William F. Buckley, Jr., R.I.P.

When I took Problems of Democracy as a senior in high school my teacher Mr. Glen Pike encouraged us to subscribe to magazines that would broaden our horizons. He recommended I subscribed to Mother Jones, The Progressive and The Nation with The National Review for “balance”. It wasn’t long before I dropped Mother Jones & The Progressive from my active reading list because of their failures of principle, vision which left them with a basic misunderstanding of the human condition and ultimately reality. They were negative and depressing, completely without joy or mirth. The Nation lasted longer principally because of Calvin Trillan but in time they also fell by the wayside. The National Review on the other hand was and is absolutely right in its understanding of human nature, politics, culture and it is fun, sometimes sarcastic, sometimes caustic but always with wit and good humor. It perfectly reflects its founder William F. Buckley, Jr. and benefited from his gifts of writing, editing and finding talent wherever it resided. And while I have let the print version lapse I do read the National Review Online daily paying particular attention to Goldberg, Nordlinger, Ledeen and Hanson. WFB, Jr. seemingly single handedly rebuilt the modern American conservative movement into a vibrant and dynamic political philosophy which ultimately resulted in the election of Ronald Reagan and bringing conservatism into the mainstream. He also started and hosted Firing Line on PBS a weekly political talk / interview show which ran for 33 years. Throw in writing 50 books, some 1,500 columns, playing the harpsichord in public, sailing across the Atlantic multiple times and you have a life lived to its fullest, a life that has enriched us all.