William Frank Buckley Jr. (born William Francis Buckley; November 24, 1925 – February 27, 2008) was an American conservative writer, public intellectual, political commentator, and novelist.
Born in New York City, Buckley spoke Spanish as his first language before learning French and then English as a child. He served stateside in the United States Army during World War II. After the war, he attended Yale University, where he engaged in debate and conservative political commentary; he graduated from Yale with honors in 1950. He then worked at the Central Intelligence Agency for two years.
In 1955, Buckley founded National Review, a magazine that stimulated the growth and development of the conservative movement in the United States. In addition to editorials in National Review, Buckley wrote God and Man at Yale (1951) and more than 50 other books on diverse topics including writing, speaking, history, politics, and sailing. His works include a series of novels featuring fictitious CIA officer Blackford Oakes and a nationally syndicated newspaper column.
In 1965, Buckley ran for mayor of New York City on the Conservative Party line, finishing third. From 1966 to 1999, he hosted 1,429 episodes of the public affairs television show Firing Line, the longest-running public affairs show with a single host in U.S. television history; through his work on the show, he became known for his Northeastern elite accent, articulate discourse, and wide vocabulary.The Wall Street Journal, February 28, 2008, p. A16
Buckley is widely considered one of the most influential figures in the conservative movement in the United States.
Early life
Childhood William Frank Buckley Jr. was born William Francis Buckley in New York City on November 24, 1925, to Aloise Josephine Antonia (née Steiner; 1895–1985) and lawyer and oil developer William Frank Buckley Sr. (1881–1958). His mother hailed from New Orleans and was of German, Irish, and Swiss-German descent, while his father had Irish ancestry and was born in Texas to Canadian parents from Hamilton, Ontario. He had five older siblings and four younger siblings.
As a boy, Buckley moved with his family to Mexico before moving to Sharon, Connecticut. He began his formal schooling in France, attending first grade in Paris. By the time Buckley was seven, the family had moved to England, where he received his first formal English-language training at a day school in London. Due to the family's varied places of residence, his first and second languages were Spanish and French. Early chapters recount his early education and mastery of languages.
As a boy, Buckley developed a love for horses, hunting, music, sailing, and skiing, all of which are reflected in his later writings. He was homeschooled through the eighth grade using the homeschool curriculum developed by the Calvert School in Baltimore. Just before World War II, when he was 12 and 13, he attended the Jesuit preparatory school St John's Beaumont School in the English village of Old Windsor.
Buckley's father was an oil developer whose wealth was based in Mexico and became influential in Mexican politics during the military dictatorship of Victoriano Huerta, but was expelled when leftist general Álvaro Obregón became president in 1920. Buckley's nine siblings included eldest sister Aloise Buckley Heath, a writer and conservative activist; sister Maureen Buckley-O'Reilly, who married Richardson-Vicks Drugs CEO Gerald A. O'Reilly; sister Priscilla Buckley, author of Living It Up with National Review: A Memoir, for which Buckley wrote the foreword; sister Patricia Buckley Bozell, also an author; brother Reid Buckley, an author and founder of the Buckley School of Public Speaking; and brother James L. Buckley, who became a U.S. senator from New York and a judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.
During the war, Buckley's family took in the English historian-to-be Alistair Horne as a child war evacuee. He and Buckley remained lifelong friends. They both attended the Millbrook School in Millbrook, New York, graduating in 1943. Buckley was a member of the American Boys' Club for the Defense of Errol Flynn (ABCDEF) during Flynn's trial for statutory rape in 1943.
At Millbrook, Buckley founded and edited the school's yearbook, The Tamarack; this was his first experience in publishing. When Buckley was a young man, libertarian author Albert Jay Nock was a frequent guest at the Buckley family house in Sharon, Connecticut. William F. Buckley Sr. urged his son to read Nock's works, the best-known of which was Our Enemy, the State, in which Nock maintains that the founding fathers of the United States, at their Constitutional Convention in 1787, executed a coup d'état of the system of government established under the Articles of Confederation.
Music In his youth, Buckley developed many musical talents. He played the harpsichord, later calling it "the instrument I love beyond all others", but said he was not "proficient enough to develop my own style". He was a close friend of harpsichordist Fernando Valenti, who offered to sell Buckley his 16-foot pitch harpsichord. Buckley was also an accomplished pianist and appeared once on Marian McPartland's NPR show Piano Jazz. A great admirer of Johann Sebastian Bach,"Once Again, Buckley Takes on Bach" ; The New York Times; October 25, 1992. Buckley wanted Bach's music played at his funeral.
Religion Buckley was raised a Catholic and was a member of the Knights of Malta.Phelan, Matthew (February 28, 2011) Seymour Hersh and the men who want him committed , Salon.com He was committed to Catholic devotionals, including praying the Rosary daily.
