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William F. Buckley Jr. RIP

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William F. Buckley Jr. RIP

Unread postby PenultimateManStanding » Thu 28 Feb 2008, 14:37:15

I used to read his magazine, National Review, avidly. Not necessarily for the the political views espoused. There was an element of Conservatism which was cultural and not political. It was about holding on to what was good in the past, an intellectual point of view which I found appealing. The contributors to Buckley's magazine possessed fine minds and I learned much from them.
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Re: William F. Buckley Jr. RIP

Unread postby efarmer » Thu 28 Feb 2008, 16:30:23

He really was a fine specimen of human being. He had a very
well thought out and formulated universe of meshing ideas and
principles and he was at home, fluent, and adept at it.
He could accept dissent or opposition from a reasonable and
respectable place without feeling he had to smear, or insult,
or damage, or neutralize any or all who was not in his sphere
of thought and influence. He was a very big and respectable
person.

The Republicans all seem to go back to Reagan to get their
warm fuzzies, but Reagan was the warm and comfortable
structure, WFB was the architect.

There are people left, center, and right who all claim to be
a proponent of a noble and gifted thinker or leader or one
sort or another. But their actions betray them, they are willing
to say or do or permit almost anything in pursuit of their goals
and in so doing they really become part of the smearing and pandering blob of indecipherable crap that shape shifts to
attempt to add legitimacy to that which has no right to it.
We forget that when you see people smearing scat on each
other and claiming it part of an honorable defense of their
ideas and principles, they must not really have any.
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Re: William F. Buckley Jr. RIP

Unread postby Flowerr » Thu 28 Feb 2008, 16:34:47

There are three certainties.

1. War
2. taxes
3. Judgement day.
Last edited by Flowerr on Fri 29 Feb 2008, 00:18:09, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: William F. Buckley Jr. RIP

Unread postby kabu » Thu 28 Feb 2008, 18:19:28

... I really liked watching him get stomped by Chomsky in that old debate of theirs!
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Re: William F. Buckley Jr. RIP

Unread postby Pops » Thu 28 Feb 2008, 18:59:32

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('efarmer', 'W')e forget that when you see people smearing scat on each other and claiming it part of an honorable defense of their ideas and principles, they must not really have any.

Lowest common denominator poll-based phrasing, look at the backdrop slogans instead of listening the gist of the speech and believing the connotations of the names tooled for laws, PACs and lobbyists are now the thing.

It was nice once when WFB made you actually think beyond slogans and You Tube clips...

Rest in peace.
The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves -- in their separate, and individual capacities.
-- Abraham Lincoln, Fragment on Government (July 1, 1854)
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Re: William F. Buckley Jr. RIP

Unread postby lateStarter » Thu 28 Feb 2008, 19:14:50

He had an amazing vocabulary. I remember watching him with a pencil and paper at my side. I'd jot down all the $20 words that he used in the course of his discussion and then look them up later.

The weird thing is that he used them naturally. They weren't forced. I think he belonged to a much different era - probably Victorian.

My all time favorite that I still remember to this day was this one:

pejoratively...

Tell me honestly. Without looking it up! Who knows what this word means? Would make a great SAT reading comprehension question (if they still do that kind of thing).
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Re: William F. Buckley Jr. RIP

Unread postby BigTex » Thu 28 Feb 2008, 19:32:44

I liked him a lot. Not too many of the larger than life types around anymore.

Seemed like a really sincere, funny and warm person. People who knew him spoke very highly of him.
:)
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Re: William F. Buckley Jr. RIP

Unread postby lys3rg0 » Thu 28 Feb 2008, 19:39:04

The world is now a better place.
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Re: William F. Buckley Jr. RIP

Unread postby jboogy » Thu 28 Feb 2008, 19:49:51

I'll take a shot latestart; pejoratively- of, or having to do with the pejoggler, pejoggler being slang for male reproductive organ?

