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Darth Grandiloquos
Total Posts: 25629
Member Since: 05/02
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Date Posted: Nov 23, 2005 10:30 AM
Today is the 80th birthday of William Frank Buckley Jr. The son of oil baron William F. Buckley Sr. and brother of former New York Senator James L. Buckley, he is best known as the man, who 50 years ago launched the conservative journal National Review, declaring in its first issue (Nov. 19, 1955) that it "stands athwart history, yelling Stop." At the time he was already the author of such conservative classics as God and Man At Yale and McCarthy and His Enemies (the latter co-written with his brother-in-law L. Brent Bozzell). For many years Buckley also hosted the TV program "The Firing Line".
And so:
Eh,
*nibbles carrot*
Happy 80th Birthday Mr. Buckley.
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£0ß0
Total Posts: 11603
Member Since: 01/02
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Date Posted: Nov 23, 2005 10:32 AM
Happy birthday!
You taste like crap, but you work!
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twittle
Total Posts: 28111
Member Since: 09/00
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Date Posted: Nov 23, 2005 10:33 AM
Ah, yes. Mr. Buckley. He once appeared on Laugh-in or some-such show just because the producers offered to fly him to LA on a plane with two right wings. 
One of my political heroes.
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T'tocs Deloran
Total Posts: 7325
Member Since: 12/00
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Date Posted: Nov 23, 2005 10:37 AM
HBD...get well soon.
Well at 80 there's got to be something wrong.
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Darth Grandiloquos
Total Posts: 25629
Member Since: 05/02
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Date Posted: Nov 23, 2005 10:41 AM
One of my political heroes.
Did you get a copy of his "literary autobiography" Miles Gone By last year?
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twittle
Total Posts: 28111
Member Since: 09/00
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Date Posted: Nov 23, 2005 10:46 AM
Did you get a copy of his "literary autobiography" Miles Gone By last year?
No. Just 'cause someone's my hero doesn't mean I go out and buy all their books.
Seriously, though, he was great to watch and listen to back when he was more active.
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France is Baking
Total Posts: 5749
Member Since: 12/03
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Date Posted: Nov 23, 2005 10:52 AM
This message was edited by France is Baking on Nov 23, 2005 10:56 AM
One of my political heroes.
What are some of William Buckley's defining moments in your opinion?
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Darth Grandiloquos
Total Posts: 25629
Member Since: 05/02
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Date Posted: Nov 23, 2005 10:53 AM
No. Just 'cause someone's my hero doesn't mean I go out and buy all their books.
It's just as well in this case. The book is a collection of previous essays. Not really worth the price (although it comes with an accompanying cd of him narrating parts of it, to a classical music background, with introductions by Walter Cronkite ).
Seriously, though, he was great to watch and listen to back when he was more active.
It's mostly his written material that I'm familiar with.
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France is Baking
Total Posts: 5749
Member Since: 12/03
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Date Posted: Nov 23, 2005 10:57 AM
The book is a collection of previous essays. Not really worth the price
Got to love how book publishers adopted the "Best of..." anthology trick of the music industry
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twittle
Total Posts: 28111
Member Since: 09/00
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Date Posted: Nov 23, 2005 12:17 PM
What are some of William Buckley's defining moments in your opinion?
Other than the beginning of his conservatism, it's hard to choose. He's basically the father of conservatism as we know it.
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Darth Grandiloquos
Total Posts: 25629
Member Since: 05/02
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Date Posted: Nov 23, 2005 01:22 PM
Other than the beginning of his conservatism, it's hard to choose. He's basically the father of conservatism as we know it.
I wouldn't call Buckley the father of conservatism. That title is given to him by the neocons as an attempt to dismiss the libertarians and Southern Agrarians and the other elements of the reactionary coalition that formed in alignment against FDR in the '30's. That coalition, the "Old Right", was the beginning of the American conservative movement. Buckley's role in the history of American conservatism was the transformation, largely through the vehicle of his National Review, of the conservative movement from this loose coalition into the powerful movement that brought about the Reagan administration in the '80's. For this he deserves both much credit and blame (the latter for the principles abandoned and people "kicked off the bus" in order to bring it about)
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Darth Grandiloquos
Total Posts: 25629
Member Since: 05/02
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Date Posted: Nov 23, 2005 01:22 PM
Buckley had a knack for attracting first-rate minds to his journal. Consider his original staff. He brought in his Yale mentor Wilmoore Kendall and Frank S. Meyer who's attempts to blend 19th century classical liberalism (libertarianism) with classical Burkean conservatism was the beginning of "fusionism". For foreign affairs Buckley found James Burnham, an ex-Trotskist turned Machiavellian, who in the decade before NR's founding had written a trilogy of books outlining a "liberation" or "rollback" strategy as an alternative to containment in the Cold War. This strategy would eventually be put into practice by the Reagan administration. Russell Kirk, who around the same time launched the conservative quarterly Modern Age, was invited onboard to represent the "traditionalist" (as opposed to libertarian) wing of conservatism.
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Darth Grandiloquos
Total Posts: 25629
Member Since: 05/02
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Date Posted: Nov 23, 2005 01:23 PM
This message was edited by Darth Grandiloquos on Nov 23, 2005 01:29 PM
Ex-leftists Willi Schlamm (who had given Buckley the idea of founding NR) and Max Eastman were also part of the original crew, as was Brent Bozell, a friend of Buckley's from Yale who had married his sister, University of Illinois Classics Professor Revilo P. Oliver, Austrian Catholic-Monarchist Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn and John Chamberlain. Whittaker Chambers, the former Communist who had exposed Alger Hiss's treason, was soon brought aboard.
This knack of Buckley's didn't end in 1955 either. 10 years after launching his magazine he decided to hire a religion editor and brought in Will Herberg of Yeshiva University, the author of Protestant, Catholic, Jew. He found the perfect curmudgeonly film critic in John Simon. He launched the journalist career of Taki Theodoracopulos and over the years brought in Joe Sobran, John O'Sullivan, Peter Brimelow and many others.
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Darth Grandiloquos
Total Posts: 25629
Member Since: 05/02
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Date Posted: Nov 23, 2005 01:24 PM
This message was edited by Darth Grandiloquos on Nov 23, 2005 01:29 PM
The importance of this is easily demonstrable. There has been a noticeable decline in the quality of NR as Buckley has relinquished more and more control over the magazine through his several stages of retirement, to the point where it seems at times, to be just a transcript of FOX News these days.
Which of course just goes to show Buckley's tremendous skill as an editor.
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twittle
Total Posts: 28111
Member Since: 09/00
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Date Posted: Nov 23, 2005 01:31 PM
I wouldn't call Buckley the father of conservatism.
Oddly enough, that's not what I said, now is it. The "as we know it" was an integral part of the statement.
And your pontification is lost on me as I'm too lazy to read it.
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