Jaffa on Buckley and Roth

Claremont's Soul on Buckley's Soul

CMC's great professor emeritus Harry Jaffa has a nice piece up today on National Review Online commemorating William F. Buckley.

In it, we are reminded of all the difficulties modern conservatism has had in finding a theoretical core. Jaffa has spent his professional life trying to ground conservatism in a philosophical understanding of human nature--which he sees clearly expressed in the principles of the American Founding and the statesmanship of Abraham Lincoln. My own sense is that CMCers today have no real idea how profound Jaffa's thinking is or how important he has been for the school. Most who have heard of him simply choose to buy into second-hand prejudices passed down from liberal faculty and alumni. They prefer to balk at Jaffa's bold willingness to express his mind rather than take his arguments seriously. Cowardice is more common at the academy than you might think.

Anyways, I encourage you to read what he says about Buckley. The end especially sums up Buckley's life with a sweet anecdote. Buckley's soul, says Jaffa, was "magnanimous." I think he's right. Regardless of how skeptical we may be, men like Buckley show us how excellent and complete human life can and should be. I am reminded of a similar moment at the passing of a great man, when Leo Strauss reflected on Winston Churchill the day after his death:

The tyrant stood at the pinnacle of his power. The contrast between the indomitable and magnanimous statesman and the insane tyrant—this spectacle in its clear simplicity was one of the greatest lessons which men can learn, at any time....

The death of Churchill reminds us of the limitations of our craft, and therewith of our duty. We have no higher duty, and no more pressing duty, than to remind ourselves and our students, of political greatness, human greatness, of the peaks of human excellence. For we are supposed to train ourselves and others in seeing things as they are, and this means above all in seeing their greatness and their misery, their excellence and their vileness, their nobility and their triumphs, and therefore never to mistake mediocrity, however brilliant, for true greatness.

Speaking of mediocrity, if you read the Jaffa piece, you will find an interesting aside. Jaffa blasts that pin-head John Roth who has tried to corrupt many a PPE student by moping about the Holocaust. Roth, who was loved by the CMC administration, famously compared Israel to the Nazis. And you might remember that Roth's "ethical" expertise helped Professor Petropoulous decide it was okay to try to swindle a Holocaust survivor to make a grand fee on her family's stolen artwork.

Here's what Jaffa says:

On another occasion, Bill was the speaker at a Claremont McKenna College banquet. Although I have through the years generally had good relations with the college administrations, this was an exceptional interval. One of my colleagues made his career in Holocaust studies as a kind of professional mourner. Unfortunately he had, like others, used his synthetic lamentations as authority for his leftist politics. But he had also written articles, comparing Israeli treatment of Arabs to Nazi treatment of the Jews, and otherwise depreciating Jews and Judaism. Yet over my protests he had become the poster boy for the college’s public relations. In the arrangements of the banquet, my wife and I had been seated in a far corner of the room, as far as possible from the VIPs. When Bill entered the room, to general applause, he strode rapidly across the dining hall to where we were seated, threw his arms around my wife, and hugged and kissed her. Only then did he turn to greet the others. That turned the official pecking order upside down.