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Conservatism Is The Tacit Acknowledgement That All That Is Finally Important In Human Experience Is Behind Us; That The Crucial Explorations Have Been Undertaken, And That It Is Given To Man To Know What Are The Great Truths That Emerged From Them.

-William F. Buckley, Jr.

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Conservatism Is The Tacit

William F. Buckley, Jr.

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Conservatism Is The Tacit Acknowledgement That All That Is Finally Important In Human Experience Is Behind Us; That The Crucial Explorations Have Been Undertaken, And That It Is Given To Man To Know What Are The Great Truths That Emerged From Them.

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More From William F. Buckley, Jr.

You Know, I’ve Spent My Entire Life Time Separating The Right From The Kooks.

If Only The Left Hated Crime As Much As They Hated Hate.

I've Always Believed That Conservatism Is The Politics Of Reality, And That Reality Ultimately Asserts Itself In A Reasonably Free Society, In Behalf Of The Conservative Position.

Bobby Kennedy And Nelson Rockefeller Are Having A Row, Ostensibly Over The Plight Of New York's Mentally Retarded, A Loose Definition Of Which Would Include Everyone In New York Who Voted For Bobby Kennedy Or Nelson Rockefeller.

I Catch Fire And Find The Reserves Of Courage And Assertiveness To Speak Up. When That Happens I Get Quite Carried Away. My Blood Gets Hot My Brow Wet I Become Unbearably And Unconscionably Sarcastic And Bellicose I Am Girded For A Total Showdown.

The Socialized State Is To Justice, Order, And Freedom What The Marquis De Sade Is To Love.

Even If One Takes Every Reefer Madness Allegation Of The Prohibitionists At Face Value, Marijuana Prohibition Has Done Far More Harm To Far More People Than Marijuana Ever Could.

The Majority Of The Senior Class Of Vassar Does Not Desire My Company And I Must Confess, Having Read Specimens Of Their Thought And Sentiments, That I Do Not Desire The Company Of The Majority Of The Senior Class Of Vassar.

The Best Defense Against Usurpatory Government Is An Assertive Citizenry.

Earlier This Month The State Department Gave The Umpteenth Performance Of Its Popular Play, Please Tread On Me, With Ceylon As Guest Star, And The Usual Cast.

Life Can't Be All Bad When For Ten Dollars You Can Buy All The Beethoven Sonatas And Listen To Them For Ten Years.

When It Is Not Possible To Reason With Holy Warriors, It Is Necessary To Immobilize Them Or Crush Them.

Liberals Claim To Want To Give A Hearing To Other Views, But Then Are Shocked And Offended To Discover That There Are Other Views.

One Must Recently Have Lived On Or Close To A College Campus To Have A Vivid Intimation Of What Has Happened. It Is There That We See How A Number Of Energetic Social Innovators, Plugging Their Grand Designs, Succeeded Over The Years In Capturing The Liberal Intellectual Imagination. And Since Ideas Rule The World, The Ideologues, Having Won Over The Intellectual Class, Simply Walked In And Started To Run Things. Run Just About Everything. There Never Was An Age Of Conformity Quite Like This One, Or A Camaraderie Quite Like The Liberals'.

It Is Not A Sign Of Arrogance For The King To Rule. That Is What He Is There For.

Nobody Who's Ever Been To Gulag Is A Pacifist.

Louis Kelso Of San Francisco, A Lawyer-economist, Has For Years Felt That He Has A Radical Answer To The Problem.

He [cassius Clay] Became A Black Muslim, Which Is A Pseudo-religion For Unbright Neurotics Who Feel The Need To Hate All White People.

Now It Is One Thing To Say I Say It That People Shouldn't Consume Psychoactive Drugs. It Is Entirely Something Else To Condone Marijuana Laws, The Application Of Which Resulted, In 1995, In The Arrest Of 588,963 Americans. Why Are We So Afraid To Inform Ourselves On The Question?

Decent People Should Ignore Politics, If Only They Could Be Confident That Politics Would Ignore Them

Mr. Rockefeller Is Due To Entertain Munificently At Breakfast, And Make His Pitch. My Advice To One Invited Guest Was: Order Caviar, And Then Say No.

Marijuana Is Not Much More Difficult To Obtain Than Beer. The Reason For This Is That A Liquor Store Selling Beer To A Minor Stands To Lose Its Liquor License. Marijuana Salesmen Don't Have Expensive Overheads, And So Are Not Easily Punished.

