National Review Founder Says It's Time to Leave Stage

[MarkTwain]

- SNIP -

Tonight, however, Mr. Buckley, 78, is giving up control. In an interview, he said he planned to relinquish his shares today to a board of trustees he had selected. Among them are his son, the humorist Christopher Buckley; the magazine's president, Thomas L. Rhodes; and Austin Bramwell, a 2000 graduate of Yale and one of the magazine's youngest current contributors.

- SNIP -

In explaining his decision, Mr. Buckley said he had taken some satisfaction in the triumph of conservatism since then, though he expressed some complaints about President Bush's unconservative spending and some retrospective doubts about the wisdom of invading Iraq. But his decision, Mr. Buckley said, had more to do with his own mortality.

- SNIP -

Not everyone shares this assessment of Mr. Buckley's work. Leon Wieseltier, literary editor of The New Republic, called Mr. Buckley's sometimes baroque style "genially ridiculous." Mr. Wieseltier added: "It is a kind of antimodern pretense, but of course he is in fact a completely modern man. His thinking and his writing have all the disadvantages of a happy man. The troubling thing about Bill Buckley's work is how singularly untroubled it is by things."

- SNIP -

As for conservatism today, Mr. Buckley said there was a growing debate on the right about how the war in Iraq squared with the traditional conservative conviction that American foreign policy should seek only to protect its vital interests. "With the benefit of minute hindsight, Saddam Hussein wasn't the kind of extra-territorial menace that was assumed by the administration one year ago," Mr. Buckley said. "If I knew then what I know now about what kind of situation we would be in, I would have opposed the war." Asked whether the growth of the federal government over the last four years diminished his enthusiasm for Mr. Bush, he reluctantly acknowledged that it did. "It bothers me enormously," he said. "Should I growl?" Still, he professed more than a little pride at the country's rightward drift during his years in control of National Review. "We thought to influence conservative thought, which we succeeded in doing," he said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/29/politics/29buckley.html?hp

[kskiska]

1. I guess he saw which way the wind was blowing

In explaining his decision, Mr. Buckley said he had taken some satisfaction in the triumph of conservatism since then, though he expressed some complaints about President Bush's unconservative spending and some retrospective doubts about the wisdom of invading Iraq. But his decision, Mr. Buckley said, had more to do with his own mortality.

He was hardly in tune anymore with the wild-eyed group that hijacked his party. He actually made sense sometimes.

[gratuitous]

2. Buckley doesn't want to return to irrelevancy

Not that he ever edged far out of that penumbra, but he's had to love the taste of power afforded him and his cronies in the last 10 years. Going back to sniping from the back benches probably doesn't look like too savory a choice at this stage of his life.

By greedily overplaying their hand, the neocons have guaranteed that they will not gain an ascendance anywhere near permanently.

So long, Billy Boy. Don't forget to take your chimp with you.

[Baltimoreboy]

11. I wish I were that optimistic

I think you are counting chickens.

[salinen]

3. Cheney you

WFB

[FlemingsGhost]

4. Any chance of a final bow?

I got this tomato, you see ...

[MarkTwain]

5. Lovable Bill Buckley ? Atrios Reminds Us Otherwise.

"Lovable Bill Buckley"

What a sweet sweet profile of the retiring Buckley. For another view, we have the lovable folks at American Renaissance (warning, serious cooties) to remind us of the glory days of the National Review. From "Why the South Must Prevail," August 24, 1957:

"The central question that emerges . . . is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not prevail numerically? The sobering answer is Yes – the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race. It is not easy, and it is unpleasant, to adduce statistics evidencing the cultural superiority of White over Negro: but it is a fact that obtrudes, one that cannot be hidden by ever-so-busy egalitarians and anthropologists."

"National Review believes that the South's premises are correct. . . . It is more important for the community, anywhere in the world, to affirm and live by civilized standards, than to bow to the demands of the numerical majority."

"The South confronts one grave moral challenge. It must not exploit the fact of Negro backwardness to preserve the Negro as a servile class. . . . Let the South never permit itself to do this. So long as it is merely asserting the right to impose superior mores for whatever period it takes to effect a genuine cultural equality between the races, and so long as it does so by humane and charitable means, the South is in step with civilization, as is the Congress that permits it to function."

