I am not a ultra-conservative, I am not an admirer of ultra-conservatives just as I am not an admirer of the ultra lefties. Although I bet I believe a lot of what both lefties and righties believe in. Me, being rather shallow in the sense that I am a headline reader versus the in-depth discussion pieces that I probably should read indicates that I am at the mercy of commentators who, of course, have their own personal political axes they like to grind. The right has the best of the bunch. They are the ones we love to hate, but boy are they good at what they do. Which brings me to what I wanted to say in the first place.

William F. Buckley, as we all know by now died this week. He was the godfather of conservatism. He was its voice, a voice who spouted words that would send me scurrying to find a dictionary. I loved to watch his television show and watch him refer to his clipboard and with his nose in the air throw out some words that I was always surprised that the interviewed person seemed to understand, or did he?

I read today's George Will's, another conservative, very moving good-bye to someone he obviously liked and admired. In the piece Mr. Will quotes one of Mr. Buckley's favorite quotes from Harold Nicolson that I had never heard before but which I will repeat here:

"Only one person in a thousand is a bore, and he is interesting because he is one person in a thousand."

That he liked and repeated the quote tells me a lot about his character.

He wrote many books, some of which were a series of spy novels. I figure if he could write spy novels in between his more erudite writings he had to be a good guy. I think he was.