William F. Buckley: A Life of Fun

All of my adult life, William F. Buckley Jr. has been a player on the national stage. It is hard to believe that Buckley is no longer with us – that he has to be moved in our mental computers from an active folder to one labeled memory.

Thousands of writers have claimed that Buckley was the father of modern conservatism. Maybe. What is certain is that Buckley has carried the conservative standard from the time he wrote his seminal book, God and Man at Yale. He followed this with the founding of the National Review in 1955. The National Review sought to give an intellectual patina to the business-dominated conservatism of the Eisenhower era.

Buckley was grandee – a boisterous intellectual who, at some level, never left the debating society at Yale. Above all, Buckley was a man of fun. His conservatism was never in tow with the conservatism of the Republican Party. It was Buckley conservatism, as much informed by the high spirits of European aristocracy as it was by the yeoman farmers of America.

While working in New York years ago I was invited to a dinner at a NY restaurant. During the cocktail hour the host announces that he wanted to introduce a special guest,...and in walks William F. Buckley!!

If you have never been in the presence of greatness or rue genius it is a sudden and heady feeling. Here I was shaking hands with a great American and an exceptional human being.

I had read several of his Blackford Oakes's novels and so I asked him if we could expect another great read. He seemed very grateful that I had read his books and thanked me. Said you never know when the next book might come flowing out of his brilliant mind!

He gave a short talk, spent a moment with each of us, and then he was gone. What a rare moment for me. Will always remember him as gracious, striking, brilliant. He could make a three syllable word last for half-an-hour!

William F. Buckley’s ‘Conservative Movement’ Still-Born, Dead-On-Arrival, Decades Ago, Because it Was Godless, Against Christ, Ignored God’s Word

Contact: John Lofton, 301-873-4612, 410-760-8885, JLof@aol.com

MEDIA ADVISORY, March 3 /Christian Newswire/ — Recovering Republican John Lofton, Editor of TheAmericanView.com and co-host of “The American View” radio show with the Constitution Party’s 2004 Presidential candidate Michael Anthony Peroutka, has issued the following statement:

“Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the LORD keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.” – Psalm 127.

The Lord Jesus Christ did not build the “conservative movement” house. Thus, it was a house built on sand, it fell and great has been the fall of it, a recent example of this fall being the “conservative movement’s” support for President of George W. Bush who has given us the most Godless, unconstitutional, debt-ridden, big spending Federal Government in our history.

Even though most of its “leaders” claimed to be Christians, the “conservative movement” was dead-on-arrival because, from the beginning, it’s political plan was Godless, against Christ, and ignored the Bible. This “movement” vainly imagined succeeding without honoring Christ, succeeding through bread-alone, flesh-and-blood-only-politics when God tells us the REAL battle is a spiritual war which must be fought in the full-armor of God (Ephesians 6:10ff).

An example of the Godlessness I allude to occurred when I was on Bill Buckley’s “Firing Line” program June 24, 1987. Referring to him having told Malcolm Muggeridge that he (Buckley) did not believe there was a Christian means of organizing society, I asked Bill: “Wouldn’t God’s Laws, wouldn’t the Laws of Christ be a means of organizing a society?” Buckley said: “No. No….The consent of the governed in societies ruled by the people is the ultimate source of authority.”

Alexander Solzhenitsyn was once asked how just a few Communists could take over his country when it had a thousand years of being Christian? He replied: “We forgot God.” The leaders of the “conservative movement,” politically-speaking, forgot God. They forgot that the Lord Jesus Christ is Lord over ALL, including politics. They forgot that He is King of kings, Lord of lords, with ALL power in Heaven and on earth. They forgot Psalm 2:12 commands: “Kiss the Son, lest he be angry, and ye perish from the way, when his wrath is kindled but a little. Blessed are all they that put their trust in him.”

I know all of what I say here is true because, from the inside, I ran with this “conservative movement” from the mid-1960s to 1980 when God, by His grace alone, raptured me from among this Christless crowd – something for which, literally, I will be eternally grateful.

To hear much more on this subject, please click here to hear the latest “The American View” radio show http://www.theamericanview.com/dictator/media/997/show_145.mp3

If you’d like to interview John Lofton, you may reach him by calling: 301-873-4612; 410-760-8885; or by email: JLof@aol.com.

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