“The reality of the situation is that missions abroad to effect regime change in countries without a bill of rights or democratic tradition are terribly arduous.”
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William F. Buckley Jr.
William Frank Buckley Jr. was an American conservative writer, public intellectual, political commentator, and novelist.
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culture · American conservative author and commentator (1925–2008) · journalist · television presenter · novelist · writer · politician · also William F. Buckley Jr., William Frank Buckley Jr., William Frank Buckley, Jr., William Frank Buckley, William F. Buckley, Jr., Jr.
Born 24 November 1925 · Died 27 February 2008 · Q378098
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2026· 3 entries
“I endorse all six of those objectives.”
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“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.”
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2020· 1 entry
The Columbia Journalism Review uncovered documents that implicated Buckley in a media campaign by the Argentina military junta promoting the regime's image while covering up the Dirty War
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2008· 5 entries
Died 2008-02-27.
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Died of a heart attack at his home in Stamford, Connecticut, at the age of 82
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“Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality, the costs become prohibitive.”
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That Buckley was "arguably the most important public intellectual in the United States in the past half century
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“Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.”
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2007· 1 entry
Pat Buckley died at age 80 of an infection after a long illness
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2006· 1 entry
“One cannot doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed”
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2004· 4 entries
Buckley told Time, "I once believed we could evolve our way up from Jim Crow
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Told The New York Times Magazine: "If the protocol had been accepted, many who caught the infection unguardedly would be alive
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“I once believed we could evolve our way up from Jim Crow. I was wrong. Federal intervention was necessary.”
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In which he called for conservatives to change their views on legalization, writing, "We're not going to find someone running for president who advocates reform of those laws
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2003· 1 entry
When Esquire republished the original Vidal essay as part of a collection titled Esquire's Big Book of Great Writing
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2000· 2 entries
Awarded Library of Congress Living Legend (2000).
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Buckley said he had been "beaten down" by fellow "right-wing theorist and intellectual friends" from advocating for a single tax on land rent
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1991· 4 entries
Won Presidential Medal of Freedom presented by George H. W. Bush (1991).
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“I find it impossible to defend Pat Buchanan against the charge that what he did and said during the period under examination amounted to anti-Semitism”
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Buckley wrote a 40,000-word article criticizing Buchanan
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Buckley received the Presidential Medal of Freedom
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1990· 2 entries
Buckley retired from the day-to-day running of the National Review
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Buckley retired from the day-to-day running of National Review
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1988· 1 entry
Buckley organized a committee to campaign against U
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1981· 2 entries
Buckley informed President-elect Reagan that he would decline any official position offered to him
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There was another agreement with the SEC
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1980· 1 entry
Awarded National Book Award (1980).
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1976· 2 entries
Buckley supported Ronald Reagan's primary campaign against sitting President Gerald Ford and expressed disappointment at Reagan's narrow loss
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Five years after being released from prison, Smith attempted to murder another woman, this time in San Diego, California
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1975· 1 entry
Buckley recounted being inspired to write a spy novel by Frederick Forsyth's The Day of the Jackal: "If I were to write a book of fiction, I'd like to have a whack at something of that nature
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1973· 1 entry
The Nixon administration appointed Buckley as a delegate to the United Nations, about which Buckley later wrote a book
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1972· 1 entry
Said that while he supported removing criminal penalties for using marijuana, he also supported cracking down on trafficking marijuana
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1971· 4 entries
The group published a letter announcing that its members no longer supported Nixon
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Buckley debated Betty Friedan on abortion
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Career landmark: trustee (1971–1974).
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Buckley assembled a group of conservatives to discuss the domestic and foreign policies of Richard Nixon that the group opposed
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1970· 3 entries
For six to seven weeks per year, Buckley and his wife lived and worked in Rougemont, Switzerland
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Giving very generous credit to the activist support of the New York State chapter of YAF
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Beginning in 1970, for six to seven weeks per year, Buckley and his wife lived and worked in Rougemont, Switzerland.
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1968· 1 entry
Saying: "I believe in black power, by the way
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1966· 1 entry
Career landmark: trustee (1966–1967).
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1965· 2 entries
Buckley ran for mayor of New York City as the nominee of the new Conservative Party
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Buckley ran for mayor of New York City on the Conservative Party line, finishing third
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1964· 2 entries
And saw his dreams fulfilled when Reagan and the Bushes captured the Oval Office"
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Buckley wrote of "her desiccated philosophy's conclusive incompatibility with the conservative's emphasis on transcendence, intellectual and moral" and "the incongruity of tone, that hard, schematic, implacable, unyieldi
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1963· 3 entries
Resulting in the deaths of four African American girls
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The day after George Wallace, the white supremacist governor of Alabama, made his "Segregation Forever" inaugural address, Buckley published a feature essay in National Review on his recent "South African Fortnight", con
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And 1964, Buckley mobilized support for the candidacy of Senator Barry Goldwater, first for the Republican nomination against New York Governor Nelson Rockefeller, and then for the presidency
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1962· 2 entries
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
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Called African nationalism "self-discrediting" and said "the time is bound to come when" Westerners "realize what is the nature of the beast"
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1961· 2 entries
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
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When asked when Africans would be ready for self-government, he replied, "When they stop eating each other"
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1960· 1 entry
Buckley helped form Young Americans for Freedom (YAF)
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1957· 1 entry
And the two disagreed on the reasons for the United States' perceived failure in the Cold War's early years
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1956· 1 entry
(renamed American Opinion in 1958), one year after the founding of The National Review
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1955· 2 entries
At a time when few publications were devoted to conservative commentary
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Buckley founded National Review, a magazine that stimulated the growth and development of the conservative movement in the United States
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1952· 2 entries
But left after perceiving newly emerging antisemitic tendencies in the magazine
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Their mutual publisher Henry Regnery introduced Buckley to Welch
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1950· 1 entry
Buckley married Patricia Buckley, née Taylor, daughter of Canadian industrialist Austin C
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1945· 1 entry
Buckley enrolled at Yale University, where he became a member of the secret Skull and Bones society and was a masterful debater
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1944· 1 entry
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
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1925· 2 entries
Born 1925-11-24.
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To Aloise Josephine Antonia (née Steiner; 1895–1985) and lawyer and oil developer William Frank Buckley Sr
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