When our friend William F. Buckley Jr. died on February 27 at 82, the world poured forth a library of grateful recollection. His passing made the cover of Newsweek, The Weekly Standard, and the front page of The New York Times. National Review, which Bill Buckley founded in 1955 when he was only 29, devoted almost all of its issue for March 24 to memorializing his accomplishments —literary, political, journalistic, nautical, oenological, social, musical, philanthropic, gustatory, and philological (that’s the short list). As far as we know, only one or two mephitic breathes of resentment wafted out from the petulant fever wards of political atavism that Bill Buckley had manfully quarantined in his early years at National Review. The overwhelming response interwove admiration, sadness, and gratitude in more or less equal proportions.

Endeavoring to epitomize B ...