The Telling of the Truth: William F. Buckley’s Life in Letters

“It is always fascinating to watch people react to the telling of the truth,” wrote Bill Buckley in his first book, God and Man at Yale. It is equally interesting to watch people react to the passing of someone who told the truth. Not your truth or my truth. Not the truth as he saw it. Not the truth as best he knew it. Not the kind of truth that feels good today but is opposite to the wisdom of the ages and of the sages, both past and future, and thus destroys tomorrow. The simple truth; or, as Christian apologist and philosopher of history and culture Francis Schaeffer was fond of saying, true truth: about life and about eternity, as it is available to any honest mind. The truth of the butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker, their grandparents, and their grandchildren – linguistically adorned, philosophically beatified, and internationally contextualized to tell a true story that properly placed the man on the street, his full human and spiritual dignity intact, into the drama of the life of the nation and the life of nations.

Buckley famously said he’d rather be governed by the first 50 names in the Boston phone book than by the entire Harvard faculty not because he wanted to be cute, but because he wanted to tell the truth.

It was the same kind of truth Buckley told about Yale in 1951 at the tender age of 25. By then he in his exceptional talents had already discerned that even, or perhaps especially, many in the hallowed halls of the Ivy League had developed a curious aversion to true truth. It is an aversion that has almost universally swallowed up American intellectuals, and which Buckley was providentially destined, singularly equipped, and, it seemed, inordinately pleased to battle his entire life.

Even by the standards of the most literate literati, his vocabulary was staggering. And he wielded it not in the pretentious, ostentatious manner in which the mainstream, “drive-by” media are prone to wield theirs in an attempt to justify, mainly to themselves, their right to occupy the august, influential post to which they have risen. Rather, he wielded his with the commanding ease of a man who knew God was bigger than he was, and who was thus less interested in the great words he knew than in the great ideas – indeed, the great ideological worlds – he knew lay behind the words, and less interested in glorifying himself than in, as he put it, standing athwart history crying, in all wise benevolence, “Stop!”

His humor was of a type that has become a bit of a hallmark in conservative circles: the kind that is less a positive creation for entertainment than an unavoidable adaptation to the telling of the truth and the negative or embarrassed reaction the truth engenders. When you repeatedly tell the truth, and that truth is not only repeatedly rejected, but repeatedly caricatured, studiously avoided, and, when the inevitable calamity arrives as a result, repeatedly blamed for having created the calamity, one develops a certain modestly self-aggrandizing humor that every genuine conservative recognizes and that no such conservative begrudges another. So Buckley, when asked why he tended to sit during his TV episodes of “Firing Line” and most other TV interviews: “It’s difficult to stand up under the weight of all I know.”

It’s not arrogance; it’s an attempt to advertise a healthy confidence in the truth in an age peopled by, as G. K. Chesterton once quipped, a race of men too mentally modest to believe in the multiplication tables.

His literary output was enormous, for a time almost single-handedly sustaining a post-war renaissance in conservative – that is, true – thought about God, man, Yale, society, state, and history. Like few others – his friend, the late Dr. Russell Kirk, did something notably similar – he put words, ideas, and history behind and around the thoughts, knowledge, emotions, convictions, hopes, and political visions of millions of butchers, bakers, and candlestick makers who sensed in the latter half of 20th century the rise of an aggressive totalitarian ideology that was finding a weaker and weaker United States, and a weaker and weaker spiritual, moral, and political backbone in the West, as its only meaningful world opposition.

The talk in the last week about Buckley as a defender of a more urbane, sophisticated, polished, and agreeable brand of conservatism than that to which we – sigh – are now condemned in the wake of his death is mere media kerfuffle. It is the kind of talk that comes from people not substantive enough to know what to say when an authentically great man passes. When Ronald Reagan passed, we heard much the same sort of thing from people who had spent their entire public careers criticizing, caricaturing, slandering, and opposing him. Now that he’s gone, what fond memories we have of him! What a better sort of conservatism he stood for! What dignity, what learnedness, what charity, what disagree-without-calling-your-opponents-names know-how he had! If only we had more like him!

The move is mendacious: a back-handed way of insulting those conservatives – that is, truth tellers – who remain, with whom both Reagan and Buckley consorted and identified their entire lives, and with whom still resides the only authentic stewardship of the life and legacy of either man.

