John North Editor & Publisher

“William F. Buckley Jr., 82, dies: Sesquipedalian spark of right,” proclaimed the headline on a front-page story in last Thursday’s edition of The New York Times.

That the ever-clever Times used a polysyllabic word meaning “characterized by using polysyllabic words” to describe one of America’s most flamboyantly intellectual pundits was a witty parting shot Buckley would surely have appreciated.

For me and undoubtedly many other Americans, Buckley, who died last Wednesday, was a larger-than-life character. He sailed a luxury yacht, he sipped cocktails with everyone from top political figures here and abroad to Hollywood glitterati to fellow famous authors and thinkers. His genteel and impeccable manners included finger bowls at mealtime and other trappings of the old-line New England bluebloods.

I first became aware of him through his conservative magazine, National Review, and his long-running weekly television show, “Firing Line.”

National Review was always a lively read, filled with thought-provoking ideas. It was accented by a clever and witty writing style that was no doubt a reflection of the erudite Buckley’s influence.

Later, I discovered his books — he wrote more than 50 of them, including both fiction and nonfiction. I marveled that a man who lived so full a life could find the time to write so much — and so well.

On “Firing Line,” I enjoyed watching the engaging Buckley challenge his guests on a highly intellectual level — and exchange witty repartée with them. Sometimes the exchanges took a nasty turn, resulting in more heat than light, I thought.

But Buckley, a Yale graduate with an upper-crust patrician demeanor and vocabulary, seemed to go overboard in his blatant elitism.

While he marshalled his style, which bordered on snobbishness, to impressive effect as a speaker and talk-show host, I often felt that his persona was standoffish and that he lived in an insulated world of his own.

Perhaps as a result of his yacht-club, school-tie worldview, Buckley made at least one major misstep in his career. He initially opposed racial integration — a stance for which he later apologized, claiming that he was too much a man of his times.

While I consider myself an eclectic politically, I always found Buckley’s right-wing ideas to be well worth pondering.
Indeed, he is widely credited with founding the modern conservative movement in the U.S., linking traditional American

political conservativism with economic libertarianism and anti-communism. The most prominent exponents of Buckley conservativism were U.S. presidential candidate Barry Goldwater and President Ronald Reagan.
Buckley burst onto the public scene with his critical essay “God and Man at Yale” in 1951, in which he argued that the school had strayed from its original educational mission.

Splitting his time between New York City and Stamford, Conn., Buckley was a practicing Roman Catholic and preferred attending mass in Latin. Christian piety and anti-communism were Buckley’s twin pillars.

The New York Times described Buckley’s views as “an amalgam of Friedrich Hayek’s free-market economics, Russell Kirk’s cultural conservatism and Whittaker Chambers’ anti-Communism.” The paper credited him as a pioneer in giving conservatism a voice and a forum.

Interestingly, this quintessential American conservative not only changed his views on integration, but also came to support the legalization of marijuana.

Off and on, he described himself as either libertarian or conservative — which makes it all the more surprising to me that the man who served as the arbiter of American conservatism disdained Ayn Rand, whose revolutionary ideas are credited with inspiring the launch of the Libertarian Party, America’s most successful third party.

In his self-appointed role of trying to keep oddballs and crackpoints out of the conservative movement, the ever-pragmatic Buckley shunned Rand because of her overt atheism and materialism. He reportedly was convinced that Rand’s acceptance into his inner circle would alienate the God-fearing majority of American conservatives.

As a result, Rand’s masterpiece, “Atlas Shrugged,” was panned in the pages of the National Review by reviewer Whittaker Chambers. who some contended had a chip on his shoulder — placed there, they said, by the ubiquitious Buckley.

While I am not an atheist, I think Rand, her literary works and Objectivist philosophy were treated shabbily — and she was undeservedly blacklisted by Buckley and his club. In turn, Rand, the world’s pre-eminent champion of unfettered capitalism and individual freedom, never forgave Buckley and the conservatives.

As for Buckley and oddballs, I think the pot shouldn’t have called the kettle black. Buckley most definitely was an eccentric, although an admirable one in many ways.

Given today’s vicious strain of neo-conservativism that has dragged the U.S. into a quagmire, I now look back wistfully to Buckley’s more nuanced and ever-inquiring political philosophy.

 Perhaps it’s portentous that the founder of modern conservativism died at a time when his movement is in such disarray that election analysts are predicting a possible landslide — to the left — in the upcoming presidential election.
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John North, publisher and editor of the Daily Planet, may be contacted at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .