William F. Buckley Jr.

William F. Buckley Jr. (1925-2008) was an American writer and commentator from New York who first gained attention with God and Man at Yale (1951), which argued that his university had strayed from its original mission. In 1955 he founded National Review, which he edited until 1990, and from 1966 to 1999 he hosted the television debate program Firing Line. He ran for mayor of New York City in 1965 on the Conservative Party line, receiving 13.4 percent of the vote. He never held elected office but was a leading organizer of postwar conservatism.

Admirers across the conservative movement credit Buckley with giving American conservatism intellectual standing, distancing it from fringe groups and building the coalition behind Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan, and he received the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1991. Liberal and progressive critics point to his early opposition to civil rights legislation, a 1986 column proposing tattooing people with AIDS that he later retreated from, and what they saw as an elitist style. Some conservatives disagreed with his support for drug legalization and his late criticism of the Iraq war. His Firing Line debates are often cited as a model of civil argument.