Buckley’s Mix

Best Unwritten Books

The Transformation of America. This book extends Daniel Walker Howe’s study of the Whig Party backwards to the Federalists and forward to the Republican Party of the 19th century and today, to identify a form of conservatism that is nationalistic and economic, and which is far removed from the Jeffersonian libertarian tradition. It recognizes the need [...]

The Sensibility of the Baroque

From Morris West: “Love in all its forms and degrees is a surrender of bodies in the small death of the bed, the surrender of the spirit in the great death, which is the moment of union between God and man.” The Devil’s Disciple. File under Crashaw, Richard, and Bernini, Gian Lorenzo.

On the Feast of Charles the Martyr

We remember today Charles I, who was led to the scaffold 360 years ago today, outside the Banqueting House in Whitehall. “He nothing common did or mean, Upon that memorable scene,” observed Marvell. In fact, we don’t really remember his death, except perhaps as a step in the triumph of Whig principles. But as the King’s [...]

Google Street View…

has finally gotten around to shooting my house. And, thank God, they didn’t catch me lying drunk on the sidewalk. That was someone else…

Blago: Why we should regret the impeachment.

1. His impeachment is a provocation to Serbo-Americans everywhere! (I think you know what this means, you Kosovar-Americans…) 2. He brought politicians and politics into disrepute. 3. He reminded me of Elvis. 4. He will be replaced by someone more corrupt. 5. We deserved him.

A Work of Spiritual Charity

Anyone who finds himself in Pittsburgh, as I do tonight, should not lament, but should rejoice in his ability to perform a work of spiritual charity. What I did was to speak to friends in Hawaii and Florida to tell them what the temperature is here. I performed a simlar work of charity, many years [...]

Institute for the Psychological Sciences

A pleasant chat today with Fr Chares Sikorsky of the Institute for the Psychological Sciences in Arlington VA. What has always astounded me are the people to whom those who are troubled look for help. The Ethics Advisor at Esquire magazine, the law professor, the marriage counsellor (who is really a divorce counsellor). Wilde said that divorces [...]

Beyond Satire

Don’t you hate it when someone tells you that things are so crazy that they’re beyond satire? That sounds like a challenge. So how to satirize the bailout? Well, the idea behind satire is to take a bit of popular wisdom and extend it to the point of nuttiness. In the case of the bailout, [...]

John Updike R.I.P

Over at NRO Updike’s novels are recalled fondly. I won’t miss them. It wasn’t so much that they dealt with ordinary life–they’re grandiose in theme, compared with Carol Shield’s minimalism. It’s rather that one didn’t see in Updike a moral core of compelling interest. “Yes, that is just how things are, here in Stamford, in [...]

On What Is Owed Caroline Kennedy

America has failed to live up to its promise, having failed Caroline Kennedy. We took her father away from her, it is said, and it was churlish indeed to deny her a seat in the Senate. But doesn’t this ignore Aristotle Onassis? Henry Kissinger was once asked, “what would have happened had it been Nikita [...]

On Culture

When I hear the word “pistol,” I reach for my culture. When I hear the word “aquaculture,” I reach for my water pistol.

Rabbie Burns II

The 250th anniversary of his birth today, and nothing of Burns on WETA, that I heard in any event. Mozart instead, as this was his birthday too. After listening to Mozart for a spell I feel just as moved as if I had heard a talented typist give a concert on a Remington. When I [...]

The Best Joke in the World

Some years back, after I had written a book about laughter, I appeared on a number of call-in radio shows. Inevitably I’d be asked to tell a joke. I bristled a little at this, as joke-telling seems to me a mark of an inferior wit. But when pressed I would tell what I think the [...]

Analytic Philosophy: A Wittgenstinian Joke

When I talk to natural lawyers, I feel like a man who has been thrown up on a strange beach, where he understands only one in three words spoken to him. One reason for this is that, as an undergraduate, I studied analytic philosophy–the ordinary language philosophy that dominated the philosophy world 40 years ago. Since [...]

Wus Nation

One hundred and ten years ago, Theodore Roosevelt gave his “Strenuous Life” speech in Chicago. Here’s how he began. “I wish to preach, not the doctrine of ignoble ease, but the doctrine of the strenuous life, the life of toil and effort, of labor and strife; to preach that highest form of success which comes, [...]

Grave Robbers and Coal Miners

Sir Isaiah Berlin famously distinguished between two kinds of intellectuals. A fox, like Berlin, is a polymath who can talk intelligently (and amusingly) about an endless variety of things. By contrast, a hedgehog burrows down and makes himself the master of a single subject. A cute distinction, and one that served Berlin well, after he [...]

Rabbie Burns

Sunday is the 250th anniversary of Burns’ birth, and a good time to ask why we should care. His poetry seldom rises higher than the level of amusing doggerel, and in his personal life he was the very model of poets-behaving-badly. At school, we were made to memorize the poetry because (gag me) it was [...]

Meet Ari

Welcome

And so I begin to blog, the last person on my block to do so…