[Rhodes22-list] Great Sailor 'Gone West'

[Brad Haslett]

You owe it to yourself to read his books on sailing.  Brad

February 27, 2008
 William F. Buckley Jr. Is Dead at 82 By DOUGLAS
MARTIN<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/douglas_martin/index.html?inline=nyt-per>

William F. Buckley
Jr.<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/b/william_f_jr_buckley/index.html?inline=nyt-per>,
who marshaled polysyllabic exuberance, famously arched eyebrows and a
refined, perspicacious mind to elevate conservatism to the center of
American political discourse, died Wednesday at his home in Stamford, Conn.

Mr Buckley, 82, suffered from diabetes and emphysema, his son Christopher
said, although the exact cause of death was not immediately known. He was
found at his desk in the study of his home, his son said. "He might have
been working on a column," Mr. Buckley said.

Mr. Buckley's winningly capricious personality, replete with ten-dollar
words and a darting tongue writers loved to compare with an anteater's,
hosted one of television's longest-running programs, "Firing Line," and
founded and shepherded the influential conservative magazine, National
Review.

He also found time to write more than 45 books, ranging from sailing
odysseys to spy novels to celebrations of his own dashing daily life, and
edit five more.

The more than 4.5 million words of his 5,600 biweekly newspaper columns, "On
the Right," would fill 45 more medium-sized books.

Mr. Buckley's greatest achievement was making conservatism — not just
electoral Republicanism, but conservatism as a system of ideas — respectable
in liberal post-World War II America. He mobilized the young enthusiasts who
helped nominate Barry Goldwater in 1964, and saw his dreams fulfilled when
Reagan and the Bushes captured the Oval Office.

To Mr. Buckley's enormous delight, Arthur M.
Schlesinger<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/arthur_m_jr_schlesinger/index.html?inline=nyt-per>,
Jr., the historian, termed him "the scourge of liberalism."

In remarks at National Review's 30th anniversary in 1985, President
Reagan<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/ronald_wilson_reagan/index.html?inline=nyt-per>joked
that he picked up his first issue of the magazine in a plain brown
wrapper and still anxiously awaited his biweekly edition — "without the
wrapper."

"You didn't just part the Red Sea — you rolled it back, dried it up and left
exposed, for all the world to see, the naked desert that is statism," Mr.
Reagan said.

"And then, as if that weren't enough," the president continued, "you gave
the world something different, something in its weariness it desperately
needed, the sound of laughter and the sight of the rich, green uplands of
freedom."

The liberal advance had begun with the New Deal, and so accelerated in the
next generation that Lionel Trilling, one of America's leading
intellectuals, wrote in 1950: "In the United States at this time liberalism
is not only the dominant but even the sole intellectual tradition. For it is
the plain fact that there are no conservative or reactionary ideas in
general circulation."

Mr. Buckley declared war on this liberal order, beginning with his
blistering assault on
Yale<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/y/yale_university/index.html?inline=nyt-org>as
a traitorous den of atheistic collectivism immediately after his
graduation (with honors) from the university.

"All great biblical stories begin with Genesis," George Will wrote in the
National Review in 1980. "And before there was Ronald Reagan, there was
Barry Goldwater, and before there was Barry Goldwater there was National
Review, and before there was National Review there was Bill Buckley with a
spark in his mind, and the spark in 1980 has become a conflagration."

Mr. Buckley weaved the tapestry of what became the new American conservatism
from libertarian writers like Max Eastman, free market economists like Milton
Friedman<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/f/milton_friedman/index.html?inline=nyt-per>,
traditionalist scholars like Russell Kirk and anti-Communist writers like
Whittaker Chambers. But the persuasiveness of his argument hinged not on
these perhaps arcane sources, but on his own tightly argued case for a
conservatism based on the national interest and a higher morality.

His most receptive audience became young conservatives first energized by
Barry Goldwater's emergence at the Republican convention in 1960 as the
right-wing alternative to Nixon. Some met in Sept., 1960, at Mr. Buckley's
Connecticut estate to form Young Americans for Freedom. Their numbers — and
influence — grew.

