Founding Father (1925-2008)

For my birthday in 1992, my mother-in-law bought me a gift subscription to National Review. The magazines started coming in January 1993, coinciding with the opening days of the Clintonista Administration. They continue today, roughly every two weeks, including the latest, glossy-covered issue as a tribute to their founder, Wm. F. Buckley Jr.

Always reasoned, never shrill, NR was the perfect antidote to an overtly left-leaning media (in the days before the Internet and before Talk Radio became populated beyond Rush Limbaugh), and the unmitigated chaos, vacuity, bean-counting and mendacity of the early Clinton years (not that the later years were much better). On top of that, it played a major role in pulling me out of the four years of left-leaning academic from which I had recently emerged. My only regret is that nobody, including me, thought to begin the subscription four or five years earlier.

Fifteen years later, I still have nearly every issue (a few having perished in various moves along the way), and look forward to my twilight years in the near future when I'm able to peruse them at my leisure. The tributes to Mr. Buckley have been numerous, but his courage in starting a serious journal of conservative thought in the early 1950's had a major impact on my life forty years later, not to mention to millions of people all over the world. Thanks, Bill.