November 24, Thanksgiving this year, was Bill Buckley’s birthday. Born in 1925, he would have turned 86 that day. It doesn’t seem possible that he died at the end of February 2008, nearly four years ago. Where have those months gone? It’s as if the company that delivers time blundered, supplying only half the expected number of hours, days, and months these last several years. Yet another illustration, I suppose, of the mysterious fact that life seems to speed up as you get older.
I often think about, and even more often miss, Bill Buckley. He and his wife Pat were dear friends of ours, and propinquity, the fact that we lived quite close to each other, helped cement the bond. It was rare, in the last few years of his life, that we didn’t see him at least once a week and we “spoke” by email (Bill loved email) much oftener. A veteran observer of world affairs, Bill was ostentatiously well-informed about the controversies of the day. I never thought I had pondered a contentious issue thoroughly until I had discussed it with him.
Bill died before the burlesque that is Barack Hussein Obama really got going. As I recall, he wrote about Obama only once, early in 2008, just a few weeks before he died. Linda Bridges, Bill’s long-time assistant, and I include the column in our recent anthology of Bill’s political and polemical writings, Athwart History: Half a Century of Polemics, Animadversions, and Illuminations: A William F. Buckley Jr Omnibus. There was little Bill didn’t know about the folly of government intervention, and his connoisseur’s nose for socialist encroachment masquerading as community-based altruism instantly revealed Obama as the redistributionist that he has turned out to be. Thus Bill described as “mischievous” candidate Obama’s suggestion that increased government intervention in our lives would increase the chance that “every American child” would benefit from the riches produced by the mighty engine of American capitalism. It was, Bill observed, a mendacious suggestion, a false promise that would “foster frustration and stimulate disillusion.
“Fostering frustration and stimulating disillusion”: that’s a pretty accurate summary of Obama’s net effect on the body politic of this great county. The title “Athwart History,” as many readers will doubtless already know, comes from the famous publisher’s statement introducing the inaugural issue of National Review, on November 19, 1955. “National Review is out of place,” that bulletin declared, “in the sense that the United Nations and the League of Women Voters and the New York Times and Henry Steele Commager are in place. It is out of place because, in its maturity, literate America rejected conservatism in favor of radical social experimentation.”
This brash new magazine had arrived with its brash young editor to cast a cold, skeptical, and inquisitive light upon that presumption. The magazine “stands athwart history,” Bill announced, “yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.”
Coincidentally, I just finished re-reading “God and Man at Yale.” Unfortunately few people heeded that warning, and the vast majority of our educational system is in Leftist shambles.
My parents were news addicts, and I was thus exposed to Buckley and his masterful show, Firing Line, at a young age. Astounding, the truths he spoke of in his laconic, erudite way. I suspect no one has or will compare.
Aye. I ken we’ll ne’er see his like again.
Perhaps the reason we are now ruled by Obamas is because we don’t have any left like him. They’ve been replaced by Occupods.
While agreeing completely with his political-economic views, I was repulsed by his affected, drawling accents. He seemed to be yawning while speaking.
It was better to read his thoughts.
I’ve never read any of Buckley’s non-fiction books, probably because I was so put off by his speaking style on the Firing Line episode (or maybe it was a couple of episodes, I don’t recall for sure) that I saw. [I did read one of his spy novels, Marco Polo If You Can, being a fan of those at the time, and found it very weak.]
I seem to recall finding his remarks and arguments logical enough but his voice just seemed to ooze condescension and arrogance. I was – and am – impressed by his insistence that he would rather be ruled by the first few hundred individuals in the Manhattan phone book than by the Harvard elite yet he sounded like the epitome of that very elite.
It’s unfortunate when someone worth listening to doesn’t get heard just because his presentation style is so offputting. (Of course, it’s no better that some people with toxic ideas get heard and taken seriously just because they seem pleasant and approachable.)
In the 50′s and 60′s, far more so even than today, it was assumed that all conservatives were uncultured, unlettered philistines. Buckley’s presentation, however “off-putting” it may have been to some, was instrumental in weakening that myth. Outside of just being himself, he was playing to the super-elitist left, beating them at their own game.
Amen to all that and I’ll raise the ante. WFB was the only conservative presence in the media matrix in which we baby boomers grew up swimming. He thus initially led me and no doubt thousands of others out of Babylon. But he was undeniably pompous and a bit of an embarrassment. As he abandoned ultra-conservatism for the “neo” kind in the PC age his love of ferreting out totally obscure words and popping them into his columns made him look all the more an elitist or Insider.
PC is the outer facade of Jewish supremacism, and Buckley bowed the knee to it by firing Joe Sobran for getting too truthful on that subject as editor of NR. This act was one of the great private-sector “conservative” crimes. Sobran chronicled it as it happened in his genteel, thoughtful columns and it was clear (for anybody who needed convincing) Buckley was a cad about it. Sobran never recanted his love and admiration of Buckley and wrote a later column describing what a kind, generous, fun, great person WFB had always been up till the great sellout.
Firing Line became more PC and more of a total yawn. Finally Buckley gave the show a more Hollywood look and did the next logical thing — hired a liberal Jew, Michael Kinsley, to run it and him.
