By and About William F. Buckley Jr.

The one nice thing following the sad news of William F. Buckley Jr.'s passing is how many wonderful opportunities we've had to read about his life in the last few days.

Jay Nordlinger's piece (subject link) is another in a lengthening line of "must reads" about Buckley. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

And of course one has to read Mark Steyn's Buckley tribute: "If you were running one of those Frank Luntz machine-wired focus groups to produce the ideal conservative leader for America, I doubt you’d come up with an urbane patrician harpsichordist semi-resident in Switzerland and partial to words like 'eremitical' and 'periphrastic.'... But, as they will tell you in the capitals of post-Communist Eastern Europe, the world is better off because William F. Buckley Jr. stood athwart history and changed its course."

National Review today ran an essay that Buckley wrote about his mother when she passed away in 1985. It's a lovely piece of writing which brings a tear to the eye.

The man seems to have had a very blessed life, for which we can all be grateful.