Good riddance indeed!

Thanks for that reminder, Patrick, since we're going to be deluged with a ton of de mortuis nil nisi buncombe.

I think dancing on his grave to pack the earth down is called for so he can't crawl back out.

Guys, you're only allowed to say nice, respectful things about the deceased. That's why when Ted Kennedy and Bill Clinton die, there will be no harsh words spoken, merely gentle reminiscing about what honored statesmen they were.

Thanks, Patrick, I was looking for someone to give Buckley the honor his life's work really warrants, as opposed to what his fans might wish for.

Watch while they lower him to his deathbed,
And dance on his grave 'til we're sure that he's dead.

With apologies to Bob Dylan.

I think it was also Buckley who said "If everyone were homosexual, tomorrow there would be no one at all." Well, Bill, it's equally true* that if everyone were male tomorrow there would be no one at all, but I didn't see you trying to stamp out the scourge of maleness. An evil, bigoted hypocrite is dead. Hallelujah, Allahu akbar, so mote it be.

I caught some flak last time** (Falwell, I think) for gloating over the death of an enemy of me-and-mine, but now I have Fragano's phrase to quote at them. I'll Americanize the spelling, I think, to 'bunkum' at the end, but that's good, Fragano, thanks.

The death of a good person (like Robert L) diminishes us all. The death of an evil person (like Buckley) magnifies us all. I quietly rejoice.

*That is, not very.
**Not here.

I wouldn't use the word "elevated". But he did bring conservatism into the center of American political discourse; and on its own terms, it's quite an accomplishment -- in the way that, say, Robert E Lee was a good general regardless of the merits of his cause. Whatever you think of the conservatism that he championed (and sure, my response would be similar to Patrick's), his *effectiveness* was remarkable. It seems a fair tribute to say that he did what he set out to do (for better or worse).

I still think of him as 'William Fastbuckley'.

The evil that men do lives after them...

Here's an interesting remembrance from Rick Perlstein, who, I think it's safe to say, knows as much about -- and is as hard on -- the movement Buckley was so instrumental in advancing as anyone.

That gushing NYT obit reminds me of Not The Nine O'Clock News' take on the press coverage of Oswald Mosley's death in 1980. So it could be worse, of course.

Did Buckley ever repudiate (or reject or renounce or . . . aw, fuck it) that quote?

That's a very interesting piece by Perlstein, a writer I respect a great deal.

However, Buckley wasn't my friend; all he did for me was make the world a worse place. With great energy and effectiveness.

But but but ...

BYRD WUZ A KLANSMAN!!!!11!

</parody>

Chumbawumba seem particularly appropriate, too.

Though this version has better sound quality

Stephen 10: I got as far as "He was a good and decent man" and had to stop. My gorge was rising.

Perlstein is mistaken. Well, you will say, he knew him personally and you didn't. Yes, I will reply, but lots of people who were neither good nor decent were friendly and personable one-on-one, could be charming even to their enemies, and were positively kind to their friends. One such figure in history was famously good to his dog; I'm sure you know who I mean. Rudy Giuliani is famous for his personal charm, and he's a total psycho.

Buckley was NOT a "good and decent man," and it nauseates me to hear him called one, even with sympathy for Perlstein's reasons for doing so. One cannot be both a good and decent man and a racist; Buckley was a racist. One cannot be both a good and decent man and an arch-homophobe, not if one is intelligent and well-read and capable of using (albeit frequently unwilling to use) logic. Buckley was an arch-homophobe.

There are many words for people who ought to know better embracing their prejudices instead of fighting them, and trying to persuade other people to join them by using arguments too spurious to credit them with believing themselves. I'll just use one: scumbag. Buckley was a scumbag, and I'll personally try to vomit on anyone who tries to tell me he was a good man.

While I was writing that, Patrick got in and said what I was trying to say, shorter and better.

What he said.

I'm with Xopher on this one. Buckley had his talents: he was elegant, witty, clever, capable of some swell rhetoric and good use of history and culture to support an argument, and like that. But none of that is moral.

As I commented at LGM,

It was a black president, in the library, with the clue stick.

Buckley gave an address at a conservative conference last year. He railed against the war in Iraq, and said you'd have to be delusional to find anything positive about it.

Audience members interviewed afterwards said he must not be a true conservative.

Man, that must have stung.

Stefan 20: I sure hope it did.

Audience members interviewed afterwards said he must not be a true conservative.

Hey, this has inspired the vague glimmerings of a brilliant new aphorism: If you indiscriminately plant wind seeds in your backyard, don't be surprised when a whirlwind turns up at harvest time.

So he never renounced those writings from the 50s? I'm not up on that "school" of "thought."

It really is appalling that someone who could publicly express those ideas could be lionized by anyone who isn't way out on the fringe. I think his ideas should be spread far and wide as the underpinnings of true conservatism: racist, reactionary, avaricious, and unworthy of this stage of human history.

Perlstein:

He knew exactly what my politics were about—he knew I was an implacable ideological adversary—yet he offered his friendship to me nonetheless.

