William F. Buckley is giving up control of National Review, the magazine he helped found fifty years ago to "stand athwart history yelling, 'Stop'!"

I had the pleasure of meeting Bill Buckley at an event I helped organize at the University of Chicago several years ago. As his reputation suggests, he was a true gentleman. What surprised me, though, was how down to earth he was. He was not some god who had descended from Mt. Olympus, but a man who displayed great kindness in interacting with students, some of whom occassionally behaved towards Buckley as Chris Farley's jittery-interviewer character acted towards Paul McCartney on Saturday Night Live ("Re, Re, Remember when you were in the Beatles? That was awesome.").

Buckley's rapport with young people certainly predated this packed-house Chicago lecture. Young Americans for Freedom was established at Buckley's Sharon, Connecticut estate in 1960. He groomed Joe Sobran, Richard Brookhiser, and several other great writers when they were quite young. Several years ago, he made a then twentysomething Rich Lowry his magazine's editor. He even enthusiastically provided an endorsement and encouraging comments for my new book. And now, one of the five men Buckley has designated to people the board controlling National Review is Austin Bramwell, a 2000 graduate of Yale. Some have expressed shock at Mr. Bramwell's appointment. They shouldn't have. William F. Buckley's modus operandi has always been to mentor, cultivate, and promote the talents of young conservatives. At least in that one sense, he has always looked to the future rather than the past.

Dan, I just have a quick question to the last sentence. Did Buckley usually look to the past in all other areas - like argue from a historical point of view for instance? Or conservatives inherently look into the past to understand current times?

The reference in the last line was a reference to the first line. That is to say, some might find it paradoxical that a man who famously sought to "stand athwart history yelling 'Stop'" would serve the future by nourishing so many young conservatives. While liberals so often talk of change and a bridge to the future and all that, conservatives often talk of tradition.

I agree that the level of threat and the cost of reconstruction are both relevant factors in judging whether the Iraq war is 'worthwhile'. That, however, does not untangle Mr. Buckley's statement.

He could argue that 'the benefit of hindsight' has revealed the cause for war to be unfounded. Or he could argue that the cause for war, even if founded, is not worth the current cost. He does neither. Rather, Mr. Buckley uses hindsight to separately criticize both cause and cost without relating one to the other.

Obviously if the cause is unfounded, then any cost is too high – "the bad consequence outweighs the good achieved by 'preempting' a non-existent threat." This trivial insight cannot be Mr. Buckley's intent. Is he now against the war because the cause has turned out to be unfounded? Or is he against the war because the cost has turned out to be greater than the stated cause?

'To retrench' – to defend a position against unreasonable criticism. Guilty as charged.