November 24, 1925 – February 27, 2008
- CIA “Special Activities” operative (supervised by E Howard Hunt)
- segregationist
- witch hunter
- spy novelist
- queer-basher
- crypto-Nazi
Buckly wrote an entire book in praise of Joseph McCarthy’s anti-communist witch hunts. Things have gotten so bad that Buckley is now considered a gentle moderate.
His his elder brother Jim Buckley defeated incumbent Republican Senator Charles Goodell, who was appointed to the seat after Robert F. Kennedy’s assassination. Just one of those things.
In 1988, Buckley organized a committee to defeat liberal Republican Senator Lowell Weicker. He endorsed and helped first elect Senator Joseph Lieberman.
“the central question that emerges… is whether the White community in the South is entitled to take such measures as are necessary to prevail, politically and culturally, in areas where it does not predominate numerically? The sobering answer is Yes – the White community is so entitled because, for the time being, it is the advanced race.”
— William F Buckley, 1957