William F. Buckley Jr.: Encyclopedia - William F. Buckley Jr.

William F. Buckley, Jr.

William Frank Buckley Jr. (born November 24, 1925), an American author and journalist, founded the prominent conservative political magazine National Review in 1955 and the award-winning television show Firing Line in 1966. He often is credited as the godfather of modern American conservatism.

William F. Buckley Jr. - Childhood

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Buckley was born in New York City to lawyer and oil baron William Frank Buckley, Sr., and Aloise Steiner Buckley. The sixth of 10 children, young Buckley moved with his family to Sharon, Connecticut. He soon moved to Paris where he attended first grade and learned French. By age seven, he had had formal training in English at a day school in London. As a boy, Buckley developed a love for music, horses, swimming, hunting, story-telling, and the importance of his religious faith; all of which would be reflected in his later writings.

William F. Buckley Jr. - Education military service and the CIA

In 1943, Buckley attended the University of Mexico. The following year, he joined the U.S. Army and was commissioned a second lieutenant. When World War II ended in 1945, he enrolled in Yale University where he became a member of the secret Skull and Bones society (whose membership has included such prominent figures as William Howard Taft, Gifford Pinchot, Averell Harriman, Henry Luce, Potter Stewart, George H. W. Bush, John Kerry, and George W. Bush), was a member of Davenport College, and served as the chairman of the Yale Daily News.

Buckley graduated from Yale in 1950. That same year, he married Patricia Taylor of Vancouver, British Columbia, and they had one child, a son, writer Christopher Buckley, an only child with 49 first cousins.

In 1951, Buckley was recruited into the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) where he served for less than one year. Little has been published regarding Buckley's work with the CIA, but in a 2001 letter to author W. Thomas Smith, Jr., Buckley wrote, "I did training in Washington as a secret agent and was sent to Mexico City. There I served under the direct supervision of Howard Hunt, about whom of course a great deal is known." In a November 1, 2005 editorial for the National Review, he recounted that:

When in 1951 I was inducted into the CIA as a deep cover agent, the procedures for disguising my affiliation and my work were unsmilingly comprehensive. It was three months before I was formally permitted to inform my wife what the real reason was for going to Mexico City to live. If, a year later, I had been apprehended, dosed with sodium pentothal, and forced to give out the names of everyone I knew in the CIA, I could have come up with exactly one name, that of my immediate boss (E. Howard Hunt, as it happened). In the passage of time one can indulge in idle talk on spook life. In 1980 I found myself seated next to the former president of Mexico at a ski-area restaurant. What, he asked amiably, had I done when I lived in Mexico? "I tried to undermine your regime, Mr. President." He thought this amusing, and that is all that it was, under the aspect of the heavens.

While with the Agency in Mexico, Buckley edited The Road to Yenan, a book addressing the Communist quest for global domination, by Peruvian author Eudocio Ravines.

William F. Buckley Jr. - Career

In 1951, the same year he was recruited into the CIA, Buckley's first book, God and Man at Yale, was published. The book was a critique of Yale University, in which he argued that the school had strayed from its original, Christian mission. In the book, he attacked Yale for being anti-religion, anti-capitalist, and collectivist. He then worked as an editor for The American Mercury in 1951 and 1952 before founding National Review in 1955, voice of conservatism of all kinds, which he edited for many years. In 1957 Buckley published a review of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged by Whitaker Chambers, ostensibly "reading her out of the conservative movement." In 1960 Buckley helped form Young Americans for Freedom. Five years later in 1965, he ran for mayor of New York City as the candidate for the newly formed Conservative Party, because of his dissatisfaction with Republican candidate John Lindsay. He finished third with 13 percent of the vote. In 1973, he served as a delegate to the United Nations.

Buckley is a nationally syndicated newspaper columnist whose work appears in more than 300 newspapers, and author of numerous books both fiction and non-fiction. His writing style is characterized by his strict adherence to correct grammar, strong opinion, and use of uncommon words. Over the course of his career his views have changed on some issues, such as drug legalization, which he now favors.

Buckley is the author of a series of novels featuring the character of CIA agent Blackford Oakes. He has also written several books on communicating, writing, history, political thought, and sailing.

