I will never forget the greatest radio address I ever heard in my opinion was delivered by Mr. Bcckley. The address was not on subject that help shape my life, but in the delivery of the message. He had a caller tell him on air how vastly important he was and how he had it all together. He stopped the caller telling the story of how life is for himself. He said he tried like a good tennis player in life to always find those better than himself to play with to better his game. He said that the people he looked up to had little time for him but made time though he was not worthy because they were so much more together than he. The relativity of our place in this world depends allot on how charitable or gated the truly humble and willing to help great people are, and how open we are to make our petitions be known. Being content with what we have or reasonably attain puts the burden at the top where it belongs. Mr. Bcckley never thought to much of himself and was willing to burden the really together people for his own growth to be the great man he was in the public eye. Mr. Bcckley had the courage to fail in the eyes of those really great people to make himself a better man and share that experience openly. It is all relative though we wonder if the really together people have time to glance our way without our playing tennis any more, because that burden is still on them?

...where did he get that fake accent from?

Ah, yes, let's sigh woefully at the loss of Buckley's more moderating, high falutin' and upperbrow conservativism. Like his calls to ban blacks from voting... or the time he called Gore Vidal a "f*gg*t" on t.v.... or, perhaps, if we really want to traipse blissfully down memory lane, the time he argued that AIDS patients should be forceably tattooed... or maybe... uh, excuse me for a second while I vomit into the begonia bush in the most "erudite" manner possible.

Modern conservtivism has pushed things so far into the toilet that we literally have people looking back at this jackass as a moderating force? Jesus H. Christ.

I can't wait until twenty-five years from now, once modern "conservatives" are literally dumping in their pants and hurling their poo on live t.v., and we all look back fondly at what a "moderating" force Ann Coulter once was. To quote the bard: BLEEEEEARRRRGGGGH.

Faithful viewers of Buckley's long-running old television show "Firing Line" will always hold him in the highest regard. We learned a lot from him--and not just about politics.

That his last few years were physically excruciating, that he suffered deeply, and, that at the moment of his death he came to realize what a worthless piece of shit he was.

See you in hell, bitch.

I used to read NR back in the 80's, and his columns often made me laugh out loud. He took extreme positions, but he had so much skill as a writer that he could make them seem reasonable. I can't help but wonder what he really thought of the conservative movement at the end of his life, though. It's almost like a Greek tragedy. He helped bring modern American conservatism to life, then watched helplessly as it self-destructed in Iraq, while his own body slowly failed him.

Did modern conservatism die also? Wish it would! Bill Buckley: one of America's most cherished antiques.. well almost!

Yeah, they broke the mold. I understand they also beat the shit out of the mold maker...

It's a joke. Relax. I mostly disagreed with him, but I never passed up the opportunity to read what he wrote. He was a special one.

As a writer, my dream is a death like that of William F. Buckley -- at my desk, pen (figuratively or literally) in my hand. And surely his family deserves condolences at this time. But as a public intellectual, over a span of some 50 plus years, I don't know that he ever retracted or apologized for two positions that NR notoriously held during the 1950s -- the support of racial segregation and of McCarthy. It seems that the reactionaries that compose the intellectual cohort of the GOP have only ever been able to praise the civil rights movement long after it was safe to do so. And as for McCarthyism, it is no accident that Anne Coulter was able to write a book in praise of Gunner Joe -- the model was provided by Buckley himself. Yes, his vocabulary was extensive, and he had wit and deep intelleigence, but they were put in the service of some pretty odious causes.

Although I seldom agreed with William F. Buckley, I certainly enjoyed and respected his commentary. He possessed an erudite style which is almost completely absent on either side of our political spectrum. I, for one, will miss him.

Au revoir, vieil ami,
Francois

You couldn't have invented a character as simultaneously erudite and dickish as Buckley and had anybody believe he could really exist.

@RussH said: With Buckley gone, I sense that sort of moderating influence (for what it was worth) on American conservatism is now gone.

More accurately, the veneer of intellect Buckley provided is gone. I doubt there is another who was his equal. My feeling is that the Ann Coulters of the movement will come to define it, and we'll all find out in short order whether they were really relevant at all.

Chris Buckley is one of the best writers of political satire that I've ever read, he may be personally conservative, but he targets both sides with his acid humor.

I give him my condolences for the passing of this father.

Oddly, Buckley's demise is very symbolic of the plight of today's reactionary movement. Buckley was always an intellectual, and while he paved the way for the think-tank and right-wing foundation reactionaries that intellectually buttressed the modern GOP, the Intellectual Right seem to be more marginalized by the anti-intellectual Right majority, like princesses captive in their ivory towers, surrounded by the mongrel hordes they've roused.

The Right today has grown toxic in its hostility to science, education, intellectualism. The roots of that animosity go deep, but Buckley was increasingly an anachronism, given where the dominant power of the GOP resides today. If not for their saturation in the mainstream gliberal media, the think-tankers of the reactionary movement would have no reliable soapbox. They still get called in as policy experts, but within the GOP, it almost seems like the Right's a headless monster, animated by the ideas of Buckley and his peers, but having slipped loose of its bonds long ago, careening heedlessly (and headlessly) toward a future it cannot comprehend.