William F. Buckley

William Frank Buckley Jr. (born William Francis Buckley; November 24, 1925 – February 27, 2008) was an American public intellectual, conservative author and political commentator. In 1955, he founded ''National Review'', the magazine that stimulated the conservative movement in the mid-20th century United States. Buckley hosted 1,429 episodes of the public affairs television show '' Firing Line'' (1966–1999), the longest-running public affairs show with a single host in American television history, where he became known for his distinctive Mid-Atlantic accent and wide vocabulary.''The Wall Street Journal'' February 28, 2008, p. A16

Born in New York City, Buckley served stateside in the United States Army during the Second World War. After the war, he attended Yale University, where he engaged in debate and right-wing political commentary. Afterward, he worked for two years in the Central Intelligence Agency. In addition to editorials in ''National Review'', Buckley wrote ''God and Man at Yale'' (1951) and more than fifty other books on diverse topics, including writing, speaking, history, politics, and sailing. His works include a series of novels featuring fictitious CIA agent Blackford Oakes as well as a nationally syndicated newspaper column.

Buckley called himself both a conservative and a libertarian. George H. Nash, a historian of the modern American conservative movement, said in 2008 that Buckley was "arguably the most important public intellectual in the United States in the past half century. For an entire generation, he was the preeminent voice of American conservatism and its first great ecumenical figure." Political consultant Stuart Stevens, who served as a top strategist on Mitt Romney's 2012 presidential campaign, writes that "for all his well-crafted sentences and love of language, Buckley was often a more articulate version of the same deep ugliness and bigotry that is the hallmark of Trumpism." In contrast, Roger Scruton wrote that "Buckley used the pages of the National Review to distance conservatism from anti-Semitism, and from any other kind of racial stereotyping. The important goal, for him, was to establish a believable stance towards the modern world, in which all Americans, whatever their race or background, could be included, and which would uphold the religious and social traditions of the American people, as well as the institutions of government as the Founders had conceived them".

In both 1979 and 1981, Buckley's moral convictions were brought into question through court proceedings and crackdowns on his and his family's businesses by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Early life

Buckley was born November 24, 1925, in New York City, to Aloise Josephine Antonia (Steiner) and William Frank Buckley Sr., a Texas-born lawyer and oil developer. His mother, from New Orleans, was of Swiss-German, German, and Irish descent, while his paternal grandparents, from Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, were of Irish ancestry. The sixth of ten children, Buckley moved as a boy with his family to Mexico, and then to Sharon, Connecticut, before beginning his formal schooling in Paris, where he attended first grade. By age seven, he received his first formal training in English at a day school in London; his first and second languages were Spanish and French. Early chapters recount his early education and mastery of languages. As a boy, Buckley developed a love for music, sailing, horses, hunting, and skiing, all interests reflected in his later writings. He was homeschooled through the eighth grade using the Calvert School of Baltimore's Homeschool Curriculum. Just before World War II, at age 12–13, he attended the Jesuit preparatory school St John's Beaumont in England.

Buckley's father, William Sr. (1881–1958), was an American oil developer whose wealth was based in Mexico. The elder Buckley became influential in Mexican politics during the military dictatorship of Victoriano Huerta but was expelled when leftist general Álvaro Obregón became president in 1920. The younger Buckley had nine siblings, including eldest sister Aloise Buckley Heath, a writer and conservative activist; sister Maureen Buckley-O'Reilly (1933–1964), who married Gerald A. O'Reilly, CEO of Richardson-Vicks Drugs; sister Priscilla Buckley, author of ''Living It Up with National Review: A Memoir'', for which William wrote the foreword; sister Patricia Buckley Bozell, who was Patricia Taylor's roommate at Vassar before each married; brother Reid Buckley, an author, debate-master, and founder of the Buckley School of Public Speaking; and brother James L. Buckley, who became a U.S. Senator from New York and was later a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

