National Review articles from March 2008

National Review archives from March 2008

Face the music.(letters to the editor)(New York Philharmonic Orchestra's visit to North Korea)(Brief article)
March 10, 2008... In his piece on the New York Philharmonic's trip to North Korea, Jay Nordlinger writes, "I myself would not accept an invitation from the regime of Kim Jong Il--certainly not to give a concert" ("Date in Pyongyang," February 11). That concert...

To the nines.(letters to the editor)(Letter to the editor)
March 10, 2008... We were troubled by the allegation in your recent article ("The Left Fires a Counter-Volley," February 25) that the Joyce Foundation has made "ethically questionable" questionable" grants in the area of gun violence. You cite as an example "a...

Mr. Sinister?(letters to the editor)(Letter to the editor)
March 10, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] David Frum's otherwise excellent review of Conrad Black's new biography of Nixon ("Trial by Fire," February 11) was tainted by the usual smears that filled the papers of my youth. Yes, Nixon was "dark." Yes, he was...

To make her really proud.(The Week)(Brief article)
March 10, 2008... To make her really proud, will we have to give him a landslide?

Mike Huckabee joked that he would continue his presidential campaign since it is not distracting him from anything more pressing, such as a day job.(The Week)(Brief article)
March 10, 2008... Mike Huckabee joked that he would continue his presidential campaign since it is not distracting him from anything more pressing, such as a day job. It has been pointed out to him that even if he won all of the remaining delegates to the...

American intelligence operations are being held hostage by House Democrats and a secret ruling issued by an unknown federal judge.(The Week)(Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act)(Brief article)
March 10, 2008... American intelligence operations are being held hostage by House Democrats and a secret ruling issued by an unknown federal judge. The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, adopted by a Democratic Congress in the wake of Watergate, is intended...

The Clintons worked up a tsunami of outrage over MSNBC correspondent David Shuster's use of the term "pimped out" in a question about Chelsea's role in her mother's campaign.(The Week)(Bill and Hillary Clinton, Chelsea Clinton)(Brief article)
March 10, 2008... The Clintons worked up a tsunami of outrage over MSNBC correspondent David Shuster's use of the term "pimped out" in a question about Chelsea's role in her mother's campaign. Reluctant as we are to tempt fate by using the words "Clinton" and...

President Bush has asked Congress to reauthorize the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), and to double its budget, from $15 billion to $30 billion spread across a five-year period.(The Week)(Brief article)
March 10, 2008... President Bush has asked Congress to reauthorize the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), and to double its budget, from $15 billion to $30 billion spread across a five-year period. Questions exist about the efficiency of such...

Barack Obama is famously light on legislative achievements, and the one big bill with his name on it is bad news.(The Week)(Global Poverty Act)(Brief article)
March 10, 2008... Barack Obama is famously light on legislative achievements, and the one big bill with his name on it is bad news. As with many on the left, Obama's heart is hostage to the United Nations, and his bill, the Global Poverty Act, would oblige the...

City Journal, the Manhattan Institute's fine publication, kicked off a useful debate by running Sol Stern's essay "School Choice Isn't Enough.".(The Week)(Brief article)
March 10, 2008... City Journal, the Manhattan Institute's fine publication, kicked off a useful debate by running Sol Stern's essay "School Choice Isn't Enough." Stern is for charter schools, vouchers, and other efforts to bring competition to education, but he...

The list of professions in which steroid use is common has expanded way beyond athletes to include rappers, models, and even ballerinas.(The Week)(Brief article)
March 10, 2008... The list of professions in which steroid use is common has expanded way beyond athletes to include rappers, models, and even ballerinas. Just about the only occupational group that has not been implicated is politicians, and no wonder; they...

The Bush administration's decision to try to shoot down a hobbled spy satellite has drawn plenty of complaints from the disarmament lobby.(The Week)(Brief article)
March 10, 2008... The Bush administration's decision to try to shoot down a hobbled spy satellite has drawn plenty of complaints from the disarmament lobby. "The politics are terrible," groused Jeffrey G. Lewis of the New America Foundation, explained to the New...

Fidel Castro has been one of the cruelest dictators in living memory.(The Week)(Brief article)
March 10, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Fidel Castro has been one of the cruelest dictators in living memory. He has also been the longest"-serving," and is now "retiring," just short of his 50th year in power. Senator Fulbright said famously that Castro...

Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf has confounded his enemies foreign and domestic by neither rigging nor canceling the general election.(The Week)(Brief article)
March 10, 2008... Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf has confounded his enemies foreign and domestic by neither rigging nor canceling the general election. It would have been easy for him to fix the polls, and in keeping not just with his overblown reputation...

Kosovo is the seventh and last fragment of the old Communist Yugoslavia to become a sovereign state.(The Week)(Brief article)
March 10, 2008... Kosovo is the seventh and last fragment of the old Communist Yugoslavia to become a sovereign state. The Yugoslav breakup unleashed nationalist passions, genocide, and armed intervention from outside: in the case of Kosovo, nothing less than...

Dreams from his eugenicists.(The Week)
March 10, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] LAST year, New York Times columnist Paul Krugman started a big debate by waxing righteous about the Republican party's allegedly racist past. He charged that Ronald Reagan's 1980 campaign was born in racism and that...

As every high-school student who has read The Crucible knows, witches were executed in Massachusetts as late as 1692.(The Week)(Brief article)
March 10, 2008... As every high-school student who has read The Crucible knows, witches were executed in Massachusetts as late as 1692. But colonial Massachusetts had politics, law, public opinion, and intellectual inquiry, if not full freedom of thought: social...

The Vancouver Public Library has scheduled a talk by Greg Felton, author of The Host and the Parasite: How Israel's Fifth Column Consumed America.(The Week)(Brief article)
March 10, 2008... The Vancouver Public Library has scheduled a talk by Greg Felton, author of The Host and the Parasite: How Israel's Fifth Column Consumed America. The book is pretty much what you'd expect; Felton praises "sacrifice bombings" and suggests "a...

Kids' TV characters have a rough go of it in the Gaza Strip.(The Week)(Brief article)
March 10, 2008... Kids' TV characters have a rough go of it in the Gaza Strip. Farfour the Mouse was beaten to death by an Israeli soldier, and Nahoul the Bee died a martyr when he could not get to Egypt for medical attention. But fear not, jihadi children:...

Cindy Sheehan emerged from obscurity, but not from obloquy, when she took her one-woman show all the way to the streets of Cairo.(The Week)(Brief article)
March 10, 2008... Cindy Sheehan emerged from obscurity, but not from obloquy, when she took her one-woman show all the way to the streets of Cairo. That mother of a slain soldier is pushing for an end to military trials for members of the Muslim Brotherhood, the...

The New York Philharmonic decided to accept an invitation from the regime of Kim Jong Il to play a concert in Pyongyang.(The Week)(Brief article)
March 10, 2008... The New York Philharmonic decided to accept an invitation from the regime of Kim Jong Il to play a concert in Pyongyang. That was controversial: Conscientious people made arguments for and against. But, right before leaving, Lorin Maazel, the...

John L. Esposito, professor of Islamic studies at Georgetown, typifies his discipline.(The Week)(Brief article)
March 10, 2008... John L. Esposito, professor of Islamic studies at Georgetown, typifies his discipline. What he says, others say and more are taught, albeit with less voltage. He came to Stanford recently, and Campus Watch, a pro-Israel, anti-radical group,...

New Republic contributor Debbie Nathan offers the following career update on her blog: "I'm presenting my new book Pornography.(The Week)(Brief article)(Blog entry)
March 10, 2008... New Republic contributor Debbie Nathan offers the following career update on her blog: "I'm presenting my new book Pornography. It was published late last year by Groundwood, a Canadian children's press." Children's press?

The Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Journalism is given once a year, to a journalist who exhibits "love of country and its democratic institutions" and "bears witness to the evils of totalitarianism.".(The Week)(Brief article)
March 10, 2008... The Eric Breindel Award for Excellence in Journalism is given once a year, to a journalist who exhibits "love of country and its democratic institutions" and "bears witness to the evils of totalitarianism." The award is worth $20,000. There is...

The Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery is running an exhibition titled "Recognize! Hip Hop and Contemporary Portraiture.".(The Week)(Brief article)
March 10, 2008... The Smithsonian's National Portrait Gallery is running an exhibition titled "Recognize! Hip Hop and Contemporary Portraiture." In addition to some faithfully reproduced graffiti and some gibberish "poems," it includes "patterned paintings of...

Rep. Tom Lantos (D., Calif.) belonged to the greatest generation--with a twist.(The Week)(Obituary)(Brief article)
March 10, 2008... Rep. Tom Lantos (D., Calif.) belonged to the greatest generation--with a twist. He was 16 when the Nazis occupied Hungary: a fascist ally that had not, however, until then exterminated its Jews. As the Nazis set about remedying that omission,...