One of my first acts as a reborn conservative around 1985 was to donate a subscription to National Review to my local library. It was still grade B+ but fortunately an ad in it led me to stronger stuff — Chronicles. Then I discovered Instauration and left them both in the dust. That sensational underground magazine dished up the real story on Buckley and other “pseuds” as nobody else would. Already in 1985 it had a “Majority Renegade of the Year” cover story on Newt Gingrich.
I’m certainly grateful for Buckley’s TV skewering of many a leftist in the sizzling ’60s when it was sorely needed and can agree with Mr. Kimball on the greatness of what once was.
– when Reagan won in 1980? WFB just wrote, “Ain’t it Grand?” Miss him still..
Well, reading this article just cost me $13 and change at the Kindle store!
TO MR.CHANCE. READING THIS JUST COST ME $37 + CHANGE @ AMAZON IN HARD-BACK.
PRIOR TO RECEIPT, I AM SURE MY MONEY IS WELL SPENT.
jl
God knows I love dead tree books, but I’m at a place in my life where walls of books, boxes of books, and especially humping boxes of books around just ain’t on my agenda anymore. I have my special ones, my collector leather-bounds and such all shown off in a, see the singular, nice bookcase, and the rest live as electrons stored on my Kindle, now Kindles, or in a Cloud.
I keep on turning those pages and God help me, I can’t stop now. I am in the early pages of “Witness”, and my book has a preface by Mr. Buckley. “God and Man at Yale” is dog eared and resting in my bookshelves. Still, our local schools are completely controlled by the secularist mentality that celebrates diversity as a virtue and practices political correctness as a manifestation of this absurdity. Hopefully, others have fared better than I have.
Witness was amazing, depressing and inspiring. Hope you enjoy it.
Whitaker Chambers did the best job I know of helping us understand how well-meaning idealists could be seduced by the abyss of the collectivist statist Progressive LEFT. I still run into people who believe despite all the revelations of the archives of the fallen CCCP government, that Senator Joe McCarthy was nothing but a loose cannon bigoted fascist.
The Left today behave with more vicious bullying, and repeatedly “blacklist” people who dare to disagree with their orthodoxy than ten thousand McCarthy’s.
Where is our Willima F. Buckley when we need him more than ever. Can you imagine him disecting Barack Obama and the other Lefties in gov’ment like Madame Maxine, Charlie Rangle, Chucky Schumer, and Land Deal Reid? How about the disgracefull Erik Holder? How about the distortionists in the Leftie media, movies, music and Mis-Education? I don’t know anyone else who had such command of the language and could argue conservatism like he could.
In order for mediocrities to rule, the people have to be rendered ignorant. Such talents as Buckley will not be nurtured in our current education system, because our education system is in the control of government and those selfsame mediocrities.
Furthermore, even where there is such talent developed into skill, the market for same is much diminished. The supply has been reduced, and so, also, has the demand.
Do you doubt this? Allow me to allay such doubts. Take just three words used in this article: propinquity; enthymeme; ephemera. Ask your friends what they mean. Even use the words in a sentence for them. MEGO ensues. My Eyes Glaze Over. Such words serve to bemuse me (cause me to be engrossed in thought), but only serve to bemuse others (cause to be dazed, confused).
Most people now lack a sufficient lexicon, lack sufficient morphemes, as a basis for further understanding. They cannot even master their own tongue, much less learn the foreign tongues which are the sources of the etymology of our modern words. Why, it’s all Greek to them.
There is a reason they created the public education system in the late-1800′s-early-1900′s. It wasn’t so people could be more learned. They were far more learned back then. It was so that people could be made less learned. This was the same movement which, in the 1910′s, gave us the Corporation, the Federal Reserve, the Progressive Income Tax, and the direct election of Senators.* The 1910′s was a very bad decade for our Republic.
We’ll see if the 2010′s are any better. It’s not looking too promising right now.
*(One might even throw in Suffrage. That has not worked out so well. For example, have you ever tried to talk to women about foreign policy? Have you?)
I am 64, college educated, reasonably well read and well traveled, and a life-long conservative. I knew that WFB’s yawning speech and accent would at some point leave me behind his thought-curve, so I am one of his fans who would reluctantly tune him out. I found his writings to be remarkable and insightful, but frankly I was often forced to grab a dictionary when reading WFB. I put up with his “50 cent words”, as I understood that he believed language to be an art form. I wish he had given his editors the right to “translate” a few individual words into English 101, as his message was often tied too tight with knots of intellectual lexicon… just because he could.
I’m so glad you posted because that is exactly how I felt about WFB to the “T” and I’m so glad I am not alone. Thanks a million.
Aside from your comment about women and foreign policy, I agree with your comments.
I have been a licensed teacher (grade 5 and ESL–spent four years teaching in Turkey) for 41 years. It seems that teachers these days think that by the time you’re five years old, you’ve learned everything there is to know about the English language. There is no need to waste time learning about relative and subordinate clauses, parts of speech, appositives, or past participles, and all the other more intricate and complex aspects of the English language. They’ll muddle through somehow.
When I was teaching, I taught all this stuff–the mechanics of writing (punctuation, usage, formatting on a page); grammar; and sentence structure, simple and complex. They just don’t teach this anymore. That’s why we have idiots who can’t spell, read, or write graduating from college. Sign seen at a college protest: “Who’s school is this?” This is sad and dangerous for our future. Eventually, we’ll have an electorate that is totally ignorant and totally malleable.
