- While some conservatives blast President Bush for trying
to restrain Israel's response to suicide attacks, another conservative
is blasting Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for "the stupidest
campaign in recent memory."
-
- Columnist William F. Buckley, in a Tuesday op-ed, writes
that Sharon's offensive has "solved nothing, increased Israel's problems,
intensified Palestinian hatred of Israel, estranged many Europeans and
Americans, and fanned Islamic hostility." Buckley says that Sharon,
in his effort to destroy the terrorist infrastructure, is conducting a
scorched-earth campaign of "wanton damage."
-
- According to Buckley, "What has been done is to
enhance and even legitimize Palestinian grievances." Buckley's conclusion:
"Mr. Sharon has wounded the state of Israel incalculably, causing
ache and pain not only to Palestinians, but to his people and to friends
of Israel everywhere."
-
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- Comment
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- The Last Great Republican
-
- By Robert McDougall
bob0516@hotmail.com
4-18-2
-
- What has become of America's great Republicans? Well,
I can speak about one of them. His name is William F. Buckley Jr., one
of the country's brightest, most courageous conservative voices for going
on a half a century.
-
- His recent condemnation of Ariel Sharon's disastrous
and clearly criminal actions in the Middle east merely confirm Buckley's
venerable stature. Indeed, as I see it, an homage is in order.
-
- Here is my humble perspective.
-
- I remember that as a high school lad in the 1970s nothing
could come between me and a television set Sunday afternoons when Firing
Line and the inimitable Bill Buckley Jr. bristled on screen. Here he sat,
face to face with some of the greatest minds and oddest personages in America
and from around the world, exchanging views, insults and laughter -- always
in a very high-minded way.
-
- Though his sometimes extremist views troubled and even
angered me, I nonetheless admired his braininess and his deft conversational
skills. I also got a big charge out of his weird theatricality; that reptilian
tongue darting this way and that; those amazing eyes rolling back in his
head, reminding me of nothing if not a hungry shark on the attack.
-
- I still vividly recall those rumpled but somehow stylish
suits of his in the Brooks Brothers' vein: modest lapels, button down Oxford-cloth
shirts and thin ties, always in subtle, muted tones as distinguished from
the garish garb he briefly sported when the fashion bug bit him in the
1960s.
-
- His clothing seemed to have a life if its own as he wriggled
in his chair on Firing Line, stretching his limbs shamelessly during the
course of any debate like a house cat oblivious to all but its own comfort.
What gall the man had. He did the same on The Johnny Carson Show and merely
blinked with incomprehension when Johnny mugged.
-
- Odd though he seemed to others, here was a man who was
comfortable in his own skin. And why not? He was born to privilege and
wealth; a patrician of sorts; a kind of American aristocrat. A yatchsman
from youth -- educated at Yale -- he would grow to become a renowned magazine
editor, TV personality, essayist, spy novelist, and even manage to serve
as an intelligence operative skilled in the martial arts.
-
- But to most, of course, it was the vocabulary that distinguished
him. The hallmark. The polysyllabic phantasmagoria. The first word Buckley
introduced me to as Crescent Collegiate High was "intransigent."
To this day I use the word in place of "stubborn" when the moment
permits.
-
- By the time I entered Mount Royal College in Calgary
to study journalism I was so taken with the man that I devoted hours to
developing a cartoon satire of his TV show called Inspiring Line. Here,
William Chuckley Jr. took on my fellow students, most of them co-workers
at the student newspaper The Reflector and many of them avowed communists.
-
- One installment reworked the famous U.S. election debate
between Bill Buckley and the outspoken author Gore Vidal, an undeclared
socialist and purportedly a bi-sexual. Some may remember that during the
debate Vidal referred to Buckley as a crypto-Nazi. Buckley in turn cast
aspertions on Vidal's politics and sexual preferences, then threatened
to beat Vidal up on camera.
-
- In my cartoon feature, Chuckley threatened to beat up
the far-left leaning editor of The Reflector, a slovenly, bearded man-bear
called "Stinkin? Nick" by my group.
-
- I was already in my career an indefatigable (thanks again
Bill) libertarian. At a time when many of my contemporaries were suggesting
that we hold Canadian University Press conferences in either China or Cuba
as a show of support for these nations, I was "in solidarity"
with Buckley on a host of issues concerning communism (Vietnam excluded).
The Chinese and Russian governments were scum, and history proved it in
the Gulag, Tibet and elsewhere.
-
- Of course, Buckley, even by the strictest libertarian
standards, sometimes went way too far. I am reminded of his suggestion
once that America ought to consider the nuclear option for China. Still,
I had to admire the man for promoting individualism and its democratic
benefits over collectivism and its totalitarian evils.
-
- Buckley was one of a kind and certainly open-minded as
a conservative. After all, his guests on Firing Line included individuals
who, if they were alive today, would hardly receive the air time Buckley
so graciously provided. Imagine the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg talking about
LSD and singing mantras on Crossfire for an hour. Think about an hour with
Bill O' Reilly and novelist Jack Kerouac as the latter quaffs booze on
camera and makes a drunken ass of himself. Forget it.
-
- To steal a metaphor from Hunter S. Thompson, Bill Buckley
stomped on the American tundra.
-
- Come to think of it, Buckley got quite a charge out of
Hunter Thompson's antics, too, way back when gonzo journalism was topical
among America's media savants and fear and loathing gripped the United
States during the unfortunate reign of Richard Nixon.