That's easier for the privileged elite interacting with aspiring members privileged elites; they want to recruit. No matter how bad politics got in America, Buckley was never going to be starving, or in jail, or in a cardboard box, or dead of a treatable disease because he lacked medical coverage. For Buckley, winning or losing a political battles meant, for him, the difference between buying three homes or two; for millions of others, Buckley winning would mean poverty, Jim Crow, pestilence, the closet, and death.

Buckley did advocate drug legalization--one of the few prominent conservatives who did--and for that he deserves some praise. But I hope he spent his last years in misery and horror at what he wrought.

Paul: No, he never did. It's conservative policy to pretend that such things weren't said, or weren't meant if said, or can be excused if meant. How directly they lead into modern racial politics must never be pointed out, as that would be rude.

@#7 Stephen Frug in the way that, say, Robert E Lee was a good general regardless of the merits of his cause.

(self-deprecation)
Hey now, don't be down on the hero of the War of the Northern Aggression! Wait, what? We lost? Oh. Yeah. Sorry. Keep forgetting that. Flag still looks good on that orange car in the Dukes of Hazzard, tho!
(/self-deprecation)

I was born in NOLA, my family has been Southern since we came over on the boat, and I may interpret the General's "cause" differently than you do. That's not to say I support slavery, or the KKK, or any such thing, just saying there's different veiwpoints out there and I have a right to poke fun at myself! :-)

Later,
-cajun

Well, he's joined the great proletariat now; whatever "them" he defended his "us" again are his equals in the twining of the worms. If there is any form of eternal judgment, may there also be mercy for him, as for us all.

Don't let me stop your discussion, guys; his reputation should not be hallowed because he is dead. Wrong is wrong, whether or not the sparks still fly in the grey matter that conceived it.

I don't believe Buckley renounced his racist utterances of opposition to civil rights, or his sexist utterances of opposition to civil rights, or his homophobic utterances of opposition to civil rights, since he most certainly made all three.

I never met the man. My closest encounter to him, was the doorman of a building on the Upper East Side recounting a 'joke' that Buckley had told him, during the 1984 election campaign to the effect that Reagan had a Bush, and so did Mondale. Regular man-of-the-people, Bill Buckley was.

The idea that one's political opponents must be rotten all though without anything redeeming in them is, of course, a staple of Buckley's flavor of conservatism. His heroes like McCarthy and Nixon used it all the time in their campaigns to destroy opponents of their hairbrained schemes; in these latter days it flourishes among College Republican veterans like Rove, for whose campaigns Buckley and his organization always had time.

The more relevant idea is not that someone like Buckley must be a monster all through but that his occasional good points (like support for drug legalization) don't actually matter in the overall scheme of things. He was right, early and often, about drug legaization...but he supported the presidents who appointed the justices who constantly rule against it. It's good to be a decent chap to a hundred or a thousand friends, but it's not nice to set up ten or thirty or a hundred million of one's fellow citizens and human beings as enemies who must be corralled or eliminated if they can't be forced into abject subjugation.

It doesn't help to be a fine fellow in certain regards when the weight of your life is on the side of monstrousness.

Stefan@20, Xopher@21:

I found this mirror of a TNR article ... somewhere. Probably some other comment thread. Is this the case you were talking about?

Buckley was instrumental in creating the political climate that has made me bitter and ungenerous enough to smile upon hearing, on the radio this morning, of the death of a fellow human being.

I hope that parses.

Lo, these many years ago, the first time I had to use the Salmon of Correction over on the dearly departed SMOF-BBS was over a piece of Buckley slashfic.

#30: That's it. A bit different than I recalled, but the audience tsk-tsking was there.

Man. Where's an iceberg when you need one?

I agree with everything Patrick wrote in #13... it's just that part of that means I agree with the "very interesting... writer I respect a good deal part"; hence my linking.

SF

About, not by...

Earl, you have now given my mind whiplash twice in the space of five minutes. Ow.

As far as Joshua's question (#12) goes... It happens that an entire chapter of my soon-to-be-completed-if-I-can-get-off-the-internets dissertation is about precisely that question.

The short answer: it's complicated.

The just slightly longer answer: He said a number of different things on a number of occasions (not all *that* many, since it wasn't a subject he liked to return to), some of which could be taken as repudiation, some of which are weaselling, some of which are even defenses of it (as right then, but times have changed -- that sort of thing). They don't fall into any neat chronological order, so that one can say he first defended & then repented (or vice-versa). So he responded in different ways, to different people, at different times; there didn't seem to be an overall response that he always had.

(The even longer version? Let me finish the dissertation and then I'll get back to you :>)

SF

SF, please picture me sitting here with genuine curiosity how that chapter turns out. I'd like to know more about the matter than I do; when you have something worth sharing, please do, at whatever length seems suitable.

Thanks!

I'm reminded of "He Was A Crook" by Hunter Thompson. There was a man who knew what to write on the occasion of a death of a monster.

For what it's worth, Richard Nixon counted Buckley as one of his friends too.

And I, of course, have to argue.

What's the difference between Buckley's rhetoric and goals, and those of all the judges and technocrats who dismantled segregation in the public schools? In both cases, the argument is "I'm right, so to hell with democracy."

