What does lit think of William F. Buckley Jr.?

What does lit think of William F. Buckley Jr.?

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youtube.com/watch?v=DDqy4zXVM5A
youtube.com/watch?v=icBPLqrkyvw
readitforward.com/excerpt/william-f-buckleys-eulogies-of-famous-authors/
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive
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I read "God and Man at Yale" and I sub-vocalized the whole time in his accent. I couldn't help it. It was an interesting experience.

prefer his son tbqh

He's pretty awful. Conservatives just like him because they're so dumb they actually think that Buckley was clever.

Contentless post.

I like him, but I'm a center-right conservative, so that's no surprise.

I really wish I could have heard his thoughts on this election. He was probably rolling in his grave so hard he could power Belgium for a few years.

Vidal was the more honest intellectual and a far better writer. He was also right more often.

Buckley and his philosophy have no relevance today except as some kind of historical artifact, and even in his own time was a sort of anachronism.

I don't like starting fights on the internet but i mean come on.

Buckley is the father of modern conservatism.

God and Man at Yale is more relevant than ever in today's PC university/college/campus environment. Buckley saw what was coming decades ago.

Also, Vidal was hardly more honest nor necessarily a better writer. He spent his whole life LARP'ing as Oscar Wilde, only Wilde did it better.

This is coming from someone who thought Buckley was far too verbose and grandiose.

It's his redefinition of conservative ideology that is causing it to fail so dramatically. Structuring conservatism around morality instead of liberty was a short sighted mistake; an ideology which at its core is strongest when it can be dressed as the principled position, not reactionary or politically expedient, should not have been compromised to exploit American fear and ignorance for votes. Buckley destroyed the political right's credibility.

I guess that was an unfair statement. It's hard to read into a person's intentions with certainty but this is just the impression I have of them.

I also just really like Vidal's historical novels.

Made for entertaining debate with Gore Vidal in the 68' election. His politics were disagreeable and I thought Noam Chomsky gave him a thorough beat down on his show once.

Chomsky turned into an absolute pedant when called out on anything by Buckley.

>I didn't mean that!
>Actually, that was in a different context!

The man was a prophet. Unfortunately he did not manage to avert what he saw on the horizon.

why did he have an english accent if he was american?

Boston Brahmin.

His accent isn't english, its mostly a Mid-Atlantic (which was an artificial accent taught to upper class students at preparatory school in those days like an American Recieved Pronunciation) mixed with a little bit of RP he picked up during a few years he spent being educated in England.

I think Buckley isn't that strong in the debate, but when he points out how Chomsky is a hypocrite for supporting the Marshal Program but opposing American interference in Greece he wins it after all. Chomsky has no fucking answer to that and it unmasks him for the fraud he is.

That's why I like Buckley. He's a pedantic jerk-off that usually loses his arguments, but he's a fighter and there's always one moment in every debate where he exposes his opponent

He got absolutely anal-raped by Chomksy in that debate they had.

But as Chomsky says, the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan are not the same thing. They are not the same kind of intervention,

Bump

Saw a debate with Chomsky where he came across as a bit of a dense cunt.

>I saw a five minute clip on youtube with a title that told me what opinion to have

They were though.

Pretty sure the debate was an hour long

nothing in my post suggests that it wasn't

Buckley is probably my favorite debater. Not because he's the best or has the best thought out positions but simply for the fact that his fucking accent was so good and he had a dry wit about the whole thing. Extremely charming.

The best episode of firing line is one where Buckley has two other debate experts on and they start just talking to Buckley about all the little debate cheats that he uses and then you get Buckley responding with this shit eating grin. Absolutely hilarious.

Another good episode is the one where he speaks with a very young Ann Coulter and absolutely destroys her.

If modern conservatism were more along Buckley's line I might like it but instead we have a bunch of idiots making arguments aimed at idiots.

"The sixth of ten children, Buckley moved as a boy with his family to Mexico,[13] and then to Sharon, Connecticut, before beginning his formal schooling in Paris, where he attended first grade. By age seven, he received his first formal training in English at a day school in London"

What are the best episodes of Firing Line? I enjoyed his interview with Muhammad Ali.

