Buckley's totalitarian "conservatism".

Nearing the end of his eighth decade, William F. Buckley Jr. has relinquished control over National Review, the fortnightly journal commonly called the "flagship" publication of the conservative movement. When Buckley founded the magazine nearly 50 years ago, he and his associates "thought to influence conservative thought, which we succeeded in doing," he proudly told the New York Times.

In 1952, shortly before creating National Review, Buckley--fresh off a stint in the CIA--laid out some critical tenets of his "conservatism" in an essay for Commonweal. Although he was typically referred to as a "libertarian," Buckley's philosophy could best be described as something akin to Trotskyite revolutionary socialism: Centralized, bureaucratized government at home in support of a militaristic foreign policy abroad.

The Cold War conflict with the Soviet Union, Buckley wrote in 1952, will require that the U.S. maintain "large armies and air forces, atomic energy, central intelligence, war production boards and the attendant centralization of power in Washington--even with Truman at the reins of it all." In fact, he contended, "we have got to accept Big Government for the duration--for neither an offensive nor a defensive war can be waged ... except through the instrumentality of a totalitarian bureaucracy within our shores."

In a June 30 New York Post eulogy for Buckley's career, columnist Eric Fettman praised him as someone who "helped drive truly extremist elements, like the John Birch Society, out of mainstream conservatism at a time when their 'paranoid and unpatriotic drivel' threatened to discredit the entire movement." Of course, "unpatriotic" in this context meant resistance to the creation of the "totalitarian bureaucracy" Buckley championed.

At the beginning of the Iraq War, Buckley's magazine once again attempted to purge principled conservatives. In an April 7, 2003 cover story entitled "Unpatriotic Conservatives," contributor David Frum--a Canadian native who only became an American citizen following 9-11--declared that "antiwar conservatives ... have made common cause with the left-wing and Islamist antiwar movements in this country and in Europe. They deny and excuse terror. They espouse a potentially self-fulfilling defeatism. They publicize wild conspiracy theories. And some of them explicitly yearn for the victory of their nation's enemies."

Curiously, however, as be handed the reins of his magazine over to Frum and his ilk, Buckley quietly admitted that conservatives opposed to the Iraq War had been right all along. "With the benefit of hindsight," Buckley told the Times, "Saddam Hussein wasn't the kind of extra-territorial menace that was assumed by the administration one year ago. If I knew then what I know now about what kind of situation we would be in, I would have opposed the war."