I liked WFB too, he was not however instrumental in the assention of the neocons, he did not not like the neocons or their agenda, that's why you rarely saw him on TV the last seven years. He also was not someone who could " accept dissent or opposition....without smear or insult, etc." I saw Gore Vidal kick his ass on a show once so bad that Buckley lost it and got so mad he called Vidal a Fag something or other. He was losing the argument and resorted to anger and insults. But I did like him.
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Re: William F. Buckley Jr. RIP

Unread postby oswald622 » Thu 28 Feb 2008, 20:04:15

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Re: William F. Buckley Jr. RIP

Unread postby Pops » Thu 28 Feb 2008, 20:04:28

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('lys3rg0', 'T')he world is now a better place.

Exactly my point; I have never voted for a republican in my 50 years but for some, as quoted above, even the idea of showing respect for a person of some intellect with a different mindset brings out their bumper sticker mentality.

Banality though it was...
The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves -- in their separate, and individual capacities.
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Re: William F. Buckley Jr. RIP

Unread postby BigTex » Thu 28 Feb 2008, 20:29:09

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('lys3rg0', 'T')he world is now a better place.

Exactly my point; I have never voted for a republican in my 50 years but for some, as quoted above, even the idea of showing respect for a person of some intellect with a different mindset brings out their bumper sticker mentality.

Banality though it was...


Another one I kind of like but don't agree with much is Pat Buchanan (I don't know how that's going to play with this crowd).

I just like the interesting personalities who seem to believe what they say and don't take every cheap shot they can.
:)
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Re: William F. Buckley Jr. RIP

Unread postby Pops » Thu 28 Feb 2008, 20:40:39

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('BigTex', 'A')nother one I kind of like but don't agree with much is Pat Buchanan (I don't know how that's going to play with this crowd).

I just like the interesting personalities who seem to believe what they say and don't take every cheap shot they can.

Yea I watch all the Talking Heads shows I can get and Pat has been on the one Susan calls The Yeller Show (McLaughlin Group) since way back.

It is interesting to me that even the most strident folks on TV have become somewhat more circumspect over the last few years.
The legitimate object of government, is to do for a community of people, whatever they need to have done, but can not do, at all, or can not, so well do, for themselves -- in their separate, and individual capacities.
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Re: William F. Buckley Jr. RIP

Unread postby DomusAlbion » Thu 28 Feb 2008, 20:54:15

Buckley introduced me to two things I've treasured ever since I first watched Firing Line when I was just a wee lad.

Conservative thought and Bach.

Rest in Peace, dear gentle man.
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Re: William F. Buckley Jr. RIP

Unread postby lys3rg0 » Thu 28 Feb 2008, 21:42:48

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Pops', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('lys3rg0', 'T')he world is now a better place.

Exactly my point; I have never voted for a republican in my 50 years but for some, as quoted above, even the idea of showing respect for a person of some intellect with a different mindset brings out their bumper sticker mentality.


Dude, get a fscking clue. I'm not dissing Buckley just because i disagree with him (as he did so many times himself). The fact that he posessed "some intellect" as you say is even more contemptible when this intellect was used to publicly blacklist all the professors at Yale, defend McCarthy and his witchhunt, denounce atheists and preach that only theists can hold a moral high ground, or to support the forcefull tattoing of HIV patients... and this is barely scratching the surface.

From nyt:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')n 1955, Mr. Buckley started National Review as voice for “the disciples of truth, who defend the organic moral order” with a $100,000 gift from his father and $290,000 from outside donors. The first issue, which came out in November, claimed the publication “stands athwart history yelling Stop.”

It proved it by lining up squarely behind Southern segregationists, saying Southern whites had the right to impose their ideas on blacks who were as yet culturally and politically inferior to them. After some conservatives objected, Mr. Buckley suggested instead that both uneducated whites and blacks should be denied the vote.


