Professor Bogus is a dedicated Liberal who has a profound respect for William F. Buckley, Jr., and, generally, the Buckley family. He says that William F. Buckley, Jr. is one of the most significant men of the latter half of the 20th Century. In generous and accurate detail he describes Mr. Buckley's amazing talent in--well, seemingly everything, whether his music; or sailing (a superb sailor); writing books and newspaper columns; creating National Review (the most important and influential opinion journal in the 20th Century); his lectures and his television program (Firing Line); his humor and charm; his and his wife's personal radiance; his amazing command of English, and his translator's ability in Spanish or French; his dedication to religious and to historical political and social principles that create a great political order; his powerful commitment to personal friends, and shepherding others who became famous and excellent writers in their own right.
This book has much more. As Professor Bogus greatly admires Mr. Buckley's life and work, he seems, also, to fear both. His fear, briefly stated, is that the Conservative movement that Mr. Buckley galvanized became so strong and dominant that it impaired or destroyed the kingdom of Liberalism in which the Professor resides. My sense of the Professor's effort is rejuvenation and protection of principles (and several people) to which he clings because he believes that both intellectually and practically they have no life except when associated with the power of the State.
In his book, protection of Liberalism comes, he believes, in parallelism. He protects Liberalism from its utter disasters by comparing those events, or infusing them, with selected thoughts and expressions extracted from prominent Conservative writers in a particular period.
An example is Viet Nam. Professor Bogus says he relies heavily on Neil Sheehan's writing about Viet Nam or Indo China or Ho Chi Minh. The Professor says America lost the war [it did not] and it was a Liberal failure stemming from Lyndon Johnson although the genesis of American involvement was John F. Kennedy, McGeorge Bundy, Robert S. McNamara, and their ilk. However this may be, he seems say, Liberalism was sucked into Viet Nam by "Cold War thinking--domino theory, in particular." And who was responsible for that theory? You need just one guess. Correct, it was Bill Buckley, James Burnham, Ernest Van den Haag, National Review, and others like them.
Two more, briefly: On wining the Cold War, the Professor says that both George Kennan and Ronald W. Reagan (but not James Burnham at National Review) knew the Soviet Union was bound to collapse. Their mutual approach caused that result.
With respect to the Professor, the similarity between Kennan and Reagan is limited to three English letters, "e" "a" and "n," that appear in their last names.
And, says the good Professor, President's Reagan's contribution to the demise of the Soviet Union was just as much in spite of modern Conservatism as because of it.
It seems to me that it might be easier to prove that gravity naturally causes water to flow uphill.
Professor Bogus begins this work saying he concentrates on the years 1955 to 1968, the seminal period of the modern Conservative movement.
I conclude this brief review with the thought, "How I wish." Significant parts are not about Bill Buckley or the Conservative Movement. They are Professor Bogus on several things, several theories, and extensions of both.
However, major parts of this volume are excellent. It presents impressive reviews of the works of Ayn Rand, and important distinctions among Burke, Kirk, Meyer, Buckley and others, whose major contributions are very well summarized. These and more permit me to recommend it, and I do.
I register one disappointment. The finest writer who came from National Review's and Bill Buckley's stable was Joseph Sobran, easily one of the best in the latter half of the 20th Century. At some point, Bill and Joe were in dispute. Sobran left National Review. No one could replace his writing. Others such as George Will were not even close.
As each man approached the end of life they reconciled. Sobran beautifully wrote about Buckley when he died.
Professor Bogus is fair-minded; he is not of the Radical Left. He clings tenaciously to old Liberalism, his kind of Liberalism, even if its loss was self-inflicted as it sank into the fever swamps of the Radical Left--a Left that came to despise Felix Frankfurter, once a secular saint, as much as it loathes William F. Buckley, Jr. and his enormous contributions to the American social order and to the West.
My hope for Professor Bogus is that he continues to write and think well; that he is not ostracized by the Radical Left for writing this book, and if he is that he will receive aid and comfort from the principles that William F. Buckley protected and sustained.
William F. Harvey
Indianapolis, Indiana
