The Buckley canonization continues apace. In NYT's Op-Ed page, Robert Semple Jr. repeats the principal chorus in the dirge: that WFB was a man of ideas, not personal hatreds. "Yet despite his uncompromising beliefs, Mr. Buckley was firmly committed to civil discourse and showed little appetite for the shrillness that plagues far too much of today’s political discourse."
Today's essay question- with extra points for penmanship- is this: Everyone pretty much agrees Buckley midwifed modern conservatism. Everyone pretty much agrees that Buckley hated liberal ideas, not the liberals who espoused them.
So: why hasn't Buckelyian civility in public discourse caught on among his conservative legatees? Why is the uplifting of the public discussion not a greater value among the scribes at National Review, or among the political class?
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