04/15/2005
Bill Buckley will be 80 this November 24, which gives me some time to finish the celebratory essay I've been writing in my head since he stabbed the immigration reform movement in the back in 1997 by firing National Review editor John O’sullivan without warning and allowing the immigration issue (and me!) to be purged from the magazine. More recently, there have been signs that NR has been triangulating back toward immigration reform (lite), after a pause presumably to get word from NeoCon Central after 9/11.
The limits to this welcome development are clearly displayed by Buckley’s recent column "Can We Stop Illegals?" in which he insultingly compares the idea of a fence on the southern border to the building of the Berlin Wall and proclaims: no. Needless to say, Buckley remains oblivious to such subtleties such as encouraging self-deportation by altering the incentives keeping illegals here. Scott Fitzgerald famously said there are no second acts in American lives. There has been in Bill Buckley’s — but it’s a farce.
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