His interview with Jesse Jackson was classic. They couldn’t understand each other at all.
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.
I always liked his debates with John Kenneth Galbraith. I think they enjoyed insulting each other more than debating.
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.
This article is crap. Based on a false premise.
Buckley? A conservative?
(insert eye roll here)
He’d be ashamed today.
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.
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.
We miss Buckley, Kirk, and the rest.
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.
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.
Champion of aesthetic conservatism.
He wanted to be right. Unfortunately, the Left wanted to win and they did.
We need men of the Right who want to beat the Left, not to play mind games.
People today don’t understand how fortunate they are to have such a wide range of conservative media available to them - TV, internet, print, all any hour of the day or night, over and over again if you want it - I lived back in the day when Buckley’s “Firing Line” - one hour each week - was the only breath of conservative fresh air we could look forward to - he kept a lot of us going......