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William F. Buckley Jr., one of the most versatile public figures in America, is the authentic, authoritative journalistic voice of conservatism today.
One of the most widely syndicated and intensively read of all columnists -- appearing in over 300 newspapers, Buckley is the founder of National Review, the lively and respected journal of conservative thought and opinion.
Buckley is the also the star of "Firing Line," the weekly television debate program which airs on the Public Broadcasting Service. Guests have included George Bush, Jimmy Carter, Gerald Ford, J.K. Galbraith, Valery Giscard d'Estaing, Barry Goldwater, Germaine Greeg, Edward Heath, Henry Kissinger, The Dalai Lama, Norman Mailer, Groucho Marx, James Michener, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher and Theodore White.
Buckley has written many best-selling books, including God and Man at Yale, Saving the Queen, Stained Glass and Overdrive.
Buckley has also contributed articles to most American publications, among them: Architectural Digest, Art & Antiques, The Atlantic Monthly, Esquire, Foreign Affairs, Harper's, Life, The New Republic, The New Yorker, The New York Times, Playboy, Reader's Digest, The Saturday Evening Post, Saturday Review, and TV Guide.
Buckley's career has taken him from Yale to the United Nations and into politics and journalism, where he has become something of an institution as a successful debater, political analyst and critic.
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William F. Buckley (Dec 27, 2007)
It happened, in the summer of 1987, that I had all the Democrats who were running for president in 1988 in an auditorium in Houston, speaking for the first time as formal... more
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William F. Buckley (Dec 12, 2007)
Some months ago I had a communication from a member of Conrad Black's defense team. The jury had just convicted him on four of the 13 charges brought against him. Said the... more
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William F. Buckley (Nov 20, 2007)
A perplexed citizen in Greenwich, Conn., writes to his local newspaper saying that the anti-abortion movement suffers from the absence of a comprehensive position on the... more
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William F. Buckley (Nov 13, 2007)
How to deal with Norman Mailer? I begin by acknowledging the truth of much that is being said about him, that he was a towering figure in American literary life for 60 years,... more
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William F. Buckley (Nov 06, 2007)
The Foundation Management Institute (FMI) lets out what can only be described as a screech of joy. The cause? "Judge Neil Shuster (of Trenton, N.J.) ruled that the... more
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William F. Buckley (Nov 03, 2007)
The shooting war in New York over the question of driver's licenses for illegal aliens dramatizes several features of U.S. culture. The first of these is that the right to... more
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William F. Buckley (Oct 27, 2007)
It's not as it was with President Nixon. The thought of Nixon is impossible except under the shadow of Watergate, which would have meant impeachment and probable conviction.... more
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William F. Buckley (Oct 18, 2007)
There is head-scratching in the political marketplace over a looming contradiction. The candidates for president of the United States include a man identified as a Roman... more
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William F. Buckley (Oct 13, 2007)
A while back, watching television, I winced when a Democratic stalwart referred to "sanctimonious Joe." He was talking about Sen. Joe Lieberman, I quickly... more
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William F. Buckley (Oct 09, 2007)
In days (long) gone by, the tradition was that gentlemen engaged in media work do not disparage other gentlemen engaged in media work. The protocol was blatantly violated... more
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William F. Buckley (Oct 06, 2007)
The flap featuring Rush Limbaugh, Media Matters and MoveOn.org illustrates the importance not only of keeping facts straight but also of lining up symmetrical... more
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William F. Buckley (Oct 02, 2007)
Pity John McCain, for whom everything has gone sour in the past period, taking him from lead candidate for the Republican nomination to the cellar. Some years ago, after... more
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William F. Buckley (Sep 25, 2007)
CNN devoted an entire hour to the chaos in Jena, La., and rendered a considerable service. We hear, running through it all, the voices of critical figures -- the district... more
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William F. Buckley (Sep 13, 2007)
Not enough attention has been paid, on the Iraq question, to the factor of universal access to information. For many years, in many wars, news reporters could not get near... more
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William F. Buckley (Sep 08, 2007)
The most recent initiative of the president of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, is to change Venezuela's time zone by one half-hour. Why? There is only one reasonable answer: to annoy... more
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William F. Buckley (Sep 07, 2007)
This is the season in which, quite obviously, lascivious ears tune up for hypocrisy on the part of politicians. More often than not the scorn is justified. It can't be a... more
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William F. Buckley (Sep 06, 2007)
Some set the matter aside as being nothing more than verbal play for the benefit of word-men. What term properly designates what we are doing, and what we are enduring, in... more
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William F. Buckley (Sep 04, 2007)
The news of the incident in the men's room at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport needs to be absorbed layer by layer. It can already be referred to as the "infamous"... more
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William F. Buckley (Aug 24, 2007)
Western Europe has a Muslim problem, and it is particularly acute in Great Britain, which is more intimately linked to constitutional traditions and procedures. The French... more
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William F. Buckley (Aug 22, 2007)
Did you know -- better, would you have guessed? -- that the top income-tax rate in India, which is the home of breast-fed socialism, is a mere 30 percent? That is down from... more
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William F. Buckley (Jun 12, 2007)
The genius of David Chase, the originator of "The Sopranos," was never more evident than in the last episode of the series. I viewed it with an earnest and... more
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William F. Buckley (Jun 08, 2007)
The talk about a pardon for Lewis Libby is food for thought. Partisans are grateful that there is time, even if not much time, to think, pending the appeals that are under... more
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William F. Buckley (Jun 05, 2007)
Robert Shrum has written a book in which he tells all, or at least leaves one hoping that what he has told is all there is to tell. If, in the dawn's early light, freshly... more
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William F. Buckley (Jun 01, 2007)
While it is true that no historical event exactly replicates another, it is certainly the case that what happened in Vietnam in 1972-1975 bears very closely on the current... more
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William F. Buckley (May 29, 2007)
The congressional initiative to take coal and transform it into a liquid that serves to replace various fuels is going to have a hard time. Coalescing as fighting camps are... more
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William F. Buckley (May 29, 2007)
The immigration bill is a mess, but how could it be otherwise? Messes are a part of democratic rule.
