Book Review: Living on Fire, Life of Brent Bozell

Brent Bozell was a radical. He took no half-measures in all that he did and believed - as a husband, father, conservative, and Catholic. He began his public life as a conservative debater while at Yale; he was the bane of Communist sympathizers everywhere. He was a backer of Joseph McCarthy and Barry Goldwater, even ghostwriting Goldwater's Conscience of a Conservative. He was close friends with William Buckley, wrote frequently for National Review, and even tried his hand at politics.

Yet above all, he was Catholic, so much so that his Catholicism eventually consumed his conservatism. He founded the journal Triumph and became something of a theocrat. His anti-Americanism was particularly pronounced: America was "a vast moral and spiritual wasteland… [the American credo held that] salvation comes from democracy, education, a nifty standard of living, and a stockpile of nuclear bombs… non-Catholic America is morally disgusting. It is a panorama of evils: gay liberation, women's liberation, pills, pornography, sterility and murdered babies." Such writing alienated Bozell from the conservative movement and eventually causedTriumph's demise.

I had a hard time sympathizing with Bozell. While I agree with many of his ideas, his tone tended to be condescending and pugnacious. Moreover, his ideal of Catholic sovereignty in America was patently unrealistic. Yet as he grew older he also became more human. He struggled mightily with manic depression. And he emerged from this depression as a man of mercy, ardent to carry out Christ's corporal works of mercy to those in need. Not the most cheerful read, but a fascinating study all the same.