Muddling Toward Maturity Blog

WILLLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR. ON "FINAL TRUTHS"

It's hard to believe that it's been two years since William F. Buckley, Jr. passed away.  Jack Fowler, over at the Corner, points to something WFB wrote back in 1962 to the newsletter of Young Conservative Club of Walt Whitman High School in the Bronx.  Fowler explains WFB was "responding to their inquiry about something he had written in Up from Liberalism concerning "final truths."  Fowler quotes WFB: [my emphases]

In the passage you quote from Up From Liberalism I intended, indeed, to refer to the religious truth that is our central heritage and to the moral philosophy and human insight that derive from it. Sometimes this position is referred to (in a phrase going back, I believe, to the days of the Roman Empire) as “the morality of the last days”—by which is meant the world-view of men who know that death is close. But, in the long view, we all stand sentenced to death, and whether it comes in 1995 or tomorrow makes no difference. That is why the morality of the last days always applies to what is “finally important in human experience.” All our techniques of social welfare, all our science, all our comfort, all our liberty, all our democracy and foreign aid and grandiloquent orations—all that means nothing to me and nothing to you in the moment when we go. At that moment we must put our souls in order, and the way to do that was lighted for us by Jesus, and since then we have had need of no other light. That is what is finally important; it has not changed; and it will not change. It is truth, which shall ever abide in the future. And if it is “reactionary” to hold a truth that will be valid for all future time, then words have lost their meaning, and men their reason.

Me:  I might mention that I also enjoyed Rich Trzupek's post, "Two Years After His Death Buckley's Message Lives On."

CHRISTOPHER BUCKLEY'S BOOK - "LOSING MUM AND PUP: A MEMOIR" (ON HIS RELATIONSHIP WITH HIS PARENTS, PAT AND WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR.)

The Scriptorium links to an excellent review of the young Buckley's book using the following sentence as a link: "Christopher Buckley tried to write a book about Mum and Pup but ended up writing the first draft of a religious memoir about his own unbelief."

Me:  The review offers significant insight into, and the flavor of, the Buckley relationships.  It concludes with this paragraph (which seems wise to me):

The only son of two outsized individuals, Christopher vainly sought his father's attention and approval, chafed at Bill's public role, and nursed a secret knowledge of his limitations. Today, the world knows that his father was no saint. Despite the occasional laughs, this reader wishes the author had filed the manuscript away and waited for the gift of time and perspective. It would have been a better book.

Wm. F. Buckley, Jr. -- His Books and His Influence -- Under Review Again

Update 2/26/08 - For a picture of Buckley in his office, click here.

See the splendid review article  by Linda Bridges and John R. Coyne, Jr. published in the Spring 2008 issue of the Claremont Review of Books.  It's a dandy read. 

My additional posts on Buckley can be found here.

MORE REMINISCENCES OF WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR

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(Note: Updates can be found at the end of this post..)

Another post on William F. Buckley may seem tedious to some, but I regard Buckley as one of the giants of the 20th century.  TodayI began to dip into his first book, God & Man at Yale, a book I have
had on my shelf but never got around to reading until now.  I find it fascinating.  So far as I can tell, little has changed since he wrote it back in 1951 as a 25 year-old Yale graduate.  As I wrote before, for years I greatly appreciated his television program, Firing Line.  What follows are more reminiscences (mainly from the National Review website) to add to a previous post.

David Brooks - Remembering the Mentor

George Will - A Life Athwart History

George Will - He Won the Cold War (A Dialog with Buckley)

Peggy Noonan  - May We Not Lose His Kind

Jonah Goldberg - Prince of Polysyllabism

Mark A. Thiessen - The Day I Met WFB (quite interesting - unmuddle)

MORE TRIBUTES TO WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR

Michael Cromartie of the Ethics and Public Policy Center interviewed Buckley back in 1997 and published an article, "Buckley on Belief."  The occasion was the publication of Buckley's newly published book, Nearer, My God: An Autobiography of Faith (Doubleday, 313 pp.; $24.95), 

Here, for the first time, Buckley writes at length about his faith, about some of the principal obstacles to Christian belief (despite self-deprecating comments concerning his lack of theological training, he displays considerable powers as an apologist), and about the distinctive experience of a Roman Catholic in the twentieth century.

WFB link roundup, from the Corner:

Editorials:

DC Examiner: Demand a Recount

Chicago Tribune: Buckley's World

The Daily Telegraph: William F Buckley