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I normally do not read or comment on gossipy biographies of famous people, especially written by their family members who may be a bit too bitter to be objective. But the just published memoir by William F. Buckley Jr.´s son Christopher about his parents´ deaths piqued my interest. First a little background. Stories are myriad today about the renewed popularity of the novel "Atlas Shrugged" by novelist-philosopher Ayn Rand. With capitalism widely being declared dead or defunct it may seem strange to some people that masses of Americans are turning to this work of literature which celebrates laissez-faire capitalism, among...

Qui vive is the French sentry’s challenge, the equivalent of "Who goes there?" Except, the literal meaning of qui vive conveys the timeless common sense of the French peasant who puts his trust only in blood ties, deeds to land, and in gold coins in a jar under the plum tree. For qui vive means “Who moves there?” but also "Who lives?" He lives who is on the alert. But we have been dedicated somnambulists for 40 years now. The American comedienne and blogger, Julia Gorin, described two years ago how bus riders in Richmond, Virginia started calling the local...

EDITOR’S NOTE: What follows is adapted from remarks delivered before a Portsmouth Institute session celebrating the life and faith of William F. Buckley Jr. Let me begin by confronting the canard spreading through this conference that I am here under false pretenses. Not true. I am an Episcopalian, which is to say that I’m here under real pretenses. Indeed, according to a recent survey conducted by the Gallup organization, I may not be just an Episcopalian but the Episcopalian. Perhaps I should present myself to your monastery as a kind of anthropological exhibit. Let me note, however, in a transparent...

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...

Several Oklahoma legislators are concerned that individuals and organizations are quietly working on plans to create a privately-operated tollway in Oklahoma. Many referred to Spain-based Cintra, which has been involved in the development of a proposed Trans-Texas Corridor. Cintra also took over the operation of the Indiana East-West Toll Road from the Indiana Department of Transportation in 2006. Oklahoma State Sen. Randy Brogdon and state representatives Eric Proctor, Richard Morrisette, Scott Inman and Charles Key all expressed concern that efforts to open up Oklahoma to a privately operated tollway system were being kept out of the view of the general...

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...

... Yes, Bill Buckley was a true conservative leader. We will miss him as we miss Reagan. But no, the conservative movement is far from dead. It's just had some of its pseudo-conservative dead weight removed... There's a sifting going on, and the conservative movement is still being sifted as those who clamor for last-minute political favor have endorsed the candidate who stands for LESS of what they say they believe. People we trusted. People we loved. But as I've told Gov. Huckabee repeatedly as leader after leader turned their back on the only guy who embraced their beliefs: God...

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...

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....

In my high school yearbook (Collegiate School, class of 1970), there’s a photo of me wearing a political button. (Everyone did in those days. I wasn’t that much dorkier than everyone else.) The button said, “Don’t let THEM immanentize the Eschaton.” There you see an example of the influence of Bill Buckley, who died last week at age 82. For it was Buckley who had promulgated this slogan, as an amusing distillation of the thinking of the very difficult historian of political philosophy Eric Voegelin. I’d of course not read Voegelin then (there’s a lot of him I still haven’t...

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...

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...

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...

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...

When the news came over the transom yesterday that William F. Buckley, Jr. had passed, I turned to pick up a 14-year-old framed photograph on the desk in my office that I had not looked at for some time. The picture is of a strapping young man that used to be me shaking hands with the godfather of modern American conservatism as we posed for the snapshot at the base of the stairway leading from the lobby at the Omni Orrington Hotel in Evanston, Illinois. Through a conservative student group I had run at Northwestern University, we brought Bill Buckley...

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...

The passing of a great man is sometimes accompanied by the end of an historical epoch. This is usually due to the titanic effect the man had on his times as well as a recognition that with his death, the world will change and that what transpired during the time he walked the earth can never be recaptured. So it is with the passing of William F. Buckley, Jr. who died while at work at his home in Stamford, Connecticut. He was 82 years old. It is impossible to exaggerate the influence of Mr. Buckley on conservatism, on politics, on...

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...

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...

