Opinion: What Would Bill Buckley Think of the Tea Party?

(May 1) -- Intellectuals on the left as well as on the right grow ever more agitated about the tea party movement. At first dismissive of their demonstrations and their signs -- whatever do they mean, "Live Free or Die"? -- they have decided that the tea partiers are dangerous to democracy. "Racist," "anti-Semitic" and "homophobic" are some of the more printable charges leveled.

Well, what would William F. Buckley Jr., founder of National Review and arguably the pre-eminent intellectual of the modern conservative movement until his 2008 death, say about the tea party movement? Having just published the first biography of Buckley in 22 years, I make bold to offer the following:

• He would applaud the tea party's message of "We want government off our backs and out of our pockets."

Throughout his life, Buckley firmly resisted governmental aggrandizement. "I will use my power as I see fit," he wrote. "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."

When he ran for mayor of New York City in 1965, Buckley recommended that "anti-narcotic laws for adults" be repealed, gambling be legalized, anyone without a police record be allowed to operate a car as a taxi, and communities be encouraged to finance their own neighborhood "watchmen."

He suggested that state and federal authorities suspend property and income taxes for all black or Hispanic entrepreneurs who established businesses in depressed areas in the inner city.

He proposed that all welfare recipients be required to do "street cleaning and general prettification work" -- an early version of workfare.

• Buckley would like the tea party's determination to place principle above party, any party.

He and National Review -- the magazine he founded and edited for 35 years -- did not hesitate to criticize both major political parties and their leaders whenever they deserved it.

When President Richard Nixon (whom the magazine had endorsed in 1968) went to Communist China and toasted top Communist officials, Buckley wrote: "The effect was as if Sir Hartley Shawcross had suddenly risen from the prosecutor's stand at Nuremberg and descended to embrace Goering and Goebbels and Doenitz and Hess, begging them to join him in the making of a better world."

• Buckley would delight in the tea party's willingness to challenge the establishment.

In National Review's very first issue, Buckley famously wrote that his magazine "stands athwart history yelling Stop." The growth of government, he said, "must be fought relentlessly."

Some of you may be saying, "But wait, wasn't Bill Buckley an elitist, the ultimate patrician, the man with a New York City maisonette and a limousine and driver? Wouldn't he dismiss the tea party people as a bunch of ignorant emotional backwoods yahoos?"

Well, according to a New York Times/CBS survey, supporters of the tea party are wealthier and better educated than the general public. More than 90 percent of them think the country is heading in the wrong direction. An overwhelming majority say that President Obama does not share the values most Americans live by and does not understand their problems.

Bill Buckley would be very comfortable with such yahoos. After all, it was he who said in a debate at Harvard University: "I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 names in the Boston telephone directory than the Harvard faculty."

I wouldn't be surprised to see this sign at a tea party rally: "Bill Buckley -- Patron Saint of the Tea Party."

Lee Edwards is distinguished fellow at The Heritage Foundation (heritage.org) and author of new book William F. Buckley Jr.: The Maker of a Movement.


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