"I speak … about the impending defeat of Barry Goldwater" - "Following gasps, William Buckley exhorted conservatives to embrace reality: "It is wrong to assume that we shall overcome; and therefore it is right to reason to the necessity of guarding against the utter disarray that sometimes follows a stunning defeat"

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The American Conservative 
A book about William F. Buckley
Buckley's Paradise Lost
Strictly Right : William F. Buckley Jr. and the American Conservative Movement, Linda Bridges and John R. Coyne Jr., John Wiley & Sons, 358 pages
By Robert W. Merry

Buckley's Paradise Lost


Some excerpts :

Buckley displayed similar shrewdness in crafting the magazine’s positions on delicate issues of the day. He boldly excoriated John Birch Society head Robert Welch for splitting the conservative movement with the “extravagance” of his accusatory rhetoric. He did so, however, with characteristic political deftness, only after getting a nod of assent from Barry Goldwater himself. When his staff became hopelessly split over whether it should support or spurn the 1960 presidential candidacy of Richard Nixon, Buckley wrote the editorial himself. Neither supporting nor rejecting the man, he issued a plea, “directed as much to Buckley’s colleagues as to NR’s readers,” for each side to concede that the other’s position fit reasonably within the conservative ambit.

And the authors remind us of Buckley’s brilliance in capturing the zeitgeist at crucial moments. Particularly poignant was his speech to the national convention of Young Americans for Freedom on Sept. 11, 1964—just before the electorate would cast ballots on behalf of Barry Goldwater or Lyndon Johnson. Those in attendance had expected a fiery exhortation to march on to a brilliant November victory. Instead, he stilled the audience with the line, “I speak … about the impending defeat of Barry Goldwater.”

Following gasps, Buckley exhorted conservatives to embrace reality: “It is wrong to assume that we shall overcome; and therefore it is right to reason to the necessity of guarding against the utter disarray that sometimes follows a stunning defeat.” Rather, he said, they must honor Goldwater’s “political nobility” in placing himself and the conservative outlook before the American people. They could do that by “showing not a moment’s dismay on Nov. 4” and resolving to “emerge smiling, confident in the knowledge that we weakened those [adversarial] walls, that they will never again stand so firmly against us.” His words went beyond eloquence to capture just the right sentiment for that particular audience at that particular moment.

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