At 100 years young, James Buckley is an American legend
Quin Hillyer
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Conservatives of a certain vintage will all be tipping their caps March 9 to the much-loved James Buckley, former U.S. senator, high-ranking State Department official, and federal appeals court judge, on the occasion of Buckley’s 100th birthday.
Deservedly so. Buckley, who is still reportedly healthy and sharp, is a national treasure. Longtime American Enterprise Institute public opinion specialist Karlyn Bowman, who served on Buckley’s Senate staff in the early 1970s, described him to me as “an extraordinary individual, highly principled, very decent, thoughtful, resolute… very learned, and just a delight.” For most of us, earning just two or three of those adjectives would be a great achievement, but again and again, all who know Buckley described him in similarly glowing terms.
I’m not in the habit of referring to someone else’s column for the definitive take on my own current subject, but Matthew Continetti of AEI has a superb tribute to Buckley, one of the only men in history to serve at such high ranks in all three branches of the federal government. Do read it here.
I write instead to relay something in my possession that captures some of Buckley’s personality. It comes from the files of Kenneth Giddens, who served for more than seven years, the longest tenure ever, as director of the Voice of America, the official international radio broadcaster for the United States. When Buckley served as head of the Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, also U.S. government organizations in the same umbrella as VOA, he wrote to Giddens from Munich, where Buckley was stationed so as to better direct RFE work at the height of the Cold War.
The letter’s putative purpose, in the end, was to urge Giddens’s support for President Ronald Reagan’s reelection, but mostly it was a personal reflection on what Buckley experienced while directing the U.S. radio services. It is charming.
The Soviets, Buckley said, seemed to have developed a “special animus” against him because of the RFE/Radio Liberty efforts.
“Pravda denounced me as a notorious hawk, ‘obscurantist’ (whatever that means), and an ‘enemy of democracy and détente,’” Buckley wrote. “I try to keep a stiff upper lip. But frankly, sometimes it hurts. As when I was recently charged with being a ‘double-eyed reactionary’ and ‘windbag’ who is in charge of a ‘vile vipers’ nest’ of ‘airwave bandits’ and ‘kept women of the CIA.’”
“All of which,” Buckley then wrote, “confirms that I am engaged in the work of the Lord, and that these radios are of great importance.”
Well, speaking of doing the Lord’s work: In 2010, longtime conservative activist Wayne Thorburn wrote a history of the role the group Young Americans for Freedom played in the development of the conservative movement, called A Generation Awakes. In one vignette, he wrote fondly of James Buckley’s role as a featured speaker at YAF’s National Convention in 1977.
Afterward, reported Thorburn, “among YAFers there was agreement that if men were angels, they would all be like Jim Buckley.”
That angel still walks among us, 100 years old this week. How wonderful.