Reflecting on the Revolution in France in his classic 1790 treatise, the Anglo-Irish politician and philosopher Edmund Burke wrote that “whenever our neighbor’s house is on fire, it cannot be amiss for the engines to play a little on our own.” More than a century later, William F. Buckley Sr.—father and namesake of the conservative American icon—took a similar view of the Mexican Revolution (1911-20), sharing Burke’s pragmatic approach to government as well as his concerns about liberal contagion. But unlike Burke, who observed the happenings in France from the safety of England, Buckley was a participant in the drama that unfolded in Mexico, where he had moved in 1908. This is the subject of “William F. Buckley Sr.: Witness to the Mexican Revolution, 1908-1922,” a fascinating if uneven book by the independent historian John A. Adams Jr.
