THE WANDERER, JUNE 8, 2006
JOSEPH SOBRAN'S
WASHINGTON WATCH
Morituri
In 1993 I was fired from NATIONAL REVIEW for a
column I'd written for THE WANDERER criticizing Bill
Buckley, who'd been my boss and my dear friend for 21
years. It was painful for both of us, but things had
reached the breaking point.
Now comes the awful news that Bill, at 80, has been
diagnosed with emphysema and recently spent two weeks
being treated for it at the Mayo Clinic; by a bitter
coincidence, one of his sisters is dying of the same
ailment, which is of course both agonizing and incurable.
I've written, maybe too much, about our political
differences, but one could never write too much about
what a lovable man Bill is. It would take a long book to
detail his quiet acts of charity, if there were any way
of finding them all out. I've been the beneficiary of my
share of them, and I've accidentally learned of many
others, and I don't doubt that all these are only a small
fraction of the sum.
His career as a political journalist is almost
incidental to his life; you don't really know him until
you know his burning love of Jesus.
I once learned by chance that Bill had supported the
great libertarian Frank Chodorov in his last years, when
the sweet little old man had been all but forgotten by
the rest of the world. That was typical. Bill wasn't one
to preach compassion; he lived it. He couldn't bear to
see a friend suffer.
One night in London many years ago, an old friend
since his Yale days told me how Bill had stayed with him
to console him when his six-year-old daughter was dying
of brain cancer. Such inexpressible grief is frightening
to most of us; we feel helpless to relieve it, and we can
hardly bear to face it. But when Bill couldn't give you
anything else, he gave you himself.
He was endearing in countless little ways too. His
warmth and humor kept the office of NATIONAL REVIEW a
happy place to work. When he returned from his annual
winter stay in Switzerland, he brought little gifts for
the women on the staff. Best of all, he brought the
delight of his own great presence. The place lit up with
joy. Bill was home! It was spring!
Bill loved to laugh, and he loved to make us laugh,
with special affectionate jokes for each of us. When I
became a syndicated columnist in 1979, he let me know, in
a typically witty way, that he was proud of me. He sent
me a clipping from a newspaper announcing that it was
dropping his column and picking up mine instead! With the
clipping he sent a note: "Morituri te salutamus." "We who
are about to die salute you."
I wouldn't call Bill guileless, but he could be
naive. I think his big mistake was to welcome the
neoconservatives into the house of conservatism. Some of
them were decent people; but others were blackmailers and
smear artists, and these in effect had a knife in his
ribs. They respected nothing, let alone a friendship. One
of them boasted that he'd gotten Buckley to shut me up.
Today, alas, the neocons and their allies control
NATIONAL REVIEW.
But I don't want to dwell on all that. Now Bill and
I are both old men, looking at the end. It seems fitting
to close with a joke:
Morituri te salutamus, Bill.
Let 'Em Crumble
Peter Beinart of THE NEW REPUBLIC is an astute young
liberal, worth reading even when you disagree with him.
I'm pleased to see he has had second thoughts about the
Iraq war, which he originally favored. Writing in TIME,
he draws a wise parallel with the Cold War.
Conservative Cold Warriors used to argue that time
was running out for the United States and urged
aggressive action against the Soviet Union before it was
too late. This was the position of James Burnham, whom I
knew at NATIONAL REVIEW, and whose memory I'll always
revere. But liberal Cold Warriors, such as George Kennan,
argued for a strategy of containment, confident that the
Soviet Union would eventually collapse. Communism would
never work in the long run, because it was held together
by raw force.
Fortunately, says Beinart, Kennan's view prevailed
and he was proved right well before he died last year at
the age of 100. Preventive (or "pre-emptive") war turned
out to be unnecessary. In the same way, Beinart goes on,
Saddam Hussein could have been contained without a
disastrous invasion, and so can the mullahs of Iran.
"Time is not on our side," President Bush warned
before attacking Baghdad, summoning visions of mushroom
clouds. Actually, it was; in a sense it always is. Given
time, every regime will falter, lose focus, and come to
confusion, as Bush's own administration has.
I'd call this a conservative insight, but when it
comes to war, liberals seem to grasp it better than
conservatives do. In Beinart's words, "Let your enemies
crumble."
If only liberals took this patient approach to other
problems! Poverty was naturally drying up until they
declared war on it.
The Delusion of Control
"There are many events in the womb of time, which
will be delivered," says Shakespeare. I think of those
words whenever I recall Francis Fukuyama's optimistic
declaration that we had arrived at "the end of history."
Communism had fallen, and liberal democracy was the
universal destiny of mankind. History had not only ended,
but ended happily.
Only a decade ago this seemed plausible; now it
sounds mad, the expression of a blind hubris. War, mass
immigration, global warming -- real and alleged
emergencies threaten us, and who knows what others lie
ahead?
Hurricane Katrina was only an especially vivid
reminder that man can never really control events. In
fact, his very attempts to control them, especially
through government, only aggravate the chaos.
Nevertheless, we seem unable to give up those
attempts. The delusion of man's omnipotence dies very
hard, no matter how often it is exposed. A generation ago
the West felt threatened by a "population bomb" that
would soon have us all starving unless we -- our
governments, that is -- acted decisively; contraception
became not a sin but a duty.
Today, as a result, the white race is dying off
while others multiply. When will we learn?
+ + +
"A country is in real trouble when even its
conservatives have forgotten the past." -- SOBRAN'S. If
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