CHAPTER 2

MONEY AND IDEAS MATTER

The F(o)unding Fathers and Families of the Conservative Movement

PLANTING THE SEEDS Many accounts of the conservative movement and the origins of its philanthropic base tend to point to two prominent figures—William F. Buckley, Jr. and Lewis Powell. Indeed, Buckley is often referred to as the father of modern conservatism and Lewis Powell is credited with mobilizing big business to the cause of fighting “liberal” orthodoxy and reinvigorating free-market ideology in the early 1970s.133 Undoubtedly, these two men have been quite influential as noted below; however, it is also necessary to acknowledge the role played by an some have referred to as the “forgotten man of the right”—.134 Before the 1960s became the bête noir of the right, the thorn in the sides of conservatives and corporate marauders was, as previously alluded to, New Deal liberalism. Nock’s book, Our Enemy, The State, published in 1935 reflected his scorn for the liberal state and his legendary pessimism about the possibility of containing the “beast” that had been unleashed by the egalitarian impulses of the New Deal era. Just as modern day conservatives characterize critiques of the excessive greed of the capitalist class and the gross inequality that flows from it as a form of “class warfare,” Nock believed that the New Deal was a “coup d’état” that enabled the “economic exploitation of one class by another.” Presumably, Roosevelt’s policies represented a capitulation to the demands of the working classes whom Nock regarded as lesser species. According to Nock, the state, if it deserved any credence at all, should represent the interests of business rather than those of the indolent masses.135 His worldview would eventually have a profound influence on the conservative model of governance. In an essay entitled Isaiah’s Job, first published in 1936 in Atlantic Monthly, Nock bemoaned the success of Roosevelt’s New Deal, the creation of the “welfare” state, and “collectivism.” He mourned the contemporaneous state of conservative politics and described what he called the conservative “remnant”—an obscure, un- organized, and inarticulate world view which, nonetheless, could “come back and build a new society” with the appropriate amount of nurturing.136 What kind of citizens would constitute this new society? They would love “tradition” but loathe the state, believe in radical freedom while never doubting the fixity of human nature and natural laws. They would be elitist and anti-democratic yet despise elites (read: liberals) in power and they would unflinchingly defend the principles of economic “freedom.”137 Nock believed that such an “ideal” society could be achieved if only there was a “prophet” who could lead the remnant out of its cloisters.

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That prophet, as some have contended, was the late William F. Buckley, Jr. And, not surprisingly, Buckley once identified Nock as a seminal influence on his own personal and intellectual formation.138 After being commissioned as a second lieutenant in the US army in 1944, Buckley enrolled in Yale University in 1945 where he was actively involved with the Conservative Party and the Yale Political Union. He was also a member of the furtive Skull and Bones society and “maintained cordial relationships with New Haven FBI agents” while a student.139 In 1951, Buckley was recruited into the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and was trained as a secret agent in Washington before being dispatched to Mexico City presumably to monitor the burgeoning student movement there. His stint with the CIA was rather short-lived as he served for less than a year. That same year, Buckley published God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of “Academic Freedom” in which he chastised the idea of academic freedom (at least for liberals and leftists) and the independent academy. Buckley lamented the “atheism” and “secularism” of the professoriate and recommended that universities should embrace one value system and seek to inculcate it in their students. The value system advocated by Buckley was one that would extol the virtues of capitalism and Christianity. Jacoby notes that Buckley’s book “can be situated as a salvo in the McCarthyite attack on the universities” and given Buckley’s predilection, it is hardly surprising that three years later, in 1954, he and his brother-in-law Brent Bozell penned McCarthy and His Enemies, a defense of the Wisconsin Senator’s career and activities.140 If this sounds remotely familiar, it should, for it is the coalition of economic conservatives and the Christian right which has promulgated contemporary forms of patriotic correctness and neo-McCarthyism. Like Nock, Buckley expressed his disdain for what he perceived to be collectivist and liberal orthodoxy in both American public life and higher education. Slowly but surely, Buckley began to sow the seeds of a conservative “counterrevolution”— an enterprise whose legacy continues to mould the minds of those seeking to castrate intellectual dissent on campuses to this very day. Like the prophet Nock longed for, Buckley was, without a doubt, a visionary. What was needed, in Buckley’s opinion, was a publication that would provide a forum for the articulation of a conservative world view.141 Initially, Buckley attempted to purchase Human Events, but was turned down. He subsequently forged a relationship with Willi Schlamm, an ex-communist editor of The Freeman (Nock’s publication), and began to raise funds to start their own weekly magazine. With a $100,000 donation from his father, a Texas-born oil wildcatter and lawyer, and additional monies raised Buckley published the first issue of (NR) in 1955. While NR shared some affinities with previous publications like The Freeman, Blumenthal has noted that the NR was “wholly new” in its approach and represented the views of “free-marketers, ex-Communists and cultural conservatives.”142 In short, it epitomized the “fusionist” ideology which conservatives had forged. Sara Diamond argues that: , simply put, was the historical juncture at which right-wing activists and intellectuals focused, diversely, on the libertarian, moral- traditionalist,

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