William F. Buckley, Jr.
1925-2008

Wednesday I heard the CNN TV announcer say "He used really big words", but coming from CNN, that could have referred to nearly anyone.

Bill Buckley was born four months and two weeks after the opening of the Scopes Trial into a time and place that had little regard for the permanent things and among people doing a spectacular job of abandoning the faiths. Mr. Buckley grew up to found a journal of opinion that obstructed and opposed the advance of disbelief.

He was a man of ideas and he loved to defend them; he obviously enjoyed the parry and thrust. He had wit, charm, and a darting tongue that may have been the last thing his opponents saw before their lights went out. He goaded the careless and scorned the gasbags and I loved watching it happen.

He founded that National Review which I read cover to cover every fortnight, he hosted Firing Line, which I watched every Sunday afternoon it was possible, and he wrote spy novels which I read occasionally. He also taught me the proper way to misuse commas.

But it was Bill Buckley and the cultured space he created that explained to me that my conservative temperament was intellectually defensible and morally obligatory.

He didn't use big words, he used right words. Nothing corrupts thought like imprecise language, and he was the perfect David for our Goliath.

Yesterday evening I got a brochure from a domestic cleaning service entitled: "Life's Too Short to Clean Your Own Home." Clearly this was the motto of the Western church I grew up in, and it was a divine grace that I learned outside church how stupid this policy is. Buckley distinguished between the idea of conservatism and the movement and he distanced conservatism from the weirdos, wackos, and witless opportunists that polluted the streams of thought.

We have lost a man who changed the world, and I hope Heaven has an Atlantic Ocean for him to play with.