(Akiit.com) “You know,” the late William F. Buckley Jr. once mused, “I’ve spent my life separating the right from the kooks.” The conservative commentator was famously pugilistic, an ideological brawler, in fact, unrelentingly caustic, if eruditely so, about what he regarded as the deeply misguided policy prescriptions of liberal Democrats. Staunchly anti-Communist, he was unable to hide his contempt for those whom he perceived as hypocritical about totalitarianism.
Buckley was devilish at locating the holes in liberals’ arguments, and he was accorded the status of devil by many of them. This was especially so in the 1960s and 1970s, when the combined divisions over Vietnam, civil rights and feminism produced an embittered polarization, which, at the time, seemed worse than anything we’d experienced since the Civil War.
In his new biography “Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America,” historian Sam Tanenhaus rightly assesses that Buckley was the intellectual architect of the modern conservative movement that carried Ronald Reagan to the White House in 1980. Buckley is less frequently recognized for the civility that he brought to his political combat than for all the zeal that he also brought to it. His weekly television show, “Firing Line,” featured thoughtful debates between him and Black liberationists, what at the time were thought of as militant feminists, and far-left ideologues. Derisive of critics of American policy in Vietnam, he counted as among his cherished friends two of America’s most prominent anti-war leaders: liberal economist John Kenneth Galbraith and Allard Lowenstein, who spearheaded the anti-war movement that forced Lyndon Johnson out of the 1968 presidential race. When Lowenstein was assassinated, Buckley flew halfway across the world to join Sen. Edward Kennedy in giving an emotional eulogy for their mutual friend.
Buckley would have been revolted by Donald Trump’s crude thuggery. He would have been appalled, for that matter, at the hatred that has broadly consumed America over the last decade, a hatred that flows from all directions, and which is eating America alive.
Last week’s massacre at Minneapolis’ Annunciation Church is simply the latest in a steady stream of murders by extremism-fueled American lunatics. The ravings of this lunatic have become all too familiar: “Six million wasn’t enough.” “Israel must fall.” “Kill Donald Trump.” “I hate those entitled, penny-sniffing kikes.” “I am a terrorist.” And so on, ad nauseam, with copious homages to other mass murderers.
The slaughter will be attributed to the prevalence of mental illness in America and the prevalence of guns here, and there’s truth to that. But there’s plenty of mental illness elsewhere, and the easy availability of guns in America isn’t a recent development.
What we’ve got here is a raging, out of control hatred problem. It spews from right and left. We’ve got a president who revels in his cruelty, who openly praises white supremacists and domestic terrorists, who incited a coup and then pardoned those who tried to execute it, who ridiculed 82-year-old Paul Pelosi after he had been savagely attacked by an assailant who intended to murder Trump’s political opponent. We’ve never seen anything like this.
On the other side, we’ve got college students, egged on by performative faculty and indulged by administrators, assaulting their fellow students, shouting “We are Hamas,” celebrating a genocidal group that had just slaughtered 1,200 innocents at a dance festival or in their beds. Embraced by Democratic politicians preening for approval by the party base.
You can see it on social media, flooded with gleeful cruelty, with sadism, with viciousness directed at those holding contrary views. You can see it in the mad retributive demonization of those who did their level best to protect us during a deadly pandemic. You can see it in the ostracism of students who decline to embrace the fashionable political orthodoxies of the day. You can see it in the increasingly mindless demagoguery of politicians and media personalities.
The venerable Anti-Defamation League has long had as one of its signature programs an educational campaign designed to stem the surge of bias and vitriol in our society. It is called “No Place for Hate.” It’s a poignant name, because the truth is, to our national shame, America has become a place where hatred is spawned, where it spreads and deepens, and there seems no end in sight.
Columnist; Jeff Robbins
Official website; https://x.com/jeffreysrobbins