This looks interesting. Regards. Jim

What a great piece. Hogeland loves to smash idols but there is more to his method than simply bursting bubbles. He insists that we understand our heroes because we elevated them to their statuses, and if we don't try to understand them, we'll be missing something about ourselves. However, I think there is one important difference between Seeger and Buckley that this article fails to capture. Seeger's thinking matured. Buckley's never did. I guess that doesn't change the fact that the media covers them both so badly, but it's worth thinking about, I believe.

Yeah Seeger's thinking matured all right. He eventually realized that his tacit support of Hitler and his outright support of Stalin were ill advised.

I would suggest that Buckley's "retreat to a more logically consistent snobbism" constituted a turnabout on race entirely. I fail to see how you claim that it doesn't? The NR's later support for voting qualifications that are not based on race may be attacked on a number of grounds, including the simple fact that such a program would in fact have a disproportionate effect on blacks. But it nonetheless is a recognition that "race" was never the defining characteristic that WFB advocated discriminating on the basis of.

There never was any such organization as the "International Workers of the World". There was, and still is, the "Industrial Workers of the World". Hogeland's pig-ignorance about this very elementary fact raises natural suspicions about his other remarks on the American left, especially his more venomous characterizations of American Communists. I joined the Communist Party in my native South over 60 years ago, in 1947, and left (for personal reasons not relevant here) in 1951, although I remained close to the Party until 1956 and the Soviet repression of the Hungarian revolution. During all that time, I never once had a discussion with anyone in the Party about the USSR or Stalin. We were entirely pre-occupied with the struggles against Jim Crow - the whole apparatus of racial segregation and oppression, and with matters having to do with trade union organization, and, of course, with defending the Party against the Smith Act prosecutions. Naturally of course I did read some Party literature, mostly paperback books by Lenin which I found so boring that I could not finish them, and the Daily Worker which I still regard as at that time the very best newspaper in the United States on racial oppression in the South and on trade union news. We were native born, homegrown, radicals intensely interested in the enormous amount of injustice woven into the very fabric of American society, and not just in the South. Since that time, I have over the decades met a number of ex-Party members from all over the country, and their experience was similar to mine. Any suggestion that we were not down-home radicals, and that our interests and loyalties were directed toward the USSR and Stalin, is an intolerable slander, and morally odious. I have nothing to say about Pete Seeger whom I met only once and found to be a sweet and utterly charming man; I did not like his music, preferring jazz and classical music instead. I loved, and still do, Bill Buckley's sense of humor and his amusing persona.

Bad mistake on the IWW: thanks for pointing it out. Apologies.

D.D. Todd's post also points out a significant distinction between the youthful mistakes Hogeland attributes to Seeger and Buckley. Seeger's mistakes concerned inappropriate positions taken on events in Europe -- he embraced Stalinist Communism, an entity which to him was entirely theoretical. Buckley's mistake was to embrace Jim Crow and racism in his own country, a system of political evil of which he might have been expected to have some firsthand knowledge, and of which he himself, as a privileged white, was a beneficiary. There is a difference in moral weight between the illusions of erstwhile American Communists about the virtues of the Soviet Union and the illusions of erstwhile opponents of black rights about the virtues of the Jim Crow South.

Yes, "International Workers of the World" looked more like a slip of the pen than an error of ignorance. With that cleared up, I wonder if Professor Todd's opinion of the article improves.

All I need to know about the Communist Party of the USA is that it's leader Gus Hall made his living selling real estate, died a property owner, landlord and wealthy. One has to wonder whether any of the admitted $2 million he received from Uncle Joe Stalin stuck to his hands.

When you read the biographies of these so-called “workers,” you note that most of these Communists died with property and money. Yet the millionaire Communists like Berthold Brecht or Lillian Hellman always disdained Bill Buckley for his wealth.

So many sad Red hypocrites.

Mr Barth, hypocrisy is a human failing, not a political one, and it is ubiquitous, not confined to any one political grouping. I do not know much at all about Gus Hall as leader of the CPUSA. That was after my time. But during my time, and before, he was a crackerjack labor organizer involved in some of the most successful organizing organizing drives in labor history, His life was all-too-frequently on the line. Hundreds of thousands of working families owe to him and his colleagues a much improved standard of life. Just a priori, I would guess that he probably ossified in his old age, a prisoner of his Stalinist youth. BTW, just exactly what is your personal history in improving the lives of the American working class? Also, btw, Brecht and Hellman both made all their money honestly, through their personal talent and efforts. Buckley inherited his. You may not think that makes much of a difference, but I certainly do. And mind you, I am not an apologist for Brecht and Hellman, both of whom were very nasty people I would rather have dined with Buckley any day rather than one of them

Mr Baker, your suggestion is nonsense. One might well make a slip of the pen by writing "shit" instead of "ship". But writing "International" instead of "Industrial", a slip of the pen? Hardly. It was and is (unless he has by now read my comments) straightforward, inexcusable, ignorance about an elementary fact. I spent a great many years reading student essays, and I'm sufficiently sensitive to the distinction between slips of the pen and ignorance. On the whole, and with due regard for my criticisms, however, the article is well written, interesting, and informative.

