The BBC is reporting tonight that noted conservative activist, commentator and author, William F. Buckley, Jr., is dead at the age of 82.

In one of his final National Review articles (Buckley was co-founder of the world-famous conservative publication), his insight was as keen as ever. Using Fowler's Modern English Usage as his measuring stick, Buckley undertakes an exploration of the language flaunted in a recent Democratic debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama. Vintage Buckley -- pointed commentary without rancor; sprited discourse without showmanship.

This is what separated Buckley from many of his contemporaries. While people like Bill O'Reilly, Don Imus and Ann Coulter use their visibility to further their own capitalistic agendas, Buckley used his to tout the conservative cause. He was not afraid to attack when necessary, but it wasn't his style.

Buckley's style was to use poised and precise language. When Don Imus was thrown off the air after his unconcionable racial remarks, Buckley was the first to harden the rebuke. In excerpts from this April 2007 National Review article, appropriately titled, "Imus Dead," we can see Buckley's philosophy of discourse, and the relief he felt when those who transgressed its fundamental importance were called to answer for it:

Some years ago, Cokie Roberts, faithful to her profession and to the proposition that those engaged in public discourse, at whatever level, should be left free to do as they liked, stopped short. What did it was a speech at the Radio and Television Correspondents’ Association dinner, an annual affair at which, in 1996, 3,000 guests ate and drank in the company of President and Mrs. Clinton and listened to Don Imus. After that night’s performance, Ms. Roberts changed her mind. “I really don’t think it would be appropriate for any of us to ever go back on [Imus’s show],” she said. Imus’s monologue “was profoundly rude not only to the President of the United States and the First Lady, but also to our colleagues.” Two days later we learned from Mike McCurry, the president’s press secretary, that National Public Radio’s Elizabeth Arnold, who sat between him and the First Lady on the dais, was trying to incite a mass walkout. In retrospect, McCurry wished he had backed her up instead of sitting there for 25 agonizing minutes. “I was getting prepared to send a note down the table saying, ‘Let’s go,’ when mercifully [the speech] came to an end,” McCurry later said. “I think we would have gotten a standing ovation if we’d done it.”

Well, eleven years later “it” was done to Don Imus, and the sense is of the restoration of clean air.

Buckley goes on:

One of [Imus'] specialties, over the years, was cracks aimed at Jews. It is revealing that these he managed to get away with. Every now and then there was a rebuke, but he stayed on the air. This tells us interesting things about current U.S. culture. One of them is that anti-Semitism is not as mortal as one hoped. Another is that millions of Americans, though they show no evidence of inclining to acts of racial or religious persecution, did not much mind it when Imus broke the basic protocols — it was just a part of his act.

And to nail his point home:

Imus was quoted as saying that the look he saw in Clinton’s eye convinced him that if the president had had a gun, he’d have aimed it at the speaker and shot. A strong metaphor, but when the cocked guns began to go off last Thursday it gave some satisfaction that there are reserves of decency in the land that sometimes assert themselves.

In many ways, Buckley was the anti-Imus; never resorting to gutter journalism, yet never failing to say what needed to be said.

Buckley's mastery of tone, economy of words and penetrating wit will be missed in the political arena. Lesser minds tend to wield these gifts like a weapon, aiming them like darts at the opposition and firing without warning or thought. But not Buckley. Ever the polite conservative, he chose his words carefully, aimed his arguments thoughtfully, treated his ideological opponents with respect (when they deserved it) and gave his admirers new reasons to follow him every day.

There will be many who may have disagreed with Buckley's points of view. There will be few, however, who can disagree with the way he expressed them. He made a career out of standing up for what he believed was right, regardless of the consequences. His political criticism was the closest thing to literature that exists in modern-day American politics. Needless to say, he will be greatly missed.

Requiescat In Pace, Mr. Buckley.