Bah. Call him a witch if you like. He was a conservative I felt I could respect most of the time.

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For a conservative, he was ok, I guess.

I was gonna post more in the main post, but figured I'd not try to overexplain.

Here's how I see him. Articulate, prone to outbursts of threats of physical violence, partially intellectual (certainly more intellectual than the bloviating gasbags we have on air now), and an ability to "go against the grain" as it were with things like Legalizing Pot, the Iraq War, etc...

So, yeah, he's better than some. But he's still conservative, and he still lavished policies that ultimately hurt the downtrodden, and his clout was so immense that the few moderate positions he has had were drowned out (I don't see pot being legalized soon, and the right-wing is still rabidly pro-drug-war, regardless of his stance) by his overall pro-capitalist message.

Sure, I'm glad he's not a neo-con, I can't begrudge him that. But that's not much different than saying "Ron Paul isn't a neo-con". At least Paul is consistently libertarian.

That said, I'm sure some of the issue you have with this post has to do with your voodoo superstition of illspeak against the dead ;)

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Maybe a tiny bit.

I think here's why I liked Buckley, though-- he was unrepentant and interested in holding a consistent position. Intellectually, he let everything hang out. Because of that, I always saw him as an opponent and not an enemy. He's wrong, but a good example of what I think we should see in a democratic society. Sometimes, he crossed the line, but I don't consider him part of the Failure of Discourse.

I want conservatives in my dream world, as long as they're people of principle who are faithfully representing their interests.

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And it's not speaking ill of the dead. I think one should not speak of the dead one way or another just as a matter of etiquette. And it's only the recently dead. Once you're in the ground and the mourners have gone home, that's the time to give historical analysis.

"A man's biography tells you nothing. Nothing more than he was born, the thought, and then he died." --Derrida

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