During the war, Buckley's family took in the future British historian Alistair Horne (son of Sir Allan Horne) as a child war evacuee. He and Buckley remained lifelong friends. They both attended the Millbrook School in Millbrook, New York, graduating in 1943. Buckley was a member of the American Boys' Club for the Defense of Errol Flynn (ABCDEF) during Flynn's trial for statutory rape in 1943. At Millbrook, Buckley founded and edited the school's yearbook, ''The Tamarack''; this was his first experience in publishing. When Buckley was a young man, libertarian author Albert Jay Nock was a frequent guest at the Buckley family house in Sharon, Connecticut. William F. Buckley Sr. urged his son to read Nock's works, the best-known of which was ''Our Enemy, the State'', in which Nock maintained that the founding fathers of the United States, at their Constitutional Convention in 1787, had executed a coup d'état of the system of government established under the Articles of Confederation.

Music

In his youth, Buckley developed many musical talents. He played the harpsichord very well, later calling it "the instrument I love beyond all others", although he admitted he was not "proficient enough to develop isown style". He was a close friend of harpsichordist Fernando Valenti, who offered to sell Buckley his sixteen-foot pitch harpsichord. Buckley was also an accomplished pianist and appeared once on Marian McPartland's National Public Radio show ''Piano Jazz''. A great admirer of Johann Sebastian Bach,"Once Again, Buckley Takes on Bach"
''The New York Times''; October 25, 1992. Buckley wanted Bach's music played at his funeral.

Religion

Buckley was raised a Catholic and was a member of the Knights of Malta. He described his faith by saying, "I grew up, as reported, in a large family of Catholics without even a decent ration of tentativeness among the lot of us about our religious faith." When he attended Millbrook School, Buckley was permitted to attend Catholic Mass at a nearby church despite the school's Protestant affiliation. As a youth, he became aware of a perceived anti-Catholic bias in the United States through reading '' American Freedom and Catholic Power'', a Paul Blanshard book that accused American Catholics of having "divided loyalties".

The release of his first book, ''God and Man at Yale'', in 1951 was met with some specific criticism pertaining to his Catholicism. McGeorge Bundy, dean of Harvard at the time, wrote in ''The Atlantic'' that "it seems strange for any Roman Catholic to undertake to speak for the Yale religious tradition". Henry Sloane Coffin, a Yale trustee, accused Buckley's book of "being distorted by his Roman Catholic point of view" and stated that Buckley "should have attended Fordham or some similar institution".

In his 1997 book ''Nearer, My God'', Buckley condemned what he viewed as "the Supreme Court's war against religion in the public school" and argued that Christian faith was being replaced by "another God ... multiculturalism". As an adult, Buckley regularly attended the Tridentine Mass in Connecticut. He disapproved of the liturgical reforms following the Second Vatican Council. Buckley also revealed an interest in the writings and revelations of the 20th Century Italian writer Maria Valtorta. In his spiritual memoir, Buckley reproduced Valtorta's detailed accounts of Jesus Christ's crucifixion; these accounts were based on Valtorta's visionary experiences of Christ and the mystical revelations she recorded in her book ''The Poem of the Man-God''.

Education and military service

Buckley attended the National Autonomous University of Mexico (or UNAM) until 1943. The next year, upon his graduation from the U.S. Army Officer Candidate School (OCS), he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the United States Army. In his book ''Miles Gone By'', he briefly recounts being a member of Franklin Roosevelt's honor guard upon Roosevelt's death. He served stateside throughout the war at Fort Benning, Georgia; Fort Gordon, Georgia; and Fort Sam Houston, Texas. After the war ended in 1945, Buckley enrolled at Yale University, where he became a member of the secret Skull and Bones society and was a masterful debater. He was an active member of the Conservative Party of the Yale Political Union, and served as chairman of the ''Yale Daily News'' and as an informer for the FBI. At Yale, Buckley studied political science, history, and economics and graduated with honors in 1950. He excelled on the Yale Debate Team; under the tutelage of Yale professor Rollin G. Osterweis, Buckley honed his acerbic style.

