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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...

Click the pic. 

Bethany Was Near Jerusalem A homily on the occasion of the Memorial of William F. Buckley Jr. By Rev. George W. Rutler Editor's Note: The following homily was preached on the occasion of the Memorial Mass for Repose of the Soul of William F. Buckley Jr. on April 4, 2008, at St. Patrick's Cathedral. “Now Bethany was near Jerusalem. . . . ” John 11:18 In the village of Bethany was the house of Mary and her sister Martha and their brother Lazarus. There Jesus wept when Lazarus died, and then he called into the tomb and Lazarus came forth...

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...

Buckley Remembered at St. Patrick's Cathedral By Fred Lucas CNSNews.com Staff Writer April 04, 2008 New York (CNSNews.com) - William F. Buckley, Jr. changed American politics and culture to a degree that many would call him incomparable. Still, Henry Kissinger found a comparison when commemorating Buckley at a crowded St. Patrick's Cathedral Friday. "He wrote as Mozart composed, with inspiration. Bill never needed a second draft," Kissinger, a former secretary of state, said during the memorial service for the icon of conservatism, journalism and politics. "Bill Buckley's conservatism is about the liberation of the human spirit," Kissinger said. "All of...

The long-term implications of Buckley's stands were enormous. By remaking the conservative movement in his own image, in which the emphasis was on anti-communism and a libertarian skepticism of government power, he ensured that it, and the Republican Party, which it came to dominate, would be a place where Jew-haters were unwelcome. That enabled liberal Jews, such as Commentary editor Norman Podhoretz, to feel comfortable making common cause with the right on a host of issues as he began his own journey away from the left. Though expectations that the Jews would ditch liberalism en masse were always unrealistic, the...

The recent death of conservative commentator William F. Buckley reminded me of when I lived in Boston in the mid-1990s, when, for lack of a better term, I became a "born-again" conservative. Although I already considered myself a conservative, one day I came across The Conservative Mind by Russell Kirk. I had never heard of the book or the author, but I thought it might be worth a look. It changed my life. Kirk outlined a conservative tradition steeped in the philosophy of everyone from English statesman Edmund Burke to poet T.S. Eliot; he even devoted an entire chapter to...

Was there any major American personality in the last half-century who seemed more remote from the sensibilities of most American Jews than William F. Buckley? Buckley, who passed away last week at the age of 83, was the fervent Catholic patrician whose work helped create the modern American conservative movement in the 1950s at a time when nothing could have been more removed from the thinking of most Jews in this country than his National Review. Though much has changed in the 53 years since NR's debut, given that most Jews are still, at the very least, reliable supporters of...

The death of William F. Buckley Jr. last week brought several calls with reminders of his connection to South Texas. His grandfather, John Buckley, came to Duval County in 1874 from Ontario, Canada. He was involved in raising sheep. Back then, South Texas was sheep country. John Buckley, the patriarch of the family, ran for sheriff of Duval County as a Democrat in 1888. He lost to Republican L.L. Wright. Buckley sued for fraud, claiming that forces loyal to Wright failed to count votes from precincts favoring Buckley. He also charged that Wright brought in illegal voters from Nueces and...

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." One of the perks of being a liberal is disdaining people who are not liberals. However, as of 1954, Trilling's dismissive attitude toward conservatives' intellectual landscape was painfully close to the truth. Trilling wrote ten years after Friedrich Hayek's landmark counterattack against the left in his book "The Road to Serfdom." But that was a book with great impact on a relatively small number of people at the time, though its...

Conservatives face difficult times in today's political world and ever-shifting culture, but they will live to fight another day, concluded four scholars at a book forum Tuesday at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. At the event, "The 'Right' Books: The Past, Present, and Future of Conservatism," authors Donald Critchlow, Jacob Heilbrunn, Mark Smith, and John Samples praised the lifetime work of conservative icon William F. Buckley Jr., who died last week, Feb. 27, at the age of 82. Buckley had founded the influential conservative magazine National Review in 1955, wrote numerous books, and saw his twice-weekly column syndicated...

