Politics & Power Quote by William F. Buckley, Jr.

Buckley’s line is a neat piece of Cold War conservatism: crisp, confident, and quietly accusatory. “Usurpatory government” isn’t just “big government.” It’s government as a thief - power taken, not granted. The word choice matters because it frames politics as a perpetual attempted coup conducted through paperwork, agencies, and good intentions. That’s Buckley’s signature move: elevate a policy dispute into a moral drama about legitimacy.

“Assertive citizenry” is equally loaded. He doesn’t say “informed” or “engaged.” Assertive implies pushback, friction, refusal. It’s civic life as resistance training. The subtext is that passivity is complicity; the state expands not only because it wants to, but because the public lets it. Buckley’s target isn’t merely Washington; it’s the comfortable middle-class tendency to outsource responsibility to experts, courts, and bureaucracies.

The rhetorical trick is that “defense” is framed as a civic posture rather than an institutional design. Constitutions, checks and balances, elections - all are treated as insufficient without a temperament of skepticism in the populace. That fits Buckley’s role as a journalist-impresario of a movement: National Review conservatism sold itself as an insurgency against elite consensus, especially the post-New Deal managerial state.

Context sharpens the intent. Buckley wrote in an era when “freedom” was the language of both anti-communism abroad and anti-statism at home. The line doubles as a warning and a recruiting slogan: if you fear usurpation, stop waiting for saviors and start behaving like a counterweight.