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You may recognize the music as the "Faber College Theme" from "Animal House." It's an Elmer Bernstein composition based on Brahms' "Academic Festival Overture." I thought it was a fitting piece for Buckley, a man whose life as a public intellectual was launched by a quarrel with his own alma mater, and who was never without his sense of humor.
William F. Buckley once said of his time at Yale, "there was carousing, but not on the order of what one saw in 'Animal House.'" His words—written, spoken or just plain abstruse—were an incitement to political upheaval, an invitation to pride in conservative beliefs, and an insistence on the intellectual defense those ideals deserved. His life was a quest for good government, good wine, and good cheer. Now that he is gone, those who love the cause of liberty will say forevermore, "There has been carousing, but not on the order of what one saw when we were led by William F. Buckley Jr."
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