Stephen 37: Would a medium-length answer be "He was a weaselly lying hypocrite and he said whatever would get him the most credit, or cost him the least, at any given time"?

In a world where people who learn better about something ("Last year you said you didn't know the difference between Sunni and Shi'a, but now you say you do"), or even where facts change ("In 1968, you said that no human had walked on the moon, but in 1970 you said that someone had"), are accused of "waffling," I see no reason to give the benefit of the doubt to a man like Buckley when he gives different answers at every turn. After all, he helped create that world.

Earl@35: You've raised a great question that shall forever be unanswered: would Buckley rather write about Hermione hooking up with Malfoy, or slumming with Crabbe and Goyle?

Bruce Baugh: I appreciate that! (Enough people have expressed interest in my topic in the years I've been working on it that I've often thought that I wish the author measured up better to the quality of the question. Of course that's a standard grad student experience; on the third hand, *someone* has to be below average. All I can say is, you go into research with the brain you have, not the brain you want...)

I honestly, no-kidding hope to finish this summer. At that point the dissertation will be (of necessity) in worth-sharing form and, really, part of the public record. So if you ask again then (I'll try to remember, but gang aft a'glay and all that), I'll email you the chapter in question. Until then, I think I'd prefer to forebear to say more than I said, since I might change my mind/find new evidence/whatever in the meantime.

Xopher: the fact is that, as someone who is trying to study the matter academically, I'm making an effort not to pass judgment. I'm trying to find, and understand, and put in context, what he said. Whether what you say is a fair interpretation of it... well, that's probably something I shouldn't say. (There: if that makes *me* weaselly, so be it.)

SF

#16 Xopher: I'm with you, save for one thing... I reckon that just about everyone is bigoted in some manner, and saying that all racists are damned is just going to make the smalltime operators deny that they're racists. There are degrees, and I agree with you that anyone who sets out to make it so that whites dominate blacks is damned. So Ha! to Buckley.

Kevin J. Maroney at #24 said what I wanted to say about Perlstein; his (Perlstein's) admiration for Buckley reminds me of the MSM's admiration for McCain. Of course he's going to be nice to you, dummy--it serves his purposes.

Anyway, it's hard for me to take comfort in this kind of death, at an old age, surrounded by opulence. If I needed proof that there's no such thing as justice, that's it.

Madeline 44: I guess I'd say that people in the grip of false beliefs (of the factoidal type, that is not like "whites should rule" but like "blacks have smaller brains") can be excused for a certain amount of false belief of the prescriptive kind, until the factual errors are dealt with.

But a man like Buckley, with unlimited access to facts and one of the best educations money can buy, highly intelligent and extremely articulate, has no excuse whatsoever. If he had false factoidal beliefs, it was a willful thing; I doubt that he did. He knew the truth and yet rejected its implications, because it did not serve the interests of his race and his class.

And such people like to draw false equivalencies, too: comparing George Wallace and Martin Luther King, saying "they're both fighting for the interests of their own race." No; one was fighting to keep another people subjugated, the other to free his own people from subjugation. These are not the same thing.

We all fall into evil from time to time, it's true. But when the evil is knowing, deliberate, carefully devised, and indulged in over a lifetime, as Buckley's was, it's not unjust to say that the person himself was evil.

Sam@40: Well, a few things, like the difference between overturning local law on the basis of controlling national law (namely, the Constitution), and overturning national law based on, well, that whites know best.

(Or, to quote from Buckley's editorial, "If the majority wills what is socially atavistic, then to thwart the majority may be, although undemocratic, enlightened." The "socially atavistic" horror being referred to here is school integration.)

Indeed, the spurious "what's the difference" comparison seems to have been one of Buckley's favored gambits. Later in the same editorial, he dismisses the claims that blacks should have the same voting rights protections as whites by first equating that with "Universal Suffrage", and then equating *that* with allowing 20-year-olds to vote. And since we don't allow that (this was before the 26th Amendment), then what's the harm of not letting unenlightened darkies vote? "The problem in the South is not how to get the vote for the Negro, but how to equip the Negro-- and a great many Whites-- to cast an enlightened and responsible vote," Buckley says. You'd think that things like, oh, the Fifteenth Amendment, just happened to slip his mind as he wrote this.

My first awareness of him was when he repeated this sentiment on a talk show:

"Everyone detected with AIDS should be tatooed in the upper forearm, to protect common-needle users, and on the buttocks, to prevent the victimization of other homosexuals." -- William F. Buckley, Jr., New York Times, March 18, 1986

It was helpful, early exposure to evil costumed as compassion.

I'm sure there's going to be a lot of bleating about "Well, we can't agree with his positions, but Buckley was an intellectual and thinker." I call hogwash on that. Yes, he put his brand of conservatism in the center of American thought. He did it by dragging the center as far right as it would go, primarily by repeating his arguments, all of them as specious as his defense of racism, over and over, long after they'd been refuted and re-refuted. That's not any form of intellectual honesty I'll accept.

