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Entry: WFB vs. the Neocons Link: http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/wfb_vs_the_neocons#18396 Post contents: Just a couple years ago, Buckley quoted his friend Whitaker Chamber’s comment to him that he would one day know what it was to experience fatigue of the most acute kind. WFB stated that he now knew what that fatigue was like, because he felt it and frankly stated that he was tired of life. We on the outside can only guess what some of WFB’s personal and professional disappointments were, but no doubt they existed and he wished to escape them. Perhaps it is a tribute to WFB that so many have been so disappointed in him, in what he failed to achieve in their estimation, and in what he did that they didn’t approve of. Whether WFB would have agreed with those who were disappointed in him we don’t know. We can guess that WFB, like all men, in some respects disappointed himself, and without a doubt was disappointed by others. The fault in large part is with those who didn’t carry forward what work he had done up to the high point in his career, to the late 1960s or some time during the 1970s. That WFB lost interest in politics over time is understandable. It is one thing for conservatives to honor their heroes, but that should stop short of a slavish following that is as bad for its object of veneration as it is for the worshipers. As WFB stated, Switzerland was well governed when nobody knew who its governors were they were so innocuous. WFB could never have been that invisible, or even that self-effacing, but because of his talents perhaps too much was expected of him. Sent at: 2008 09 08