February 27, 2008
UPDATE: Christopher “Thank You For Smoking” Buckley eulogizes his father here.
I just saw this at the Agitator. I personally can’t forgive Buckley for all the people he “kicked off the bus“. The Frankenstein’s monster of modern neo-conconservatism is in part his creation, even if he might have regretted making it. I also can’t forgive him for this on smoking. That he’s not as bad as others doesn’t make him good. Rot in peace anyway, Buckley, you’re not doing anything to piss me off at the moment.
Current list of folks paying their respects (or possibly lack thereof): Tyler Cowen, Kathryn Lopez, Douglas Martin in the NYT, Ilya Somin, Alan Bock in the OCRegister, Robert Poole, Brian Doherty, Tavis Smiley & Garry Wills (video), Jacob Sullum, Matthew Yglesias, Jeet Heer, Steven Hart, Billy Beck, Prozium, Justin Raimondo, Richard Spencer, Andrew Sullivan, Jamie Kirchick, Rod Dreher, Marc Ambinder, Joe Klein, Rick Perlstein, Vox Day, Kip Esquire, Ilya Shapiro, John Derbyshire, Lawrence Auster, Timothy Noah, John F. McManus (president of the John Birch Society and author of William F. Buckley, Jr.: Pied Piper for the Establishment), Christopher Westley, Glenn Greenwald, Ann Coulter, Mona, Scott Horton & Lew Rockwell (audio), Daniel Larison, Ross Douthat, Taki Theodoracopulos, IOZ, Limited Inc, Dennis Perrin (with video of old debate between Buckley and Chomsky on Vietnam/imperialism), Robert Sirico, Peter Brimelow, Jacob Heilbrunn, Ximena Ortiz, Buckley’s biographer-to-be Sam Tanenhaus, Razib, Joe Lieberman, Brian Moore, Robert Bidinotto, Edward Cline, Alexander Cockburn, Katrina Vanden Heuvel in Newsweek, John Nichols, James K. Galbraith, Ezra Klein, George Shadroui, Mark Steyn, David Warren, Jeffrey Hart (and again in AmConMag), Chris Roach, Wretchard, Jerry Pournelle, Steve Bachman, FreedomDemocrats, Paul Tuns (quoting and linking to George Will), David Gordon, David Bardallis, Jay Nordlinger (the most sycophantic yet), Peter Suderman & Ezra Klein (video), Paul Gottfried, Paul Cella, Dan Spielberg, Savrola, Joe Sobran, Jack Hunter the Southern Avenger (now with video goodness!), Richard Posner, Gary Becker, Tom Piatak, Christopher Hitchens, Marcus Epstein, Gore Vidal, Jonathan Bean, Austin Bramwell,
Lew Rockwell notes that (like Rand and Rothbard) the John Birch Society’s Robert Welch criticized our involvement in Vietnam, which is why he was also booted out. At Luke Ford’s site Jewish Press editor Jason Maoz notes that the JBS wasn’t really an anti-semitic organization, and Buckley only rejected them because he thought their “kooky, paranoid image” reflected badly on conservatives. Buckley himself explains the story about him, Goldwater and the JBS here. Another piece written years before Buckley’s death by Werther (who you may know from William S. Lind’s “Defense and the National Interest“) holds him in large part responsible for modern “pseudoconservatism” as described in Richard Hofstadter’s “The Paranoid Style in American Politics”. Sean Higgins filling in for Jeremy Lott discovers why Buckley had such an unusual accent here.
February 28, 2008 at 1:24 pm
I’d rather think of him as an organizer than a theorist. He built a political movement — I wouldn’t have read Sailer or Sobran or any of those other edgy types if the National Review hadn’t published them. On utilitarian grounds, he did more good than harm to the conservative ideology, if only by keeping the classics in print longer.
February 28, 2008 at 3:44 pm
It’s really hard to say what would have happened if not for him.
February 28, 2008 at 3:48 pm
Indeed. But if you look over the list of people feeling sorry that he’s gone, it’s hard to believe that they would all be agreeing on something — not to mention being published in the same magazine — if he hadn’t been around. You’re indulging in the same kind of speculation when you complain about how many people he kicked off the bus, without wondering where the conservative movement would be if he hadn’t built the bus first.
February 28, 2008 at 4:42 pm
The Old Right existed before Buckley. Buckley himself was inspired by such figures as Nock and Chodorov. Buckley got people to pursue a different version of conservatism, so it might be said that he hijacked the bus and added some major modifications, though it might not have been much of a bus beforehand. Or maybe I should stop trying to extend the metaphor.
March 2, 2008 at 5:55 am
Are any of those more hateful than Brimelow’s? I can’t be bothered to read any more about how much he loved his boat or his human-engineered loving machines. I want to see people grind the boot.
March 2, 2008 at 2:15 pm
Some of them are pretty down on him, though I can’t think of many that express the same bitterness that comes from trust and betrayal.
March 9, 2008 at 10:39 pm
In the interest of completeness, you may add Becker and Posner to the list: http://www.becker-posner-blog.com/archives/2008/03/william_buckley.html .
(Re?)read God and Man at Yale. It’s amazing what the elites were being taught at an ostensibly conservative institution — Yale’s comparative econ textbook suggested an income tax of 75-99% in the top bracket. Buckley definitely betrayed the South, and the Objectivists, and never seemed to care about the Austrians, but he definitely Stood Athwart History yelling “Look at me! I’m rather conservative, yet likable and mainstream! Perhaps extending the New Deal is less centrist and more radical than you thought!”
March 11, 2008 at 5:15 pm
[...] quotes William F. Buckley (whose obit list I am still expanding) saying “Now if, for instance, a society feels that its attachment to [...]
June 1, 2008 at 2:21 pm
[...] of the Buckley vs Chomsky video (both of which can be found in what I am proud to declare the largest gathering of Buckley obituaries), and then in turn Chomsky vs Foucault (part 2 here). That last one I found via OrgTheory and [...]