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Conservative political leader and writer Michael Johns, a former White House speechwriter and Heritage Foundation policy analyst, will appear on Sirius Satellite's "Blog Bunker" show today from 5pm to 6pm EDT to discuss the state of the 2008 United States Presidential election and the public policy issues of the respective campaigns. The Sirius show, hosted by Joe Salzone, is available globally on Sirius Satellite's Indie Talk Channel 110.
Also this week, Johns provided an extensive interview to the popular Sonoran Alliance blog and the recently-launched Grizzly Groundswell podcast. In both interviews, Johns argues that, despite significant and understandable voter angst, American conservatism is providing thoughtful policy solutions to the vast challenges confronting the nation, including the global war against Islamic extremism, American economic challenges, the mounting global petroleum shortage, and others.
My buddy and I hit the ballpark last night for some more interleague
action (that still sounds dirty to me), this time involving the California Anaheim Los Angeles (insert eye roll here) Angels of, ahem,
Anaheim. The Phillies had almost no offense. Manager Charlie Manuel
finally gave the apparently exhausted Chase Utley a night off, and the
rest of the Phillies line-up seemed to have nothing to offer. The Phils lost, 6-2.
In the seventh inning, when there were already two outs, the Phils did manage to score two runs to tie the game. Jayson Werth hit a solo homer. A few minutes later, Pedro Feliz doubled, sending Chris Coste—who had walked—home. Eric Bruntlett, who was subbing for Utley, ended the rally with a baserunning mistake, but it wouldn't have mattered. The Angels roughed up Phillies starter Brett Myers, as well as reliever Chad Durbin, in the eighth. The fans, disgusted at the fourth straight loss, streamed out. Not me, though! I hung tough, until the final out.
Myers, by the way, pitched fairly well for most of the game. He gave up two solo homers to Vladimir Guerrero early in the game, and I guess I wasn't absolutely shocked that Manuel sent him out to pitch the eighth. In retrospect, though, that was a mistake. Myers got two outs and then gave up a two-run homer to Erick Aybar (who?). Myers is a real puzzle this season. He'll be pitching really, really well, and then, suddenly, he gives up a home run. Then he's back to pitching well..and then, suddenly, well, you know. He's given up a league-leading 23 homers already this season. Ouch. And that's our opening day starter, you know? Ouch, again.
But I have to put the blame here pretty squarely on Manuel. With the game tied in the eighth, Myers—whose pitch count was nearing three digits—should've come out.
But on to more important things. I got to the game extra early so I could stand in the long, long, long line at Tony Luke's for a roast pork sandwich. Damn, it was delicious—all moist and meaty. It might've been the best thing I've eaten all year. It's certainly the best thing I've eaten at the ballpark this year, and that's high praise because I love those crab fries from Chickie's and Pete's.
I don't have time to do it justice right now, but remind me to go on
a real tear sometime about baseball teams that change their names to
something silly. Yup, I'm thinking about the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. But I'm also thinking of you, too, Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Bay Rays? That is so dumb.
I think I need another roast pork sandwich right about now.
Despite a tornado watch and heavy, rain-laden clouds, 40,000
Phillies fans and I headed to Citizens Bank Park last night for a game
against the Cincinnati Reds. What motivated this devotion craziness? A bobblehead, of course. It was Jimmy Rollins Bobblehead Night!
I was at the park on Monday, on what was a much nicer night, for a game against the same opponent, and there were thousands fewer fans in the stands. That's the power of the bobble. Those little pieces of plastic fill the seats, even damp ones.
Anyway, the game was a good one, a defensive battle. Phillies pitcher Brett Myers had a no-hitter going for six-and-two-thirds innings. Just as the fans in my section seemed to be waking up to Myers's feat, though, Reds first baseman Joey Votto ripped a pitch to centerfield, driving in what would be the winning run (Myers had walked a previous batter). Reds pitcher Edinson Volquez, who already owned the League's best ERA, pitched seven scoreless innings for the Reds. Volquez did look vulnerable at times. The Phils had two men on base in the fourth, and Volquez hit two batters in the fifth, helping the Phillies load the bases. But they just couldn't finish the deal. They also had a chance in the eighth, after Volquez left the game, but the Phils' bats just weren't there. The Reds won, 2-0.
