Wednesday, February 27, 2008

Buckley Dead, Rehmke's Wrists Broken

Founder of modern conservatism William F. Buckley has passed away at 82 (as if conservatism didn’t have enough problems at this juncture in history) — and as if that weren’t painful enough, my “no” debater for next week’s Debate at Lolita Bar (on the question “Should We Deport All the Illegal Aliens?”), libertarian Greg Rehmke, has broken both his wrists and will likely have to be replaced in the debate. I’ve got feelers out, but if NYC-area potential replacements (for this completely non-paying gig) want to e-mail me, I’ll try to assess my options in the next day or so and get back to you.

UPDATE 2/28/08: Replacement debater found.  Will officially announce tonight.

(Finding new intellectual leader of conservative movement: trickier.)

5 comments:

dave said...

Look at it this way. Conservativism’s loss is Athiesm’s win.

Todd Seavey said...

While religion — or more accurately, the existence of God (since I think religion sometimes has social benefits) — is indeed one of the issues on which I disagree with conservatives, it’s hard to see the loss of Buckley as a win in any sense (other than serving to remind us while he was still intellectually active that he’s led a very productive life).

And in fact, since this blog’s “Month Without God” ends tomorrow, I will start its “Month Without Buckley” this Saturday, March 1, and use that time to ask where conservatism goes from here — and exactly which parts of conservatism are themselves worth conserving.

jenny said...

how’d he break both wrists?

Todd Seavey said...

He hasn’t written to explain that, so I suspect typing hurts.

I assume he was cuffed too tightly by government goons or was trying to carry a displaced family across the border or something heroic like that, or fell while carrying a plasma TV maybe.

Meredith said...

My guess is that he was late on a loan payment….