The next time you watch TV, listen to people using the word “was.” People don’t know how to use “was” and “were” anymore: There was 159 people aboard the plane. The books was on the table. Just listen. You’ll be amazed.
The next time you watch TV, listen to people using the word “was.” People don’t know how to use “was” and “were” anymore: There was 159 people aboard the plane. The books was on the table. Just listen. You’ll be amazed.
It seems counter-intuitive but I find it is the short words that give people the most trouble, especially the ones that sound the same, such as its/it’s, your/you’re, there/their/they’re, etc. which get used as if they mean the same thing. I still remember an error message in a manual that said “Program failed do to insufficient memory”.
I was in one of the very last batches of students that actually learned spelling and grammar. Some jokers in the education bureaucracy in the late 60s decided that spelling and grammar were irrelevant and should no longer be considered in assignments and exams. They argued that as long as people understood you, that was good enough. So our province (I’m Canadian) dropped all grammar and spelling education. Immediately. That was around 1969 and I had just finished Grade 8. We had a full period of grammar every day in Grades 7 and 8. In high school, I think we spent exactly a single period over the entire course of high school reviewing a few key points of grammar.
I still cringe frequently as I read what younger people write even though it has become increasingly common over the past 40-odd years to see these horrible mistakes. I’m very grateful that I still remember how to write grammatically, even if I break rules occasionally.
I worry sometimes that I don’t remember WHY something is wrong, just that it is wrong. I started looking for grammar resources online recently to refresh myself on the rules but haven’t found that much. I remember looking for grammar books in a bookstore 20-odd years ago and finding precious little on the subject.
If I had more time and perceived a market for it, I’d build a grammar website. But I really doubt that there is any substantial interest in the subject. Almost everyone has simply gotten used to bad grammar and I don’t see anything on the horizon that is going to change that so that people actually care about expressing themselves correctly. And that’s assuming we could even get agreement on what is correct any more. Some usages have become so ingrained that I doubt anyone could root them out now….
For American English you can’t beat a Harcourt-Brace college English text published prior to the mid-’70s. You’ll have to dig in used book stores for it. There’s also a good book more oriented to English English called Eats, Shoots, and Leaves, can’t remember the woman’s name but Amazon has it. It is both funny and useful.
I also had the benefit of English one period a day and I had it all the way through, graduated HS in ’67. I can’t remember the why of things and I get caught up in the colloquialism, slang, and poor punctuation, but when I really have to I can still write a complete English sentence. There are cliques on the ‘net that really insist on very formal English. I was doing research into the US Civil War and some of the board there make you think you’ve returned to the mid-19th Century.
I admire Buckley’s love of language and especially his grasp of Latin but he could be crass, a brute, and a fool. His altercation with Gore Vidal on Firing Line comes to mind. Buckley looked fit to be tied, straight-jacketed and placed in a rubber room. That he is so highly regarded today says quite a lot about us, not him.
Anyway, ask his son.
In early 1909 Buckley’s hapless son took back his foolish endorsement of Obama. Christopher said he had not “know who Obama was.” Lots of us knew who Obama was, we paid attention to his (Ayers) writings, his lies, and his comments, such as those to Joe the Plumber.
“There is a reason they created the public education system in the late-1800′s-early-1900′s. It wasn’t so people could be more learned. They were far more learned back then. It was so that people could be made less learned.”
First, there has been some level of “public” education almost from the beginning in Colonial America. It was common for a planter to hire a teacher to teach both his own children and for a small fee, sometimes none at all, allow neighboring children to attend. Likewise it was common in the towns for a group of citizens to hire a teacher and start a school or for a teacher to start a school which could be attended for a fee. Free public schools were common in the larger towns by the Revolution, though mostly in The North. The much more rural South continued to rely on private “academies” until well after the Civil War. The push to provide universal free public education was to assure that more people had some education, a need most acute in the rural areas of The South, Appalachia, and the states of the old Northwest. If one lived on a farm, as most did, or in any but the largest towns in these areas, one was likely to barely if at all literate unless one came from a family which could teach “reading, writing, and ‘rithmetic.” Abraham Lincoln’s self-education was not at all uncommon.
Glenn Beck not withstanding, there was no “progressive” conspiracy to make citizens stupid by indoctrinating them in public schools. It was in fact a noble enterprise and one that raised all boats. While the public schools were less rigorous than the private academies they largely superceded because they served a wider sociodemographic range of students, it is fair to say that public school in the late 19th, early 20th Centuries was far more rigorous than today though a much narrower range of subject was taught than today. My grandmother is a good example: she had 10 years of the six or eight months a year rural Georgia public schooling, graduating at the turn of the century and going on to two years of “Normal School,” what they called teachers’ colleges in those days. Her penmanship and grammar were impeccable. She could decline, conjugate, identify parts of speech, and diagram with alacrity. Her math skills highly developed through elementary algebra and geometry. She could rattle off from memory those geometry therorums that drove me to distraction, recite long passages of Caesar’s Gallic Wars and The Aneid in Latin or huge passages of the King James Bible or Shakespeare. She knew US History and a bit of English History fairly well. All that said, she knew very little the rest of the World and as a result was thoroughly xenophobic. She was completely ignorant of all but the most rudimentary science. She was as ignorant and superstitious as a medieval peasant in matters of health, hygiene, and general biology and physics. She planted and harvested by “the signs” and attended to matters of health in the same way; home remedies, wives tales, and “signs.” She personified that line about how only a Southern Grandma could believe that ‘rasslin was real and the moon landing was fake.
