Free Republic

Thought some might enjoy reading Mr. Buckley initial article on conservatism in NR. "The Magazines Credenda" at the end seems as topical today as in 1955. There is, we like to think, solid reason for rejoicing. Prodigious efforts, by many people, are responsible for NATIONAL REVIEW. But since it will be the policy of this magazine to reject the hypodermic approach to world affairs, we may as well start out at once, and admit that the joy is not unconfined. Let's face it: Unlike Vienna, it seems altogether possible that did NATIONAL REVIEW not exist, no one would have invented...

"Let's face it: Unlike Vienna, it seems altogether possible that did NATIONAL REVIEW not exist, no one would have invented it. The launching of a conservative weekly journal of opinion in a country widely assumed to be a bastion of conservatism at first glance looks like a work of supererogation, rather like publishing a royalist weekly within the walls of Buckingham Palace. It is not that, of course; if NATIONAL REVIEW is superfluous, it is so for very different reasons: It stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have...

In the wreckage of their election blowout, conservatives gather to plot Sarah Palin's next career move. As I type, a boatload of bigfoot conservatives are aboard a cruise ship at an undisclosed location somewhere east of Fort Lauderdale and very west of Eden. They are sipping piña coladas and dribbling guacamole onto their chins as they chew over Topic A, namely “What the F--- Was That All About?” Mitt Romney is aboard, presumably not sipping piña coladas. His ticket for the cruise came to about $45 million, so I hope they gave him the Admiral’s Suite on A Deck. Within...

    'National Review' Allows Diverse Opinions, Former Staffer Says By S. T. Karnick (http://stkarnick.com)       A former associate editor of National Review magazine says Christopher Buckley's departure from his back-page column was not a firing, and the magazine embraces diverse viewpoints within conservatism. But that's the real problem with the contemporary right: it lacks a set of coherent principles.   Recently a well-publicized conflict at National Review magazine created a stir on the right and much schadenfreude on the left. Christopher Buckley, the son of the magazine's late founder-editor and a highly respected writer himself, announced...

How are you holding up? I am heavily medicated. What are you taking? I’m teasing. It’s just a line from one of my favorite movies, “Spinal Tap.” I feel I should be heavily medicated. In the past few weeks you’ve been pilloried by the right for a column you contributed to a Web site, “Sorry, Dad, I’m Voting for Obama.” What I mounted in The Daily Beast was an argument. It was not an attitudinal riff — it was not “John McCain is an old snarly-pants.” I presented a thoughtful argument, and it was viewed as apostasy. As a result,...

As if the mainstream media's dumpster-diving campaign against Palin isn't galling enough, the conservative elite's casually dismissive attitude toward the brightest GOP star from Alaska may be even worse. Washington insiders' common mantra is "readiness." Colin Powell dismissed Palin as not "ready to be president." Kenneth Adelman, forgetting the governor is already above his pay grade, patronizingly declared her "not close to being acceptable in high office." Their disdain is rivaled by some East Coast conservative pundits. New York Times columnist David Brooks declared Palin "a cancer," and Washington Post writer Kathleen Parker called her "clearly out of her league."...

With the rise to enduring power of president Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal in 1933, a new type of Republican emerged in reaction to FDR's attractive and overawing power - the-me-too Republican. Until the election of president Reagan five decades later, these me-too Republicans supported, rather than opposed, Democratic Party policies, but claimed they would administer them better. Of course this led to a half-century of Democratic dominance of American government and politics.

In his now-infamous I'm-running-away-from-home note to National Review posted on the cyberpages of leftist publisher Tina Brown, Christopher Buckley, conservative legend William F. Buckley Jr.'s writer/novelist son, clearly stated reasons why someone like him would -- under normal circumstances -- utterly refuse to vote for someone like Barack Obama (words in italics are Buckley's): “He [Obama] is … a lefty. I am not." We'll take "Christo" (as his friends call him) at his word, for the moment. His essay is subtitled "The conservative case for Obama," but for reasons I illustrate below, I think it should be instead "A conservative's...

Christopher Buckley ’75, co-founder of the Yale Daily News magazine and son of conservative icon William F. Buckley Jr. ’50, resigned Saturday from his position as a columnist at National Review, the influential magazine his father founded five years after graduating from Yale. The younger Buckley offered up his post to National Review editor Rich Lowry after Buckley’s Thursday endorsement of Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Barack Obama in an online news magazine elicited a wave of outrage from National Review readers. “By Friday, I was Judas,” said Buckley in a telephone interview with the News on Tuesday night. “I thought...

