If that article is accurate, then William Buckley is to be condemned. And if the entire Buckley family are wealthy jack asses, then so be it. I suppose all I can claim, is William Buckley’s good inspiration to me, regardless of how he was personally.
He died of emphysema, and is quoted as saying he hoped government would ban tobacco. That is an absurd rejection of his entire life’s thinking. It is a rejection of personal responsibility unworthy of him.
It does not change the point of my post. If anything, it corroborates it. Great wealth is spiritually debilitating.
Thank you for your post, it was interesting. I have been a NR subscriber since I was in my early 20s (that’s a long time!) and it greatly inspired me. WFB was always interesting to listen to, an incredibly smart man, but he was a man, and sometimes he was wrong (occasionally he would say something and I would go...WHAT?) Of course that doesn’t negate the effect he had on the American Conservative Movement. I always took that to mean that I really was thinking for myself, if I could occasionally disagree with Buckley, clearly I was NOT a mind numbed robot. :)
I was shocked when I read that article of his in National Review. I believe it was one of his last articles before he died. If I remember right, he said that those that don’t protest tobacco aren’t much better than the German manufacturers of Zyklon B, which is a total leap in logic. He blamed his wife’s death on her sixty-plus year smoking habit, although she didn’t die of a smoking related illness. His grief appeared to have robbed him of his logic at the end of his life. Also, if he really wrote that in his will, than he has fallen even further in my book.