The great push in public education from the 1940s on was “consolidation” and standardization of curriculum. This resulted in an urbanization and centralization of schools and took control away from school boards of hard-handed farmers and small town merchants and put them in the sway of professional “educators” and state boards of education. From the 1930s onward the US Academy got a strong and virulent injection of German sociological and psychological thinking combined with a large dose of communism. By this time “progressive” had become code for communist fellow traveller. Unfortunately, Beck conflates this usuage of the term progressive with its earlier strictly American meaning.
By the time Buckley was writing of Yale in the ’50s, a college education outside the hard sciences meant an indoctrination to “progressive” thought in its communist meaning, and that was what he was yelling “Stop” at. It wasn’t until after WWII that education was anything like universal in the rural areas of the Country but as it became universal in the ’50s and ’60s it was being administered and taught by “educators” who had been taught by Marxist and progressive instructors in the ’30s and ’40s. By the time I started college in ’67 even in a small school in rural Georgia most of my professors in humanities were out and out marxists, and some of them even knew it. So again, with all due respect for Glenn Beck, what really happened was that the communists adhering to Gramsci’s teachings set out to take over Western institutions and one of the first to fall completely under their sway was higher education, which since teachers are definitionaly college educated resulted in their almost total takeover of public K-12 education.
“Where is our William F. Buckley when we need him more than ever…I don’t know anyone else who had such command of the language and could argue conservatism like he could.”
That would be Mark Levin. Different persona, same incisive intellect, same combative nature, same comprehensive grasp of facts and history.
What about Limbaugh or Gingrich?
WFB, with Spanish as his first language and basic education in English boarding schools, looked at America as an outsider. God knows,there are plenty of home-grown American would-be aristos, but in Spain and England class status is refined to an art-form unknown (and only dreamt of by some) in the US. Smart, well-educated, excellent debater, WFB had many strengths. Fot a male, the necessary strength is the one Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr, had — to look another man in the eye, and kill him (Holmes killed in hand-to-hand combat in the War Between the States). Absent demonstration in action, we just have to guess at any individual guy’s steel. That’s why societies that go too long without large-scale wars degenerate. The leadership ranks cannot be tested; they have to be vetted by indirect observation, which is not reliable. Society’s leaders can weaken as well — becoming what we say is “tanto bono che no vale niente” (or something close to that: ‘so good they are good for nothing’). Buckley started out by telling us that secularism was toxic for any society. As time went on, he seemed to keep to his own personal faith, but fail to advocate imposing it on others. Maybe he just got tired, or maybe he decided the hoi polloi just couldn’t measure up. Good ’50s Catholics were brought up in the Church Militant, but Buckley seemed to belong to the Church Sibilant. Very smart people tend to favor complexity in thought just because it’s interesting for them. The trouble can be that the right thing to do is always simple (and hard), while the wrong thing is complicated (but easy). Standing athwart history yelling ‘stop’ is a conservative position. It doesn’t work, although in 1954 it would’ve seemed reasonable. Bring it forward to 2011, and it’s pretty obvious that it is hopeless. Rightists have the right answer — that simple, but hard, program of action that so many seek to avoid by doing the wrong/easy thing. Many years ago, I read an article about abominable
modern architecture. After discussing the “poop-in-the-plaza”, strip-malls, International-Style office buildings, etc., the author posed the question: “so, what’s the answer?” His answer was — tear it down, all of it, right now, and do it over right. That’s Rightism, and that’s right. Mark Levin is smart enough, but is rude, vulgar, and obnoxious in a way that WFB would’ve had to struggle even to fake. A Rolls-Royce and a Fiat are both wheeled vehicles powered by internal-combustion engines, but not otherwise comparable in refinement.
Jacobite,
I truly enjoyed your comment on WFB. You have a very incisive way of saying things.Pity you do not write an article.
Thus Bill described as “mischievous” candidate Obama’s suggestion that increased government intervention in our lives would increase the chance that “every American child” would benefit from the riches produced by the mighty engine of American capitalism. It was, Bill observed, a mendacious suggestion, a false promise that would “foster frustration and stimulate disillusion”.
Color me highly frustrated and deeply disillusioned.
Bill Buckley was often on in our house, especially for my mom who was our resident political animal.
His inhalations (I can hear it now), dramatic pauses and manner of speaking didn’t bother me once I matured enough to appreciate the content.
….”inhalations…dramatic pauses…”
Yes. Wish I’d added those words. Neat. Thanks.
Well there IS something new under the sun and it is the fashionable hatred of America by Americans. We disavow our history, make excuses for the failures of the least among us, try and social engineer our way out of the taken for granted endemic racism of white people and much more.
We are in the grip of Critical Pedagogy and President Obama is it’s most conspicuous and quietly fanatical adherent. Out goes the Churchill bust – what a dead give away. What more do you need to know?