Somehow or other, I managed not to get wet at the game. When I left for the ballpark, it was raining outright. When I got off the subway near the park, it was still sprinkling. But by the time I got to my seat—dry thanks to an attentive usher—the rain had stopped. And it didn't start up again until my friend and I were walking back to the subway.
Obviously, I was meant to have that bobblehead, and it was meant to be dry. Or something.
Pretty much on impulse, I headed to Citizens Bank Park after work last night to watch the Phillies take on the Reds. It was a beautiful June evening, and the game was a good one. That after-work impulse really worked out....
The Phils, who are now leading the N.L. East, continued to be impressive on offense and defense. 2008 MVP (that has to be the prediction, right?) Chase Utley (3-for-4) homered in his fifth straight game, and Pedro Feliz and Chris Coste each had home runs as well. The Reds closed to a single run, but the Phillies bullpen hung tough, securing the 5-4 win. Fittingly enough, Utley ended the game by catching a piercing, two-out line drive. (You can see the play at The 700 Level.) Chase, will you marry me? Please?
What else can I say about the game? Well, for one thing, it could've been the game when Ken Griffey, Jr., hit his 600th career home run. But "general soreness" kept him out of the game. A Griffey-jersey-clad man in the row ahead of me was truly bummed when he found out that Junior'd been scratched. Personally, I'm hoping Griffey won't get No. 600 in Philly.
I sat in Section 233 tonight, which is sort of the third-base, mirror-image version of my usual section (Section 211, near first base). There's no real view of the scoreboard in Section 233, but the sight lines are definitely better than in Section 211—where the seats are all at a weird angle, causing grumbles about seeing home plate. Plus, during a day game, Section 233 probably has better overhead coverage. When I'm choosing season tickets next year, I'll have to give Section 233 some thought....
I skipped the last Phillies game in my season ticket package because it was darn cold and I needed to pack for my trip to Santa Fe. So...despite tonight's forecast for thunderstorms, I headed out to the ballpark to see the Phils take on the Rockies. I owed it to the Phillies, you know?
The Phillies took a seven-run lead in the first two innings, as the skies darkened significantly. In the stands, there was tension. We wondered whether we'd get through four-and-a-half innings so the Phillies would get the win and not a rain-out. After the Rockies' third out in the top of the fourth, Phils starter Kyle Kendrick got a huge ovation. Relief!
It actually didn't start to rain—significantly, anyway—until the eighth inning. Quickly enough, it was pouring. I took shelter near, um, an ice cream vendor for awhile. But during the bottom of the eighth, when the lightning started and when the tarps came out, I headed home. I've only ditched a game early a couple of times in my life, but it looked like this rain was going to last a long time.
Just as I was getting home, the game finished. The Rockies closed in some, mostly due to Tom Gordon's poor "relief" pitching and what scorekeepers call "defensive indifference" (i.e., when a team is so far ahead that it's willing to concede runs to get outs). But I'll take a 7-4 win any day.
The most puzzling part of the evening was a freebie handed out by the Phillies. It's a ballcap, a pretty bland, white ballcap, one with the cheapest possible plastic clasp. It reads: FIGHTINS Philadelphia Phillies.
FIGHTINS?
The hell? When the Phillies employee handed me the cap as I entered the stadium, I shot him a look, I guess. "I don't know what it means," he shrugged. Several hours later, I still don't have a clue. Not Fightin' Phillies. FIGHTINS Phillies. Hmm, it's pretty preposterous.
FIGHTINS?
Someone...anyone, enlighten me.
Update #1 (5/28/08): The 700 Level has some great pictures from last night's games. Cool clouds, huh?
Update #2 (5/28/08): I've been informed that Fightins is a legitimate, if little-used, nickname of the Phils. Hmm, ok. A Google search for Fightins returns only about 6,000 hits (versus, say, about 3 million for—randomly, I know—"rhinitis"), but most of them seem to be actual references to the Phillies. The term has even appeared—again, if rarely—in the inquirer and Daily News. Some of these references add an odd apostrophe (Fightins'), but that's another battle, I suppose. Oh, and also: There's even a new Phillies-oriented blog called The Fightins'. So, ok, I surrender. I've been a Phillies fan for a long time, and I ain't never heard anybody call 'em The Fightins, but apparently it was time I did. It still doesn't make any sense, though.
