Catching up with Buckley

Reading on the walk home from work: I'm sitting here at my desk, at home, on a sunny saturday morning, the Paris light streaming in through the French doors from a bright, blue winter sky. It's crisp out. You can tell just by looking. For the moment, thought, I've got random music playing and a stack of articles I've been reading over the last few weeks. They've been piling up on my desk, the "best of walking home" collection, waiting to wind up here. I always think, "Oh, I'll just throw a link to that up on the blog," but I can never quite seem to post links to articles without saying why the pieces struck me. I read so much dross on my walk home, tossing it straight in the recycling bin when I walk through the door. So why does an article wind up linked on here? I'm posting it for my own memory as much as to share it with anyone who might trip by, here. I feel an onus to jog my own memory, in the future, and, more, to give you a hint why you might want to spend precious time clicking a link, zooming off somewhere else and diving into some text. Probably the most wizened piece sitting on the desk is an article from the November 12 Wall Street Journal. It's an interview with William F Buckley. I disagree with Buckley often, but he's never poorly reasoned. Buckley has always been one of the most powerful and articulate conservative voices. (His use of the English language as an elegantly carved and subtly inlaid battering ram is legendary.) Today, however, when so many people who call themselves conservatives spout jingoism and an inherently inconsistent party line, Buckley has remained true to a political philosophy that demands serious consideration, if not one's ultimate embrace. I think he hits the nail on the head when he refers to the neo-cons as "lazy". The rigour of Buckley's conservatism is a refreshing contrast what we hear from the current administration. Here is the WSJ piece. And here, just for fun, is an additional piece -- an interview with Buckley -- from Newsweek. ..