The passing of conservative icon and National Review founder William F. Buckley has given TNR contributors pause to reflect on his legacy. John B. Judis, one of Buckley’s biographers, writes that “the key to Buckley is to understand that he was a rebel, but not a heretic.” On The Plank, James Kirchick pays homage to “the voluminous service [Buckley] performed on behalf of the English language,” and Buckley’s old friend and political foil, James K. Galbraith remembers him as “a magnificent human being, by any standard.” And, from the TNR archives, Sam Tanenhaus discusses the disintegration of “the movement Buckley did so much, perhaps more than anyone else, to create,” while Johann Hari encounters a disenchanted Buckley on a cruise ship and, in what makes a fine eulogy, observes that “the great battles of his life are already won.”
--Ben Crair