Addendum to WFB Remembrance

Very briefly, David Brooks has a uniquely self-deprecating and warm-spirited retrospective up today at the New York Times, and I couldn't help but be touched by the spirit of the man he conveys in these few spare paragraphs:

Buckley’s greatest talent was friendship. The historian George Nash once postulated that he wrote more personal letters than any other American, and that is entirely believable. He showered affection on his friends, and he had an endless stream of them, old and young. He took me sailing, invited me to concerts and included me at dinners with the great and the good.

He asked my opinion about things, as he did with all his young associates, and he worked hard on polishing my writing. My short editorials would come back covered with his red ink, and if I’d written one especially badly there might be an exasperated comment, “Come on, David!”

His second great talent was leadership. As a young man, he had corralled the famously disputatious band of elders who made up the editorial board of National Review. He changed the personality of modern conservatism, created a national movement and expelled the crackpots from it.

He led through charisma and merit. He was capable of intellectual pyrotechnics none of us could match. But he also exemplified a delicious way of living.

What an important lesson for us all to remember about Buckley's life and persona: his mentorship, his dedication to friendship and the true civility that can only be sustained through a sincere and meticulous cultivation of the best qualities in one's friends -- and never tiring of making the effort. Those arts of friendship and mentorship are too often neglected and our political institutions suffer as a result: they require real investment in our fellow citizens, and our political discourse erodes whenever we shirk the duty.