Then, of course, there are the polite but empty compliments from respectable, moderate folk: even if you didn’t agree with Buckley on everything, by God, at least you knew where he stood! Or, even if you didn’t agree with Buckley on everything, you had to admire his talents and passion on behalf of what he believed in! The point being not to praise Buckley for anything genuinely praiseworthy, but to, again in a back-handed way, partake oneself of the immediate trend among the fashionable – the thing one is really in a habit of caring about – of honoring the venerable dead without oneself having to do anything like what the venerable dead did to earn the honor. That is, pay one’s easy respects to the dead without having to agree that this particular dead took the risk of telling the truth; of doing it for a long time; of sacrificing the many lucrative and fashionable engagements that one is oneself angling for and which would have easily been his had he chosen that easier pathway through life; and of putting up with the marginalization and condemnation from enemies, and not infrequent abandonment by ostensible friends, that inevitably attend such a courageous career.

In short, one is offering polite courtesies without offering the one thing that would truly honor the venerable dead: a frank admission that he was right, and you were wrong to disagree with, publicly oppose, or maintain a convenient silence toward him and what he believed, and toward what his genuine friends and heirs still believe.

The modern conservative movement in America – and the movement conservatives who comprise it – recognize innately that Buckley’s influence will last as long as our movement does. Many of us not only grew up with faithful, interested parents who kept copies of National Review on their coffee tables and in toilet-side baskets, but we still now have dusty, closeted boxes full of back issues with cartoon caricatures of Al Gore on the cover and Buckley’s inimitable columns in the back.

Yes, if only we had more of him. Eagles flock not, but one day, if God is gracious, there will be another collegiate Elijah who arises with the kind of spirit to, before he is 30, take on an Ivy League establishment, a political establishment, a world of easy, empty, errant words, with the butcher, baker, and candlestick maker’s truth that man is made in the image of God, and that what has happened once in six thousand years – a Gentile nation consciously and publicly founded on that truth – is not likely to ever happen again.

The audacity of conservatism

The intra-party brouhaha over the imminent nomination of Sen. John McCain as the GOP candidate for president is, as modern elections are regularly becoming, a spiteful referendum on political conservatism. That our nation has lost its cultural, its political, and, most deeply, its spiritual way has long since been beyond doubt. The only question is increasingly – and this election cycle demonstrates it in spades – how a principled conservative ought to respond when the standard for political leadership has dropped so embarrassingly low that he senses an undeniable tug of the conscience toward abstaining from an election altogether. Outside the broad mushy middle of the political world – that portion of the “mainstream” spectrum where one resides when one knows not what one believes or why – everyone agrees there is a point where such recusal is the only conscientious choice. In an election, say, between Ronald Reagan and Antonin Scalia, does anyone seriously believe Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama, or many of the self-righteous pundits in the media now scoffing at lifelong conservative leaders such as Dr. James Dobson for his decision not to vote if Mr. McCain is the GOP nominee, would be found darkening a presidential oval?

By the same token, many Republicans, including many conservatives, calling for other conservatives to get on board the inevitable McCain bandwagon – “What, are we just going to let a liberal Democrat win?” – know there is a point where they, too, would choose intelligent, convicted abstention over casting a vote for someone they know is unworthy of the presidential office. Picture an election between, say, Hillary Clinton and Richard Nixon – Nixon being well to the political right of John McCain – or between, say, Bill Clinton and Sen. Larry Craig, who is also well to the political right of Sen. McCain. Just get on board the GOP bandwagon? What, are we just going to let a Democrat win?

This is how third parties get started.

Recusal is not only the intelligent choice but the only wise choice in many life circumstances. Judges regularly and admirably recuse themselves when their personal connections, interests, or history make, or even give the appearance of making, a disinterested judgment improbable. An attorney will decline a case in which he has no expertise, as will a business manager who knows a particular decision is outside the realm of his knowledge or experience. Members of school boards, city councils, state legislatures, and the U.S. Congress regularly abstain from votes for a multitude of reasons, not infrequently because they simply wish to broadcast their protest against an array of options so pathetically weak that only the lowest form of pragmatism, political expediency, and peer pressure could persuade one to participate by casting a vote one simply does not believe in.

A vote is more than just a protest against the party or issue opposed. It is, at the same time, an affirmation of the party or issue supported. This is the nature of a vote. A vote says something about us as people. Twelve years from now, when we are gathered at the house with friends during the momentous election year of 2020, the question of who we voted for “back in that year, you know, when Hillary and Barack were running, when was it?” is one we can expect to come up, and our answer one on which we can expect, however light-heartedly and good-naturedly, to be evaluated. Many conservatives are deciding that “I held my nose and voted for McCain” is an answer they will be able to live with. I may yet take that route myself. For the moment, “For the first time since I came of voting age, I voted down-ballot but sat the presidential race out” is sounding like an answer I’d be comfortable with.

