William F. Buckley: A tribute.

William F. (Bill) Buckley is a great American whose contributions to our country span more than half a century.

In 1950, he came to public attention when he wrote God and Man at Yale, which warned that ideology was pushing scholarship aside on university campuses. How prophetic he was.

Five years later, Buckley founded National Review at a time when, as former NR staffer Chris Weinkopf said, “the world considered conservative intellectuals a genetic impossibility. Just nine years later, NR would prove instrumental in Barry Goldwater's rise to the GOP nomination for president. In 1980, Goldwater protégé Ronald Reagan won the White House, and made National Review mandatory reading for his entire staff."

President Reagan often said it wouldn't have been possible for him to become President without Bill Buckley and NR.

Except for far-right extremists who still resent Buckley's attacks on the conspiracy-driven John Birch Society, is there a conservative or libertarian group active today that doesn't acknowledge a debt to Bill Buckley? Young Americans for Freedom was literally founded in his home. The many important research and policy proposals of The Heritage Foundation and American Enterprise Institute are part of Buckley’s legacy.

With words, ideas, and actions, Buckley has unapologetically championed the American creed, often at times when few others were doing so. Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby recently wrote an appreciation of Buckley which included this:

I was a 17-year-old college sophomore when I discovered National Review. A quarter-century later, I no longer recall where I came across my first issue, or what was on its cover. What I do recall, vividly, is the thrill of encountering words and arguments that gave shape and coherence to my own inchoate political beliefs. The importance of individual freedom, the dangers of a too-powerful government, the blessings of a free market, the imperative of fighting communism, the indispensability of faith -- these were themes I encountered again and again in the pages of NR. And, in those pre-Reagan days, almost nowhere else.

Bill Buckley is 80 years old on Nov. 24, 2005. Let us give thanks for his life: and wish him many more fruitful and happy years.