NEW YORK - William F. Buckley Jr., the erudite Ivy Leaguer and conservative herald who showered huge and scornful words on liberalism as he observed, abetted and cheered on the right's post-World War II rise from the fringes to the White House, died Wednesday. He was 82. His assistant Linda Bridges said Buckley was found dead by his cook at his home in Stamford, Conn. The cause of death was unknown, but he had been ill with emphysema, she said. Editor, columnist, novelist, debater, TV talk show star of "Firing Line," harpsichordist, trans-oceanic sailor and even a good-natured loser in...

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.

Dead at 82

Just breaking on NRO...

Some set the matter aside as being nothing more than verbal play for the benefit of word-men. What term properly designates what we are doing, and what we are enduring, in many parts of the world, the symbolic center of which is the Twin Towers site in Manhattan? Sometimes the words chosen can mean the justification of an additional measure of military power. Always they calibrate the public mood and the public perception of what is going on. I am informed that French pacifists, ensconced in the French Academy in 1939 and determined to understate Nazi military exercises (even...

The news of the incident in the men's room at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport needs to be absorbed layer by layer. It can already be referred to as the "infamous" meeting between Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho and the police officer. Freeze the story at this point, and you have simply a pickup story, another one of those "dirty old man stories," as one might have it. U.S. Senator Larry Craig (R-ID) holds an impromptu news conference on Capitol Hill in Washington in this March 2, 2004 file photo. Craig confirmed on August 27, 2007 that he pleaded guilty earlier...

William F. Buckley once said something to the effect that he didn't want the most conservative nominee as presidential candidate for the GOP, he wanted the most conservative candidate that could win the election as the GOP's nominee. In light of this sentiment, I am wondering if the lion of old line conservatism has decided that Mitt Romney just might be the "conservative enough" candidate for the GOP in 2008? Last week, Buckley offered for our consideration a column mentioning Mitt Romney's conversion from abortion advocate to his new found status of anti-abortion believer -- a stance that puts him...

The heavy condemnatory breathing on the subject of global warming outdoes anything since high moments of the Inquisition. A respectable columnist (Thomas Friedman of the New York Times) opened his essay last week by writing, "Sometimes you read something about this administration that's just so shameful it takes your breath away." What asphyxiated this critic was the discovery that a White House official had edited "government climate reports to play up uncertainty of a human role in global warming." The correspondent advises that the culprit had been an oil-industry lobbyist before joining the administration, and on leaving it he took...

Fifty years ago Edgar Smith shattered the rural serenity of northern Bergen County when he bludgeoned a 15-year-old girl to death with a baseball bat and a rock.  The March 1957 crime changed Ramsey forever and began a strange odyssey that is still taxing the judicial system today.Smith was sentenced to death -- then won his freedom with the help of William F. Buckley. But he was soon back behind bars after he kidnapped and stabbed a California woman.  Now, the 73-year-old killer is again up for parole.  "I'll do anything I need to do to keep him in prison,"...

These are vexing days for those who (a) want to press the war against terrorism, and (b) want to maintain the usual protections against unnecessary accretions of state power. The recent headliner in this carnival is the Supreme Court ruling on Osama bin Laden's bodyguard. What was challenged was the legality of the "military commission" that put him on trial at Guantanamo, denying him access to his accusers or to the evidence presented to the judges (military) by the prosecution. The first rule is to reason calmly about what happened. And best to begin by reflecting on the vote within...

We hope day by day that the facts will become plain as to what occurred at Haditha in November. But this isn't happening. What we have is a story the components of which are pieces perpetually on the move. Starting at the bloody end, we read that 24 Iraqi civilians were killed by U.S. Marines in blood lust, the Marines reacting to the killing of a beloved member of their unit by a roadside bomb. Fiddle with the words above, and you can compose narratives for just about every story that has gone out. It is illuminating that there is...

The public Galbraith I knew and contended with for many years is captured in the opening paragraphs of my review of his last book, "The Culture of Contentment." I wrote then: ` "It is fortunate for Professor Galbraith that he was born with singular gifts as a writer. It is a pity he hasn't used these skills in other ways than to try year after year to bail out his sinking ships. Granted, one can take satisfaction from his anti-historical exertions, and wholesome pleasure from his yeomanry as a sump-pumper. Indeed, his rhythm and grace recall the skills we remember...

