Daily Inspiration Quote by William F. Buckley, Jr.

Buckley’s line lands like a polished provocation: it normalizes hierarchy by treating power not as a moral problem but as a job description. The trick is the phrasing. “Not a sign of arrogance” pretends to rebut a petty accusation (the king is too full of himself) while quietly dodging the bigger democratic charge (the king has no right to rule at all). Buckley collapses legitimacy into function: a king rules because ruling is what kings do. Circular, yes, but rhetorically efficient - it swaps argument for inevitability.

The subtext is classic Buckley: a patrician skepticism toward modern egalitarian guilt, dressed up as common sense. He’s not defending tyranny so much as defending the idea that authority can be proper without constantly apologizing for itself. In that frame, calling rule “arrogant” becomes a category error, like blaming a judge for judging. The line also smuggles in an old conservative instinct: order isn’t self-generating; it requires someone authorized to say no, to rank, to decide.

Context matters. Buckley spent a career needling liberal pieties and re-legitimizing the language of tradition, competence, and “natural” leadership for postwar America. He knew that modern audiences flinch at crowns, so he uses “king” as a high-contrast metaphor: if even monarchy can be described as mere duty, then lesser forms of authority - elites, institutions, gatekeepers - can be recast as necessary rather than suspect. The sting is its calmness. It doesn’t beg you to love kings; it asks you to stop acting surprised they act like kings.