William F. Buckley, Jr. (1925 - 2008)

William F. Buckley, Jr. led a 50 year movement to champion conservatism that began in a New Deal America where liberalism reigned. Buckley made conservatism cool with his coalition of anti-communists, constitutionalists, and free-market enthusiasts.

There will be much written about America's modern conservative leader in the coming days and I will post links to the best of it here. I'll start with words from Ronald Reagan that appeared in today's NY Times.

"In remarks at National Review’s 30th anniversary in 1985, President Reagan joked that he picked up his first issue of the magazine in a plain brown wrapper and still anxiously awaited his biweekly edition — “without the wrapper.”

“You didn’t just part the Red Sea — you rolled it back, dried it up and left exposed, for all the world to see, the naked desert that is statism,” Mr. Reagan said.

“And then, as if that weren’t enough,” the president continued, “you gave the world something different, something in its weariness it desperately needed, the sound of laughter and the sight of the rich, green uplands of freedom.”"

Bill Kristol said, "For people of my generation, Bill Buckley was pretty much the first intelligent, witty, well-educated conservative one saw on television. He legitimized conservatism as an intellectual movement and therefore as a political movement."