Got shit on by Gore Vidal in that debate really hard

I am a conservative and I don't like Buckley. NRO sucks too

The one where he talks to kerouac

The one where he talks to hitchens

The one where he talks to Ron Paul

"Now listen, you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I'll sock you in your goddam face, and you'll stay plastered."

But really I enjoy Buckley and his intellectual conservatism. We need more of that.

he has bret easton ellis on just when less than zero was blowing up. the fiction editor of the national review was on as well. they discuss america's young authors. the editor seemed to have a dismissive view of less than zero but buckley surprisingly seemed to have found more depth to it. bee is a nervous little qt throughout. wish we still had television like that.

also its not on youtube last i checked but you can buy the episode for like 5 bucks on amazon i think

Buckley was charming and that's all that matters

Correction: he also should be lauded for his contribution to American public discourse.

Youth is worship of Buckley, adulthood is acceptance that Vidal had some good points.
>inb4 I'll paste you one, queer

There are still smart moderate conservatives today (i.e. David Brooks, George Will, etc.), but there are no remaining conservatives who were so thoroughly ideological or intelligent. American conservatism has become a trainwreck since his departure from public life.

kek, I remember Hitchens looking like a pasty drunk fuck in that episode. He doesn't make very good points, either.

Isn't he basically a Jewish, second-rate Chesterton?

He was a cunt, obviously

controlled opposition
"conservatives" were created to perpetually lose

Buckley:

>Not Jewish
>Not a fiction author
>Not morbidly obese

I can't think of anything wrong with that comparison.

I love the guy.

Two great interviews here.

One with Allen Ginsberg: youtube.com/watch?v=DDqy4zXVM5A

One with Kerouac and others (Kerouac is drunk): youtube.com/watch?v=icBPLqrkyvw

Chomsky is a cleverer person than Buckley was - that's on the face of it an asinine observation (cleverness being an overrated quality) but given that Buckleys whole act was this overblown verbose smartass its painful to watch his flailing hopelessly against a far brighter chap.

Agreed, he did best against the lesser minds that often populate the political arena

You act as though being a fiction writer is somehow a detriment to Chesterton.

The man conquered the English language and was a master of the written and spoken word. He makes Buckley look like a pleb. He's also less of a hypocrite than Buckley was.

Bump

As a liberal; I love using some of his quotes against my more liberal friends to shut them up.
>"Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views."
>"I would like to take you seriously, but to do so would affront your intelligence."

No they weren't.

closet homosexual like 98% of righty rhetoricians.

In your dreams, fagboy.

nice projection faggot

You were the one who said it, closet homo.

and you got triggered by it. i wonder why, faggot fuck.

I wasn't the one imagining that other people are homosexuals.

have you watched him speak?
why so triggered gayboy?

I'm not triggered that you're a homosexual. Just don't push your gay agenda on other people.

that doesn't make any sense.
why were you so triggered by my post faggot?

...

I admire his intellectual curiosity. Both he and Vidal were true men of letters, though Vidal was always a more rational debater, whereas Buckley exploited his superficial wit too much.

With that said, his proposal for tattooing AIDS patients is mind-blowing in its stupidity, especially for an otherwise pretty smart guy

I wasn't trying to disparage Chesterson, he is obviously much smarter than Buckley. However, I don't see how they could be compared, they are completely different.

What do you make of his position on civil rights
Yes that gay tattoo almost ruins him for me

No, they weren't!

I recently learned that Nabokov was a reader of National Review and a friend of Buckley's and once a year Buckley would meet Nabokov at his home at the Montreux Palace Hotel.

>“The National Review has always been a joy to read,” Nabokov wrote WFB on March 26, 1973, from Montreux, “and your articles in the Herald Tribune counteract wonderfully the evil and trash of its general politics.”

Here's a link to the eulogy WFB wrote about VN:
readitforward.com/excerpt/william-f-buckleys-eulogies-of-famous-authors/

...

...

Wtf. Nabakov hated everything I love but liked the National Review.

Wow, a whopping 3 people voted.

>With that said, his proposal for tattooing AIDS patients is mind-blowing in its stupidity
Why? I think it's a pretty good idea. Actually quite brilliant when you think about it.

Would have liked to see him live to witness Trump's take-over of the GOP.

What a little faggot.

>second-rate
Try fourth-rate.