In 1981, Buckley informed President-elect (and personal friend) Ronald Reagan that he did not want any official position in his administration. Reagan replied that was too bad, because he had wanted to make Buckley Ambassador to (then Soviet-occupied) Afghanistan. Buckley replied that he was willing to take the job, but only if he were to be supplied with ten divisions of "bodyguards."

Buckley participated in a debate following the airing of The Day After, a 1983 made-for-TV movie about the effects of nuclear war. A staunch anti-communist, Buckley consistently defended the strategy of nuclear deterrence during the cold war.

In 1991, Buckley received the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President George H. W. Bush.

In June 2004, Buckley relinquished his controlling shares of National Review to a pre-selected board of trustees. The following month, Miles Gone By, a memoir of his life, career, and love of sailing was published.

Buckley continues to write his syndicated newspaper column, as well as opinion pieces for National Review (the bi-weekly magazine) and National Review Online (the popular daily web version of the magazine known widely as NRO). He also lectures, grants the occasional radio interview, and makes guest appearances on national television news programs.

Recently Buckley has criticized certain aspects of policy within the conservative movement that he largely helped create. He has said "Bush is conservative but he is not a conservative," and that Bush was elected "as a vessel of the conservative faith." According to him the war in Iraq was "anything but conservative. 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." He was careful to add: "This isn’t to say that the [Iraq] war is wrong, or that history will judge it to be wrong. But it is absolutely to say that conservatism implies a certain submission to reality; and this war has an unrealistic frank and is being conscripted by events." [1]

William F. Buckley Jr. - Criticism

Buckley once walked out in the middle of a debate with Howard Zinn at Tufts University when the audience began to applaud Zinn's remarks.

Some critics regard Buckley as arrogant, and believe his clipped Mid-Atlantic English accent to be pretentious. Few know, however, that Buckley came late to the English language, not learning it until he was seven (his first language was Spanish, learned in Mexico and his second French, learned in Paris). This would hardly endear him to many conservatives and thus is not emphasized by his adoring supporters. Buckley is also criticized for evoking his wealthy New-England background to seem glamorous (e.g. in God and Man at Yale).

William F. Buckley Jr. - Family

• When Buckley was a young man, his father, William F. Buckley, Sr., was an acquaintance of libertarian author Albert Jay Nock.
• Buckley's son, Christopher Taylor Buckley, is an author, essayist, and humorist.
• Buckley's younger brother, Fergus Reid Buckley, is an author, debate-master, and founder of the Buckley School of Public Speaking.
• Another of Buckley's brothers, James L. Buckley, is a senior judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit, and a former U.S. Senator from New York.
• Buckley co-authored a book, McCarthy and His Enemies, with his brother-in-law, attorney Brent Bozell Jr. (Bozell married Buckley's sister, Patricia Buckley). Bozell's son, L. Brent Bozell, III, is an author, political commentator, and founder of the Media Research Center.

