What William F. Buckley, Jr. Did Not Understand about James Baldwin: On Baldwin’s Politics of Freedom

In this essay, we explore James Baldwin’s understanding of freedom through an examination of his famous debate with the conservative polemicist William F. Buckley, Jr. at the Cambridge Union in 1965. During the course of the debate, Buckley attempts to show that Baldwin was a wild-eyed extremist who was bent on overturning “American civilization.” Buckley saw Baldwin as a threat, to borrow the language of the National Review “Mission Statement,” to the “tradition of fixed postulates having to do with the meaning of existence, with the relationship of the state to the individual, of the individual to his neighbor, so clearly enunciated in the enabling documents of our Republic.” In sum, it is fair to say that Buckley thought Baldwin was an “enemy of freedom.” We argue that Buckley was right to perceive Baldwin as a threat to his worldview, but that he fundamentally misunderstood the nature of Baldwin’s critique. In order to make this case, we challenge Buckley’s portrayal of Baldwin as an ideological extremist and we compare what Buckley and Baldwin had in mind when they talked about freedom. Our aim, in other words, is not to offer a comprehensive comparative analysis of Buckley and Baldwin, but rather to use Buckley’s misunderstanding of Baldwin as the basis for an exploration of how Baldwin challenged – and attempted to transform – how we think about freedom

Nearer my God: an autobiography of faith

Reviewed Book: Buckley, William F. (William Frank). Nearer my God: an autobiography of faith. New York: Doubleday, 1997

Review of Paul Buckley, Primitive Christianity Revived: Translated into Modern English (San Francisco, Inner Light Books, 2018) and Primitive Quakerism Revived: Living as Friends in the Twenty-First Century (San Francisco, Inner Light Books, 2018)

In translating William Penn’s analysis of the early Quaker movement into Modern English and in expanding on its meaning for reviving the spirit of early Quakerism for the 21st century, Quaker theologian and historian Paul Buckley has performed a great service. These two books go hand-in-hand, and individuals and reading groups alike would benefit greatly from reading these books and considering their meaning for today. The text is readable, and Buckley’s language is readily accessible. Thus, in rendering William Penn’s Primitive Christianity Revived in a welcoming form, and in expanding upon its meaning as a source of spiritual renewal for contemporary Friends, Paul Buckley serves readers well in his latest books, published by Inner Light Books

Vincent Buckley: Shaping the Book

The basic shape of a biography is given by the facts of the life of its subject. The biographer’s task is to make sense of these facts: to provide a map that will show the significance of the facts, their relationship to each other and to their historical context. This map will show the features of the subject’s journey through life, but it is also the result of the biographer’s own journey through the subject’s life. The interactions between these two journeys give the book its shape, map its patterns. This paper will show some of the paths the author attempted and try to explain the directions the author eventually took

A Critic Friendly to McCarthy : How William F. Buckley, Jr. Brought Senator Joseph R. McCarthy into the American Conservative Movement between 1951 and 1959

William F. Buckley, Jr. has been revered among American conservatives, and even some scholars of the field, for fathering what would come to be known as movement conservatism through his National Review. Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, a Republican from Wisconsin, has not been so fondly remembered; he was best known for his paranoid style of politics and eventual censure in the Senate. While Buckley and McCarthy’s worlds clearly overlapped in the fervent anticommunist conservatism of the 1950s, few historians have recognized the extent to which McCarthy was a part of Buckley’s conservative movement, if it is to be acknowledged as such. A closer examination of the historical record, through Buckley’s published and private writings, reveals that Buckley considered McCarthy a friend, a political ally, and a singular, enlightened figure in American history. Although Buckley’s legacy generally centers around his ideas and intellectual prowess, Buckley was a deft political strategist. In the early 1950s, after McCarthy had burst onto the national stage but before Buckley rose to prominence, Buckley tethered his fortunes to McCarthy, defending the senator publicly and working for him personally. McCarthy, however, earned a rare rebuke from his colleagues in December 1954 for continuing to attack the Eisenhower administration and, in particular, the Army. Shortly afterwards, a now-famous Buckley would found the National Review, and while he would remain a McCarthy devotee, Buckley understood that McCarthy was polarizing at best, and that lavishing praise on the senator would not help Buckley’s fledgling publication. Only after McCarthy’s death would Buckley and his National Review pivot toward a rehabilitative stance, even in the face of warnings from fellow conservatives. Ultimately, Buckley saw himself as a friendly critic, but even this much has been largely unexplored by historians. A fuller, more nuanced understanding of Buckley’s relationship to McCarthy, especially through the turbulent 1950s, sheds light on Buckley himself and the nature of American conservatism, in the postwar era and beyond

Buckley 2.0: How Would The Buckley Court Decide Buckley Today?

If you read Supreme Court campaign finance cases, you will be struck by the disconnect between the lofty rhetoric used to justify the constitutional protections afforded political speech and the impoverished sound bites and hyperbolic attack ads that dominate contemporary electoral communications. The origin of this disconnect is in large part two phenomena. First, in the last decade the Court has failed to take the factual record seriously and, as a result, makes generalizations that are belied by contemporary campaign practices. Relatedly, the Court has adopted doctrines that co-exist in uneasy relationships with campaign finance doctrines of longstanding. As a result, the Court has created an alternative universe that only first amendment absolutists find credible, and it has constitutionalized an increasingly corrupt electoral landscape

Sharp weighted bounds for one-sided and multiple integral operators

In this paper we establish sharp weighted bounds (Buckley type theorems) for one{sided maximal and fractional integral operators in terms of one{sided $A_p$ characteristics. Appropriate sharp bounds for strong maximal functions, multiple potentials and singular integrals are derived