Nicholas Lemann<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/l/nicholas_lemann/index.html?inline=nyt-per>observed
in Washington Monthly in 1988 that during the Reagan administration
"the 5,000 middle-level officials, journalists and policy intellectuals that
it takes to run a government" were "deeply influenced by Buckley's example."
He suggested that neither moderate Washington insiders nor "Ed Meese-style
provincial conservatives" could have pulled off the Reagan tax cut and other
reforms.

Speaking of the true believers, Mr. Lemann continued, "Some of these people
had been personally groomed by Buckley, and most of the rest saw him as a
role model."

Mr. Buckley rose to prominence with a generation of talented writers
fascinated by political themes, names like Mailer, Capote, Vidal, Styron and
Baldwin. Like the others, he attracted controversy like a magnet. Even
conservatives — from members of the John Birch Society to disciples of
conservative author Ayn
Rand<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/ayn_rand/index.html?inline=nyt-per>to
George Wallace to moderate Republicans — frequently pounced on him.

Many of varied political stripes came to see his life as something of an art
form — from racing through city streets on a motorcycle to a quixotic
campaign for mayor of New York in 1965 to startling opinions like favoring
the decriminalization of marijuana. He was often described as liberals'
favorite conservative, particularly after suavely hosting an
adaptation of Evelyn
Waugh<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/w/evelyn_waugh/index.html?inline=nyt-per>'s
"Brideshead Revisited" on public television in 1982.

Norman Mailer<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/m/norman_mailer/index.html?inline=nyt-per>may
indeed have dismissed Mr. Buckley as a "second-rate intellect
incapable
of entertaining two serious thoughts in a row," but he could not help
admiring his stage presence.

"No other act can project simultaneous hints that he is in the act of
playing Commodore of the Yacht Club, Joseph Goebbels, Robert Mitchum,
Maverick, Savonarola, the nice prep school kid next door, and the snows of
yesteryear," Mr. Mailer said in an interview with Harpers in 1967.

Mr. Buckley's vocabulary, sparkling with phrases from distant eras and
described in newspaper and magazine profiles as sesquipedalian
(characterized by the use of long words) became the stuff of legend. Less
kind commentators called him "pleonastic" (use of more words than
necessary).

And, inescapably, there was that aurora of pure mischief. In 1985, David
Remnick<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/r/david_remnick/index.html?inline=nyt-per>,
writing in The Washington
Post<http://www.nytimes.com/mem/MWredirect.html?MW=http://custom.marketwatch.com/custom/nyt-com/html-companyprofile.asp&symb=WPO>,
said, "He has the eyes of a child who has just displayed a horrid use for
the microwave oven and the family cat."

William Francis Buckley Jr., was born in Manhattan on Nov. 24, 1925, the
sixth of the 10 children of Aloise Steiner Buckley and William Frank Buckley
Jr. (According to "William F. Buckley, Jr., Patron Saint of the
Conservatives," a biography written by John B. Judis, Mr. Buckley's sister
Patricia said he was christened Francis instead of Frank because there was
no saint named Frank. Later, in "Who's Who" entries and elsewhere, he used
Frank.)

The elder Mr. Buckley made a fortune in the oil fields of Mexico, and
educated his children with personal tutors at Great Elm, the family estate
in Sharon, Conn. They also attended exclusive Roman Catholic schools in
England and France.

Young William absorbed his family's conservatism along with its deep
Catholicism. At 6, he wrote the King of England demanding he repay his
country's war debt. At 14, he followed his brothers to the Millbrook School,
a preparatory school 15 miles across the New York state line from Sharon.

In his spare time at Millbrook, young Bill typed schoolmates' papers for
them, charging $1 a paper, with a 25-cent surcharge for correcting the
grammar.

He did not neglect politics, showing up uninvited to a faculty meeting to
complain about a teacher abridging his right to free speech and ardently
opposing United States' involvement in World War II. His father wrote him to
suggest he "learn to be more moderate in the expression of your views."

He graduated from Millbrook in 1943, then spent a half a year at the
University of Mexico studying Spanish, which had been his first language. He
served in the Army from 1944 to 1946, and managed to make second lieutenant
after first putting colleagues off with his mannerisms.

"I think the army experience did something to Bill," his sister, Patricia,
told Mr. Judis. "He got to understand people more."

