Thank you, George

A Life Athwart History

It will be easy for liberals and others less inspired by the life of Bill Buckley to try to dismiss his legacy. But it will not be honest. The honest fact is that people like Bill Buckley and Milton Friedman dramatically changed the discussion about government in the 1950's and 1960's and uniquely, at the time, challenged a Keynesian economic model that has since fallen into disrepute.

The legacy of Bill Buckley and Milton Friedman and other fellowtravelers is one long refuation of any self-righteous notion that any liberal or anyone else in America "knew what was right all along."

They didn't. Noone does. And some people have ideas so powerful and so generally looking in the right direction that they deserve a moment on our part to pause and reflect on the humility of the contributions that each of us has to offer to the world and why none of us should take our opinions so seriously as to think them unchallengeable, despite our vainest attempts to make them indestructable.

Freedom is a mightily indestructable idea, I must say. But the freedom that matters most is that which allows and makes us responsible for engaging a neverending debate about the role of everything in life, government among those things.

There is no end to that debate. And there is no ruling consensus in favor of forcing our way about things that will bring it to some artifical close.

It just goes on.

And thank goodness that Bill Buckley was there to add a verse.