William F. Buckley Jr, the fantastically well-spoken founder of the modern Conservative movement is dead at 82. So basically all our currently problems are his fault.
But in the spirit of not speaking ill of the dead, here's Ezra Klein mourning the death of the public intellectual and LG&M pointing out that the old man was no longer down with the program.
I do have to mention my favorite Buckley story. From Wikipedia:
Buckley appeared in a series of televised debates with Gore Vidal during the 1968 Democratic Party convention. In their penultimate debate on August 28 of that year, the two disagreed over the actions of the Chicago police and the protesters at the ongoing Democratic Convention in Chicago. At one point Vidal called Buckley a “pro-crypto Nazi”, to which Buckley replied, “Now listen, you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I will sock you in your goddamn face, and you will stay plastered.
Alas, public debate has fallen far from the day of yore.
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