When partisanship goes too far...

[tagryn]

Ran across a very disappointing comments thread on William F. Buckley's passing over at Eat Our Brains, a blog I usually enjoy. I found the glee at WFB's death very off-putting. Apparently speaking ill of the dead is considered OK by some, if they were politically on the other side.

I considered posting a rebuttal, but I figured, if someone is ideologically so far gone they're taking glee in someone's passing, they're too far gone to reach (by a few words on the Internet, anyway). By way of comparison, I disagreed with Paul Wellstone on most everything, but I felt no joy whatsoever in his passing. I don't think we check class and dignity at the door, just because we disagree with someone's philosophy; regardless of whether you agreed or disagreed with him, WFB was hardly Stalin or Mao.

Comments

[foomf.livejournal.com]

Conservatism has drifted in interesting and not particularly positive directions over the last several decades, and a large part of that drift can be attributed to Buckley's influence.

I especially lay at his feet the transformation of the adjective "liberal" into something that was casually and unthinkingly accepted as the moral equivalent of "child molester".