How we Choose to See

About a week ago, I received a text from my aunt concerning a recent development in her life. She had been given the opportunity to foster a child. 

Our family had known for a year now that she, an unmarried woman nearing her semicentennial birthday, had been looking to be a foster parent. While my family seemed widely supportive of this, I was staunch in my opposition. The only aspect I saw was the fact that children are not commodities to be forced into a family situation contrary to my religion and the deepest tenets of Western society. The only thing that kept me from being ostracized from the family was a basic understanding of respect: I could not, and therefore should not utter, imply, or otherwise opine on the development whereas; it did not directly concern me and; it would contradict the filial piety I believed to be important in a family hierarchy. 

My aunt had invited us to her annual black party happening in only two days. I had two days to figure out how to act on my Catholic beliefs of respect, dignity, grace, and respect in a practical setting.

Walking to her house, I said a short prayer that the Holy Spirit would take control, and bind my mouth shut until I was free to say whatever I wanted to my bedroom wall after the party was over.

In short, the event was a success, I had not broken my law, and been ostracized from my family. Although I don’t doubt the Holy Spirit’s ability to intervene, I’m not sure whether it was the silencing of the Holy Spirit, or a revelation I had while watching the foster child play. A revelation spurred by the legacy of William F. Buckley Jr.

I recently finished Sam Tannenhause’s biography of Mr. Buckley: Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America. An excellently written work, the book took me on a passenger’s seat journey through Mr. Buckley’s life as if he had taken me to be his plus 1 through it all. This was so much so that I had grieved his death reading the pages of a book 17 years later. The most striking part of Mr. Buckley’s life, enumerated across 1,040 pages (appendices included), was the colorful yet morally upright manner in which he conducted his life. Despite the turbulent method Mr. Buckley worked out his philosophy, only emphasized by the highly public ways he argued with himself and others (his syndicated column, Firing Line show, and National Review magazine, among many others) he always seemed to reach the right side of the issue in question sooner or later with the grace (other than calling Gore Vidal a “pink queer” among a few other hiccups) that I prayed for that afternoon. Even more impressively, Mr. Buckley managed to do so while keeping those often targeted by his beliefs in good company.

I believe his profound ability to do this traces back to his family and his childhood in Kamschatka and Great Elm (their South Carolina and Connecticut properties, respectively). The Buckleys had numerous servants, most being black. While this may seem to reinforce the hierarchy the Buckleys maintained, their opposition to racial equality is impossible to guess considering many of them admitted to pride for their boss, W. F. Buckley Sr. Their treatment “‘changed the culture’ of the town they lived in, Edward Allen said. It created a new atmosphere of loyalty and obligation in which the needs of Blacks were taken into consideration by some in the wealthy winter colony.”

As an adult,  faithful Roman Catholic Mr. Buckley maintained strong relationships with homosexual friends and colleagues (of which there were many), and “loyally guarded” the secret identities of many. At one point Buckley, along with many other famous names (including Donald Trump’s) publicly testified in favor of his gay confidante Roy Cohn, who was facing disbarment while simultaneously being eaten alive by AIDS.

Buckley had a sense for people, especially those he did not agree with. Not only did he know what set them off in fiery debates, inundating them with astute vocabulary, but he also knew how to otherwise connect with them. He enjoyed dinner with those who revealed to him their newfound Communist ideology, and only talked music with the various performers he invited to play in his home.

Some may say this talent was a weakness that only served to moderate Buckley’s young, passionate Conservative absolutism, but I disagree. Instead, it conditioned Mr. Buckley to be the leader the Right needed. It oversaw his evolution from a staunch Conservative personality to a compassionately Conservative person. Mr. Buckley would have been a victim of social pressure if he had chosen to purge any notions of immorality from his mind and blindly support his friends’ lifestyles. He would have chosen what to see in his friends. It was not that Mr. Buckley believed upholding sexual morality, for example, was no longer important, as did still stay true to his belief that acting on homosexual desires is a radical offense to God. Instead, Mr. Buckley changed how he chose to think, elevating the humanity of others, and seeing first ”the unity in the brotherhood of man” before acknowledging his own reservations, as Buckley himself said.

This is what the Conservative movement must continue to do. 

On that late Saturday afternoon, as my least favorite genres of music (pop and lazy DJ remixes) syncopated through the large speakers a few houses down, I watched the three youngest kids in our group frolic on my aunt’s lawn. That afternoon, I began to watch them differently. As my toddler-aged cousin followed the others around, I witnessed her hair glisten in the setting sun, and I heard her soft innocent voice call the names of the kids she was imitating. Of course, I was aware of the fact that her parents had experienced fertility issues, and that sadly, she had an older sibling who could not survive until nine months was up, but that paled in comparison to her presence that always brought my family such joy. I watched the elementary-aged son of a family friend of ours show the foster child how to drive his remote-controlled shark-shaped monster truck, the fact that he had been conceived in IVF due to his single mother’s desire for a child coming to mind, but taking a back seat. I may not have supported her decision, but I support his life. I watched the foster child play with her new friends as nicely as I have ever seen young children play. She is 6, turning 7 this month, and was adjusting well, considering she had only been under my aunt’s supervision for four days. Contrary to what I predicted I would do all day, I did not sit there and ponder the nature of her presence. Even after I learned she was being drugged into submission and deprived of any semblance of a genuine childhood on account of “ADHD,” I enjoyed a short dinner with her. 

Mr. Buckley not only taught the Conservative movement how to win battles, but how to win people. His legacy shows us today that above all other things, a Conservative should be tested on his spirit towards those around him.

Tested for the same spirit the Buckleys had, that caused Edward Allen, the son of their chief groundskeeper to “thank God for the Buckleys” “every time I look up at the heavens.” Tested for the same spirit Mr. Buckley had when he offered a glowing endorsement of Roy Cohn at his disbarment hearing (he is “absolutely impeccable”), and for the same spirit that drew even sworn political rivals like John Kerry, George McGovern, and Ed Koch to Mr. Buckley’s funeral at the end. 

That afternoon, I believe I had completed (and passed) my test for that spirit. As far as I was concerned, that foster child was my cousin now, because that was how I chose to see her.