So Long Bill. Buckley, Say Hello to The Parental Units for Me

I was raised, believe it or not, by ultra-conservative Catholic career military parents. I remember coming home from elementary school during the McCarthy Hearings in the fifties to find my mother at the ironing board, her attention totally absorbed by what was happening on the radio on the shelf behind her, not noticing or caring how many chocolate chip cookies my sisters and I devoured before supper.

The National Review was read as soon as it hit the mailbox, providing fodder for my parents' discussions, or raging arguments, with cocktail or dinner guests on the weekends. We didn't have a television in our home during my growing-up years, not, that is, until Firing Line hit the airwaves in 1965, well after I had left home for undergraduate school. I had to go to other kids' houses to watch The Lone Ranger and Hopalong Cassidy, but as soon as William F. Buckley could, he appeared in my parents' living room, impressing even me with his ridiculously engorged vocabulary. So, my younger sisters and brother were able to go through their high school years watching Star Trek, Laugh-In, Monty Python's Flying Circus, maintaining their cool among their peers, thanks to America's most intelligent, witty, articulate conservative ever.

Buckley has gone to his eternal reward today, at the age of 82. Whatever his reward may be, I have to hope it's the same one my parents are enjoying, as it will most certainly brighten up their eternity to have Bill Buckley in their midst. I just about never agreed with the guy on anything (nor did I very often with my parents, I have to confess), but he was truly sui generis, and I have to admit that there are ways in which I'm going to miss him. Mainly as an icon of my rebellious youth and my parents' admiration for him, verging on idolatry. It is regrettable that so few other talking conservative heads have been able to live up to his cultured, erudite brand of Conservativism, but have instead descended into the rabble-rousing idiocy of an Ann Coulter or Bill O'Reilly. Buckley may have had a seminal influence on the growth of conservatism in his time, but he at least invited other opinions and always asked his audience and his readers to think.

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