William F. Buckley, Jr.  died last night.  America has lost one of its greatest and most unique minds and personalities.

Bill Buckley was a true conservative.  He hardly reflected the neo-con mindless jingoism that prevails today, glorifying simplistic answers to difficult questions by contending that if it’s the “American Way,” it must be right. 

While some may wonder how I can admire William F. Buckley, it has to do with respect rather than agreement.  His politics were a world away from mine, yet he brought such wit and intelligence to his views that it was impossible not to admire the man.  Nor was I alone in my admiration.

His friends included such liberals as John Kenneth Galbraith and Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., who despised Buckley’s “wrathful conservatism,” but came to admire him for his “wit, his passion for the harpsichord, his human decency, even for his compulsion to epater the liberals.”

I have two Bill Buckley stories to tell.  Bill Buckley was the honoree the year before I graduated law school.  For reasons unknown, I was asked to take care of him while he was in the Green Room awaiting his time to go on stage.  There was a piano in the room, and after having a drink, he sat down.  He played and sang a bawdy song.  No, it was filthy.  But very funny.

I watched in awe.  I knew quite well who William F. Buckley was.  I knew about his politics.  But I had never met anyone with his patrician manner, his vocabulary or such a twinkle in his eye.  And then he played piano and sang dirty songs.  And he did so well.  It was extraordinary.

This was the first time in my life that I had met a renaissance man.  Bill Buckley was a renaissance man.

Many years later, I learned that one of my friends was producing his television show, Firing Line.  I went to watch the show being taped, and my friend put me in the Green Room with his guest, John Kenneth Galbraith.  Unlike Buckley, Galbraith reflected my views toward economics and politics, but he had the ability to create the ideas that someone like me could only agree with.

I stood there was Buckley and Galbraith greeted each other, like prize fighters who had the utmost respect for the other’s skills, but also a certain camaraderie that came from knowing that they were of a different order than the rest of us.  The show that day was spectacular.  The banter between them was lyrical.  Just to be able to listen to two men, geniuses both in their own right, spar with a level of wit that I never imagined possible was one of the high points of my life.

Buckley so loved a good argument — especially when he won — that he compiled a book of bickering in “Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription,” published in 2007 and featuring correspondence with the famous (Nixon, Reagan) and the merely annoyed.

“Mr. Buckley,” one non-fan wrote in 1967, “you are the mouthpiece of that evil rabble that depends on fraud, perjury, dirty tricks, anything at all that suits their purposes. I would trust a snake before I would trust you or anybody you support.”

Responded Buckley: “What would you do if I supported the snake?”

I am deeply saddened to hear of his passing.  I am deeply saddened that we have no more Bill Buckley’s.