Central Intelligence Agency

Buckley remained at Yale working as a Spanish instructor from 1947 to 1951 before being recruited into the CIA like many other Ivy League alumni at that time; he served for two years, including one year in Mexico City working on political action for E. Howard Hunt, who was later imprisoned for his part in the Watergate scandal. The two officers remained lifelong friends. In a November 1, 2005, column for ''National Review'', Buckley recounted that while he worked for the CIA, the only CIA employee he knew was Hunt, his immediate boss. While stationed in Mexico, Buckley edited ''The Road to Yenan'', a book by Peruvian author Eudocio Ravines. After leaving the CIA, he worked as an editor at ''The American Mercury'' in 1952, but left after perceiving newly emerging anti-Semitic tendencies in the magazine.

Marriage and family

In 1950, Buckley married Patricia Aldyen Austin (Pat) Taylor (1926–2007), daughter of Canadian industrialist Austin C. Taylor. He met Taylor, a Protestant from Vancouver, British Columbia, while she was a student at Vassar College. She later became a prominent fundraiser for such charitable organizations as the Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, the Institute of Reconstructive Plastic Surgery at New York University Medical Center, and the Hospital for Special Surgery. She also raised money for Vietnam War veterans. On April 15, 2007, Pat Buckley died at age 80 of an infection after a long illness. After her death, Buckley seemed "dejected and rudderless", according to friend Christopher Little.

William and Patricia Buckley had one son, author Christopher Buckley. They lived at Wallack's Point in Stamford, Connecticut, with a Manhattan duplex apartment at 73 East 73rd Street: a private entrance to 778 Park Avenue in Manhattan.

Beginning in 1970, Buckley and his wife lived and worked in Rougemont, Switzerland for six to seven weeks per year for more than three decades.

First books

''God and Man at Yale''

Buckley's first book, ''God and Man at Yale'', was published in 1951. Offering a critique of Yale University, Buckley argued in the book that the school had strayed from its original mission. Critics viewed the work as miscasting the role of academic freedom. The American academic and commentator McGeorge Bundy, a Yale graduate himself, wrote in ''The Atlantic'': "''God and Man at Yale'', written by William F. Buckley, Jr., is a savage attack on that institution as a hotbed of 'atheism' and 'collectivism.' I find the book is dishonest in its use of facts, false in its theory, and a discredit to its author."

Buckley himself credited the attention the book received to its "Introduction" by John Chamberlain, saying that it "chang dthe course of his life" and that the famous ''Life'' magazine editorial writer had acted out of "reckless generosity". Buckley was referred to in Richard Condon's 1959 novel ''The Manchurian Candidate'' as "that fascinating younger fellow who had written about men and God at Yale."

''McCarthy and His Enemies''

In 1954, Buckley and his brother-in-law L. Brent Bozell Jr. co-authored a book, ''McCarthy and His Enemies''. Bozell worked with Buckley at ''The American Mercury'' in the early 1950s when it was edited by William Bradford Huie. The book defended Senator Joseph McCarthy as a patriotic crusader against communism, and asserted that "McCarthyism ... is a movement around which men of good will and stern morality can close ranks." Buckley and Bozell described McCarthy as responding to a communist "ambition to occupy the world". They conceded that he was often "guilty of exaggeration" but believed the cause he pursued was just.

''National Review''

Buckley founded ''National Review'' in 1955 at a time when there were few publications devoted to conservative commentary. He served as the magazine's editor-in-chief until 1990.Encyclopedia.com
June 10, 1990 During that time, ''National Review'' became the standard-bearer of American conservatism, promoting the fusionism of traditional conservatives and libertarians. Examining postwar conservative intellectual history, Kim Phillips-Fein writes:

Buckley sought out intellectuals who were ex-Communists or had once worked on the far Left, including Whittaker Chambers, Willi Schlamm, John Dos Passos, Frank Meyer and James Burnham, as editors and writers for ''National Review''. When Burnham became a senior editor, he urged the adoption of a more pragmatic editorial position that would extend the influence of the magazine toward the political center. Smant (1991) finds that Burnham overcame sometimes heated opposition from other members of the editorial board (including Meyer, Schlamm, William Rickenbacker, and the magazine's publisher, William A. Rusher), and had a significant impact on both the editorial policy of the magazine and on the thinking of Buckley himself.