There are people who start out holding untenable beliefs like racism, discover their mistake, and truly recant their positions. Buckley wasn't one of those people; he just wanted everybody to forget he'd said any of that, unless of course they agreed with him.

Dance, Xopher, dance! I'll join you.

Sam Chevre (#40): Are you really equating arguments that the white race is superior to all others with attempts to promote equality? And are you really arguing that simple majority-rule "democracy" is (and should be) the foundation of all decisions?

Is he gonna get a urinal instead of a tombstone, to make it more convenient?

#51: Why grant him the dignity of a urinal-tomb? Urinals exist to channel pee into the sewers where it doesn't stink up the joint. I say stink up the joint. And bring the dog.

Did you notice the number of this entry? It's a roll-over number. Kind of like the dead rolling over.... Aw, forget it. [grin]

The "Buckley Stomp" dance could create a new dance game craze: "Dance, Dance, Dance, Recrimination".

Abi @ 27:

Wow. That was really well said.

A poisonous, wicked man. Good riddance.

Amen. Thank you.

And are you really arguing that simple majority-rule "democracy" is (and should be) the foundation of all decisions?

No, I'm arguing that "Bill Buckley didn't think majority-rule democracy should be the foundation of all decisions" is not a very sensible criticism.

#40: "What's the difference between Buckley's rhetoric and goals, and those of all the judges and technocrats who dismantled segregation in the public schools?"

Buckley's rhetoric was in defense of his goal, the preservation of a society of hierarchal orders and classes, with severe limits on social mobility.

The rhetoric of the people who dismantled segregation in the schools was in defense of their goal, a society in which more people have more opportunities to advance themselves regardless of the accidents of their birth or the color of their skin.

Different rhetoric. Different goals. HTH!

"In both cases, the argument is 'I'm right, so to hell with democracy.'"

Democracy is an important thing. It's not the only important thing. Injustice imposed by a majority vote is still injustice.

Every man's death diminishes me.

It would seem that you haven't bothered reading much about Buckley or his opinions or you would surely have noted that he referred to his his earlier opinions on race as a mistake and, in fact, greatly respected Martin Luther King later in his life. Not to imply that you should research your statements, of course.

I have to confess I rather liked the first couple spy novels. And I liked God and Man at Yale, too, at least the descriptive parts. Of course, what stands out to me now is his call to have the unreliable atheistic faculty culled from Yale.

And that's the core achievement of the man, I think: he saw McCarthy and realized that a smarter, more sophisticated, buttoned-down McCarthyism would make a tremendous political movement, as long as it took care to not quite touch the extremes, whatever they were at the time.

Oops, just realized I scored at least a 1 on Flamer Bingo with my #26... I'm currently reading the Flamer Bingo thread which I found while trying to look up "heresiarch's rule". I'm a n00b, and apparently acting more like one than I'd prefer. I'll just take my off-topic self back to that thread...

Later,
-cajun

esb @60:
Links? Citations?

#40 Samchevre: In both cases, the argument is "I'm right, so to hell with democracy."

Uh, no. In the case of school segregation, the argument is, "The Constitution protects even the rights of those who are in the minority, and we will require you to respect that." Brown v. Board of Education and all the other desegregation actions are predicated on the concept that Equal Protection under the law means everyone, not just the white folks.

And local governments -- democratic as they may have been, for values of democracy that include interfering with black voting in various tawdry ways -- are obligated to comply with the 14th Amendment, the same way the federal government is.

He comes across as the type who would never stint you another glass of his best port but would lash the slaves all the harder in the morning to keep the cellar filled with more of it. People who knew him praise his grace and wit, but he never showed that side to the people his ideas were harming. Which I guess is another way of saying he never sought to understand the problems of the day, as to learn from them might make him change his mind.

"It would seem that you haven't bothered reading much about Buckley or his opinions"

True. Also, I've never played poker before.

"or you would surely have noted that he referred to his his earlier opinions on race as a mistake"

You mean: "that by the 1980s he found it expedient to disassociate himself from some of the more blatant racist appeals he'd earlier used in the process of building modern conservatism."

"and, in fact, greatly respected Martin Luther King later in his life."

Once King was safely gunned down, sure.

Damien Neil #59: That is patently untrue. I am not diminished by the death of a murderer, a rapist, a thug, a torturer, a sadist, a racist, or the propagandists for such.

I'm baffled by the backhanded complements of, "well, at least he was an intellectual." Bullshit.

He was good at using fancy words to dazzle simpletons, nothing more. He said all the same, tired old arguments against equality that Bill O'Reilly, Sean Hannity and Anne Coulter repeat today, he just kept a thesaurus handy. That doesn't make him an intellectual. Intellectuals learn from what they read, they don't just fish for quotes to use as ammunition against decent human beings. He was rehashing the same elitist crap at 82 as he did when he was 30.

Some graves are made to dance on. I think I'll choreograph a jig, just for him.

If I needed proof that there's no such thing as justice, that's it.

Yes, but as a flawed human myself, there are times when I take comfort in that notion - I don't suppose many of us would be left standing and sane if we got justice.

