every man, woman, child and animal on the face of the earth.

The idea that anyone who had even the remotest familiarity with the Bible could think that the Biblical God was the fountainhead of morality is difficult to fathom. But the idea that unless such a God existed, there could BE no morality is even more bewildering. Of all the arguments for the existence of a diety, that one is the least plausible.

- Bill

Post 9

Sunday, March 9, 2008 - 3:35pmSanction this postReply
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Tibor or William,
I wonder if Buckley knew that Kant used "God" as a regulative ideal and not as a constituive concept? That makes all the difference.

Fred

Post 10

Monday, March 10, 2008 - 1:22amSanction this postReply
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Tibor or William,
I wonder if Buckley knew that Kant used "God" as a regulative ideal and not as a constitutive concept? That makes all the difference.
I take it by "a constitutive concept" you mean the idea of God as a causal explanation for the existence of the world -- which Kant rejected as unprovable by means of reason -- and by "regulative ideal," you mean the assumption of God as a guiding principle regulating our understanding of the world, even though, according to Kant, we can claim no actual knowledge of such a being. In other words, in Kant's view, we must assume the idea of God not as an object of knowledge, but as practical necessity for employing reason in a realm where we can have knowledge.

I see your point. Kant didn't give the kind of "proof" of God that would likely have satisfied a Roman Catholic like Buckley, who, I imagine, would be more comfortable with a "constitute" argument for God's existence, like the first-cause argument or the argument from design.

- Bill


(Edited by William Dwyer on 3/10, 1:25am)


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Post 11

Monday, March 10, 2008 - 4:31amSanction this postReply
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Perhaps Wm. F. Buckley would have .. ah...ah....ah...accepted Anselm's argument. Ah... ah.... ah....


Bob Kolker


Post 12

Monday, March 10, 2008 - 2:24pmSanction this postReply
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William,

A constitutive concept refers to something physically real, e.g., the Rockies. A regulative ideal refers to something that is imaginary, like the equator. These ideas contribute to the systematization of our knowledge but do not refer to anything real. And you are right, this idea of God should not only not please a Catholic, it should infuriate him.

Fred

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Post 13

Tuesday, March 11, 2008 - 11:23pmSanction this postReply
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Tibor, Thanks for your revealing experiences and insights into Bill Buckley.

Having read not just your piece but a half-dozen other post-mortem pieces this past week,it turns out that things he did which helped grow a movement out of nothing included:

(i) being gracious, charming, and open to a range of people - corresponding with them, bringing them along -- networking;
(ii) mentoring, developing, training young writers in a well-edited magazine (National Review);
(iii) taking an active (and non-hostile) part in the 'great debates' of the time (Firing Line) -- engaging with adversaries in a pleasant but uncompromising, intelligent but entertaining and witty manner.

What's required for an intellectual movement to grow (and not self-destruct or stagnate) is not merely a great original genius or two as founders, but also major figures with world-class leadership and people and organizational skills.

Any guesses as to which of these Objectivism has and has not had?



(Edited by Philip Coates on 3/11, 11:27pm)


Post 14

Wednesday, March 12, 2008 - 8:54amSanction this postReply
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A constitutive concept refers to something physically real, e.g., the Rockies. A regulative ideal refers to something that is imaginary, like the equator. These ideas contribute to the systematization of our knowledge but do not refer to anything real.
Ah, so for Kant, God was an imaginary ideal which Kant considered necessary to systematize our knowledge, even though, according to him, there was no way to prove that such a being exists, whereas the "constitutive" concept of God viewed God as a real being, whose existence could be proved by logical arguments like the first-cause argument or the argument from design. Is that correct? If so, I now see the distinction more clearly. But I don't think it's valid.

Either God exists or he doesn't. If you have to assume his existence, as an imaginary ideal, in order to have a coherent or systematic knowledge of the world, then you're saying, in effect, that a rational understanding of the world requires his existence, i.e., that reason presupposes it, just as reason presupposes the law of identity.

By the way, I don't regard the equator as an imaginary place. It is an actual location, which I happened to have crossed while onboard a ship. :-)

- Bill

Post 15

Wednesday, March 12, 2008 - 9:42amSanction this postReply
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By the way, I don't regard the equator as an imaginary place. It is an actual location, which I happened to have crossed while onboard a ship. :-)

Likewise - several times....;-)


Post 16

Wednesday, March 12, 2008 - 1:54pmSanction this postReply
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Equators, like points, lines or any other mathematical curve or object live in our heads. There is no such thing in the physical world.

It may be all in our heads, but it is a very handy, dandy abstraction, like latitude and longitude.

Bob Kolker


Post 17

Wednesday, March 12, 2008 - 6:36pmSanction this postReply
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William,

You wrote, "Either God exists or he doesn't." Either angels exist or they don't. Rand thought they didn't exist, but that did not keep her from using them for heuristic purposes when trying to teach Peikoff about the way human, as opposed to angelic, minds work. One can use fictional entities for rational purposes. Think of Atlas Shrugged. Kant used God the way Rand used angels and Galt.

"By the way, I don't regard the equator as an imaginary place" I was using it in the standard sense. For example, from Wikipedia, 'The equator is an imaginary line on the Earth's surface..." The equator is imaginary, the Rockies are real. Hope that helps.

Fred

Post 18

Wednesday, March 12, 2008 - 7:03pmSanction this postReply
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Fred,

Um, an imaginary line is one in imaginary space, like in the graphic here.

Please don't put Descartes before de horse. He Kant push or walk backwards very well.

Te-he.


Post 19

Wednesday, March 12, 2008 - 11:17pmSanction this postReply
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> Please don't put Descartes before de horse. He Kant push or walk backwards very well.

Youre gonna make me Spinoza my grave and play Hobbes with my patience. We're going to Locke you up if you continue with these philosopher puns. You're Berkeleying up the wrong tree when you keep doing this and will have to Hegel with the judge to negotiate a suspended sentence.

What kind of Marx am I getting for this post? Anyone keeping Comte?

Someone once said that puns, the lowest form of humor, are Thales told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

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