Let me be the latest conservative/libertarian/whatever to leap onto the Barack Obama bandwagon. It’s a good thing my dear old mum and pup are no longer alive. They’d cut off my allowance. Or would they? But let’s get that part out of the way. The only reason my vote would be of any interest to anyone is that my last name happens to be Buckley—a name I inherited. So in the event anyone notices or cares, the headline will be: “William F. Buckley’s Son Says He Is Pro-Obama.” I know, I know: It lacks the throw-weight of “Ron Reagan Jr....

A look at the life of William F. Buckley, leader of one of the most successful intellectual movements in American history. William F. Buckley: Right From The Start

The son of conservative icon William F. Buckley has parted ways with the magazine his father founded for committing a heretical act by National Review magazine standards: endorsing Barack Obama. In a column today entitled “Sorry, Dad, I was Sacked”on www.TheDailyBeast.com, Christopher Buckley, a well-known author also who wrote the back page column for National Review magazine, writes that the uproar over his endorsement last week of Obama over Republican John McCain prompted so much backlash that he offered his resignation—and the magazine accepted. “This offer was accepted—rather briskly! —by Rich Lowry, NR’s editor, and its publisher, the superb and...

Christopher Buckley, the author and son of the late conservative mainstay William F. Buckley, said in a telephone interview that he has resigned from the National Review, the political journal his father founded in 1955. As a result, he wrote to Richard Lowry, the editor of the National Review, and its publisher, Jack Fowler, offering to resign, and “this offer was rather briskly accepted,” Mr. Buckley said.

Christopher Buckley, in an exclusive for The Daily Beast, explains why he left The National Review, the magazine his father founded. I seem to have picked an apt title for my Daily Beast column, or blog, or whatever it’s called: “What Fresh Hell.” My last posting (if that’s what it’s called) in which I endorsed Obama, has brought about a very heaping helping of fresh hell. In fact, I think it could accurately be called a tsunami. The mail (as we used to call it in pre-cyber times) at the Beast has been running I’d say at about 7-to-1 in...

A Word on Christopher Buckley [Rich Lowry] Chris is up with a post at The Daily Beast, "Sorry, Dad, I Was Fired." I’d like to clarify this “firing” business. Over the weekend, Chris wrote us a jaunty e-mail with the subject line "A Sincere Offer," in which he offered to resign his column on NR's back page and said that if we accepted, there "would be no hard feelings, only warmest regards and understanding." We took the offer sincerely. Chris had done us the favor of writing the column beginning seven issues ago on a "trial basis" (his words), while...

In either the last week of August or the first week of September, 1970, just before I arrived at college, I had the extraordinary experience of going to Sharon, Connecticut, to the home of William Buckley. With several hundred other young conservatives (I was 17), I gathered for a couple days to validate my totally-against-the-crowd perception of life, a perception inspired in large part by William Buckley, one of the giants of the 20th century. Buckley's inspiration was not a new or different perception of life. To the contrary, his perception was an explication of life, a logical and spiritual...

I have the sad news of reporting that also succumbing to cancer on Saturday was Patricia “Trish” Bozell, beloved sister of WFB. Our sympathies to our good friend Brent and the entire Bozell family, to Priscilla, Jim, and Reid Buckley, and all friends and family. I read this from Philippians (1:12) as if St. Paul wrote it from Heaven: “To me life is Christ, and death is gain.” It's hard not to read it today as if a message from Tony and Trish, as if to say: Do not be afraid. We’re in good shape. Make sure you come and...

Like thousands before and after me, I first met William F. Buckley because of Yale. ©Steve Schapiro/Corbisbuckley A group of us from the Yale Political Union had invited the conservative magazine editor R. Emmett Tyrrell Jr. to come talk to us. Tyrrell generously accepted -- and asked if he could bring his friend Bill Buckley along with him. We students were thrilled, of course, and on the appointed date Tyrrell and Buckley rocketed up from Sharon together. "Rocket" is really the word. Driving was one unique activity where Bill made up in speed for what he lacked in exactness and...

This website contains the complete writings of William F. Buckley, Jr. "Well, thanks to Hillsdale College,it is all here, a lifetime's work. Necessarily, you will find infelicities here, and maybe a deviation or two, but it is all an earnest attempt to contribute to the patrimony, preserved here thanks to Hillsdale." W.F.B.