I wouldn't exactly call Jeffrey Lurie, the owner of my beloved Philadelphia Eagles, a good friend, or even a friend at all really. But we share enough in common: the same birthday (September 8th) and a passionate love for the Eagles, which in my case goes back to the age of six or seven, with fond memories of Ron Jaworski and Bill Bergey. Mr. Lurie's history is actually not as deeply rooted in the green and white: he comes from Boston, then headed to Hollywood to run some movie production company, neither of which you would find too commonly among the old 700-level Veterans Stadium fans who have deep emotional investments in this team. But suffice it to say that he's now the CEO of the company I have long admired the most--and, on that basis alone, Mr. Lurie has earned a place in my world.
But there's at least a little more to my history with Mr. Lurie and maybe, today being NFL Draft day, some relevant lesson that can be drawn from it as it relates to today's shocking first round selection by the Eagles. In that selection, the Eagles opted to trade down with the Dallas Cowboys in the first round and then use their first overall selection to draft University of Houston quarterback Kevin Kolb. Kevin Kolb? Yes, Kevin Kolb.
Back in the late 1990s, as a senior associate in one of Philadelphia's politically-wired center city consulting firms, I also counted the Eagles among one of the Philadelphia-based clients that I represented. While the vast majority of my time was spent in our health care practice focused on assisting hospitals, nursing homes and the like, from time to time some of my colleagues at the firm--looking for some lobbying or strategic input but more likely just knowing of my passionate, lifelong love for the Birds--would look for my assistance in one way or another on the Eagles account. The essence of the mission was simple enough: to obtain state funding from Harrisburg for a new football-only stadium to replace Veterans Stadium, the historic South Philly stadium and former home to the Eagles and Phillies. It's a stadium of such fond multi-decade memories (to put it in historical perspective, I once saw Lou Brock steal a base there) that I sort of regret never purchasing one of its stadium seats, which I think they ended up marketing and selling for about $200 a piece before the stadium was ultimately subjected to a somewhat saddening 15-second, "shock and awe" city-orchestrated implosion. And then it was gone. Given that, I always thought a few Veterans Stadium seats would work well in my living room and would reveal all one needs to know about my interior design preferences.
The decimation was understandable. By the late 1990s the Vet's "field" was pretty much green concrete, not keeping up with some of the more plush NFL stadiums arising around the nation and, while many of us hated to see it go, the case for its replacement became glaringly apparent once quality prospective Eagles and Phillies players expressed reluctance about playing in Philly because of the field's quality. Lincoln Financial Field (along with three other large Pennsylvania stadiums) ultimately won the support sought from the state, and the Eagles now have a new and vastly improved home field.
As the campaign to replace the Vet gained momentum in the 1990s, I'd find myself from time to time in our firm's mahogany board room with none other than Mr. Lurie, and it didn't take more than a few meetings before I joined the many Philadelphians who felt compelled to share their "wisdom" on the team's direction. It was March 1999, maybe three weeks or so before the NFL Draft in which the Eagles had the second overall selection (and it was already widely established that Tim Couch would go first). The fall before, I spent quite a few Saturdays watching the poetic running of University of Texas running back Ricky Williams, who Sports Illustrated reasonably labeled the "Texas Tornado" in one cover story. One look at Williams told me everything I needed to know: he was a huge talent, with great stop and go running capabilities and the sort of speed explosion and misdirection running that made him extraordinary. His senior year, as I recall, he rushed for over 200 yards on something like 12 separate occasions. Who was the last to do that? Not surprisingly, Williams was the obvious choice for the 1998 Heisman. Like a lot of Eagles fans, I felt that Ricky Williams would one day belong to the elite group of NFL running backs: Emmitt Smith, Walter Payton, Barry Sanders...Ricky Williams. Obvious enough, right?
