Today would have been James L. Buckley’s 101st birthday. The former “sainted junior senator from New York,” so called by his “exotic” (James’s word) brother Bill, had a long and fruitful career — in all three branches of government — before passing away at age 100 last August. You can find more about him here and here.

In the months since James Buckley’s death, I have read his published books: If Men Were Angels (IMWA, 1975), published while he was still in the Senate; Gleanings from an Unplanned Life (GFAUL, 2006), an “annotated oral history” of his life; Freedom at Risk (FAR, 2010), a collection of his writings; and Saving Congress from Itself (SCFI, 2014), an explanation of his proposal to end federal grants in aid to the states. There is much clarity in these texts, not only in their unforced, straightforward prose, but also in their principled, practical substance. Below is a selection of his thought on a few of the subjects important to him.

Morality

I am utterly persuaded that the framers of the Constitution never intended to exclude religious perspectives from public life, contrary to what so many are suggesting today. If you read the writings of the founding generation, you can’t help but be struck by what they saw as the relationship between religion and freedom. They believed that freedom depended on the exercise of self-control by moral people, and that morality in turn depended on religion. They would have been shocked by the idea that the state should not be hospitable to religion so long as it established none. (GFAUL)

Those who are heard to cry that one should not try to “legislate morality,” or “impose” one’s own morality upon others through the law, are ignorant of both history and the law. Whatever else might be said about such arguments, this much, I think, is clear: it would have struck previous generations of Americans as only slightly less than absurd to say that morality cannot or should not be legislated. Americans have always debated and will, I hope, continue to debate the propriety or prudence of incorporating certain moral propositions into the law; but to say that morality and law do not or should not mix flies in the face of everything we know about American history—or, for that matter, about the history of every system of law since at least the Code of Hammurabi. (FAR)

We are in danger of forgetting that freedom can flourish only where a people have the character and self-discipline required to keep the calls on public authority or public assistance to an absolute minimum. (IMWA)

Americans are told by the Court that pornographers are protected by the same First Amendment that forbids their children to join in classroom prayer in public schools. (IMWA)

Abortion

I profoundly believe that whatever acceptance abortion has acquired derives largely from the ability of its proponents to dissemble the true facts concerning the nature of unborn life and the true facts concerning what is actually involved in an abortion. (FAR)

To enter the world of abortion on request . . . is to enter a world that is upside down: it is a world in which black becomes white, and right wrong; a world in which the powerful are authorized to destroy the weak and defenseless; a world in which the child’s natural protector, his own mother, becomes the very agent of his destruction. (FAR)

The Constitution

The Constitution was designed to help protect and preserve those freedoms; but a constitution is no more than a scrap of paper if it does not continue to draw life from the people, from the continuity of traditions that keep old truths fresh and old commitments strong in the life of the society. (FAR)

A written Constitution may be indispensable in preserving freedom once achieved, but it will not impose it on a people that lost the will or taste for it. (IMWA)

Federalism

If the objective of a proposed bill was important and could only be achieved through national legislation, I would vote for it. Otherwise, I would oppose it as inconsistent with the principle of federalism. (SCFI)

One of the sharpest departures from the grand plan designed by the architects of the Constitution is the current compulsion to concentrate power in Washington, to impose a Washington-approved uniform mold on a vast, sprawling, and diverse population. (IMWA)

There are no doubt many causes of the paralysis I see creeping over Washington, but I feel by far the most significant of these has been the virtual abandonment of the principle of federalism. Accordingly, I believe the surest road to true reform is to rediscover and reapply that principle, and, in that way, to reduce the scope of federal responsibilities to manageable size. (FAR)

If we really believe in the competence of Americans to govern themselves, if we really believe that our people, whether they be located in the East, or in the South, or in the Mid-west, or in the middle of the Pacific, are part and parcel of Homo americanus, we must be willing to accept a diversity in judgments as to what constitutes acceptable minimum standards under all sorts of diverse conditions. (IMWA)

. . . the apostles of centralized power praise the “common man” while at the same time espousing a philosophy that is contemptuous of his ability to exercise his franchise in a responsible manner.

I would suggest there is nothing in the record of the past forty years to support the smug belief that Washington has a monopoly on compassion or that it has a special competence in meeting human needs. Indeed, the evidence is all the other way. (IMWA)

The case for Federalism is not efficiency but freedom. (IMWA)

Chevron Deference

I have my own views on a number of Supreme Court decisions, but I find Chevron very troubling; and I say that in significant part because of my own experience in the Senate . . . . In Chevron, the Supreme Court assumes that because Congress has assigned a particular agency with the responsibility for administering a program, Congress expects judges to defer to that agency’s interpretation of the relevant statutory language. I recall markup sessions when this very new senator would ask, “What does this language mean?” And the old-timers would say, “Well, we don’t have time to fiddle with this. Let the courts decide.” I never heard anyone say “let EPA decide” except with respect to those highly technical matters that fall within the agency’s area of expertise. So I think that the Supreme Court got this one wrong; it creates a terrible burden for a court that is persuaded that Congress intended something else. (GFAUL)

Stare Decisis

While the common law principle of stare decisis is important in lending predictability to the law, if with benefit of hindsight it can be seen that a chain of precedents has turned a constitutional principle on its head, I am not satisfied that the Supreme Court doesn’t have the duty to revert to the original understanding. (GFAUL)

Foreign Policy

Feel-good sentiments should never be allowed to divert us from the enduring truth that credible strength is the surest guarantee of peace. (FAR)

Like it or not, we can no longer remain indifferent to developments that threaten the political independence and stability of large areas of the world in which we have significant long-term interests. And because we alone in the western world have the power to safeguard the security and integrity of the West, we have been forced to assume world responsibilities we never sought, but which we cannot avoid.

