Edward Cline did -- bury one, that is. It's well deserved.
Buckley saved their necks and provided them with a "system" of ideas they could feel at home with. He persuaded a spent and ideologically rudderless conservative movement to base its political philosophy on religion, altruism, and self-sacrifice as an alternative to the "atheistic" liberal welfare state of society, altruism and self-sacrifice. Individual rights were nothing to him if not "God-given." He was as much an enemy of freedom - and of freedom of speech - as any holy-roller Democrat. Fundamentally, there is no difference between the policies advocated by "atheistic" or secular collectivists and "religious" ones. Buckley never seriously challenged the "status quo" of controls, deficit spending, or the regulation of business and industry. He was one of the original advocates of volunteerism or mandatory public service.
Damn right. Read the whole thing. The title is Billy's line.
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Rand, quoted by Cline:
The ideological position of National Review amounts, in effect, to the following: In order to accept freedom and capitalism, one has to believe in God or some form of religion, some form of supernatural mysticism.
That's a very strategically placed "in effect" up there.
Cline:
Let no one doubt that Buckley understood Rand's philosophy to the core, that he feared it…
Fantastic allegation.
…and chose as his weapon against it the Toohey-esqe tactic of snickering laughter.
Maybe the light sabres were all taken.
Yea Linda, "light sabres." And you're probably right…Rand et al were more than happy to rein moral judgment upon the impure at a moment's notice.
Buckley & Co would be far more content to just send the commissars to your door.
Far more eminent men of the right, such as John Flynn, got 'thrown off the bus' (that's supposed to be a euphemism, mind you) when Buckley decided that he wanted to create a new respectable right. One welcome even in the parlors of the New Deal and amongst Roosevelt worshipers. This purging is, I think, only truly understood in the light of Buckley's (and his senior editors') CIA past.