Did William F. Buckley believe that political processes could render a nation culturally affluent?
Jeth Fogg
Arts, Culture, & Scholarship Editor, The Buckley Beacon
In a 1966 essay called “The Politics of Beauty,” William F. Buckley ‘50 explores the aesthetic quality of architecture and why aesthetics is a matter of political concern. For Buckley, the “repose of [one’s] soul” necessitates an aesthetic experience of “external harmony.” Buckley offers childhood memories that reveal encounters with beauty as constitutive experiences for his personal development.
In the 1960s, “affluence” came to epitomize American society as politicians were coming to terms with what it meant to cultivate human flourishing in various areas of political relevance. Buckley, while he sought to elevate the nation’s soul through aesthetically pleasing infrastructure, was skeptical that leveraging federal organizations is the suitable means to regulate aesthetic culture. In his estimation, national agencies that seek to hone an affluent citizenry exceed the purview of the federal government. Instead, Buckley contended that local municipalities should regulate architectural aesthetics through various zoning policies. William F. Buckley’s position on the primacy of communal initiatives in cultivating beautiful neighborhoods epitomizes his broader political claim that the federal government should play a minimal role in shaping cultural life in the United States.
William F. Buckley frames his essay on architectural aesthetics and politics with a striking vignette from his childhood. In the words of Buckley biographer Sam Tanehaus, “Everything [Buckley] learned, and all he became, began at home” with his father, William F. Buckley Sr. In his essay, Buckley Jr. recollects a series of aesthetic experiences growing up in Sharon, Connecticut: his childhood hometown which his father selected as their residence “for the simple reason of its extraordinary beauty.” Buckley narrates a childhood defined by a “continuing confrontation with beauty,” from his family’s refurbished antebellum vacation home flanked by floral terraces to the monumental “Great Elm” abiding on their property. For Buckley, these childhood encounters with beauty were edifying experiences that seemed to“communicate something to our lawless brood” – an endearing epithet for his nine siblings. Buckley does not specify exactly what “something” was communicated, but he knows that it induced the repose of his soul. His underlying assumption, then, is that encountering beauty is an existential necessity that engenders human flourishing.
Following his aestheticized account of a childhood steeped in beauty, Buckley shifts to discussing a consumerist innovation that seemed an affront to not only the New England landscape, but to beauty itself: the billboard. He recalls the 1930s that saw “the irruptions of the billboards” portending “garish announcements of their magical contributions to modern commerce” situated alongside the Hudson River. Much to his father’s chagrin, a gaudy red Coca-Cola billboard profaned the Connecticut countryside near their residence. The Buckley family preferred to imbibe the beauty of the New England treescape rather than the sugary cola. Even if he could not articulate it at thirteen years old, young William wondered what it meant for human beings to flourish in a society where consumerism emerged as the norm. Thus, the Buckley children waged an iconoclast campaign against Coca-Cola, advancing “with mops and a bucket of white paint, and streaked the sign into unrecognition,” – a just “venture in beatification” in young Bill’s eyes. Alas, within a few days, the consumerist idolaters triumphed, erecting a new Coca-Cola sign. “Unlike Hercules,” Buckley quipped, “we were not equipped to cut off the Hydra’s head.” At this point of departure, Buckley transitions from his account of childhood to a discussion about the politics of beauty, “concerning which architects, and their supervisors, are enjoined to care about more and more.”
William F. Buckley’s metaphysical convictions about beauty’s effect on the soul require a political justification for its upkeep. Since “attractive external surroundings can mean a great deal,” it follows that “something ought to be done about it.” Beauty, then, becomes a political matter. Buckley defines the question at the crux of his essay as: who gets to decide what is beautiful? In an amusing anecdote, Buckley belittles the “white neo-classical blah” Congress chose as its House Office Building, insinuating that Congress is a misguided arbiter of what is beautiful. Congress’s aesthetic palate, Buckley intimates, is deficient. The question remains – who gets to play referee in deciding what constitutes beautiful architecture? Far from an aesthetic subjectivist who concedes that “all tastes are equally defensible,” Buckley affirms the superiority of some people’s perceptions, but nevertheless flags the omnipresent dilemma that afflicts democracy: deciding “whose eyes are operatively better.” Even among experts, nobody agrees about what is beautiful. Upon their completions, both “Westminster Abbey and Chartres,” Buckley retorts, “were respectively a catastrophe and a thing so sublime as might have been designed by God Himself.” Only time could illuminate the majesty of these structures. Since the political will cannot consistently render beautiful buildings, Buckley turns to the local level for a solution through city planning.
Buckley appeals to municipal authority as the suitable means to regulate architecture locally. He reveres the “municipal coordination” responsible for zoning plans, but nevertheless admits that “it is… a tricky business to regulate, [o]n behalf of an overarching aesthetic idea, what a man may build on his own plot of land.” This issue of aesthetic standards, Buckley admits, has multiplied with America’s transition from a predominantly rural to urban society. Regardless, Buckley would “be for taking that risk” of municipal regulation in deference to aesthetic harmony. In fact, in matters that implicate natural beauty, Buckley condones the “occasional excesses” of regulatory authorities in a modern age “that very much needs to be reminded of the factor of beauty, natural and manmade.” The question remains: at what point does regulation impinge on one’s liberty to build a property as he sees fit? How far can municipal zoning extend, lest its “doctrine of congruity… have the effect of discouraging those elegant variations” of organic beauty? Buckley lends a great deal of credence to a “disciplined individuality” wherein “breathtaking mutations” in architecture can emerge. Therefore, he entrusts regulation affairs to the discretion of the community rather than the government, which “ought to remain primarily negative” rather than operate as an architectural curator. As a remedy, Buckley encourages grassroots beautifying enterprises that emanate “from the genes of the community.”
In his remarks about beautifying American architecture, William F. Buckley endorses democratizing high culture and promoting an affluent society, but not at the expense of orthodox political positions. Buckley invokes American architect Edward Durrell Stone, who laments the fascist political bind of the Italians but marvels that they “hear opera on every street corner and… walk among fabulous things of beauty” as ordinary citizens who venerate practitioners of the arts. According to Stone, the Venetians tend to the “well-being of the spirit,” and thus “were a lot better off” than the uncultivated citizens of Akron, Ohio. “Ho hum,” Buckley rejoins. “To compare Venice to Akron,” he insists, “is not only stupid, but outrageously irrelevant.” No caliber of cultural affluence can surmount the deleterious political effects of communism, the chief ideological vice that Buckley positioned himself against as the coalition builder of a new American conservatism.
William F. Buckley’s ruminations on the politics of architecture reveal a sweeping question of the 1960s: can politics render a nation culturally affluent? If it can, then how? Buckley concedes that “nobody knows.” Despite this concession, Buckley champions proactively “[making] the effort” to inculcate an appreciation for beauty in American culture – especially through grassroots initiatives that seek to beautify American neighborhoods. Just as Buckley begins by narrating a childhood marked by a “continuing confrontation with beauty” thanks to his father, he concludes by harkening back to his “father’s soul as he walked among the azaleas, or about the streets of the beautiful towns and cities of the world.” For Buckley, no measure of federal architectural oversight can rival witnessing his father’s bliss as he gazes upon the majestic Great Elm on his Connecticut property.
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Bibliography
Buckley, William F. “The Politics of Beauty.” Essay Draft. 1966. Part III, Box 44. Manuscripts and Archives Reading Room, Sterling Memorial Library.
Tanenhaus, Sam. Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America. Random House, 2025.