The Redhunter

The two events that kicked it off, of course, were the publication of God and Man at Yale in 1951, and the founding of National Review in 1955.

But Buckley didn't just write a book and start a magazine. Conservatism as we know it today simply didn't exist then. There were disparate group of writers and thinkers, not all respectable. Buckley made order of the mess, and purged the nascent movement of its less-desirable elements. Anti-Semitism was of particular concern, as was conspiracy theorists. The John Birch Society, among others, found itself excommunicated from the movement.

Although the first edition of National Review is famous for Buckley's declaration that his magazine and movement would "athwart history, yelling Stop", to portray him as a reactionary or Luddite would be a gross caricature. If anything, conservatism became the movement of ideas, with liberalism trapped by old ways of thinking. Buckley was a famous early adopter of computers, and I remember reading him discuss something called "MCI Mail" in his 1992 book Windfall without having the foggiest notion of what he was talking about.

Buckley did not just write about politics, however. An avid sailboat racer and cruiser, the aforementioned Windfall, The End of the Affair was one of many about sailing. He both raced in the Chesapeake bay, and sailed several times across the Atlantic, and once across the Pacific. As someone who spent many weekends himself racing in that same bay, myself just outside of Annapolis, I can appreciate the experience of the challenge.

I read, I think, two of his Blackford Oakes spy novels, and they were interesting, but I've never been one much for fiction. Other than that, some of his novelized history books, such as The Redhunter: A Novel Based on the Life of Senator Joe McCarthy and Nuremberg: The Reckoning, struck me as being particularly noteworthy.

Of course there were times when I disagreed with him over this or that. It's hard to think of specifics, but there is never a situation where you agree with someone 100% (the Bible doesn't count). It's not the details that count, however, but the overall philosophy. And there he and I are almost perfectly in tune.

In the end there is nothing I can say that can do justice to the man. No doubt that while reading this brief tribute to him from his present perch on high he would notice my (undoubtably) many errors of grammar, punctuation, and style. The only real justice we can do is to carry forth his ideals.

William F Buckley Jr, 1925 - 2008, R.I.P.