There are people enough who will dance (or piss) on his grave with you, although I hope not at the same time. Be happy in the light which may come through now he is not there to cast a shadow, and speak about fairness, equity and better things in the silence he has left.

#26: so long as you see "the cause" as treason in defense of slavery, we're on the same page. moving away from the south has allowed me to see that much more clearly. now when I see a rebel flag on a truck or cap, I wonder how a german WWII-era flag would look in Paris or London or a Japanese imperial navy flag in the philippines or china.

cajunfj40 @62:
Heresiarch articulated the rule here.

(To find it, I did a View All By and searched for the word "last". Sometimes I think we need better way to keep track of these things.)

</digression>

Fragano @ #67:

Many that live deserve death. Some that die deserve life. Every man's death diminishes me. Yes, even murderers and rapists.

Nielsen Hayden, you are a fucking idiot and a fucking asshole. When you die, they'll remember you as a shitty editor and untalented hack who tried to remold the genre to conform to his Marxist ideology. You are the worst sort of hypocrite, someone who preaches tolerance and compassion but then drops the curtain to reveal a coldhearted cruel bigot. Fuck you, and fuck your retarded band of parrots in the comments section.

Counting down to disemvowelment/deletion...5, 4, 3...

Damien 72: Well, then, you should rejoice the more at the death of Buckley, whose political influence led to many, many unnecessary deaths.

than @45: No memory of having starred/ Atones for later disregard,/ Or keeps the end from being hard.

(The final triplet may or may not apply.)

Oh dear. Patrick, you haven't, perchance, recently rejected a story from a foul-mouthed pseudonym who doesn't even have the courage to post under their own name?

(or there's the other reaction - yeah, Nielsen Hayden - just where do you get off, expressing your own opinions in your own blog?)

Ahem.

Damien Neil #72: Please consider the quotation which Patrick placed at the head of this thread. Then tell me, in the name of every one of my ancestors who suffered the Middle Passage, how I am diminished by the death of a racist bastard like Buckley? Please do.

Still, full marks for spelling the surname correctly. So many trolls can't manage that.

I vaguely recall Buckley actually flat-out admitting that his stance on the civil rights movement was wrong. However, I don't recall the specifics, and I suppose anything he wrote that appears contrite can be interpreted either way: either he actually did change his mind and feel remorse, or he was just repositioning himself in order to preserve his relevance in modern political discourse.

I don't know which it is. I'm told Governor Wallace eventually repudiated the segregationist stance he took that caused the mobilization of the National Guard, and asked for forgiveness from a few of the civil rights leaders of that time. I don't know if that was genuine either. But it's nice to think so.

Here, here, Patrick! That he was a libertarian conservative means he got a very few things right. His reformed racism - after all the blood was spilled - was the convenience of necessity. He was, as Bruce Baugh noted in #29, a rabid McCarthyite, a homo-hatist and an all-around vicious man, the privileged son of an oil baron born with a silver spoon up his ass.

Saying he was better and more principled because he was more erudite than Limbaugh/Coulter/Malkin/Savage, etc sets the bar lower than a worm's knees.

You want a principled conservative? Try James Kilpatrick. Buckley had the best of everything and used it to sow hatred.

Or it's just a fan of Buckley, and/or a de mortuis nil nisi bullshit person. That would explain, though not justify, the 'coldhearted' and the 'cruel'. The 'bigot', however, remains a mystery. I see no criticism of Buckley for what he was, only for what he said and did. Very odd. And there's nothing on that comment to indicate that it's about this thread; it could well be here just because this is the top thread on the front page.

No, vian, I think you must be right. And I bet the novel was a right-wing piece of Randism or dare-I-say-it jne cbea, and that it was titled Goya's Ghost.

Anybody fading me on that?

Fragano @ #78:

Perhaps you aren't. I, however, am.

Actually, I'm such a clever Marxist ideologue that I'm inclined to leave #73 exactly as it is, a perfect specimen of something or other.

(I'm also such a wild-eyed Marxist ideologue that I edit and publish David Weber. Cunning and subtle are my plans for Communist world domination!)

abi 79: Art thou not a moderator? Hast thou lost thy disemvoweller? Or do we wait for Jim to ascertain the IP address, that we may heap derision on this troll most foul?

@60 - I've attached a link.
@66 - I'm glad to see that you took my suggestion to research the topic... I would assume that a person that admits to making a mistake should be respected and given the benefit of the doubt -- you certainly seem to be giving him a fair chance.
NY Times Q&A About Buckley

I've heard plenty of excuses for Buckley today.

One is that he was just a product of his time--- it's been 50 years. Bull-crap. There are octogenarians today who opposed Buckley. They were right and he was wrong.

Another is that we shouldn't be so hasty to criticize the newly dead. Again, bull-crap. Obituaries should serve not merely to praise but also criticize. If it is wrong to speak ill of the newly dead, how much more the living (who can be offended) or the ancient dead (who cannot defend themselves.)

Plenty of people convert; some even ask forgiveness. Very few ponder why they arrived at the wrong conclusion, and what else they might be wrong about. There is no sign Buckley achieved the slightest bit of self doubt from being so egregiously wrong in the 50's.

