William F. Buckley Jr. in his office at National Review, about 1965.
Rest in Peace Mr. Buckley.
Posted on 02/27/2008 8:56:30 AM PST by NormsRevenge
NEW YORK - William F. Buckley Jr., the erudite Ivy Leaguer and conservative herald who showered huge and scornful words on liberalism as he observed, abetted and cheered on the right's post-World War II rise from the fringes to the White House, died Wednesday. He was 82.
His assistant Linda Bridges said Buckley was found dead by his cook at his home in Stamford, Conn. The cause of death was unknown, but he had been ill with emphysema, she said.
Editor, columnist, novelist, debater, TV talk show star of "Firing Line," harpsichordist, trans-oceanic sailor and even a good-natured loser in a New York mayor's race, Buckley worked at a daunting pace, taking as little as 20 minutes to write a column for his magazine, the National Review.
Yet on the platform he was all handsome, reptilian languor, flexing his imposing vocabulary ever so slowly, accenting each point with an arched brow or rolling tongue and savoring an opponent's discomfort with wide-eyed glee.
"I am, I fully grant, a phenomenon, but not because of any speed in composition," he wrote in The New York Times Book Review in 1986. "I asked myself the other day, `Who else, on so many issues, has been so right so much of the time?' I couldn't think of anyone."
Buckley had for years been withdrawing from public life, starting in 1990 when he stepped down as top editor of the National Review. In December 1999, he closed down "Firing Line" after a 23-year run, when guests ranged from Richard Nixon to Allen Ginsberg. "You've got to end sometime and I'd just as soon not die onstage," he told the audience.
"For people of my generation, Bill Buckley was pretty much the first intelligent, witty, well-educated conservative one saw on television," fellow conservative William Kristol, editor of the Weekly Standard, said at the time the show ended. "He legitimized conservatism as an intellectual movement and therefore as a political movement."
Fifty years earlier, few could have imagined such a triumph. Conservatives had been marginalized by a generation of discredited stands — from opposing Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal to the isolationism which preceded the U.S. entry into World War II. Liberals so dominated intellectual thought that the critic Lionel Trilling claimed there were "no conservative or reactionary ideas in general circulation."
Buckley founded the biweekly magazine National Review in 1955, declaring that he proposed to stand "athwart history, yelling `Stop' at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who urge it." Not only did he help revive conservative ideology, especially unbending anti-Communism and free market economics, his persona was a dynamic break from such dour right-wing predecessors as Sen. Robert Taft.
Although it perpetually lost money, the National Review built its circulation from 16,000 in 1957 to 125,000 in 1964, the year conservative Sen. Barry Goldwater was the Republican presidential candidate. The magazine claimed a circulation of 155,000 when Buckley relinquished control in 2004, citing concerns about his mortality, and over the years the National Review attracted numerous young writers, some who remained conservative (George Will, David Brooks), and some who didn't (Joan Didion, Garry Wills).
"I was very fond of him," Didion said Wednesday. "Everyone was, even if they didn't agree with him."
Born Nov. 24, 1925, in New York City, William Frank Buckley Jr. was the sixth of 10 children of a a multimillionaire with oil holdings in seven countries. The son spent his early childhood in France and England, in exclusive Roman Catholic schools.
His prominent family also included his brother James, who became a one-term senator from New York in the 1970s; his socialite wife, Pat, who died in April 2007; and their son, Christopher, a noted author and satirist ("Thank You for Smoking").
He was truly a great man. He will be missed.
When his wife died past April, I knew he wouldn’t be with us for very much longer.
Rest In Peace, Mr. Buckley. Rush Limbaugh is speaking his tribute to you now.
It is our duty to continue his legacy- to educate ourselves and others about what makes conservative principles CORRECT and right.
Without Willima F. Buckley...where would we be today?
Godspeed WFB..
I believe Rush has interviewed Buckley on his show, if I’m not mistaken..
God Bless You William F.Buckley & may you Rest In Peace.
Sad news, but I’m sure he’s with God and with his wife, who went on before him last year, so I’m sure he’s very happy.
He has. Hope he reruns the interview today.
My favorite memory of Buckley was the way he used to drive Phil Donahue absolutely INSANE in old “Donahue” show days. Phil would be flapping his arms like wings and squawking like a chicken by the time Buckley got through with him. It was glorious.
My favorite works by Buckley were his many excellent newspaper columns over the years, and his tremendous “Blackford Oakes” novels. Wow.
His intellectual brilliance and ability to defeat liberals with little more than that mischievous stare and profound one liners will inspire for many years to come, and will be missed for just as long.
Blessings, Mr. Buckley. Thank you.
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Today is truly a dark day for the American Conservative movement. He was a great man and will be truly missed. It is now our task to take up the standard he carried and press on against the evil and nefarious left.
Glad he doesn’t have to live through the crap yet to come. I’m starting to really think about the whole ‘they will envy the dead’ thing lately...
My all-time favorite.
Lesson for today:
William Buckley was a CONSERVATIVE who successfully led the fight to make the Republican Party the repository of conservatism.
His loyalty was to conservatism, not to the Rockefeller/Lindsay school of Republicanism, aka Democrat-lite.
When he ran for mayor of New York, it was as a Conservative against a Republican liberal. Announcing his entry into the race, he said:
“The two-party system presupposes an adversary relationship between the two parties. That there is no such relationship in New York Mr. Lindsay makes especially clear when he proposes as running mates members of the Liberal and Democratic Parties. Mr. Lindsay’s Republican Party is a sort of personal accessory,. . . indifferent to the historic role of the Republican Party as standing in opposition to those trends of our time that are championed by the collectivist elements of the Democratic Party.”
Those words could be used today, substituting Lindsay with McCain.
It is sad that on the day William Buckley departed this world and the perpetual battlefield of good versus evil, the dark forces were in ascendancy.
Asked what is the first thing he would do if elected Mayor of New York, he said “Demand a recount.”
Maybe he can get the Man Upstairs to get us a recount/revote for these primaries.
The New York Times is already distorting his legacy and spinning things to slander Buckley. Their lack of respect is disgusting.
Yep, probably the first thing St Peter told him was, "You were spot on about Gore Vidal."
Even this wire piece that started the thread uses words like “scornful”. By the end of the day the MSM will have made Mr. Buckley into just another “mean spirited” conservative.
Stupid liberals. RIP Mr. Buckley, this Stamford native thanks you.
I will miss him so very much. I thank him for all that he gave us...may he RIP.
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