10 Candles for YAF

( First of two parts )

BILL BUCKLEY stood up before the applauding crowd. He looked a little nervous and a little rumpled in his blue blazer, striped tie, and chinos. Since Wednesday, when the tenth anniversary celebration for Young Americans for Freedom began, almost all of the speakers at the convention had commented on the amazing growth and unexpected success of this conservative youth group. YAF had started out ten years before with a weekend meeting of 90 young conservatives at Buckley's "family home" in Sharon, Connecticut; now 460 of the 55,000 national members stood on the lawn of that same Buckley estate, students from all over the country who had come for three days of meetings at the University of Hartford-and for this speech. They had taken chartered buses out to Sharon from Hartford, listened to a rock band on the lawn, and wandered through the huge Buckley home noting the religious artworks on the walls and the books on the desk in the library, and chatting with Mrs. Buckley, Sr., who stood by the front door.

It was an impressive affair: Mike Kenney of the Boston Globe decided that only the Kennedys of ten years ago could have pulled off a garden party for 500 as smoothly as this one was managed. Buckley was apparently aware of this. Kenney and Buckley unexpectedly ran into each other during the morning; they had both stopped abruptly, looking each other over. Buckley had recognized the reporter and, raising his eyebrows as he bowed, said "Ahhhhhhh, Mike! Shall we pretend we're at Bobby's?"

Now the guests stood under a striped canopy on the lawn, finished their roast beef sandwiches, their soda and beer, their cake and apples, finished with all the other speakers. Al Capp, Li'l Abner's creator and one of the big attractions of the celebraton, had titillated them with a long chuckling monologue-"I live in Cambridge, Massachusetts, just a stone's throw from Harvard.... As for John Kenneth Galbraith, well [chuckle], he's by far the best American economist since Edna St. Vincent Mllay.... I think the bedwetting, lunatic left knows that it's lost.... We're in for something ghastly this fall.... My prediction is that there will be killings at Harvard Square this fall."

THE celebration was almost over, everyone was almost ready to start back to Hartford and from there back home, but the best had been saved for last, and the best was Bill Buckley, a midwife at the birth of YAF, the unflappably intellectual defender of the right, the man always ready to put down by any means possible the emotional liberals, the fascistic rads, the Communist sympathizers, and the collectivists of all kinds. Four hundred sixty Young Americans for Freedom and a good number of older Young American supporters stood clapping for Buckley, anticipating his speech, making mental notes to take home to the local chapters, and Buckley stood before his audience looking anxious, as though unprepared to give them either what they wanted or what he wanted them to have, waiting for the applause to end and for the delegates to sit down. He had no notes, and his speech would prove to be uninspiring even to those craning their necks for his inspiration. Obscured by the complexity of his bafflingly lofty vocabulary, his speech would be so far removed in style from the quite ordinary subjects he spoke of that it would be hard to translate the complicated periods of the address into political sense.

But it was, after all, Bill Buckley speaking before Young Americans for Freedom, and his speech would be listened to with careful attention. While the applause was still fading, he began. "Thank you very much-I'll tell you when to resume."

When the convention began, Wednesday, September 9, the start of classes at the University of Hartford was a week away. YAF had rented the campus. U. or H. doesn't have a chapter of YAF; it's an urban university, located on a grassy hillside not far from Hartford's black and Puerto Rican "North End." On the first day of the convention, there was no real contact between the students at the convention and those of the university; those few U. of H. students who were already back at school didn't seem to know about the meetings. The Yaffers, as they call themselves, milled around the comfortable student lounge where new arrivals passed continuously through the registration line, getting their identification badges, schedules, and dormitory regulations. In the lobby some were buying YAF sweatshirts, buttons that said "Liberate Czechoslovakia" and buttons that said "Up Against the Wall, Commies"; pamphlets about "The Fascist threat to America"; "Youth in Politics" and "Voluntary Military" kits in large brown envelopes; and posters of Ronald Reagan, Barry Goldwater, William F. Buckley, and George C. Scott in his role as Patton.

