Be someone's Bill Buckley

(Denver Post, March 16) The famous political gadfly and New York literary lion is invited to speak at the University of Hawaii. He accepts, not for the fee or the beach time, but with a passion for his beliefs and a try-anything spirit that equally attracts him to sailing and the harpsichord. Two starstruck newlyweds, intellectually underfed at the Pearl Harbor naval base, come up after the lecture to shake their hero’s hand. He responds encouragingly to the young ensign’s aspiration for a career in conservatism. That night a life is changed. It was my life that took a turn under the Honolulu palms in 1968, and it was William F. Buckley Jr. who aided the turn in a single gracious moment of uncalculating kindness. Donna and I relived the memory on learning of Bill’s death – at the writing desk, with his boots on, aged 82 – two weeks ago.

Buckley’s legacy is towering. Founder of National Review, midwife to the Goldwater and Reagan candidacies, author of over 50 books and 5000 columns, host of “Firing Line” on PBS for 33 years, he was the conservative movement’s George Washington. But my tribute is not to his public persona. It is to the private man, unforgettable in his flair for friendship and his genius for generosity.

Charles Kesler of the Claremont Institute told my radio listeners of contacting WFB cold for a high-school newspaper interview during a West Virginia speaking trip in the 1970s. Kesler got not only the scoop but a recommendation letter to Harvard, his first step to becoming one of America’s leading political scientists.

David Asman, formerly at the Wall Street Journal and now an anchor on Fox, ended his one-hour commemorative special by confiding, “I probably wouldn’t be in journalism if it weren’t for Bill Buckley.” His experience matched Kesler’s and mine: a young fan’s letter to WFB that brought a fatherly reply such as 99 of 100 big shots would never stoop to send.

You could fill a book with the stories of this contagiously energetic man’s influence on budding devotees of liberty, order, and American exceptionalism. Some of the beneficiaries rose to stardom themselves, others (like me) remained more obscure; but a lifelong bond of affection and gratitude linked all of us to Bill. And amazingly, he reciprocated.

As a kid on Nixon’s staff after the Navy, I found the sage of National Review never too busy when I called up hoping to write for the magazine (he assigned me to book editor George Will), or get advice during the Watergate scandal, or explore job leads after quitting in protest. As a think-tank guy in Colorado a decade later, I was floored to receive complimentary mention in Overdrive, his 1983 memoir.

WFB heads the list of important men who reached down and took an interest in me when there was nothing in it for them. Sen. Charles Percy, Missouri Gov. Warren Hearnes, and Gene Bradley of GE were others in the 1960s. In the ’70s there were John Ehrlichman and Bill Armstrong; in the ‘80s, Donald Rumsfeld and Chuck Stevinson. I try to pay it forward in their honor.

Gone are my fantasies of succeeding as the next Bill Buckley – or later the next George Roche, my mentor at Hillsdale College. I just seek opportunities to “be someone’s Bill Buckley,” in the sense of taking time to encourage that eager, questing youngster as he long ago encouraged me. Winning a million in the lottery is nothing compared to the rewards of this.

We who follow Christ, as Buckley so devoutly did, call the recent season Lent and the coming days Holy Week. Self-giving is the keynote. The Good Samaritan, helping where he didn’t have to, is the example. God-talk speaks far less than actions. WFB’s life shouted and sang.

What Bruce Benson knows

(Denver Post, Mar. 2) “The Idea of a University” is the title of a classic work by the scholar and churchman John Henry Newman. Recently it has also been the subject of a contentious public seminar polarizing Coloradans. Some acted as if the University of Colorado belongs exclusively to under-age students, self-important faculty, and the Democratic Party. Others saw the idea of a university as involving a civic trusteeship and the transmission of truth, along with the search for more truth. With this came a different idea of who owns CU. When the regents confirmed entrepreneur and philanthropist Bruce Benson as CU’s new president on Feb. 20, the seminar recessed with the grownups in control – for now. But the battle for the soul of higher education in our state is far from over.

Benson’s liberal detractors didn’t like it that he made his fortune getting energy out of the ground, headed the Republican Party and backed its candidates, and sat for no extra degrees after graduating from Boulder in geology. So what?

