WFB

I have been meaning to post William F. Buckley's response to the New York Times Book Review critic Alan Wolf regarding his review of Dinesh D'Souza's new book "The Enemy at Home". This is classic WFB and he is, indeed, the "commander-in-chief of decent and honorable American conservatives".

To the Editor:

Alan Wolfe denounces “The Enemy at Home: The Cultural Left and Its Responsibility for 9/11” (Jan. 21), the new book by Dinesh D’Souza (I haven’t read it and I reject its thesis). That’s O.K. — D’Souza has written nearly a dozen books, and you lose some. But in a startling final paragraph the reviewer calls on all the world not only to reject the thesis, but to deplore the ventilation of it. He writes, “I look forward to the reaction from decent conservatives and Republicans who will, if they have any sense of honor, distance themselves, quickly and cleanly, from the Rishwain research scholar at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University.”

D’Souza is a lively and curious, independent and scholarly young man — I had the pleasure of writing the introduction to his first book, an essay on medieval theologians, written months after his graduation from Dartmouth. As commander-in-chief of decent and honorable American conservatives, I take this occasion to overrule Wolfe’s reprobation, and to advise him to curb his inclination to act as universal censor for the book-reading world.

William F. Buckley Jr.