William F. Buckley, Jr. - RIP

In the world of conservative thought, William F. Buckley, Jr. was like that girl after whom all who follow never seem to quite measure up.  Buckley, the architect of modern conservative thinking in America, died last week, and my feeling has long been that once you finished reading anything written by him, you’ve sort of been ruined for anyone who may follow.  He was, for me, one of a select few who do what it is they do in so mesmerizing a fashion that it is impossible to like them in any less than the most complete way.  I’ve often said about actor Anthony Hopkins that I would be OK with spending two hours watching him do nothing but sleep on film, such is my admiration for his skills; in very much the same way, Buckley’s intellect and command of the wonderful and rich English language were such that I might have been tempted to read a grocery list if I’d known it to be his work.

Buckley always struck most around him as a bit of a privileged snob; indeed, he would likely agree with that characterization, to some extent, but there were differences from others in that regard.  Both during and following his college years, he enlisted in the US Army and went to Office Candidate School, becoming a lieutenant, and also spent time in the CIA.  Additionally, he was not in any way above thrashing about, as appropriate: In what may be regarded as his most famous debate, that contra Gore Vidal at the 1968 Democratic National Convention (actually a series of fairly brief debates spread out over four nights), Buckley lashed back at Vidal’s reference to him as a “pro-crypto-Nazi” by testily responding, “Now listen, you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I’ll sock you in the goddamn face and you’ll stay plastered.” 

How can you not pine away for the days before sanitized, politically correct television…?     

Speaking of television, in my childhood home, the watching of it as a pastime was frowned upon.  We had one TV in the house when I was a boy, which meant that when television could be watched, I was invariably viewing the preferred selections of my parents.  One of those few, acceptable offerings from the “boob tube” was Buckley’s Firing Line, which ran for 33 years and became the longest-running program with a single host.  His Firing Line conversations, often debates, with such giants of American history like John Kenneth Galbraith, Benjamin Spock, and Ronald Reagan (to name just a ridiculously small sampling) were weekly love songs to the realm of intellectual discourse.

Buckley’s brand of commentary was always disinclined toward the lowbrow and the base, and that’s one of the things that made him so great.  Oh, sure, he could get angry, as he did in the above-referenced “moment of passion” with Vidal, but that’s not the same as being grotesque or boorish as a matter of course; his intellect, his humor, and his sesquipedalian tendencies (I couldn’t resist – this is, after all, a column about William Buckley) would never allow for such.  My grandmother used to say that profanity was a strong way of expressing a weak mind, and if we were to create a measuring stick from that idea, we’d be left with no conclusion about Mr. Buckley other than that his was the strongest mind of all.

There are those people about whom it is said that the world is just a bit more diminished with their passing.  So it is with William F. Buckley, Jr., who, in addition to all for which he is publicly known, was one who lived it as he spoke it; there was never even a hint of scandal that ever arose around the man, and when you consider how many throughout American politics and media surely salivated at the thought of Buckley falling to his knees in the face of some sort of impropriety, that none was even whispered about by anyone speaks volumes.  Buckley, American conservatism's best friend and greatest tactician, who was also the finest of men in his personal existence, has permanently ridden off into the sunset, which means that the sunlight in all the days that follow will be just a bit dimmer.  RIP.

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Robert G. Yetman, Jr. Contributing Editor - www.ChristianMoney.com