As a 13 year old, I subscribed to National Review and used to drag my dad to here WFB speak at local colleges when he came into town….read almost all his books as a young man, and today credit him with my own deep belief in conservatism. He educated a generation that is fighting the good fight today.
“He educated a generation that is fighting the good fight today.”
Important correction: he educated a TINY portion of that generation, a mere splinter to the redwood of ignorance created by the indoctrination centers of the Left.
“I will not,” Bill wrote,”cede more power to the state.”
Well, if Obamacare is not struck down by the Supreme Court, that statement will be a moot point. Under Obamacare, Federalism will be dead and the Federal Government will be all powerful. It can order you to do literally anything, from what medical care you can have to what car you have to buy. It will be the end of this nation as we know it and if the Supreme Court upholds it, well, then I’m just happy Buckley isn’t around to see what has happened to all of us.
Time to take the country back from Obama and his socialists in 2012. A guy like Buckley would expect it from us, and he would be right.
And Amen again.
In my adolescence was the only periodical (apart from the Freeman) that contradicted the prevailing liberal orthodoxy. Most of that orthodoxy has since been eroded away by even more implausible beliefs. Buckley’s conservative views have endured, grown stronger in light of events.
Roger, you are certainly doing your bit to promote book sales: David Stove, Raymond Aron and now Bill Buckley. It was unfortunate that his patrician drawl, perceived as elitist, was an obstacle to a broader and more lasting influence, despite
the continuation of National Review. As you point up, he had an evisceral fear of the inroads of not merely “government paternalism” but of doctrinaire Socialism, the opium of the Leninists, a fear that is hard to find anywhere in conservative commentators other than radio. There may be “nothing new under the sun” but there sure as hell is a much darker and ominous cloud of open effort at ” a fundamental change in our form of government. The barbarians, the slave-masters. are at the gate and leading “conservative pundits”, like Bill O’Reilly are asking, “Do you think he is a Socialist?”
Where is the sense of outrage on the Right? Buckley certainly wouldn’t have been reluctant to express it. The GOP’s debating contenders never utter the word “socialist.” They talk about “liberals” and bicker over their respective qualifications for foreign relations! The GOP is going its usual route, trying make sure one of its dead-assed crony club members is the nominee, ignoring the T Party,the biggest influence on the conservative side today, whose votes constitute the swing factor for victory. If we hammer the Democrat agenda as truly, deliberately, Socialist, we will rid ourselves of them. If we continue to oppose spending, regulation and environmentalism, we’ll lose. Meantime, the GOP is looking for its next McCain.
If someone does not oppose “spending, regulation and environmentalism” soon, there will be no country left to defend. All of these things increase, inexorably. Nothing is, or ever has been, cut or rolled back. It just grows, (exponentially since that commie and his cronies got into the White House). Those three things are THE problem. Arguing anything else is just playing with yourself.
Besides, the American problem with socialism is greater than just running out of money. It goes against the American character. We, as a people brought forth in a great Revolution in which reason and justice trumped greed and power, despise greed and power. We don’t like to be told what to do, especially not by self-important little twits not yet dry behind the ears, which includes Obama and his entire cabinet and shadow cabinet. I wouldn’t let Pistole or Napolitano dogsit for me. I love my dogs. Yet, we entrust these idiots with Homeland Security (whatever that really is, besides another government employment agency for losers).
We all need to be yelling “STOP” far louder. Buckley isn’t here any more, to do it for us.
Sad for America, William Buckley could be the last of the media Conservative
with influence. Maybe Rush Limbaugh, but I cannot think of another real conservative leading the cause as Buckley. There are a lot of writers and opinion individuals, but no Buckley.
Buckley really understood the thinking of the Elite Liberals and Socialist. That is why he was so effective.
The majority of the political republicans in office have all comprimised they core beliefs, that they cannot take up the Banner and LEAD.
I am a long time “Conservative” and hate the current system, but will vote for anyone that opposes Barak Obama. Almost any one will be better.
Watch the Republican Political Class in Washington turn against a Romney or Gingrich President .
Washington has become a cess pool of political favors and money dealing.
Rogers Bio says he is an Editor, Writer and publisher yet this so called professional writes “we “spoke” by email (Bill loved email) much OFTENER” . So tell us please Roger what is the verb ‘to often’ I mean it must be a verb if you can perform the function of ‘oftener’. The correct expression is ‘more often’ of course. I really despair at the dumbed down level of education in America. What hope is there for youth if professional writers and editors can’t even get it right.
I am constantly being called ‘gramer(sic) police’ or being told, ‘You know what I meant’, when pointing out either errors in grammar to friends or asking for clarification of a statement. Professional ‘announcers / journalists’ on both tv and radio can be listened to for no more than 5 minutes without an abundance of grammatical errors. It is all excused with the statement that our language is constantly evolving and it seems that once an error becomes commonplace, we are all expected to make that error. The ‘dumbing down’ of our educational system and our populace is advancing apace.
Coeurmaeghan in Twentynine Palms, CA
Rogers Bio says he is an Editor, Writer and publisher yet this so called professional writes “we “spoke” by email (Bill loved email) much OFTENER” . So tell us please Roger what is the verb ‘to often’ I mean it must be a verb if you can perform the function of ‘oftener’. The correct expression is ‘more often’ of course. I really despair at the dumbed down level of education in America. What hope is there for youth if professional writers and editors can’t even get it right.
