Here is Holy Joe’s obit, with its reminder that Buckley helped foist one of the worst senators in US history on us. But here is my favorite line: “[Buckley] rejected extremism. To his everlasting credit, he took on the John Birch Society when it wasn’t popular to do so.”
Of course, it was always popular to criticize the JBS. The thought police love to congratulate each other for their courage. But Lieberman neglects to mention the reason that Buckley sought to expel Robert Welch from civilized society (as he tried to do with Murray Rothbard, Ayn Rand, and other heretics). Welch had criticized the US war on Vietnam. With the Buckleys and the Liebermans of the world, aggressive war and empire are always and everywhere the key issues, and reason enough to seek to destroy dissidents.