I felt compelled, as a passionate Eagles fan with this special access, to share my wisdom with my new friend, Mr. Lurie. Our meeting broke, the small talk commenced, and I soon found myself walking down the firm's hall with the owner of the Philadelphia Eagles. I shared my pearl of wisdom: "Mr. Lurie, I watched a lot of Ricky Williams down at Texas. I sure hope the Eagles can pick this guy up." "You think so?" he replied, with the smirk of a man who had heard utterly too many suggestions from all-knowing Eagles fans and may well already have discounted Williams for reasons unknown to the pedestrian Eagles fan.
NFL Draft day came and many Eagles fans, urged on by Philly sports radio station WIP, famously made the journey to New York City's Madison Square Garden to root for a Ricky Williams selection. The opportunity to seize the next Walter Payton had arrived. "With the second selection in the 1999 NFL Draft," NFL Commissioner Paul Tagliabue said that day, "the Philadelphia Eagles select...Donovan McNabb from Syracuse." Eagles brethren filled the Garden with boos as McNabb grabbed his Eagles jersey and posed with Tagliabue. The boos continued. Then New Orleans Saints coach Mike Ditka saw his unique opportunity, quickly traded up, and Ricky Williams was off to New Orleans and Eagles fans, I suppose, spent a bus ride back to Philly denouncing the selection of this new quarterback from Syracuse.
Fast forward a few years. McNabb has led the Eagles to the playoffs just about every year and to one Super Bowl. Call him the best quarterback in football and some people might pause and mention Peyton Manning, the Super Bowl-proven Tom Brady, or the emerging and explosive Michael Vick, but the thesis of McNabb as "best" would not be too broadly challenged. McNabb is plain good and maybe great. He has played with broken bones. I became a believer when, this past fall, he refused to leave a game in 110-degree Tampa Bay heat, ultimately vomiting on the grass of Raymond James Stadium, then calmly resuming an Eagles drive to a fourth quarter score.
As for Ricky Williams, as I recall, the Saints somewhat outrageously ended up negotiating his contract with Williams' new agent, Master P of hip hop fame, and Williams then went on to test positive for marijuana multiple times, ultimately announcing an early retirement presumably because he was about to face his third positive test for the drug, which he said he used instead of taking anti-depressants to treat his social anxiety disorder (he would conduct media interviews with his helmet on). Time passed, and the 1999 draft faded from memory. Williams disappeared from the game and the memories of most Eagles fans. McNabb soared to legendary status.
Which brings me to Kevin Kolb, the University of Houston quarterback taken this afternoon with the Eagles' first 2007 NFL Draft selection (after the Eagles were apparently convinced they would not obtain the quality safety they originally sought). I did not follow college football quite as closely in the fall of 2006 as I did the 1998 season that I grew to admire the "Texas Tornado." But let me say that I watched enough to know that Kevin Kolb was not a name that rolled off the tongues of many as a likely top 2007 draft selection. Even among quarterbacks, he was considered a more likely third round selection, and he did not appear on any Eagles short list that I remember seeing.
But at least with the Eagles, I've come to learn and remember the lesson of Ricky Williams. Eagles coach Andy Reid and his quality group of coaches and scouts, likely now realizing that a day will come when McNabb (who will turn 31 this season) no longer takes Eagles' snaps, have thought ahead. As I do most years, I'll make the trip to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania this July for Eagles training camp and look forward to seeing Kolb in a red Eagles quarterback jersey. With the Ricky Williams selection now nearly a decade old, are we too proud in our football wisdom to give Kevin Kolb the benefit of the doubt?
Mr. Lurie, of course, had it right in his selection of Donovan McNabb, who (if his injury recuperation continues on pace) may yet lead the Eagles to a Super Bowl victory and may some day enter Canton as a Pro Football Hall of Fame selection. Conversely, after disappearing for a while following his positive drug findings, Ricky Williams resurfaced recently, playing a season with the Toronto Agronauts in the Canadian Football League and is now purportedly attempting an NFL comeback. I, for one, would love to see him in an NFL uniform this season because his raw talent has yet to be fully witnessed in the NFL, and there is no reason to think it still does not exist. But the Ricky Williams lesson is obvious: The selection of Ricky Williams by the Eagles in 1999 would have ranked among the worst draft selections in Eagles history, with the Eagles passing on a quarterback who has become "the franchise."
