Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Bill Buckley, RIP

The announcement that William F. Buckley has died is less than four hours old but it has already produced an avalanche of tributes and remembrances; deservedly so, for he was a giant of a man. I can't possibly match the eloquence of the hundreds of those who knew and loved him. But I do have a Buckley story of my own.

When I was a very young man and my only source of political news came from The Washington Post and Rolling Stone magazine, I held conventionally liberal views. Not that I thought about politics much. But to the extent that I did, I accepted the liberal orthodoxy of the day that The Post was one of the leading purveyors of. It never occurred to me not to.

But The Washington Post made one mistake. They carried Bill Buckley's column on their op-ed page. As I became more interested in politics I began to read his column regularly. It became clear to me quite quickly that this was something different from the liberal pieties I was used to. Buckley's wit, humor, and clearly reasoned arguments blew right through those pieties. Everything he wrote made sense. So I started watching Firing Line whenever I had a chance. I'll admit that as a political neophyte a lot of the conversation went way over my head, but I found Buckley delightful - charming, funny, and witty while discussing the most serious issues of the day. Before you know it, I had subscribed to National Review and was carrying a copy of Keeping the Tablets around with me wherever I went. I was a conservative. Buckley, Ronald Reagan, and George F. Will became my mentors. But it was WFB who started me on the path.

So, as I said above, I will leave it to others much more capable than me to write the moving obituaries - I will read every one of them, and you should to. But for me, the most important thing I can say today, something I have in common with tens of thousands of others, is: Bill Buckley made me a conservative. RIP.

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