The tribute pieces on the late, great William F. Buckley, Jr., have already trickled in, but they are a mere prelude to the Niagara-like waterfall of praise that is surely to come over the next few days. As a latecomer to understanding just how great, influential, and indeed essential to the modern conservative movement Buckley is/was, I find myself with little ability to detract from, let alone add to, the insights and praises that will be unearthed by the big-name conservative cognoscenti (Limbaugh, Coulter, Sowell, etc.).

            What I can do, however, is briefly remind those of us in the under-30 crowd just how important Buckley was to giving conservatism credibility. We 20-somethings have had it easy, as far as conservatives go. We were toddlers or newborns when Reagan was elected President in 1980. Rush Limbaugh started broadcasting his radio talk show and the Berlin Wall fell while we were in grade school. We came of age professionally with Fox News on cable TV, and Bush-43 changing a nation’s paradigm on dealing with international terrorism. It can easily be argued that none of that would have been possible without Bill Buckley paving the way.

            Try being a conservative prior to 1980, before enough people were sufficiently radicalized against big government that even the drive-by media – then a much more influential voice for liberalism – could not hold up the waters to prevent the flood from soaking their agenda. As early as the 1950s, Buckley took on a role similar to that of Atlas holding up the sky, except in this case, he became the cornerstone of a nascent ideological movement created as a response to the fallout of Big Brother government ushered in by FDR.

            Republicans were late-comers to understanding the importance of being more hard-lined of social issues (Reagan helped wipe out that weakness), largely because it was not necessary to be conservative on social issues prior to the 1960s, when myriads of those sorts of problems suddenly erupted all over society. A similar thing can be said about conservatism as a whole; prior to the Great Depression, the ideas that are the basis for the conservative ideology today were merely mainstream American ideas back then. What would be classified as liberals today were justifiably ostracized by mainstream society as Trotskyites, confined to a few underground coffeehouses in Manhattan. 

            The big problem for America emerged with FDR, who basically took advantage of many people’s economic fears to become a liberal quasi-dictator. Big government is not the only reason why leftists worship at Franklin Roosevelt’s altar to this day – he was the only politician who remotely succeeded in living out a liberal’s dictatorial fantasy. These trends for continued growth in government seemed unstoppable 20 years after Franklin Roosevelt was first inaugurated into the White House. It was in this spirit that Buckley, who in 1955 founded National Review -- arguably to this day the most influential magazine on conservative thought -- announced its purpose with an editorial that included what must be the most oft-quoted statement any magazine has ever made about itself: "It stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it."

            Buckley had already created a stir among the liberal establishment when he wrote God and Man at Yale in 1951, a scathing critique of the secular-leftist agenda that was slowly seeping into the hallowed halls of his alma mater. Liberals, of course, have inclined themselves to react in the same manner to sentiments that they deem to be heresy as Pavlov’s dog was trained to respond to certain sounds. Ann Coulter, in her tribute piece on Buckley, gives a nice, concise list of the way many liberals reacted to his ground-breaking book. This book, of course, was hardly a drop in the proverbial bucket of what was to come. His literary achievements alone would make 99 percent of the most productive of people seem like underachievers. In Jeff Jacoby’s first tribute piece written on the occasion of Buckley stepping down from leading NR, the Boston Globe columnist gives us a brief list of his body of work that includes “35 nonfiction books, 15 books of fiction, 79 book reviews, 56 introductions or forewords to books written by others, 227 obituary essays, 800-plus editorials or other articles in National Review, 350 articles in periodicals other than National Review, and more than 4,000 newspaper columns at the rate of two or three a week.” Can I take a breath now?

            If you think that his achievements were restricted to print media, think again. For over 30 years, he hosted his own debate show “Firing Line,” often skewering his liberal guests with his cool, calm, hyper-intellectual demeanor and his absolutely wicked sense of humor. His erudite New England-accented pronunciation of “Reverend Jackson,” when the notorious race hustler appeared on his show, became the basis and inspiration for Rush Limbaugh’s satirical quips of Jackson’s name and title on his radio show today. When, years earlier, Robert F. Kennedy was asked why he refused to appear on "Firing Line," he replied: "Why does baloney reject the meat grinder?" A great interchange that demonstrates Buckley’s intellectual prowess was in 1969 when he took on MIT’s very own America-hater, Noam (“gnome?”) Chomsky. (Part Two on YouTube can be found here.)

            Indeed, Buckley was the leading conservative commentator for three decades, in both print and on television. In the final few days leading up to the presidential election of 1968, ABC televised a brief, two-installment opposing-point-of-view special, where the two sides argued the merits of the candidates and the ramifications of the election for the country (part one and part two). Gore Vidal provided the liberal point of view, while it came as no surprise that Buckley provided the conservative perspective.

            The two almost came to blows when debating on ABC at the Democrat National Convention in Chicago earlier that year. At one point, Vidal, the America-hating homosexual leftist (a pervert on both counts!), called Buckley a “crypto-Nazi,” and Buckley’s response was priceless. "Now listen, you qu--r. Stop calling me a crypto Nazi, or I'll sock you in your goddamn face and you'll stay plastered." Don’t believe me? That have it one YouTube as well – enjoy!

            Among the many legacies we can also thank Buckley for was giving conservatism credibility by not only marginalizing the kooks, the John Birchers, and the nativists, but also bringing out the optimistic qualities of the ideology for all to see and appreciate. Conservatism, after all, is rooted in optimism – optimism that people can be successful through their own talents and ambitions, without government having to prop them up – or, more often, hindering them -- at every step of the way; optimism that people are better at solutions to problems than government, and optimism that people, through more local control, can decide how to better handle their own affairs than faceless bureaucrats in Washington. Make no mistake about it, without Buckley, there would have been no Reagan.

            The links in this blog entry to other tribute columns will make the reader aware of other things, such as him running for mayor of New York City, his love of sailing (he sailed both the Atlantic as well as the Pacific), and his excellent musicianship. Jeff Jacoby, in his second tribute piece points out how Buckley proved a person could be erudite and down-to-earth at the same time. Ann Coulter recalls how he skewered the prosecution where he was the defendant at a trial. One thing that I learned belatedly was that he was adept at playing the harpsichord. As a fan of Baroque music (particularly Bach), it is worth noting that that instrument was a hallmark of that epoch, and learning this bit of knowledge of the late Buckley will leave yours truly pondering for a long time on what, if any Bach concerti he might have enjoyed playing. Did anybody, for example, ever witness him playing Bach’s Brandenburg No. 5, or perhaps Bach’s Harpsichord Concerto in E Major (BWV 1053) at one of his many high-brow parties? Only time and research will tell.

            Evidence of his long-standing celebrity status have appeared over the years in numerous ways. In Disney’s animated feature film Aladdin, the Genie character, voiced by Robin Williams, gives many celebrity impersonations, with one being an obvious nod to Buckley when noting of the “quid-pro-quos” as part of the deal of service to his new master.

            After he stepped down from being “Editor at Large” of National Review in 2004 at age 78, he still churned out the occasional column, with a very recent example being his piece where he recalled Norman Mailer right after the iconoclastic author’s demise. Indeed, while he may have yelled “Stop” to history some 50 years ago, nothing seemed to stop the Godfather of American conservatism even in retirement, and nothing today seems to stop the movement he created, something for which we all can be eternally grateful.