The passing of conservative icon and National Review founder William F. Buckley has given TNR contributors
pause to reflect on his legacy. John B. Judis, one of Buckley’s biographers,
writes
that “the key to Buckley is to understand that he was a rebel, but not a
heretic.” On The Plank, James Kirchick pays
homage to “the voluminous service [Buckley] performed
on behalf of the English language,” and Buckley’s old friend and political
foil, James K. Galbraith remembers
him as “a magnificent human being, by any standard.” And, from the TNR
archives, Sam Tanenhaus discusses
the disintegration of “the movement Buckley did so much, perhaps more
than anyone else, to create,” while Johann Hari
encounters a disenchanted Buckley on a cruise ship and, in what makes a fine eulogy, observes that “the great battles of his life are
already won.”
--Ben Crair