NEW YORK (CNS) -- Mourners remembered William F. Buckley Jr. at an April 4 memorial Mass as a man of deep faith and unfailing confidence in the Catholic Church who brought people to believe in God and inspired vocations to the priesthood. "His tongue was the pen of a ready writer" and his "words were strong enough to help crack the walls of an evil empire," according to Father George W. Rutler, principal celebrant and homilist at the memorial Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York. "His categories were not right and left but right and wrong," Father Rutler...

It can be said that modern conservatism knows only two times. There was the time before him and there was the time after him, and those two times could not be more contrasting. In this stark contrast lies his larger-than-life legacy, and let there be no mistake: It is a legacy that will endure the ages.

WALKING THE ROAD THAT BUCKLEY BUILT By Michael Johns It can be said that modern conservatism knows only two times. There was the time before him and there was the time after him, and those two times could not be more contrasting. In this stark contrast lies his larger-than-life legacy, and let there be no mistake: It is a legacy that will endure the ages. As word of William F. Buckley, Jr.'s passing reached his many students, admirers and colleagues late last week, it seemed each had an account (some grand, some small) of how this intellectual giant memorably impacted...

Writing in 1954, Lionel Trilling said that most conservatives do not “express themselves in ideas but only in action or in irritable mental gestures which seek to resemble ideas.”

William F. Buckley’s ‘Conservative Movement’ Still-Born, Dead-On-Arrival, Decades Ago, Because it Was Godless, Against Christ, Ignored God’s Word Contact: John Lofton, 301-873-4612, 410-760-8885, JLof@aol.com MEDIA ADVISORY, March 3 /Christian Newswire/ — Recovering Republican John Lofton, Editor of TheAmericanView.com and co-host of “The American View” radio show with the Constitution Party’s 2004 Presidential candidate Michael Anthony Peroutka, has issued the following statement: “Except the LORD build the house, they labour in vain that build it: except the LORD keep the city, the watchman waketh but in vain.” – Psalm 127. The Lord Jesus Christ did not build the “conservative movement” house....

"At his desk," wrote Christopher Buckley in his email to friends, "in Stamford this morning." Well, one had somehow known that it would have to be at his desk. The late William F. Buckley Jr. was a man of incessant labor and productivity, with a slight allowance made for that saving capacity for making it appear easy.

The Buckley dinner salons were held at Bill and Patricia's Park Avenue apartment, a ground-floor maisonette at 73rd Street in Manhattan. Literary sportsman George Plimpton might be there, chatting with statesman Henry Kissinger or novelist Dominick Dunne. At the same time, standing in the corner might be a lumpy, Trotskyite-turned-Catholic intellectual talking to a nervous Yale undergraduate. There were rarely politicians to be seen at the Buckleys' elegant home, but, standing by the Bösendorfer piano in the living room, guests often heard worldclass pianist Bruce Levingston playing the same Bach concerto he would be performing the next week at Carnegie...

Here's one measure of the man and the scope of his achievement: No serious historian will be able to write about 20th-century America without discussing Bill Buckley. Before Buckley, there was no conservative movement. After Buckley, there was Ronald Reagan. Reagan was the most important American political figure of the latter half of the 20th century. No one was more central to his emergence and success than Bill Buckley. It was not just a happy coincidence that Buckley, in the course of promoting conservatism, also helped his country. It's true that he saw in conservatism a set of doctrines that...

Like John O'Sullivan, I'm currently traveling in Europe and spent [Wednesday, Feb. 28]being asked wherever I went about Bill Buckley. He is an heroic figure to many because he was right about the great question of the second half of the 20th century at a time when far too many in the West thought it boorish and vulgar to be: As a character in one of his last novels tells a self-regarding liberal, "The kind of people who have offended you since you were at college are the people who won the Cold War." Bill was not a shrill man...

Legendary conservative author and editor William F. Buckley Jr. recently visited HUMAN EVENTS to chat with HE Editors Tom Winter, Allan Ryskind and Terry Jeffrey. The topic was Buckley's new novel, Getting It Right, a highly entertaining fictionalized account of how the conservative movement, in its early years, rejected the objectivism of novelist Ayn Rand and the fanaticism of Robert Welch, founder of the John Birch Society. The book, published by Regnery (a sister company of HUMAN EVENTS), is now available in stores. Before it was over, the conversation among Buckley, Winter, Ryskind and Jeffrey turned to issues including modern...