By William F. Buckley Jr. Myrtle Beach Sun-Times April 23, 2006 It takes re-entry into a seemingly different life to read that there is still out there something called an Indecency Code. It lives, sort of, and is administered by the Federal Communications Commission. What brought on a reminder that such a code existed was the recent movement by TV networks to discipline the FCC. Their reaction was to a fine handed down against 111 television stations for running an episode of a show called "Without a Trace," which the commission found to be indecent in that it "depicts a...

...E-Mail the AuthorUniting the conservative movement Posted: April 21, 2006 1:00 a.m. Eastern © 2006 WorldNetDaily.com Let's be honest with each other, shall we? Brothers and sisters in arms within the conservative movement are dealing body blows to each other, and the four-decade surge conservatism had enjoyed is now suffering accordingly. Until recently, the raucous sibling factions held their tongues and kept their political differences largely under wraps. But the disputes between the various factions of the conservative movement are becoming increasingly more public and counterproductive. Sparring within a family isn't always a bad thing. In my own family, my...

...Why is it so important to the prosecution to go to such lengths to prove that Moussaoui deserves to be executed? Damage is done by this undertaking, because if the government fails, then the aroma of the trial will waft toward an ambiguity concerning the entire business. If Moussaoui "prevails" in the Virginia trial — if execution is not ordered by the jury — loose-minded analysts will arrive at the conclusion that he was finally not guilty of atrocious deeds, although he has admitted that he'd happily have been a member of the suicide team if he hadn't been detained...

Democratic protocols get pretty elusive these days. In an attempt to sort it all out, we hovered for a moment on a wild idea. Why not send the illegals to France? But delirious ideas have short lives, as they should have, and one seeks to learn from experience. We begin today by saying that, in France, the mobs don't exactly rule, but they seem to have a veto power. The utter capitulation of President Chirac disgraces him, his party, French democratic processes and economic common sense. -snip- But just to round up 11 million-plus illegals presents a logistical problem of...

The fatality figures in Iraq are perhaps telling a story, which would be that the war focuses progressively on internecine killings. The American death rate for March was 31 fatalities, a gruesome toll (one per day), yet the second lowest since the invasion was launched three years ago. Over approximately the same period, nearly 1,500 Iraqi civilians were killed, according to the American military, a significant increase over recent months. One asks then: Is the furious resolve of the insurgents altering in focus? Has the enemy reckoned that the problem in hand is not Americans, who will be gone, roughly...

There is furtive glee in the eyes of such as Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America. The reason for it is that she calculates that the effrontery of South Dakota's legislature will bring on massive retaliation by the Supreme Court. Chinese vigilantes rejoiced a few weeks ago when a group of dissenters published a call for diminished censorship. They were confident about what would happen, and it did: Beijing brought on reinvigorated party-line censorship. Ms. Keenan and some of her followers in NARAL Pro-Choice America figure that what South Dakota has done will compel the Supreme Court to act...

1. Khamenei: Iran Will Have Bomb in April April 8, 2006 could turn out to be an ominous date in history - that's the day Iran's Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei says that Iran will have a nuclear weapon. Late last year Khamenei gathered his top advisers for a strategy meeting and told them "it has been promised that by April 8, we will be in a position to show the entire world that we are members of the club." This presumably refers to nuclear weapons, according to National Review Online Contributing Editor Michael Ledeen, who offered an inside look at...

Those who hold hands with the future at night and relay their divinations tell us that Judge Alito will be OK'd by the Senate Judiciary Committee by a party vote. Some reach even further and predict that he will be confirmed by a party vote, but that there might be a little maneuvering on the floor in the matter of a filibuster.One is told not to expect a filibuster because it is a weapon of last resort, and weapons of last resort should be kept for last-resort use. Several times, in the recent past, the question has been raised whether...

E-mail Author Author Archive Send to a Friend Version January 03, 2006, 2:52 p.m. Questioning Alito Here is a coincidence which we would term providential, except that one doesn’t use that language. At least, if one does use it, it is shrouded in mystery. There is a great deal of swirl in the upcoming examination of Judge Samuel Alito, and some of it does a pretty complete circle. In 1985, Judge Alito wrote to President Ronald Reagan’s Attorney General, Edwin Meese, applying for a job. Quick ideological self-identification was in order, and Alito wrote, “The greatest influence on my...

