Book: Up from Liberalism

Overview
William F. Buckley Jr.'s Up from Liberalism (1959) is a briskly argued conservative critique of mid-20th-century American liberalism. Buckley contends that the dominant liberal policies of the New Deal and postwar era have fostered dependency, weakened civic institutions, and expanded bureaucratic power at the expense of individual liberty and moral responsibility. He frames his case as an intellectual and moral challenge to the prevailing political consensus, urging a recovered respect for limited government, free markets, and traditional social virtues.
The pamphlet articulates an early, programmatic vision for modern conservatism, combining political argument with cultural and philosophical claims. Buckley writes with polemical energy and wit, aiming both to diagnose contemporary ills and to propose a coherent alternative rooted in constitutionalism and localism.

Central arguments
At the heart of Buckley's critique is the claim that liberal social policy substitutes governmental largesse for personal initiative. He argues that welfare programs and bureaucratic interventions, however well-intentioned, create a class of dependents and erode the habits of self-reliance that sustain civic life. The result, he says, is not only economic inefficiency but a corrosion of character and community bonds.
Buckley also attacks the gubernatorial reach of centralized planning and administrative power. He sees an expanding managerial state that usurps responsibilities better held by families, churches, and voluntary institutions, and warns that this concentration stifles freedom and pluralism.

Diagnosis of causes
Buckley locates the problem in an intellectual shift away from classical liberal principles toward a technocratic and moral paternalism. He faults an elite consensus, academics, progressive politicians, and certain journalists, for promoting policy solutions that prioritize amelioration through bureaucracy over the cultivation of civic virtue. That consensus, he argues, has redefined "liberal" in ways that disconnect language from the older liberal emphasis on liberty and limited government.
He also identifies cultural factors: a growing faith in experts, a declining deference to traditional authorities, and a political class incentivized to expand programs for electoral advantage. Together these forces produce a self-perpetuating system of dependence and centralized control.

Prescriptions and program
Buckley offers a compact conservative program: devolution of authority, restraint of federal power, tax policies that encourage enterprise, and a reinvigoration of civil society. He calls for rolling back bureaucratic expansion, restoring constitutional checks, and redirecting social help through local voluntary networks rather than sprawling federal agencies. Moral rejuvenation, he insists, requires institutions that foster responsibility, religion, local civic groups, and family, alongside economic structures that reward initiative.
His practical recommendations are less technocratic than moral: cultivate character, preserve pluralism, and defend the institutional scaffolding that enables freedom. Buckley frames conservative politics as a defense of ordered liberty rather than mere reaction.

Style and impact
Up from Liberalism is concise, combative, and rhetorically polished, blending philosophical claims with sharp cultural critique. Buckley's voice helped crystallize mid-century conservative intellectual identity by offering an accessible synthesis of ideas that resisted both collectivist planning and laissez-faire superficiality.
The pamphlet contributed to the ideological groundwork of the modern conservative movement, influencing activists, commentators, and later policymakers who sought to limit bureaucracy and revive civic institutions. Its appeal lies less in exhaustive policy detail than in its clear, principled challenge to the assumptions of postwar liberalism and its call for a politics rooted in responsibility, localism, and restrained government.