One only needs to read the sub-par writing on National Review’s The Corner to see that William F. Buckley’s once bright legacy is now only lit by dim bulbs: Jonah Goldberg, Kathryn Jean Lopez, Andrew McCarthy, et al. He lived a long and good life of wealth and influence. But he gave up toward the end, I think, only meekly raising questions about the direction of the conservative movement as it was hijacked by Neo-cons. If he wasn’t an active agent in the demise of the movement he helped found, he certainly was a passive witness to it. One can wish that with his death, we will see a little of the “creative destruction” Neocons love so much when visited upon other countries and peoples, visited upon his magazine and the pernicious, in-bred think tanks and politicians that falsely worship at Buckley’s altar.
Requiscat in pacem, Mr. Buckley. And please pray for us left behind who must contend with your twisted progeny.

WFB was one of a kind.  His eloquence and thoughtfulness were nonpareil.  Although one might choose to disagree with him, he was never disagreeable.  His insight, humor and wisdom will be sorely missed.  RIP

Indeed, RIP. But he did fire Joe Sobran, who himself is none to well, and no longer writes his column.

I own every book WFB ever wrote, including all those collections of his columns.  If you go back far enough, WFB is actually a conservative, if a libertarian leaning one. 

WFB opted to move to the center way back during the 1960s, although the affect of this move was muted over the next two plus decades.  As he aged, especially over the last decade of his life, WFB’s move to the left accelerated.  In 2002 I saw WFB at a public event in New York, on a panel including Barney Frank.  When WFB stated that he found the concept of gay marriage incomprehensible, the homosexual congressperson Barney Frank went after WFB with his usual fury.  Shortly thereafter, WFB wrote a column endorsing the homosexual position in the Supreme Court case of Lawrence against Texas.  WFB argued that allowing a state to have on its books a law, even one never enforced, making homosexual conduct illegal was a denial of equal protection.  The Supreme Court agreed, paving the way for a national movement toward gay marriage. 

I’m afraid this is how I will remember WFB, a person I admired and learned from in my youth.  It is a sad ending for Taki’s friend; even as what so many have called the “American experiment” appears to be trending in the same direction, to its own sad ending.

Richard deserves our praise for this obituary.
Although I too have been critical with cause of WFB,
I am reminded on this day of his
passing of how much I admired him when I was in my
twenties, thirties,and even early forties. I do not
think that those of us who once idolized Buckley were
entirely wrong to do so. He showed for decades a
literary and stylistic brilliance that we were right
to applaud.

In the end, Revilo Oliver’s white supremacy BS was
much worse than anything the most fanatical Bircher
could dream up.  Doesn’t Ron Paul belong to the John
Birch Society?

Hmmm…
think he should have kept Revilo Oliver on board? 
Try googling “yammering yids” and check out the first item? n .
Or just go straight to revilo-oliver.com
Quite a feverish site to behold.

Mark,
Thanks so much for pointing this out. I must confess that I encountered Oliver in Jeffrey Hart’s excellent history of NR, _The Making of the Conservative Mind_. Here he quotes extensively from some of Oliver’s book reviews for NR—the man clearly had a dazzling critical mind. I wasn’t aware of his later activities, and I thank you for drawing my attention to them.
RBS

Conservatives owe a lot to William F. Buckley.  It is
too bad that his magazine has declined so accutely,
especially after the sacking of Joe Sobran, John
O’Sullivan and Peter Brimelow in the 90s.  Somehow
Jonah Goldberg musing over the Simpsons or David
Frum ranting over “unpatriotic conservatives” pales
in comparison to the writings of James Burnham,
Russell Kirk and dozens more who wrote for NATIONAL
REVIEW in its days of glory.

Buckley did not “invent” the conservative movement. He
hijacked it and corrupted it into the modern war party we all
know.  Pre-1955 there was a real conservative movement.
Afterward, there is only a statist, belligerent liberal echo.

Paleoconservatives each had their own moment when they had to give up the pretense that Buckley and his magazine were their friends.  Mine came when the admirable M.E. Bradford told me National Review would no longer publish his work.  Bradford had offended Norman Podhoretz, Irving Kristol and the rest of the neocon thugs by allowing his name to be forwarded to Ronald Reagan to head the National Endowment for the Humanities.  God forbid, they responded, that a critic of the sainted Lincoln could be considered!  They did their work, and Bill Bennett, brother of Bill Clinton and John McCain’s lawyer, won the appointment.  And so, shortly afterwards, Bradford was excommunicated by NR.

“dubious” John Birch Society?

While I admit they are less radical than they were in the 60s, I myself am a member and I dont see much dubious about them.

