William F. Buckley, 1925-2008

He was someone I disagreed with on almost everything and many of his ideas horrify me. Yet, in the wake of O'Reilly and Hannity, I do find myself missing Firing Line, to my own shock, which I suppose is something to be shocked by. In the NYT:

Mr. Buckley’s greatest achievement was making conservatism — not just electoral Republicanism, but conservatism as a system of ideas — respectable in liberal post-World War II America. He mobilized the young enthusiasts who helped nominate Barry Goldwater in 1964, and saw his dreams fulfilled when Reagan and the Bushes captured the Oval Office.

To Mr. Buckley’s enormous delight, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., the historian, termed him “the scourge of liberalism.”

In remarks at National Review’s 30th anniversary in 1985, President Reagan joked that he picked up his first issue of the magazine in a plain brown wrapper and still anxiously awaited his biweekly edition — “without the wrapper.”

“You didn’t just part the Red Sea — you rolled it back, dried it up and left exposed, for all the world to see, the naked desert that is statism,” Mr. Reagan said.

“And then, as if that weren’t enough,” the president continued, “you gave the world something different, something in its weariness it desperately needed, the sound of laughter and the sight of the rich, green uplands of freedom.”

Here, Buckley v. Vidal, and Buckley v. Chomsky:

Comments

[Nick Smyth]

Never heard of him, but Chomsky pwned him something fierce.

[Steven Augustine]

You just *know* Vidal will be taking a surreptitious trip to *that* grave with his dancing shoes on...

[Bryon]

I never watched "Firing Line," but so I'm having trouble reconciling Buckley's handling of Chomsky with something I just read by Hitchens (who I adore), who said that Buckley "really gave people time to develop an argument," he said. "These days, you often leave a show feeling like you forgot to say something; if you left 'Firing Line' feeling that way, it was your fault." (http://www.wwd.com/issue/article/123025)

[Bryon]

This adieu to Buckley from Alexander Cockburn seems more in line with what I saw in the Chomsky video:

http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn03012008.html

(Buckley piece is at the bottom of the article.)