SHARON, CONNECTICUT — 'The Founders were not afraid of religion,' James L. Buckley wrote in his book 'Gleanings from an Unplanned Life.' Buckley was a one-term senator from New York, elected on the Conservative Party line. His funeral Mass was the morning after the first Republican presidential primary this year, and just about everything about it seemed like a stark contrast to our current politics. Buckley was a public servant in the most noble sense: He served in all three branches of the federal government. And the way he lived his life — in her eulogy, his daughter talked about how he was often called 'sainted' — should serve as an example to all of us.