One Doesn't Read Jane Austen; One Re-reads Jane Austen.

Only Government Can Cause Inflation, Preserve Monopoly, And Punish Enterprise.

I Profoundly Believe It Takes A Lot Of Practice To Become A Moral Slob.

Boredom Is The Deadliest Poison.

He Was A Conservative All Right, But Invariably He Gave The Impression That He Was A Conservative Because He Was Surrounded By Liberals; That He Had Been A Revolutionist If That Had Been Required In Order To Be Socially Disruptive.

I'd Rather Entrust The Government Of The United States To The First 400 People Listed In The Boston Telephone Directory Than To The Faculty Of Harvard University.

One Must Bear In Mind That The Expansion Of Federal Activity Is A Form Of Eating For Politicians.

We Are So Concerned To Flatter The Majority That We Lose Sight Of How Very Often It Is Necessary, In Order To Preserve Freedom For The Minority, Let Alone For The Individual, To Face That Majority Down.

Old Ladies Photographed By Cbs Who Announced That They Would Die Of Malnutrition If Reagan's Bill Were Passed Could Probably Have Saved Themselves Their Impending Penury By The Simple Device Of Applying To The American Federation Of Television And Radio Artists For Scale Every Time They Were Featured By Dan Rather Or Whoever.

As A Businessman, Frank Lorenzo Gives Capitalism A Bad Name.

We Love Your Adherence To Democratic Principles.

Enthusiasm For Conservation Can Be Fashioned Into A Nasty Weapon For Those Who Dislike Business On General Principles.

I Get Satisfaction Of Three Kinds. One Is Creating Something, One Is Being Paid For It And One Is The Feeling That I Haven't Just Been Sitting On My Ass All Afternoon.

The Beatles Are Not Merely Awful. They Are So Unbelievably Horrible, So Appallingly Unmusical, So Dogmatically Insensitive To The Magic Of The Art, That They Qualify As Crowned Heads Of Anti-music.

History Is But The Polemics Of The Victor.

Kennedy After All Has Lots Of Glamour - Gregory Peck With An Atom Bomb In His Holster.

There Is An Inverse Relationship Between Reliance On The State And Self-reliance.

I Mean To Live My Life An Obedient Man, But Obedient To God, Subservient To The Wisdom Of My Ancestors; Never To The Authority Of Political Truths Arrived At Yesterday At The Voting Booth.

We View Our Atomic Arsenal As Proudly And As Devotedly As Any Pioneer Ever Viewed His Flintlock Hanging Over The Mantel As His Children Slept, And Dreamed.

One Can't Doubt That The American Objective In Iraq Has Failed - Different Plans Have To Be Made. And The Kernel Here Is The Acknowledgement Of Defeat.

In The Hands Of A Skillful Indoctrinator, The Average Student Not Only Thinks What The Indoctrinator Wants Him To Think . . . But Is Altogether Positive That He Has Arrived At His Position By Independent Intellectual Exertion. This Man Is Outraged By The Suggestion That He Is The Flesh-and-blood Tribute To The Success Of His Indoctrinators.

Not Everything That Is Legal Is Reputable.

The Government Of The United States, Under Lyndon Johnson, Proposes To Concern Itself Over The Quality Of American Life. And This Is Something Very New In The Political Theory Of Free Nations. The Quality Of Life Has Heretofore Depended On The Quality Of The Human Beings Who Gave Tone To That Life, And They Were Its Priests And Its Poets, Not Its Bureaucrats.

Socialize The Individual's Surplus And You Socialize His Spirit And Creativeness.

All That Is Good Is Not Embodied In The Law; And All That Is Evil Is Not Proscribed By The Law. A Well-disciplined Society Needs Few Laws; But It Needs Strong Mores.

Why Does Baloney Avoid The Grinder?

...following Mrs. Roosevelt In Search Of Irrationality Was Like Following A Burning Fuse In Search Of An Explosive.

What Yells Out At The Us Public . . . Is The Incandescent Hypocrisy Of So Many People Who, In The Name Of Free Speech, Persecute Its Practitioners If Their Opinions Are Conservative.

Self-control Is One Of The Most Exhilarating Of Pleasures.

A Conservative Is Someone Who Stands Athwart History, Yelling Stop, At A Time When No One Is Inclined To Do So, Or To Have Much Patience With Those Who So Urge It.

The Police Can't Use Clubs Or Gas Or Dogs. I Suppose They Will Have To Use Poison Ivy.