Kevin, #81: I don't actually think Buckley was any more of a "libertarian" than I am. Less, in fact. The most positive thing I can say about him is that he was in fact a consistent advocate of authoritarian conservatism, a man who genuinely believed that a more hierarchal society was good for human character.

Um...I wrote that before seeing PNH's post at 84. No usurpation was intended, Comrade Stalin Nielsen Hayden! Please don't have me shot!

Xopher @85:
I see Patrick has answered already.

I was going to say, This is something the Captain has to do for himself.

vian #69: I understand and don't entirely disagree with your point, but if for no one's sake but your own, I would suggest that there's a vast chasm of difference between being flawed and being William F. Buckley.

Death comes to everyone. Had his come more unpleasantly, it would not exactly be cause to rejoice, but it would be closer to what he deserved than what he got. He made the world a worse place than it would have been without him. Then he died as well as anyone could hope for, and with legions of followers to carry on his work. I cannot take comfort in that.

from the NYT Q&A:

...
Q: Did Buckley ever change his 1950’s pro-Segregation stance? —Bill
A: See above. He did, strenuously. He debated George Wallace quite strenuously in the late 1960s. It may seem odd, but Buckley, whose parents were both Southerners, actually inherited views on race that were fairly progressive for his time and place.
...
Q: How would you characterize in general Mr. Buckley’s relationship with the Jewish American community? What about his relationship with leading American Jews (e.g. the Kristols) commonly identified as neocons? —Michael Presant

A: In the 1950s, when American conservatism still bore the taint of anti-Semitism, Bill Buckley moved forcefully to erase it. One important step was banning anti-Semitic writers from National Review, the magazine he founded in 1955. Many of his allies included Jews — from Marvin Liebman, the publicist who helped organize conservative rallies and events, through his great friend Richard M. Clurman (of Time magazine) and also, as you point out, neoconservatives like Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz. Buckley was also a champion of Henry Kissinger, who remained one of his dearest friends.
Q: What was Buckley’s view of the current Bush administration? What was his opinion of the performance artist (my term) wing of the Republican party —e.g., Rush Limbaugh or Anne Coulter? —Richard French

A: He was most distressed by it and once said if the United States had a parliamentary system, President Bush would be subject to a “no confidence” vote. He was highly critical of the war in Iraq and wrote eloquent columns on the subject in his last years. He liked Rush Limbaugh, who was published in National Review, but was more skeptical of Ann Coulter, whose book “Treason” he reviewed.
...
Q: I understand that in the 1960s Mr Buckley publicly backed Southern segregationists even though he crusaded against anti-Semitism. How did he reconcile this difference in his own mind? Did he ever formally renounce or apologize for his backing of the segrationists? —John Fuller
A: In the 1950s Buckley did indeed support segregationists in the South but later changed his views. He wept when he learned of the Birmingham church bombing that killed four black children. Later he became an admirer of Martin Luther King.

The demise of the man whose picture appears in the dictionary under the definition of "Pretentious blowhard" does not sadden me even a trifle.

Ain't I a meanie? :)

ethan, you're having what I call a "right now I wish I believed in Hell" moment.

Xopher, you've just left the nail's head split open and bleeding.

Yes yes yes, in other words.

I'm not touching #73, which is a type specimen of its kind. It has a sort of crystalline perfection, like a kidney stone.

Meanwhile, I'd like to say something positive about WFB:

For the vast majority of right-wingers, conservatism is their ideology. In William F. Buckley's case, conservatism was his kink. He really got into it.

Per the troll in 73 - Is "Retarded Band of Parrots" too obvious a name for a band?

Patrick's a Marxist?!?

Well, now... This is going to make Christmas shopping a little more difficult.

esb @ #86: Thank you for posting the link to the NYT Q&A. I will be interested in saying the response to my question: if Buckley wept when he heard about the 1963 church bombing in Birmingham, did he also reject the conclusion of the National Review that the bomber "set back the cause of the white people there so dramatically as to raise the question whether in fact the explosion was the act of a provocateur - of a Communist, or of a crazed Negro"?

Wirelizard 97: Yes, because 'band' is redundant. 'Retarded Parrots' would be a good name, provided it's a very sophomoric punk band.

I don't actually think Buckley was any more of a "libertarian" than I am. ...he was in fact a consistent advocate of authoritarian conservatism, a man who genuinely believed that a more hierarchal society was good for human character.

Buckley was (IMO) less authoritarian than hierarchical. He was pretty consistently hostile to the strongly-religious conservatives, who I'd view as the authoritarians.

It's possible to think that liberty is good, and will result in hierarchy/class distinctions.

moe99@#92:
When quoting an answer that consists of "See above", it is usually helpful to include the above that should be seen. For reference, here is what I assume was meant by "above":

Q: Did he ever recant his opposition to the civil rights movement? —Chris

A: Yes, he did. He said it was a mistake for National Review not to have supported the civil rights legislation of 1964-65, and later supported a national holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., whom he grew to admire a good deal, above all for combining spiritual and political values.

I must say that I find that rather weak, on the order of excusing Reagan's racist 1980 campaign by saying that he signed the bill making MLK's birthday a national holiday.

