The Happy Warrior: William F. Buckley, Jr.
ARGUER CASE STUDY
“William Buckley would argue about anything with anybody.” — Irv Kupcinet
“For the wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God.” — James 1:20, quoted by William F. Buckley in his essay “On Experiencing Gore Vidal”
At the end of his life, William F. Buckley was widely seen as the father of contemporary conservatism in America. When he began his career, however, Buckley was an ideological misfit (albeit a rich, handsome, popular one). It is not an exaggeration to say that during 59 years of firehose rhetorical output, he helped argue U.S. politics as we know it into being.
Buckley loved to argue. He argued in writing and he argued in speech. He estimated that he made 70 public speeches a year for 40 years. He hosted the television debate show “Firing Line” from 1966 to 1999: over 1400 episodes. The New York Times obituary estimated that his collected newspaper columns would fill 45 books. This in addition to his 55 actual books. [1] That Buckley died at his desk did not surprise his own National Review, which figured he went as he would have chosen to go: “At home, still devoted to the war of ideas.”
Thinking of the moment when Buckley set out, at age 29, to reshape his country’s political discourse, you do not imagine a dogged figure throwing his weight against a mountain in the faith that it might one day move. You imagine, rather, a puppy bounding into the biggest pile of leaves in the world, a pile raked carefully into place by generations of earnest groundskeepers. More… »