One cannot really view the Kevin Kolb selection in April 2007 without that perspective. The McNabb era will one day end. His off-season training and recuperation efforts are legendary, but his cumulative injuries are now sufficiently concerning to ask what the future holds for the Eagles at quarterback.
One hopes that question was answered today in Kevin Kolb, of whom I know next to nothing except that he appears to have had reasonably impressive statistics at the University of Houston, whose games were not once broadcast in Philadelphia as far as I recall. The word "durable" was used today to describe him. Good enough for me. Here's to Kevin Kolb--and hoping his NFL career becomes all that Andy Reid and Jeffrey Lurie obviously saw when Tagliabue let out those now infamous words at the Garden: "Donovan McNabb from Syracuse." This time, I am letting the lesson of Ricky Williams prevail and, unlike some Eagles fans, presuming some not so obvious wisdom in the selection.
Because it was Jamie Moyer Bobblehead Night (really, that's why I went!), I headed to Citizens Bank Park last night to watch the Phillies play the San Diego Padres. The Phils didn't play all that well, first on defense and later on offense. Not a good combination, of course. They lost, 4-2. And, damn, it was a chilly night. I wished I'd brought gloves....
Since last night's game wasn't part of my season package (i.e., it wasn't a part of the Man Trap), I sat in a different location: Section 129, Row 30, Seat 8. What a weird seat! I know it sounds like it's probably smack dab in the middle of some row (it's Seat 8, after all), but it's not. Seat 8 is the only seat in that row! Section 129 is itself a funny little section, wedged between two normal-sized sections along the third base line. And by Row 30, there's only room for a single seat. Row 29, which was right in front of me, had two seats, and Row 31—the final row in the section—also had just a single seat.
I felt like I was in a royal box, sorta. A baseball royal box??? There was no one at all, of course, to crawl all over me. And I had tons of room around me, which I filled with the bobblehead and the remains of crab fries, a hot dog, and a beer. Plus, I had a great, close-up view of home plate.
If you're ever headed to Citizens Bank Park by yourself, well, I'm sorry you couldn't find a date, either. But I highly recommend Section 129, Row 30, Seat 8. It's the perfect place to be alone at the ballpark.
Someday or other, I'm going to write a long post of tips for single travelers to Philly (and maybe another one for Las Vegas).... Seat 8 is going to get high marks, I tell you.
Let me preface this by saying that I voted for Barack Obama in yesterday's Pennsylvania primary because I believe, as he does, that we need to get beyond lapel pins and what somebody's pastor said and talk about the real issues we face. But after Obama's anemic performance, I have to wonder whether Mrs. Clinton has a point.
Obama was strong in the city of Philadelphia and around Harrisburg and State College but not as strong as expected in the Philly suburbs. My county, Montgomery, was, I thought, an Obama stronghold, but he lost to Clinton 51% to 49%. And Obama has continuing problems in the large industrial states with blue collar white men. One commentator said today that this doesn't necessarily mean that those voters will desert the Democrats in the general election, but I have to disagree. Those voters are just the ones who will flip for McCain in a McCain-Obama race. Of course they may do the same in a McCain-Clinton race, but that doesn't seem as likely to me.
It's frightening and amazing to me that we have a reviled Republican President, a presumptive Republican nominee who is unpopular with a large segment of his own party's base, and two very strong Democratic candidates, but the Dems may still manage to blow it once again.
Gosh, it's been awhile since I posted. I need to do better. But I've been busy with the usual things—work [insert eye roll here], Phillies games, beer, rooting my Fly-boys into the next round of the NHL playoffs, and spending way, way, way too many hours working on [dang, this is kind of embarrassing] my fantasy tennis games.
On Tuesday, I caught my second game of the baseball season from my perch in Citizens Bank Park's Section 211, accompanied this time by a different co-worker. Yes, the plan to use my season tickets as a man trap is still a work-in-progress. Instead, I keep inviting colleagues—men, mostly straight, who are sports fans but not a single one who's likely to evolve into the beer-drinking, baseball-addicted boy toy of my dreams. It is good to spend time at the ballpark with a friend, though. And since it's not a date, I don't have to worry too much about how my hair looks.... [That was a joke. Really.]