Even if I ultimately take a different route from Dr. Dobson, his stand is refreshing. He and the conservative talk radio universe that has opposed McCain consistently since the beginning of the race are right, and other conservative leaders, particularly among the intelligentsia, who are now falling over themselves to curry favor and secure access with McCain, are foolish. Even if one votes for McCain, one need not commit one’s public influence, or that of the organization with which one is associated, to supporting a candidate so far from what we admire, revere, hold dear, and still hope for in a great political and world leader. Now is the time for conservative leaders to be trumpeting what conservatism is and calling the GOP back to it, not myopically looking for ways to defend Mr. McCain and secure access to his potential administration.

Opposing Democrats is easy. We show how dearly we hold our conservative principles by how willing we are to hold Republicans to the same standard.

Three obvious truths, two of them timeless, need to be stated clearly once again. First, the temporary one: Mr. McCain is not a conservative. He is a liberal Republican. He is not the most liberal Republican. There are currently 48 Republican members of the U.S. Senate. Perhaps the most liberal is Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine. Perhaps the most conservative is Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma. Those who know his record know that Mr. McCain is 7 or 8 senators to the right of Snowe, and 40 or so senators to the left of Coburn. The list of issues and occasions on which he has sold out the conservative movement runs into the dozens.

The laughable claim by President Bush that McCain is “a solid conservative,” or by Dr. Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention that McCain “has moved to a more conservative position on taxes, he has expressed appreciation for the pro-life position, and has proclaimed regularly, ‘I am pro-life,’” reflect the pragmatic low standards and neglect of real history that are rampant among the political and chattering classes today and which have brought the Party of Reagan to its knees over the last two decades. Dr. Land’s dismissal of Rush Limbaugh as someone who “needs to get out and talk to average folk more” is a manifestation of the precisely backward way in which short-sighted leaders – including those in the church – justify their expedient choices, alliances, and maneuverings rather than take an unpopular stand for the truth. Dr. Land, I can say it respectfully as someone who admires your body of work and who is a student at your convention’s flagship seminary: you have a D.Phil from Oxford and have been in high church and Republican circles for decades. Limbaugh doesn’t even have a college degree, talks to “average folk” by the dozens every day on his radio show, and has for 20 years shown more backbone in standing up to compromising politicians, including Republicans, than most anyone on the national scene. Again with respect, it is you, sir, who might benefit from talking to average folk a bit more.

Second truth, first timeless one: political conservatism is not a knee-jerk reaction or simple dislike of Hillary or a set of talking points for after the golf round. It is the stuff of the American grassroots. It is the stuff of the American founding. It is the stuff of strength, of truth, of right, of principle, of courage, of honor. It is the stuff of legends. It represents now, and will always represent, a hope far more audacious than Barack Obama ever conceived or wrote about, or that John McCain may ever realize he has systematically negotiated over the course of his political career: it is the hope that authentic truth, justice, and wisdom may yet arise to lead the planet’s greatest commonwealth in our lifetime, and that a dying American culture may yet be redeemed by authentic political virtue on high.

Third, final, and, to many, most annoyingly timeless truth: political conservatism is rooted in Christianity, and Christianity is by its nature conservative. Being conservative means believing in the steadfast conservation of God-given political and social institutions against the corrupting influence of human vice, ambition, mendacity, machination, and manipulation. Christianity preserves and conserves because it tells the truth about God, man, society, state, and history. Christian leaders like Dr. James Dobson do not abstain because they are grumpy; they abstain because they feel the weight that C.S. Lewis felt when he wrote that Christianity, considered only from an ethical standpoint, is hot enough to boil all the other systems of the world to rags. Christianity is fierce because evil and folly are fierce. Christianity’s standards are high because the standards of evil and folly are so despicably low. And all the greatest Christian saints in history have been equally fierce in their defense of truth not because they were grumpy, but because they knew that, in the course of human events, today’s pragmatic sellout is tomorrow’s political, cultural, and historical calamity.

One of the greatest truths Christianity teaches is that human politics, even at their best, are a pathetic imitation of the Real Thing. As the American Founders knew and wrote as eloquently as any group of political men in history, and as American conservatives still sense deeply today, the Real Thing is yet to happen. When the clouds are rent and the trumpet sounds, and the Son of Man descends for the second time to gather His elect from the four winds, there will be no more compromised political candidates or pathetic attempts to hide a history of negotiated principles. Rather, the entire world – some joyfully and some in terror – will join in recognizing for the first and final occasion that, in the fullness of time, government as we always dreamed and feared it could be – a deeply and abidingly and permanently conservative government – has finally come of age.

Eve of NH: Reagan forsaken?

Rumors of Mrs. Clinton’s demise are greatly exaggerated. True, she is reeling after a weak showing in Iowa, but the first subsequent poll (USA Today/Gallup) still showed her tied nationally with Barack Obama, and prior to Iowa she held a consistent double-digit lead in national polls for months. Indeed, to this point nobody else has led nationally in the Democratic race. And though Obama looks likely to win New Hampshire and South Carolina in the coming days on the strength of far greater likeability than Mrs. Clinton – particularly among men – contests in big states like Florida, New York, and California where Clinton is strong still remain.