Christianity Finds All Its Doctrines Stated In The Bible, And Christianity Denies No Part, Nor Attempts To Add Anything To The Word Of God.

The Principal Sponsors Of The Terrorists Are Not Religious Fanatics. "palestine's Yasser Arafat, Iraq's Saddam Hussein, And Syria's Assad Family Have Made Themselves The Icons Of Islamism Despite The Fact That They Are Well-known Atheists Who Live Un-muslim Lives And Have Persecuted Unto Death The Muslim Movements In Their Countries."

Professor Galbraith Is Horrified By The Number Of Americans Who Have Bought Cars With Tail Fins On Them, And I Am Horrified By The Number Of Americans Who Take Seriously The Proposals Of Mr. Galbraith.

Scientists Are People Who Build The Brooklyn Bridge And Then Buy It.

Brooklyn Bridge

I Find It Easier To Believe In God Than To Believe Hamlet Was Deduced From The Molecular Structure Of A Mutton Chop.

Conservatism Is The Politics Of Reality

A Conservative Is A Fellow Who Is Standing Athwart History Yelling 'stop!'

Norman Mailer Decocts Matters Of The First Philosophical Magnitude From An Examination Of His Own Ordure, And I Am Not Talking About His Books.

The Amount Of Money And Of Legal Energy Being Given To Prosecute Hundreds Of Thousands Of Americans Who Are Caught With A Few Ounces Of Marijuana Makes No Sense.

Treatment Is Not Now Available For Almost Half Of Those Who Would Benefit From It. Yet We Are Willing To Build More And More Jails In Which To Isolate Drug Users Even Though At One-seventh The Cost Of Building And Maintaining Jail Space And Pursuing, Detaining, And Prosecuting The Drug User, We Could Subsidize Commensurately Effective Medical Care And Psychological Treatment.

If Bach Is Not In Heaven, I Am Not Going!

I Had Much More Fun Criticizing Than Praising.

Arlen Specter Is The Man Who Voted In Favor Of Bill Clinton During Impeachment, Voted Against Robert Bork For The Supreme Court, Voted Against School Choice For The District Of Columbia, Endorses An Absolutist Interpretation Of Abortion Rights. He Is Bright And He Is Tough And He Belongs Elsewhere.

The Anti-marijuana Campaign Is A Cancerous Tissue Of Lies, Undermining Law Enforcement, Aggravating The Drug Problem, Depriving The Sick Of Needed Help And Suckering Well-intentioned Conservatives And Countless Frightened Parents.

Though Liberals Do A Great Deal Of Talking About Hearing Other Points Of View, It Sometimes Shocks Them To Learn That There Are Other Points Of View.

To Buy Very Good Wine Nowadays Requires Only Money. To Serve It To Your Guests Is A Sign Of Fatigue.

A Relatively Small And Eternally Quarrelsome Country In Western Europe, Fountainhead Of Rationalist Political Manias, Militarily Impotent, Historically Inglorious During The Past Century, Democratically Bankrupt, Communist-infiltrated From Top To Bottom.

I Grew Up, As Reported, In A Large Family Of Catholics Without Even A Decent Ration Of Tentativeness Among The Lot Of Us About Our Religious Faith.

The Beatles Are Not Merely Awful. I Would Consider It Sacrilegious To Say Anything Less Than That They Are Godawful.

The Real Threat, As Seen By The Aclu, Is That Religious Behavior Might Give Secular Behavior A Bad Name, And That Is, Surely, Unconstitutional.

The Superstition That The Hounds Of Truth Will Rout The Vermin Of Error Seems, Like A Fragment Of Victorian Lace, Quaint, But Too Brittle To Be Lifted Out Of The Showcase.

Idealism Is Fine, But As It Approaches Reality, The Costs Become Prohibitive.

Idealism And Realism

Some Of My Instincts Are Reprehensible.

You Cannot Paint The Mona Lisa By Assigning One Dab Each To A Thousand Painters.

I Would Like To Electrocute Everyone Who Uses The Word 'fair' In Connection With Income Tax Policies.

It Seems To Me That The Idea Traditionally Defended Of Endeavoring To Maintain Existing Ethnic Balances Simply Doesn't Work Any More.

Did You Know That Forty Percent Of The Words Used By Shakespeare Were Used By Him Only Once?

If You Had A European Prime Minister Who Experienced What We've Experienced It Would Be Expected That He Would Retire Or Resign.

I Would Rather Be Governed By The First 2000 People In The Manhattan Phone Book Than The Entire Faculty Of Harvard.

