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29 Feb 2008 11:15 am
A Rebel, Not A Heretic
John B. Judis on Buckley. This rings very true:
When he was at officer's training school, Buckley, who was only 18 at
the time, couldn't get by on his good grades and brilliance, and found
himself not only disliked, but on the verge of being flunked out of
officer candidates' school. In the letters he wrote, Buckley revealed a
fear and anguish about his place in the world and how people thought of
him. He got his commission, but he also learned that he had to leaven
his own political and intellectual convictions with a tolerance for
people who didn't share them. He would sometimes condemn their views,
but he would not condemn them. By the time he arrived at Yale, he was
pretty much the Buckley whom we've known for the last sixty
years--witty, arrogant, but always with a certain restraint, even at
times a gentleness and consideration. And I think that same sense of
limits and boundaries--a sense of how far he could and couldn't
go--affected the way he conducted himself politically.
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