We are a great power, with all the headaches and responsibilities of one, and we cannot elect to be otherwise without the most serious consequences, not only to ourselves, but to all others who must depend on us. And as the only great power in the West, how we exercise our responsibilities, how we use or fail to use our power, will have the most far-reaching consequences. This is a fact of international life for the United States today, and it is one too few in Congress appreciate. (IMWA)

Military forces are not a luxury but a necessity. So long as we live in a world in which some nations feel a compulsion to dominate others, we have no choice but to maintain those levels of defense that are essential to our survival. We can find no escape in isolationism because great nations are not allowed the luxury of retiring from the world. For great nations, there can be no peace unless they have the power and the will to defend it. (IMWA)

Now, it is self-evident—or, at least, it ought to be—that we cannot provide for the nation’s defense and interest unless we have the strength to do so. If we do not have military force adequate to meet any possible threat, we will have to yield to those who do. It cannot be otherwise. Unfortunately, in recent years we have allowed this elementary fact to be obscured by talk about national priorities, as if any society has a higher priority than to assure its own survival. (IMWA)

Economics

An increase in taxes due to inflation is no different in its effect than an explicit tax increase—it discourages productive activity. Because such taxation is not legislated, however, it becomes nearly impossible for voters to hold individual members of Congress accountable for their part in creating the inflation-related taxation used to finance vote-buying expenditures. (IMWA)

Government economic intervention tends to produce distortions that are used to justify still more intervention, and it is a rare bureaucrat who will admit, even to himself, that he is doing more harm than good. (IMWA)

Abundance, the profusion and variety of goods and services that our people produce and exchange, has offended the sensibilities of those who believe they know better than the average person what it is the average person should be allowed to have. (IMWA)

It is no coincidence that those who want to regulate America into their version of justice are also those who want to spend America into prosperity. (IMWA)

The idea that American wealth can accommodate every demand placed upon it is simply not true, and we court economic disaster if the nation and its government ignore the simple truth that the growth of government spending requires corresponding reduction in private buying power, regardless of whether the government spending is financed by taxes, borrowing, or creating new money. (IMWA)

Being Pro-Market vs. Being Pro-Business: 

I have been described as “pro business,” which is wrong. What I am is passionately “pro” the competitive free enterprise system that has provided us with such an extraordinarily productive economy. I have little sympathy with businessmen who seek special favors or who are the victims of their own mismanagement. (GFAUL)

Today’s conservative is pro-business in the sense that he favors our economic system of private, competitive enterprise and wants it to be able to operate with the maximum freedom consistent with the freedom and rights of others; and it is this principled commitment to a free economy that places American conservatives increasingly at odds with so much of corporate America. (FAR)

It is small wonder, then, that conservatives today are tending to view big business more as members of the enemy than as friends and allies, even as conservatives continue to work to preserve the economic freedom that permitted those businesses to grow and prosper in the first instance. (FAR)

Too many businessmen . . . will preach the virtues of unrestricted trade while defending to the last the sanctity of the quotas that protect their particular markets from the hazards of a too-energetic foreign competition. Big labor will champion the rights of the little man to fight the monopolists–unless, of course, the monopoly in question happens to be big labor itself. (IMWA)

Campaign-Finance Restrictions

Perhaps the most disturbing consequence of these laws has been the way they have consolidated the political power of favored establishment forces. (GFAUL)

The greater the government’s involvement in our lives, the more important it is that participation in political debate be unhampered by artificial restraints. (FAR)

Conservatives and the Environment

Their every instinct ought to propel conservatives into the forefront of the environmental movement. Conservatives pride themselves on their understanding of the dangers that can accrue from the thoughtless destruction of systems or institutions that have successfully served man’s needs; they perceive the existence of natural laws that man in his own highest interest is bound to observe; and they acknowledge a moral obligation to serve the inheritance received from generations past for the benefit of those to come.

Too few conservatives seem to appreciate the extraordinary complexity and sensitivity of the interdependent ecological systems on which life literally depends. Too few acknowledge that unless man learns to modify some of his habitats, this generation of “temporary possessors and life-renters” could well (in Edmund Burke’s words) “leave to those who come after . . . a ruin instead of a habitation.” (IMWA)

This compilation is hardly exhaustive. I can heartily recommend each of the above works to those interested in learning more about James Buckley and his worldview. I hope to have further occasion both to draw from it and to communicate it to others.