[Note: See also the NH forecast by John Andrews and Joshua Sharf on the Gang of Four blog.]

Moreover, the larger Clinton machine and network, one of the most powerful in recent political memory, remains formidable in Democratic circles. Obama has a shot, to be sure, but media hype about the race being Obama’s to lose is just hype.

On the GOP side, mediocrity is breeding ambivalence. A field of philosophically lackluster candidates has made for the most evenly-matched race in recent memory, with leading conservatives everywhere lamenting that these are the best a wandering Republican Party can produce. There is no Reagan in sight. Rudy Guiliani has led in national polls for months but began sliding toward the end of November as Mike Huckabee skyrocketed.

Huckabee’s meteoric rise, which over-exposed Republican pundit and focus group organizer Frank Luntz has called “unprecedented in modern political history,” began around Nov. 25, the very day Huckabee began airing his famous “Christian leader” ad.

Interpretation: evangelical social conservatives are still numerous in the South (South Carolina) and Midwest (Iowa) and, prior to Huckabee’s series of bold statements regarding his faith and social conservatism, had not seen anyone or anything in the race that made it interesting to them. Huckabee followed up the “Christian leader” ad with his famous Christmas ad which, as such things do, terrified secular media pundits with visions of hovering crosses (actually just lighted bookshelves) and tyrannical Christian theocracy.

Huckabee’s faith is obviously genuine, his knowledge of the Bible obviously thorough (he is halfway to a Master of Divinity degree from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas), and his answers to media questions regarding evolution and religion unwavering. Here, for instance, on evolution. Or here on whether he believes the Bible.

If you don’t understand how energizing this is to evangelicals, the largest single bloc of Republican voters, you don’t understand evangelical Christianity. Huckabee is also a solid conservative on abortion and homosexual marriage, furthering buttressing his appeal to evangelicals. He combines this kind of backbone on his faith with a quick wit and guy-next-door likeability that is disarming even to those who distrust his Christianity.

His response to those who saw a “floating cross” in his Christmas ad: “I will confess this: if you play the spot backwards it says, ‘Paul is dead. Paul is dead.’” And here is his appearance on the Jay Leno show on the eve of the Iowa caucus (watch both parts – he plays bass guitar with Leno’s band in the second). Finally there was his debate crowd-pleaser back in May: “Congress spends money like John Edwards at a beauty shop."

Huckabee is the only candidate in the race with a Reagan-style wit and charm, to say nothing of an unashamed belief in the historic Christian religion. There is only one problem. On foreign policy and military matters, taxes and fiscal matters, the welfare state, law and order, and immigration, Huckabee’s record is either confused or outright liberal. He represents the rebirth of pre-Reagan evangelical politics – William Jennings Bryan reincarnated. Bryan opposed evolution, supported Prohibition, and preached evangelical salvation, but supported the nationalization of railroads, the disbanding of trusts, and many other important free-market economic priorities of industry captains. He and Huckabee represent more a brand of Christian populism than a coherent conservatism.

Thus, the larger Republican base remains unenergized by Huckabee, and many military, foreign policy, fiscal, law enforcement, and immigration conservatives actively oppose him. These people are either settling for McCain or Guiliani – the two most liberal candidates in the race – if they are weak on social issues, or, with national conservative organ National Review, agreeing Mitt Romney is the conservative candidate of choice in a weak field. Romney’s conversion to social conservatism is too recent for the comfort of many (myself included), making his seemingly courageous adherence to his Mormon faith, which clearly teaches social conservatism, ring a bit hollow. But he does appear the best of the field.

As of now, McCain looks as though he has sealed up New Hampshire. Romney’s father was governor of Michigan once upon a time, making Romney strong there, but Huckabee is running a close second and has South Carolina in the bag. It is thus very possible that, by the time Super Tuesday rolls around, when Guiliani still looks to win big states like California, New York, and Pennsylvania, there could be three different early GOP winners, and thus no clear frontrunner. This is Guiliani’s dream scenario.

Sigh. For now, Reagan’s revolution does appear to be at an end.

Conservatism: The Making of Good Men

Two major premises to start: (1) Human corruption tends to reverse the natural poles of good and evil in the mind, clouding the moral judgment, and producing either weak and timid behavior on behalf of the good or behavior that is downright corrupt. (2) The pursuit of power magnifies this natural human tendency by orders of magnitude. [So began my talk to the Falcon Republican Club near Colorado Springs on September 22. It continued as follows:]

My suggestion to you tonight is that in the year 2007, we are living amidst the decay and corruption of American political structures due to the pervasive influence of human vice.

