[Congressional Record Volume 154, Number 35 (Monday, March 3, 2008)]
[Senate]
[Pages S1463-S1464]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  IN MEMORY OF WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR.

  Mr. DODD. Mr. President, I wish to mark the loss of an outstanding 
American intellect--and, what's more, a decent and a well-loved man. 
William F. Buckley, Jr., died last week at the age of 82. He was found 
at work at his desk, pen in hand--and I don't think he could have 
imagined a more fitting exit.
  Few thinkers were more prolific than Bill Buckley--his total 
catalogue amounts to more than 50 books and thousands and thousands of 
columns, not to mention his three decades on the pioneering debate 
program ``Firing Line.'' Few writers wielded more influence--the entire 
modern conservative movement honors him as its founder. And few figures 
in our national life earned such admiration-- all the way from Ronald 
Reagan, who told Buckley, ``You didn't just part the Red Sea--you 
rolled it back, dried it up and

[[Page S1464]]

left it exposed, for all the world to see,'' to the many writers, 
activists, and leaders who counted him as a mentor and inspiration.
  He was a good friend of my parents, Thomas and Grace Dodd, and one of 
Connecticut's best-known native sons. I was especially proud to see him 
in attendance at the dedication of the Thomas J. Dodd Library in 
Storrs; like my father, Bill Buckley was a dedicated foe of 
totalitarianism in all its forms.
  In the wake of his death, tributes have risen from left and right and 
from every point in between. Even those who stood against Bill's 
staunch conservatism respected his intellectual rigor and integrity. In 
the inaugural issue of National Review, which Bill launched in 1955 at 
the age of 30, he wrote this: ``Our political economy and our high-
energy industry run on large, general principles, on ideas--not by day-
to-day guess work, expedients and improvisations. Ideas have to go into 
exchange to become or remain operative; and the medium of such exchange 
is the printed word.'' It was that commitment to ideas, to reasoned and 
courteous debate, that we appreciated most in Bill and that we will 
miss most.
  His intellectual honesty spared neither himself nor his friends. When 
he changed his mind--as he did on civil rights, on Vietnam, and on 
Iraq--he did it publicly and forthrightly. And long after the movement 
he founded took on a life of its own, Bill continued to hold it to his 
high standards and to call it to account. In his last years, he wrote: 
``Conservatives pride themselves on resisting change, which is as it 
should be. But intelligent deference to tradition and stability can 
evolve into intellectual sloth and moral fanaticism, as when 
conservatives simply decline to look up from dogma because the effort 
to raise their heads and reconsider is too great.''
  Bill resisted dogma, not because it was often wrong but because it 
was always lazy. He was too energetic for that. And while he pioneered 
new thinking, worked to rid the conservative movement of xenophobia, 
and even staged a quixotic run for mayor of New York City--asked what 
he would do if elected, he replied: ``Demand a recount!''--he developed 
a one-of-a-kind prose style and public persona. ``I am lapidary but not 
eristic when I use big words,'' he said. Those are my thoughts exactly.
  Bill Buckley lived a full life, devoted to words, to ideas, and to 
his deeply-held principles. We didn't agree on much. But given his 
grace, his wit, and his deep erudition, I can think of few people with 
whom disagreement was so agreeable.
  I request unanimous consent that the attached article, ``May We Not 
Lose His Kind,'' be printed in the Record.
  There being no objection, the material was ordered to be printed in 
the Record, as follows:

             [From the Wall Street Journal, Feb. 29, 2008]

                        May We Not Lose His Kind

                           (By Peggy Noonan)

