Since his death on February 27th this year, William F. Buckley has been eulogized everywhere, and not only by conservative acolytes – most liberals respected him for his patrician fairness and for his intellectual honesty, especially in his later years. He was one of the first conservatives to opine publicly that President Bush was wrong to invade Iraq.

To my mind Buckley had some living down to deal with too; he was a prominent defender of the universally reviled Joe McCarthy.

I admired him not for his columns in National Review which I never read even in my student days, but for his Socratic dialogues on his television program Firing Line.

Where else on American television in the late 60s could one find such serious and extended discussions on important subjects? British and French television had been doing it for years but in America it was very rare. Even in Canada there was nothing to match Firing Line.

I also admired him for his love of music. How many people take up the harpsichord at the age of fifty and learn to play well enough to perform publicly?

One of the most moving eulogies upon his passing may have been the one written for the February 29th issue of National Review by pianist Larry Perelman, one of Buckley’s close friends; he was with WFB the night before he died.

Paul E. Robinson

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