Defining the boundaries of conservatism

Buckley and his editors used ''National Review'' to define the boundaries of conservatism and to exclude people, ideas, or groups they considered unworthy of the conservative title. For example, Buckley denounced Ayn Rand, the John Birch Society, George Wallace, racists, white supremacists, and anti-Semites.

When he first met author Ayn Rand, according to Buckley, she greeted him with the following: "You are much too intelligent to believe in God." In turn, Buckley felt that "Rand's style, as well as her message, clashed with the conservative ethos". He decided that Rand's hostility to religion made her philosophy unacceptable to his understanding of conservatism. After 1957, he attempted to weed her out of the conservative movement by publishing Whittaker Chambers's highly negative review of Rand's ''Atlas Shrugged''. In 1964, he wrote of "her desiccated philosophy's conclusive incompatibility with the conservative's emphasis on transcendence, intellectual and moral", as well as "the incongruity of tone, that hard, schematic, implacable, unyielding, dogmatism that is in itself intrinsically objectionable, whether it comes from the mouth of Ehrenburg, Savonarola—or Ayn Rand." Other attacks on Rand were penned by Garry Wills and M. Stanton Evans. Nevertheless, Burns argues, her popularity and her influence on the right forced Buckley and his circle into a reconsideration of how traditional notions of virtue and Christianity could be integrated with all-out support for capitalism.

In 1962, Buckley denounced Robert W. Welch Jr. and the John Birch Society in ''National Review'' as "far removed from common sense" and urged the Republican Party to purge itself of Welch's influence. He hedged the statement by insisting that among them were "some of the most morally energetic, self-sacrificing, and dedicated anti-Communists in America."

On Robert Welch and the John Birch Society

In 1952, their mutual publisher Henry Regnery introduced Buckley to Robert Welch. Both Buckley and Welch became editors of political journals, and both had a knack for communication and organization. Welch launched his publication ''One Man's Opinion'' in 1956 (renamed ''American Opinion'' in 1958), one year after the founding of ''The National Review''. Welch twice donated $1,000 to Buckley's magazine, and Buckley offered to provide Welch "a little publicity" for his publication. Both believed that the United States suffered from diplomatic and military setbacks during the early years of the Cold War, and both were staunchly anti-communist. But Welch expressed doubts about Eisenhower's loyalties in 1957, and the two disagreed on the reasons for the United States' perceived failure in the Cold War's early years. According to Alvin Felzenberg's assessment, the disagreements between the two blossomed into "a major battle" in 1958. That year, Boris Pasternak won the Nobel Prize in Literature for his novel ''Doctor Zhivago.'' Buckley was impressed by the novel's vivid and depressing depictions of life in a communist society, and believed that the CIA's smuggling of the novel into the Soviet Union was an ideological victory. In September 1958, Buckley ran a review of ''Doctor Zhivago'' by John Chamberlain. In November 1958, Welch sent Buckley and other associates copies of his unpublished manuscript "The Politician", which accused Eisenhower and several of Eisenhower's appointees of involvement in a communist conspiracy. When Buckley returned the manuscript to Welch, he commented that the allegations were "curiously—almost pathetically optimistic." On December 9, 1958, Welch founded the John Birch Society with a group of business leaders in Indianapolis. By the end of 1958, Welch had both the organizational and the editorial infrastructure to launch his subsequent far-right political advocacy campaigns.

In 1961, reflecting on his correspondences with Welch and Birchers, Buckley told someone who subscribed to both the ''National Review'' and the John Birch Society: "I have had more discussions about the John Birch Society in the past year than I have about the existence of God or the financial difficulties of ''National'' ''Review.''"

Buckley rule

The Buckley rule states that ''National Review'' "will support the rightwardmost viable candidate" for a given office. Buckley first stated the Buckley rule during the 1964 Republican primary election featuring Barry Goldwater and Nelson Rockefeller. The rule is often misquoted and misapplied as proclaiming support for "the rightwardmost electable candidate", or simply the most electable candidate.

