The American Spectator

p> BUCKLEY’S LEGACY br> Re: R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr.’s William F. Buckley, RIP , Alfred S. Regnery’s Conservatism’s Heart and Soul , and Tributes and Reminiscences : /p> p>I enjoyed very much your reminiscence of Bill Buckley. That is, until the penultimate sentence. I recognize that the deceased do not often have the privilege of choosing to whom their torch is passed on to; however, I would find it difficult to believe that Mr. Buckley would choose to hand his off to Ms. Coulter. And this for some of the very characteristics that you so fondly remembered in Mr. Buckley. His was a conservatism of intellect and erudition, as you so rightly point out; he commanded by his very manor the respect of friend and foe alike, conservative and liberal. His graciousness was of the kind long passed from this scene, even to his most ardent opponents whose ideas and ideologies he held with contempt. Ms. Coulter does not have the benefit of any of these. I’ll perhaps grant you intelligence, but this is so rarely in view given her penchant for sensationalism and beside-the-point demagoguery. As I sat in my office yesterday and watched a YouTube video of Buckley’s debate with Chomsky on the Vietnam War, I resigned myself to the fact that there is simply no one at this point in the history of the conservative movement who can even approach what Buckley did and was for the movement these last 50 years; CERTAINLY NOT Ann Coulter. Perhaps Mr. Gingrich, but he is too stained by the taint of politics past. Thank God Buckley never followed through on his presidential pretensions. br> — Jeffrey A. Wilcox, Ph.D /p> p> I began to get interested in politics again a few years ago when my youngest son fresh out of college came to me telling me I just had to see Michael Moore’s