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. http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WilliamFBuckley http://media.townhall.com/TownHall/icons/TH-feed-icon-128x128.gif http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WilliamFBuckley TownHall.com, Where your opinion counts. 128 Copyright (c) 2012 Townhall.com, A Salem Communications Web. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED jim.dearras@townhall.com (Jim De Arras) Thu, 31 Jan 2008 05:01:00 GMT Thu, 31 Jan 2008 05:01:00 GMT http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss RSS.NET: http://www.rssdotnet.com/ President Bush didn't give Congress, in his State of the Union address, quite what was expected, especially in the area of taxation. Several high critics of Bush, most of them running for president, spoke vociferously... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WilliamFBuckley/2008/01/31/state_of_the_union_not_so_good ffd76943-93bc-43ed-bf89-a53bcd1cfd3f Thu, 31 Jan 2008 05:01:00 GMT Students of current events writing on Tuesday morning are expected to discover whether Mr. Obama or Mrs. Clinton is responsible for the collapse of the stock market. Because the accents in which they engaged each other... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WilliamFBuckley/2008/01/22/barack_vs_hillary ecdc7e90-aaa4-47bc-90b4-c862a0258d66 Tue, 22 Jan 2008 05:01:00 GMT It is a field day for practitioners in politics. In South Carolina the hottest issue this week wasn't the specter of recession and what the federal government should do about it, but the Confederate flag. A citizens'... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WilliamFBuckley/2008/01/18/its_really_quite_simple f1c3d1e7-4d35-47c7-a2a8-c514fc2e8363 Sat, 19 Jan 2008 01:11:37 GMT Sebastian Mallaby, a journalist for The Washington Post, writes to formulate, or rather reformulate, the complaint we are entitled to make on the matter of our primary practices. Mallaby reminds us that if three people... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WilliamFBuckley/2008/01/16/primary_confusions 901507e4-5ccb-436d-b4ae-775f79ebe247 Thu, 17 Jan 2008 01:24:35 GMT It's wonderful what a mere American presidential caucus contest can do. Gov. Bill Richardson, interviewed after the Iowa caucuses, said that his ranking in the vote must be understood in the light of the parsimony of... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WilliamFBuckley/2008/01/04/produced_by_iowa 9f5ee10d-6bce-448f-bee2-6fe797669a0c Sat, 05 Jan 2008 01:15:24 GMT 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 candidates. All the Republicans had agreed to... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WilliamFBuckley/2007/12/27/what_they_cant_ask 8fbbf407-8379-4d16-9ffa-213ed2c2c103 Thu, 27 Dec 2007 20:55:44 GMT 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 lawyer to however many hundred people she... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WilliamFBuckley/2007/12/12/black_times 194ed23f-7077-4b4a-bae4-653df2495e87 Wed, 12 Dec 2007 23:40:25 GMT 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 practice. He believes that the Catholic... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WilliamFBuckley/2007/11/20/crime_punishment 0062e011-645c-4e1f-b4c0-c88c312645c9 Tue, 20 Nov 2007 05:01:00 GMT 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, almost unique in his search for notoriety... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WilliamFBuckley/2007/11/13/norman_mailer,_rip 5f64dc3b-eccd-4bc5-bd0f-54ff53302cdb Wed, 14 Nov 2007 00:43:37 GMT 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 Robertson family is entitled to its day in court.... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WilliamFBuckley/2007/11/06/one_up_for_the_donors 9eb19416-33b0-4de2-a225-1a029ff6f216 Wed, 07 Nov 2007 02:31:25 GMT 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 drive a car is the most cherished right in... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WilliamFBuckley/2007/11/03/illegalizing_illegals 2339cf5a-a8e7-42b3-a67a-aca73b7f2d4c Sat, 03 Nov 2007 04:01:00 GMT 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. But it isn't widely remembered that there was... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WilliamFBuckley/2007/10/27/impeach_bush d5e51c05-1311-49b7-9194-ab3f15677996 Sat, 27 Oct 2007 16:10:26 GMT 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 Catholic, and among the voters there are, of... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WilliamFBuckley/2007/10/18/what_about_the_faithful 863c4794-fbd1-4f2c-a390-d95599919bbd Thu, 18 Oct 2007 04:01:00 GMT A while back, watching television, I winced when a Democratic stalwart referred to "sanctimonious Joe." He was talking about Sen. Joe Lieberman, I quickly discovered. Since then I have begun quietly memorizing... