Free Republic

William F. Buckley Jr.’s centenary arrives as free speech falters and truth-telling grows perilous—a reminder that every generation must fight anew for civilization’s soul. William F. Buckley, Jr., who died in February 2008, would have been 100 years old in November of this year. There are many tributes planned to celebrate his centenary. The huge, authorized biography by Sam Tanenhaus will be out in just a few weeks. I will not say anything about that book apart from noting that its subtitle—“The Life and the Revolution That Changed America”— is apt. For five or six years at the end of...

I never thought I’d end up in handcuffs and a jail cell for something I didn’t say. But last May, police in New Haven, Conn., arrested me — because a parking attendant falsely claimed I had used a racial slur against him nearly a year earlier. I denied it. I asked the cops to check the parking lot’s surveillance video. They didn’t — and the state charged me first with disorderly conduct, then with three counts of breach of peace in the second degree. It took almost a year, tens of thousands of dollars in legal fees and endless stress...

It seems that Rich Lowry, editor-in-chief of National Review, has been canceled from two speaking engagements. One was at Indiana State University and the other at the Badger Institute, which Lowry describes as “a right-of-center institute in Wisconsin.” This was in response to Lowry appearance on the Megyn Kelly Show where, apparently, he committed a disastrous speaking error when explaining the Haitian migrant problem in Springfield, Ohio. From Lowry’s account, it would seem that he slurred the word “migrant” in pronouncing the phrase “Haitian migrants,” and it sounded to his listeners that he was engaging in a racial insult. Retribution...

Several high-ranking Secret Service agents are stepping down just before the public release of an internal investigation into the failures that led to the assassination attempt on Donald Trump in Butler, PA on July 13. Among the findings of the report is the revelation that agents did not instruct local police to secure the rooftop of the building where the gunman positioned himself, two anonymous sources have revealed to the Washington Post. Mike Plati, the assistant director of the Office of Protective Operations, officially retired on Friday, according to a statement from the Secret Service. John Buckley, a senior executive...

WASHINGTON — Some of the 51 “Spies Who Lie” were active CIA contractors when they claimed files from first son Hunter Biden’s laptop had “the classic earmarks” of Russian disinformation ahead of the 2020 election — a fact that was uneasily noted inside the agency at the time, new records acquired by The Post show. Former CIA acting director Michael Morell, who previously told Congress he organized the Oct. 19, 2020, letter to give Joe Biden a “talking point” against then-President Donald Trump ahead of a debate, was a contractor at the time, the agency informed Congress. Ex-agency inspector general...

...As a young man, I was struck by how masterfully Buckley built an entire movement and kept it going by force of personality. Even then, however, I was increasingly turned off by Buckley’s crusading anti-Communism—and that was long before he wandered off in a neoconservative direction. I also became concerned with how Buckley lavished favors on his buddies on the left and the manner in which he inserted them into National Review, and then on his TV interview program, Firing Line. By the 1990s, Buckley made only feeble attempts to defend longtime friends and loyal employees who came under assault...

Thought this might be interesting for anyone who wishes to watch. Expires in May. Being PBS I hope it's not biased, but the guy was just brillilant.

Former Fox News host Tucker Carlson agreed wholeheartedly with the assertion that National Review founding editor William F. Buckley Jr. was “one of the great villains of the 20th century” during a Wednesday interview with Dave Smith, a comedian and libertarian YouTube host. Smith launched the initial attack on Buckley, declaring “I’ll tell you this: Whatever this atrophy in like the intelligence of the American people, it’s, I think it’s accelerating. I mean it’s-. Look, and again, just like you said I’ll disclaimer as well: I’m talking about people who I don’t necessarily like. Like I view Bill Buckley as...

James L. Buckley, a “conservative beacon” who won a shock election victory to represent New York in the US Senate in 1970, has died. He was 100. Buckley’s death in a Washington, DC, hospital was the result of complications from a fall, his nephew, author and political satirist Christopher Buckley, told the New York Times Friday.

The oldest living former U.S. senator turns 100 Thursday. James L. Buckley is among the few in American history who have served in the upper echelons of all three branches of our government. Jim Buckley served as a lieutenant in the Navy during the final years of the Pacific war. After the war, he attended Yale Law School and became an attorney. In 1970 Mr. Buckley won a historic third-party victory as the Conservative Party’s Senate nominee in New York. Serving as a U.S. senator until 1977, Mr. Buckley was an articulate and cordial agent of change and an advocate...

A good documentary that suggested Vidal got the upper hand throughout he convention debates. Buckley threatened him when called a Nazi and Vidal smirked, showing his evil side. He got to him and the filmmaker showed an obvious bias.

The United Kingdom and governments throughout the world will try to brand climate change as a public health issue in order to expand their powers, as they did during the Chinese coronavirus crisis, Baroness Claire Fox warned. Speaking with Breitbart London during the Reform UK party conference in Manchester, Claire Fox, Baroness Fox of Buckley said that while she is the “opposite of a conspiratorial thinker”, she believes that governments will try to retain the powers they have acquired during the pandemic by raising fears over a range of other issues, including climate change.

Historic debate between James Baldwin v. William F. Buckley Jr. at Cambridge University on the question: "Is the American Dream at the expense of the American Negro?"

How politically diverse is the Yale faculty today? According to an article by James Freeman in the Wall Street Journal: “0%.” He notes, “Nobody looks to the Ivy League for balanced political discourse. But a new report suggests that on at least one campus, the stifling of conservative views among faculty members is nearly complete.” I find this 12/9/19 report fascinating because recently I have been culling through the transcript of an old radio interview a cousin sent me of William F. Buckley, Jr., who attended Yale. Buckley was my mom’s first cousin. He founded National Review and was the father of...

Mr. Martin gives us a breathless and detail-filled account of why Pope Paul VI had sought to appease the Communists ("because he was persuaded that he couldn't stop the advent of Communist parties ... [either in Europe or in Latin America] and hence his idea was, 'Let's survive by making friends'"), what the election of Albino Luciani as John Paul I meant

So Rich beat me to the punch, right as I was writing this. Yes, this is my last day at National Review. While I’m excited about my new venture, I can’t say this isn’t a profoundly melancholy moment for me. I’ve been at NR longer than I’ve been married. Far longer than I’ve been a father. It’s been the lodestar of my professional and much of my personal life for 21 years. I talk about it in today’s G-File and there’s info there for how to follow what comes next. But since the Corner was such a big part of...

Per Groucho, No.

In his last phone call home, Lance Cpl. Gregory Buckley Jr. told his father what was troubling him: From his bunk in southern Afghanistan, he could hear Afghan police officers sexually abusing boys they had brought to the base. “At night we can hear them screaming, but we’re not allowed to do anything about it,” the Marine’s father, Gregory Buckley Sr., recalled his son telling him before he was shot to death at the base in 2012. He urged his son to tell his superiors. “My son said that his officers told him to look the other way because it’s...

On the subject of cycles, Warren Buffett likes to talk about “the natural progression, the three I’s.” As he put it to Charlie Rose in 2008, those I’s are “the innovators, the imitators and the idiots.” One creates, one enhances — and one screws it all up. Then, presumably, the cycle starts afresh. Buffett was describing the process that led to the 2008 housing and financial crises. But he might as well have been talking about the decline of the conservative movement in America. I was reminded of this again last week, on news that the Fox News host Sean...

With the focus on political talk shows in the wake of the BOR episode, it's a good time to consider another format, one that Buckley kept alive 33 years.