You, of course, are not a ‘liberal.’ Rather, you attempt to sound educationally flattering and pull from Greek philosophers at least a few times a day.

Where is your defense of the intellect as attacked by those morons? You clearly value education as it has been gained by your mind; so why not denounce them; as opposed to being bogged-down in endless quips about dead friends and Barrack Obama?

I hate Obama as much as the next man; but as a fairly pure Objectivist; I have trouble citing the rationality of your arguments in any sense other than you admire certain people on the right; and disdain nearly everyone on the left. You are pundit, it seems, my friend; in that you only advocate one way but lack clear political philosophy beyond the whim of your character-acceptance.

Where are your underlying political convictions? Not once do you say capitalism in your arguments against this or that state intervention. As you play for a team; I cannot trust your opinion.

And if it’s all for that, and all for the money you gain by getting those dumber than you to play percussion at your tempo; why not just go into politics and receive lobby money? Wouldn’t it be a faster fortune than snarking on this comparatively tiny website and letting us observe your bow tie from a frozen frame?

Dear Mr. Smith:

In the passage you quote from Up from Liberalism I intended, indeed, to
refer to the religious truth that is our central heritage and to the moral
philosophy and human insight that derive from it. Sometimes this position
is referred to (in a phrase going back, I believe, to the days of the
Roman Empire) as “the morality of the last days” — by which is meant the
world-view of men who know that death is close. But in the long view, we
all stand sentenced to death, and whether it comes in 1995 or tomorrow
makes no difference. That is why the morality of the last days always
applies to what is “finally important in human experience.” All our
techniques of social welfare, all our science, all our comfort, all our
liberty, all our democracy and foreign aid and grandiloquent orations
– all that means nothing to me and nothing to you in the moment when we go.
At that moment we must put our souls in order, and the way to do that was
lighted for us by Jesus, and since then we have had need of no other light.
That is what is finally important; it has not changed; and it will not
change. It is the truth, which shall ever abide in the future. And if it
is “reactionary” to hold a truth that will be valid for all future time,
then words have lost their meaning, and men their reason.

Yours faithfully,
William F. Buckley, Jr.

As a kid I actually found Bill entertaining. In surfing channels between the Flintstones and Bugs I remember stumbling across Firing Line and thinking, “What is this?”

And Cackcon, while Buckley goal was Logos, his Ethos is what made his writing compelling. And Buckley avoided Pathos in his political writing (he saved that for topics like sailing and cocktails).

“as a boy Buckley moved with his family from Mexico to Sharon, Connecticut before beginning his first formal schooling in Paris, where he attended first grade. By age seven, he received his first formal training in English at a day school in London; his first and second languages were Spanish and French, respectively. As a boy, Buckley developed a love for music, sailing, horses, hunting, skiing, and story-telling. All of these interests would be reflected in his later writings. Just before World War II, at age 13, he attended high school at the Catholic Beaumont College in England.”

Life was sooo tough…..but I liked him anyway even if I abhored his politics. He would have made a fine Monarchist…

And WFB never produced a masterpiece.

I agree we could us a Buckley in our day, but it is not, as many conservatives have posited, that we need a Buckley “for our time.” After all, classical conservatism is rooted in traditional understandings and resists change for its own sake.

What we really need, then, is someone to make the same appeals to logic and longstanding conservative principles in the face of today’s struggles–to remind us that we must stand our ground even now!

You make a good point, though, that the right reasoning will not necessarily lead us down the same path on every issue. In other words, the right answer won’t always “feel” right. It is only by resorting to principle and reason that we know with the full strength of our convictions that we are, in fact, right. And Buckley’s many words of wisdom will allow his ghost to guide conservatism for a long time to come if we’ll only revisit them regularly.