The Lord told Moses that, after he died, the people would "go a whoring after the gods of the strangers.".(The Week)(Maharishi Mahesh Yogi)(Obituary)(Brief article)
March 10, 2008... The Lord told Moses that, after he died, the people would "go a whoring after the gods of the strangers." And even the godlets. In 1968, the Beatles, Mia Farrow, Mike Love of the Beach Boys, and Donovan trekked to the ashram of Maharishi Mahesh...

Ruth Stafford Peale survived her husband, the Rev. Norman Vincent Peale, by 14 years.(The Week)(Obituary)(Brief article)
March 10, 2008... Ruth Stafford Peale survived her husband, the Rev. Norman Vincent Peale, by 14 years. She was a very consequential part of her husband's very consequential life. The magazine Guideposts (circulation: 2.5 million) began with her suggestion that...

Peace on the right.(2008)(John McCain)
March 10, 2008... THE percentage of Americans who consider themselves Republicans has plummeted. Young people voted for John Kerry and have not become more conservative since 2004. Democrats think they just might get a filibuster-proof Senate capable of enacting...

Flight to the feckless.(2008 II)
March 10, 2008... BARACK OBAMA'S solid win in Wisconsin--a potential battleground state in the fall--coupled with his favorite-son victory in Hawaii takes him one step nearer the Democratic nomination. It is increasingly hard to see how Hillary Clinton can catch...

E. Victor Milione, R.I.P.(OBITUARY)(Obituary)
March 10, 2008... THERE wasn't yet a "conservative movement" in the early 1950s, but there was bustling activity on the right side of the political spectrum. The great Austrian economists Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises had come to America, and Leonard Read...

Robert Jastrow, R.I.P.(OBITUARY II)(Obituary)
March 10, 2008... ROBERT JASTROW was a scientist among scientists. The story goes that in the 1950s, during the question period at a seminar organized by Robert Oppenheimer, the young Jastrow stood up to offer an unconventional theory about the behavior of...

The warrior and the priest: how Clinton and Obama divide their party.(2008)(Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Democratic Party)
March 10, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] HILLARY CLINTON and Barack Obama fought to a draw on Super Tuesday. They won roughly the same number of delegates, and the popular-vote margin between them was 0.4 percent. But Yuval Levin pointed out something odd...

Mitt's closing act: will there be a curtain call?(2008 II)(Romney Mitt)
March 10, 2008... A WEEK after dropping out of the Republican presidential race on February 7, Mitt Romney held a meeting with senior staff at his campaign headquarters in Boston. They had a lot of questions to consider. Should Romney endorse John McCain now, or...

A most dangerous game: house democrats continue to hobble our intelligence services.(AT WAR)(Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act)
March 10, 2008... When the clock struck midnight on the evening of Saturday, February 16, American intelligence services were for all practical purposes shorn of their ability to monitor the communications of newly discovered terrorists and spies operating...

Sharia, Anglican--style: the archbishop of Canterbury is a special kind of fool.(BRITAIN)(Rowan Williams)
March 10, 2008... AT what point does otherworldliness become mere stupidity? At what point does woolly benevolence become vanity and spiritual pride? At what point does willful blindness become plain cowardice? At what point does intellectual incoherence become...

Dead to rights: the world is better off without Imad Mughniyah.(THE MIDEAST)(Brief biography)
March 10, 2008... LATE at night on February 12, a car exploded in Kfar Sousse, a quiet residential district of Damascus, and killed the lone man who was about to drive away in it. Some say that a bomb was detonated by remote control; others say that the device...

'Re-Liberators': a progress report from Iraq.(Iraqi War)(Cover story)
March 10, 2008... Hamada, Iraq THIS small, rural village in Diyala Province north of Baghdad experienced a revolution a month ago. Hamada had been controlled by al-Qaeda and its band of teenage killers, who terrorized the place. Qaeda imams took over the...

Troubled in spirit: the surprising direction of African Christianity.(THE WORLD)
March 10, 2008... Nairobi, Kenya A WOMAN like Margaret Wanjiru, the self-anointed bishop of one of Kenya's largest churches, could not have existed even a generation ago in Africa. That she does now owes largely to the worldwide evangelical reawakening that...

One for freedom: meet a popular musician who says he supports the troops--and means it.(CULTURE WATCH)(John Ondrasik)(Interview)
March 10, 2008... ON the night of February 9, more than a thousand people gathered in tuxes and dresses at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library to pay tribute to Medal of Honor recipients. Forty-three of the 107 living medalists were in attendance, along with...

