William F. Buckley, Jr. - A Man For All Seasons

In my father's extensive library, collected while he was in medical school at Harvard, were two large tomes that caught my eye when I was 14 years old - Whittaker Chamber's Witness and Buckley's God and Man at Yale.

I was impressed that Mr. Chambers would defect from the Workers of the World revolution, couple his idealism with sober realism, and reveal the truth of the Communist infiltrator, Alger Hiss, to a scathingly unbelieving world. My friends were similarly and militantly unbelieving.

I thought his book heroic amid the turmoil of the Sixties, with all my Leftist friends yelling "screw you" to the adult world that had given us Freakin' Don't-Ask-I-Don't-Give-A-Damn Vietnam, Valium popping moms ratting and hairspraying their beehive hairdos, and fathers in thin-lapelled suits, trying to keep it all together (or not and having an affair).

I never bought it.

There was something disingenuous about it all. I thought my generation did protest too much. It wasn't until much later that I read a Nobel Prize winning economist (other than Milton Friedman) link the hypocrisy of the 1950s to liberal parents who did not live their ideals. This sounded like the 50s and 60s I lived through, for many of my friends were liberal.

And while they were always "more real and more authentic" in their own eyes, they were not a little hypocritical in it all.

Oddly, and not without a measure of irony, the Era of Sexual Freedom, for all its so-called liberation, and at its core, treated women as objects. That I saw in the actions of my reactionary friends who loved to tell me about George Washington's indiscretions late in his life, all the while their indiscreet obsessions sent one beautiful young woman to the psych ward of a local hospital early in her young life.

Indelibly carved in my mind during that Decade of Decadence (the 60s) was the book that dared challenge Yale's, and by extension, the nation's godless direction, for its lack of truth and light, even though those words were, according to my sources, inscribed in Hebrew (Urim and Thummim) on Yale's crest.

William F. Buckley's quietus this past week hands the torch of Light and Truth to a younger generation, and with it comes a sense of deep loss, as I have noted the passings of leftist John Kenneth Galbraith, noted Keynesian economist at Harvard and economic advisor to President John Kennedy; of Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Freidman, heir to Adam Smith and Ludwig von Mises, and principal champion of Free Market economics. These are three men whose loss I mourn. Not to mention Daniel Patrick Moynihan, whose burly ectomorph chassis I identify with (though I'll pass on the bowties).

Freidman and Buckley loved to ski where my best buddy, the late Dr. Gary Mertlich, sociologist at the University of Toledo, taught me that same love - on the slopes of Alta, Utah. Gary and I enjoyed a Left/Right relationship similar to Buckley and John Kenneth Galbraith (me being Buckley). Similarly, I rejoice in the knowledge that Bill and Mr. Galbraith, likewise, had an intellectually vigorous friendship and correspondence.

When Gary and I were kids, he made a ski slope in his back yard with an old door elevated and meticulously covered with snow to give me enough speed to do a snow-plow. Little could I realize the hidden agenda, when he left me at the top of a ski run at Alta, on my first day skiing, laughing as he skied away (which made him more like Galbraith).

In today's self-righteous, pundit-posturing political domain (at both ends - Left and Right!), there needs to be more political ecumenicalism, and a Buckleyesque civility in debate (excepting the Gore Vidal exchange; but that's been settled, in court even, as Mr.Vidal needs to move on). http://nationalreview.com/

William F. Buckley, conservative advocate, founder and editor of the National Review, host on Firing Line, interviewed, wholeheartedly teased, and debated the greatest minds of our Modern Age, giving us balance during the Season of Excess that was the Sixties.

His influence powerfully spanned six decades and all seasons of political and cultural intrigue.

Requiescat In Pace, William F. Buckley, friend, and man for all seasons.


[Charlie Rose's final tribute to Mr. Buckley is touching.]