Tea at Trianon: Who Bill Buckley Was

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Saturday, April 13, 2024

Who Bill Buckley Was—And Was Not

From Modern Age:

He was the single host of the weekly PBS program Firing Line for more than thirty years and 1,504 programs, happily jousting with and besting the liberal likes of Norman Mailer, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Norman Thomas, William Sloane Coffin Jr., and Jesse Jackson.

He was the founder and hands-on editor of National Review, the most influential conservative journal in America from its founding in 1955.

He was the author of some fifty-five works of nonfiction and fiction, including best-selling novels featuring the ever-resourceful CIA agent Blackford Oakes.

He wrote more than six thousand newspaper columns starting in 1962 and continuing until 2008, when he died at his computer, writing a column. Its topic: the obligation, especially if you are in public life, to use the right words.

He ran for mayor of New York City, the most liberal city in America, shocking the pundits when he received 13.4 percent of the popular vote. He campaigned on a staunchly conservative platform that included an increase in the police force, lower taxes, workfare, disavowal of those who “encouraged racism, lawlessness and despair” among blacks, decentralization of city schools, and a reduction of the urban renewal and city planning that “dehumanized” the city. In his landmark study The Emerging Republican Majority, Kevin Phillips cited Buckley’s vote as a “harbinger” of the “silent majority” that elected Richard Nixon president in 1968 and helped Ronald Reagan win by landslides in 1980 and 1980. (Read more.)