William F. Buckley
Guardian of American Conservatism and founder of the National Review, William F. Buckley, Jr. died last week at the age of 82. (He’s the author of the most recent piece you just read.) Buckely was an unusually keen observer, agile debater, prolific writer, and imaginative intellectual, but it’d be useless for me to write much else since others who knew the man and his work far more intimately than I have been offering their thoughts since the news of his passing.
National Review has begun an archive of appreciations on its founder, and other media have produced their own, NPR’s “Remembering William F. Buckley”, New York Times’ “The Mighty Political Legacy of William F. Buckley Jr.”, and Charlie Rose’s retrospective (below), among them.
Here’s a portion (check out all the segments) of the 1968 debate between Buckley and famed MIT linguist Noam Chomsky (whom he notoriously threatened, as he had once Gore Vidal, to sock in the face) over American intervention in Vietnam:
The videos are interesting, but it may lead you to wonder more about what I mentioned to you in class: “Why Did William F. Buckley Jr. Talk Like That?”
I’d encourage any student to sample his work from the National Review archive of his opinion and analysis. Observe closely his broad, deep, and lucid understanding and command of social, political, and cultural issues.
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