Help!!!!(Cartoon)
March 10, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "When one door closes, another opens--but enough about immigration reform..." [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] "The mouse? Excellent choice, sir--dead or alive?" The Shotgun WEDDING [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]...

The delegate's mailbag.(the long view)(Democratic Party delegate)
March 10, 2008... Dear Democratic Party Committed Delegate: Hard to believe it's been sixteen years since I took the stage at our historic convention and accepted our party's nomination for the presidency! But this letter isn't about me. It's about my...

Shock seekers.(Modernism: The Lure of Heresy: From Baudelaire to Beckett and Beyond)(Book review)
March 10, 2008... Modernism: The Lure of Heresy: From Baudelaire to Beckett and Beyond, by Peter Gay (Norton, 640 pp., $35) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] WHAT is modernism? It is a testimony to the complexity, or possibly to the recalcitrance, of the idea that...

King Fischer.(Joschka Fischer and the Making of the Berlin Republic: An Alternative History of Postwar Germany)(Book review)
March 10, 2008... Joschka Fischer and the Making of the Berlin Republic: An Alternative History of Postwar Germany, by Paul Hockenos (Oxford, 400 pp., $35) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] A PRIORITY in the post-1945 world order was to make Germany a normal...

Race games, old and new.(The Race Card: How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations Worse)(Book review)
March 10, 2008... The Race Card: How Bluffing About Bias Makes Race Relations Worse, by Richard Thompson Ford (Farrar, Straus, 400 pp., $26) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] IT's hard to imagine a more red-meat-conservative title. At last, someone--a black law...

You Are Not Other Men.(books, arts & manners)(Poem)
March 10, 2008... YOU ARE NOT OTHER MEN They will not save you, those from whom you sought some help, no, nor the writings they left behind; you are not other men, and now you find you are the center of the labyrinth wrought by your own...

Thank the Academy?(FILM)(Michael Clayton, Atonement, Juno)(Movie review)
March 10, 2008... THE writers' strike is settled, the picketing scribes have dispersed to their keyboards, and if the stars feel any pangs of social conscience while strolling the red carpet they'll have only their fuel-guzzling, globe-warming private jets to...

Brushes through India.(TRAVEL)(Bombay, India)(Travel narrative)
March 10, 2008... 'WHAT'S playing in India?" asked a friend of mine, before I took off. Oh, nothing in particular: just India itself, for two weeks of exploration. My friends and I begin in Bombay, or, as we're all supposed to say now, "Mumbai." I ask a local...

White lightning.(THE STRAGGLER)(baijiu)
March 10, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] I SEE that the highest grades of Chinese baijiu ("white liquor"--it's pronounced bye-jee-oh) were retailing at over $3,000 a bottle this Lunar New Year. It is good to know that all the T-bonds we have been shipping...

Readers remember WFB.(letters to the editor)(Letter to the editor)
March 24, 2008... I was drawn early to Bill's enjoyment of life and everything in it, from skiing and sailing to Bach to the riches of the English language. As a NATIONAL REVIEW intern in the summer of 1975, my strongest memory is of the editors' laughter over...

The week.
March 24, 2008... * Let's pray they have a dictionary in Heaven. * Late in 2007 word went around that the New York Times had a story on John McCain that could sink him, but when that story finally ran at the end of last month it went off like a dud. In 1999,...

Cronies against capitalism.
March 24, 2008... FOR economists, the economic success of capitalism creates something of a puzzle. When combined with a relatively small government, capitalism is a well-established ticket to improved standards of living. Yet many countries resist. Why? A...

William F. Buckley Jr., R.I.P.(OBITUARY)(In memoriam)
March 24, 2008... OUR founder and inspiration died in his study on February 27. If ever an institution has been the lengthened shadow of one man, this publication is his. So we hope not to be thought immodest for saying that Buckley has had a greater impact...

Misremembering.(THE LEFT)(William F. Buckley Jr. )(In memoriam)(Brief article)
March 24, 2008... THE death of William F. Buckley Jr. cast a pall over the office, of course, but we have been gratified by the immense outpouring of affection for him--an outpouring in which most of this issue participates. Three of the most common notes...

Toil and trouble.(2008)
March 24, 2008... 'WHEN shall we three meet again?" asks the First Witch at the beginning of Macbeth. "In thunder, lightning, or in rain?" "When the hurlyburly's done," answers the Second Witch, "When the battle's lost and won." "That will be ere the set of...

