Thinking Conservatively

[Today's subject, for no good reason, is William F. Buckley. I've heard the name connected in some vague way to conservative thought and rhetoric most of my life. I'd never read anything he'd written, and only when my interest in Gore Vidal began to emerge a few years ago did I hear anything concrete about him. He and Vidal apparently had a series of televised debates that have become famous; I guess I'll see footage of that tonight. (You will be watching the documentary tonight on PBS, won't you?)]

[This morning, while reading a story about the terms of Katharine Hepburn's will, I clicked on a...something Buckley wrote commenting on the recent publication of Hepburn's authorized biography. The commentary is the first thing of Buckley's that I've ever read, and my first reaction was to say it'll be the last. It's a marvel of assumptions, circular logic, and what I want to call false morality. I may now seek out other of Buckley's writings, to see if the same faulty thinking pervades them, with the goal of improving my own reasoning ability. Is this ostensibly fluffy piece the key I've been looking for to decode the conservative mindset?]

Previously Next

[Later: The above distracted me from the more important fact that I was up until 3 a.m. last night finishing Douglas Coupland's newest, Hey Nostradamus. Unfortunately, I spent the rest of the night thinking about it. Fathers and sons, drug abuse, obession with the past and dread of the future paralyzing the present, love and what it's like at different stages of life; all stuff on which I, as Destiny's Child said, got issues.]