Is he worth reading?

Yeah. Buckley's a subtle thinker even when he's "wrong," and subtly representative of a worldview that few embodied better than he.

Really understanding that worldview, and especially understanding its fragility, its weariness and resignation, and eventually its intellectual balkanisation by more vigorous but also much narrower conservative worldviews, is crucial to understanding 20th century American culture, modern American politics, etc.

>>8909469
persuasive post

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>>8909449
No. A library checkout's worth perhaps.

>>8909483
I have a lot of respect for Buckley other than that teeth grinding moment he thought that it was the right thing to call out Gore for being gay

>>8909489
He was gay. And Buckley was a crypto-fascist. Look where his Regan revolution has lead. I only wish the two of them were alive today to see it

>>8909469

I just wish there were more people on the right who were as articulate. Public discourse on either side of the spectrum has really degenerated.

I guess it's to be expected considering the state of American education.

>>8909483
Saw that documentary earlier today. Vidal seemed like such a pretentious prick. He went into the first show doing research specificaly to smear Buckley and even went so far as practicing his crappy pre-written witticisms on the nearby camera crew before the debate to prep for their delivery.

It seemed like he only goes into a debate to win and does so by any means necessary trying to devise the best way he can inflame his opponents.

Am I getting the wrong view of him?

>>8909503
In what way was Buckley a Crypto-Fascist?

>>8909503
I know he was gay and I've heard the descriptions of him and his partners parties which are pretty fucking weird.I don't know Buckley towards the end of his life just wanted it to be over and Gore just had religious arguments and I'd say if they saw the current state of things they'd follow the same lines of thought as they did back then

>>8909508
I don't think Gore was pretentious usually he just was trying to control what image would be put across of him in the debate. In saying that they were pretty childish at several points

>>8909503

> Buckley was a crypto-fascist

I'm gonna stop you right there.

> Look where his Regan revolution has lead

This argument is dumb anyways but it has two specific problems:
1. Assuming that Trump is a result of the Reagan revolution. If anything, Trump is more are reaction against "globalism" and a desire for lower taxes. He's not really a cultural conservative other than wanting to destroy "PC culture" and that's just because he's a loudmouth asshole with no self-control.

2. Buckley's intellectual heirs hate Trump. National Review, the magazine founded by Buckley, has consistently opposed Trump.

Bumping out of interest.

>>8909518
>I don't think Gore was pretentious
lol

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Buckley was certainly interesting, but I could count on one hand the number of occasions where I thought he was being genuine. A lot of the time he seemed to simply take old-fashioned conservative views, which we would ordinarily dismiss as backward/etc, and gave them a airily pretentious veneer — aided and abetted by his mid-Atlantic accent, not to mention his rhetorical skills in general. He knew where to place a pause, how long to hold it, and so forth.

Despite all that, I still admire him more than Gore Vidal — who always struck me as little more than an actor, playing the role of Oscar Wilde without pause. A second-rate Harold Bloom, who is also quite pretentious and verbose in his own right. Vidal is worse, however — at least Wilde had the decency to admit the folly of his ways in De Profundis. Vidal never got that far.

>>8912209
>filename

kek'd

>>8912209
>I like the disingenuous conservative
>Vidal must have been acting cuz I don't like him
Such wind, such nonsense. You bothered with this?

>>8909503
don't use fascist as a blanket term for anything authoritarian

>>8909506
it's not about education

the average person is just so dumb that he flocks to televised idiots like o'reilly or stewart

>>8912241

>Vidal must have been acting cuz I don't like him

I never said he was an actor. I said he struck me as one.

>>8912273
It is about education.

>>8912271
True enough. Probably why he said "crypto-fascist".
Idiot-authoritarianism and the decimation of labor will lead you to today's mess. Trump is still only partly that super specific fascism
>>8910052
Point taken. And I acknowledge all the other actors, but still, look where Buckley's Regan revolution has led us.
Idiot-authoritarianism is run by the oligarchy to whatever they want. Can we try democracy someday?

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>>8909449
Buckley is responsible for making neo-conservatism the predominate intellectual current in conservatism and killing the Old Right, instead of reading anything by him just watch his show to get what he's all about [television is more of the proper mode of exposition for neo-conservatism than written works]

>>8910052
Trump is definitely a reaction to the continuous rightwards shift starting with Jimmy Carter [most deregulation began under him before Reagan came in] that intellectuals like Buckley shaped. Poor white people with no skills have seen their living standards continuously decline and don't understand what has been going on.
Taxes going down ain't going to really mean anything for people with no skills since they are fully disposable and have artificially inflated wages already thanks to minimum wage laws, if you're not a STEMfag your position in society is going to continue to decline throughout the 21th century thanks to continuous innovations so that machines will continue replacing most blue collar jobs.

>>8910052
>2. Buckley's intellectual heirs hate Trump. National Review, the magazine founded by Buckley, has consistently opposed Trump.

Buckley HIMSELF hated trump. He wrote an article about him and other narcissists in politics. It was about the Trump 2000 campaign. Google "William F Buckley Trump Demagogue"