In his favor were proven executive ability, experience as Metro State board chairman, and notable successes as a bipartisan coalition-builder and financial rainmaker. He’ll be a worthy successor to outgoing president Hank Brown.

Profiles in courage during the campaign to stop Benson included two regents who turned on him after voting yes in the finalist round on Jan. 30, the spineless Democrat Cindy Carlisle and the GOP maverick Paul Schauer; the vandal who scrawled “right-wing nut” across his portrait in a classroom building he had donated; and hypocritical Alice Madden, state House Majority Leader.

Madden first called the nomination “a really bad joke.” She then organized a letter from Democrats that labeled Benson’s association with Trailhead Group campaign ads as “most disconcerting.” It didn’t mention her own role in bare-knuckle tactics against the GOP in 2004 and 2006. Nor did it condemn former CSU president Al Yates for his “foot on throat” attack plan against Republican Bob Schaffer in this year’s Senate race, which surfaced Jan. 29. Double standard, anyone?

As Bruce Benson ran the gauntlet of CU stakeholders, some pristine-green undergrads hammered him about being in the oil and gas industry, from which they suggested he should now divest. Try doing without oil and gas, the nominee retorted. It was his finest hour. I’ll bend but not bow to get this job, Benson signaled. It was like McCain saying he’d rather lose an election than a war.

Understanding the real world, he implied, doesn’t require a terminal degree; indeed common sense terminates as over-education mounts. To insist, as many of us do, that the idea of a university involves the transmission of truth, is ultimately to insist on truth itself –and hence to reject intellectual, cultural, and moral relativism, the disease of academia today.

Precisely because Benson is no egghead, he is the right man for CU now. He knows that fossil fuels have made the world better, and that markets are more likely than bureaucrats to develop the new energy sources to make it better still. He knows you don’t do science, on climate or anything else, by consensus. He knows that America is good, and that partisan politics protect free government.

He knows that all cultures don’t work equally well, and that Western civilization works best of all. He knows the Constitution is a written document, not a living organism. He knows war is an ever-present danger, and armies are necessary. He knows Marx was mostly wrong, Christ and Moses were mostly right.

We the people, most of us anyway, also know these truths. As owners of the University of Colorado, we want them transmitted there – not by dogmatic indoctrination but with open discussion in an atmosphere of maturity and common sense. That’s our charge to the new president.

If the Republicans fracture

(Denver Post, Feb. 17) Was it hearing of Dennis Kucinich’s encounter with spacemen? Or was it seeing the ex-Governor Moonbeam, Jerry Brown, doing TV commentary? Something sent me on an out-of-body experience the other night, a sci-fi trip into the future – and it was scary. I was driving home after my radio show, haunted by Mike Littwin’s prediction about John McCain’s detractors: “The Limbaugh Republicans will eventually vote for him, but the Dobson Republicans, who knows? They may not.” Suddenly my car was a tiny dot far below, and then it was caucus night 2012. Nine of us lonely Republicans huddled in a school library that had held hundreds for previous caucuses. Out in the corridor were five caucus-goers of the feisty little Tory Party that had formed around Ann Coulter and James Dobson after McCain wrested the 2008 nomination from Romney and Huckabee. Three hundred Democrats packed the gym.

Caucus business quickly done, we brooded over the dramatic events of President Barack Obama’s first term. Despite campaign gaffes, foot-dragging by the Clintonistas, and his maturity deficit against the GOP’s war-hero nominee, Obama and VP Nancy Pelosi won the popular vote and narrowly took the Electoral College over Sen. McCain and Condoleeza Rice.

Fittingly, it was Colorado’s nine electoral votes that made the difference. “That’ll show’em,” a Tory leader in Colorado Springs told Fox after McCain’s midnight concession speech. The President-elect rewarded state Democrats by naming Federico Pena as treasury secretary and Ken Salazar as interior secretary. Gov. Ritter elevated Diana DeGette to the Senate vacancy.

Helped by the Republican fracture, Dems had taken 58 Senate seats; after Maine’s Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins switched parties, Harry Reid could now break any filibuster. DeGette’s embryonic stem-cell bill sailed through and was signed in Obama’s first hundred days. He inked the repeal of Bush’s partial-birth abortion ban the same day.

