Buckley

Happy birthday to William F. Buckley, writer, journalist, celebrity and the last quasi-sensible conservative (Nov. 24, 1925-Feb. 27, 2008).

He was a dickhead with a snake-like tongue, but he flicked it with style.

An institutionalized racist in a racist society, he finally came to admire MLK: 

In the late 1960s, Buckley disagreed strenuously with segregationist George Wallace, who ran in Democratic primaries (1964 and 1972) and made an independent run for president in 1968. Buckley later said it was a mistake for National Review to have opposed the civil rights legislation of 1964–65. He later grew to admire Martin Luther King, Jr. and supported creation of a Martin Luther King, Jr. Day national holiday for him. During the 1950s, Buckley had worked to remove anti-Semitism from the conservative movement and barred holders of those views from working for National Review.


TS