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WilliamFBuckley/2007/10/13/sanctimonious_joe 49479797-5608-4c4a-a59e-6194798ad49d Sat, 13 Oct 2007 23:51:03 GMT 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 from time to time. How, in the age of Drew... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WilliamFBuckley/2007/10/09/the_bum_said 6e03983e-797a-47c1-a5d2-b54246085d98 Wed, 10 Oct 2007 00:27:07 GMT 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 perspectives. For instance: An individual soldier... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WilliamFBuckley/2007/10/06/the_war,_in_the_vernacular d4d58936-5c3e-468c-b01a-3f7de674c81e Sat, 06 Oct 2007 18:35:33 GMT 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 hearing what John McCain withstood in North... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WilliamFBuckley/2007/10/02/religion_marginalized 237725ee-9581-4726-8e9c-da86d98aa958 Wed, 03 Oct 2007 01:44:57 GMT 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 attorney, the school principal and a school... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WilliamFBuckley/2007/09/25/the_mess_in_jena 6667ff87-1081-4c8a-bf68-0c1b653b6abc Wed, 26 Sep 2007 02:08:59 GMT 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 the front-line scene. And where high politics... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WilliamFBuckley/2007/09/13/iraq_one_more_time ffef41df-8a2d-4861-8c44-08870c6f905c Thu, 13 Sep 2007 20:36:28 GMT 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 the United States. Why should the U.S.... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WilliamFBuckley/2007/09/08/chavez_half-past_noon 1a51ca6a-044b-44ef-b525-ae279d037667 Sat, 08 Sep 2007 04:01:00 GMT 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 surprise that politicians seeking public office... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WilliamFBuckley/2007/09/07/is_epiphany_running_for_office 95c803ce-2927-4d41-9096-9c634f00c3db Sat, 08 Sep 2007 03:09:17 GMT 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 many parts of the world, the symbolic center of... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WilliamFBuckley/2007/09/06/world_war_iv 88e6aa83-2445-4fff-b090-22b63bafb4cf Thu, 06 Sep 2007 14:50:09 GMT 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" meeting between Sen. Larry Craig of Idaho and... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WilliamFBuckley/2007/09/04/entrapment_does_not_wash_here b52c730d-4657-435a-8465-77cbbc088ddb Tue, 04 Sep 2007 16:08:52 GMT 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 are quietly aghast at the presence of 5 million... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WilliamFBuckley/2007/08/24/british_openings 1dc73f67-f3c1-4be5-b1b7-6cb583c365da Sat, 25 Aug 2007 03:00:21 GMT 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 60 percent in 1979. How does that compare?... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WilliamFBuckley/2007/08/22/jobs,_trade,_and_the_democrats b35627e9-294d-4f3a-9727-e291a0bc3835 Thu, 23 Aug 2007 02:12:42 GMT 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 cosmopolitan young man and his lady, and we wondered,... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WilliamFBuckley/2007/06/12/goodbye,_tony c352c1e9-d61e-472d-b76e-23916a8b430c Wed, 13 Jun 2007 00:37:34 GMT 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 way challenging the conviction at a technical... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WilliamFBuckley/2007/06/08/yes,_free_libby 0ed3384a-f43a-49a5-bfe9-810a98db3eb8 Sat, 09 Jun 2007 01:15:17 GMT 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 empanelled fathers convened to found a civil... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WilliamFBuckley/2007/06/05/debasing_democracy bc413118-d3a4-41b5-bc70-849525088b29 Wed, 06 Jun 2007 00:21:28 GMT 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 situation in Iraq. To truncate the story... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WilliamFBuckley/2007/06/01/honor,_duty,_country d474f89a-f15e-46b6-ad99-53ea291f5a87 Sat, 02 Jun 2007 01:54:52 GMT 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 (l) a public that says we have to devise a... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WilliamFBuckley/2007/05/29/fill_er_up 2c12d10f-a2f7-40a8-a771-5a682be1369c Wed, 30 May 2007 01:07:15 GMT 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. There is (1) the existing illegal population... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WilliamFBuckley/2007/05/29/immigration_blues 0c1852ab-611c-490c-b813-578b6a119f9d Tue, 29 May 2007 14:10:35 GMT 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. There is (1) the existing illegal population http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WilliamFBuckley/2007/05/25/immigration_blues 7d87b981-96ef-4d07-a1cd-05edd671e7aa Fri, 25 May 2007 13:32:54 GMT 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 of what happened one day last week. I was... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WilliamFBuckley/2007/05/22/great_lives d22f8913-1836-4f33-83ec-7c8660412d9d Wed, 23 May 2007 01:58:22 GMT 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 accosted a skeptic. What he said was that... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WilliamFBuckley/2007/05/14/romneys_moral_thought 0a4efbae-c530-4c96-90b7-fe333ab77777 Mon, 14 May 2007 04:05:00 GMT 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 percent of Americans wish the war ended -- wish at l http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WilliamFBuckley/2007/05/02/the_waning_of_the_gop eb5ef286-c76c-47be-ba04-4964842dfc53 Wed, 02 May 2007 15:48:07 GMT 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 was thought to be needed to justify the jubila http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WilliamFBuckley/2007/04/25/superstitions_of_democracy 511987e3-5bec-40f2-85b8-6e92227e9da9 Wed, 25 Apr 2007 13:48:57 GMT 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 foremost that the crime was quickly identified as http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WilliamFBuckley/2007/04/23/facing_the_unique 7b05a8f8-de21-46ab-9471-f37af309c474 Mon, 23 Apr 2007 16:20:08 GMT 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 authority and, almost certainly, the immediate fate... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WilliamFBuckley/2007/04/17/political_blockbuster_ahead 4a702b68-2548-416d-a740-34a8f6e61dfa Wed, 18 Apr 2007 03:07:18 GMT 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 liked, stopped short. What did it was a... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WilliamFBuckley/2007/04/14/imus_dead b3e262e5-6e67-417c-a985-07811b3f5e3c Sat, 14 Apr 2007 20:05:14 GMT 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, preferably rich and generous. They are not... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WilliamFBuckley/2007/04/10/the_high_cost_of_loving_dartmouth 697e47ab-1323-407a-9018-347246ec49f1 Wed, 11 Apr 2007 02:10:39 GMT 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 Iraq on Sunday and reported that he had... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WilliamFBuckley/2007/04/07/good_news_can_be_good ecac5e37-40f6-4992-a097-f56670e88842 Sat, 07 Apr 2007 17:12:11 GMT 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 learn that Mitt Romney is way ahead in GOP... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WilliamFBuckley/2007/04/04/scoop_inc a19d2b20-eb87-450d-a386-8abdc2aacf0c Wed, 04 Apr 2007 13:42:22 GMT 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 offering, which is -- of course -- guaranteed... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WilliamFBuckley/2007/03/28/john_edwards_will_give_you_free_health ad4bde21-6cd9-4eb5-b466-a0ec86934e9e Wed, 28 Mar 2007 13:13:54 GMT 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 respecting the operations of members of the executive... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WilliamFBuckley/2007/03/24/presidential_pleasure d5737429-cd6b-423b-9c97-a227e17fdc37 Sat, 24 Mar 2007 12:22:24 GMT 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. There are reasons that might be given... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WilliamFBuckley/2007/03/19/a_republic,_if_you_can_keep_it 98c79a8a-4c3b-4a47-a94a-21238e93f0c5 Mon, 19 Mar 2007 13:28:04 GMT 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: "Confrontation of terrorism, dear brothers,... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WilliamFBuckley/2007/03/15/rallying_the_protesters d53335ee-c9b3-4cce-8db7-9b28d1d4c571 Thu, 15 Mar 2007 14:05:00 GMT 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 the archbishop of Canterbury) have informed... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WilliamFBuckley/2007/02/28/a_new_bill_of_rights c7cee1ea-efd4-403e-b710-7b811a63ceb3 Wed, 28 Feb 2007 13:52:14 GMT 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 in America. In Iraq, the situation appears... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WilliamFBuckley/2007/02/21/high_decision_time e58154c6-c478-48da-b7b1-db23072ae7a7 Wed, 21 Feb 2007 13:56:13 GMT 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 appetite for smoking. That is a dreamy prospect for t http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WilliamFBuckley/2007/02/01/protection_time 4bf6ec0e-28b5-44e3-92ad-022bf38a4056 Thu, 01 Feb 2007 05:01:00 GMT 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. Today's story focuses on Hillary Clinton's... http://www.townhall.com/columnists/WilliamFBuckley/2007/01/23/politics_for_a_billion 2f3f4303-7634-45d2-9665-c656beb16f67 Wed, 24 Jan 2007 02:01:00 GMT