• “so called” should be “so-called.”
• So tell us please Roger what is the verb ‘to often’ — should be “So tell us, please, Roger: What is the verb ‘to often’? ”
• The correct expression is ‘more often’ of course. — should be “Of course, the correct expression is ‘more often.’
• I really despair at the dumbed down level of education in America. — should read “I despair of the dumbed-down level of education in America.” What is a “dumbed-down level”?
• What hope is there for youth if professional writers and editors can’t even get it right. — should read “What hope is there for youth if even professional writers and editors can’t get it right.” Not clear to what “it” refers.
Well, look on the bright side of things: there’s no lack of unflinching pedants and people who can’t get past an accent.
Harris Tweed are you a Scot, it would seem so by your pedantry. I exposed a clear MISTAKE you on the other hand just nit pick.
“So tell us please Roger what is the verb ‘to often’ I mean it must be a verb if you can perform the function of ‘oftener’. The correct expression is ‘more often’ of course.”
I’m not sure what the writer means in his first sentence (two sentences, really, had he bothered to punctuate it), but the second is quickly disposed of by the examples below, gleaned from the quickest of Google searches. One is welcome to despair at “the dumbed down level of education in America” if one likes, but calling upon rigid and misunderstood (and, in this case, frankly incorrect) rules does not address the issue.
. . .being call’d/A hundred times and OFTENER, in my sleep,/By good Saint Alban. . .
2 Henry VI, II, 1, ll. 92-4
In Venice they change indeed OFTENER than every year some particular council of state. . .
Milton, The Ready and Easy Way to a Free Commonwealth
. . .so it will be found that perfect beauty is OFTENER produced by nature than deformity. . Samuel Johnson, The Idler, November 10, 1759
How came her eyes so bright? Not with salt tears:/If so, my eyes are OFTENER wash’d than hers. A Midsummer Night’s Dream, II, 2, ll. 92-3
. . .the queen that bore thee,/OFTENER upon her knees than on her feet,/Died every day she lived. Macbeth, IV, 3, ll. 109-11
Sir, I will serve him; for I do find your hangman is a more penitent trade than your bawd; he doth OFTENER ask forgiveness. Measure for Measure, IV, 2, ll. 46-8
Oh well that makes it OK then Chubfuddler a list from you of other fools who made the same MISTAKE. LOL
Pragmatist: Need a job? The Obama administration is looking for people like you.
So tell us, Pragmatist, what is your authority for “oftener” being wrong? Did Shakespeare get it wrong over and over again?
By the way, Harris missed the most obvious error you made: the very first word, “Rogers,” should have an apostrophe in it.
oftener:
adverb
more often or more frequently
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/oftener
“Adverbs typically express some relation of place, time, manner, attendant circumstance, degree, cause, inference, result, condition, exception, concession, purpose, or means.” http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/adverbs
Seems like there are more idiots who think there is a verb’ to often’ . So come on then smart ar*es conjugate it for us all so we can marvel at your brilliance. So Shakespeare used it did he well no one is even 100% who Shakespeare was or indeed how he spelled his own name and Shakespearean English is virtually unintelligible today. BTW do I claim to be a writer, editor and Journalist as Roger does. No of course I don’t so why try to nit pick what I write when professionals like him make such a hash of it.
Can’t understand the ‘work for Obambi’ jibe at all it has no relevance to anything written by me, but then its par for the course from people scrabbling to defend the indefensible.
Seems like there are more idiots who think there is a verb’ to often’ . So come on then smart ar*es conjugate it for us all so we can marvel at your brilliance. So Shakespeare used it did he well no one is even 100% sure who Shakespeare was or indeed how he spelled his own name and Shakespearean English is virtually unintelligible today. BTW do I claim to be a writer, editor and Journalist as Roger does. No of course I don’t so why try to nit pick small grammatical errors in what I write when professionals like him make such a hash of it by INVENTING words.
Can’t understand the ‘work for Obambi’ jibe at all it has no relevance to anything written by me, but then its par for the course from people scrabbling to defend the indefensible.
As a teen in the sixties and early seventies I was seduced by the ‘dark’ side, falling into the moral relativists’ trap of existence without consequence and the false god of statism. Fortunately, the teachings of my parents(the ones the state attempted to malign)and the education of the Jesuits and nuns beat into me, despite doing my level best to thwart them, prevailed, allowing me to find my way back.
I was a HS senior in 1964, and handing out Goldwater literature was my political coming-out. However, doing so at NYC subway stations should have earned me combat pay.
I’d discovered NR a few years earlier, and that was the beginning of my conservatism. I was at NYU the next year, and volunteered on WFB mayoral campaign. I was a “gofer”..( back then that’s what they called interns) and was in the room when Buckley delivered what to this day I still maintain is the single greatest political “one-liner” ever.
When asked what’s the first thing he would do if he won the election, Buckley replied, “Demand a recount!”
Good one!
Thanks for sharing those memories.
W. F. B. was a true hero whether you agreed with him or not.
RE: incremental time acceleration (Perception of Time)= 1/(sum of days)
Thus your second year of life goes by twice as quickly as your first.