-
- Thats the thing many liberals -- and for that matter
many conservatives -- could not quite grasp about Bill Buckley. He could
quickly warm to individuals other conservatives would dismiss out of hand.
Hunter Thompson is a perfect example.
-
- Buckley knew a free spirit and a sharp mind when he saw
one. He admired Thompson despite his anarchic craziness. Buckley himself
was a free spirit. There was something of the mischief-maker in him. He
enjoyed rubbing elbows in improbable ways and he had fun carousing with
high-profile shit disturbers and odd balls.
-
- Consider Norman Mailer and Hugh Hefner. Buckley was certainly
taken aback by the views these men articulated in Advertisements for Myself
and The Playboy Philosophy. Yet he got on well with Mailer and Hefner.
If memory serves, he even visited The Playboy Mansion.
-
- Now there is something wonderful in this thought even
if images of Buckley cavorting with Bunnies in Hef's grotto strike a preposterous
note.
-
- Actually, it is most unlikely Buckley gamboled with even
so much as a domesticated Ostrich on Hefner?'y?s living room amid Hollywood
liberals dumb struck for want of scripts or cue cards.
-
- Plainly speaking, Bill Buckley was an American original
who admired others for their originality. Call him the Howard Rourke of
the conservative media set. Any psychologically honest soul with half a
brain who strove to live life on his own terms could earn Bill Buckley's
respect.
-
- He was far more tolerant than many liberals dared to
admit. Just because he also happened to have a healthy respect for meritocracy
did not make him an elitist or a bigot. It simply made him a believer in
giving credit where credit is due.
-
- He also demonstrated political and intellectual heroism
of the highest order, thankfully without tragic consequences. Who for instance
among Republicans or Democrats -- including especially the craven hypocrites
Bill Clinton and George W. Bush -- has had the courage finally to call
a spade a spade with respect to that calamitous 30-year folly called The
War on Drugs?
-
- Bill Buckley had the wherewithal.
-
- He called for the decriminalization of drugs and for
this alone I admire the man more than I can say. I have always believed
that no man has the right to tell another what he can or cannot put into
his body, particularly if what he ingests derives from the good earth.
The notion that a human being should be imprisoned for years simply because
he possesses -- or has consumed -- plant substances or derivatives is utterly
insane.
-
- Years from now, if we as a species do not obliterate
ourselves first, we may look back to The War on Drugs as one of the most
ridiculous and socially disastrous enterprises ever undertaken by humankind.
We may look back and see that Bill Buckley told us so in no uncertain terms.
-
- Is there any conservative in the broadcast media today
who is even remotely capable of filling Bill Buckley?s Oxfords? Who can
America look to now for words and arguments that enliven, rather than deplete,
the American spirit of freedom and self-determination?
-
- Must America turn to young whelps such as Tucker Carlson
from Crossfire? God in heaven! Someone ought to stuff that pathetic bow
tie Carlson sports up his sycophantic nose (for some men, certain charming
traditions shall forever remain out of reach no matter how far the stretch).
The truth is, Crossfire has become a bloody circus, all noise and emotional
acrobatics. Not a news program but an "entertainment." I can
not bring myself to watch it anymore.
-
- And do not talk to me about Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'
Reilly carrying on any tradition related to the noble, erstwhile editor
of The National Review. They are but ghosts of Godfather Bill. Indeed,
issues of substance are a joke among these men. Nothing is taken seriously
despite loud claims to the contrary. It is all a carnival sideshow undertaken
purely for effect, ratings and money. It is only time and the full-scale
dumbing down of American culture that has given the new, noisy pugilists
of the right high ratings on radio and television. Then again, can anyone
expect much more these days from a country that celebrates an illegal government
composed of liars and a business community consisting of grifters?
-
- Now, I have been speaking posthumously about Bill Buckley.
Of course he is still with us, but he is considerably toned down. Today
he writes columns about the trouble with book publishing. He appears on
late-night cable chat shows and plays classical piano pieces. Yet he is
aging well. His charm has not diminished even as his frailty has increased.
-
- Today the syndicated columnist and author of almost 50
books is "retired." Editor-at-large, they call him at The National
Review. Firing Line is an archive and old Bill has become a stately elder
in a country where few give much of a damn about stately elders anymore.
-
- Among many of the young, supposedly well-educated business
people I encounter today in cities throughout the United States and Canada,
Buckley generally is unknown. Like other estimable media personalities
of the last century -- Walter Kronkite and I.F. Stone for instance -- he
has become something of an antique curiosity.
-
- Still, William F. Buckley Jr. burned brightly in his
day.
-
- Blessedly, he is still capable of bursting forth onto
the scene and holding many of us in thrall with his surprising clarity
of thought and breathtaking wisdom.
-
- I last saw the man on one of those late-night talk shows
some time ago. The host asked Buckley what troubled him most in life.
"Growing old," the septuagenarian said. I sensed a hint of bitterness
that implied he would take issue with God himself on the matter when the
time comes.
-
- And isn't that just like Bill Buckley Jr. A man always
ready and fully able to argue a point. A treasure in a sinking American
ship.
-
- He is probably the nation's last great Republican.
- ___
-
- Canadian-born Robert McDougall is a former journalist
with the morning daily The Albertan (now The Calgary Sun). He has served
as a stringer with The Globe and Mail, The Toronto Star and United Press
International. Today he is a commercial writer based in Toronto.
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