Politics & Power Quote by James L. Buckley

Buckley’s line lands like a dry slap: it’s not really about God, it’s about us congratulating ourselves for mistaking a show of hands for a moral argument. The bite comes from the phrase “God, as a good democrat,” which turns a comforting American reflex - that legitimacy flows from majority rule - into a theological absurdity. By casting the divine as a voter who “will go along,” Buckley skewers the way modern societies launder anxiety about ethical change through procedural confidence. If enough people do it, we tell ourselves, it can’t be wrong.

The specific intent is conservative, but not merely partisan. Buckley is warning against moral relativism disguised as progress: the temptation to treat shifting norms as proof that the norms were foolish in the first place. “Rewrite the rule book” is doing double duty. It suggests cultural evolution, yes, but also a casual, even opportunistic editing of standards once anchored in religion, custom, or natural law.

The subtext is suspicion toward elite and popular consensus alike. “Openly engage” points to normalization: what was once hidden becomes visible, then defended, then celebrated, until the stigma itself is recoded as prejudice. Buckley’s implied target is the late-20th-century American habit of turning liberation into inevitability: history is moving, so disagreement must be retrograde.

Context matters: Buckley came from a generation of Cold War-era conservatives for whom mass culture, courts, and media could feel like a moral steamroller. The line is a warning flare about democratic confidence overreaching into metaphysics - and about the convenient belief that numbers can absolve.