The American Spectator

In Memoriam

Tributes and Remembrances

2.28.08 @ 12:08AM

(Page 2 of 3)

HAYWOOD H. HILLYER III

Bill Buckley deeply influenced many young minds for the better -- even at a great distance. A copy of National Review discovered in a New Orleans physician's office in 1958 gave this newly minted conservative a refreshing, stimulating alternative both to the leftist indoctrination on my college campus and to some right-wing rags that exuded a distressing whiff of anti-Semitism.

But Buckley's biggest contribution to the spread of intelligent conservatism specifically among college youth came in September of 1960. He, with his large extended family of siblings and in-laws, hosted more than a 100 students one weekend in Sharon Connecticut at Great Elm, his parents' estate -- presided over by his mother, a wonderfully warm lady from New Orleans who made this somewhat shy traveler feel at home. This "Sharon Conference" produced Young Americans for Freedom, which proceeded to plant seeds of conservative activism on many college campuses, and grew to provide many of the foot-soldiers of the Draft Goldwater movement and eventual leaders of the Reagan Revolution.

Bill Buckley and his colleagues were perfect hosts for this gathering. They gave guidance but not dictation as the group made the decisions on names, mission statement, and organization. Buckley even joked, when we set an upper age limit for this new organization, that at two months short of age 35 he himself barely qualified -- but in hindsight what was remarkable was that at such a young age he already was seen as the unchallenged leader of this new national movement. In retrospect, he made only one minor mistake: He allowed this enthusiast to pin a "Buckley for Congress" pin on his lapel. (His New Orleans cousin, Ross Buckley, was running a groundbreaking but necessarily unsuccessful campaign for the U.S. House seat of the powerful Hale Boggs.) The campaign button caused some confusion among the attendees: Their hopes were falsely raised for a WFB political campaign that year, when in truth it would be five more years before their host would put his name on the ballot in New York City and famously say his reaction to (an impossible) victory would be to "demand a recount."

Haywood H. Hillyer III is a former Republican National Committeeman from Louisiana.

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G. TRACY MEHAN, III

Attending college in the late 1960s and early 1970s was a lonely pursuit for a conservative. There really was no conservative movement as the term is understood today mostly in the context of electoral politics. There was only Buckley.

In his magazine, his columns, his television show, and books he waged, literally, a one-man guerrilla action against the regnant Zeitgeist. His writings were canonical.

It was Buckley, and Buckley alone, who provided support, intellectual resources, and inspiration for those not ready to march in lockstep with the times.

Thinking back on the countless viewings of Firing Line, and the wonderful dialogue and debate that went on there, with friend and foe alike, it is painful to compare the current fair on cable television and, yes, conservative talk radio. It is swill compared to a fine wine.

Other commentators will certainly describe, at length, William F. Buckley, Jr.'s many accomplishments. But his untiring defense of the integrity of unborn children will surely weigh heavily in his favor in the higher realm for which he has now departed.

I distinctly recall the marvelous article by federal judge and philosopher Judge John Noonan, which Buckley ran as a cover story in NR. It was a magisterial piece outlining the flaws of Roe and Doe with logic and scholarship nowhere to be found on the pages of any other opinion magazines in the early 1970s.

But Buckley went further and supported the Human Life Review, right out of the offices of NR, which became the forum for the small band of thinking, committed people who made the right-to-life movement the force it is in American politics, a movement nearly absent in most parts of the Western world.

May he rest in peace.

Letter to the Editor

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