"I saw, every single day, what the world would be like, if we did not have the influence of William F. Buckley."   

I always felt like an instinctive conservative, even as a child during the 60s.  My parents were instinctive liberals, but I just felt they were wrong.  I had no intellectual basis at the time, unsurprising given my youth and adolescence.  My conservative instincts were confirmed in 1979, when I watched Ronald Reagan's "A Time for Choosing" speech.  But my conservatism was still an instinctual thing, uneducated, ill-formed.  I was passionate in my convictions, but could not evangelize, lacking the intellectual discipline and clueless about where to find such an education.   

Then, while serving in Germany, as a young cavalry officer, patrolling the frontier of freedom on the East German border, personally confronting the barbarity of communism,  I discovered National Review magazine.  And my conservative instincts found their voice! 

Reason, wit, clarity, temperament...all of it flowing from the fount of wisdom with the name "William F. Buckley" at the masthead.  I would take my current copies into the field with me, as we maneuvered across the German countryside.  I often would read it by flashlight, or in the red-lights of a darkened gunnery tower.  I was amazed at how much there was to learn.  What a great professor I had in William F. Buckley, and his contributors to the National Review.  Suddenly, and gradually as it were, I became powerful, combining my youthful instincts with education in the conservative arts, thanks to Professor Buckley, and his disciples.

I saw, every single day, what the world would be like, if we did not have the influence of William F. Buckley.  I saw every day, the outcomes of the force of history that he stood athwart, shouting "Stop!"  I needed no further evidence

I am deeply saddened by his passing, as I was with the death of President Reagan.  It strikes me personally, though I have never met either of them.  As if I had lost a grandfather, a mentor, a friend.  There will never be another like either of them.  They are laughing together at this moment.
David W. Parmly, Knoxville, TN

03/02 06:47 PM