The 1951 release of his first book, God and Man at Yale, was met with some specific criticism pertaining to his Catholicism. McGeorge Bundy, dean of Harvard at the time, wrote in The Atlantic, "it seems strange for any Roman Catholic to undertake to speak for the Yale religious tradition". Henry Sloane Coffin, a Yale trustee, wrote that the book was "distorted by his Roman Catholic point of view" and that Buckley "should have attended Fordham or some similar institution".
In his 1997 book Nearer, My God, Buckley condemned what he viewed as "the Supreme Court's war against religion in the public school" and argued that Christian faith was being replaced by "another God [...] multiculturalism". He disapproved of the liturgical reforms following the Second Vatican Council, writing of the loss of the Latin Mass: "I pray the sacrifice will yield a rich harvest of informed Christians. But to suppose that it will is the most difficult act of faith I have ever been called upon to make, because it tears against the perceptions of all my senses."
Education and military service Buckley attended the National Autonomous University of Mexico (or UNAM) until 1943. The next year, upon his graduation from the U.S. Army Officer Candidate School (OCS), he was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the United States Army. In his book Miles Gone By, he briefly recounts being a member of Franklin Roosevelt's honor guard upon Roosevelt's death. He served stateside throughout the war at Fort Benning, Georgia; Fort Gordon, Georgia; and Fort Sam Houston, Texas.
After the war ended in 1945, Buckley enrolled at Yale University, where he became a member of the secret Skull and Bones society and was a masterful debater. He was an active member of the Conservative Party of the Yale Political Union, and served as chairman of the Yale Daily News and as an informer for the FBI. Chapter 7 is devoted to Buckley. At Yale, Buckley studied political science, history, and economics and graduated with honors in 1950. He excelled in the Yale Debate Association; under the tutelage of Yale professor Rollin G. Osterweis, Buckley honed his acerbic style.
Early career Buckley remained at Yale working as a Spanish instructor from 1947 to 1951.
Central Intelligence Agency Buckley served in the CIA for two years, including one year in Mexico City working on political action for E. Howard Hunt, who was later imprisoned for his part in the Watergate scandal. The two officers remained lifelong friends and Buckley was the godfather of three of Hunt's children.Tad Szulc, Compulsive Spy: The Strange Career of E. Howard Hunt (New York: Viking, 1974) Buckley said that while he worked for the CIA, Hunt, his immediate boss, was the only other CIA employee he knew and that William Sloane Coffin exposed Buckley's CIA employment. While stationed in Mexico, Buckley edited The Road to Yenan, a book by Peruvian author Eudocio Ravines. After leaving the CIA, Buckley worked as an editor at The American Mercury in 1952, but left after perceiving newly emerging antisemitic tendencies in the magazine.
First books
God and Man at Yale Buckley's first book, God and Man at Yale, was published in 1951. In it, Buckley argues that Yale University had strayed from its original mission.
One critic viewed the work as miscasting the role of academic freedom.Countryman, Vern (1952). Review of "William F. Buckley, God and Man at Yale." The Yale Law Journal , 61.2: 272–283 ("Once upon a time there was a little boy named William Buckley. Although he was a very little boy, he was much too big for his britches."). The American academic and commentator McGeorge Bundy, also a Yale alumnus, wrote in The Atlantic: "God and Man at Yale, written by William F. Buckley, Jr., is a savage attack on that institution as a hotbed of 'atheism' and 'collectivism.' I find the book is dishonest in its use of facts, false in its theory, and a discredit to its author."
Buckley credited the attention the book received to its "Introduction" by John Chamberlain, saying that it "chang[ed] the course of his life" and that the famous Life magazine editorial writer had acted out of "reckless generosity".Chamberlain, John, A Life With the Printed Word, Chicago: Regnery, 1982, p. 147 Buckley was referred to in Richard Condon's 1959 novel The Manchurian Candidate as "that fascinating younger fellow who had written about men and God at Yale."
McCarthy and His Enemies In 1954, Buckley and his brother-in-law L. Brent Bozell Jr. co-authored a book, McCarthy and His Enemies. Bozell worked with Buckley at The American Mercury in the early 1950s when it was edited by William Bradford Huie. The book defended Senator Joseph McCarthy as a patriotic crusader against communism, and asserted that "McCarthyism ... is a movement around which men of good will and stern morality can close ranks." Buckley and Bozell described McCarthy as responding to a communist "ambition to occupy the world". They conceded that he was often "guilty of exaggeration", but believed the cause he pursued was just.
National Review Buckley founded National Review in 1955 at a time when few publications were devoted to conservative commentary. He served as the magazine's editor-in-chief until 1990.Encyclopedia.com June 10, 1990 During that time, National Review became the standard-bearer of American conservatism, promoting the fusionism of traditional conservatives and libertarians. Examining postwar conservative intellectual history, Kim Phillips-Fein writes:Phillips-Fein, Kim; "Conservatism: A State of the Field", Journal of American History, (Dec. 2011) Vol. 98, No. 3, p. 729.Nash, George H.; The Conservative Intellectual Tradition Since 1945 (1976)