Death of a Christian Knight

Communism had no greater foe than the Catholic Church. From the time of the Reformation and, later, the period of the French Revolution, Rome understood that its battle with those who marched under a red flag posed what is nowadays called "an existential threat" to its existence. Although liberty, equality and fraternity had been put to rest in 1815, two hundred years of seething ferment in the West ultimately produced the Russian Revolution and the very real possibility of the old guard being entirely eradicated around the globe.





Now, not quite twenty years since the demise of what some might call the great socialist experiments, those of all political coloration have begun to come to terms with what appears to be the victory of "free enterprise" in every corner of the globe with the exception of such roaring mice as Cuba, North Korea and the Islamic protestors against modernism. Most of us were taken by surprise. Prior to the fall of the Berlin Wall, who on the left would have, could have predicted the demise of communism? Yet, when it occurred there was no shortage of those who would make claim to having foreseen its inevitability. The New York Times celebrated the occasion by giving space on its first page first to one of its own, the late R.W. Apple, who called it the greatest historical event since the revolutions of 1848. Then, upping the ante, the Times gave the same space to Solzhenitsyn, who proclaimed that what we were witnessing was not merely the fall of the Soviet Union but the demise of the whole romantic revoltionary tradition, that what events illustrated was that the ideals of the French Revolution of 1789--liberty, fraternity and equality--were at bottom incompatible.





There have been many candidates for hero of the counter-revolution--from Pope John Paul II to Ronald Reagan, from Milton Friedman to Margaret Thatcher--but many Americans will harbor the not so secret suspicion that but for William F. Buckley and his influence, the hammer and sickel might still be waving above red square and half the people on the planet.



Bill Buckley was indeed the ultimate Christian knight, so much so, in fact, that I suspect he knew the truth about himself and his movement. He was too much of a gentleman to tell a really big lie.

The truth is that none of these figures can truly take credit for the victory of capitalism. That capitalism wins all of its battles through the reckless application of capital itself. Money talks.