Don’t believe the obituaries. William F. Buckley is still very much with us. Just as John F. Kennedy continues to inspire successive generations of liberals, so too will Buckley continue to motivate conservatives in the present and future. Buckley’s goal—establishing economic, social and foreign-policy conservatism as the default political template of the United States—has yet to be fully reached, but he has encouraged millions to make his dream a reality. It is not unreasonable to characterize Buckley as the Martin Luther King Jr. of the conservative movement. Both men rose to prominence in the 1950s by challenging political philosophies that...

For Conservatives, the Buckley Doesn't Stop Here By Donald Lambro Monday, March 3, 2008 WASHINGTON -- William Buckley's pioneering influence in the creation of the modern American conservative movement has been well documented since his passing last week. But little if any attention has been given to the influence and impact he had upon a younger generation of foot soldiers in that movement in the 1950s and 1960s, when he burst upon the political scene with the publication of his indictment of liberal academics, "God And Man At Yale," and with the founding of National Review magazine. The movement he...

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....

March 01, 2008, 9:00 a.m. ‘It’s the Epigoni, Stupid’William F. Buckley Jr. stood athwart history and changed its course. By Mark Steyn If you were running one of those Frank Luntz machine-wired focus groups to produce the ideal conservative leader for America, I doubt you’d come up with an urbane patrician harpsichordist semi-resident in Switzerland and partial to words like “eremitical� and “periphrastic.� “It’s the epigoni, stupid� is not a useful campaign slogan — although, in fact, a distressingly large number of political candidates are certainly epigoni (“a second-rate imitator�). But William F. Buckley Jr. was a first-rate original,...

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...

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...

"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. But he was driven, all right, and restless, and never allowed himself much ease on his own account. There was never a moment, after taping some session at Firing Line, where mere recourse to some local joint was in prospect. He was always...

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...

Conservative intellectual William F. Buckley, Jr., the founder of National Reivew, died Wednesday morning at the age of 82. The editors of National Review are hardly an impartial source, but they are nevertheless largely correct when they write that "he created modern conservatism as an intellectual and then a political movement." Buckley's central contribution was to forge an alliance between religious traditionalists, pro-free-marketers, and foreign policy hawks. National Review describes this task as convincing "anti-Communists, traditionalists, constitutionalists, and enthusiasts for free markets" to "all...take shelter under the same tent." The idea that was supposed to hold up this conservative "big...

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...

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...

In what may well be one of the last published articles he wrote, William F. Buckley Jr. recalls the problems that arose when the John Birchers got too close to Barry Goldwater’s Presidential Campaign: The society had been founded in 1958 by an earnest and capable entrepreneur named Robert Welch, a candy man, who brought together little clusters of American conservatives, most of them businessmen. He demanded two undistracted days in exchange for his willingness to give his seminar on the Communist menace to the United States, which he believed was more thoroughgoing and far-reaching than anyone else in America...

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...

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

WASHINGTON -- Those who think Jack Nicholson's neon smile is the last word in smiles never saw William F. Buckley's. It could light up an auditorium; it did light up half a century of elegant advocacy that made him an engaging public intellectual and the 20th century's most consequential journalist. Before there could be Ronald Reagan's presidency, there had to be Barry Goldwater's candidacy. It made conservatism confident and placed the Republican Party in the hands of its adherents. Before there could be Goldwater's insurgency, there had to be National Review magazine. From the creative clutter of its Manhattan offices...

PRAGUE -- Whenever Bill Buckley was profiled in the media, he was usually pinned firmly to words such as "impish" and "gadfly." It is easy to understand why. He was a wit - and a reckless wit at that. Asked what he would first do if elected mayor of New York in 1965, he replied: "Demand a recount." Bores cling to the consoling thought that such a sharp wit must also be frivolous and ineffectual, but Bill was one of the most effectual men of our time. He sailed several oceans. He played the harpsichord. He authored (annually on his...

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...