Braaawk! Patrick is right! Patrick is right!

Braaawk! Workers must seize the means of production! Workers must seize the means of production!

Braaawk! Parrots of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your crackers!

etc.

@Paul #70: I'm not sure exactly - it's been a while since I did any critical thinking on that subject. Come to think of it, I may not have done any at all... I'm remembering parents and uncles etc. talking about how it was a war about property rights (that slaves were considered property was conveniently set aside in such discussions, or dismissed as "beside the point") and/or about the right of a State to secede from the Union. I personally know of no reasonable defense of slavery, and most discussions I've been in about the Civil War try to sidestep the slavery question because it is a topic that can so easily quash any rational discussion about the rest of the War, which I know little about in any case.

"The War of the Northern Aggression" was an attempt at humor originating with or introduced to me by, most likely, a relative of mine. I find it tends to get a snicker when used in conversation with people who know me. I should probably re-examine whether it actually is humorous before continuing to use it.

The Confederate Flag pushes so many buttons in so many painful ways for so many people I don't really relish seeing it, but that contrasts mightily in my head with my remembered boyhood joy at seeing (on TV) that flag on the roof of an orange Dodge Charger cornering at high speed with the tires squealing *on dirt*, jumping often, etc.

So, I don't know if we agree or disagree - my statement implied that I may have a different opinion than others do, but I failed to remember that I don't have a well thought out opinion to disagree with in the first place!

Maybe I'll think on that and get a well thought out opinion. More likely I'll forget about it and be embarrassed again next time I post with my foot in my mouth.

@abi #71 - thanks! The little bit I took time to read there explains it enough to tell me I need to read much of that thread. Alas, I am overstaying at work for no good reason (my internet connection at home is just as good, and there are no co-workers or employers to annoy...) and best be on my way, so maybe I'll read it there.

Thanks for the heads-up from both of you - ML is raising my expectations of myself, and this is a good thing!

Later,
-cajun

@102 - You seem to have ignored the first part of the sentence, "He said it was a mistake for National Review not to have supported the civil rights legislation of 1964-65..." I imagine that you have made mistakes in your life, do you generally have the decency to admit those mistakes?

I'm just a retarded parrot pinin' for the fjords!

No, I'm arguing that "Bill Buckley didn't think majority-rule democracy should be the foundation of all decisions" is not a very sensible criticism.

Fair enough; fortunately, almost all of the criticisms here of WFB are over entirely different points.

Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real condition of life and his relations with BRAAWK!

(Excuse me, it's just that I haven't been accused of being a commie in way too long.)

esb @105:
It appears you haven't posted here before. Since you're writing in a relatively contentious thread, could I advise you to watch the tone you use?

Each of your comments has verged on the ad hominem. I know you may have been sincerely impressed by Mr Buckley, and be grieved at his passing, but you aren't going to persuade this audience of his gentler nature by trying to back-foot them. Quite the opposite.

Why, what do you know! This:

Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real condition of life and his relations with BRAAWK!

Just parroting you, Patrick.

From each according to his abilities!
To each according to his needs!
BRAAAWK!

From each according to his abilities!
To each according to his needs!
BRAAAWK!

From each according to his abilities!
To each according to his needs!
BRAAAWK!

abi 112: Wow, abi, I've quoted that so often as a good social* principle that I almost forgot that it was Marx.

I guess I'm a pinko, huh? A PINKO PARROT!!!!

Now that's a band name.

*not even ist

Rather than "nil nisi..." I'd say instead, with Chesterton, that "charity is a reverent agnosticism towards the complexity of the soul."

That was a genuine, but fortuitous, router hiccup. I think I'll leave it for posterity.

"This is going to make Christmas shopping a little more difficult."

Bombs. Marxists like bombs. The kind that look like little bowling balls with a stem that has a fuse sticking out of it.

Also, beard grooming tools, leather hats with ear flaps, and hard black bread.

To prove that no man is all of a piece, I recall him skewering Ann Coulter for her book on Clinton. He called her a vapid twit, in that way which only he could.

Doesn't make up for the rest of his bile but it was pleasant to watch.

abi, you're too honest by half. I was quite admiring your wit for posting that three times in a row.

This may be another indication of WFB's character: on page 185 of How to Win Arguments by William A. Rusher (1981), Rusher quotes some advice by various commentators in response to a list of questions. Note #5: "When an arguer is caught in a mistake, what is his best course?" Buckley's response: "When an arguer is caught in a mistake his best course of action is to trivialize its significance." Michael Harrington said, "Admit the mistake quickly and openly." Harold Miller: "Admit it. ..." Daniel Patrick Moynihan: " ... a person of any integrity admits it right off." Pat Buchanan indicated one should try to press on in similar vein to Buckley - how ironic.

cajun@104, I apologize for coming down like a ton of bricks on you there. the treason in defense of slavery crowd get my back up very quickly. You're plainly not of that stripe.

If you really want to get into this, drop into "the edge of the american west" which is written by a couple of young history profs who cover the history of the civil war/war of northern aggression/late unpleasantness pretty regularly. It's hard to refute that slavery was a key issue for the confederacy if it was specifically mentioned in its constitution. But I don't want to lecture: you can find what you need in various places.