The arriving convention-goers were young-looking, most of them barely out of high school by their appearance, though the organization's upper age limit is 40. A lanky boy with a goatee jutting from his chin and a cowlick on the back of his head walked among the chatting delegates, hawking snap-shots of an astronaut standing on the moon next to a perfectly erect American flag. "They're copies made from a slide I got from an outfit in Houston," he explained. "Seventy-five cents."

Some of the delegates standing around the edges of the room looked uncomfortable, as though unused to new clothes and strange surroundings. A few looked as though they'd be more comfortable at a student council or 4-H meeting. Others, wearing longish hair, moustaches, wide ties and dress bellbottoms, did what they could to impress the prettier YAF girls.

By 7 Wednesday evening, most of the members were in their seats in Miller Auditorium for the "keynote speech." Security was efficient: everyone who entered was checked for his I. D. badge. One large woman in a green dress was understanding when an apologetic usher asked to see her badge. "That's all right, there might be some SDSers."

The keynote came from a Texas Democrat, former speaker of the Texas House Waggoner Carr; he was appropriate for the kickoff-about a hundred Texan Young Americans for Freedom had flown in on a chartered plane. Mr. Carr thanked the assembly for the privilege of speaking to them, introduced his wife Ernestine ("One of the prettiest girls of her age in Texas"), and in a slow, polite, instructor's voice free of most of the drawl that he must have been saving for the folks back home, he delivered quietly phrased exhortations that established one of the recurring themes of the next three days.

"I believe that there are future governors, senators, and maybe even a president here tonight.... Your number one job is to take the offensive against those in your generation who are dedicated to the complete destruiton of our country...."

"At Harvard, they carried a meat cleaver with them when they confronted the administration with their demands.... Most of you have silently allowed the Hitler-type revolutionaries to blacken your reputation in America and throughout the world.... Your good name and your reputation have definitely been blackened because all around the world they have pronounced you guilty of... howling foul curse words at respected public officials,... kidnapping college presidents,... killing police,... burning banks." He took some of the soft, reproachful tone from his voice, and put in the hardness of a politician making a point "America is not perfect, but while you and I are working for a better day, I am not going to sit idly by and watch the radical subversives destroy us....

"From this moment on, why don't we take the offensive? Let us serve SDS with these non-negotiable demands....

" One: You must obey our laws, both on and off campus.

" Two: You must immediately cease and desist your attacks on others.

" Three: You must respect our American institutions....

" Four: ... Hit the books, or hit the road.

" Five: If you don't want to love America, stand aside and let a man do the job." He finished up with restrained force, pleading intensely but quietly, being gentle for a young audience.

"If America falters now, our successors'flag will be a Communist flag.... Talk about what's good about America. The world's hungry to hear your voice. Don't keep it waiting."

YAF leaders held workshops after each evening's major address, discussing the "Voluntary Military," "Anti New-Left Strategy," "Politics, Campus Style," "The Right to Bear Arms,"

"Fund-raising," the "Legal Action Programs" (against infringements of personal freedom by campus leftists) and other topics of concern. David Keene, a respectable looking, voluble, intelligent and articulate law student at the University of Wisconsin, is adept at putting down extreme comments from his audiences by first thanking the contributor and then ignoring him. He's been to Vietnam three times as an observer; in a workshop on Vietnam and Southeast Asia, he warned about the prevailing liberalism on campuses. "The thinking of Sam Brown has filtered down and influenced other people. This is what's really dangerous."

Keene wants the United States to win in Southeast Asia, and considers Nixon's Vietnamization plan as not inconsistent with that goal. He sees three main reasons for our continuing involvement in Vietnam: "The strategic importance of Southeast Asia for the free world," the "question of defeating the Communist strategy of the peoples's war," and a "moral obligation" to other nations who have fought because they thought we're with them." Keene believes in the domino theory. "If we win, we're more assured of no more wars-if we lose, there will be more wars."

