When Buckley is compared favorably to the conservatives who rule the roost in the present day, Limbaugh is almost always the one compared unfavorably. But only someone lacking familiarity with Buckley's history would proclaim a man who called Gore Vidal a "faggot" and threatened to punch him at the 1968 Democratic National Convention as a "kinder and gentler" version of the supposedly out-for-blood pundits like Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and Bill O'Reilly.

Wittingly or not, Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription provides a counter-history to recent narratives which portray Buckley as the sterling example of Conservatism Done Right. We see this best in a conversely humorous and heated exchange between WFB and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., when the latter declined an appearance on "Firing Line," unwilling as he was to do anything to "help" Buckley or further his worldview.

When Buckley published his rejoinder for all the world to see, Schlesinger responds, gruffly. "I do not see National Enquirer or National Review or whatever it is called, but I understand you ran your silly letter to me…in a better world I might have hoped you had the elementary fairness, or guts, to provide equal time; but, alas, wrong again."

Buckley responds in kind: "Now, suppose I had begun this letter "Dear Arthur, or Dear Barfer, or whatever you call yourself." Would I do that? No; and not merely because it's childish, but because it isn't funny."

When Schlesinger sheepishly counters that "the reason one confused National Enquirerand National Review is because they have comparable standards of wit, taste, intelligence, and reliability," Buckley goes in for the kill: "it is obvious to me that only someone who had difficulty in distinguishing between National Enquirer and National Review could have written such works of history as you have."

When Newsweek prints a story claiming that the National Review and the head of the hateful and racist Liberty Lobby "agree on about 90 per cent of their positions," Buckley doesn't miss a beat.

"This is about as illuminating as if National Review were to report that Newsweek and the Soviet Union agree 'on about 90 per cent of their positions' (health care, Social Security, educational opportunity for all…)," he begins. "What is distinctive about Liberty Lobby isn't its love of the American flag or its belief in the free market. The outstanding contribution of Liberty Lobby to the public discourse is its concern…for the 'niggerfication' of America, and its discovery that the Holocaust was a Jewish hoax."