Posted on 02/28/2008 9:59:05 PM PST by kellynla
PRAGUE -- Whenever Bill Buckley was profiled in the media, he was usually pinned firmly to words such as "impish" and "gadfly."
It is easy to understand why. He was a wit - and a reckless wit at that. Asked what he would first do if elected mayor of New York in 1965, he replied: "Demand a recount."
Bores cling to the consoling thought that such a sharp wit must also be frivolous and ineffectual, but Bill was one of the most effectual men of our time. He sailed several oceans. He played the harpsichord. He authored (annually on his Swiss vacation) a successful series of Cold War thrillers starring the American equivalent to James Bond. He wrote a play - ah, but he also saw it accepted and staged. He served as a U.S. diplomat at the United Nations. He wrote three newspaper columns a week for 40 years. He was briefly with the CIA in the early 1950s. He wrote several conventional novels late in life. He was the politely skewering host of the PBS program Firing Line until just a few years ago. And everything he did, he transformed into a series of books both amusing and wise.
To the dull and sober, such versatility is further evidence of unseriousness. And it is true that on a few, very few, matters - his clavichord playing, perhaps his CIA spying - Bill acted on G. K. Chesterton's principle that if a thing is worth doing, it's worth doing badly. Most other activities, however, he performed with high professionalism and apparently effortless superiority.
He also had his share of luck. How likely is it that a future columnist, then 12, would be passing Heston aerodrome outside London at the very moment in 1938 that Neville Chamberlain returned from Germany waving his piece of paper and proclaiming "peace in our time"? His father stopped to see what was going on - and Bill was firmly hostile to appeasement of any kind thereafter. Coincidence?
All of these roles and activities were secondary, however, to the great achievement of Bill's life: his shaping the conservative movement that put Ronald Reagan in the White House, revived the American spirit, created the information capitalism that now bestrides the world, and won the Cold War. Three close friends deserve the credit for this historical turnabout - Milton Friedman, Mr. Reagan himself, and Bill. His role was not the least of them.
First, at the young age of 30, he established the National Review. By reconciling brilliant but quarrelsome and more senior talents, he shaped a new philosophy for conservatives wandering disconsolately in New Deal America.
Second, he used the magazine to reconcile the quarrelsome factions of conservatism - economic libertarians, moral traditionalists, foreign policy hawks - around this philosophy.
Third, he used his own celebrity and Firing Line to give confidence to conservatives nationwide by taking on eminent liberals in debate and dispatching them with better arguments and better jokes. When conservatives saw Bill jab the air with the point of his pencil or devastate a guest with some witty epigram, they would feel, perhaps for the first time: "They can never win."
And as long as Bill was alive, they never could.
When news of his death reached me, I was in Prague. It was suitable and perhaps comforting place to hear such sad news, since Prague is one of the great European cities Bill helped to liberate from communism. Eighteen years ago, he and I were here on a National Review Institute political tour of Eastern Europe. This was only a year after the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the "velvet revolutions."
Because of Bill's leadership in the anti-communist and conservative movements, everyone wanted to meet him. New ministers, heads of new political parties and editors of old national newspapers (with new editorial lines) told him of how they had read smuggled copies of the magazine during the years that the regime condemned them to work as stokers and quarrymen.
He took it all very humbly, even a little quizzically. It was as if he didn't quite believe that he had blown a trumpet and, lo, the walls of communism had tumbled down - "literally," to use a word whose misuse he occasionally denounced. He was a great man and a figure of great historical significance. But he wanted to slip quietly away to avoid the presidents and prime ministers rushing up to ask for his autograph.
And sometimes his wit spoke volumes. My favorite Buckley quote is, "I'd rather be governed by the first 500 names in the Boston phone book than the entire staff and faculty at Harvard."
As Liberal as Boston is, I would also.
Rush should fill Buckley’s shoes, at least you can stand to listen to him....BTW, when Rush would do his stammering Buckley impressions, I had to turn him off too.
“velvet revolutions” — heard of it but no idea of what it means.
No intended disrespect to Rush, but no way he or any other current conservative fills Bill Buckley's shoes. In 1965 as a H,S, senior my English teacher brought me and tw friends to meet Bill. He is still the most intelligent and elegant person I've ever met, And I've met Antonin Scalia. Rush? No Way.
No intended disrespect to Rush, butNo intended disrespect to Buckley but because of his stammering I couldn't listen to him long enough to know how intelligent he was.
It's not only about what they say, it's also about how they say it. If you want to spread the word you have to have somebody that can deliver...If you don't think delivery is important, then you haven't heard about Barac Obama...He's all about delivery.
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