William F. Buckley, Jr., R.I.P

William F. Buckley, Jr., passed away on Wednesday, February 27th, marking the end of an era, as he was the preeminent intellectual of the post-Word War II American conservative movement. In recent years, the term “conservative” has lost an absolute definition, and competing factions have intensely debated its “true” meaning. At the close of the World War II, however, the term had almost no ideological definition whatsoever when applied to then-contemporary politics. After over a decade of the Roosevelt administration, New Deal liberalism was the dominant political trend, and the Democrats reigned supreme as the party of ideas.

This would all begin to change, however, when a young Buckley published his famous God and Man at Yale (1951), a fierce attack on his alma mater for what he saw as its embracement of atheist and collectivist trends. In reaction to the big government liberalism of FDR, coupled with a seemingly ever more dangerous Soviet Union, Buckley put forth a cohesive set of ideas which would come to define the conservative movement for decades to come. Taking the traditionalism of Russell Kirk, the anti-statist ideals of Albert Jay Nock, and the anti-communism of Whittaker Chambers, Buckley’s conservatism was founded on the pillars of limited government, individual liberty, and respect for the Western tradition. He would soon launch the magazine National Review, a principle text of conservative journalism and opinion, in 1955, and the rest, as they say, is history.

George Will famously noted that “…before there was Ronald Reagan, there was Barry Goldwater, and before there was Barry Goldwater there was National Review, and before there was National Review there was Bill Buckley with a spark in his mind.” It is almost impossible to overestimate Buckley’s impact on modern day conservatism, but his sphere of influence hardly ended with National Review and his writing. As host of the program Firing Line (1966-1999), Buckley debated and conversed with seemingly every figure of note in the latter half of the 20th century, with the guests being as varied as the topics of discussion. From the Beat writers Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, to the free-market economist F.A. Hayek, or the M.I.T Professor Noam Chomsky, nothing was out of bounds for the purpose of debating and discussing, thus illustrating an intellectual honesty so rarely seen on television today.

In addition to sporting a set of often bizarre facial expressions and a uniquely patrician way of speaking, Buckley was well known for his wit and the amusement with which he lived life. After famously losing the New York City mayoral election in 1965, to John Lindsay, Buckley was asked what he would have done had he won, to which he replied, “I’d demand a recount!” Once, an interviewer jokingly asked him if, since he was always sitting down during his television appearances, he was unable to “think on his feet.” Buckley calmly replied, “It’s very hard to stand up, carrying the weight of what I know…”

Buckley’s charming sense of humor and fun stemmed from his thankfulness for all the joys that life and God (he was a dedicated Roman Catholic) had given to him, and he thus saw it as his duty to ensure that those freedoms and joys would be preserved for the generations to come. There would be no room for cowardice and passivity when facing down destructive totalitarian ideals. When giving a speech, in 1985, to an audience that included Ronald Reagan, Buckley specifically addressed the President, saying, “I pray that my son, when he is sixty, and your son, when he is sixty, and the sons and daughters of our guests tonight will live in a world from which the great ugliness that has scarred our century has passed. Enjoying their freedoms, they will be grateful that, at the threatened nightfall, the blood of their fathers ran strong.” So it did.

Buckley was a man of immeasurable personal generosity, which was largely a product of his own spirit of thankfulness. Since his death, there have already been countless recollections by friends and foe alike of the joy he took in living. When he announced, in 1990, his retirement as editor of the magazine that he created, he reflected while looking over the final publication to go through his desk. “The editorials are now in order, and the line count is confirmed. Another issue of National Review has gone to bed; and you acknowledge – the thought has ever so slowly distilled in your mind – that the time comes for us all to go to bed, and I judge that mine has come, and I leave owing to my staff, my colleagues – my successors – my friends, my muses, my God, an unrequitable debt for having given me so much, for so long. Good night, and thanks.” Gone from us at 82, rest in peace.