William F. Burkley, Jr.

From the Australian article posted earlier:
March 04, 2008

THE Bush administration has been skittled and the theo-cons and neo-cons who have dominated US politics are going down like ninepins. Do not send to know for whom the bell tolls. The deaths of Paddy McGuinness [known in Australia, presumably]and William F. Buckley Jr mark the end of the conservative surge.

While joining with Paul Keating [same comment] and Bob Carr [same] in believing Paddy's importance as a thinker was grossly overrated by his mourners - that he was more ranter than writer - I acknowledge the primacy of Buckley. He wrote very well indeed and from time to time was right as well as Right.

For example, we had long agreed that the so-called war on drugs was a greater catastrophe than the prohibition of liquor. A decade ago his National Review ran a cover story titled "The war on drugs is lost", and Buckley called for drugs to be decriminalised. Sadly, no one listened. And Buckley was a sceptic on Iraq.

I look back at Buckley's brand of conservatism as a golden age. He refused to open the National Review's pages to loonies such as the John Birch Society, whereas Paddy's Quadrant showed less quality control. And the stridency of conservative commentary in Australia would have made the fastidious Buckley wince. Even when Gore Vidal called him a fascist in a celebrated television brawl, Buckley's riposte that Vidal was a queer was delivered quite politely. Gore notwithstanding, Buckley enjoyed long-term friendships with such ideological opponents as Norman Mailer and John Kenneth Galbraith. (That sort of thing didn't happen here during the decade of right-wing triumphalism. No lions lying down with lambs. No Bolts lying down with Mannes, let alone Keatings with Albrechtsens.)