William F. Buckley, Jr, A remembrance

The magazine he founded, National Review, honors William F. Buckley, in the wake of his passing. National Review is quoting a number of leaders from President Bush and Newt Gingrich on down to NRO's own Jonah Goldberg and Mark Steyn. The eulogies are as gracious and kind as the man himself. A great man, a good man, and a man with wit and flair. His influence cannot be underestimated.

What does William F. Buckley mean to me? Some time ago, I thought about who my political influencers were, and I came up with many books and events ... but one man who informed me into conservatism:

BIGGEST INFLUENCE: My political ideas been shaped and informed by many, but one great conservative was a key influence: William F Buckley. He masterfully has woven the threads of traditional conservatism and classical liberalism thinking to create the synthesis that is modern American Conservatism. Watching "Firing Line" and reading National Review as teenager was an early influence for me. Up from Liberalism!

I first got the influence of William F. Buckley in the late 1970s in High School, with his show "Firing Line". In 1981, I visited a friend at Harvard and saw William F. Buckley in person, in one of his famous Firing Line debates. Bill Buckley, with Jack Kemp and Art Laffer on his side, defended Reaganomics (then not even yet fully implemented) against some liberals - his pal-cum-nemisis John Galbraith and some other forgettable sidekicks. (That friend of mine had an untimely passing himself in the past year.) These were debates that would leave today's talking head shows in the dust. His debates were impressive because they were about big ideas, and they worked precisely because he was a man of ideas. He loved ideas and in particular he loved the essential ideas that make up modern conservatism, and through his love he made the Right Ideas bloom.

Buckley was also a man of humor, wit and humility. His book "The Unmaking of a Mayor" was one the early books of his that I read long ago. His run for New York City Mayor in 1965 was a Quixotic attempt to stave off liberalism in one of its most fertile precincts. A journalist asked him what the first thing he would do if elected, and he retorted: "Demand a recount."

I recently (last year) read a collection of his writings, "Miles Gone By", that reflects both his personal and political writings. One essay discussed his 25th anniservary edition of "God and Man at Yale." He give a fascinating account of the machinations of the Yale University authorities to stop Buckley, then 24, from publishing his account of the ideological indoctrination of College students. So much has changed - his is arguing against Keynesianism, an economics theory that has become and antique; and so much is the same - colleges today are more aggressive in their leftist indoctrination than ever before. And so, while his book was the first of its kind, it was not the last: The Closing of the American Mind, Illiberal Education, and other books have given an update on the continued ideological derangement of the American University.

This book of Buckley's begat his career as writer and magazine editor, which begat the modern conservative movement, Goldwater to Reagan to Gingrich and beyond; it begat a global revolution away from socialism around the world. John O'Sullivan says: "He founded the American conservative movement that, among many other achievements, won the Cold War." He left his mark on the world, and he left his mark on me. In both cases, for the better.