WFB: A Vantage Point for the World
WFB and National Review were the armored vehicles in which I rode through my college days in the late 60’s. I had WFB’s photo on my bulletin board instead of the Beatles and walked back from Berkeley, Haight-Ashbury, and The Graduate (up the steps of Lone Mountain) to the new issues of National Review. His books I read with a notepad and a dictionary and, subsequently, studded my conversation with the words I picked up—“jejune” was an early favorite. A reading list also emerged, and I found my way to Burke, Hayek and Russell Kirk. I played the 10th anniversary album over and over, particularly WFB’s speech. His reference to the schoolmaster’s warning in Scott-King’s Modern Europe: "I think it would be very wicked indeed to do anything to fit a boy for the modern world", prompted me to hunt for a vantage point from which to judge modernity on terms other than its own. Finally, WFB pointed me to Ronald Reagan, and I left San Francisco and spent the Spring 1968 term working for RR in the Oregon primary.
I never met WFB, but I “owe him” and shall, therefore, pray for his entry into the “perpetual light.”
02/29 04:55 PM
