We knew it had to happen but still it’s a shock. A classical liberal – and libertarian enabler — in so many ways, William F. Buckley, Jr. was the quintessential public intellectual without whom public intellectual life is now hard to fathom.
Though not a great philosophical influence on me personally — I came around to his writing later even than I started reading National Review (originally finding it, to use both Buckleyesque language and irony, sesquipedalian) – the institution he created and movement he fostered certainly affect my life daily. Before think tanks emerged to counter the left-wing takeover of the academy and public discourse, before cable channels provided alternatives to network news, long before the Reagan Revolution, Buckley famously began standing athwart history yelling stop.
All this while embodying the prolific, polymathic, bon vivant style that appeals to those of us who ever dreamed of inhabiting that realm of ideas between academia and the real world and having great fun doing it. Well played, Mr. Buckley, well played.
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Where Ilya provides running commentary on life at the intersection of blue state tastes and red state values, with plenty of legal and travel-related discursions along the way. The opinions expressed are his alone, and do not necessarily reflect the views or policy of any institution with which he is affiliated.
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2 comments:
Ilya,
Did you mean to say sesquipedalian ?
Yes; I corrected that on the Cato blog but neglected to do so here.
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