On the political left, this reversal of the poles of good and evil in the mind has reached its most hardened political expression in the institutions of the Democratic Party.

On the political right, embodied particularly by the Republican Party, the pursuit of power has done the following:

a) attracted those who are led by mere self-interest or social history, or who see in the Party an avenue for personal promotion; and

b) it has turned men and women who previously were innocently passionate and courageous on behalf of the public good – this is why they got involved in the Party in the first place – into men and women who now are passionate about their own political security and promotion, and who, though they may still believe in the conservative platform, are using the platform more to enable personal security, promotion, and prestige than to courageously contend for what is right, and who in many cases are now involved in slandering and marginalizing the very type of people whom they themselves used to be.

In many cases, this has turned friend against friend, colleague against colleague, Christian sibling against Christian sibling, and even spouse against spouse, in most cases never to be reconciled. And what is so sinister about this is that the more a politico becomes guilty of this kind of behavior, the more he deceives himself as to his own innocence.

What I’m saying is that the pursuit of power in the Republican Party has destroyed integrity and character, it has destroyed families, and it has destroyed in large measure the post-war conservative movement.

Former Chairman of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan, in his much-awaited book called The Age of Turbulence just released, gets this point exactly right. The book is self-aggrandizing and silly in many places, including some condescension toward Ronald Reagan, but Greenspan gets this point exactly right. He says he advised Bush to veto some spending bills the Republican congress was sending him, but instead Bush and the Republicans swapped principle for power, ending up with neither. This is exactly what Bush and the Republicans did, and yet Bush was taken totally by surprise when the GOP got drubbed in the 2006 elections.

Bush should be given due credit for his firmness on the war, his appointment so far of good Supreme Court justices, and his strength on behalf of lower taxes and in opposition to any tax increase. But No Child Left Behind, McCain-Feingold, excessive spending and regulation, giving the Democrats Don Rumsfeld’s scalp after the 2006 losses, and his equivocation in diplomacy toward Israel and advocacy of a Palestinian state have all been disasters.

The Republican collapse in Colorado began long before it materialized nationally. It began with the election of Gov. Bill Owens in 1998 and showed perhaps its most ugly manifestation in 2004 with the political betrayal of Bob Schaffer. Mr. Schaffer, like Congressman Doug Lamborn, is one of the great and good figures currently on the Colorado political landscape, and bad faith toward men like this says more about the Party than it does about the men themselves.

A few minutes ago I mentioned passion for the public good as what motivates so many Republicans to become activists and many to eventually run for office. The next natural question is, what is good?

Let’s start with a reminder of what isn’t good. There are seven classical vices, sometimes called the seven deadly sins, and I want to suggest to you that they extensively characterize not only American politics today, but American cultural life in general.

1. Lust. Sen. Larry Craig. Rep. Mark Foley. Rev. Ted Haggard. Rep. Bob Livingston, who was next in line for House Speaker but whose extramarital affair came to light at the same time Bill Clinton’s affair and perjury did. Pedophilia by priests in the Roman Catholic Church. Millions of pornographic web sites, with homosexuality making its way further and further even into social conservative ranks. This is lust.

2. Gluttony. It doesn’t simply refer to overeating. Refers to over-indulgence in any pleasure beyond what is normal and healthy. According to the New York Post of Feb 14, chairman and CEO of one of the world’s largest private equity groups held a party to celebrate his 60th birthday and his recent consummation of the largest private equity buyout in history. There was a private concert by Rod Stewart, for which Stewart was paid $1 million, and food, beverage, and décor that brought the total bill to over $3 million. This is gluttony. To be clear, being wealthy is no crime, throwing an expensive party is no crime, living at a high level is no crime. But there does reach a point where the ostentatious display and expenditure of wealth strikes any healthy person as excessive. In politics, legislative spending at any level is gluttonous, plain and simple. There is not a single public legislative body anywhere in the U.S., including in heavily Republican areas like El Paso County, that is anywhere close to the kind of fiscal sanity that normal people and businesses have to live by just to survive. Public spending is gluttonous and is reminiscent of the late Roman Empire.

3. Sloth. Laziness. Interestingly, the sin of sloth was originally called the sin of sadness. Why? Because work and joy go together. Hard work makes people joyful and content with life. Sloth and sadness go together. Welfare programs beginning with FDR, but growing rapidly under Lyndon Johnson in the 1960’s, devalued the importance of work and taught entire generations of modern people that the government owes them health care, a school loan below market rates and with generous payback terms, and an unemployment check while between jobs. This led to such institutionalized laziness, primarily on the part of men in the inner city, that by the 1990’s a Republican-controlled Congress sent President Clinton a good welfare reform bill three times before he signed it. The bill placed limits on how long someone could live on the public dole. Opponents said welfare reform would force many into begging or crime. People had a right to be on the dole, they essentially said. Actually, the bill has reduced the number of welfare recipients by 57% since it was passed in 1996, and places like big-city-dominated Illinois have seen reductions as high as 86%. Why? Because sloth is a vice, and it is the purpose of law to restrain vice, not encourage and fund it.

