I ordered the book, and it's a fantastic read.

I'm also very sorry of Mr. Buckley's passing. His collumn is one of the few I read in my Review subscription. I may cancel now.

For all the joking around we all do, there's a definate part of me that wishes I had the civility, intelligence, and character of Mister Buckley.

I never even met him and he'll be missed.

(I have met John McCain twice though. Once in Ireland, he was flying with Sen Lieberman. I went to shake his hand, and he looked at me like I was braindead. I was upset and walked away, and Sen Lieberman caught up to me to say hello. Making up for his comrades rudeness. I have a fondness for Sen Lieberman after that day.)

I've heard it said that charisma is no excuse for leadership... Mr. Buckley had both. I wonder who will rise up to take his place?

Why, FrankJ, of course.

I remember once reading his glorious magazine many years ago while not sleeping through my job as a security guard. And still chuckle at his reply to one exceptionally enraged letter: "Cancel your own damn subscription. Cordially, WFB"

Brilliance on cue. A truly rare gift.

While he seldom eschewed obfuscation, and was often pedantic, the erudite Buckley nonetheless towered over the feckless coterie of nattering nabobs; his ratiocinative disputations stood unassailable atop the apex of intellectual discourse.

Yeah, it's a rehash from yesterday, so what? You wanna get obstreperous?

That was gweat. Mr. Buckley would have been proud.

Mr. Buckley was all class, all the time. One of the small steps that I took on my journey from hate-filled lefty to the redneck who I am today was reading an interview with him in Playboy magazine in 1970 or so (no, I didn't buy it for the articles). Every sentence was grammatically correct. Every paragraph was perfectly constructed. I'm sure that some editing was involved, but it was an astonishing piece of articulation (articulateness? WFB would have known the word). It made it very clear to me that conservatives weren't the unlettered slobs that the glitterati made them out to be.

I didn't learn until recently that English was not WFB's native language. He lived in Mexico until he was twelve or so, and spoke only Spanish, which, of course, makes his verbal prowess even more asonishing.

An avid reader of Buckley for decades, I was, however, a little stumped by the staunch Catholicism that underlied many of his arguments.

I owe Mr. Buckley much and like you I started using "cordially" as my closing in emails as a direct result of reading his wonderful reader mail responses.

To quote R. Emmett Tyrrell: "William F. Buckley, Jr. who died Wednesday, appropriately enough in his study, was one of the most stupendous educated Americans of the 20th century."

He will be missed.

Out of four Barnes & Nobles and one Borders around here (Houston, west of 610), I have so far found two copies of LF for sale - both in a lower corner of "Current Events". I bought one of them.

I am selling tickets to the Thunderdome match over the last one. Bidding starts at $150.