Dead William F. Buckley Jr. has penned a RATHER RIBALD essay for Kathryn Jean Lopez’s National Review magazine about the year 1976, when the Buckley plutocrats invited the Reagan plutocrats to their 2,000-year-old chateau, “Great Elm,” in Connecticut colony, for the annual Thanksgiving bank holiday. Then! Drama! “…Ron Jr., in his first semester at Yale, had decided to quit college — more or less immediately. I expressed doubt that he was having academic problems, which indeed he was not, and his parents brought me to the heart of the matter. What moved him was a voracious desire to dance professionally.” Grandmother must never hear of this, she would be most dismayed! Later: “Ronald Reagan was as determined to subject his son to poverty as Ron Jr. was to live in it.” And that’s when dead W.F. Buckley knew that Ronald Reagan had fathered a Welfare Queen, the end. [National Review]

Bill Kristol thinks that William F. Buckley Jr.’s death last week was perfectly timed and truly conservative. “It’s fitting that Bill’s last evening,” Kristol writes in his latest New York Times column today, “was filled with music and graced by friendship, both of which gave him so much joy.” And, and, it’s also fitting that his last evening was Wednesday night, just as Kristol was desperately scanning USA Today for some general column idea! Bill Buckley was always so generous to his lazy intellectual heirs. So how does Kristol phone in his homage to Buckley this week? MORE »

William F. Buckley Jr., founder of conservative ideas and delightful sailor, died earlier this week. This afternoon, the Nation posted an article challenging Buckley’s legacy. “Buckley’s so-called boldness and playfulness had an ideological flip-side,” Richard Kim writes, “cruelty, pettiness and a tendency to embrace fascistic solutions in the guise of pragmatism.” What the hell is wrong with Richard Kim? Doesn’t he know that it is, objectively, too soon to question Buckley’s ideas? If Kim expects anyone to show up at his funeral after this stunt, he’s kidding himself. MORE »

William F. Buckley Jr., the founder of conservative politics, died yesterday, leaving a decrepit magazine and its very-Y2K blog as heirs. If you thought the endless eulogies on the National Review’s Corner blog might veer towards hyperbole as the news cycles went on, you were underestimating. How is Jonah Goldberg taking the news? Kathryn-Jean Lopez? The other 40 writers on the Corner? They’re honoring their founder’s legacy by promoting their books, relating the death to various natural disasters, and cursing the liberals ahead of time for disrespecting Buckley. Buckley, unfortunately, is not the problem. MORE »