According to ''National Review''s Neal B. Freeman, the Buckley rule meant that ''National Review'' would support "somebody who saw the world as we did. Somebody who would bring credit to our cause. Somebody who, win or lose, would conservatize the Republican party and the country. It meant somebody like Barry Goldwater."

Starr Broadcasting Group

Buckley was the chairman of Starr Broadcasting Group, a company in which he owned a 20% stake. Peter Starr was president of the company and his brother Michael Starr was executive vice president. In February 1979 the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission accused Buckley and 10 other defendants of defrauding shareholders in Starr Broadcasting Group. As part of a settlement, Buckley agreed to return $1.4 million in stock and cash to shareholders in the company. The other defendants were ordered to contribute $360,000. In 1981, there was another agreement with the SEC.

Political commentary and action

Broadcasts and publications

Buckley's column ''On the Right'' was syndicated by Universal Press Syndicate beginning in 1962. From the early 1970s, his twice-weekly column was distributed regularly to more than 320 newspapers across the country. He authored 5,600 editions of the column, which totaled to over 4.5 million words.

For many Americans, Buckley's erudition on his weekly PBS show '' Firing Line'' (1966–1999) was their primary exposure to him and his manner of speech, often with vocabulary common in academia but unusual on television.

Throughout his career as a media figure, Buckley had received much criticism—largely from the American left, but also from certain factions on the right, such as the John Birch Society and its second president, Larry McDonald, as well as from Objectivists.

In 1953–54, long before he founded ''Firing Line'', Buckley was an occasional panelist on the conservative public affairs program ''Answers for Americans'' broadcast on ABC and based on material from the H. L. Hunt–supported publication ''Facts Forum''.

Young Americans for Freedom

In 1960, Buckley helped form Young Americans for Freedom (YAF). The YAF was guided by principles Buckley called "The Sharon Statement". Buckley was proud of the successful campaign of his older brother, Jim Buckley, on the Conservative Party ticket to capture the US Senate seat from New York State held by incumbent Republican Charles Goodell in 1970, giving very generous credit to the activist support of the New York State chapter of YAF. Buckley served one term in the Senate, then was defeated by Democrat Daniel Patrick Moynihan in 1976.

Edgar Smith murder case

In 1962, Edgar Smith, who had been sentenced to death for the murder of 15-year-old high-school student Victoria Ann Zielinski in New Jersey, began a correspondence with Buckley from death row. As a result of the correspondence, Buckley began to doubt Smith's guilt. Buckley later said the case against Smith was "inherently implausible". An article by Buckley about the case, published in ''Esquire'' in November 1965, drew national media attention:

Buckley's article brought renewed media interest in Hommell, who Smith claimed was the real killer. In 1971, there was a retrial. Smith took a plea deal, and was freed from prison that year. Buckley interviewed him on ''Firing Line'' soon thereafter.

In 1976, five years after being released from prison, Smith attempted to murder another woman, this time in San Diego, California. After witnesses corroborated the story of Lisa Ozbun, who survived being stabbed by Smith, he was sentenced to life in prison. He admitted at the trial that he had in fact also murdered Zielinski. Buckley subsequently expressed great regret at having believed Smith and supported him. Friends of Buckley said he was devastated and blamed himself for what happened.

Mayoral candidacy

In 1965, Buckley ran for mayor of New York City as the candidate for the new Conservative Party. He ran to restore momentum to the conservative cause in the wake of Goldwater's defeat. He tried to take votes away from the relatively liberal Republican candidate and fellow Yale alumnus John Lindsay, who later became a Democrat. Buckley did not expect to win; when asked what he would do if he won the race, he responded, "Demand a recount." He used an unusual campaign style. During one televised debate with Lindsay, Buckley declined to use his allotted rebuttal time and instead replied, "I am satisfied to sit back and contemplate my own former eloquence."

To relieve traffic congestion, Buckley proposed charging drivers a fee to enter the central city and creating a network of bike lanes. He opposed a civilian review board for the New York Police Department, which Lindsay had recently introduced to control police corruption and install community policing. Buckley finished third with 13.4% of the vote, possibly having inadvertently aided Lindsay's election by instead taking votes from Democratic candidate Abe Beame.

