"You didn't just part the Red Sea. You rolled it back, dried it up and left exposed, for all the world to see, the naked desert that is statism. And then, as if that were not enough, you gave the world something different, something, in its weariness, it desperately needed — the sound of laughter and the sight of the rich, green uplands of freedom." -Ronald Reagan to William Buckley in 1985
A sad day in America: William F. Buckley, founder of National Review and arguably the most influential conservative thinker in the nation, died today. He was 82. If modern America could ever boast a true Renaissance man, it was Buckley. A devout Catholic and frequenter of the traditional Latin Mass, he was considered the father of American conservatism, his influence was enormous, his devotees legion. In the wake of the cultural madness of the 1960s, the successes of conservatism and common decency in American society can, in large measure, be traced back to Buckley. R.I.P.
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Here's an excerpt from a press release:
Editor, columnist, novelist, debater, TV talk show star of "Firing Line," harpsichordist, trans-oceanic sailor and even a good-natured loser in a New York mayor's race, Buckley worked at a daunting pace, taking as little as 20 minutes to write a column for his magazine, the National Review.
Yet on the platform he was all handsome, reptilian languor, flexing his imposing vocabulary ever so slowly, accenting each point with an arched brow or rolling tongue and savoring an opponent's discomfort with wide-eyed glee.
"I am, I fully grant, a phenomenon, but not because of any speed in composition," he wrote in The New York Times Book Review in 1986. "I asked myself the other day, `Who else, on so many issues, has been so right so much of the time?' I couldn't think of anyone."
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20080227/D8V2P9PG0.html
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