&gt; Buckley was an interesting case. To some extent, he was more acerbic towards those he mostly agreed with than those who he had further ideological skirmishes with. For instance, he was friends and associates with Galbraith, but infamously brutal towards Rothbard over his non-interventionist views on foreign policy.<p>Buckley probably realized that without vigorous pruning of the anti-Semites, libertarians, Randians and John Birchers, American conservatism would collapse into a fairly terrifying fringe movement; something which has been borne out since his passing.