       He was sui generis, wasn't he? The complete American 
     original, a national treasure, a man whose energy was a kind 
     of optimism, and whose attitude toward life, even when things 
     seemed to others bleak, was summed up in something he said to 
     a friend: ``Despair is a mortal sin.''
       I am not sure conservatives feel despair at Bill Buckley's 
     leaving--he was 82 and had done great work in a lifetime 
     filled with pleasure--but I know they, and many others, are 
     sad, and shaken somehow. On Wednesday, after word came that 
     he had left us, in a television studio where I'd gone to try 
     and speak of some of his greatness, a celebrated liberal 
     academic looked at me stricken, and said he'd just heard the 
     news. ``I can't imagine a world without Bill Buckley in it,'' 
     he said. I said, ``Oh, that is exactly it.''
       It is. What a space he filled.
       It is commonplace to say that Bill Buckley brought American 
     conservatism into the mainstream. That's not quite how I see 
     it. To me he came along in the middle of the last century and 
     reminded demoralized American conservatism that it existed. 
     That it was real, that it was in fact a majority political 
     entity, and that it was inherently mainstream. This was after 
     the serious drubbing inflicted by Franklin D. Roosevelt and 
     the New Deal and the rise of modern liberalism. Modern 
     liberalism at that point was a real something, a palpable 
     movement formed by FDR and continued by others. Opposing it 
     was . . . what exactly? Robert Taft? The ghost of Calvin 
     Coolidge? Buckley said in effect, Well, there's something 
     known as American conservatism, though it does not even call 
     itself that. It's been calling itself ``voting Republican'' 
     or ``not liking the New Deal.'' But it is a very American 
     approach to life, and it has to do with knowing that the 
     government is not your master, that America is good, that 
     freedom is good and must be defended, and communism is very, 
     very bad.
       He explained, remoralized, brought together those who saw 
     it as he did, and began the process whereby American 
     conservatism came to know itself again. And he did it 
     primarily through a magazine, which he with no modesty 
     decided was going to be the central and most important organ 
     of resurgent conservatism. National Review would be highly 
     literate, philosophical, witty, of the moment, with an elan, 
     a teasing quality that made you feel you didn't just get a 
     subscription, you joined something. You entered a world of 
     thought.
       I thought it beautiful and inspiring that he was open to, 
     eager for, friendships from all sides, that even though he 
     cared passionately about political questions, politics was 
     not all, cannot be all, that people can be liked for their 
     essence, for their humor and good nature and intelligence, 
     for their attitude toward life itself. He and his wife, Pat, 
     were friends with lefties and righties, from National Review 
     to the Paris Review. It was moving too that his interests 
     were so broad, that he could go from an appreciation of the 
     metaphors of Norman Mailer to essays on classical music to an 
     extended debate with his beloved friend the actor David Niven 
     on the best brands of peanut butters. When I saw him last he 
     was in a conversation with the historian Paul Johnson on the 
     relative merits of the work of the artist Raeburn.
       His broad-gaugedness, his refusal to be limited, seemed to 
     me a reflection in part of a central conservative tenet, as 
     famously expressed by Samuel Johnson. ``How small of all that 
     human hearts endure / That part which laws or kings can cause 
     or cure.'' When you have it right about laws and kings, and 
     what life is, then your politics become grounded in the facts 
     of life. And once they are grounded, you don't have to hold 
     to them so desperately. You can relax and have fun. Just 
     because you're serious doesn't mean you're grim.
       Buckley was a one-man refutation of Hollywood's idea of a 
     conservative. He was rising in the 1950s and early '60s, and 
     Hollywood's idea of a conservative was still Mr. Potter, the 
     nasty old man of ``It's a Wonderful Life,'' who would make a 
     world of grubby Pottersvilles if he could, who cared only 
     about money and the joy of bullying idealists. Bill Buckley's 
     persona, as the first famous conservative of the modern media 
     age, said no to all that. Conservatives are brilliant, 
     capacious, full of delight at the world and full of mischief, 
     too. That's what he was. He upended old cliches.
       This was no small thing, changing this template. Ronald 
     Reagan was the other who changed it, by being a sunny man, a 
     happy one. They were friends, admired each other, had two 
     separate and complementary roles. Reagan was in the game of 
     winning votes, of persuading, of leading a political movement 
     that catapulted him to two terms as governor of California, 
     the nation's biggest state, at a time when conservatives were 
     seemingly on the defensive but in retrospect were rising to 
     new heights. He would speak to normal people and persuade 
     them of the efficacy of conservative solutions to pressing 
     problems. Buckley's job was not reaching on-the-ground 
     voters, or reaching voters at all, and his attitude toward 
     his abilities in that area was reflected in his merry answer 
     when asked what he would do if he won the mayoralty of New 
     York. ``Demand a recount,'' he famously replied. His role was 
     speaking to those thirsting for a coherent worldview, for an 
     intellectual and moral attitude grounded in truth. He 
     provided intellectual ballast. Inspired in part by him, 
     voters went on to support Reagan. Both could have existed 
     without the other, but Buckley's work would have been less 
     satisfying, less realized, without Reagan and his presidency, 
     and Reagan's leadership would have been more difficult, and 
     also somehow less satisfying, without Buckley.
       I share here a fear. It is not that the conservative 
     movement is ending, that Bill's death is the period on a long 
     chapter. The house he helped build had--has--many mansions. 
     Conservatism will endure if it is rooted in truth, and in the 
     truths of life. It is.
       It is rather that with the loss of Bill Buckley we are, as 
     a nation, losing not only a great man. When Jackie Onassis 
     died, a friend of mine who knew her called me and said, with 
     such woe, ``Oh, we are losing her kind.'' He meant the 
     elegant, the cultivated, the refined. I thought of this with 
     Bill's passing, that we are losing his kind--people who were 
     deeply, broadly educated in great universities when they 
     taught deeply and broadly, who held deep views of life and 
     the world and art and all the things that make life more 
     delicious and more meaningful. We have work to do as a 
     culture in bringing up future generations that are so well 
     rounded, so full and so inspiring.
       Bill Buckley lived a great American life. His heroism was 
     very American--the individualist at work in the world, the 
     defender of great creeds and great beliefs going forth with 
     spirit, style and joy. May we not lose his kind. For now, 
     ``Good night, sweet prince, and flights of angels take thee 
     to thy rest.''

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