The good example of royalty

Putting the win back in Windsor:

For Harry to serve his country in a combat zone will boost the morale of forces families everywhere. Britain can be extremely proud of its soldier Prince and so can the Royal Family...

But then giving up the palace, perks, nightclubs, and fawning beauties of London to lead ambush patrols against the Taliban with your own hardy band of Gurkhas ... that's a no-brainer, isn't it?

Impudence and death

An irate reader answers yesterday's post:

Dear Mr. "Roth" -

My husband, who is otherwise occupied, asked me to send you this short note on his behalf. He says it is unseemly for an anonymous blogger to imply personal success by imputing failure to a man as accomplished as Bill Buckley. I would add that my husband was laughing so hard at the insolence of your post, some small lepidoptera cases were shaken off their wall mounts.

Sincerely yours,
Vèra Nabokov

The point is not to elevate one's self but to rightly analyze the point of failure of a major cultural figure.

The founder of The Alternative has dropped his Mencken pastiches long enough to write plainly that WFB's impact was political: "... by the 1980s Buckley's positions had pretty much defeated liberalism wherever democratic elections could be held. Without him this change would have been either impossible or much delayed."

Tyrrell obliquely reinforces the point with his obit's final paragraph:

And so the baton is passed. On the conservative side it passes from Buckley to Ann Coulter.

I take him to mean that Buckley held the baton of political polemic, the baton of chief liberal-baiter. That would also put him in line with Westbrook Pegler or Rush Limbaugh.

What a strange and tragic eulogy.

The sign to begin

Raking the embers of the fire in my cave for some days wondering whether to start a political blog I decided Bill Buckley's death appears to be my sign to begin.

Have a look at the National Review Online. It will be a good starting point from which to launch this journal. Note the obit authors.

The tragedy of modern conservatism lies in Buckley trying to start an intellectual movement and having it degenerate into a political movement. NR is now attempting to honor him in death, but the people doing so are nowhere near the stature of the authors he originally enlisted.

To see Buckley honored by Reagan, or to say it more painfully, to feel himself honored by the praise of a politician, was a shock when it came. The Bill Buckley who founded NR would have been amused and detached in the presence of a politician in 1957. As late as 1970, he could still mutter in protest, looking at his own senator brother, "The movement, c'est moi!" It was a sensible response to this politician (his own kin) claiming leadership.

By the time Reagan "graced" Buckley with his presence at an NR anniversary banquet, all that had changed. The movement was subordinated to politics. Original thinkers with deep, right-leaning books were not recruited anymore. NR nowadays features the kind of bright young staff normally employed helping congressmen find their glasses. NR's silver age produced nothing better than interesting pundits (think Will and Wills). Its copper age brought forth plodding columnists (think Brooks). It is now in the grip of (dare I say) bloggers. People like me.

So, Buckley's failure - the tragedy of American conservatism - is writ large across the obit columns of the National Review today. He worked toward a certain ending and got it. He became an adjunct to one of his own tangential interests, earning a footnote in some future political tome he wouldn't have bothered to read ... back "in the day."

He deserved more than the sorry bed he made for himself.