From his book Nearer My God to Thee:

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')magine the fate of slavery and of the Inquisition in a moral vacuum in which the magnetic reach of Christianity was unfelt. Mightn't it be said that, but for Christianity, there is reason to wonder whether slavery would even now be extinct in the Christian world? And that whatever the historical slowness of its reflexes, the stability of Catholic-dominated Christianity continues to be central to the moral health and prospects of the human race?


Think of that. If not for Christianity, we would never have abolished the Inquisition!!!

And if not for Hitler, we'd never have closed down Auschwitz.... 8O

I should also point out that Buckley - consistent with his persistent efforts to elevate right-wing hackery to the status of intellectual respectability - championed the cause of neocreationism. He and his fellow conservatives were/are eager to make people who can't tell an archaeopteryx fossil from the carcass of last Thanksgiving's turkey believe that they are competent to render judgment on the fossil evidence.

When news of his death broke, the talking heads were trying to put an intelligent face on the old fart. They missed.

Joe Scarbourough (Idiot) actually tried to argue that Buckley (old fart) was an opponent of the evangelical movement among conservatives. Buckley (old fart) agreed with creationism, the "Godliness" of America, and the "evil that is atheism." Being the snob that he was, he just couldn't stand the lower classes working his side of the street. (Property values, you know)

Country club creationism, as opposed to trailer park creationism...

And, it isn't just biology, geology, and paleontology that they want to revise. IIRC, his Nazi Review even gave precious ink and paper to some nutcase who was trying to refute the theory of relativity. (After all, if morals are to have any chance of being absolute, we must first establish that position and velocity also have an absolute meaning.)

Ok, enough energy spent on that piece of garbage... Bumper sticker mentality my anus.
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Re: William F. Buckley Jr. RIP

Unread postby Alcassin » Thu 28 Feb 2008, 22:24:11

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('lys3rg0', 'T')he world is now a better place.


Yes.

He was eloquent and intelligent, that's what made him so dangerous. Very clever way to influence other people by toxicity of his views is pragmatism which can be admired by all, but the essence... only if you're conservative.
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Re: William F. Buckley Jr. RIP

Unread postby PenultimateManStanding » Thu 28 Feb 2008, 23:08:15

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Alcassin', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('lys3rg0', 'T')he world is now a better place.


Yes.

He was eloquent and intelligent, that's what made him so dangerous. Very clever way to influence other people by toxicity of his views is pragmatism which can be admired by all, but the essence... only if you're conservative.
Yes, Stalin was dangerous too. I admired Buckley. So sue me.
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Re: William F. Buckley Jr. RIP

Unread postby lys3rg0 » Thu 28 Feb 2008, 23:50:41

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', 'I') admired Buckley. So sue me.


His ideas were backward and WRONG, but he dressed them up in sophisticated verbage and made an intellectually bankrupt philosophy chic.
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Re: William F. Buckley Jr. RIP

Unread postby wisconsin_cur » Fri 29 Feb 2008, 00:08:49

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('lys3rg0', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', 'I') admired Buckley. So sue me.


His ideas were backward and WRONG, but he dressed them up in sophisticated verbage and made an intellectually bankrupt philosophy chic.


Or are you just upset that such ideas could be eloquently and persuasively made?

I never watched the guy; never read the magazine; couldn't tell you one thing he did or objected to.

I do observe that the passing seems to bring a little too much joy to some which says more about those speaking than the man who is now dead.

Seems like many are sulking that the death of Christianity was proclaimed a little too early and that this man had a part, a small part, in making it intellectually respectable to believe again. Forgive the man, he had the audacity to believe as fervently as you but in something other than you.
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Re: William F. Buckley Jr. RIP

Unread postby Alcassin » Fri 29 Feb 2008, 00:18:36

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PenultimateManStanding', 'Y')es, Stalin was dangerous too. I admired Buckley. So sue me.


:-D

Sure, and even Stalin was admired by Truman. You can't say that Stalin wasn't intelligent... Intelligence has nothing to do with the ideas somebody holds. Talleyrand is the best example.

So sue Truman or whoever you want. You may admire even Pol Pot, I don't care B-)
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