Thank heavens for Peggy Noonan who so often manages, so elegantly, to articulate the meandering germs running through my brain but remaining unexpressed due to my lack of skill.In appreciating William F. Buckley today she writes: …When Jackie Onassis died, a friend of mine who knew her called me and said, with such woe, “Oh, we are losing her kind.” He meant the elegant, the cultivated, the refined. I thought of this with Bill’s passing, that we are losing his kind–people who were deeply, broadly educated in great universities when they taught deeply and broadly, who held deep views of...

The warm tributes to William F. Buckley Jr., the conservative hero who died Wednesday at age 82, have emphasized all that everyone could appreciate about him: the formidable intelligence, the capacious vocabulary, the otherworldly productivity, the playful wit, the graciousness and deep, wide-ranging friendships. He was a beloved figure who had entered American lore and, in that sense, belonged to all of us. But in the fond reminiscences, it shouldn't be forgotten what he hated. Buckley was an anti-Communist to the marrow of his bones, whose lifelong mission was to crush Marxist totalitarianism. In this, he was uncompromising, relentless, and...

Buckley and Reagan: The Qualities of Conservative Greatness by Bruce Walker As conservatives bemoan the apparent descent of conservatism into a swamp, we would do well to remember the two men who most personify conservatism in America. One of those two men, William F. Buckley, has just passed away. The other man, Ronald Reagan died four years ago (also in the middle of a presidential campaign.) These two men were more than conservative icons, they were American icons. No Leftist will ever be as loved by Americans as that "Arch-Conservative" Reagan and no Leftist will ever be as respected and...

Many of us are guilty of romanticizing our heroes. So please forgive me when I say that author, journalist, talk-show host and intellectual William F. Buckley Jr., who died this week, deserves all the sparkling words of tribute showered on him from every corner of the political world. Trying to list his accomplishments would eat this column up — but let's just mention the 5,600 newspaper columns he authored, along with hundreds of articles in the National Review, 1,429 "Firing Line" television shows and 55 books. Buckley was all the things his eulogizers declared. But more than that, he possessed...

From 1969, but still very relavent today. (sic)

William F. Buckley, Jr. has died, God rest his soul. He famously said, “I’d rather be governed by the first 2000 names in the Boston phone book than by the dons of Harvard.” I can’t usefully add to the praise of this great man that has begun appearing since his death two days ago, but I can say something interesting about this statement. There are several grades of pine “2 by 4’s”, the studs that make up the walls and ceilings of your house. Superior grades are made for exterior walls, lesser grades are useful for external projects, such as...

Thirty years ago I was fresh out of college, with no particular career path chosen, and decided I’d like to be a nationally-syndicated columnist. I’d learn rather quickly that before being one, one has to become one, and to qualify on that caliber one has to demonstrate a talent which this young man didn’t possess. Bill Buckley told me so. I’d penned a couple of practice pieces, one having something to do with Jimmy Carter’s choice of Muhammad Ali as his ambassador-at-large to Africa, another on something equally memorable, and sent them to Bill, asking for his critique. Now, Bill...

In the early months of l962, there was restiveness in certain political quarters of the Right. The concern was primarily the growing strength of the Soviet Union, and the reiteration by its leaders of their designs on the free world. Some of the actors keenly concerned felt that Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona was a natural leader in the days ahead. But it seemed inconceivable that an anti-establishment gadfly like Goldwater could be nominated as the spokesman-head of a political party. And it was embarrassing that the only political organization in town that dared suggest this radical proposal—the GOP’s nominating...

I worked in Bill Buckley's campaign for mayor of New York City in 1965. Being 17 at the time, and given that he didn't get terribly close to winning, I obviously wasn't much help. Still, my participation was enough to make a strong impression, not just on me, but also on my family, who assumed -- or at least hoped -- I was going through a phase. Members of my family, with their not-distant roots in Eastern Europe and immigrant New York, and all the socialist and similar affinities implied, were not exactly charter members of New York's Conservative Party....