From June 2, 1964:

"But whatever the exact net result in the restricted field of school desegregation, what a price we are paying for Brown! It would be ridiculous to hold the Supreme Court solely to blame for the ludicrously named 'civil rights movement' – that is, the Negro revolt . . . . But the Court carries its share of the blame. Its decrees, beginning with Brown, have on the one hand encouraged the least responsible of the Negro leaders in the course of extra-legal and illegal struggle that we now witness around us. . . . "Brown, as National Review declared many years ago, was bad law and bad sociology. We are now tasting its bitter fruits. Race relations in the country are ten times worse than in 1954."

-Atrios 10:05 PM

http://atrios.blogspot.com/2004_06_27_atrios_archive.html#108847504203298145

... Damn. I can't begin to quantify just how much I hate the New York Times. The man whose pen consistently produced and supported "values" such as the noted above and what do they give us? A friggin' puff piece on the lovable old crusty godfather of modern conservativism. Damn, I hate them so very much. Can we hope that the Internet is the mechanism which will ultimately reduce them and their sorry and hypocritical ilk to the abject irrelevency which they are rightfully earning while on their knees servicing their masters at the other three estates?

[johnfunk]

13. Bill Buckley, Connecticut Confederate

Good riddance to the racist.

[jdj]

6. "If I knew then what I know now..."

Okay, I'm just a working class shmuck, and I knew, so how the hell did this well educated wealthy white man with connections out the yin-yang not know a year ago what I knew then and know now???

I feel like writing him a letter and telling him to call me any time he needs some insight on world events.

[UpInArms]

12. my thought on this piece of crap also

jdjkkse!

We could have told him/it easily and offered many sources for documentation.

This POS should be abjectly apologizing for assisting in an illegal and immoral war on humanity.

A cushy retirement for the liars. :puke:

[Piperay]

7. I think that when WFB got what he

wanted (CONservatives having control of everything) he found out it wasn't so great after all. I guess WFB learned the hard way 'be careful what you wish for.....' :argh:

[gatlingforme]

10. I think alot of conservatives are re-thinking the Bushco Admin.

[JCMach1]

8. I love Bill Bukley and never loved him more

than when I watched him get his ass handed to him by James Carville during a debate during the 1996 Election at Oklahoma State University.

It was like watching two heavy weights go at it, but Carville got the knockout!!!

[MarkTwain]

14. Just as notable.. Vidal vs. Buckley..

Gore Vidal, in a debate with Mr. Thesaurus in 1968, tore Buckley a new one throughout the entire debate, but most memorable was Vidal referencing Buckley as a "Crypto-Nazi." To which Buckely could only retort calling him a "Fag" and "Queer."

I was never quite certain if what upset Buckley so much was the Nazi part or the Crypto characterization.

It was widely regarded that Vidal won that debate. Hands down.

[SoCalDem]

9. Good riddance

:(

[struggle4progress]

15. NYT doesn't even remember publishing Buckley's famous oped ...

asking that people with AIDS be multiply tattooed so others could easily identify them?

<edit: sp>

[kskiska]

16. This is funny

Somehow it's incongruous to see WFB and Rush in the same sentence:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1162042/posts

WFB was the first conservative that I began to follow. To a large extent, he shaped my views and I thank him for his insight. For many many years he WAS the voice of conservative wisdom.

That said, it was Rush who became a stalwart for me and brought conservative values alive in a way that WFB could never do. I became a conservative because of WFB and an activist because of Rush. I thank them both.

15 posted on 06/28/2004 8:03:49 PM PDT by Drango

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

17. Now, now... maybe Mr. Buckley will turn over a new leaf

Instead of just hating blacks and Spanish-speaking people, he will have time to develop hatred for Gays, Women and Democrats of all stripes.

[WannaJumpMyScooter]

18. Now, now... maybe Mr. Buckley will turn over a new leaf

Instead of just hating blacks and Spanish-speaking people, he will have time to develop hatred for Gays, Women and Democrats of all stripes.

[David Zephyr]

19. How Long Until Murdoch Buys Buckley's Rag As He Did With Weekly Standard?

Any bets?

[seemslikeadream]

20. William F. Buckley and Gore Vidal

William F. Buckley and Gore Vidal, Chicago, August 1968 (Wisconsin Center for Film and Theater Research, Gore Vidal Collection)


Fred Kaplan reads a passage from Gore Vidal: a debate between William F. Buckley and Gore Vidal, during which William F. Buckley loses his composure and embarrasses himself on national television.

http://www.randomhouse.com/boldtype/1199/kaplan/reading.html