Warren Woodward just graduated from a prep school in Connecticut where he led a small ("5 or 6 guys") YAF chapter. The most freak-like of all the delegates (wearing tennis shoes, small round sunglasses, a colored T-shirt, overalls with a "For God and Country" flag patch, and a part in the middle of his longish hair), Warren was the only one to openly question Keene's views on the war by raising an opposing point of view during the question-and-answer period. "I advocated winning for a while, but I've given up. They're Mickey-Mouseing around over there with little rules and lines. I wouldn't go over there and give my life in a war we're not trying to win."

Keene is National Chairman of YAF and, like most of his colleagues, strongly opposed to student violence. He's been close to it at the University of Wisconsin; he began a workshop on anti New-Left strategy by talking about this summer's bombing of the Army Math Research building there, and of the failure of the university officials to take seriously such warnings as an article in a paper titled "Army Math Research Building: Blow it Up." "All of these things represent a pattern," Keene warned the workshop attenders. "They're not isolated incidents, no matter what anyone says."

He spoke briefly, and with a little bitterness, of the abuse given him whenever he argued or debated a conservative position. Keene was not the not only by radicals but also by those simply unwilling to listen to the conservative position. Keene was not the first nor the last to complain of being put up to ridicule.

Several of the older conservatives who talked to the youth group during the week reminded them that, twenty or thirty years ago, conservatives ran into much more opposition than they do today, and that there were times when all but a few avoided the label "conservative" itself. To judge from their speeches, they take it for granted that they are members of a kind of oppressed political minority, outsiders looking into the world of political power, biding their time and holding their ground until the time comes when they will take control from the "liberal establishment." Some, encouraged by recent trends, see their day coming soon; others are less sanguine about taking over in the near future.

WHEN Keene was finished with his introduction, one student asked what kind of legal procedure could be used against students and faculty who close down a university.

"YAF is trying to round up a list of lawyers who will give us help," Keene explained. "Really what you're trying to do is put a little fear in the administration who have been just sitting back or, even worse, helping these causes."

The workshop turned to the problems of outside agitators in campus politics. Rocky Rees, of the Yale YAF, stood up to comment that last year's Yale May Day Weekend to protest the Panther trials was named by"... a wandering band of bloodthirsty gypsies." "If you go to a small college and you notice a lot of unfriendly-well, freaky faces around you, the best thing you can do is take some pictures.... You might as well send them to us at Yale, because we might know who they are."

Walter Dilger is too old to be a member of YAF, but he attended a lot of the conferences. He's from Dayton, Ohio, a small oldish man who's taken college courses in economics and political science at night, and just before the "anti New-Left" workshop broke up, he raised his hand and stood up to say, "I'm not surprised that the [campuses] were for Nixon, because the liberals spent twenty million dollars to put Nixon in office. He talks real conservative, but you look at his policies and he acts real liberal, especially in school desegregation and on cleaning out the Justice Department."

Mr. Wilger later explained the liberal conspiracy. "Yes, they put up twenty million for Nixon-it's a group of mostly bankers in New York that runs it. Rockefeller went down there to Miami in '68 and spent so many millions of his family's money and couldn't make it, so he and Sidney Weinberg and Lewis Strauss called in Nixon and said, 'look, do you wanta get elected? We'll put up the money! And Nixon had to take on his old enemy Kissinger, who was Rockefeller's adviser for twenty years, and he didn't want him, but now Kissinger is sitting up there next to Nixon and he's really running things.

"You know, Will Rogers says that we haven't had a real President since Abraham Lincoln, just Vice-Presidents; well of course, Harding was a guy who'd stand up for his rights and do what he wanted, but he had this food-taster, he wanted to make sure his food taster went along with him wherever he went, until he went off to Alaska without his food-taster and he came back dead.... You must remember: nothing just happens, everything is planned...."

( Tomorrow: Barry Goldwater Day and a visit from Storm Thurmond. )