RIP Bill Buckley

OMG, I hope my suggestion that Bill Buckley fall on his sword, in atonement for the racial nuttery of one of the contributors to the National Review , had nothing to do with his departure from this earth today.

Bill Buckley founded the National Review in 1955, when conservatism was considered by polite people as some kind of mental infliction. Conservatives were odd indeed, having opposed Roosevelt's New Deal, ranted against the income tax, and been essentially isolationists before World War II. They even felt the federal government had no constitutional authority to regulate marijuana.

Yes folks, in 1928 Ron Paul would have been Chairman of the National Republican Committee.

Buckley was instrumental in kick starting the modern conservative movement , by joining liberals in the fight against monolithic communism, but also leading the struggle to eradicate creeping socialism on the home front.

But with the fall of communism, conservatives lost their way, as was evident on the Ship of Fools last year, a cruise in the Caribbean organized by the National Review.

Buckley was the senile old man out, amongst the new shining stars of the right, such as Norman Podhoretz , who lives for the testosterone-drenched liberation of the lands of Islam, and Ken Starr, famous for paralyzing the federal government on account of a cum stained dress.

While Buckley was with Podhoretz on the necessity of crushing godless communism, he did not see it the proper role of the United States to democratize and bring Methodism and white picket fences to the Middle East.

Buckley, as Republican always do, invoked the memory of Ronald Reagan, but heretically told the lunatics that he not think the Gipper would have embarked on the ruinous Iraqi adventure.

Podhoretz fumed about such conservatives as Buckley and George Will, who fail to realize that after September 11 we had no choice but to impose democracy on the Muslims.

And the passengers pretty much dismissed Buckley as a senile old man living in the past.

It is too bad Bill Buckley lived long enough to see his brand of conservatism turned into little more than rampant paranoia, anti-intellectualism, warmongering, and the raw lust of power for power's sake.

What a contrast the urbane intellectual was to the the current breed of conservative mouth pieces, such as Limbaugh, O'Reilly, Coutler, Hannity and all the other bottom feeders.

Bill Buckley may have been the father of modern conservatism.

But we never know how our children will turn out.