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Bill Buckley

Posted February 28, 2008 | 12:27 AM (EST)

Bill Buckley died Wednesday at 82 at his home in Connecticut. He was the most influential public intellectual of his generation in this country, maybe the world.

More than anyone, even Goldwater or Reagan, he was the father of modern conservatism, which was as much an intellectual as a political movement from 1955, when he founded the National Review, to 2000 when, under Bush and DeLay, the movement foundered in a sea of law breaking, war mongering and greed.

I got to know Buckley a little in the 1990s, debating him on his show, Firing Line. The show, the longest running with a single host in TV history, was civil, substantive and high minded; in short, the opposite of everything political talk shows have since become.

Off camera he was witty and articulate and also gracious and warm. A couple of years after the show went off the air I was running for Governor of Connecticut and bumped into him. He put his hand gently on my arm and said, softly, "I will vote against you with the deepest affection."

Buckley evolved over time from one who insisted the constitution forbade us from ending segregation, to one who supported civil rights laws and a national holiday for Martin Luther King.
But the underlying tenets of his thought, grounded in his Roman Catholicism and equally fervent beliefs in free republics and free markets, remained consistent.

It didn't always keep him close to the leaders of his party or of the movement he had led. On the National Review website, Buckley identified himself as a "libertarian conservative," a designation that separated him, ever so slightly, from the excesses of his crowd.

He saw Viet Nam as a mistake and parted company with Bush over Iraq. He sailed to international waters to try marijuana before calling for legalization. His lovely book Nearer My God reveals a real spirituality, as opposed to the hateful, hypocritical swill peddled as religion by his party. Sam Tanenhaus, author of a much anticipated biography, says Buckley couldn't bear Ann Coulter.

I first met Buckley a decade before our Firing Line encounters at a reception for an ailing Mike Harrington, socialist and author of 'The Other America.' Harrington truly regarded Buckley as a friend. So did John Kenneth Galbraith. So did most liberals Buckley knew.

Buckley loved debate. Unlike today's cowardly conservatives, he debated the best minds he could entice on to a stage. He never used his opponents as props or punch lines for fixed fights. He liked them. Loving his own ideas, not just hating theirs, left room for liking them.

What a long sad fall from Bill Buckley to Bill O' Reilly. I'm not part of the crowd that says if we can just get along everything will be alright. But I am part of the crowd that thinks learning to get along better will help.

To get out of Iraq or into a new health care system will require some hard fighting, but also some hard thinking and most of all reasoned arguments to persuade, if not the opposition, certainly the public.

If you want to see how far we are from having that kind of debate, watch an old episode of Firing Line and then watch a random hour of live cable television. That's how far.

Bill Buckley raised an army against a liberal establishment. Like Barry Goldwater, he often dissented in later years from a conservative establishment he helped create.

The political debate Buckley launched is over, many of its old categories defunct. To shape a new debate we'll need at least a few people with the intellect, humanity, civility and great good humor of Bill Buckley. I hope we find them.

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But having done a fair amount of reading about him since then and finding almost all of it positive, I am left to wonder why the "Conservatives" of today are so unlike Mr. Buckley, their erstwhile role model.

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Madtowntripper said:
I admit to not being terribly familiar with Buckley before his demise the other day. I find it quite enough of a punishment to have to deal with Conservatives today that I have no interest in dealing with Conservatives of the past.

But having done a fair amount of reading about him since then and finding almost all of it positive, I am left to wonder why the "Conservatives" of today are so unlike Mr. Buckley, their erstwhile role model.

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zappaisgod said:

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Madtowntripper said:
I admit to not being terribly familiar with Buckley before his demise the other day. I find it quite enough of a punishment to have to deal with Conservatives today that I have no interest in dealing with Conservatives of the past.

But having done a fair amount of reading about him since then and finding almost all of it positive, I am left to wonder why the "Conservatives" of today are so unlike Mr. Buckley, their erstwhile role model.

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He was nicer than us because he could afford to be. The rest of us are infantrymen, we have to do the dirty work of clubbing the baby seals. He just had to buy the coats. He was a general.

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we have to do the dirty work of clubbing the baby seals.