How is that a good idea?

Why it could limit the spread by making people aware of the people carrying it. Be it through intercourse, shared needles or whatnot I think the transmission rates would decrease. Naturally liberals would frame it in a negative manner because it would "increase the stigma of being positive" or some other such nonsense but I see the potential good it could do. It really should be standard procedure for any incurable and contagious diseases.

buckley is a cute

because the practical benefit is so small compared to the huge drawbacks? It's really simple. People who know they're HIV positive are a tiny proportion of transmissions. It's people who never get tested. And unless you're somehow rounding them up, how would you get anyone who would otherwise transmit the disease to be tattooed?

Miss him tbqh. Miss all these guys

The political right is a shell of its former self today

Gore Vidal is the the classic example of a period thinker. His entire oeuvre has dropped clean off the map. No one reads him anymore, with good reason.

In theory it makes sense, but I think you underestimate how much it could impact a person's life, especially in communities where homosexuality was and is still considered to be a massive social transgression. It's not that hard to imagine people being physically harmed or otherwise ostracised economically because of this permanent mark on their lower backs. The same goes with drug use, but probably to a lesser degree overall.

Because people would start hiding the disease to avoid the humiliation of the tattoo. Then it would be even harder to control the spread of the epidemic.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perverse_incentive

That first one is perfect, at least conservatives usually admit they believe in unquestionable truths

He's a disgusting lizard who sold out conservatism to the false idol of "free"-market capitalism

Here's how it works you negro apologist:

All anti-retroviral drugs are FDA controlled substances. You can't get them without a prescription from a licensed physican.

First, testing for HIV/AIDS should be government financed. Anyone who wants to get tested can do so anonymously and free of charge.

Once someone tests positive for HIV/AIDS, they have a choice. Preserve their anonymity and go without treatment, or confess to their positive status and receive a branding that will mark them out to potential sexual partners.

Here's how it would work:

A small + sign would be branded into their groin region by a physician using local anesthesia. The branding has the advantage over a tattoo in that it is much harder to remove or obscure and has a tactile component which tattoos lack, meaning it cannot be concealed by darkness. The only people who will ever know about the mark will be potential sexual partners.

Those who do not wish to be branded will not be compelled, but they will also not be permitted to receive treatment for HIV/AIDS.

They will go without treatment and continue spreading the disease

Think of the kind of person who gets aids in the first place, they won't man up and go to the clinic if they're going to get fucking branded. They'll weasel out of it and try to get the drugs on the black market

As attractive as the idea is from a moral standpoint I think it's counterproductive.

They'll die sooner, that's the rub. No matter what they can get on the black market, a regimen of anti-retrovirals is very costly and very complicated. You can't self-medicate a disease like this. If they want to be selfish and conceal their condition, that is their choice. But this program ensures they answer for it.

>And unless you're somehow rounding them up
This would naturally be a part of the process, then you can isolate the diseased population from the rest. If this sounds too costly you could focus on the homosexual and drug abusing parts of the population for the maximum impact at the lowest cost.
This is indeed a possible drawback, I do however feel that the benefit of less people having their lives ruined by contracting the virus far outweigh these relatively minor concerns. They will also be less of an issue in the long term due to the declining numbers of positive citizens.

the right is finally turning into a formidable force again after decades of being perpetual losers
it does have a long way to go though

His stance boils down to the idea that it's the state's right to decide who should and shouldn't be allowed to vote based on the individual's merit, since state authorities can more accurately assess the competence of the local population, black or otherwise. This is great, assuming that the local government is acting on logical grounds as opposed to some irrational fear of genetic disparity.

Note that he vouched for the implementation of an IQ test that each citizen would have to pass before being allowed to vote. I think such a test is, in theory, a good idea (though it would probably be abused), but why would he assume by default that a black from the South is less 'civilised' than a black from the north, and as such wouldn't pass the test simply due to his geographical circumstances? He often cited statistics that supposedly demonstrated blacks from the South were intellectually constrained, but statistics cannot account for the hypothetically select handful of blacks who did become successful, in spite of economic constraints, and were still not allowed to vote on the basis of their colour. He emphasised the racial part of the equation too much, while neglecting the valid argument for a broader meritocracy not simply restricted to race.