On Sun, 19 Jan 2003 12:58:00 -0800 (PST) andie nachgeborenen
<andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> writes:
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> Luke Weiger <lweiger at umich.edu> wrote:> No, but he [Judis] is a fan
> of William F. Buckley. jks I'd imagine in the same sense you're a
> fan of Posner.
> By that you mean? That he doesn't agree with Bucklet's politics (as
> I don'ta gree with Posner's), but as admires and respects -- what?
> What's to admire and respect about Big Word Bill, defender of Joseph
> McCarthy? Judge Posner is a major intellectual and literary figure,a
> creative and imaginative scholar, a learned but accessible writer
> who can translate half a dozen disciplines to each other and the
> general public, and has actually made important contributions in
> several of them, and he's pretty darn good at his day job too
> (deciding cases). What's WFB done to merit Judis' or anyone's
> respect? Yet he's a big fan. jks
That's a good question concerning Buckley. I think the answer might be that a lot of people admire his style, which when back when he was in his prime certainly had a lot of flash. As far as substance is concerned, it should be apparent that there is no there, there. Buckley began his career as a political commentator defending the likes of Joe McCarthy, and the rights of Southern states to maintain segregation, if they so wished to keep it. And things got only slightly better after that. Furthermore, even on his own terms, Buckley was never really much of a thinker. Even Judis in his Buckley bio, details Buckley's failed effort to write a book offering a coherent philosophy for the right. That effort failed because Buckley simply was lacking in any such coherent philosophy. Even Buckley has conceded his failures in this regard. In one of his books he reproduces an exchange of letters that he had with JK Galbraith, who had been urging Buckley to take an academic position. Basically, Buckley's reply was that he didn't think it would be worthwhile for him to go into academia because he didn't think that he could produce work comparable to that of a whole host of right-wing thinkers which he then listed.
Jim F.
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