ROGER KIMBALL: The Centenary of Buckley and the Crisis of Free Speech.

Free speech, it turns out, is like other freedoms: its victory is never permanent. It is a melancholy truth that the right of free speech, like other civilizational achievements, must constantly be renewed to survive.

That was one of Edmund Burke’s central insights. But it is an insight that is regularly forgotten—until reality intrudes upon our reverie to remind us. Every generation finds that it must work anew to win or at least to maintain the freedoms bequeathed to it by earlier generations.

What was argued for and won yesterday is today once again up for grabs. Which moves patience and perseverance to the head of the queue of political virtues. You already made the argument. But it always turns out that you must make it again.

During the Japanese bombardment of Shanghai in 1932, the Austrian essayist Karl Kraus was anguishing over the placement of commas in a column. It might seem futile at such a moment, he told a friend, but concluded that “if those who are obliged to look after commas had always made sure they were in the right place, then Shanghai would not be burning.”

Was that hyperbolic? Perhaps. But the general point holds: language matters. Telling the truth is not only a linguistic desideratum; it is also a political imperative. I know that Bill Buckley, who devoted much of his seemingly boundless energy to broadcasting the truth, would have had much to say about the many ways our culture has colluded against that often lonely but always exigent task.

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