God, Buckley, and Yale

Bill Buckley came to Yale in 1946 with deep-rooted beliefs in Christianity and individualism, beliefs which were probably shared by most of his classmates that year. But while many of Yale '50's values were modified during its four years at college, Buckley's remained fixed. During his stretch at Yale (he was chairman of the Daily News and an excellent debater) Buckley measured what the college was teaching against what he already believed. Yale generally came out second best; Buckley found his classes and clubs disturbingly secular and collectivist. In "God and Man at Yale" he has drawn on what he remembers of his courses and teachers to try to convince his fellow alumni just how Godless and socialist Yale has become, and what they can do about it.

With the smooth logic of a debater, Buckley states his case: 1) Yale's teaching shows no attempt to inculcate students with the twin values of Christianity and individualism; 2) Yale alumni are overwhelmingly Christian and individualist; 3) Therefore these alumni should hold off contributing to their alma mater until it sets itself right. What Yale has to do, says Buckley, is to adopt a "value orthodoxy," a rigorous system of classroom and extra-curricular indoctrination plugging his and the alumnus' views. How, asks Buckley, can alumni get their money's worth when the old school isn't teaching what they believe?

Even stated this simply, Buckley's case has a rhetorical appeal, enough so that the loud and intensive counter fire it has drawn from the Yale Daily News and a squad of Yale professors may be peculiarly ineffective. Buckley's thesis has too much superficial logic to stagger perceptibly under a broadside of charges of "fascism" or "medieval scholasticism." It is the framework, the lattice of values beneath Buckley's facile reasoning, that is weak, rotten, and remarkably prone to cave in.

Buckley's Christianity and individualism are both queer animals. He condemns, for example (in detailing the Godlessness of Yale's student organizations) a magazine whose position is that "the Christian philosophy is the most adequate, the most persuasive, the most conducive to understanding." Hogwash, says Buckley: "...such a utilitarian conception of Christianity, coupled with...steadfast refusal to proclaim Christianity as the true religion (which is what all genuine Christian leaders proclaim it to be...) is a sample of the adulteration of religion to the point that it becomes nothing more than the basis for 'my most favorite way of living.'" It seems unlikely that there are many Yale alumni, including Buckley's fellow Catholics, who share his belief in the absolute and unquestionable truth of one religion.

Buckley's conception of individualism is equally definite. He states it in a footnote: "I am committed to the classical doctrine that...regulation by a free competitive economy brings out not only maximum prosperity but maximum freedom." Buckley will brook absolutely no exceptions. Again, there are probably few Yale graduates who would go down the line with him on the pristine perfection of laissez-faire economics.

But even if Yale alumni held exactly Buckley's views, they still would most likely balk at his formula for teaching these views. Buckley says "Truth will not of itself dispel error; therefore truth must be championed and promulgated on every level and at every opportunity." He proposes to do this by splitting education into teaching and research: Teaching teaches what is Right; research finds out what is Right. Teachers who teach Wrong get fired. Buckley does not want research fettered. It is only in the classroom that the teacher should be limited to teaching what Buckley and others think is the truth.

Buried here is Buckley's overwhelming fallacy. He says "...A researcher ought to be free to seek out his own conclusions, to make his own generalizations on the basis of his discoveries...It is a self-contained paradox to endow a researcher or a research organization with funds and to assert simultaneously what will come out of the investigations for which the funds are to be used. For obviously under such a formula, there is no reason for investigation to be undertaken at all." What Buckley terribly forgets is that the classroom is just as much a research organization as the Sterling Library, that earmarking Alumni money so that students can get only selected pre-decided "truths" from the lecture platform is no different from paying a research organization to find selected, pre-decided facts. He says to tell a researcher what his answers must be is a "self-contained paradox." But Buckley wants to tell the student, the most basic researcher of all, just what the answers must be. There is no reason for investigation to be undertaken in Buckley's classroom, either. There is no reason for the classroom at all.

"God and Man at Yale" is an Alien-Wonderland book. It lauds laissez-faire economics, deplores laissez-faire education. It preaches religious tolerance but says that there is only one true religion. It weaves its value judgments and quotes-out-of-context into a superficially strong case for the narrowest sort of indoctrination. It is convincing enough so that Yale alumni, reading it, may reject Buckley's logic but still be perturbed a little at his picture of what the old school is teaching. They needn't worry. Bill Buckley went there for four years, and it didn't affect him a bit.