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Ronald Reagan is often hailed as the hero of the modern conservative movement. The movement’s architect and intellectual leader, however, was William F. Buckley Jr.
Like many others, we were saddened to learn of Mr. Buckley’s passing yesterday at the age of 82. As founder of the political magazine National Review, host of the television show Firing Line and author of the syndicated newspaper column “On the Right,” Mr. Buckley influenced generations of conservative thinkers — including the group that launched this very paper back in 1969.
Indeed, The Badger Herald’s existence to this day owes no small bit of gratitude to Mr. Buckley. Faced with mounting debt and an uncertain future, the fledgling Herald invited Mr. Buckley to appear at a fundraising dinner in Madison in 1971. Luckily for us, he accepted.
“One might as well undertake to found a Republican paper in the basement of Buckingham Palace as a conservative paper in Madison, Wisconsin,” Mr. Buckley said that night. Erudite as ever, he predicted the Herald’s move to a daily format, “a shot that will be heard ’round the world, which will challenge the hegemony of the poor radicals who run the Cardinal.”
The Herald has grown and evolved a considerable deal in the years since, of course. For Mr. Buckley, the decades that followed brought fruition to the movement he helped launch in the 1950s, as Mr. Reagan ushered in a new era of conservatism with his election in 1980.
Of course, Mr. Buckley’s record did have its blotches. In its early years, the National Review vigorously defended segregation in the South. But Mr. Buckley also successfully fought to strip vestiges of anti-Semitism from the conservative movement.
A true pundit until the end, Mr. Buckley became dismayed by certain aspects of George W. Bush’s presidency in recent years, telling the Wall Street Journal in 2005: “Bush is conservative, but he is not a conservative.”
If ever one was qualified to make such a distinction, it was Mr. Buckley. The man called “the most influential journalist and intellectual of our era” by Mr. Reagan will certainly be missed.
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Lets be real, its sad whenever someone dies, but Buckley was a fascist.
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To the above, Shut up Ashok. Do you have any scruples? God. Oh sorry, I don’t want to offend you. How about, “potential being of greater existance.”
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Mr. Buckley will be missed by those of us who are true conservatives. To be conservative does not mean that one must be fascist; in fact, it couldn’t be farther from the truth.
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Actually William F. Buckley devoted his life to fighting fascism…. and communism and socialism and their weak sister, American liberalism. He was opposed to any system whereby the power of the state superceded the God given rights of individuals.
It’s ironic that the very leftist PC crowd who so easily attach the fascist label to their opponents are, in fact, the ideological bedfellows of fascism with its state controls over all aspects of human activity.
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6:55/10:00 - you’re both idiots.
The country is better off without him, he has done irreparable harm to so many Americans and much of the rest of the world.
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I like how the Herald jumps from the National Review’s support of segregation in the South, to Antisemitism without answering for the support of it in the first place… 10:00-O you mean like telling people they can’t have abortions,get life saving stem cell research done, get married, have sex in their own house, wiretapping of citizens, and being held without being charged? You mean control of society like that??? Heaven forbid a conservative is doing this right now….
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Buckley was less an “intellectual” than a hate-mongering moron. He dedicated his life to the conservative philosophy, flirting with his fellow right-wing dilettantes like the equally unreadable Ayn Rand and promoting militarism, bigotry and neoliberalism all the while.
To take but one example: He supported segregation until the last “Whites Only” sign came down, writing that whites, or the “advanced race,” were entitled to establish separated institutions to protect themselves politically and culturally from African-Americans. He opposed every proactive civil rights enforcement measure until his death.
His legacy is one of a few crappy spy novels which no one reads anymore and opposing every progressive measure of the past half century that he had time to put his pen to. As his leftist rival Gore Vidal (a guy who actually knows how to write) put it, Buckley was “a pro-crypto Nazi” and I’m not so sad to see him go.
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Fascist @ 2:53am puked: “Buckley was a fascist.”
Since fascism was clearly a Leftist movement, your clumsy attempt at character assasination falls flat.
Marxist physician, heal thyself.
See also (NYTimes #1 bestseller), “Liberal Fascism” @ http://liberalfascism.nationalreview.com/
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This guy was a hate-monger through and through. He believed that Africans benefited from slavery. Also, after Gore Vidal called him a crypto-fascist, he responded by threatening to punch that “queer” in the face.