Editor's note.
March 24, 2008... A few notes on this issue. We considered a black border on the cover but decided against it, because we are not marking a death but celebrating a life. Besides, Bill loved the blue border. During my time as editor, we twice experimented with...

Man of thought, man of action.(William F. Buckley, Jr.)(In memoriam)
March 24, 2008... WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR.--"Bill" to that half of the world he knew personally--was the star of many odd and significant stories. In two of the oddest and most significant stories involving him, however, Bill was not the central figure at all but...

'The blood of their fathers ran strong': what he fought, why he fought, in his words.
March 24, 2008... EXPRESSIONS of gratitude can be most awfully trying to the ear of an audience, generally captive. But the act of gratitude nowadays is probably more often neglected than overdone. We published recently, in NATIONALREVIEW, an essay on...

Brother.(Remembering WFB)(William F. Buckley, Jr.)(In memoriam)
March 24, 2008... WHAT was young Billy like? A pigeon-toed, skinny little boy in short pants, his bony knees covered with scabs, too busy asking a question to watch where he was going. As sixth in a family of ten, his boast was that he was the top of the bottom...

Friend.(Remembering WFB)(William F. Buckley, Jr.)(In memoriam)
March 24, 2008... IN an introduction to my Small Earthquake in Chile (1990), Bill wrote: "I have known the author a very long time and, since it is likelier he will write my obituary than I will write his (I smoke cigars), I see no reason to turn down this...

Mainstay.(Remembering WFB)(William F. Buckley, Jr.)(In memoriam)
March 24, 2008... WHEN Chris Buckley phoned me with the news, my first words were: "I cannot bear it." I was not thinking so much of the elegant, vibrant, articulate, witty public persona who shaped so much of our period; rather the gentle, tender, thoughtful...

Businessman.(Remembering WFB)(William F. Buckley, Jr.)(In memoriam)(Brief article)
March 24, 2008... JOURNALS of opinion have never earned their way. Typically they have been subsidized by wealthy liberals and conservatives who believe, and are willing to invest their money, in their respective causes. So when NATIONAL REVIEW was launched...

Red wing, my red wing.(Red Wing peanut butter)(Brief article)
March 24, 2008... AN actor can get away with endorsing products, because an actor is, damn it, an actor. Ah, but this immunity cannot reasonably stretch to opinion salesmen. Like me. But this leaves a hole in the life of an evangelist. We come upon wonderful...

Dazzler.(Remembering WFB)(William F. Buckley, Jr.)(In memoriam)(Brief article)
March 24, 2008... THE first time I saw Bill Buckley, in early 1955, I knew something was about to happen. Until then the established idea of a conservative was Sen. Robert Taft of Ohio, a man of intellect and integrity but so lacking in charisma that he made...

The American gentleman.(Remembering WFB)(William F. Buckley, Jr.)(In memoriam)
March 24, 2008... BILL BUCKLEY earned a special place in history by doing the original spadework in the reconstruction of American conservatism. But to me he was much more. Looking at him as an outsider and an Englishman, I saw him as the living archetype of a...

Truly first class.(MGM Grand Air)(Brief article)
March 24, 2008... HOW to abbreviate the experience of flying on MGM Grand Air? I have flown on Air Force One, have disported on the Concorde right around the world, on a dozen corporate jets, including a luxuriously appointed G-4 dispatched all the way to Geneva...

Joy on the open sea.(Brief article)
March 24, 2008... AH, but the sea always has something lying in wait for you. Perhaps, in my last years, I'll deny it the opportunity to vex me. But if so, how can I draw from it those fleeted moments? You have shortened sail just a little, because you want more...

Monosyllablist.(Remembering WFB)(William F. Buckley, Jr.)(In memoriam)
March 24, 2008... ON the eve of the 2004 election, William F. Buckley Jr. was reflecting on criticism of the networks re the 2000 debacle in Florida. He noted that, in the wake of protests, the broadcasters had abandoned their old ways, in which "computers...

Candidate.(Remembering WFB)(William F. Buckley, Jr.)(In memoriam)
March 24, 2008... WHEN I reflect on the famous mayoral victory of 1965, I think first not of Bill's wit and grace and charm, all of which have been justly celebrated, but of his courage, both physical and moral. In those days, people who stirred passions in the...

Improviser.(Remembering WFB)(William F. Buckley, Jr.)(In memoriam)
March 24, 2008... ON the air from 1966 until WFB himself brought it to a close in 1999--"The end of the millennium," he said, "kind of makes sense"--Firing Line was the longest-running program in television history whose host never changed. How did a cerebral...

