Misremembering.(THE LEFT)(William F. Buckley Jr. )(In memoriam)(Brief article)

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 sounded in the editorial encomia to WFB ought, however, to be modified.

Nearly every appreciation of Buckley has noted that he was (and this magazine was) wrong about civil rights. Fair enough: He was, and we were, and the error was admitted. People who are otherwise good, and even whole societies, can be wrong about matters of moral import. A few of the notices have implied that hostility to the aspirations of American blacks was one of his animating impulses, which is a calumny.

Liberals celebrated Buckley's retrospective opposition to the Iraq War and criticism of the current administration. What Buckley said was that if he had known before the war what he knew afterward--notably that the Iraqi regime did ...