Gone to a better place, never to be forgotten by friends nor enemies.

He was the greatest. We will miss you Mr. Buckley. R.I.P.

He had a good passing, doing what he loved.
God bless him.

Vaya con Dios, Mr. Buckley. You made a difference.

A brilliant man without a doubt, although his ideological insistence on social stratification leaves one feeling rather cold. He did indeed reinvent conservativism for the 20th century and opened up an interesting field of debate. He was a true dialectician and a thoughtful (though somewhat frightening) man whose politics were at least intellectually informed, if somewhat patrician. He was also one of the few men who was worth disagreeing with. Where are his ilk? What is his legacy? It seems sad that with the death of Buckley comes the death of rational conservatism. Ironic timing that he leaves us when what's left of American conservatism is dying on the vine of fundamentalist, reactionary, anti-humanist zealotry . With Buckley we could argue; with what's left of conservativism we can only cringe and do our best to deflect the bile storm of ignorance, greed, and hatred.

Conservatism is dying on the vine because it does not hold true to its principles, not because of any "zealotry" or any other of the other epithets you seem to like to hurl at people of faith. The conservative movement was much more closely aligned with Christian fundamentalism 20 years ago than it is today, and it seemed to survive just fine. But when "conservatives" decide that we need to spend, spend, spend to grow the government and drift away from what made conservatism successful in the first place, we get what we have today.

The man last year
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/04/can_republicans_survive_iraq.html

When it comes to showing class, nogo never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity.

2 Samuel 3:38:

'Do you not know that a prince and a great man has fallen this day ?'

Conservatism is what it has always been, the principles are not changing, have not changed, and conservatism is not dying.

What IS dying is Republicanism. The GOP is in the process of slitting it's own throat right now. GOP senate and house members have won elections running on conservative principles, but seem to have checked those principles at the door to D.C. Conservative principles live on despite the GOP.

Just because a group of individuals in our government preached conservatism in order to get elected, then abandoned the principles once elected, does not mean that conservatism has changed. It means that politicians are doing the best job they can in order to ensure their job security; grow the government. There is nothing conservative about that and there never will be.

Bill Buckley was all there was for conservatives in the beginning. It started with God and Man at Yale.

There was no alternative medium in the intelligentsia, schools and media to established liberal dogma. In the beginning there was Buckley and his ideas. Conservatives have come a long way since then.

Bill Buckley brought Burke and the classic struggle between right and left (see Reflections on the Revolution in France ) back into the popular political dialogue. He championed the Austrian economists, and later, Friedman. With only a set of ideas and a fledgling magazine, he in large part brought about the repudiation of Keynesian economics and the supply side revolution that followed.

Buckley laid bare the lie of communism. He published the writings of one communism's former insiders, Whittaker Chambers, and showed the world what the left really was.

Buckley was what conservatives needed most at that particular time in history: an erudite intellectual with a razor sharp wit and mind who could and would eviscerate an opponent, and do it politely. John Kenneth Galbraith comes to mind.

Bill Buckley will be missed.

Amen HughS.

So it goes.

The last prominent conservative with class is gone. What shall we call you guys now?

You know, I may not have always agreed with what I read of Buckley--but I certainly did not always disagree. He always made me think about my political understandings, and presented challenging arguments. The man had class, and he was incredibly thoughtful. He argued his case, and he did it well.

RIP Mr Buckley.

I thought nogo was banned... ?

The last prominent conservative with class is gone. What shall we call you guys now?

We're still trying to locate the first prominent liberal with class.

We're still trying to locate the first prominent liberal with class.

And as demonstrated within this thread, there are no candidates for that here.

Mr. Buckley will definitely be missed; someone needs to pick up the torch he's left behind. I couldn't agree more with HughS; he says it best.

I find it utterly ironic there are liberals here willing to use the death of a person with class as an opportunity to take a swipe at the class of the rest of the conservative community. This is projection at its finest, and I'm not surprised in the least.

Ya know, if you took the minds of all the Kosites and Wizbang Blue'ers and combined them, you'd have something that approached .001% of Bill Buckley's intellect.

You can't be serious, Listkeeper!

It's closer to .000000000000000000000000000001%

ryan a:

While I appreciate your attempt at moral equivalence (quite typical), it falls flat when the comments you point out were made in response to classless people trashing the main point of the thread, which was the death of William F. Buckley, and taking a broad swipe at a large population of the U.S. Understandable defensive and emotional commenting, given the circumstances.

The fact that point went over your head speaks volumes.

The first group to belly up to the insult bar matters, in this case. I'd be the first to smack down a conservative doing this on a thread discussing the death of a well-known liberal icon, for your information. When the "outsider" group throws the first insult bomb, well...what did you expect to happen?

For a multitude of reasons, that's all that needs to be said about this. If you disagree, fine. Whatever. Save it for another time and place, please. The comments on this thread should be reserved for remembering Mr. Buckley, and not dissertations on social etiquette.

Tom,

Point taken. I agree with you about the point of this thread.

Read my comment above (#14) for my opinion of Mr Buckley.