Star.(Remembering WFB)(William F. Buckley, Jr.)(In memoriam)
March 24, 2008... FIRING LINE was usually taped, three shows at a time, at the HBO studios in New York. The format evolved over the years. Toward the end, my role was to introduce the show and then throw to Bill, Ed McMahon to his Johnny Carson. Sometimes I got...

The most beautiful dogs.(Brief article)
March 24, 2008... I HAVE never understood why, when there are beautiful dogs one can acquire, people should go out of their way to acquire non-beautiful dogs. I know better than to give an example, because nothing arouses owners more than the suggestion that...

The rebuke dans l'escalier.(Remembering WFB)(William F. Buckley, Jr. )(In memoriam)(Brief article)
March 24, 2008... WHY does no one mention the subtlest of all Buckley's rhetorical ploys, the rebuke dans l'escalier? Beats me. It was such beautiful stuff. Everybody is familiar with l'esprit de l'escalier. Some smug wit has cut you to the quick in repartee...

Husband.(Remembering WFB)(William F. Buckley, Jr.)(In memoriam)
March 24, 2008... I MET Bill and Pat in 1965, when Bill was running for mayor of New York, and I learned then that they had a wonderful time "winding each other up," as the Brits say. One night during the campaign, Bill was writing a speech at dinner (!) in the...

Ski buddy.(Remembering WFB)(William F. Buckley, Jr.)(In memoriam)
March 24, 2008... THE winters seemed longer then, the slopes much whiter and the weather sunnier. This was Gstaad around 1960, and I had run into the Buckleys during a Palace Bar altercation with Alistair Horne over a fascist song about youth. Pat thought it...

Pleasure on skis.(Brief article)
March 24, 2008... [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] I DON'T know why, but it is unfailingly the case that there is always something to relate after an afternoon's ski. The ski tow stopped halfway up the hill. You were stranded for twenty minutes! An avalanche over on...

The boss.(Remembering WFB)(William F. Buckley, Jr.)(In memoriam)
March 24, 2008... NOW that Bill has met God, he'll have some idea of how I felt when I met him. I joined the staff of NR in 1979, the year I finished college. Bill was in his early 50s and his "cruising speed" was about 500 miles per hour. Who was that traipsing...

Egalitarian.(Remembering WFB)(William F. Buckley, Jr.)(In memoriam)
March 24, 2008... IN Bill's public appearances, people saw a snooty aloofness--his acting de haut en bas, as he would put it. But in private he was the most egalitarian person I ever met. He treated everyone equally, with equal dignity. When I submitted an...

Giver.(Remembering WFB)(William F. Buckley, Jr.)(In memoriam)
March 24, 2008... WHEN I began working at NATIONAL REVIEW in December 1960 as a part-time college student, I had yet to meet Bill Buckley. Then one afternoon I got summoned to his office--not only to meet the great man, but to do him a favor. Bill needed someone...

The irrepressible.(Remembering WFB)(William F. Buckley, Jr.)(In memoriam)
March 24, 2008... ERLE STANLEY GARDNER, the creator of Perry Mason, is said to have kept four secretaries busy at once taking his novels in dictation and transcribing them. That wasn't Bill's story, but only because he kept his book-writing to an average of less...

At home, Wallacks Point.(Brief article)
March 24, 2008... ONE watches, and says very little, when the lady of the house is pursuing a vision. The sun room soon became the bordello the Shah couldn't afford. Then the living room, a kind of Haitian concentrate. Self-respect required me at one point to...

A second father.(Remembering WFB)(William F. Buckley, Jr.)(In memoriam)
March 24, 2008... AT about age 13 I became mesmerized by Bill Buckley's column in the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. His intellect and good humor literally created my desire to learn. But in my first year of college I flunked Speech 101 (I refused to outline). At age...

Mets fan.(Remembering WFB)(William F. Buckley, Jr.)(In memoriam)
March 24, 2008... IN late 1993, during the course of an interview with Charlie Rose, Bill confessed to never having attended a baseball game. Regarding this as un-American, I wrote to tell him that he was lucky the House Un-American Activities Committee had been...

Hooked on the Latin Mass.(Brief article)
March 24, 2008... I HAVE always been impatient, and so it was I suppose surprising that I came so quickly to feel at ease with the daily Mass, becoming progressively more engrossed in the words and the ritual. The liturgy took hold of me, and I suppose that this...