Up From Liberalism[snip] This coalition served as the intellectual foundation for the rising architecture of the conservative movement. In 1964, Barry Goldwater defeated the Eastern establishment's Nelson Rockefeller for the Republican Presidential nomination. Though Goldwater badly lost, the ideas that animated his candidacy continued to gain support, and the 1980s saw the Presidency of Ronald Reagan and its fruits, a revolution in domestic economic policy and the undoing of the Soviet empire. [snip] [snip] A famous debate in 1978 with the Gipper on the Panama Canal included the following exchange: Reagan: "Well, Bill, my first question is why haven't you...

Bill Buckley: The Founder of the Movement by Lee Edwards Posted: 02/28/2008 Bill Buckley was the founder of the modern conservative movement. Others clearly made major contributions -- Russell Kirk, Milton Friedman, Barry Goldwater, Ronald Reagan of course -- but in the 1950s and 1960s Buckley by his words and his actions forced the reigning Liberal Establishment to acknowledge that a major new political force had emerged in America. I say “actions” because the founding of National Review in 1955, the creation of Young Americans for Freedom in 1960, the birth of the Conservative Party of New York in...

WASHINGTON -- William F. Buckley Jr., who died Wednesday, appropriately enough in his study, was one of the most stupendous educated Americans of the 20th century. He was among the founders of the American conservative movement that crept out of the New Deal years, advocating market economics, traditional social values, and aggressive resistance to communism. Such ideas were viewed disdainfully by the reigning orthodoxy, liberalism, but by the 1980s, Buckley's positions pretty much had defeated liberalism wherever democratic elections could be held. Without him, this change would have been either impossible or much-delayed. He brought together serious intellectuals, for instance...

A whole bunch of good articles on Buckley.

I am very profoundly saddened to hear of the passing of William F. Buckley Jr. and offer my deepest condolences to the Buckley family. Bill had many friends, including my parents, who he even took time to visit when they were stationed at the U.S. Pacific Command in Hawaii. My father and mother very much admired him and so did their son. With Bill’s passing, freedom has lost one of its greatest defenders. Bill was a great American who helped change the course of history. When conservatism was a lonely cause, he bravely raised the standard of liberty and led...

Buckley's primary intellectual achievement was to fuse traditional American political conservatism with libertarianism, laying the groundwork for the modern American conservatism of U.S. Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater and U.S. President Ronald Reagan.bttt

Woody Allen is reputed to have said that it was better not to meet people you revere -- the disappointment was always so crushing. But no one fortunate enough to meet or know William F. Buckley Jr., who passed away yesterday at the age of 82, could say that. A man of coruscating wit (he'd approve of that word), he was also, by universal acclamation, the most gracious man on the planet. Legend he was, but in a small group, it was always Bill who rushed to get a chair for the person left standing. It was always Bill who...

Our revered founder, William F. Buckley Jr., died in his study this morning. If ever an institution were the lengthened shadow of one man, this publication is his. So we hope it will not be thought immodest for us to say that Buckley has had more of an impact on the political life of this country — and a better one — than some of our presidents. He created modern conservatism as an intellectual and then a political movement. He kept it from drifting into the fever swamps. And he gave it a wit, style, and intelligence that earned the...

WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY: R.I.P., ENFANT TERRIBLEFebruary 27, 2008 William F. Buckley was the original enfant terrible. As with Ronald Reagan, everyone prefers to remember great men when they weren't being great, but later, when they were being admired. Having changed the world, there came a point when Buckley no longer needed to shock it. But to call Buckley an "enfant terrible" and then to recall only his days as a grandee is like calling a liberal actress "courageous." Back in the day, Buckley truly was courageous. I prefer to remember the Buckley who scandalized to the bien-pensant. Other tributes will...

Just breaking on NRO...

I first met Bill Buckley in 1961. He was debating Steve Allen at the time, on international relations. It was a formal debate, not at all like what we see today. Allen had just made his point that American troops were scattered like Topsy all over the globe, often in places unknown to the American people, such as Indochina, a country, Mr. Allen believed, that no one in their audience could point to on a map. Bill replied something to the effect that certainly any child could do so. As the only child immediately available in an audience otherwise very...

When Rich Lowry called me a while ago to report the passing of Bill Buckley, I had to work hard to catch my breath and swallow this news. He was a great man. I am privileged and honored to have shared a part of his wonderful life over the past fifteen years. I am very sad right now, and so is my wife Judy. She became a great friend of Bill’s and Pat’s, often sitting down with Bill at the piano at dinners in Stamford, or at our place in Redding. They talked a lot about art and classical music....