Anyway, Tuesday night's game was a chilly affair, but the hometown fans who stuck it out were rewarded with an almost unbelievable, come-from-behind victory in the bottom of the ninth. Trailing 3-0 to the Astros, the Phils strung together a comeback with an improbable home run from a just-added player; a hit batsman; a homer from hunky [see, it's always gay when I'm at the ballpark] Pat Burrell; a stolen first base after a strikeout by Geoff Jenkins; and a probably unwise trip home by Jenkins, who missed the third base coach's stop sign after Pedro Feliz's game-winning double. Wow. After all that, the teeth-chattering I'd suffered for the last half of the game suddenly didn't matter so much.
Yesterday afternoon, I was back at the ballpark, catching my first Phillies-Mets game of the season. I met yet another colleague [this one gay, if not at all a likely candidate for the man trap]. It was a gorgeous day for a game, springlike and sunny, and I even broken open the sunscreen for the first time this year. The Phillies' offense was pretty lackluster, though. Half the team, it seems, is injured. And Chase Utley, who went two-for-four and homered, just can't carry the whole team. The Evil Mets won, 4-2. Bummer, huh?
What else did I do this week? Well, there was some beer—not all of it at the ballpark. [<Digression>The beer selection at the ballpark is better than you'd think, but it's not superb. I usually stick to Victory's HopDevil. I normally rail against hops-heavy American craft beers, but HopDevil is good—and it's one of the best things I'm going to find at Citizens Bank Park.</Digression>] On Monday night, I was at another beer-tasting at Tria's Fermentation School. The session was devoted to La Trappe Brewery, one of the seven remaining Trappist breweries in the world and the only one in the Netherlands. [The rest are in Belgium, of course.] In the States, La Trappe beers are sold as Koningshoeven beers for reasons attributable to church politics.... I was smitten with the Koningshoeven Bock, the Koningshoeven Tripel, and the Koningshoeven Quadrupel—which was my favorite of the night, all caramel and goodness. I was also smitten with one of the brewers [not a monk, Mom!], Gijs Swinkels, but even the slightly buzzed me recognized the futility of making a pass at a straight man from another continent.
So that's pretty much what I've been spending my time on. Baseball and beer. And, well, perfecting my entries in Tennis Channel and ATP fantasy games. [Hmmm, this could explain why I'm still single.] My picks for this week's U.S. Men's Clay Court Championship were, I thought, stunningly good. I even correctly put the way unheralded Marcel Granollers Pujol into the final on my bracket. [I did not have him upsetting James Blake to take the title, however.] And despite this prescience, I still only barely finished in the Top 200 [190th out of 1733 entries]. How good do I have to be, anyway?
And do I have to be that good to get a date, too?
It can be said that modern conservatism knows only two times. There was the time before him and there was the time after him, and those two times could not be more contrasting. In this stark contrast lies his larger-than-life legacy, and let there be no mistake: It is a legacy that will endure the ages.
As word of William F. Buckley, Jr.'s passing reached his many students, admirers and colleagues late last week, it seemed each had an account (some grand, some small) of how this intellectual giant memorably impacted and touched their lives, their vision, and their work. In the aggregate, they tell the story of a man whose immense collective qualities--genius, boldness, industriousness, persuasiveness, and (perhaps least appreciated) kindness and generosity--were without equal in modern American public life. Even in death, Buckley is bringing conservatives together more effectually than many conservative leaders are doing in life. It should surprise no one. To have had the good fortune to have brushed upon Buckley during this life was to leave impressed, inspired, and reinvigorated in the purpose-driven life that he lived admirably and which he cultivated in a whole generation of conservatives who, now in his absence, carry forward his torch.
It may be said too often of the recently deceased, but it must be said emphatically of Buckley: We will not likely see his type again.
So diverse and ultimately immense were Buckley's accomplishments that it becomes dangerously easy to short change the vastness of his ultimate legacy. During the 82 years that God granted him to us, he was described as the most prolific conservative writer of modern times. No doubt. From the early 1950s until a few weeks ago, Buckley's writings eloquently challenged liberalism's false promises at every step and defined the intellectual and political alternative that was and still is contemporary conservatism. His books (35 non-fiction, 12 in the Blackford Oakes novel series, and another eight of fiction), his National Review columns and commentary (beginning with the magazine's 1955 founding and continuing through early this year), and his syndicated column (published since 1962 in over 300 U.S. and global newspapers) represent nothing short of a library of modern conservative thought. In these writings lies not just Buckley's persuasive case for conservative policies and principles but one of the best depictions of conservatism's evolution from a nascent ideology to the most consequential intellectual and political force of modern times. What a literary treasure he has left us.