Tory radio hosts, already demoralized, grew more so after September 11, 2009, when Al Qaeda took down a dozen airliners over the US, Britain, and Canada in a single hour. Aboard one of them, tragically, was Chief Justice John Roberts. Obama appointed arch-liberal Laurence Tribe to replace him, and picked Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison to chair a commission on why they hate us.

McCain, now as lonely a voice in the Senate as Churchill had been in Parliament before 1939, pointed out that the Patriot Act and FISA surveillance could probably have averted the Second 9/11. But few listened, especially after the Super Fairness Doctrine was signed, muzzling conservative voices on cable and the Internet as well as talk radio.

Did I mention it was depressing, that GOP caucus I magically attended in 2012? It was the pits. Speaker Charles Rangel had passed a black reparations bill in 2009. The Tribe court had ordered gay marriage in 2010. Israel had fallen in 2011. Why didn’t thinking Republicans work harder to prevent the 2008 schism, we sat there asking each other.

The upside, we told ourselves, was Barack’s vulnerability for reelection against Condi or Newt or Jeb. Even Huck and Rudy were talking of a comeback. Chances seemed good, considering the recession triggered by Rangel’s huge tax increase, along with global tension over an Al Qaeda-dominated Iraq, an Iran with nukes, and a China that had seized Taiwan while the US stood by.

Predictably, Obama-Care was way over budget and already unpopular. Thankfully, his Supreme Court nomination of Bill Clinton, a payoff to Hillary for the DNC deal on super-delegates, had failed. Republican hopes were reviving. But what a price to pay for getting America’s conservative party unified and competitive again.

Then, snap! I was back at the wheel, and it was still 2008. Heaven protects day-dreaming pundits. Headlights showed my garage door going up. My party might still avert self-destruction.

George Soros, meet John Jay

(Denver Post, Feb. 3) Precinct caucuses are coming up on Tuesday. If you’re registered with a party, be there. You can vote in the presidential poll and help choose candidates for local, state, and federal offices, as well as issues for the party platforms. If you go to a Republican caucus, the other participants were probably at church or synagogue this weekend. If you’re at a Democratic caucus, it’s likely they were not. Surveys show that Americans who worship at least weekly tend to vote with the GOP by about 60-40. Those who worship less often, vote with the Dems by a similar margin. This doesn’t make either party better, but it’s one of the sharp differences between them. Asked what issues will frame the 2008 campaign, members of a DU adult class I’m teaching with David Sirota put religion second on the list, right behind the war. Also near the top were the economy, health care, taxes, and the role of government.

After Sirota elicited these suggestions and jotted them on the board, it was my turn to cross-examine. How had such concerns, I probed, helped Republicans win seven of ten presidential elections since 1968? Specifically, where did religion come in? The class is mostly liberals (which I’m enjoying), and one answered: “Abortion and homosexuality.”

True, but the explanation goes deeper. Faced with a string of Supreme Court rulings devaluing religion, and with a Manhattan-Berkeley-Hollywood axis scorning moral absolutes and spiritual faith, traditionally-minded Americans of both parties rallied around GOP candidates for a defense of the old values, “the way we were.”

Defense of marriage and the unborn was part of it, sure, but so was defense of our national identity and security. Baptist Jimmy Carter lost reelection after dismissing the “inordinate fear of communism” and embracing a declinist view of the future. Divorcee Ronald Reagan won twice with “city on a hill” biblical optimism and a forward strategy against the Soviet “evil empire.”

The Bush-Clinton struggle since 1992 has reflected many of these same disagreements. In 2000, a tree-hugger bent on saving the planet was edged out by an evangelical saved from drink. Substitute radical Jihadism for communism, and you realize that our 2008 debates aren’t so different from those of 1972 or 1984.

The political force of America’s enduring self-image as a nation under God, what Lincoln called “this almost-chosen people,” will be my message to that room-full of older progressives when our DU course wraps up on Feb. 6. Will they get it? Probably not as well as the class of younger conservatives I met with a month ago.

