How We On The Darker Side Will Remember Buckley

We live in era when Barack Obama must lead a lynch-mob to the home of Louis Farrakhan in order to allay the suspicions of certain white pundits. Meanwhile, these fools are tripping over each other to praise a dude who,if it were up to him, would have kept black folk in the grips of homeland terrorists. Witness the mindless bigotry of the now departed William F. Buckley:

The central question that emerges…is whether the white community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail politically and culturally, in areas in which it does not predominate numerically. The sobering answer is YES — the white community is entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race.

That's from the National Review in 1957. I want to get really clear on something. For a lot of folks in the commentariat the Civil Rights movement, Jim Crow, segregation is essentially theory. It is an abstract notion to them, because for the most part they don't know any black people outside the ones working in their mailrooms (this is less true at newspapers, by the way). But for people like me Buckley's words are not hypothetical. We understand  what "such measures as are necessary" has always meant. I am never happy to see someone die. But when Farrakhan's time comes, I don't expect his death to be a waiver against all the hate he's spewed in his lifetime. I don't expect the Million March to indemnify him against denunciation. But Buckley, of course, is from the other side of the tracks. Man, I tell you, it's good to be the king.

Oh well, I need cheering up. Here's how you handle death. Talk to 'em Hitch: