Informed Speculation

The big news of the day, of course, is the passing of one of the true fathers of modern American conservatism.  If you want coverage, you’ll find it in all the major outlets, and of course, the National Review website is chock-full of related articles.  I purchased my first Buckley book in high school, so I started early.  It was, naturally enough, a collection of essays, for though Buckley was a prodigious writer whose works also appeared in longer forms such as novels and memoirs, it was the short essay that brought his razor-sharp reasoning and wit to bear most effectively.

Among the longer works, the most lasting will always be God and Man at Yale, the work that made his national reputation, and introduced the three pillars of classic Buckley: faith, conservatism, and erudition (often quite abtruse, and his critics might say occasionally bordering on obscurantism).  Buckley had to be seen in the flesh, however (or at least on TV) to get the full effect – his high-brow affectations were easily parodied and occasionally unintentionally hilarious, but definitely pure Buckley.

The true public intellectual is in short supply these days (we always have Hitchens, but Hitchens, as great as he can be at his peak, has not had NEARLY the effect on society that Buckley had).  Thus, the passing of Buckley is to be mourned by those of any political stripe who enjoy a good argument well delivered.  He is one of the very few of whom we can say we shall not see his like again, but as an NRO regular pointed out, you can’t say his life was cut short – he lived long, he lived well, and he left his mark – and really, who can ask for more?…