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| WSJ Editorial: William F. Buckley, Jr. |
| 2008-02-28 |
| . . . In 1951, Bill Buckley made his name with God and Man at Yale, which critiqued his alma mater for its hostilities to capitalism and religion. Four years later, Buckley founded National Review. He was 29. In its fecund early period in the 1950s and '60s, National Review helped introduce a modern conservatism into American political life. Buckley and his talented stable of editors and contributors gave coherence and shape to what he called "a fusion" of traditionalism, anti-Communist internationalism and free-market economics. Equally important, the magazine worked to discredit fringe elements like the John Birchers, the Jew-haters and the Lindbergh isolationists. 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. . . . Buckley himself never lost his faith—in God, his country, the obligation to engage in the controversies of the age, and the wonders of the mind. His half-century at the center of the American scene was a model of thoughtfulness and political creativity that remains as relevant today, perhaps more so. Ave atque vale. |
| Posted by:Mike |