REVIEW: Russell's Reviews Volume One # 9

[EDMLite]

On Mar 1, 4:21 pm, Saxon Brenton <saxon.bren... at uts.edu.au> wrote:
> On Saturday 1 March 2008 Tom Russell wrote, among other things:

> So when I heard of William F. Buckley and his reputation
> as a thinking US conservative, I thought I had found a
> role model for Anal-Retentive Archive Kid, but hadn't
> gotten around to doing any research yet.  Now Tom has
> disabused me of that notion.  I doubt me if a true
> conservative in the minimum-government-intervention/let-
> people-just-get-on-with-their-own-affairs mold would
> support the stance that Tom describes of Buckley - and
> moreso since FW4 as the issue would now be personal.

I can certainly emphathize with the reaction both you
and Tom have had to Buckley's statements.  Yet while I'm
no defender of either Buckley or his work, I feel the
need to note that people are complex creatures, and that
it would be difficult to find any truly admirable person
who hadn't said or done things one might find unsettling.

I have always admired and respected Thomas Jefferson,
for example, and yet I have had to wrestle with the fact
that the author of the Declaration of Independence
owned slaves throughout his lifetime, and that this
Enlightenment sage had some fairly unenlightened views
regarding the native tribes of the American West.

My conclusion is that I respect Jefferson on the whole,
while acknowledging that I can't agree with everything he
said or did.  To some degree, I feel that way about
Buckley, too -- I'm appalled by the opinions Tom credits
him as having, yet my impression of Buckley was that his
was a conservative voice in the United States who wasn't
tied to the religious right, a Republican who wasn't
afraid to be an intellectual.  I'd like to believe that
aspect of his legacy will be respected and imitated.

> So I throw this question to the people on RACC who are
> reasonably knowledgeable on the subject: Given the type
> of personality that Anal-Retentive Archive Kid has, which
> conservative intellectuals would he be likely to be
> influenced by?

George Will, perhaps?  Or Allan Bloom?

--Easily-Discovered Man Lite
--Likes a little revolution now and then