William F. Buckley, Jr., founder of the National Review Magazine in 1955, is widely credited for his pioneering role in reviving conservatism from the sidelines of public discourse. He died this morning at his home in Stamford, Connecticut. Buckley handed over the reigns at National Review in 1990 and retired from his TV talk show “Firing Line” in 1999. The latter elicited this observation from William Kristol, editor of Weekly Standard:
“For people of my generation, Bill Buckley was pretty much the first intelligent, witty, well-educated conservative one saw on television. He legitimized conservatism as an intellectual movement and therefore as a political movement.”