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I knew you were into that sorta thing! Thanks for confirming it.

...I'm calling PETA.

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zappaisgod said:
Civil? I'm as civil and more so than my opponents. I even insulted you civilly above. And subtly. You, on the other hand, tossed out a whiny insult worthy of a High School sophomore.

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Virus_with_Shoes said:
Why must you assume that everyone who doesn't agree with you is an idiot?

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"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse over loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a dictatorship."

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Democracy is the worst form of government in the World, except for all of the others that have been tried.

- Winston Fucking Churchill

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SlashOZ said:
because unlike buckley zappa has no sense of political decency, a key conservative value.

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I might be a good bit more decent if it wasn't a home invasion I was fighting off. And make no mistake it is a home invasion. Buckley had so much wealth he did it for purely humanitarian reasons. I'm fighting for my life. Well, property anyway.

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And who exactly are these evil forces conspiring to invade your home and steal your livelihood? Sounds a bit paranoid to me. Kinda reminds me of Ash from Evil Dead battling back the forces of the undead from his shack in the woods.



Your mentality is a perfect example of where fear-based, divisive politics have gotten us. I can tell you one thing for sure though- being nasty to a bunch of pinkos on an internet message board wont save your home.

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"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse over loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a dictatorship."

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zappaisgod said:
The home invaders are the socialists who want to tax me at 80% again. You know who you are. Fucking barbarians.

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Virus_with_Shoes said:
Best of luck.

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The multinational corporations surely do have the interest of the American people at heart, ya know?

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Steven L. Bachman said:
The recent passing of William F. Buckley, Jr. brought the expected torrent of praise-in-memoriam; exalting Buckley as the Intellectual Godfather of Modern Conservatism, and crediting him with providing the ideological ammunition for a generation of "conservative" thinkers, pundits, and politicians. Indeed, if there is one thing that Bill Buckley deserves great credit for, it is for leading the way in laying the intellectual foundations for the transitional road from the Old Right philosphical principles of individualism, to the overt and fawning collectivist statism of the modern-day conservative movement.

[...]

William F. Buckley clearly died having successfully completed his mission. Today, the conservative movement has completely abandoned all ties to it's anti-statist roots. To listen to Buckley's most prominent successors -- Limbaugh, Hannity, Coulter, Kristol, or Bill Cunningham -- you will not hear any substantive criticism of the workings of the welfare-warfare state. You will not hear any calls for the restoration of private property rights. You will not hear any calls for the abolition of the oppressive and tyrannical income tax -- indeed, every call for reductions in tax rates is predicated on the supply-sider argument that lower taxes serve to increase government revenue; hardly a convincing stance for someone who claims to advocate "limited government." And you certainly will not hear any calls for abolishing the massive macro-economic central planning, price-fixing, engine of inflation and regressive wealth redistribution called the Federal Reserve System. Indeed it's as if the Fed has been deemed sacrosanct, and any criticism leveled towards it may be ham-handedly cast aside as paranoid "conspiracy theory."

In short, you will not hear any truly substantive calls for decreasing the size, scope, and power of government from the gatekeepers of today's "conservative" movement. William F. Buckley, you may rest in satisfied Peace.

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zorbman said:
So your opinion of a man's life rests upon one article written about him?

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zorbman said:
Do you know he had significant disagreements with the modern conservative movement?

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SlashOZ said:
there is nothing inherently wrong with conservative ideals, especially when they are well articulated via WFB and other intellectual conservatives.

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zappaisgod said:

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Virus_with_Shoes said:
Why must you assume that everyone who doesn't agree with you is an idiot?

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Isn't it obvious?

Actually I figure that they are either stupid or have some self-interest in mind. Nobody who puts their hand out surprises me and if they can scam a bunch of politicians into buying their vote with handouts then they aren't so stupid. Except in the long term after they realize they have killed the golden goose.

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"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover that they can vote themselves generous gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates who promise the most benefits from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse over loose fiscal policy, (which is) always followed by a dictatorship."

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Murder rate per 100,000 residents in counties won: by Gore, 13.2; by Bush, 2.1.

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