4. Greed. Contra Gordon Gecko, greed is not good. Greed is the inordinate desire for material things beyond what is wise and healthy, and which leads one to do things that are not wise, honest, or healthy. I want to refer here to the cases of people like Joseph Nacchio, Bernie Ebbers, Charles Keating, Martha Stewart, and similar high-profile white-collar crime cases, but not in the way you are used to hearing about them. The greed in these cases was not on the part of these giants of business, who not only raised everyone’s standard of living through their heroic innovation and management talent, but made thousands of others wealthy in addition to themselves. Not only this, but they used their wealth philanthropically. Keating donated millions to Mother Teresa. Ebbers was a church-going Southern Baptist who doubtless gave a load to his church and church-related activities. Nacchio was the son of a Brooklyn longshoreman who doubled as a bartender at night – in other words, he was from the lower classes. He pulled himself up by his own bootstraps. Martha Stewart, the woman who decorated America’s homes, is an evil criminal?

None of the charges against these people had any merit, friends, and in most cases the charges on which they were convicted were not even part of the original charges levied against them. Martha Stewart, for example, was first charged with insider trading, then those charges against her were dropped and new ones instituted for lying to regulators about the original charges. A similar strategy was followed by current leading Republican presidential nominee, Rudy Guiliani, who began his political career by prosecuting the famous 1980’s junk bond cases against Ivan Boesky and Michael Milken. Neither did anything wrong except help new businesses get started by developing the market for high-risk bonds. Yet Guiliani, then U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, charged Milken with 98 counts of racketeering and fraud before settling a plea deal with Milken on 6 – six! – lesser charges. He intimidated Milken with the 98 charges into accepting a plea deal on 6 different charges. Milken was sentenced to 10 years and was out in less than two. Since then he has donated millions to philanthropic medical research and a new private Jewish high school in Bel-Air, California.

The convictions of these successful people represent not the triumph of justice against greed, as has been played in the media and political circles, but the triumph of greed against justice, and the triumph of central financial decision-making against those who make possible the greatest poverty-destroying machine in world history: American-style moral capitalism. Those guilty of greed in each of these cases were attorneys and government regulators who saw deep pockets and a friendly political environment in which to pillage those deep pockets and promote themselves in government. The only difference between them and Michael Nifong, the DA in the absurd Duke rape case who has now been rightly disgraced for the absurd politicized charges he pursued against innocent people, is that Nifong got caught.

5. Anger. Wrath. Any society overcome with vice in general is going to be overcome with anger. Why? Because confrontation of the guilty by the truth or by the law almost always produces the additional vice of wrath. Guilty people do not like to admit they are guilty or have been wrong, and get angry when confronted. It is what led William F. Buckley to state famously in his 1953 book *God and Man at Yale*, which helped launch the post-war conservative movement: “It is always interesting to watch the reaction of people to the telling of the truth.” President Clinton’s wrath was manifest when he was questioned on video by independent counsel. When Sen. Larry Craig was asked by a reporter what he was going to do after resigning from office, Craig said, “We’ll fight this like hell.” Apparently Craig is angry about the evil frame job that had been perpetrated against him by an airport policeman who doesn’t know what he’s doing. Murder is commonplace on the front pages of the news, often even by one spouse against another, because the vice of wrath is now an epidemic in our political and general culture, and we cover our sins of wrath by presenting them as righteous indignation.

6. The last two of the seven deadly sins you know: envy and pride. Envy is jealousy. Wanting what someone else has. Pride, or arrogance, in turn, is the root of all human vice. It says, I determine what is right and what I will do, and nobody will hold me to a standard higher than myself. C.S. Lewis once wrote that pride is how the Devil became the Devil. I will be like the Most High.

Friends, there is no characteristic more prominent in our politics and in our common life today than pride: black, corrosive, friendship and family ruining, integrity and virtue killing, party, state, and nation destroying pride. We will be like the Most High. We will be a law unto ourselves.