These were a dozen grad students at the John Jay Institute for Faith, Society, and Law in Colorado Springs. Though Jay is sometimes called the forgotten Founder, Kenneth Starr terms him “the father of American conservatism.” Co-author of the Federalist Papers and the nation’s first Chief Justice, he insisted morality and religion were indispensable to ordered liberty. The John Jay Institute insists they still are.

Conducting one-year academic fellowships and a lecture series, the newly-formed institute and its scholarly president, Alan Crippen, are not a militia “waging war against the separation of church and state” as secularists fumed in a Gazette article on Nov. 11 (reprinted in the Washington Post). They are a voice of reason -- yet politely subversive even so.

Fellow Adrienne Moorehead told the Gazette that natural law, asserted by constitutionalists from Thomas Jefferson to Clarence Thomas, must again have its day. Fellow Brandon Showalter spoke of a career in service to “God’s design for the social order.” Incendiary talk indeed.

George Soros and Tim Gill may call the tune in this election cycle, but soon enough it’s a good bet we’ll be hearing more from Showalter, Moorehead, Crippen, and John Jay.

Resist political seduction

(Denver Post, Jan. 20) Who do you like for President? Many Americans this year seem inclined to answer that question with another: What’s today? The polls are volatile. We’ve already seen surprises, and we’ll see more. This was going to be a column endorsing Romney. The straight-arrow entrepreneur is my guy. If Mitt quits, I’m for gruff Fred Thompson. I was also going to say that McCain and Huckabee, big-government egotists, are my least favorite – though preferable to any Democrat. As it turns out, I’m not here to tell you any of that. (Notice the deft use of paralipsis, the rhetorical trick of mentioning something by claiming not to. “Won’t make an issue of my opponent’s youth and inexperience,” as Reagan quipped in 1984. Huck similarly backhanded Romney with that Iowa attack ad he “decided not to air.” Isn’t politics fun?)

It is in fact the fun of politics, the seductive, addictive, distracting, and potentially debilitating nature of this great spectator sport, this endlessly entertaining circus of something for nothing, that I want to warn all of us about, me included, before election year 2008 gets any crazier – which you know it will.

Why seductive? Why debilitating? Because politics, the allocation and application of government power, is not the main thing for individuals and communities in a free society. The main thing is personal effort, self-responsibility, and the uplifting of the human spirit. Political decisions are no more than a means to that end, never an end in themselves.

It is too easy to think otherwise, however, lazy and careless creatures that we are. “You’re from the government, and you have to help me,” we demand – overlooking what an old laugh line we’ve just uttered. Forgotten are the ten most empowering words in the language: “If it is to be, it is up to me.” So subtly does political seduction occur.

They may throw me out of the Republican Party for saying this, but here goes: In many ways, it doesn’t matter who is elected President next fall. America’s national security, economic vitality, and adherence to justice are of tremendous importance to our own people and the world, no question. The two parties differ honorably about these.

But my side isn’t all wisdom and saints, nor is the other all folly and scoundrels. Whoever wins will govern largely between the 40-yard lines. While Sen. Clinton or Sen. Obama in the White House isn’t my preference, even less than Sen. McCain, the country will be okay. Talk of ruin is moonshine. Great nations can withstand a lot of “ruin,” observed Adam Smith.

The seduction of politics, which we must have the backbone to resist, happens when citizens – on the left or the right, both are susceptible – regard agencies and laws, taxes and budgets, as a magic box from which solutions to imperfection and scarcity can be expected. No such solutions exist, and we court moral bankruptcy by banking on them.

Freedom won’t work unless enough of us practice four essentials of citizenship, writes Thomas Krannawitter of the Claremont Institute. We need self-assertion to defend our liberties, self-restraint to behave responsibly, self-reliance to avert dependency, and civic knowledge to participate constructively. Simple, aren’t they? Yet far from easy.

And now consider how poorly these qualities are fostered today by many of our nation’s families, schools, corporations, media, entertainers, government programs, and even churches. Think how often candidates and campaigns promote the exact opposite: passivity, indulgence, blaming, and sloganeering. That road does lead to ruin.

Alexander Hamilton said America is an experiment in governing ourselves by “reflection and choice” rather than “accident and force.” More important than who’s elected this year is how we go about it. Are we a stampeding herd or a free people, choosing reflectively? The world is watching.