It disturbs me that this bigoted troll and segregationist is a hero to anyone.
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Kyle stops applauding terrorists to sneer: “He [Buckley] supported segregation until the last ‘Whites Only’ sign came down, writing that whites, or the ‘advanced race,’ were entitled to establish separated institutions to protect themselves politically and culturally from African-Americans.” Is Kyle aware that Esquire had the good grace to apologize to and compensate Buckley for Gore Vidal’s serial libels? http://www.villagevoice.com/blogs/pressclipsextra/archives/2004/12/buckleyandvid.php
Maybe BH should consider that before publishing anything offered by the discredited terrorism apologist, Kyle Szarzynski.
Try reading what your cited, unsigned, ANONYMOUS writer (allegedly Buckley) wrote again. Notice where it says “The sobering answer is…” The sobering fact was that southern Democrats were holding down blacks— and did their best to keep blacks ignorant.
No wonder the anonymous writer also wrote “for the time being.”
That Leftists see segregationist in that anonymous editorial paragraph is typical of progressives. As soon as they’re uncomfortable with someone’s legacy, they look for specious ways to libel or slander— all the while ignoring the steaming piles of hypocrisy their own dogs left in the progressive living room.
Kyle, tell us your thoughts on Senator Robert “Sheetz” Byrd bloviating, “There are white n!ggers. I’ve seen a lot of white n!ggers in my time. I’m going to use that word.”
Progressive uber-hero Byrd was recently hospitalized for a fall and was a KKK Grand Kleagle. Is Kyle going to hope he dies so you can sneer “good riddance?”
Kyle is one scummy little Marxist.
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Szarnicki is as uninformed as he is boorish.
First Buckley purged the conservative intellectual movement of the “white Bolsheviks” of the Randian crowd. They had no alliance.He is just plain wrong there.
Second, if Buckley is guilty of standing up for constitutionally mandated states rights in the 50s, then equal opprobrium should be cast toward liberal icons Senators Robert Byrd, Lyndon Johnson and Al Gore Sr. They, like Buckley changed their positions on segregation later as did most of the Democrat Party, which was the home of race baiter, Gov. George Wallace.
If Szarnecki thinks Norman Mailer is more readable than Ayn Rand, that is his peculiar problem.
And last, look at what this fine leftist is doing on the occassion of a distinguished man’s death — calling him a “Hate mongering moron.”
If mother Szarnecki ever taught her son any manners, they have been long since cast aside.
Isn’t it funny that people like Szarnecki are always calling conservatives “hateful” and “mean spirited?” And then they show up to boorishly dance on peoples graves.
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Yeah, Pinochet clearly based his neoliberal ideology on Marx and Lenin… There is a left that rejected authoritarian communism, and there is great intellectual and ideological diversity within the “left”—but fascism can not be placed here. It is, and always has been, extreme right-wing authoritarianism. Maybe it’s similar to authoritarian communism in the way that anarchists are kind of like American libertarians.
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Idiotarian @ 9:50pm prattled: “Yeah, Pinochet clearly based his neoliberal ideology on Marx and Lenin… There is a left that rejected authoritarian communism, and there is great intellectual and ideological diversity within the ‘left’—but fascism can not be placed here”
Leftists love to trot out ~2700 dead Chilean commies to obscure Leftist fascism’s 100s of millions of innocent corpses (and counting).
The evidence clearly demonstrates that the 20th century’s bloodiest mass murderers— Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, Honneker, Mussolini, Caeucescu, Mao, Pol Pot, Ho Chi, il Sung, Mugabe, Mengistu, Castro, Che, PFLP, PKK, FMLN, FARC, IRA, ETA, Red Army faction, Shining Path, Rachel Carson, etc., ad nauseum— were all inspired by Leftist Marxism.
100 million corpses don’t lie. Show us that “intellectual honesty” and own it, Leftist.
Hitler was a Leftist. http://constitutionalistnc.tripod.com/hitler-leftist/id9.html
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A uniique and nearly unrivaled American intellect has passed on… and our national dialogue is substantially diminished with his loss. You have only to read the crayon-scratchings and hate speech above to witness and acknowledge the truth of that statement.
God Speed, Mr. Buckley… Invictus Maneo!