One additional word on pride. If you are proud, you are a fool. There are 7 billion people currently on earth, and you are one of them. And that doesn’t even count those who lived before you and who will live after you. Congressman Lamborn is a pretty important man, a congressman. But he is one of 435. He represents exactly 2.2 tenths of one percent of the current House of Representatives, and that doesn’t count those who went before and will go after. The President of the United States is the most powerful man in the world. President Bush is one of 43 American presidents, meaning he represents about 2.3% of the historic American presidency. And that doesn’t count those who will go after him. The American presidency, in turn, is only 230 years old, so even if we assume the youngest possible date for the age of the earth of about 6,000 years, Mr. Bush’s 2.3% share of the historic presidency represents 9 one-hundredths of one percent of the history of international power. Friends, in the big scheme of things, even the president is nobody. If you are proud, you are a fool.

If we understand how truly small we are, we understand how easy it has been for Christian people to sing across the ages songs like this one by George Beverly Shea, long-time friend of Billy Graham:

I’d rather have Jesus than silver or gold, I’d rather be His than have riches untold, I’d rather have Jesus than houses or lands, I’d rather be led by His nail-pierced hand.

I’d rather have Jesus than men’s applause; I’d rather be faithful to His dear cause; I’d rather have Jesus than world-wide fame, I’d rather be true to His holy name.

Than to be the king of a vast domain, Or be held in sin’s dread sway, I’d rather have Jesus than anything This world affords today.

Which leads me to the good news after all this bad news. There are virtues that oppose these vices in which we are mired. The opposite of lust is chastity. Not no sex at all, but sex disciplined by marriage – monogamous heterosexual marriage – or no sex at all. The opposite of gluttony is self-restraint. The opposite of sloth is diligence. The opposite of greed is generosity. The opposite of anger is honesty, peace, and, where necessary, forgiveness. The opposite of envy is kindness or admiration. And the opposite of pride is humility. Think of what politics would look like, and what a nation would look like, which elevates and honors these characteristics in our leaders, and which honors men like Congressman Doug Lamborn who have displayed these virtues for decades in public life, rather than attacking, opposing, and belittling them.

Now three points in closing:

First: Ronald Reagan’s name and legacy are invoked way too often by people who don’t understand that legacy, but what was it about him that inspired the entire post-war conservative movement? I suggest it was the humble strength with which he carried himself: no pride, no envy, no wrath, no lust, no greed, no sloth, no gluttony. In a word, he was the kind of genuinely good man who genuinely understands the conservative idea and who is created by the work of the conservative idea in the soul. His kind of man is the only kind who is worthy to rule.

Second: Ladies, you’ll understand me here, I trust. What we need in the conservative movement in every generation is what the Marine Corps needs in every generation: a few good men. It doesn’t take many, and indeed we recognize there will never be many. But we need a few. Everyone knows this truth; it is the enduring power of a slogan like the Marine Corps’, or like the words placed over a prominent overpass at the Air Force Academy until the feminists got them a few years ago: "Bring Me Men." What do these slogans mean? They obviously don’t mean that women are incapable of the virtue to which we refer. They simply are an appeal to the ancient kind of rare courage – courage to fight for what is true – that we all naturally associate with virtuous and heroic masculinity. These are the kind of men every nation and every conservative party needs, and these are the kind of men we need in the Republican Party today.

Finally: The political hope of our nation, indeed, the political hope of the world, lies in exactly the place you have been told so often and so vociferously is the last place you should look for that hope – the conservative wing of American politics. The conservative wing of the American political spectrum represents the last vestige of the historic western political tradition, and the ideas for which it stands, the truths it holds dear, the sanctities it defends, the political potential it still holds to implement those ideas on the world stage, and the good political men it creates, are the last, best political hope for mankind on earth.

If the Justice Department were just

Newspapers have reported on a Justice Department celebration of the recent grievous injustice its prosecutors perpetrated against hero of high technology, world capitalism, and classical American economic opportunity, Joseph P. Nacchio. Below is the full text of an Oct. 2 Denver Post story about this. Following that, my imaginary rewrite showing how it might have read had the Justice Department of the United States of America, under Republican control, not succumbed to the arbitrary forces of central financial planning and economic redistribution, of legal and political hostility to business, wealth creation, and the ingenius innovators who enable them, and of monumental foolishness and petty ambition by government attorneys and bureaucrats who make their living using the power of the state to pillage and destroy what better men have created. So, first the story from our world:

Nacchio prosecutors receive high honor By Andy Vuong The Denver Post Article Last Updated: 10/02/2007 01:38:12 PM MDT (http://www.denverpost.com/ci_7063018)

The team of government attorneys that won an insider trading conviction against former Qwest chief executive Joe Nacchio have received the highest award from the Department of Justice.

Prosecutors Cliff Stricklin, James Hearty, Kevin Traskos, Colleen Conry and Leo Wise — along with more than a 200 other government employees who worked on the case — were honored today at the Justice Department's 55th Annual Awards Ceremony at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C.

