William F. Buckley Dies, Ardent Foe of Civil Rights; Champion of Strom Thruman
Bill Buckley like his good friend Barry Goldwater abhorred the civil rights movements. He exhorted Republicans to become more like his beloved John Birch Society even as he defended his hero Joe McCarthy.
William F. Buckley Jr. Dies at 82
By HILLEL ITALIE, The Associated Press
NEW YORK — William F. Buckley Jr., the erudite Ivy Leaguer and conservative herald who showered huge and scornful words on liberalism as he observed, abetted and cheered on the right’s post-World War II rise from the fringes to the White House, died Wednesday. He was 82.
He described himself thusly: “I am, I fully grant, a phenomenon, but not because of any speed in composition,” he wrote in The New York Times Book Review in 1986. “I asked myself the other day, `Who else, on so many issues, has been so right so much of the time?’ I couldn’t think of anyone.”