 If a high government official pleaded the authority of the Bible as reverentially as is now routine in citing the authority of the Constitution, he'd be had up for idolatry. One way to vest mystique into the Constitution is to plead its inscrutability, or else suggest that only the high priests of the legal profession are equipped to interpret it.The secretary of state informed Tim Russert no fewer than four times on "Meet the Press" that she was not a lawyer. The clear purpose of making that point, in that way, was to suggest that the non-anointed can't responsibly interpret...

Sergeant Clay: Afghanistan Vet and Adopt-A-Soldier Adoptee in the UK November 22, 2005: A Fourth Hour Phone Call Download Windows Media PlayerListen to Rush Conduct Broadcast Excellence BEGIN TRANSCRIPT RUSH: This is Sergeant Clay calling from the UK, the United Kingdom. Welcome, sergeant, to the program. It's an honor to have you with us. CALLER: Oh, my gosh! Hey, Rush. Professor Limbaugh, mega-mega-megadittos if ever such a thing there could be. We owe it all to you, brother. I just wanted to call and to let you know I've been listening to you since 1989, and I've been a...

John Kerry’s America What he said about us. By William F. Buckley Jr. EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the text of William F. Buckley Jr.'s June 8, 1971, commencement address to the United States Military Academy at West Point. The speech appears here as it is in Let Us Talk of Many Things : The Collected Speeches. The morale in the armed services was low, reflecting the impasse and progressive demoralization in Vietnam, and especially the trial of Lieutenant William Calley for the massacre at Mylai. A drastic charge, flamboyantly made by decorated veteran John Kerry (now a United States senator...

The French turmoil is explained, by many who have trained their eyes on it, as a reaction to continued French discrimination. To give evidence of this, the critics cite preferences shown by employers to applicants whose names are indisputably French, with no Algerian or Muslim overtones. One story cited resumes with straightforward French names receiving 50 times the presumptive hospitality shown to applicants with Muslim surnames. And every third or fourth story cites what continues to be thought the matrix of French political life, which is the revolution. There are those who hoped, hopelessly, that Charles de Gaulle would take...

E-mail Author Author Archive Send to a Friend Version October 28, 2005, 1:48 p.m. Unbridled Critics These are indeed rough days for the Bush administration, but critics have a difficult time harmonizing their arguments with history and common sense. The central question for Mr. Bush — more so even than the fate of Harriet Miers — has of course to do with Iraq, and the debate seems to be hardening on the underlying question: Can one country reasonably set out to democratize another country? Critics of the Iraq operation are leaning hard on theoretical arguments, as for instance General...

The rhetorical blur decalcifies straight thought. William Bennett thought he was being asked about crime rates. Well, he was being asked about crime rates, but the blur took over and the world found itself deliberating whether he wished to abort all children of black mothers. So he had to begin not with the point he had set out to make, but by affirming that not only was he against aborting black babies, he was against aborting any babies. Ah, but that statement bumps squarely into Roe v. Wade, which, invoking the right to privacy, entitles mothers to abort their children...

E-mail Author Author Archive Send to a Friend Version October 06, 2005, 7:55 a.m. Publisher’s Statement Standing athwart history, yelling Stop. By William F. Buckley Jr. EDITOR'S NOTE:National Review is celebrating its 50th anniversary this week. Throughout the week, NRO will be running pieces from the archives to help take a trip down memory lane. This piece appeared in the November 19, 1955, issue of National Review. 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...

EDITOR'S NOTE: This is the text, as released by the White House, of remarks the president made today in the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in tribute to National Review on our 50th anniversary and William F. Buckley Jr., NR’s founder.I'm here to escort William F. Buckley, Jr., to lunch. (Laughter.) But first I've got some things I want to say. It's a honor to celebrate the 50th anniversary of National Review, and soon to be the 80th birthday of our honoree. You probably think this is a — the Yale Scholars Association meeting. (Laughter.) Actually, Bill Buckley did have an...