Standing athwart history, yelling Stop

The Buzz: William F. Buckley Jr. gave conservatism wit and a rudder | Marvin Olasky

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Say your daddy is rich. Say you're smart. How should you spend his money and your life? William F. Buckley Jr., who died on Feb. 27 at age 82, showed us a rightful way.

Buckley, born in 1925, was the sixth of 10 children fathered by a Catholic oil millionaire. In college he headed the Yale Daily News and joined Skull and Bones, the elite secret society. He gained national attention with his first of at least 55 books, God and Man at Yale: It accused the college of proselytizing for atheism and collectivism.

After a year in the CIA and other short stops, Buckley used $100,000 from his father to start National Review in 1955, a time when American conservatism was largely rudderless. The magazine started slowly, with circulation at 16,000 after two years, but it hit 125,000 as a nine-year-old in 1964, when the candidate it had helped to advance, Barry Goldwater, ran for president. Readers' donations have always subsidized the magazine, which now has a circulation of 155,000.