William F. Buckley, Jr. found dead in his home at 82

New American, The, March 17, 2008

After suffering from diabetes and emphysema according to his son Christopher, William E Buckley, Jr. was found dead at his desk on February 27 at age 82. The author of 45 books, he wrote about sailing, penned a series of spy novels, and tweaked liberals with a string of politically oriented works beginning with God and Man at Yale. That book, written while Buckley was still a student at the liberal Ivy League university, made him a folk hero of sorts in the eyes of many conservatives.

In 1955, he launched National Review magazine with a staff that was top-heavy with Trotskyite socialists who would be properly labeled neoconservatives today. He used the magazine to redefine conservatism along neoconservative lines and also to try to purge the John Birch Society (this magazine's parent organization) from the conservative movement. While the JBS was (and still is) an adherent of traditional conservatism based on constitutional principles and limited government, the neoconservatism championed by Buckley entailed support of extra-constitutional government and an internationalist foreign policy.

One of the ironies of recent history is that John E McManus, the current and longtime president of the JBS, before knowing much about the JBS, once wrote a letter to Buckley's National Review thanking the publication for an attack on JBS founder Robert Welch. The letter was published. A JBS member who read the letter contacted McManus and provided him with JBS materials, which soon led to McManus' break with Buckley/National Review. In 2002, McManus wrote William E Buckley, Jr.: Pied Piper for the Establishment, a 240-page critical biography about the celebrated publisher, author, columnist, and television personality.