William F. Buckley Jr. - Books

• William F. Buckley, Jr., Miles Gone By: A Literary Autobiography (Washington, D.C., Regnery, 2004) ISBN 0895260891.
• William F. Buckley, Jr., The Fall of the Berlin Wall (Wiley, John & Sons, Inc, 2004) ISBN 0471267368.
• William F. Buckley, Jr., Getting It Right (Regnery Publishing, Inc, 2003) ISBN 0895261383
• William F. Buckley, Jr., Nuremberg: The Reckoning (Harcourt, 2002) ISBN 141322282X.
• William F. Buckley, Jr., Elvis in the Morning (Harcourt, 2001) ISBN 0156007541
• William F. Buckley, Jr., Let Us Talk of Many Things: The Collected Speeches (Crown Publishing Group, 2001) ISBN 0761534091
• William F. Buckley, Jr., Spytime: The Undoing of James Jesus Angleton (Harcourt, 2001) ISBN 0641526385.
• William F. Buckley, Jr., The Redhunter: A Novel Based on the Life of Senator Joe McCarthy (Warner Books, Inc, 1999) ISBN 0316115894
• William F. Buckley, Jr., Buckley: The Right Word (Harcourt, 1998) ISBN 0156005697
• William F. Buckley, Jr., The Lexicon: A Cornucopia of Wonderful Words for the Inquisitive Word Lover (Harcourt, 1998) ISBN 0156006162
• William F. Buckley, Jr., Nearer My God: An Autobiography of Faith (New York, Doubleday, 1997) ISBN 0156006189
• William F. Buckley, Jr., Happy Days Were Here Again: Reflections of a Libertarian Journalist (Random House, 1993) ISBN 0679403981
• William F. Buckley, Jr., In Search of Anti-Semitism (Continuum International, 1992) ISBN 082640619X
• William F. Buckley, Jr., WindFall: The End of the Affair (Mckay, 1992) ISBN 0679403973
• William F. Buckley, Jr., Gratitude: Reflections on What We Owe to Our Country (Random House, 1990) ISBN 0394576748
• William F. Buckley, Jr., On the Firing Line: The Public Life of Our Public Figures (Random House, 1989) ISBN 0394575687
• William F. Buckley, Jr., Big Game Hunting in Central Africa (St. Martin's Press, 1988) ISBN 0312021658
• William F. Buckley, Jr., Racing through Paradise: A Pacific Passage (Random House, 1987) ISBN 0394557816
• William F. Buckley, Jr., Right Reason: A Collection (Doubleday, 1985) ISBN 0385152353
• William F. Buckley, Jr., Airborne: A Sentimental Journey (Little, Brown & Company, 1984) ISBN 0316114383
• William F. Buckley, Jr., Up From Liberalism (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc, 1984) ISBN 0812829697
• William F. Buckley, Jr., Overdrive: A Personal Documentary(Doubleday, 1983) ISBN 0385182694
• William F. Buckley, Jr., Atlantic High: A Celebration (Doubleday, 1982) ISBN 0385152337
• William F. Buckley, Jr., Who's On First (Doubleday, 1980) ISBN 0385146817
• William F. Buckley, Jr., Hymnal: The Controversial Arts (Penguin, 1978) ISBN 0399122273
• William F. Buckley, Jr., Unmaking of a Mayor (Crown Publishing, 1977) ISBN 0870003917
• William F. Buckley, Jr., Execution Eve and Other Contemporary Ballads (Penguin, 1975) ISBN 0399115315
• William F. Buckley, Jr., United Nations Journal: A Delegate's Odyssey (Penguin, 1974) ISBN 0399114084
• William F. Buckley, Jr., Cruising Speed: A Documentary (Penguin, 1971) ISBN 0399101810
• William F. Buckley, Jr., McCarthy and His Enemies: The Record and Its Meaning (Random House, 1970) ISBN 0870001108
• William F. Buckley, Jr., Dialogues in Americanism (Constructive Action, Inc, 1964) ISBN 091195614X
• William F. Buckley, Jr., God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of Academic Freedom (Regnery Publishing, Inc, 1951) ISBN 089526692X

William F. Buckley Jr. - Blackford Oakes book series

• William F. Buckley, Jr., Last Call for Blackford Oakes (Harcourt, 2005) ISBN 0151010854
• William F. Buckley, Jr., The Blackford Oakes Reader (iUniverse, Inc, 1999) ISBN 1583483837
• William F. Buckley, Jr., Brothers No More (Harvest/HBJ Book, 1995) ISBN 0156004763
• William F. Buckley, Jr., A Very Private Plot (William Morrow & Company, Inc, 1993) ISBN 0688127959
• William F. Buckley, Jr., Tucker's Last Stand (Random House, 1990) ISBN 0394576756
• William F. Buckley, Jr., See You Later, Alligator (Doubleday, 1988) ISBN 0385194420
• William F. Buckley, Jr., Mongoose R.I.P. (Random House, 1987) ISBN 0394559312
• William F. Buckley, Jr., High Jinks (Doubleday, 1986) ISBN 0385194439
• William F. Buckley, Jr., Story of Henri Tod (Doubleday, 1984) ISBN 0385152345
• William F. Buckley, Jr., Marco Polo, If You Can (Doubleday, 1982) ISBN 0385152329
• William F. Buckley, Jr., Stained Glass (Doubleday, 1978) ISBN 0385125429
• William F. Buckley, Jr., Saving the Queen (Doubleday, 1976) ISBN 0385038003

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