It looks like Time magazine has dispensed with the quaint custom of showing at least a little respect for the recently deceased. This story by Richard Corliss begins a long sneer in the direction of William F. Buckley, Jr. starting with its very title, "William F. Buckley: Mandarin of Right-Wing TV." From that low point, Corliss continues his descent into his ill-mannered septic tank as he blames Buckley for inspiring what Corliss describes as "partisan political harangue as infotainment" following an appearance on the Jack Paar show in 1962: Few viewers realized that those two evenings 46 years ago would birth a durable...

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...

Great sadness.

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...

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...

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...

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...

AG McDonnell Statement on the Passing of William F. Buckley 2/27/2008 1:22:00 PM Today we mourn the passing of William F. Buckley, Jr. For those who view conservatism as the animating philosophy in their lives, William F. Buckley was their tireless advocate and champion. For those who suffered under communism and fascism, William F. Buckley was the consistent and uncompromising voice of freedom. William F. Buckley was the intellectual father of the modern conservative movement. His founding of National Review magazine in 1955 was one of conservatism's seminal events. As the host of Firing Line for 33 years, William F....

Dead at 82

In the course of offering a tribute to William F. Buckley, Jr. on this afternoon's Hardball, Chris Matthews made a surprising revelation: that he came to political consciousness as a WFB conservative. You'll find the transcript of the Hardball host's remarks below, but I'd encourage you to view the video, here. See if, like me, you're struck by the heartfelt nature of his comments. CHRIS MATTHEWS: If you want to influence someone, get to him or her in high school. It's my experience that people at that age are the most impressionable, the most searching for guidance, for example, for...

AND NOW . . . amidst billowing clouds of fragrant, aromatic first- and second-hand premium cigar smoke. . . it is time for . . . that harmless, lovable little fuzz ball, the highly-trained broadcast specialist, having more fun than a human being should be allowed to have, from behind the golden EIB microphone, firmly ensconced in the prestigious Attila-the-Hun chair at the Limbaugh Institute of Advanced Conservative Studies, with talent on loan from G-d, at the cutting-edge of societal evolution, with half his brain tied behind his back — just to make it fair, the all-knowing, all-caring, all-sensing, all-feeling,...

G. Gordon Liddy just announced he will air WFBs last interview at the top of the third hour of his radio program - Noon EST. You can stream the show at radioamerica dot org if you don't get it on the radio or satellite. There's a free podcast, too.

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

Just breaking on NRO...

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...

NEW YORK — Author and conservative commentator William F. Buckley Jr. has died at age 82. His assistant Linda Bridges says Buckley died Wednesday morning at his home in Stamford, Conn. Buckley became famous for his intellectual political writings in his magazine, the National Review.

Conservatives' accommodation of state will have price, says William F. Buckley Jr. By Bill Steigerwald TRIBUNE-REVIEW Sunday, November 18, 2007 William F. Buckley Jr., the leading political and cultural symbol of American conservatism for almost 50 years, is universally credited with godfathering the ideological revolution that carried Ronald Reagan into the White House in 1980. Author, lecturer, debater and host of "Firing Line" on PBS from 1966 to 1999, Buckley founded National Review magazine in 1955 and turned it into the country's leading conservative journal of opinion. He retired as its active editor in 1990. But his syndicated newspaper column,...

I heard a plainspoken, sophisticated man of affairs, with a background of public service, make a statement not to be confused with a stump speech. It was for that reason all the more arresting. "The thing I regret most about the political scene," he said, "is that, as a Republican, I won't have an opportunity to vote against John Edwards in the primary." I gushed with the pride of tribal fidelity, as if running into a Christian in the middle of a desert. Is my friend's hostility to Edwards entirely ideological? No. It is also, like mine, personal. I just...

Lally Weymouth of Newsweek did a brilliant article published just two weeks before the assassination. She was in close quarters with Benazir Bhutto and then with President Musharraf. Neither one of them said anything apocalyptic, and certainly there was no indication that poised in those conventional words was the gleam of the assassin, or the fright of a victim bound. In short, from the two principals, there were no big surprises. But Ms. Weymouth’s questions were not banal, and Musharraf rewarded her with a singular frankness. This came early in the interview, when Ms. Weymouth asked him, “Do you feel...

Amazon says that they do not have this yet, but Costco does...