More on WFB Jr., RIP

From Mark Steyn:
"I liked the way Rich put it at the 50th anniversary gala, after the announcement of some highly technical-bureaucratic change in Bill's title or responsibilities: "This is still Bill Buckley's National Review, and it will always be Bill Buckley's National Review." Just so."

From NR's Ramesh Ponnuru:
"Bill's kindness and generosity of spirit really were remarkable. He was as interested in listening to the college senior to his left as to the former secretary of state to his right. I knew him in his old age, when his answer to the question, "How are you doing?" was likely to be, "Decomposing." Even when his body was weary, though, his eyes retained a preternatural youthfulness. A treatise could probably be written about the role those eyes played in the making of modern America..."

NR's Rob Long:
"Here's really, the only thing I can say about the passing of this eloquent, fearless, polymath giant: words fail."

The liberal Rick Perlstein:
"He was a good and decent man. He knew exactly what my politics were about—he knew I was an implacable ideological adversary—yet he offered his friendship to me nonetheless. He did the honor of respecting his ideological adversaries, without covering up the adversarial nature of the relationship in false bonhommie. A remarkable quality, all too rare in an era of the false fetishization of "post-partisanship" and Broderism and go-along-to-get-along. He was friends with those he fought. He fought with friends. These are the highest civic ideals to which an American patriot can aspire."

Conservative author Peter Rodman:
"Reading all the tributes that have poured in, one is struck by two things. First is that Bill’s life was a vivid refutation of the notion that great men don’t make a difference in history. Second was his personal decency, graciousness, and warmth. That is why so many of the tributes have been not only of respect, but of love."

The American Spectator's R. Emmett Tyrrell:
"Bill is famous for standing athwart history and shouting "Stop!" Today, I wish I could stand athwart history and shout "No! Don't tell us Bill's gone." But of course he is, but he'll always be with us intellectually and I guess I'll never be as successful at shouting "No!" to history as Bill was at shouting "Stop!"

William F. Buckley Jr., RIP

More here, from the editors of the magazine he founded.

For me, I am stunned. We conservatives knew he couldn't live forever. But we wished he could. WFB Jr. was a living legend. I corresponded occasionally with him, on the research and writing I have done on the history of conservatism over the years. He was as erudite and helpful and wise and full of knowledge in private, in encouraging younger conservatives like myself and literally millions of others, as he was in public. I can't believe he's gone. Others have said this, but they're right: he literally changed history (for the better). As George Will has said, before there was Ronald Reagan, there was Barry Goldwater; but before there was Goldwater, there was National Review magazine; and before there was NR, there was William F. Buckley Jr. We shall miss him terribly. But we shall carry on, thanks in part to the foundation he laid. RIP, Bill Buckley.