Legacy of William F. Buckley Jr.

It may have flown under the radar with all of the election hullabaloo, but William F. Buckley Jr. died last week. He’s often been viewed as a paragon of conservative thought. And to some extent, this is true – this is half of an interesting debate he had with Noam Chomsky in 1969, and it shows an intelligent, witty, and even charismatic man.

(You can see part 2 here.)

However, as often seems the case with retrospectives of prominent conservatives, it’s more hagiography than biography. Buckley, and his magazine National Review, were staunch opponents of the civil rights movement. While it’s often said that he’s changed his views, he had as recently as 2004 put lipstick on a pig when talking about Westbrook Pegler, who died in 1969. Hat-tip to the excellent Anti-Neo-Confederate blog, who has his own take on Mr. Buckley, including a link to a terrific article by white supremacists extolling the virtues of William F. Buckley Jr.