I must second brooksfoe's comment. The abominable actions of Lenin and Stalin were far removed from American labor organizers of the 30's and 40's. While that hardly excuses Seeger's support during the era, the same conditions did not pertain to Buckley's support of racism within his own country.

For a young Mr. Seeger to be confronted with the cruelty of Stalin's regime, he would have had to cross an ocean and a continent in a time before easy transatlantic communication, let alone travel. Mr. Buckley would only need go south some ten hours by train from New York.

But again, there are the deceptions involved in each case; were Mr. Seeger to somehow travel to the Soviet Union of his youth, he might have been confronted with a Potemkin Village of happy workers and vigorous industry. Mr. Buckley, on the other hand, would merely have needed to speak to one of his fellow American citizens, albeit one of a somewhat different background. If the South had Potemkin Villages, they were occupied exclusively by whites.

Sympathy for one group does not excuse brutality towards another. But sympathy for the powerless at least has the virtue of rough justice, while sympathy for the powerful is the sign of a crippled conscience.

Both men willfully deafened themselves to suffering in the interests of their cause. Mr. Seeger's error was bad enough, to ignore the suffering of far away Russians. But Mr. Buckley's error, not merely ignoring but belittling the suffering of American citizens, who shouted at the tops of their lungs that they were being treated as less than men, was ugly bigotry.

This is outstanding work.

While the Buckley angle is informative, I'm not entirely convinced of the saddling of Buckley's views on Jim Crow & Co. to modern conservatism's opposition to affirmative action - an opposition that is clearly associated and affirmed by conservatism's anti-interventionist stance. The few instances given and citable of Buckley's controversial position does not amount to the structure of modern conservatism being based on his seemingly race-tainted positions.

Very nice work and a rich contrast--a great read!

The paragraph on affirmative action seems to me unfortunately compressed and under-defended, however. In what sense, exactly, does conservative opposition to affirmative action "inherit" Buckley's elitist defense of racial suppression of the 50's? In what way is this conservative position a "legacy" of Buckley's earlier views?

Conservatives do not favor outlaw means to end affirmative action, nor do they base their opposition on an elitist opinion of the unfortunate results that would attend preferences in educating and hiring culturally-backward minorities. There are different conservative arguments of course, some based on supposedly blind application of equal-opportunity ideals, others based on the supposed inefficacy of affirmative action. None that I can think of seem very like any of Buckley's positions on black voting rights.

Mr. Hogeland, it seems to me, objects to omissions from a movie. The people who made the movie, made their movie (which by the way, I liked a lot). Shouldn't Mr. Hogeland make his own movie or at least write his own book.

If Mr. Hogeland wrote an essay about Charles, Ruth & Pete Seeger's political views, wouldn't standard practice have required it to be more carefully sourced that this piece is? For example, attributing Pete's views to his father's seems to me thinly documented. (Even when parent and child agree, the fact of the agreement may not have been caused by the parent.) People who want to be seen as debunkers need to more careful than than us ranters.

The shame of it is, Mr. Hogeland's Seeger effort concerns a subject interesting (to me at least). So I am sorry he treated it in such a slap-dash manner.

Mr. Hogeland idea, however, that Seeger and Buckley -- a life-long defender of racism and privilege -- were both romantic may need to be re-thought.

"The claims of civilization supersede those of universal suffrage . . . If the majority wills what is socially atavistic, then to thwart the majority may be, though undemocratic, enlightened . . . sometimes the numerical minority cannot prevail except by violence: then it must determine whether the prevalence of its will is worth the terrible price of violence."

The above is always the central idea of conservatism. And Nazism, Fascism and all the rest of the right wing. Always.

It always comes down to "their" right to decide what "civilization" is and then to protect it from "us."

"They" are always the self selected superiors to "us."

Slavery, woman's suffrage, unions, gay rights, name the advance and "civilization is in dire peril." It's-sadly, very, very sadly-time, once again, to supercede democracy and "reign in the mob!"

Conservatism always devolves back to absolute power and to kissing the French King's ass.

If William Hogeland wants to be complete, then he surely must not omit the fact that William F. Buckley worked for the CIA. It is hard to think that fact could have escaped Hogeland or it significance. I mention it only for completeness, which is supposed to be the whole point of Hogeland's article.

though, with its lousy record in gather intelligence and directing overseas operations, maybe he should have been.