I don't spend a great deal of time considering the dead. He was one of the fathers of the pseudo-conservative movement that brought us the worst of Republicans, and not worth bothering with today.
I remember Buckley on the TV show Firing Line. Personally he struck me as pompous, spoiled child. Whenever he was losing a debate he would change the subject and resort to personal attacks. There are several televised debates between Buckley and others available on YouTube. Most of them were above my pay grade at the time, probably still are. I just can't stand to watch him. I got a kick out of this discussion with Groucho Marx. Even Groucho could pull Buckley's strings and make him act like an &*%^.
I see it a lot like that. I used to subscribe to The National Review back in the 80s' maybe, back when I thought that the national political parties represented opposite ideological/philosophical poles on how best society would run. I had just switched over from being a college-age Democrat to a Reagan Democrat. I'm still registered as a Democrat, but seldom vote in national elections. First, I honestly think that he meant well, that he was positive and constructive and not a negative reactionary. A lot of what he said made, and still makes, sense if taken from a point of view that the US was at a high point in most cultural areas, and that we therefore needed to slow down social change. I think he basically worked from his own emotional attachment to the best parts of the past US tradition. I don't think that his logic was particularly good because it shied away from the conclusion that to halt the migration to increased "irresponsible" individual freedom would require an external authoritarian force--less liberty. He seemed to prefer to believe that it was merely a matter of better education, then the average man/woman would *see* the intrinsic strength of traditionalism and of personal and social responsibility. To me, this is pretty naive given what I've lived thru. Buckley was indeed a late 19th C/early 20th C thinker.
I guess I never paid much attention to Buckley; when I was younger I had no interest in pseudo-intellectual blather. (Actually still don't so there's that.) I do like some of his quotes, however. Liberals, it has been said, are generous with other peoples' money, except when it comes to questions of national survival when they prefer to be generous with other people's freedom and security. -- William F. Buckley, Jr.
Mitchell, I had heard rumors of Mr. Buckley's near 180 degree turnaround concerning civil rights in the 1960s. This is an interesting article. As to the title of your thread, I'm willing to reconsider him. How William F. Buckley, Jr., Changed His Mind on Civil Rights By ALVIN FELZENBERG, May 13, 2017 (an attempt to summarize) When William F. Buckley, Jr. ran for mayor of New York in 1965, he may have been the first conservative to endorse affirmative action. He also promised to crack down on labor unions that discriminated against minorities, a cause even his liberal opponents were unwilling to embrace. Buckley pointed out the inherent unfairness in the administration of drug laws and in judicial sentencing. He also advanced a welfare reform plan whose major components were job training, education and daycare. This Buckley, who emerged in the years after 1965, bore little resemblance to the one who, eight years earlier in 1957, had penned an editorial he titled “Why the South Must Prevail”—in which he declared the white race the more advanced race and, as such, the most fit to govern. The piece put National Review on record in favor of both legal segregation where it existed (in accordance with the “states’ rights” principle) and the right of southern whites to discriminate against southern blacks, on the basis of their “Negro backwardness.” Looking back on the period in 2004, Buckley told Time magazine, “I once believed we could evolve our way up from Jim Crow. I was wrong. Federal intervention was necessary.” The apparent turning point was ...when white supremacists set off a bomb in a Birmingham church on Sept. 15, 1963, killing four young African American girls. He blamed George Wallace for the tragedy. The Alabama governor’s “noisy opposition” to integration, Buckley wrote, had “galvanized the demon” who committed the murders in the name of “racial integrity.” Wallace, he said, sought to perpetuate himself in power by appealing to the racial resentments of those who had elected him.