As we get near the end, the biggest struggle is just to keep the mental crap detector functioning
“Bill died before the burlesque that is Barack Hussein Obama really got going. As I recall, he wrote about Obama only once, early in 2008, just a few weeks before he died.”
-Just imagine, a fellow like Obama… But because he arrived at this position, or, has been arrived, a true intellectual actually writes about him!
What would be more interesting than what William F. Buckley thought of Barack Obama is what he would have thought of the present state of conservatism and the Republican Party. I suspect he would be appalled by his son being fired by the magazine he founded, and his party’s embrace of ignorance as a governing philosophy.
I was very sad when Bill & Milton died.
Yet, I realize they needed to leave this world so room can be made for the younger generations to further expand on those foundational ideas & make them their own. I believe Bill’s & Milton’s philosophical ideas are universally good & solid enough to outlive their creators & bring much benefit to the common good of our society.
WFB,like many great figures,is being used selectivly by individuals to give authority to their agendas.This was the same Bill Buckley that turned on the Vietnam War,supported The Algerians against the French,and despised Bush 43 and his Iraq “Adventure”
I am certain that WFB despised the NeoCon takeover of NR after his retirement. Consertvatism is a completely different ISM from Neoconism.
To associate WFB with the likes of Coulter,Limbaugh,O’Reilly,Hannity,Beck,and the legions of others of that ilk is to bismerch the Great Man.
Buckley was a vain, preening, prissy, self-worshipping twit. For any human being to say that the idea of every American child benefiting from the riches of American capitalism is a false promise is despicable. It’s a false promise only because Buckley and his ideological heirs have wrecked this society for anyone that doesn’t belong to the country club set.
I liked what Roger mentioned about Bill. Then saw a debate between Bill and Noam Chomsky. Bill comes out as a jerk in it. totally. justifying imperialism!!! under no pretext is imperialism justified.
Despite the nasty observations of the mega-rich, and the tea-partiers, OBAMA IS STILL THE FAVORITE TO WIN RE-ELECTION IN 2012. This proves there is a huge disconnect between rich and middle class. If you don’t believe me, you can check out the odds at intel and ehorsex. Obama is odds on favorite. Now there’s a terrible economy that effects all classes, Obama is a black man, and the GOP can STILL not defeat him.
WHAT DOES THAT SAY ABOUT THE GOP?
Keep telling your self that, and we shall see what we shall see.
And your point would be? Your dumb rant is unrelated to the subject at hand. Go away.
The email must have gone out from http://www.fellateobama.com for all the useful idiots to come here and trash Buckley.
My point is: You guys are out of touch. You may have the money, but we have the votes. Im not going away, this is a Democracy, one that makes our country great, despite your attempt to censure and intimidate. I do respect your disagreements with courtesy.
It’s waaaaaaaay too early to predict next year’s election outcome. Things are very dynamic here in the states & abroad. For all we know, we could be knee deep in the next world war, considering what’s going on right now in Iran & Pakistan.
This is not and has never been a Democracy; it’s a Republic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_Four_of_the_United_States_Constitution
Fool, this is called “disagreement,” as in we do not agree with you; that’s something you with which you lefty children are totally unfamiliar. You stupid punks talk about freedom of speech but you really only mean that one is free to speak like a lefty. Flash for you: Intellectual and Leftist are NOT synonmyms. We think you are stupid, dependent children or people who went from their college indoctrination in to a government or government sponsored job who’ve never had a day of reality in their lives. In other words, we’re contemputous of you, so we’re not going to try to censor idiocy. And, if you’re intimidated, you should be.
True the election is 11 months away, but for a president in a bad economy to be the favorite right now doesn’t say much for the competition. “It’s the economy stupid” doesn’t seem to apply. Remember, the previously most liberal president we’ve ever had was FDR and he was elected 4 times!
“Tax breaks for the wealthy” is going to be a hard sell right now. Maybe you had to trade in your Rolls Royce and now have to drive a Mercedes. But we traded in our Caddillac and have to drive a Kia. Big difference/
I never liked William Buckley and I never trusted what he had to say. Oh he said the right things, but not enough. He created a Conservative movement far too comfortable with its Liberal co Workers. AT the same time is was far less friendly to other Conservative groups like Libertarianism. The YAF, a group started by Buckley, was composed about half libertarian and half movement conservatives. who despite Buckley’s hostility to the libertarianism, the two groups did manage to do more of the yeoman work getting Regan’s offices and committee properly populated within the depths of the Republican precincts, and did it so well, that Reagan gathered this engineered steam and went on to win the Presidency, Early on the FAR membership had to ask Buckley to step down so the work could go on.
If it had been up to Buckley, Reagan would never had made it. And he wouldn’t have cared less. Probably Buckley’s more glaring mistakes was his purging strong anti-Communist forces in the Government – Taft Republicans – and discrediting ant-communists outside of the Government.
And let us not be naive, the Expulsion of the Birches were not limited to them and were not done for the reasons used to justify the expulsions. A whole swath of Americans and ignored and the purging of the Taft Republicans ended a strong anti-Communist domestic investigatory policy, and a confrontational and containment foreign policy aiming to fully roll back Yalta in Europe and China.