Mr. Buckley then entered Yale where he studied political science, economics
and history; established himself as a fearsome debater; was elected chairman
of the Yale Daily News, and joined Skull and Bones, the most prestigious
secret society.

As a senior, he was given the honor of delivering the speech for Yale's
Alumni Day celebration, but was replaced after the university's
administration objected to his strong attacks on the university. He
responded by writing his critique in the book that brought him to national
attention, in part because he gave the publisher, Regnery, $10,000 to
advertise it.

Published in 1951, "God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of 'Academic
Freedom,'" charged the powers at Yale with having an atheistic and
collectivist bent and called for the firing of faculty members who advocated
values not in accord with those that the institution should be upholding —
which was to say, his own.

Among the avalanche of negative reviews, the one in Atlantic by McGeorge
Bundy, a Yale graduate, was conspicuous. He found the book "dishonest in its
use of facts, false in its theory, and a discredit to its author."

But Peter Viereck, writing in The New York Times Sunday Book Review viewed
the book as "a necessary counterbalance."

After a year in the Central Intelligence
Agency<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/c/central_intelligence_agency/index.html?inline=nyt-org>in
Mexico City (his case officer was E. Howard Hunt, who went on to win
celebrity for his part in the Watergate break-in), Mr. Buckley went to work
for the American Mercury magazine, but resigned after spotting anti-Semitic
tendencies in the magazine.

Over the next few years, Mr. Buckley worked as a freelance writer and
lecturer, and wrote a second book with L. Brent Bozell, his brother-in-law.
Published in 1954, "McCarthy and His Enemies" was a sturdy defense of the
senator from Wisconsin who was then in the throes of his campaign against
communists, liberals and the Democratic
Party<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/d/democratic_party/index.html?inline=nyt-org>
.

In 1955, Mr. Buckley started National Review as voice for "the disciples of
truth, who defend the organic moral order" with a $100,000 gift from his
father. The first issue, which came out in November, claimed the publication
"stands athwart history yelling Stop."

It proved it by lining up squarely behind Southern segregationists, saying
blacks should be denied the vote. After some conservatives objected, Mr.
Buckley suggested instead that both uneducated whites and blacks should not
be allowed to vote.

Mr. Buckley did not accord automatic support to Republicans, starting with
Eisenhower's campaign for re-election in 1956. National Review's tepid
endorsement: "We prefer Ike."

Circulation increased from 16,000 in 1957 to 125,000 at the time of
Goldwater's candidacy in 1964, and leveled off to around 100,000 in 1980. It
is now 155,000. The magazine has always had to be subsidized by readers'
donations.

Along with offering a forum to big-gun conservatives like Russell Kirk,
James Burnham and Robert Nisbet, National Review cultivated the career of
several younger writers, including Garry
Wills<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/w/garry_wills/index.html?inline=nyt-per>,
Joan Didion<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/d/joan_didion/index.html?inline=nyt-per>and
John Leonard, who would shake off the conservative attachment and go
their leftward ways.

National Review also helped define the conservative movement by isolating
cranks from Mr. Buckley's chosen mainstream.

"Bill was responsible or rejecting the John Birch Society and the other
kooks who passed off anti-Semitism or some such as conservatism," Hugh
Kenner, a biographer of Ezra
Pound<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/p/ezra_pound/index.html?inline=nyt-per>and
a frequent contributor to National Review told The Washington Post.
"Without Bill — if he had decided to become an academic or a businessman or
something else — without him, there probably would be no respectable
conservative movement in this country."

Mr. Buckley's personal visibility was magnified by his "Firing Line" program
which ran from 1966 to 1999. First carried on WOR-TV and then on the Public
Broadcasting Service<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/p/public_broadcasting_service/index.html?inline=nyt-org>,
it became the longest running show hosted by a single host — beating out Johnny
Carson<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/johnny_carson/index.html?inline=nyt-per>by
three years. He led the conservative team in 1,504 debates on topics
like
"Resolved: The women's movement has been disastrous."

There were exchanges on foreign policy with the likes of Norman Thomas;
feminism with Germaine Greer and race relations with James Baldwin. Not a
few viewers thought Mr. Buckley's toothy grin before he scored a point
resembled nothing so much as a switchblade.

