I found out this morning that William F. Buckley died Wednesday.

I spent a large part of my youth layin’ on the couch on a Sunday afternoon, usually alone, watching Firing Line on PBS. It was the only conservative show there was back then that laid out a different and maybe more sophisticated view of the world than the one I was getting from the main stream media. He stood erect and resistant, ready to driver a spike into the liberal, collectivist, unthinking, anti-intellectual liberal consensus of the time that took all that old New Deal welfare dependency for granted and smirked at anyone who questioned it. I loved it.

I subscribed to National Review for a time while in college, but let it lapse some time in the late ‘80s when I came to the realization that it wasn’t as much fun to read that stuff as it was to hear Buckley debate someone like his friends John Kenneth Galbraith or Michael Kinsley, or hear him interview folks like F. A. Hayek. I guess it was Buckley’s sense of humor and intellectual vitality that made the show fun and interesting. It was always fun to hear him insult some puffed up liberal intellectual in a way that even the recipient of the barb could barely discern.

I became much more aware and learned to understand my own beliefs while I watched Buckley’s show, but then I moved on and found other people to read and other views of things that opened up the world a bit more. I’ll never forget reading “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas” for the first time. Hunter S. Thompson couldn’t really be described as a purely political writer, but his insights and humor (like in his book about the 1972 elections, The Great Shark Hunt) revealed a part of the human experience to me that was hilarious and fascinating.

Since then I’ve shifted gears a bit and found a wider range of pundits that I enjoy reading or watching. Folks like P.J. O’Rourke, Camille Paglia, or Christopher Hitchens can always be depended on to cut through the tripe of what passes for our political discourse and reveal the steaming, smelly innards of the conventional wisdom du jure. They do it with intellectual humor and wit, purely in Buckley's tradition.

It occurs to me here as I write this that in terms of intellectual vitality and humor, maybe P.J. is the only person that could fill Buckley’s shoes today, but he doesn't seem to be around as much any more. Having said that, Hitchens is the guy whose writings and views I enjoy the most today. I hesitate to call him Buckley’s successor as a public pundit, but it all works for me.

Anyway, rest in peace Bill. Cheers.