Someone asked me a few weeks ago if I  would ever consider going on one of those annual National Review cruises. Weeks trapped aboard a ship with a bunch of earnest conservatives discussing politics? Not my cup of tea. But I did admit it might be worth it just for the chance to meet William F. Buckley, Jr.

Alas, that chance will now never come.

 William F. Buckley was my first exposure to conservatism. In my early twenties I found myself becoming increasing disillusioned with the vaguely democratic socialist  political philosophy I had embraced since my teens. One day I stumbled on to a collection of Buckley's essays at a used book store. Despite my left-leaning sensibility, I had always had a sneaking admiration for the conservative gadfly, largely from watching "Firing Line" with my great-grandparents as a child. So I decided to buy the book, The Jeweler's Eye, in hopes of getting a new perspective on politics. It was a revelation to me. At the time, the conservative tone was being largely set by Rush Limbaugh, who was a bit obnoxious for my taste and actually served to keep me away from the Right. Buckley's writing was anything but obnoxious. It was clever, erudite, and witty, and he more than anyone else set me on the road to conservatism.

More than anyone, William F. Buckley, Jr. is responsible for turning American conservatism into a viable intellectual movement. Prior to National Review, the only truly cerebral political thinkers tended to come from the Left. Buckley changed all that, employing a wide range of brilliant writers in those early years at his magazine. Whittaker Chambers, Russell Kirk, James Burnham, and even future left-wingers such as Garry Wills and Joan Didion all contributed pieces. It would be difficult even for those on the other side to argue that these were not serious thinkers.

It was not enough for Buckley to focus on the serious thinkers. It was necessary to purge the unserious thinkers who contributed nothing of value to the conservative movement he was trying to build. Birchers, Randians, anti-Semites, and others on the fringe were not welcome at his publication. Hugh Kenner, a frequent contributor to National Review, told The Washington Post, “Without Bill — if he had decided to become an academic or a businessman or something else — without him, there probably would be no respectable conservative movement in this country.”

While Buckley helped shape and define America's conservative ideology, he was no slave to it. He was not afraid of being a contrarian, and was willing to put forth opinions that alienated him at times from the very movement he created. A small example was from one of his last columns, in which he admitted that, given the chance, he would probably ban cigarettes in the U.S., even thought he acknowledged such a ban would violate his own belief in the market system. Inconsistent, perhaps even hypocritical? Yes, but refreshing, as was obviously written by an honest, thoughtful human being, not some ideological automaton.

In recent years, Buckley found himself at odds with the bulk of the Right on the subject of Iraq. He admitted he would not have supported the U.S. invasion had he known how it would have turned out, and wrote against the troop surge of last year. The effort to impose democracy on the Arab world by force struck him as unsound, and he doubted if it would be worth it in the end. This led to frequent battles with Norman Podhoretz, an advocate of a very aggressive, very Wilsonian American foreign policy. According to a report in The New Republic, seagoing righties on one of the National Review cruises complained loudly that Buckley was a "coward" and perhaps a bit senile because he wasn't willing to sign-on wholeheartedly to Podhoretz's great Middle Eastern crusade. Gratitude and respect are apparently no longer conservative values.

Despite my great admiration for William F. Buckley, Jr. as a political thinker, what truly makes me a fan was the man himself. In our dressed-down, dumbed-down century everyone is supposed to be "'jes folks." That was not Buckley. He was an elite and made no bones about it. We live in a time when (for example) an Ivy League-educated talk-show hostess who clerked at the Supreme Court manages to think of herself as part of "the people" and not a member of the elites, perhaps because she plays mediocre country music when going to commercial. Buckley, on the other hand, loved J.S. Bach and once built his own harpsichord and played it at Carnegie Hall.  In 2004, conservatives childishly mocked John Kerry for speaking French and representing the "wine and brie" set, implying this made him some sort of snob unfit to serve as President. (His politics are what made him unfit, not his tastes.) Back in 1993, Buckley defended Bush Sr. from accusations from democrats that he was too much of a snob and "out of touch" to be President. Buckley noted that Bush wasn't really much of a snob, though maybe he himself was, and went on the note the many ways in which he was "out of touch" with "the people", such as never having attended a major league sporting event to never having watched Oprah, whose name he could not even recall. She was merely the "black lady who is alternately fat and thin." As one who prefers Haydn to hillbilly, Beaujolais to Bud, and being waterboarded to watching team sports, Buckley represented an ideal.

Perhaps his most admirable trait was his ability to maintain friendships across the political aisle. Most famous was his long-lasting friendship with liberal economist John Kenneth Galbraith, and was on good terms with many other left-wing thinkers. Conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks observed that when they spent time together, Buckley seldom talked about politics, preferring to discuss "literature, history, theology, philosophy and the charms of the peculiar people he had known." Perhaps this is why he had no trouble having friends he disagreed with on the issues: Despite being a political thinker, Buckley knew politics isn't everything.

With Buckley's passing, the conservative movement is now a duller, gloomier place. Who has risen in the right-wing ranks in recent years to compare with him? No one comes to mind, just a small horde of radio talkers, angry bloggers, would-be TV pundits, and preach-to-the-converted writers, all ranging very widely in intellect and skill. Even worse, as noted in The Economist, the "crackpots" Buckley exiled are "beginning to define conservatism once again." The fact that even a marginal Republican presidential candidate could enjoy widespread support among American Nazis, skinheads, and other filth is not a good sign for GOP and serious conservatism. To once again quote the the aforementioned British newsmagazine, "The movement has never needed a new William F. Buckley more than it does today."