Growing up in another country, he WAS American conservatism for me.

Way back when I was a kid, there were only 3 conservatives visible across the U.S. media landscape – the 2 tokens tolerated by liberals as signs of their openess…Safire at the NYT, and Will at the Post/ABC…and the heroic Buckley, who compelled the respect of liberals by sheer charm and force of intellect.

Week after week on “Firing Line” he would confound the smugness of a then preeminent liberal elitism…his mishiveous grin as he would leisurely lean back in his chair with legs crossed to make a point, and then…leaning forward…oh-so-politely eviscerate his unwitting victim.

In contrast to the “upper-class twit of the year” conservatives I despised at home, his was a conservatism to admire…iconocolastic, relentlessly searching and intellectually rigourous. Case in point, his support for the decriminalization of marijuana.

It is very sad that he has passed, as there seems to have passed with him an era of greatness in American political discourse.

Damn, now that pointy-headed twit George Will will claim to be the dean of the Right!