Toasting the “Intellectual Godfather” of the Conservative Movement

Townhall.com ^ | February 28, 2018 | Ed Feulner

[Disambiguator]

His interview with Jesse Jackson was classic. They couldn’t understand each other at all.

[lee martell]

Only 10 years since his death? It seems like 30.
So much has changed in major parts of the American Culture.
The anonymous nature of the internet and later the far reach of smart phones were the main catylsts.

[Opinionated Blowhard]

I always liked his debates with John Kenneth Galbraith. I think they enjoyed insulting each other more than debating.

[Calvin Locke]

The two-parter at Harvard was great. I think Galbraith lost it in summing up his points, and I'm not referring to the debate.

That's not to leave out the other icons of the left. Timothy Leary, Woody Allen (May have been on Allen's show), Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, etc.

[Tilted Irish Kilt]

(From the article):" Buckley continually reminded us that real conservatism is based on tradition
and the cumulative wisdom of those on whose shoulders we stand."

That is one of the reasons why 'liberal/progressives' tear down statues, invade the school systems, and rewrite history,
because anyone who studies history knows of the folly and fallacy of progressive/socialist politics and espoused economic utopia.

[the_Watchman]

God’s of the Copybook Headings - Rudyard Kipling
(second verse)
We were living in trees when they met us. They showed us each in turn
That Water would certainly wet us, as Fire would certainly burn:
But we found them lacking in Uplift, Vision and Breadth of Mind,
So we left them to teach the Gorillas while we followed the March of Mankind.

[Responsibility2nd]

This article is crap. Based on a false premise.

Buckley? A conservative?

(insert eye roll here)

[Responsibility2nd]

The Buckley/Vidal arguments were great too.

So much so, they made a documentary over them.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Best_of_Enemies_(2015_film)

Good movie. Must watch.

[elhombrelibre]

He’d be ashamed today.

[Tilted Irish Kilt]

William F Buckley,Jr. interviewing candidate Ronald Reagan

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lTyZAul60ok

[Mariner]

Buckley was but the father of modern Conservative Orthodoxy. The origin of the modern, corrupt Republican Party.

You know, the fools who accepted into their fold the Neocons.

Those who advocate Open Borders, Endless War and Free Trade.

Those who are drunk on the blood of the American Soldier and American worker.

The real father of American Conservatism is Russell Kirk.

[pabianice]

Fox has become unwatchable as people on different sides of an issue scream at one another and shout over one another. Why they don’t have a cough-button at the moderator’s hand is unfathomable.

[generally]

is it on youtube or somewhere? I’d love to see that.

[Kaslin]

Aren’t you in the wrong link, what does the article to do with FOX News?

[TBP]

We miss Buckley, Kirk, and the rest.

[Disambiguator]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKLWzj29vl4

[Pelham]

Intellectual Godfather?

C’mon, get serious.

Wm Buckley was an important organizing figure in the post WWII conservative renaissance... and he loved to find a good $5 word for Firing Line... but I defy you to name a vital book or essay that he wrote. He wrote spy novels. And his contributions to NR in the 70s and 80s were meager.

He did surround himself with some great minds at NR and gave them a place to get published... at least until he helped wreck it by turning it over the loons that have made it the farce that it is today.

[Pelham]

“The real father of American Conservatism is Russell Kirk.”

Kirk’s seminal The Conservative Mind was published before NR began, proving your point. And he was there at the beginning of National Review.

I didn’t start reading NR until the 70s... but it introduced me to some real conservative intellectuals who had come before or were still writing... James Burnham, Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, Stephen Tonsor, Mel Bradford, Robert Nisbet, Richard Weaver...

[x]

Buckley was disillusioned and melancholy in his last years. He liked being a maverick, an outsider, a gadfly. He liked being part of a small band that took on the rest of the world. As the conservative movement became larger, more widely accepted, and more powerful, he missed the old days.

In the Fifties and the Sixties, Buckley really was a dissenter and a non-conformist. The American Establishment and the intellectual mainstream looked down on free market conservative ideas. Buckley brought those ideas into the mainstream. They weren't laughed at or dismissed any more (for a while, anyway).

If what resulted wasn't what you or I might want, that doesn't lessen the achievement. It does indicate how hard it is to be both the moralistic outsider and the Establishment insider, and how hard it is to keep the esprit de corps of an idealistic activist minority with the responsibilities of power and respectability.