Feud with Gore Vidal

When asked if there was one person with whom Buckley would not share a stage, Buckley's response was Gore Vidal. Likewise, Vidal's antagonism toward Buckley was well known, even before 1968. Buckley nevertheless appeared in a series of televised debates with Vidal during the 1968 Republican National Convention in Miami and the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.

In their penultimate debate on August 28 of that year, the two disagreed over the actions of the Chicago Police Department and the protesters at the convention. In reference to the response of the police involved in supposedly taking down a Viet Cong flag, moderator Howard K. Smith asked whether raising a Nazi flag during the Second World War would have elicited a similar response. Vidal responded that people were free to state their political views as they saw fit, whereupon Buckley interrupted and noted that people were free to speak their views but others were also free to ostracize them for holding those views, noting that in the US during the Second World War "some people were pro-Nazi and they were well .e. correctlytreated by those who ostracized them—and I'm for ostracizing people who egg on other people to shoot American Marines and American soldiers. I know you idaldon't care because you have no sense of identification with—". Vidal then interjected that "the only sort of pro- or crypto-Nazi I can think of is yourself" whereupon Smith interjected, "Now let's not call names". Buckley, visibly angered, rose several inches from his seat and replied, "Now listen, you queer, stop calling me a crypto-Nazi or I'll sock you in your goddamn face, and you'll stay plastered."

Buckley later apologized in print for having called Vidal a "queer" in a burst of anger rather than in a clinical context but also reiterated his distaste for Vidal as an "evangelist for bisexuality": "The man who in his essays proclaims the normalcy of his affliction, and in his art the desirability of it, is not to be confused with the man who bears his sorrow quietly. The addict is to be pitied and even respected, not the pusher." The debates are chronicled in the 2015 documentary '' Best of Enemies''.

This feud continued the next year in ''Esquire'' magazine, which commissioned essays from Buckley and Vidal on the incident. Buckley's essay "On Experiencing Gore Vidal" was published in the August 1969 issue. In September, Vidal responded with his own essay, "A Distasteful Encounter with William F. Buckley". In it Vidal strongly implied that, in 1944, Buckley's unnamed siblings and possibly Buckley had vandalized a Protestant church in their Sharon, Connecticut, hometown after the pastor's wife sold a house to a Jewish family. He also implied that Buckley was homosexual and a "racist, antiblack, anti-Semitic and a pro-crypto Nazi." Buckley sued Vidal and ''Esquire'' for libel; Vidal countersued Buckley for libel, citing Buckley's characterization of Vidal's novel '' Myra Breckenridge'' as pornography. After Buckley received an out-of-court settlement from ''Esquire'', he dropped the suit against Vidal. Both cases were dropped, with Buckley settling for court costs paid by ''Esquire'', which had published the piece, while Vidal, who did not sue the magazine, absorbed his own court costs. Neither paid the other compensation. Buckley also received an editorial apology from ''Esquire'' as part of the settlement.

The feud was reopened in 2003 when ''Esquire'' republished the original Vidal essay as part of a collection titled ''Esquire's Big Book of Great Writing''. After further litigation, ''Esquire'' agreed to pay $65,000 to Buckley and his attorneys, to destroy every remaining copy of the book that included Vidal's essay, to furnish Buckley's 1969 essay to anyone who asked for it, and to publish an open letter stating that ''Esquire'''s current management was "not aware of the history of this litigation and greatly egrettedthe re-publication of the libels" in the 2003 collection.

Buckley maintained a philosophical antipathy toward Vidal's other , Norman Mailer, calling him "almost unique in his search for notoriety and absolutely unequalled in his co-existence with it." Meanwhile, Mailer called Buckley a "second-rate intellect incapable of entertaining two serious thoughts in a row." After Mailer's 2007 death, Buckley wrote warmly about their personal acquaintance.

Associations with liberal politicians

Buckley became a close friend of liberal Democratic activist Allard K. Lowenstein

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