Up From Liberalism by William F. Buckley Jr

Author:William F. Buckley Jr.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Pickle Partners Publishing
Published: 2019-02-27T00:00:00+00:00

The Liberal—HIS ROOT ASSUMPTIONS

The Claims for Democracy

“The people who make the revolution always seem to ask for liberty.”

“But do they ever get it, Mr. Gumbril?” Mr. Bojanus cocked his head playfully and smiled. “Look at ‘istory, Mr. Gumbril look at ‘istory. First it’s the French Revolution. They ask for political liberty. And they gets it. Then comes the Reform Bill, then Forty-Fight, then all the Franchise Acts and Votes for Women—always more and more political liberty. And what’s the results, Mr. Gumbril? Nothing at all. Who’s freer for political liberty? Not a soul, Mr. Gumbril. There was never a greater swindle ‘atched in the ‘ole of ‘istory. And when you think ‘ow those poor young men like Shelley talked about it—it’s pathetic” said Mr. Bojanus, shaking his head, “really pathetic!”—Antic Hay, by Aldous Huxley.

PROFESSOR RICHARD WEAVER HAS shrewdly observed that in recent years method has become the reigning absolute.{34} It used to be that subject matter had precedence over method. But modish philosophical systems, notably logical positivism, whose rise has coincided with and to a crucial extent made possible the rise of contemporary Liberalism by providing it with its metaphysical base, have effected a revolution. Method is king—because things are “real” only in proportion as they are discoverable by the scientific method; with the result that method logically directs all intellectual (to which we now subordinate moral and metaphysical) traffic.

The consequences of the instrumental view of life and the transfer of attention from subject-matter to method are instantly apparent in various articles of the Liberal creed. Our preoccupation these days, as I indicated in the preceding chapter, is not so much with the kind of society democracy brings forth in a given political situation, as with democracy itself. We worry about how much academic freedom there is on this campus or that one, rather than about what is being done by the intellect-made-free. The talk is about education as a process, not about the goals of education: indeed we are not permitted to stipulate the goals of education except in methodological terms (education must teach one “how to” think, “how to” adjust, “how to” find happiness, etc.)—because it is heretical to conclude that education can have objective goals. Rather, it is for each student, exercising his Democratically-Guaranteed right of Academic Freedom to employ the Scientific Method to decide what is his truth.

Professor Ernest van den Haag, moving from premises very like Weaver’s, carries forward his observations to identify a central weakness of the democratic West in its quarrel with Communism.{35} The secular ideology of Liberalism, which sets the tone of contemporary Western thought, is no match for Communism because it is not a redemptive creed. The Communists’ program is capable (at least for a period of time, until the illusion wears off) of being wholly satisfactory, emotionally and intellectually, to large numbers of people. The reason for this is that Communist dogma is eschatologically conceived. Communism promises the elimination of poverty, war, inequality, insecurity. Communism offers a view of human

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