American public intellectual, conservative author and political commentator (1925–2008)
William F. Buckley, Jr. (November 24 1925 - February 27 2008) was an American author, conservative journalist, who founded the conservative political magazine National Review in 1955 and hosted the television show Firing Line from 1966 until 1999.
From: Wikiquote (CC BY-SA 4.0)
Native Name:
William Frank Buckley, Jr.
Alternative Names:
William Frank Buckley Jr.
•
William Frank Buckley
•
William F. Buckley, Jr.
From Wikidata (CC0)
Showing quotes in randomized order to avoid selection bias. Click Popular for most popular quotes.
2000s
The central question that emerges—and it is not a parliamentary question or a question that is answered by merely consulting a catalog of the rights of American citizens, born Equal—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 so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race. National Review believes that the South's premises are correct. If the majority wills what is socially atavistic, then to thwart the majority may be, though undemocratic, enlightened. It is more important for any community, anywhere in the world, to affirm and live by civilized standards, than to bow to the demands of the numerical majority. Sometimes it becomes impossible to assert the will of a minority, in which case it must give way; and the society will regress; sometimes the numerical minority cannot prevail except by violence: then it must determine whether the prevalence of its will is worth the terrible price of violence.
More people die every year as a result of the war against drugs than die from what we call, generically, overdosing. These fatalities include, perhaps most prominently, drug merchants who compete for commercial territory, but include also people who are robbed and killed by those desperate for money to buy the drug to which they have become addicted.
This is perhaps the moment to note that the pharmaceutical cost of cocaine and heroin is approximately 2 per cent of the street price of those drugs. Since a cocaine addict can spend as much as $1,000 per week to sustain his habit, he would need to come up with that $1,000. The approximate fencing cost of stolen goods is 80 per cent, so that to come up with $1,000 can require stealing $5,000 worth of jewels, cars, whatever. We can see that at free-market rates, $20 per week would provide the addict with the cocaine which, in this wartime drug situation, requires of him $1,000.
"..."fascist" is quite simply a word of disapprobiation. The Communists, you surely have noticed, refer to anyone who disagrees with any...any hemidemimisemiquaver in the Communist line as a fascist. Or a proto-fascist. Or a neo-fascist. It has nothing whatever to do with the political disciplines practiced by Mussolini."
Students who come to college with strong religious convictions will take an active part in one or more . . . undergraduate activities. The majority, however, will unconsciously look to see what the authorities judge to be important. If religion is relegated to the role of a not-too-important sideshow, if its part in our intellectual and emotional tradition is ignored, and if the members of the faculty act with indifference, whether deliberate or unconscious, toward those questions of ultimate import which no discipline can escape and on which religion has had much to say, then it is small wonder that a majority of students will go their way, troubled perhaps and a little uneasy in the absence of answers, upon the assumption that religion does not matter.