But Buckley's impact is not constrained to his role as the most prolific conservative author and writer of our times. His role in the ultimate ascent of conservatism as a national and even global political force is less broadly recognized but equally undeniable and important. The conservative revolution may have materialized nationally with Ronald Reagan's 1980 election, but that electoral victory was the result of over two decades of work in the trenches, pre-dating even Barry Goldwater's unsuccessful 1964 challenge against Lyndon Johnson. What existed before Buckley was an ineffectual group (one cannot even really call it a political movement) of self-described conservatives whose relevance was largely negligible. Before Buckley, modern conservatism had no refined policy agenda (and if one existed at all, it would likely have been equated with Robert Taft's dangerous isolationism at a moment when the global threat of communism was amassing). Conservatism then also had zero skill in communicating to, and connecting with, the hearts and minds of the American people. Add those two things up, and it's not surprising that conservatives, pre-Buckley, also failed in the electoral process.
It was Buckley who, in 1960, quickly looked at this "movement," and changed it forever. One of his first steps, the founding of Young Americans for Freedom (YAF), formed the foundation that ultimately propelled Goldwater's candidacy. On September 11, 1960, conservatives gathered in Buckley's hometown of Sharon, Connecticut, where conservative author M. Stanton Evans, one of the first and greatest Buckley proteges, with input from Annette Kirk (wife of the late Russell Kirk), drafted the "Sharon Statement." It is not an overstatement that it may well be one of the most important documents on the American purpose and conservative vision since the Declaration of Independence itself.
"In this time of moral and political crises," the Sharon Document began, "it is the responsibility of the youth of America to affirm certain eternal truths." It immediately and appropriately referenced the fact that it was only God's gift of free will that permits man's "rights to be free from the restrictions of arbitrary force." It followed with an unhesitating and accurate reference to the fact that political freedom, without economic freedom, cannot long endure. It defined the Constitutionally protected freedoms and national security interests that were incumbent on the American government to protect (including, if necessary, by military force). Consistent with this, it boldly called for victory over, not coexistence with, global communism, stating "that the forces of international Communism are, at present, the greatest single threat to these liberties" and "that the United States should stress victory over, rather than coexistence with, this menace." Invigorated at Sharon, conservatives left that conference with a clear cut vision of who and what they were and who and what they opposed. Modern conservatism was born.
As the years progressed, it was this Sharon-inspired movement that challenged the emerging opposition to the U.S. effort to help defend South Vietnam during the Vietnam War, urging intervention against North Vietnam's aggression not just in the defense of South Vietnam but also in resisting North Vietnam's destabilization efforts in neighboring Cambodia and Laos. While accepting many of the objectives of Johnson's "Great Society," the movement simultaneously and staunchly denounced the extraordinary expansion of federal government that Johnson used to achieve them. In 1964, it was this movement that urged and then supported Goldwater's national candidacy. While unsuccessful electorally, it did succeed in giving birth to Reagan's monumental speech, "A Time for Choosing," which was hugely and transparently influenced by the Sharon Statement's position on the importance of defending economic liberty. In this nationally-televised endorsement of Goldwater, Reagan said: "The founding fathers knew a government can't control the economy without controlling people. And they knew when a government sets out to do that, it must use force and coercion to achieve its purpose. So we have come to a time for choosing."
Reagan's persuasive case for Goldwater was made too late to salvage the Arizona Senator's Presidential candidacy, but it was this speech that gave birth to Reagan as a national political force. It was again Buckley and his allies that, following "A Time for Choosing," led conservatism forward, championing Reagan as Goldwater's conservative heir, first in his daring but unsuccessful 1976 challenge of Gerald Ford and then in his ultimately revolutionary 1980 victory. At each step, Buckley led these political advancements while carefully ensuring conservatism was kept on course and did not sacrifice its enduring principles in the name of political expediency. Buckley's was always a long-term plan and a long-term vision, which makes it unsurprising that his will be a long-term legacy.
