How Blessed a Nation   

Who am I to opine on the passing of a man that I once reflexively reviled yet grew to admire? What might I offer to the river of sentiments springing forth from every venue of a movement he inspired? Nothing, other than a sense of profound loss only mitigated by the necessary affirmation of the ideals he espoused throughout a life of immeasurable consequence. And something, perhaps, from the perspective of one who came in from the cold orthodoxies of the Left. National Review, arising from the capacious and facile imagination of Mr. Buckley, facilitated a slow but purposeful gravitation of this subscriber toward reasoned political positions founded on universal truths and honored traditions. If not for his magazine, the aperture through which so much has been discovered, would I have retained the intellectual blinders preventing my journey along this path of a virtuous conservatism.

How blessed is our nation for having known a man who engaged our minds and enthralled us at every turn. How fortunate will be future generations of Americans that, happening upon his words and works, capture anew the essence and elements of our national greatness which will sustain them in their hours of peril. And now the mighty shadow he cast recedes and we are summoned to enter the garish light. Let us move with the surety and purposeful determination with which he nobly illuminated the darkened corridors of our intellects.
Sean Higgins

02/29 05:43 PM