Weekend roundup of Encounter authors in print and online media:

The Unbought Grace of Life, City Journal, by Myron Magnet
“When I saw a headline a few months ago, A WORLD WITHOUT BILL BUCKLEY, my blood ran cold. A smaller, drabber world indeed, I thought. The appropriately adulatory text (a book review, as I recall) calmed me down, but anyone who had seen Bill recently knew that the smaller, drabber world was at hand…”

William F. Buckley Jr., Remembered, FrontPage Magazine, by David Horowitz
“Dear Bill,

It’s been twenty years since we both went up to Dartmouth to speak in support of the Darthmouth Review students whose battle was an early harbinger of the conservative tide that it is sweeping the campuses today…”

Man of Manifold Marvels, National Review Online, by Norman Podhoretz
“Nearly half a century ago, when I had only just joined the staff of Commentary as a lowly assistant editor, I scored a great coup by persuading Dwight Macdonald, one of the liveliest and wittiest polemicists of the day, to write an article about the first ten issues of a new magazine called National Review...”

Buckley Wasn’t a Conservative Catholic, Get Religion, by Mark Stricherz
“The death of William F. Buckley Jr. raises the question of what journalists mean when they use words such as conservative and liberal. Buckley was a Catholic and a conservative. But was he a Catholic conservative?…”

and more…

Midweek roundup of Encounter authors in print and online media:

15 Years at War, National Review Online, by Andrew C. McCarthy
“On the morning of February 26, 1993, Islamic militants steered a nondescript Ryder van through the winding darkness of the parking garage under the World Trade Center. They had spent years planning this moment in secret meetings at mosques and jailhouses, in rural outposts that served as paramilitary camps, and in safehouses where explosive compounds were mixed in makeshift labs…”

A Lesson from Venezuela, Town Hall, by Thomas Sowell
”People on the left often use other countries as examples of things that we should do. If other countries have a government-run medical system, then we should have one too, they say. If other countries control prices, then we should control prices — or so the reasoning goes…”

Defending Our Life and Liberty, The Weekly Standard, by Leon Kass
”As in his previous State of the Union addresses, the president’s call for a ban on human cloning was greeted by considerable applause from both sides of the aisle. But Congress has so far failed to pass any anti-cloning legislation, and unless a new approach is adopted, it will almost certainly fail again…”

Yes We Can’t, City Journal, by Fred Siegel
“Aging baby boomers see in Barack Obama’s down-the-line liberal voting record the promise of a left-wing revival. The college students and twentysomethings of the Millennial Generation see in him a way of pushing the quarrelsome, narcissistic baby boomers off the stage. Someone is bound to be disappointed by this extraordinary performance artist…”

and more…

(Originally posted on Roger’s Rules)

This morning, I got the very sad news that my friend William F. Buckley Jr. died earlier today. He was 82. I cannot say that the news was entirely unexpected—Bill had been seriously ill for months—but it was nevertheless shocking. I am one of a host of Bill’s friends who contributed a few words about him to NRO. I’d like also to share some portions of the review I wrote of his “literary autobiography,” Miles Gone By, partly because it allows me to speak about him in the present tense:

“My God, he does everything,” my friend said. “Skis, plays the harpsichord, sails across the Pacific, writes novels …” I was chatting with one of the foremost jurists of our age, a man who is himself hardly innocent of superlative achievement. But when William F. Buckley, Jr.’s, new omnibus came up in conversation, my friend declared himself disgusted at the spectacle of so much energy and accomplishment.

By “disgusted” he of course meant “awed,” and I knew what he meant. The skiing, the harpsichord, the sailing, etc., are mere avocations. The main events are National Review, Firing Line, a syndicated column, and four-plus decades on the lecture circuit (seventy engagements a year: ponder that). How does he do it?

Miles Gone By is subtitled “A Literary Autobiography.” It isn’t really an autobiography, if for no other reason than that Mr. Buckley is much too interested in the world around him to dwell on himself. In an amusing piece about managing the tedium of social life (itself worth the price of the volume), he recalls the French political philosopher Bertrand de Jouvenal telling him that “every subject in the whole world is more interesting than oneself.” This was, Mr. Buckley winks, “some years before writing his autobiography.”

Miles Gone By is as near as Mr. Buckley will ever come writing an autobiography. He plays some part in all of the dozens of pieces he has collected here, but usually as a foil for the exhibition of another personality, event, or idea. In this sense, Miles Gone By is less autobiography than heterobiography: the gaze is cast firmly outwards, not inward. The model is not Augustine or even Montaigne; it certainly is not (thank God) Rousseau. What we have here is a chronicle of things done, not passions suffered, of people met, not feelings scrutinized, of issues debated, not emotions spent. That is doubtless one reason the book is such fun to read: it has the velocity and freshness of piqued curiosity—I almost said of a well-made martini.

read on…

This week National Review Online presents Peter Robinson’s 5 part Uncommon Knowledge interview with Thomas Sowell. Today, see Chapter 3 in which Sowell takes on tenure in higher education. Or play catch up with Chapters 1 and 2 and watch Sowell debunk the conventional wisdom of mainstream feminism and the media-fueled ‘flat’ household income fallacy.

read on…

Hanson Victor Davis Hanson discusses the war, radical Islam and Iran with the Hoover Institute’s Peter Robinson: here.

If you’ve got some time on your hands have a look at this video of Theodore Dalrymple on Britain, the good life and the state of our culture.

It’s official: the Gray Lady has consummated her romance with Tariq Ramadan, political Islam’s emissary to the West and, perhaps more importantly, the grandson of Muslim Brotherhood founder Hassan Al-Banna. After a string of puff pieces, flattering reviews, and generally adulatory notices, the Book Review has opened her pages to Ramadan’s own writings. Titled “Reading the Koran,” this screed might better be understood as “Reading the Koran Without Sweating the Scary/Violent Stuff.”

Try this excerpt on for size:

The Koran is a book for both heart and mind. In nearness to it, a woman or a man who possesses a spark of faith knows the path to follow, knows her or his own inadequacies. No sheik is needed, no wise man, no confidant. Ultimately, the heart knows. This was what the Prophet answered when he was asked about moral feelings. In the light of the Book, he said, “Inquire of your heart.” And should our intelligence stray into the complexities of the different levels of reading, from applied ethics to the rules of practice, we must never forget to clothe ourselves in the intellectual modesty that alone can reveal the secrets of the Text.

read on…