On the Right

New York, July 28—A couple of weeks ago, executives of the AFL-CIO were ruffled by a special request from their guest of honor. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn desired that the labor union leaders should invite, to his big speech in New York City, Senator James L. Buckley. Having no alternative, they did so, even while leaking it to the press that they resented his presence because the senator was not a “friend of labor.” That happens, by the way, to be incorrect: the sainted junior senator from New York is not a friend of excessive labor union power; which makes him a friend of labor, not an enemy. Anyway, just to make matters worse, the moment the great Solzhenitsyn spotted Senator Buckley, he came down from the dais and shook him warmly by the hand, while cameras, and eyes, popped.

Question: Is so warm an endorsement by Solzhenitsyn politically advantageous— or disadvantageous? Is it only a nostalgic flashbulb briefly illuminating the anti-Communist hang-up of the Old Right? There is an eccentric theorist writing orotund stuff about major trends in American politics. His name is Kevin Phillips. A few years ago he wrote a book called The Emerging Republican Majority, which was a most fascinating volume, suffering only from the massive inaccuracy of its predictions. In those days, theorist Phillips was saying that the Republican Party had it all sewn up for the next generation. Since the Republican debacle of 1974, he has found it necessary to defend his thesis by saying, in effect, that it was only the terminology that was wrong, not the predictions. Accordingly, he has come up with a convenient fiction by which he distinguishes between the decadent Old Right, and the robust New Right. The Old Right, he says, orbits about “the Buckley brothers’ axis,” and cultural elitism.

About the Author

William F. Buckley Jr.

William F. Buckley Jr. founded National Review magazine in 1955.

New York, July 28—A couple of weeks ago, executives of the AFL-CIO were ruffled by a special request from their guest of honor. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn desired that the labor union leaders should invite, to his big speech in New York City, Senator James L. Buckley. Having no alternative, they did so, even while leaking it to the press that they resented his presence because the senator was not a “friend of labor.” That happens, by the way, to be incorrect: the sainted junior senator from New York is not a friend of excessive labor union power; which makes him a friend of labor, not an enemy. Anyway, just to make matters worse, the moment the great Solzhenitsyn spotted Senator Buckley, he came down from the dais and shook him warmly by the hand, while cameras, and eyes, popped.

Question: Is so warm an endorsement by Solzhenitsyn politically advantageous— or disadvantageous? Is it only a nostalgic flashbulb briefly illuminating the anti-Communist hang-up of the Old Right? There is an eccentric theorist writing orotund stuff about major trends in American politics. His name is Kevin Phillips. A few years ago he wrote a book called The Emerging Republican Majority, which was a most fascinating volume, suffering only from the massive inaccuracy of its predictions. In those days, theorist Phillips was saying that the Republican Party had it all sewn up for the next generation. Since the Republican debacle of 1974, he has found it necessary to defend his thesis by saying, in effect, that it was only the terminology that was wrong, not the predictions. Accordingly, he has come up with a convenient fiction by which he distinguishes between the decadent Old Right, and the robust New Right. The Old Right, he says, orbits about “the Buckley brothers’ axis,” and cultural elitism.