An American icon died today. William F. Buckley passed in his Stamford, CT. home at the age of eighty-two.
Love him or hate him, and millions did both, he was an unadulterated American classic and the founding father of the modern American conservative movement. High-minded and haughty, he lived a life of staggering pace and achievment, cramming several lives into one lifetime.
Buckley was an American Churchill in two ways. A soaring intellect joined by a matchless wit, his barbs were the delight of his friends and the scourge of his opponents. More importantly, he was greatly accomplished in so many different areas: pundit, scholar, member of the intelligence community, essayist, world-class sailor, downhill skiier, and founder and producer of the longest running TV News/Interview Show in history - Firing Line. He was also the founder and Editor-in-Chief of National Review, the journalistic bastion of American political and cultural conservatism. His editorial board sessions at NR were the stuff of legend, where a bottle of good scotch was in as much demand as the wits and abilities of his writers.
Of all his accomplishments, many don't know what an incredibly successful novelist he was. With multiple best-sellers to his credit, his books covered a variety of topics and themes. His best known were the "Blackford Oakes Series", which chronicled the times of the Cold War through the eyes of an American CIA Agent of that same name.
He burst on to the American scene in the 1960's with his seminal and defining work, God and Man at Yale, a book which harshly criticized and exposed the leftist politics and agenda of his Alma Mater. His intimate and revealing Nearer, My God gave us a look at his personal journey of faith and abiding in the Catholic Church. He did with a pen what Raphael did with a brush, and I have read few authors whose command of the language and purity of intellect flowed out onto the page with such unaffected beauty and style. Regardless of your view of him as a public figure, I cannot recommend his writing highly enough.
Sailor, raconteur, author, lover of good food, devoted husband and father, and a man who would go to the stake for a friend; he was more than any one thing an American original. He lived with an unfettered joy and clarity of purpose achieved by few.
We are the poorer for his passing.