Liberals, It Has Been Said, Are Generous With Other Peoples' Money, Except When It Comes To Questions Of National Survival When They Prefer To Be Generous With Other People's Freedom And Security.

I Would Sooner Live In A Society Governed By The First Two Thousand Names In The Boston Telephone Directory Than In A Society Governed By The Two Thousand Faculty Members Of Harvard University.

The Academic Community Has In It The Biggest Concentration Of Alarmists, Cranks And Extremists This Side Of The Giggle House.

Reagan Is Both Too Fatalistic And Too Modest To Be A Crudaser. He Doesn't Have That Darkness Around The Eyes Of A George Mcgovern.

Before There Was Ronald Reagan There Was Barry Goldwater, And Before There Was Barry, There Was National Review , And Before There Was National Review There Was Bill Buckley With A Spark In His Mind.

People Are Beginning To Wish That The Voters Had Been Given Breathometer Tests When They Voted In The Present Government.

Industry Is The Enemy Of Melancholy

Everyone Detected With Aids Should Be Tattooed In The Upper Forearm, To Protect Common Needle Users, And On The Buttock, To Prevent The Victimization Of Other Homosexuals.

A Capitalist Is Someone Who Derives A Substantial Share Of His Income From His Equity In Producing Companies. On This Scale The Figures Are Discouraging. Approximately Ninety Percent Of The Capital Of This Country Is Owned By Five Or Less Percent Of The American People.

Government Can't Do Anything For You Except In Proportion As It Can Do Something To You.

Can Do Something

We Have Got To Accept Big Government For The Duration-for Neither An Offensive Nor A Defensive War Can Be Waged, Given Our Present Government Skills, Except Through The Instrument Of A Totalitarian Bureaucracy Within Our Shores. … And If They Deem Soviet Power A Menace To Our Freedom (as I Happen To), They Will Have To Support 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.

I Will Not Cede More Power To The State. I Will Not Willingly Cede More Power To Anyone, Not To The State, Not To General Motors, Not To The Cio. I Will Hoard My Power Like A Miser, Resisting Every Effort To Drain It Away From Me. I Will Then Use My Power, As I See Fit. I Mean To Live My Life An Obedient Man, But Obedient To God, Subservient To The Wisdom Of My Ancestors; Never To The Authority Of Political Truths Arived At Yesterday At The Voting Booth. That Is A Program Of Sorts, Is It Not? It Is Certainly Program Enough To Keep Conservatives Busy, And Liberals At Bay. And The Nation Free.

They Told Me If I Voted For Goldwater, He Would Get Us Into A War In Vietnam. Well, I Voted For Goldwater And That's What Happened.

A Good Debater Is Not Necessarily An Effective Vote-getter: You Can Find A Hole In Your Opponent's Argument Through Which You Could Drive A Coach And Four Ringing Jingle Bells All The Way, And Thrill At The Crystallization Of A Truth Wrung Out From A Bloody Dialogue - Which, However, May Warm Only You And Your Muse, While The Smiling Paralogist Has In The Meantime Made Votes By The Tens Of Thousands.

Knee-jerk Liberals And All The Certified Saints Of Sanctified Humanism Are Quick To Condemn This Great And Much-maligned Transylvanian Statesman.

I Won't Insult Your Intelligence By Suggesting That You Really Believe What You Just Said.

Those Who Suffer From The Abuse Of Drugs Have Themselves To Blame For It. This Does Not Mean That Society Is Absolved From Active Concern For Their Plight. It Does Mean That Their Plight Is Subordinate To The Plight Of Those Citizens Who Do Not Experiment With Drugs But Whose Life, Liberty, And Property Are Substantially Affected By The Illegalization Of The Drugs Sought After By The Minority.

Conservatives Should Be Adamant About The Need For The Reappearance Of Judeo-christianity In The Public Square.

Stick Me In A Confessional And Ask The Question: Sir, If You Had The Authority, Would You Forbid Smoking In America? You'd Get A Solemn And Contrite, Yes.

Truth Is A Demure Lady, Much Too Ladylike To Knock You On Your Head And Drag You To Her Cave. She Is There, But People Must Want Her, And Seek Her Out.

It Had All The Earmarks Of A Cia Operation; The Bomb Killed Everybody In The Room Except The Intended Target!

Friendship Is Strengthened By...that Which Ever So Lightly Elevates Us From The Trough Of Self-concern And Self-devotion.

France Believes In Armed Intervention By America Only When The Intervention Is In France To Rescue France From Occupation By Other Powers.

