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BUCKLEY '50, WHO DEFINED AN ERA OF CONSERVATISM AND DEFIED AN ERA AT YALE, DEAD AT 82 2.27.08
William F. Buckley Jr. ’50, a former chairman of the News and the father of the American conservative movement, died this morning at his home in Stamford, Conn. He was 82.
The cause was not immediately known, but Buckley had been ill with emphysema, The Associated Press reported.
From his days as an eloquent orator in debates at the Yale Political Union as an undergraduate to his decades as a prolific columnist, author and television host, Buckley was a force to be reckoned with in weaving conservative ideals into the mid- to late-20th century American fabric — ideals developed, in large part, during his time at Yale.
To liberals, he was, in the famous words of the historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. famously put it, “the scourge of American liberalism.” To his fellow conservatives, he was an icon; President Ronald Reagan called him the most important journalist and intellectual of his era.
