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Nov. 6, 2009
Rabbi Berel Wein: Choosing to hear
JWisdom.com Zero to 1/60th: How to Empower An Hour with Gavriel Aryeh Sande (7 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick The mullahs' big week
Suzanne Fields A Fallen Wall for Fallen Man
Nov. 5, 2009
The Kosher Gourmet: Three scrumptious -- but simple -- butternut squash dishes
JWisdom.com Hidden Hints: Unlocking Faith & Prayer with Rabbi Jay Yaacov Schwartz (10 minutes)
Nov. 4, 2009
Tom Hamburger and Kim Geiger: Should prayers be covered?
JWisdom.com When God played peacemaker With Rabbi Sroy Levitansky (5 minutes)
Nov. 3, 2009
Martin Peretz: Beware, Barack. Beware, Rahm. Beware, Axelrod
JWisdom.com Are you are closet idolater? With Sara Yoheved Rigler (10 minutes)
Nov. 2, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The Holocaust is now on Facebook
JWisdom.com Abraham's Strange Change With Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer (5 minutes)
Oct. 30, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Secret to Immortality
Caroline B. Glick Silencing dissent in America
Oct. 29, 2009
Lini S. Kadaba: Do tactics avert flu or reduce humanity?
JWisdom.com We Must Revamp our Religious Vocabulary With Gavriel Aryeh Sanders ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 28, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: Atheists in Bubbleland
JWisdom.com Why what we wear impacts who we are With Rabbis Mordechai Becher, Menachem Golberger and Aliza Bulow ( 10 minutes)
Oct. 27, 2009
Paul Greenberg: The United Nations Is Outraged Again, Or: Department of Mideast Static
JWisdom.com The Science of Love With Rabbi Jonathan Rietti ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 26, 2009
The Jewish Ethicist by Rabbi Dr. Asher Meir: Damaging disclosures with a twist
JWisdom.com Wisdom and Wonks With Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 23, 2009
Rabbi David Aaron: Are you ready for the ultimate pleasure?
JWisdom.com Watermark and oneness with Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 4 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick Stop using limited powers in a way that expands our enemies' advantages over us
Oct. 22, 2009
Steven Emerson: Terror Cases Share Desire to Kill Americans
JWisdom.com No More More Family Fights --- Really? By Sarah Chana Radcliffe ( 5 minutes)
Oct. 21, 2009
Tonya Alanez: Holocaust denier sues survivor, calling Auschwitz memoir 'vicious lies'
JWisdom.com Meditating Jewishly: A Panacea for Success by Sarah Yoheved Rigler ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 20, 2009
Dennis Prager: Obama and Dalai Lama: Why Israel Worries about U.S. President
JWisdom.com Abraham was not religious By Rabbi Yitzchok Fingerer ( 6 minutes)
Oct. 19, 2009
JWisdom.comWhy Good People Do Bad Things By Rabbi Eytan Feiner ( 7 minutes)
Oct. 16, 2009
Rabbi Yonason Goldson: The Perfect Number
JWisdom.com Hearing Voices By Rabbi Sroy Levitansky ( 5 minutes)
Caroline B. Glick How Turkey was lost
Oct. 15, 2009
Jeff Jacoby: Peace vs. the 'peace process'
JWisdom.com: Former MTV producer and stand-up comedian Rabbi Lawrence Hajioff: Taming a Control Freak (A VERY fast 15 minutes)
Oct. 29, 2003
Mortimer B. Zuckerman: Graffiti On History's Walls (MUST-READ!)

Jewish World Review Feb. 29, 2008 / 23 Adar I 5768

William F. Buckley, RIP

By Linda Chavez


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http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Conservatism lost one of its most influential voices this week. William F. Buckley Jr. — author, editor, television host, and one of America's most important public intellectuals — died in his home Wednesday at 82. Buckley shaped the modern conservative movement into a force in American politics, and he so did with equal measure of charm and intellectual rigor.


Like many conservatives, I was influenced by Buckley, although as much in a personal as political fashion. I remember the first time I met him. I had recently been nominated by President Ronald Reagan to be director of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, along with three new commissioners. All of us were Democrats who shared President Reagan's antipathy for racial preferences, but our nominations were in trouble. Liberal interest groups were fighting tooth and nail to keep us off the commission, and the White House decided we should take our case directly to the American people via television appearances. Buckley obliged by inviting me and two of my fellow nominees on his popular show, "Firing Line," which was then taped in New York.


I was very nervous, never having been on national television before. But Buckley was disarming, with his characteristic wide-eyed grin — that is, until the interview started. Suddenly, he was transformed into this intimidating presence on stage. He peppered my colleagues with questions, and then turned his attention to me.


While I heard words coming out of his mouth, I had no idea what he was asking because most of the question was in Latin. I must have looked like a deer in the headlights, but I managed to say something about the importance of judging people as individuals, not as members of racial or ethnic groups.


Afterwards, he complimented us on our performances. "It would have been a lot easier if all the questions had been in English," I bantered.


He raised his eyebrow, with that famous twinkle in his eye, and said, "Linda, I've taught you the most important lesson you will ever learn about being interviewed. Ignore the question you're asked and make your best argument. Your aim isn't to please the interviewer but to influence the audience."


It was great advice. And Buckley was certainly a master at influencing audiences. For years, Buckley entertained Americans — even those who vehemently disagreed with him — by making them think. But perhaps his greatest contribution to American conservatism was in taking on the prejudices and bigotry that occasionally infect the Right.


Early in his career, he took on the John Birch Society for its anti-Semitic rants; and in 1991, he wrote a long essay called "In Search of Anti-Semitism" for National Review magazine. In it, he took on two fellow conservatives: Joseph Sobran, who had been an editor at NR, and Pat Buchanan, whose columns and remarks about Jews and the Middle East had taken on a nasty edge. Buckley said he found it "impossible to defend Pat Buchanan against the charge that what he did and said during the period under examination amounted to anti-Semitism, whatever it was that drove him to say and do it…"


Words mattered to William F. Buckley Jr., and he made them matter to the rest of us as well, even when we sometimes needed an unabridged dictionary by our side to read his "Notes & Asides" in NR. I'm still not sure what he meant by "to immanentize the eschaton," a phrase he once used in the magazine — and apparently I am not alone, as an amusing correspondence reproduced in his last book, "Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription: Notes & Asides from National Review," reveals. You never knew with Buckley whether he was pulling your leg or sincerely trying to expand your vocabulary.


I never managed to thank him for the valuable lesson he taught me at the beginning of my public career. But perhaps it's not too late: Requiescas in pace, amice.

Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.


JWR contributor Linda Chavez is President of the Center for Equal Opportunity. Her latest book is "Betrayal: How Union Bosses Shake Down Their Members and Corrupt American Politics". (Click HERE to purchase. Sales help fund JWR.)

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© 2006, Creators Syndicate

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