To New York City politician Mark
Green<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/g/mark_green/index.html?inline=nyt-per>,
he purred, "You've been on the show close to 100 times over the years. Tell
me, Mark, have you learned anything yet."

But Harold Macmillan, former prime minister of Britain, flummoxed the
master. "Isn't this show over yet?" he asked.

At age 50, Mr. Buckley added two pursuits to his repertoire — he took up the
harpsichord and became novelist. Some 10 of the novels are spy tales
starring Blackford Oakes, who fights for the American way and bedded the
Queen of England in the first book.

Others of his books included a historical novel with Elvis
Presley<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/p/elvis_presley/index.html?inline=nyt-per>as
a significant character, another starring Fidel
Castro<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/fidel_castro/index.html?inline=nyt-per>,
a reasoned critique of anti-Semitism, and journals that more than succeeded
dramatizing a life of taste and wealth — his own. For example, in "Cruising
Speed: A Documentary," published in 1971, he discussed the kind of meals he
liked to eat.

"Rawle could give us anything, beginning with lobster Newburgh and ending
with Baked Alaska," he wrote. "We settle on a fish chowder, of which he is
surely the supreme practitioner, and cheese and bacon sandwiches, grilled,
with a most prickly Riesling picked up at St. Barts for peanuts," he wrote.

Mr. Buckley's spirit of fun was apparent in his 1965 campaign for mayor of
New York on the ticket of the Conservative Party. When asked what he would
do if he won, he answered, "Demand a recount." He got 13.4 percent of the
vote.

For Murray Kempton<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/k/murray_kempton/index.html?inline=nyt-per>,
one of his many friends on the left, the Buckley press conference style
called up "an Edwardian resident commissioner reading aloud the 39 articles
of the Anglican establishment to a conscript of assembled Zulus."

Unlike his brother James who served as a United States senator from New
York, Mr. Buckley generally avoided official government posts. He did serve
from 1969 to 1972 as a presidential appointee to the National Advisory
Commission on Information, and as a member of the United States delegation
to the United Nations<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/u/united_nations/index.html?inline=nyt-org>in
1973.

The merits of the argument aside, Mr. Buckley irrevocably proved that his
brand of candor did not lend itself to public life when an Op-Ed article he
wrote for The New York Times offered a partial cure for the AIDS epidemic:
"Everyone detected with AIDS should be tattooed in the upper forearm to
prevent common needle users, and on the buttocks, to prevent the
victimization of homosexuals," he wrote.

In his last years, as honors like the Presidential Medal of Freedom came his
way, Mr. Buckley gradually loosened his grip on his intellectual empire. In
1998, he ended his frenetic schedule of public speeches (some 70 a year over
40 years, he once estimated). In 1999, he stopped "Firing Line," and in
2004, he relinquished his voting stock in National Review. He wrote his last
spy novel the 11th in his series), sold his sailboat and stopped playing the
harpsichord publicly.

But he began a new historical novel and kept up his columns, including one
on the "bewitching power" of "The Sopranos" television series. He commanded
wide attention by criticizing the Iraq war as a failure.

On April 15, 2007, his wife, the former Patricia Alden Austin Taylor, who
had carved out a formidable reputation as a socialite and philanthropist but
considered her role as a homemaker, mother and wife most important, died.
Mr. and Mrs. Buckley called each other "Ducky."

He is survived by his son, Christopher, of Washington, D.C.; his sisters
Priscilla L. Buckley, of Sharon, Conn., Patricia Buckley Bozell, of
Washington, D.C., and Carol Buckley, of Columbia, S.C.; his brothers James
L., of Sharon, and F. Reid, of Camden, S.C., a granddaughter and a grandson

In the end it was Mr. Buckley's graceful, often self-deprecating wit that
endeared him to others. In his spy novel "Who's on First," he described the
possible impact of his National Review through his character Boris Bolgin.

" 'Do you ever read the National Review, Jozsef?' asks Boris Bolgin, the
chief of KGB<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/organizations/k/kgb/index.html?inline=nyt-org>counter
intelligence for Western Europe, 'it is edited by this young
bourgeois fanatic.' "