promote their book
McCarthy and His Enemies in 1954 Bozell was a consistent supporter of Senator
Joseph McCarthy, teaming up with fellow
National Review associate
William F. Buckley Jr. in 1954 to write a ringing defense of him in
McCarthy and His Enemies. Bozell and Buckley defined
McCarthyism, the political movement associated with McCarthy, as “a movement around which men of good will and stern morality can close ranks.” Bozell joined McCarthy's staff, shortly after
Roy Cohn left, and wrote McCarthy's defense speech before the
U.S. Senate committee that would censure him, as well as a series of policy speeches through at least 1956. In 1958, Bozell ran for the
Maryland House of Delegates but lost. After this defeat he proposed the formation of a new political party at one of the editors' evening meetings in
New York; the idea was summarily rejected by the more
fusionist editors Buckley and
James Burnham. In 1964 he ran in the Republican primary against incumbent liberal Republican Congressman (and later U.S. Senator)
Charles Mathias for Maryland's 6th Congressional District. Bozell lost to Mathias 70.2% to 25.9% with the rest of the vote going to a third candidate. He later worked as a speechwriter for Senator
Barry Goldwater, for whom he ghostwrote the 1960 book
The Conscience of a Conservative. He was a founding member of
Young Americans for Freedom. In 1960, he took his family to Spain for the first time, making him absent from the
Palm Beach decision of Buckley, Goldwater,
Russell Kirk, and
William Baroody Sr. to freeze out the
John Birch Society from the conservative movement. Kirk inferred that Bozell would not have had any reason to be opposed to the decision, but, in fact, he, along with
Frank Meyer and
William Rusher, protested the exclusion of the Society from the conservative movement.
Triumph In 1965, he moved his family to
Spain purportedly because "you breathed the Catholic thing there" and, along with
Frederick Wilhelmsen and
William Marshner among others, founded the Catholic magazine
Triumph in 1966 which Bozell intended to be a bulwark of Catholic orthodoxy and a sort of
National Review for Catholics. The magazine featured contributions from
Russell Kirk (a Catholic convert),
Christopher Dawson,
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn,
John Lukacs,
Thomas Molnar,
Jeffrey Hart,
Sir Arnold Lunn,
Charles Journet,
Rousas John Rushdoony, a
Calvinist, and initially received an enthusiastic endorsement by Buckley in the pages of
National Review. However, the relationship between Bozell and his brother-in-law had already begun to sour; in March 1966, when Buckley wrote a column warning that Catholics should not try to seek legislation that would impose on others their belief that abortion is murder, Bozell wrote a letter to the editors of
National Review protesting that the column "reeks of relativism...Mr. Buckley writes in this instance as though he had never heard of the
natural law." Buckley was stung by the letter and had composed a bitter reply, but decided against sending it. In 1966, Bozell published
The Warren Revolution, a scholarly critique of the
Supreme Court of the United States under Chief Justice
Earl Warren. Despite his relocation to Spain, Bozell remained conscious of U.S. politics; he opposed the
Nixon administration, writing in
Triumph that, in supporting
Nixon's candidacy in 1968, the conservative movement had "ceased to be an important political force in America." Buckley later changed his mind and agreed with Bozell on this subject. He later repudiated his support for the American experiment itself in his own book
The Warren Revolution. Buckley summarized Bozell's new position as, "[Bozell's thesis now is that the republic of the
Founding Fathers was doomed because of their failure to adequately enthrall the city of man to the City of God." Bozell himself felt estranged from the United States in general and in particular the conservative movement in which he was once a rising star, denouncing conservatism as "an inadequate substitute for Christian politics." Especially following the Supreme Court's
Roe v. Wade decision, Bozell began to see the United States as a force of evil greater in magnitude to the
Soviet Union and denounced both
democratic capitalism and
communism.
Triumph idealized
Francoist Spain, criticized the events leading up to the
Vietnam War, including the U.S.-backed assassination of
South Vietnam's Catholic president,
Ngo Dinh Diem, and the conduct of the conflict thereafter as irreconcilable with
Just War Theory. He opposed
chemical warfare and
nuclear deterrence, which he had once supported, and identified his economic views with those of
distributism. Friends of Bozell blamed his increasing devotion to Catholicism, his dissolving relationship with Buckley, who was reportedly traumatized by the loss of his closest friend, and his evolving political views on mental deterioration.
Neal B. Freeman said, "Brent simply started to fade and you could see it happening, but you couldn't do anything about it."
John Judis wrote in
William Buckley Jr.: Patron Saint of the Conservatives that, "the breakup of their relationship probably could not have occurred ten years prior or ten years hence. It was very much a product of the tumultuous sixties, which exhilarated Buckley and which lifted him to new heights of celebrity, but in which more troubled, less stable souls like Bozell capsized." After founding
Triumph, Bozell also founded the Society of the Christian Commonwealth whose educational arm, the Christian Commonwealth Institute, headed by
Warren Carroll, conducted annual classes, lectures, and seminars at the
El Escorial in Spain. The entirety of the original faculty of and many of the donors to
Christendom College had attended the program in Spain and were subscribers to
Triumph. Carroll later remarked in his obituary for Bozell, "In a very fundamental sense, Christendom College was a
Triumph enterprise." Bozell was a staunch supporter of
Pope Paul VI and strongly defended his condemnation of
birth control in the encyclical
Humanae Vitae but disagreed with the pope's decisions regarding the
liturgy. Since its founding,
Triumph teetered on the verge of collapse and Bozell was planning on shutting the magazine down until Patricia Bozell attended a forum at the
Catholic University of America featuring radical
feminist Ti-Grace Atkinson in March 1971. When Atkinson said the
Virgin Mary was more "used" than if she had participated in a sexual conception, Patricia attempted to slap her and her hand hit the microphone and she was escorted out. When Bozell heard what his wife had done, he stood up and bellowed, "To Hell with Catholic University!"
Anti-abortion activity In June 1970, three years before the
Roe v. Wade decision and when abortion was illegal in most of United States outside California, Washington, D.C., and New York, Brent and Patricia Bozell led the first "Operation Rescue" mission to try by direct action to negotiate with administrators at
George Washington University Hospital Clinic in
Washington, D.C., where abortion was permitted for the mental well-being of the mother. Bozell asked clinic administrators to stop the abortions and, if they would not do so, to appoint a Catholic nurse to administer Baptism and prepare the remains for Catholic burial after each abortion. Bozell and about 230 others met at a local church for a "Funeral
Mass for
the Holy Innocents" celebrated by four priests. The rally afterwards included a Pro Life student group from the
University of Dallas,
Los Hijos de la Tormenta ("The Sons of Thunder"), who were dressed in
khaki and
red berets (red berets being worn by the
Carlist Basques, whom Bozell admired), wore
rosaries, and carried
papal flags. One speaker declared: "America ... you are daggering to death your unborn of tomorrow. The very cleanliness of your sterilized murder gives off the stench of death." After the rally, Bozell, donning a red beret himself, approached the clinic with seven others. Buckley denounced Bozell's actions, declaring in
National Review that "the Sons of Thunder have moved precious few of the unconvinced over to their side." Though
Triumph closed two years later, its staff and Bozell remained active, including the organization of the first
March for Life. The cover of ''Triumph's
March 1973 issue after the Roe v. Wade'' decision was solid black except for a small logo, a white cross, and the words "For the children". == Personal life ==