Daniel,
I would put imagining Eisenhower to be a Soviet agent in the “dubious” category. I do doubt, however, that many in the current society actually hold such views. The fact that Birchers were “radical” doesn’t bother me; that they were wrong does.
RBS

While arguing that Eisenhower was a Soviet agent was no doubt idiotic, it is hard to see how it is any more or less stupid than arguing that the entire Middle East can and should be converted to some form of republican government, via the military power of the United States.

Buckley writing the JBS crowd out of the movement was an expression of a form of elitism that was the antithesis of the pre-WWII right.  One can argue about whether or not he was right to condemn them, but it is hard to see what about JBS was so much more apalling than what the neocons have been propagating and spewing for the last thirty years.

Dylan,
Very good point.
As I said, WFB bears some responsibility for the intellectual bankruptcy of the GOP and the disarray amongst movement conservatives.
RBS

The politics of the John Birch Society aside, anyone who has read the later polemics of Revilo Oliver on the “Zionist conspiracy” and the “effeminate” nature of Christianity need not wonder whether it was wise for WFB to turf him.  I doubt that he would have kept any of his old NR friends (like Willmoore Kendall, who died in 1967) who were too intelligent and pro-Christian to swim in the neo-pagan bogs into which Oliver eventually sank.

It is interesting to see a Neocon apologist and Straussian (Grant Havers) attack an obscure figure like Oliver.  The famous sybaritic homosexual Allan Bloom, a Neocon and Straussian, would seem to be ripe for at least as much criticism as someone most people have never heard of. 

But I guess dying of AIDs (as Allan Bloom did) and having that fact covered up for nearly a decade doesn’t count high on the list of “neo-pagan” sins. 

Allan Bloom wasn’t a Christian of course, but as for effeminate, well, I guess his boyfriends aren’t telling tales out of school.

Grant and Dylan,

Yes, yes, as I mentioned above, I should have wiki-ed Oliver before mentioning him, and I’ve now changed the passage—a felicitous option in web publishing but one I only use rarely. 

My general point is that even if the Birchers were a “menace” of sorts, Buckley expelled a great many thinkers along with them who were talented but then didn’t quite fit into the conservative-Republican mainstream. My mention of Oliver—whose later views were truly loathsome—simply obscures this point.

Nonetheless, I would stress that at the time of his firing, Oliver had not descended to the pagan bogs—he didn’t even write any material for NR that was particularly “Birchy.” He wrote literary criticism, and the passages Hart quote at length in his book are superior.

There’s certainly a pattern of former NR contributors “going over to the dark side” only after they were purged due to suspicion or some dubious associations.  Joe Sobran’s speaking at the Institute for Historical Review after getting sacked at NR seems to be an example of this—“you calling me an anti-Semite; I’ll show you a real anti-Semite!” None of this, however, excuses making nice with Nazi nostalgics.

Richard Spencer, of course is right.  Oliver’s early work for NR and Modern Age was respectable.  I suppose his downhill slide might have occurred in 1964 when he speculated about the communist “conspiracy” to assassinate JFK, a charge which led to a guest spot for Oliver in front of the Warren Commission.  Whether this had anything to do with WFB’s firing of him (besides Birchy politics), I don’t know.

Conservatism has nothing of interest to say about the challenges America faces in the twenty-first century: a deindustrialized servant economy, hydrocarbon depletion, changing demographics, imperial fatigue, etc. There should be more tax cuts, free trade, wars, immigration. I think I will pass on that.

AM I THE ONLY ONE WHO FOUND WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY TO BE A SNOBBISH BORE WHOSE ESSAYS BECAME UNREADABLE OVER THE LAST TWO DECADES?  MOREOVER, IN THE MEDIA FAWNING OVER BUCKLEY, THE WORDS MOST OFTEN USED WERE “PURGED” AND “RESPECTABLE.” BUCKLEY’S GREAT LEGACY WAS THAT HE WAS THE ENABLER WHO ALLOWED THE NEOCONS TO POLICE DISSENT ON THE AMERICAN RIGHT.

Johnt, what’s with the caps lock?

Buckley’s books about his sailing adventures are priceless. I think they will be read and admired even after his other writings have been largely forgotten.

Richard,

I agree with your general point (though I see nothing inherently anti-semetic about speaking at an IHR event, though that is a seperate matter).

My point was an extension of the point, that Prof. Gottfried has been making for years.  Namely that Buckley and co. have been all to willing to allow the questionable “left” elements and ideas infiltrate the movement, even as they have fiercely guarded against allegedly “extremist” views on the right.  In sum National Review has been served a gatkeeper function against the populist herds.  When authetic rightist appeals have met with success, National Review has hopped on after the fact, if at all. 

While “making nice with Nazi nostalgics” is not a wise policy, neither is making nice with Trotskyites and their fellow travels.