"Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom".   I think Bill Buckley would express revulsion but enjoy the wit in the application of this Maoist cliché to his legacy.  But it's true.  Unlike the Communist ideology he spent a career opposing, his intellect, philosophy, and wit did in fact launch a counter-revolution replete with many, many inspired counter-revolutionaries.  I am one.

I decided I was a conservative when I was a young teenager, translating my Irish Catholic parents' uncommon Republicanism into a concrete position in reaction to the 60's liberalism all around me.  It was then that I was first exposed to Buckley's writings, and despite his admonitions to acolytes like myself to turn to the work of Friedman, Chambers, Kirk, and other giants of conservatism, it was in fact to Buckley that I turned not only for instruction and wisdom, but for style and approach in expressing my own conservatism to the world about me.  Admittedly, his Irish name and his pronounced Catholicism aided in my attachment to him as an intellectual mentor.  Worse, his famous altercation with Gore Vidal on television in 1968 sealed forever my attachment to him.

Thereafter, in my small way, I became a conservative activist.  Member of the Buckley-founded Young Americans for Freedom, conservative supporter within the Republican Party, President of the Illinois Conservative Union, an attorney in the Reagan administration, and 38 year subscriber to the National Review.  I cannot say whether I would have pursued these things were it not for Buckley, but he is so inextricably linked to both the intellectual development of the conservative movement and leadership of that cause, and so prominent a figure in my own journey through life, I cannot conceive of the course of my life without him.  My shelves are lined with his books, and my garage with old copies of NR.  I was fortunate to meet him several times in my life, each time memorable due to his kind demeanor to folks he barely knew like myself.  Ironically, I attended a reception for Jonah Goldberg last night, and he led us all in a small "Irish wake" for WFB.  The end comes to us all, but it is honestly difficult to imagine a conservative community in my lifetime without his sparkling presence.  My sincere condolences to all of his family and close friends.
John Curry