Buckley could have been the playboy of the Western world, but he chose instead to be the St. Paul of the conservative movement.
—Lee Edwards, The Heritage Foundation
William F. Buckley Jr. stands as a monumental figure in the American political and cultural landscape. He was a founder of modern conservatism, a public intellectual and controversial provocateur whose razor-sharp wit, erudite writing, and colorful personality left an indelible imprint on political discourse over the latter half of the twentieth century. Buckley founded National Review (1955), wrote over fifty books on a diverse array of topics (including politics, religion, language, history, and sailing), and hosted the Emmy award–winning public affairs program Firing Line. Central to Buckley’s worldview and intellectual foundation was his deeply rooted Catholic faith, which informed not only his personal life but also his public advocacy and philosophical reflections. I’d like to specifically discuss Buckley’s life; his first major work, God and Man at Yale (1951); and his long-running television program, Firing Line (1966–1999) through the prism of his commitment to the Catholic faith.
William F. Buckley Jr. was born on November 24, 1925, into a devout Catholic family in New York City. His parents were William Frank Buckley Sr., a successful oil executive, and Aloise Josephine Antonia Steiner Buckley, an American-born daughter of Swiss-German immigrants. Buckley Sr. was a classic American self-made man who had achieved significant success in the oil industry, providing the family with economic security and a well-to-do upbringing for William and his ten siblings. His parents, particularly his mother, instilled in him a strong religious foundation deeply rooted in Catholic values and traditions, as Bill Jr. stated in a letter to his mother at age sixteen: “Probably the greatest contribution you have given me is your faith. I can now rely on God in almost any matter.” The Church and her values were the centerpiece of Buckley family life, and in many respects, they were Catholic mavericks standing athwart the milieu of prevailing American Protestantism and New Deal Liberalism. The combination of Buckley Sr.’s church-country-family–first philosophy and vehement anti-communism, along with Aloise’s sincere and personal Catholic faith, ran as parallel and formative threads throughout Buckley Jr.’s entire life and thought.
He inspires us to engage courageously in public life while upholding the objective principles of justice, solidarity, and the common good.
Buckley graduated from the Army Officer Candidate School in 1944 and was commissioned as a 2nd lieutenant in the US Army. At the conclusion of the war in 1945, Buckley enrolled at Yale University, where he served as chairman for the Yale Daily News and was noted as a formidable debater. In 1951, he published his first major work, God and Man at Yale, which scathingly critiqued the secular bias and ideological indoctrination prevalent at his time at Yale. From a distinctly Catholic perspective, God and Man at Yale can be viewed through several key lenses: the role of faith in education, the conflict between religious and secular value systems, and the ramifications for intellectual freedom and moral formation. Catholic teaching consistently emphasizes the integration of faith and reason, and it views education as a discipline that informs not only the intellectual but the moral and spiritual development of the human person. Buckley’s critique of Yale’s curriculum and faculty members reflect his belief that a university education should not only impart facts and figures but also cultivate ethical and spiritual foundations grounded in distinctly religious principles. As a Catholic, Buckley conformed to the objective truth revealed through Church teaching and deeply criticized Yale’s promotion of moral relativism, which, in Buckley’s view, undermined the very essence of justice, solidarity, and human dignity. God and Man at Yale’s critiques of a suffocating secularization, the marginalization of religion in academic institutions, and the degenerative relativism of moral and objective truth, appear profoundly prophetic in the recent years of university protests and societal upheaval.
Buckley founded the conservative political organ National Review in 1955, where he served as the chief editor until 1990. National Review set the boundaries of the conservative movement, denouncing communism whilst promoting fusionism—a philosophical/political combination of traditional and social conservatism with laissez-faire economic theory. National Review’s influence was immense and far reaching, including the late President Ronald Reagan, who was a fervent admirer of National Review and wrote to Buckley in 1962, “I’d be lost without National Review.”
William F. Buckley Jr.’s most well-known contribution to public life was his long-running television program Firing Line, which stands as a hallmark of intellectual discourse and debate in American broadcasting. The show aired from 1966 to 1999 and is the longest-running public affairs program with a single host in television history. The program hosted a vast array of guests over its long tenure, from Catholic icons like Mother Teresa and Fulton Sheen to political conservatives like Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher to left-wing philosophers like Noam Chomsky and Germaine Greer to countercultural revolutionaries like Timothy Leary, Jack Kerouac, and Allen Ginsberg.
As a devout Catholic, Buckley believed deeply in the compatibility of faith and reason, using Firing Line as a public square in the American living room to explore complex issues through reasoned dialogue and debate. Guided by the Catholic principles of intellectual rigor, moral inquiry, and the foundation of objective truth, Firing Line fostered conversations that transcended mere partisan rhetoric. And it’s the episodes with guests that are diametrically opposed to Buckley’s Catholic-informed perspective that offer some of the most riveting programs. One example is the discussion of “Women’s Liberation” with Germaine Greer, where he gives her ample platform to have her say but respectfully engages, deciphers, and dismantles her positions. Another example is when the Beat poet Allen Ginsberg recites his countercultural poetry and sings “Hare Krishna” mid-conversation, much to Buckley’s dignified bemusement. It is in these countless moments throughout the series that Buckley reminds us how a Catholic public intellectual can engage with opposing viewpoints without compromising the objective realities that the Church teaches regarding human dignity, divine grace, and the relationship of reason with faith.
Buckley saw himself as “preaching the demands of the Church in the secular realm” through his considerable literary output, including God and Man at Yale, the prestigious conservative organ National Review, and his television program Firing Line. Buckley’s son Christopher said this about his father: “His faith was the molten core of his being and I think you could extrapolate from that everything about my father.” And it is Buckley’s faith that sustained, inspired, and guided him to the measured heights and considerable cultural and political influence that he achieved throughout his remarkable life.
Buckley’s life, work, and thought still reverberate with profound influence into the present day as he inspires us to engage courageously in public life while upholding the objective principles of justice, solidarity, and the common good. Buckley always had great eloquence, so I’d like to leave you with a quote from him about the need to reorientate modern society toward biblical principles—which continues to be very relevant today:
What has happened in two generations, is the substantial alienation of secular culture from biblical culture. . . . Free speech and private property are terrific, but they do not deal with the great eras of life. . . . The rediscovery of sin as defined in the Bible would cause us to look up and note the infinite horizons that beckon us toward better conduct, better lives, nobler visions.
—William F. Buckley Jr., Nearer, My God, 233–235