In Praise of WFB
Nathan, George
...He has been a monument to the way public persons ought to live...
...Let us then hope that Bill Buckley will come home soon and bring with him a fat packet of manuscript...
...In these early years of the 1970s most of those who caterwaul about reordered priorities are, consciously or unconsciously, demanding a new kind of society...
...George Nathan...
...In h i s journal, National Review, conservative intellectuals jump through hoops and otherwise perform their acts of derring-do to the mortification of leftish provincials who have been saying from time out of mind that these creatures were - - if they did indeed exist - - dull pedagogues incapable of such razzle dazzle...
...Bucldey is a jaunty and sassy fellow, the cornerstone of his philosophy is duty - - the merest bleep from "the trumpet, and he is on his feet...
...A more suitable setting for such writing and a setting easily within his grasp is his own National Review, which already serves up some very thoughtful essays...
...His loss to conservative missionary endeavor will be immeasurable, for he is the whirling axis from which a multimedia assault on liberal orthodoxy derives its energy...
...But I have always been a party man, which is not to say a party boy - - bee hoe, a little levity there -- ahem - - and I must stick with the Republicans, after all there are several of them whom I could nominate for the same reasons, men like Percy and Packwood...
...20 The A l t e r n a t i v e December, 1971 Dr...
...GWP and bellowing...
...It is titled Escape' A New Demand Response System...
...Now, through this column, the distinguished Dr...
...Published in August, it focuses on the unique position of minority groups in the Congolese electoral process...
...Now there are men who the Post would consider "conservative in the best sense" but I do not think you would want to nominate John Galbraith or Charles Reich...
...You might find support from the Post by nominating Alf Landon...
...Plunkitt has agreed to advise American statesmen in this time of troubles...
...all he has to do is to pick up his quill...
...Due to the political pressure from the liberal media, I feel it behooves me to nominate only one strict constructionist advocate of law and order and to mollify the left a man whose position on law and order more reasonable...
...became privy to the information that sometime this spring Mr..Buckley is to be designated American Consul to Ouagadougou...
...Kennedy heralded or that Mr...
...Perhaps while in Africa he will give himself over to the ways of the land, drop his revs below the red line, watch the water buffaloes at play and spend some time on the piazza, sipping his gin, listening to the guzzling of the fauna at twilight and then he will scrawl a few notes on the sources of our perplexities at home...
...In many ways it brings to mind Millard Fillmore, but on to delicious concerns...
...And if he dies before you get thi~ letter nominate him anyway...
...Dear Mr...
...They have utterly rejected that goal...
...Whatever the case, he is held in high esteem in academic circles, and his credentials for zero population growth are impeccable...
...George Washingtor/Plunkitt, our p~ize-winning political analyst, has just completed a penetrating study of the last Congolese election...
...In this issue we pause to meditate on William F. Buckley, for one of his most tantalizing books has just appeared and we have now learned that his flashing and sparking across the land is soon to end...
...Of these, Manson is probably most qualified...
...it can be purchased in all bookstores...
...In regard to your conservative choice I am not sure whom you can nominate...
...But not only conservatives will miss him...
...Richard Speck and Professor Charles Manson...
...But, lo, it is the call to duty, and though Mr...
...It will be their society...
...Eagerly, Richard M. Nixon President Dear Mr...
...Further, he is very handsome and I believe he was awarded a Ph...
...Address all correspondence to The Bootblack Stand, The Establishment, R.R...
...Buckley's departure into journalism is not the result of dark sehemings in high places by men of the bolshevik persuasion...
...Have you any suggestions on this score or - - bee hee - - am I in the wrong ball park...
...He has had considerable experience with the law lately and he has a great deal of that youthful idealism that we hear so much about...
...So brilliantly has he distinguished himself as Commissioner for the Advisory Board of the United Court...
...Nor are they simply questioning the means for realizing America's historic national goal...
...11, Box 360, Bloomington, Indiana 47401, Continental U.S.A...
...Upon losing all of this to Ouagadougou conservatives have reason to speculate if Mr...
...That is, of course, where he belongs, amongst the high journalists Perhaps he is the American Bagehot, though certainly he is more elegant and less banal...
...Now, I have nominated men in the Past and the affect on two of these men was such that several of my advisers have suggested I now nominate a pair of left liberal Democrats for the boost it might give to their careers...
...At any rate, the particular specifications and pressures of a thrice weekly newspaper column do not allow the scholarliness, the extended analysis and the occasional philosophical plumbing characteristic of this higher genre...
...Not long ago one of our associates residing in Washington, D.C...
...Buckley understands what ails us...
...Their reordered priorities constitute the priorities of a different kind of society, not the kind of society that Mr...
...He might still be on the faculty at UCLA...
...They both would have similar work habits...
...He is confident, thoughtful, good humored and compassionate...
...He is a thorough gentleman, and one of the few public figures in America who emulates the Christian life without waving his arms Post there are not conservatives in America, only hyphenated conservatives like arch-conservatives and ultraconservatives, and all of these are racists and transgressors of the child labor laws...
...Roosevelt thought he was vonschsafing or that Mr...
...More deeply perhaps than any other American, Mr...
...For he need not give the catastrophe much more cerebration than he has already devoted to it...
...President: Ha Ha Ha, "not to say a party boy," oh what a pawky sense of humor you have...
...D. in philosophy from The University of California at Santa Barbara...
...According to the Washington States Information Service that two of the White House's assistant presidents now desire to slip him into a diplomatic foxhole in that sensitive though uncelebrated spot on the globe...
...HIS appearances on television are generally entertaining and often inspiring...
...And if their society is based on bad ideas it will be a bad society...
...As for a man who will appeal to the left liberals on law and order you have two excellent choices in Mr...
...Nixon presides over today...
...R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr...
...Plunkitt: It has fallen to me, the President of the United States of America and of all the territories and protectorates, to nominate two men for the Supreme EDrrORIAL I (continued from page 3) ideas...
...Further, he is one of the very few conservative American journalists possessed of the education and disposition to indulge in high journalism...
...Thanks for your help and next time you are in Washington, do stop by and see me, I shall be out in the back...
...It is true that in his writing he has rarely paused to peer deeply into the gorgeous and troubled con= dition of the Supermarket Republic, but that he is capable of doing it with real genius no one who has heard his speeches or read his interviews doubts...
...The Senate would never know and he could share an office with Thurgood Marshall...
...Then, too, there are his books, his gladiatorial antics on "Firing Line," his numerous appearances on the college Chautauqua circuit and his nationally syndicated column...
Vol. 5 • December 1971 • No. 3