A Society Is Not 'free' Merely Because The Freedoms The People Are Doing Away With Are Those They Voted At The Last Election To Do Without.

They [theodore White And Lou Harris] Took Turns Weeping, And Finally Concluded That Rockefeller Got The Votes Of Everyone In California Who Is A Negro, A Jew, A Mexican, And A College Graduate, While Goldwater Got The Votes Of Every Millionaire. Which Certainly Makes California The Land Of Opportunity.

Everything I Do And Say And The Way I Do And Say It Annoys Me.

It Was Rumored, In 1946, That The Hangman In Nuremberg Adjusted The Nooses Of Some Of The Condemned To Magnify The Pain Of Suffocation. Such Sadism Was Not Called For Then And Is Not Called For Now. But If Fornication Is Wrong, There Is No Denying That It Can Bring Pleasure. The Death Of Saddam Hussein At Rope's End Brings A Pleasure That Is Undeniable, And Absolutely Chaste In Its Provenance.

Presley Brought An Excitement To Singing, In Part Because Rock And Roll Was Greeted As His Invention, But For Other Reasons Not So Widely Reflected On: Elvis Presley Had The Most Beautiful Singing Voice Of Any Human Being On Earth.

I Am, I Fully Grant, A Phenomenon, But Not Because Of Any Speed In Composition. I Asked Myself The Other Day, "who Else, On So Many Issues, Has Been So Right So Much Of The Time?" I Couldn't Think Of Anyone.

The More Complicated And Powerful The Job, The More Rudimentary The Preparation For It.

[the] Act Of Gratitude Is Nowadays Is Probably More Often Neglected Than Overdone.

The Sobering Anwer Is Yes - The White Community Is So Entitled Because ... It Is The Advanced Race ... It Is More Important ... To Affirm And Live By Civilized Standards ... Than To Bow To The Demands Of The Numerical Majority.

We Are, Always, Reminded Of The Old Saw: What Would Happen If The Soviet Union Took Over The Sahara Desert? Answer: Nothing For 50 Years. After That There Would Be A Shortage Of Sand.

What Was Wrong With Communism Wasn't Aberrant Leadership, It Was Communism.

Back In The Thirties We Were Told We Must Collectivize The Nation Because The People Were So Poor. Now We Are Told We Must Collectivize The Nation Because The People Are So Rich.

... To Say That The Cia And The Kgb Engage In Similar Practices Is The Equivalent Of Saying That The Man Who Pushes An Old Lady Into The Path Of A Hurtling Bus Is Not To Be Distinguished From The Man Who Pushes An Old Lady Out Of The Path Of A Hurtling Bus: On The Grounds That, After All, In Both Cases Someone Is Pushing Old Ladies Around.

No One Since The Garden Of Eden - Which The Serpent Forsook In Order To Run For Higher Office - Has Imputed To Politicians Great Purity Of Motive.

All Adventure Is Now Reactionary.

Conservatism Is The Tacit Acknowledgement That All That Is Finally Important In Human Experience Is Behind Us; That The Crucial Explorations Have Been Undertaken, And That It Is Given To Man To Know What Are The Great Truths That Emerged From Them.

The Largest Cultural Menace In America Is The Conformity Of The Intellectual Cliques Which, In Education As Well As The Arts, Are Out To Impose Upon The Nation Their Modish Fads And Fallacies, And Have Nearly Succeeded In Doing So. In This Cultural Issue, We Are, Without Reservations, On The Side Of Excellence (rather Than "newness") And Of Honest Intellectual Combat (rather Than Conformity).

They Are Men And Women Who Tend To Believe That The Human Being Is Perfectible And Social Progress Predictable, And That The Instrument For Effecting The Two Is Reason; That Truths Are Transitory And Empirically Determined; That Equality Is Desirable And Attainable Through The Action Of State Power; That Social And Individual Differences, If They Are Not Rational, Are Objectionable, And Should Be Scientifically Eliminated; That All People And Societies Strive To Organize Themselves Upon A Rationalist And Scientific Paradigm.

Individual Differences

Why Should Any Country Continue, Forever, To Be "great"?

...the Traces To The East Haven Been Broken, The Republican Party Will Never Again Be Dominated By The Editorial Writers For The New York Herald Tribune. Free At Last.

The Duel Between Christianity And Atheism Is The Most Important In The World, And The Struggle Between Individualism And Collectivism Is The Same Struggle Reproduced On Another Level.

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