Truman’s containment policies – taken by Truman in distress – became far less lethal peaceful coexistence foreign policies and an polite facing out on domestic left surveillance and exposure. Buckley and Liberals agreed on so so so much.
Odd piece this . I respected Buckley in the Firing Line days because he engaged in rational debate ,rather than polemics. I certainly don;t believe Gov’t can solve all problems. But this notio of creeping socialism,and Obama as a redistributionist seems delusional to me. First of all it’s the conservative faction sin the US that support the huge Military ,which is both the largest socialist spending scheme in human history,and the largest concentration of real power in any government ever.Secondly Obama’s major redistribution of wealth has been from the many common taxpayers to the few already wealthy Corporations. I mean GM was the biggest , most profitable corporation in the world for years. So bailig people like that out is socialist redistribution? I say these old tribal identities, Conservative Liberal ,socialist capitalist are simplistic and obsolete
and make it very difficult to actuall communicate as citizens about the watershed changes we’re going through.We’re on the brink of technological capabilities that are beyond the wildest dreams of most humans who ever lived,the rate of expansion of out knowledge base is still accelerating. But our cultural ,political ,an economic institutions are still running early industrial era software. I predict more shocks ahead
In the first paragraph, last sentence – “Yet another illustration, I suppose, of the mysterious fact that life seems to speed up as you get older.”
No mystery at all, simple math. When you are 10 years old and a year goes by that is 10% of your entire life. When you are 20 it is 5%, 50 it is 2%. This is why time seems to go so fast as you get older – it is all relative.
Well thank you, that makes sense. As one who just turned 77 I felt for some time that I live in a time warp. Is my percentage in the negative?
I read Buckley’s columns way back when, curious to see what conservatives had to say. Well, thank God I did because, thanks to Buckley, I became even more of a liberal. Anybody with such disdain for working class people which was my background didn’t understand what it was like to have been born without a fortune. Most of us in the real world — instead of the fantasy life conservatives have created for themselves — can use schooling and school lunches, and college loans and (when we lose our jobs thanks to endless “cutbacks”) unemployment compensation. I’m glad I didn’t grow up as a child laborer. I’m glad we have rights for gays and lesbians, and that our country chose to pass the Civil Rights Act. We are the 99% and, go ahead, you people live your privileged lives. The rest of us will find a way to tax them. Shared sacrifice is for everyone, not just the middle class. Obama is my man!
The board for useful idiots is off to your left somewhere. Truck on off and find it; nobody here is interested in your whining dependency.
“Fantasy” life? Get your head out of the clouds & look in the mirror, pal.
A dear friend gave me a t-shirt with “William F. Buckley” emblazoned on it in raised letters. I wore it proudly and watched Firing Line religiously. I always considered it my failing when I had to reach for my dictionary (often), not his.
“the burlesque that is Barack Hussein Obama”
Umm, no. The burlesque in the White House actually began with that actor fellow. No one has shown any respect for the Presidency since. Too bad.
You “progressives” are never going to forgive President Reagan for bringing down the Soviet Union, are you?
Oh, they just cannot stand how much Reagan was loved & reveared. We will never, ever see a leader of Reagan’s caliber emerge from their side of the aisle & it makes them utterly sick with envy.
…..revered….
“In essentials, we human beings aren’t much different now from what we were in 1950 or in 1960, so it is not surprising that the problems we face are, in essentials, the same.”
True, however why start with 1950? We are not much different now from what we were when Solomon wrote “There is nothing new under the sun.” Technology doesn’t change anything essential in human philosophy, psychology, sociology, or in economics, unless capitalism is allowed to function unhampered by government in a free market system giving individual consummers the power to drive its engine.
It could be argued that technology has simply made the downfall of man and all that each man labors to secure broken at a faster pace. With it, do we live better or simply faster? That which does not simplify complicates and retards. Too many complications obscure the human mind’s ability to fathom where it is, was, and is headed. We require a regular measure and healthy dose of silence to hear God.
Whether a society of one, or fifty million, there are but a few ways that human society can be governed; all since Adam and Eve have been tried repeatedly. All are “as old as the hills.” The baby one for nations of individuals is self government, individual liberty. It’s always been that those who would rather be fed than feed themselves prefer theft to labor. It’s always been that the only solution and hope for them and all others is tough love. Wisdom is a process, not a destination, a process each person must choose continuously to engage in by himself for himself under God. Enabling theft works only to breed more thieves.
So, yes, Buckley was right to say,
“I mean to live my life an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient to the wisdom of my ancestors; never to the authority of…,”
Still, let us question his “political truths arrived at yesterday at the voting booth,” because although there are governmental truths, there are no such animals as “political truths.” There are only politics as usual. Individual liberty is a truth – politics is the beast in the jungle, the wolf we must quit feeding. This is why our wise Founding Fathers gave us a democratic republic, (rather than a democracy), with a Constitution to keep inalienable rights sacred, to keep politics out of our governing system. Those who dream of life as a rose garden must, in a free society, plant their own roses and till their own garden, after which they are free to donate roses to whomever they please!
The USURPER Barack HUSSEIN Obama the ‘man with no documented history’, only non chronological fantasy autobiography, voted in to power by ‘people with no brains’.