On to the topic at hand, was Buckley sincere in his recantations? I don't know that he was all that vocal about them. And the kind of mind that can commit such offenses in print -- to claim that humans are divided into upper and lower classes, based on genetics -- has a lot of atoning to do. Of his 1400+ TV broadcasts, up until 1999, did he spend anytime refuting these ideas and challenging those who still hold them, even if they did so under his leadership?

Stefan 118: Mmmm, hard black bread. Yummm.

Xlebiy chornie, xlebiy strasnie,
Xlebiy zguchie i prikrasnie!
Kak l'ubl'u ya vas,
Kak bayus ya vas,
Znat' uvidel' vas i pridol'briy chas!

(I'm sure Terry will correct me if any of that is wrong.)

I wonder how a german WWII-era flag would look in Paris or London

Pretty stupid, although in London people have a tendency to mock the Nazis as we weren't actually occupied, and, after all, they were foreigners so you can't expect anything better from them.

A closer approximation might be how would would look in Berlin, assuming it weren't illegal. Through a long and uninteresting chain of events I happened to be at a birthday party where one friend had acquired a replica SS officers cap, and a German was offended simply by it's existence; that it had turned up to the party was just adding insult to injury.

Goya's Ghosts appears to be a film from last year; what this has to do with anything I don't know.

Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real condition of life and his relations with BRAAWK!

David Weber's exposition has never been so well edited.

Goya's Ghost: that was one of the most chuckle worthy drive-bys of late.

Patrick (if I may make so bold as to speak for him, from observation) has never preached tolerance and compassion as some abstract thing to which all get, without any question.

Did Patrick wish for his death? I don't think so. Does his not rending his garments and papering over the evils that the man did make him a hypocrite? No.

Maybe you'd like it better if he stood mute, and let those who want to do such papering over create the myth of an enlightened conservative thinker... I don't think so.

As has been said in other threads, sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander, and the folks who dislike Obama, Bill Clinton, Al Sharpton, Alan Dershowitz, or whomever your bogeyman of choice may be, aren't going to be sitting on their hands, wishing the folks who like them were better informed.

No, some of them are going to be having parties. So, until I see evidence that your bilious rants on the failure of people to be polite to the dead are evenly spread; because you think the death of any diminishes all..., you can, most kindly, bugger off and wank to your heart's content, because I shan't pay any more attention to you.

Good Day to you.

One way of looking at Buckley's legacy is that he did a huge amount to make sure that no current young man or woman with the desire to apply moderate erudition and upper-class style to politics will be welcome anywhere near power in conservative efforts. He helped enthrone the barbarians he saw everywhere but where they actually did gather, right around him.

Prole wanna cracker.

Kevin, #24: No matter how bad politics got in America, Buckley was never going to be starving, or in jail, or in a cardboard box, or dead of a treatable disease because he lacked medical coverage. For Buckley, winning or losing a political battles meant, for him, the difference between buying three homes or two; for millions of others, Buckley winning would mean poverty, Jim Crow, pestilence, the closet, and death.

IMO that should be his epitaph.

Stephen, #37: Please add me to the list of people who'd be very interested in seeing that chapter when it's been polished up.

ethan, #91: Take some comfort in this -- with his death, modern conservativism loses one of its greatest pillars of credibility. Who is going to pick up the banner -- Limbaugh? Coulter?

cajunfj40, #104: FWIW, your original comment didn't come across to me as anything but satire and some self-deprecatory humor.

About the causes of the Civil War... one of them appears to have been the South's insistence that a couple of territories which were about to achieve statehood be required to be slave states, even though the people in them didn't want slavery. So much for the "states' rights" argument.

Paul, #122: Good point. All we have right now is hearsay evidence -- the assertion of a good friend and admirer of Buckley's that he did indeed recant those positions, rather than statements from Buckley himself. And it's quite possible that he did... but I'd still like to see some public statements to that effect. As you point out, it would also be nice to find examples of him actually challenging those who still hold similar positions. Perhaps Stephen's dissertation will answer that question more completely.

All: I went poking around on Google for some Buckley quotes, and all I found were the same dozen or so repeated over and over again. Anybody got some quickly-found links to stuff that's not quite so sanitized, preferably more recent than 1957? I don't have the gumption to go plowing thru the TNR archives at random; it would be bad for my blood pressure. I'm hoping that someone, or someones, may have saved a link or three for other reasons.

Oh, and why does everyone persist in calling Buckley an "intellectual"? He hated intellectuals -- AFAICT from what I've been reading, he had nothing good to say about scholars or scientists either one. As he himself seems to have been a fairly intelligent man, this would seem to suggest that he was at best an intellectual Uncle Tom.

Oh! I just remembered my favorite Buckley story. He was arguing with Gore Vidal, who kept calling him a crypto-fascist. Buckley finally lost his cool and told Vidal that if he didn't stop calling him a crypto-fascist he'd punch him out!

The irony of this was not, I assume, lost on the audience.