Nacchio was convicted in April on 19 counts of illegal insider trading connected to his sale of $52 million in Qwest stock.

Nacchio was sentenced to 6 years in federal prison, and ordered to pay $19 million in fines and forfeit the $52 million in ill-gotten gains to compensate victims. Nacchio is free on bail pending his appeal. Oral arguments for the appeal are set for December 18.

"Today's award recipients are extraordinarily dedicated and talented men and women," said Peter Keisler, Acting Attorney General, said in a statement. "They've made incredible sacrifices, and achieved great successes, working on the front lines of the Justice Department on behalf of the American people."

In addition to the Attorney General's Award for Distinguished Service for their outstanding work in the Nacchio case, the trial prosecutors also received awards from the FBI Director's Award for Excellence in Criminal Investigations, and the US Postal Inspection Service' Inspector General's Award.

"The Nacchio trial team put their personal lives on hold, working to ensure justice was done on behalf of the many victims who lost money because of the defendant's greed," said U.S. Attorney Troy Eid in a statement.

And now the story from a better world, one in which the Justice Department would actually execute justice:

Nacchio prosecutors arraigned on charges of abuse of power, institutionalized theft, slander By Dave Crater The Justice Post Article Last Updated: 1/01/2008 01:40:12 PM MDT

The team of government attorneys that pursued an “insider trading” conviction against former Qwest chief executive Joe Nacchio have been arraigned in a Washington federal court on charges of abusing their power and using the authority of the federal government to internationally slander and steal from a private citizen and leading captain of American industry and global technology.

Prosecutors Cliff Stricklin, James Hearty, Kevin Traskos, Colleen Conry and Leo Wise — along with more than a 200 other government employees who conspired in the case — were publicly repudiated today at the Justice Department's 55th Annual Awards Ceremony at Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C.

Nacchio was convicted in April on 19 counts of what the disgraced attorneys and bureaucrats at the time called “illegal insider trading” connected to his sale of $52 million in Qwest stock. Just before Christmas, however, Appeals Court Judge Solomon L. Reigns overturned Nacchio’s conviction in a blistering opinion that deprecated the action as “a monstrous crime against ancient principles of justice and against the historic American idea.”

“Mr. Nacchio, like every other owner of American equities, had a moral and legal right to trade his stock at any time and for any reason he wished,” Judge Reigns went on to hold. “The absurd pretense by the government that its agents were heroes for having prosecuted Mr. Nacchio because he so traded at a time and for reasons they could only speculate were at odds with their infinite wisdom reveals an alarming economic illiteracy and moral underdevelopment. These agents have not protected the small investor; they have helped drive a dagger through the heart of the most inspiring hope the small-time investor has had in the history of world commerce: American-style moral capitalism.

"A nation that treats its captains of industry and most productive citizens in this manner will soon find itself financially impoverished, and, more importantly and lastingly, ethically and morally bankrupt. The United States has been the economic and judicial hope of the world for two centuries precisely because it has steadfastly resisted this kind of infiltration of its government, and especially its Justice Department and court system, by small-time, self-serving, public-pandering moral troglodytes posing as pillars of government righteousness.”

Following his trial, Nacchio was sentenced to 6 years in federal prison, and ordered to pay $19 million in fines and forfeit $52 million in allegedly ill-gotten gains to compensate alleged victims. Nacchio was free on bail pending his appeal before Judge Reigns. Oral arguments for the appeal occurred December 18, and Judge Reigns issued his opinion the next day.

"For some years recently, the Justice Department had lost its way, replacing historic and honorable American ideas of justice, private property, and moral right with low, un-American suspicions and resentments toward industry that play on popular jealousies toward the rich," Peter Keisler, Acting Attorney General, said in a statement. "With the President’s support, I am committed to turning this Justice Department ship around. The wealthy are just as entitled to justice and legal protection of their property as the rest of us."

"The corrupt attorneys and bureaucrats we repudiate today acted not on behalf of the Justice Department and the American people," Keisler continued, "but on behalf of themselves, hoping to receive awards, recognition, promotion, and financial incentives for their having taken down an innocent man. I publicly apologize on behalf of the Justice Department not only to Mr. Nacchio and his family for this preposterous action, but to every American entrepreneur and industrialist who has been slandered and robbed by the American legal system over the last twenty years."

In addition to the Attorney General's repudiation for their dishonest work in the Nacchio case, the trial prosecutors also received a public reprimand from the FBI Director's Department for Justice in Criminal Investigations. The US Postal Inspection Service also issued the prosecutors its tongue-in-cheek Inspector General's Award for Most Unethical Government Action This Year.

Mr. Nacchio, on vacation with his wife and two children to celebrate his victory, could not be reached for comment.