There are several interests here seeking to be served simultaneously.... more
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William F. Buckley (May 25, 2007)
The immigration bill is a mess, but how could it be otherwise? Messes are a part of democratic rule.
There are several interests here seeking to be served simultaneously.... more
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William F. Buckley (May 22, 2007)
I return from one week's leave from my column, grateful for my old roost and in the mood to repay a favor by granting one, or attempting to do so. You must have the narrative... more
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William F. Buckley (May 14, 2007)
There is pretty outspoken derision, on the hustings, on the matter of Mitt Romney and his evolved stand on abortion. In Iowa, which Romney recently visited, a county chairman... more
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William F. Buckley (May 02, 2007)
The political problem of the Bush administration is grave, possibly beyond the point of rescue. The opinion polls are savagely decisive on the Iraq question. About 60... more
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William F. Buckley (Apr 25, 2007)
The rapture in 1960 over the independence of Nigeria seems incredible, and was always that, but three words -- anti-colonialism, independence and democracy -- were all that... more
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William F. Buckley (Apr 23, 2007)
The search for the propellant of the killer-madness in Cho Seung-Hui tells us more about disorders in American thought than about those of the murderer. Recall first and... more
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William F. Buckley (Apr 17, 2007)
There's a first-class political fight looming. The repercussions of it will be very broad. It will decide major questions of national strategy, critical allocations of... more
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William F. Buckley (Apr 14, 2007)
Some years ago, Cokie Roberts, faithful to her profession and to the proposition that those engaged in public discourse, at whatever level, should be left free to do as they... more
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William F. Buckley (Apr 10, 2007)
The role of the college trustee is endlessly nibbled about in academic politics. Mostly, the college establishment is regnant. Trustees are expected to be affable creatures,... more
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William F. Buckley (Apr 07, 2007)
It's sad, the difficulty of saying anything about the Iraq venture that is other than apocalyptic. Sen. John McCain has problems, but focus on the recent event.
He was in... more
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William F. Buckley (Apr 04, 2007)
There are many (there are millions) outside the frontiers of active political life who are dazed by the aloofness of the political element. They (we) pick up the paper and... more
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William F. Buckley (Mar 28, 2007)
The word among professional Democrats is that John Edwards has set the stakes on the matter of health care, and no one who wants to be president can offer less than he is... more
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William F. Buckley (Mar 24, 2007)
Partisans in the quarrel of Bush vs. Congress have the satisfaction of knowing that weighty arguments can be made in behalf of either position. Presidential immunity... more
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William F. Buckley (Mar 19, 2007)
News comes in from the fighting fronts in Iowa and New Hampshire, and the other day one heard a poignant story. It is about John McCain, campaigning yet again for president.... more
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William F. Buckley (Mar 15, 2007)
The most touching declamation of the past period was by Iraq's prime minister. Nouri al-Maliki turned to his fellow Middle Eastern leaders gathered in Baghdad and said:... more
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William F. Buckley (Feb 28, 2007)
Newspapers are carrying lead stories on the inchoate schism between the Episcopalians and the rest of the Anglican Communion. The news tick is that the Anglicans (headed by... more
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William F. Buckley (Feb 21, 2007)
President Bush is uneasily situated as commander in chief of a nation at war. The first challenge of course is to win the war. But obstacles multiply, not so much in Iraq as... more
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William F. Buckley (Feb 01, 2007)
The hot news on the tobacco front has to do with the serendipitous finding that if damage is done to a particular part of the brain, the patient wakes up without any... more
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William F. Buckley (Jan 23, 2007)
The round number is now $500 million. Five hundred million
dollars is what each major party's presidential nominee is
expected to spend between now and Nov. 4, 2008.... more
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William F. Buckley (Jan 22, 2007)
In August, President Bush approved a new U.S. policy on space
exploration and on the military and commercial uses of space. The
White House announced that the United... more
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William F. Buckley (Jan 16, 2007)
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's comments raise a point worth
making. It is that, in the last analysis, there is no way for
Congress to estop military escalation by the... more
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William F. Buckley (Jan 15, 2007)
You are a Republican legislator, retiring after this, your
fifth term. Last night, into midnight hours, you composed a
questionnaire for yourself. You vowed to submit... more
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William F. Buckley (Jan 09, 2007)
The sickbed serves to distract attention, but it is unsafe to
assume as a corollary that such distraction is enjoyable or even
productive. It may have lessened, for a... more
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William F. Buckley (Jan 05, 2007)
Notes from the diary of John Jay Postlewaite, retrieved
from the salvage of his yacht, Fleetfoot, capsized while racing
to Bermuda, no survivors. The lawyer's diary was... more
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William F. Buckley (Jan 02, 2007)
We haven't yet had, in the West, a true crystallization of
opinion on the matter of (a) what can be shown on TV news, or (b)
what the public should be allowed to see... more
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William F. Buckley (Jan 01, 2007)
Many data, historical and analytical, are being thrust at us,
following the pronouncement of the death sentence on Saddam
Hussein. What one might loosely call "the... more