Still, to describe Buckley as the most prolific and politically consequential conservative of our time does not capture the totality of his contributions to American democracy. The reason is this: Even if one rejects every conservative idea that Buckley embraced and carefully and eloquently articulated in his six decades of public life--the importance of connectivity between God and democratic peoples, the correlation between free markets and economic growth, and the case for resisting and defeating (not merely containing) totalitarian threats--it was Buckley who recreated intellectual and political choice in America. As the conservative columnist Mona Charen observed in The Washington Post last week, before Buckley, the liberal intellectual Lionel Trilling was able to state without challenge that conservatism did not really have any ideas. It had, Trilling wrote in The Liberal Imagination, merely "irritable mental gestures." When he died in 1975, Trilling probably still viewed conservatism in a similarly inconsequential light, but that's only because he never lived to see the fruition of the revolution that Buckley brought us. With steady progress, those gestures that Trilling observed in 1949 turned to concepts, those concepts turned to ideas, those ideas turned to policies, and those policies, embraced fearlessly by a new generation of conservatives impacted at every turn by Buckley, ultimately transformed a political and ideological movement, then a nation, and finally the world.
But it's equally important to remember that Buckley gave us conservatism as a choice, not as a guaranteed destination. That work falls to this and subsequent generations, and it is a job that, truth be told, will never be complete. Remembering one of his earliest Buckley-inspired influences, the conservative leader Bill Kristol recalled in The New York Times a few days ago that he proudly wore a lapel pin at his New York City high school in 1970. "Don't let THEM immanentize the Eschaton,” it said, summarizing the philosophy of the early National Review contributor Eric Voegelin. "THEM," of course, referred to those who sought (and still seek) to create, outside of God, a government-created, ideologically-inspired utopian social order here on Earth.
Tragically, while we fought THEM (Marx, Lenin and his successors, and Hitler) necessarily and successfully in World War II and then again (under Buckley's urging and inspiration) in the Cold War, it may be easy to conclude that it is a victory fully won. I believe Buckley would urge restraint in such a conviction, especially when, in our own nation, Americans still pack indoor stadiums, some apparently fainting in awe, at the false promises of liberalism's allure, now conveyed in a junior Senator's promises to confiscate the income of one group of Americans and send it through the federal Treasury to others, while simultaneously leading America's retreat in the global war on terror and "daring" to engage without condition those remaining totalitarians in Pyongyang, Tehran, Havana and elsewhere who will use America's diplomatic engagement with them to validate their suppression of human liberties at home and to send a global signal that the best way to earn America's attention is to hate it. Sadly, even after Buckley, there exist some Americans who actually view such a course of false promises as a "brave" one. Message: The Eschaton is still being immanetized.
All of these grand battles, some under way right now and some yet to be fought, will now be waged by a seasoned generation of American conservative warriors educated and trained on Buckley's watch and in his tradition. This conservative generation is a centerpiece of Buckley's ultimate enduring legacy. It is a legacy, however, that is not restricted to what he accomplished in this world, but also in how he handled himself while doing it. As Charen accurately observed last week: "It was always Bill who rushed to get a chair for the person left standing. It was always Bill who reached to fill your glass. It was always Bill who volunteered to give you a lift wherever you were going, insisting it was on his way."
As he bravely and victoriously faced down the most dangerous ideological threats and temptations of his time, William F. Buckley, Jr., it should be remembered, always did it with a smile. In that smile was an eternal optimism that he held in the grand potential of the unleashed human spirit. As we honor his giant and enduring legacy, it is an optimism that must carry us forward. We now walk this road in Buckley's physical absence. But he has paved it well with the promises of the purpose-driven life amidst freedom and liberty, and a broadly-accepted and educated wisdom that permits us--and calls us--to defend both.
Michael Johns is a health care executive and conservative author and writer. He served previously as a White House speechwriter and Heritage Foundation foreign policy analyst. This article, which appeared originally in Michael Johns' blog, is reprinted here with permission. The Michael Johns blog can be accessed directly at: http://michaeljohnsonfreedomandprosperity.blogspot.com/
