Ask a conservative college student about the death of William F. Buckley today and he or she is likely not to know the name.
He probably does not read National Review.
She surely has never watched Firing Line, not even on You-Tube.
Explaining to them what the world was like in the seventies for conservatives is hard to do properly. It sounds too much like OG stories of “walking to school and back in the snow, uphill, both ways.”
Nevertheless it is true, that there was a time when I had to wait weeks to find battered copies of National Review in the library. There I could read essays on world events from a conservative point of view, read intelligent Christian writing, and see ideas applied to public policy. The magazine (National Review) was unpredictable, unlike the local paper which was blandly Great Society, like all intelligent people were supposed to be. William F. Buckley founded that magazine in his late twenties and his way of thinking dominated it.
His way of thought was Western, American, cosmopolitan, Christian, and Roman Catholic. No modern conservative in the United States can escape at least a trace of this fairly personal combination of traits which due to one man’s life, William F. Buckley, became normal in the movement.
In a four network world where PBS meant kids television and Monty Python (bless it!), there also appeared a wit and Anglophile (weren’t we all?) who would debate everyone . . . including our heroes like Ronald Reagan. This man, William F. Buckley, and his show Firing Line were all many of us had in the intellectual wasteland of afternoon cartoons, Three’s Company, and endless repeats of PBS documentaries pointing out the jolly nature of communist Russia.
Buckley was serious where they were frivolous, witty where they were merely crude, and right on the great moral issue of his time: the battle against totalitarian communism.
His death reminds us that there will never be another Buckley, because information is no longer so limited or tightly controlled. We need no Buckley hammering down the gates of the establishment, because information is much freer than it was.
No conservative communicator can be so unique, because there is such an ability to create and distribute. As a result, however, no American conservative will escape his influence for generations, because of when he lived.
He was a seminal media figure in one the last times when such a person could dominate the imagination of a huge chunk of the viewing, reading, and listening public. Young conservatives do not need to know his name, but owe him much in the same way a man can fail to know the name of his great-grandfather, but still trace eye color and temperament to him as well as existence.
So his philosophic great-grandchildren should look up his writings (his Cold War novels are great period fun!), and thank God for his instrument William F. Buckley. While no philosopher himself, he was a great teacher of good philosophy. While no saint, he introduced us to many saints. While no reactionary, he was that most traditional of men in his public persona: the gentleman.
May his soul and that of all the faithful departed rest in peace.
