Remembering William F. Buckley Jr.

Today, the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation remembers the legacy of William F. Buckley Jr., an American intellectual, commentator, and anti-communist icon. Born in New York City on November 24, 1925, Buckley Jr. left a larger-than-life impact on U.S. political thought as well as our understanding of why America must fight against the scourge of communism.



To explore how Buckley Jr. “recognized communism not only as a political threat, but as a spiritual one—a system that sought to erase God and remake human nature itself,” watch a newly released discussion between Dr. Elizabeth Edwards Spalding, Chairman of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation, and the late Dr. Lee Edwards, founding Chairman of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. This conversation, hosted by the National Review Institute, traces Buckley Jr.’s fight from Whitaker Chambers’ defection and the Alger Hiss trial to the rise of Goldwater and Reagan, and the movement that ultimately brought the Cold War to an end.

As Dr. Edwards Spalding writes in the National Review, Buckley Jr. was “driven first and foremost by his religious convictions, he viewed atheistic communism as not only evil but also the central threat of modern times…” For decades, Buckley debated against those of the opinion that “Marxism was merely, even benignly, a theory. For him, Marxism was an ideology, which meant it was not satisfied with staying on the page.”

For a deep dive into the man, the life, and the legacy, read Standing Athwart History: The Political Thought of William F. Buckley Jr. by Dr. Lee Edwards. As he concludes, “Buckley saw his goals achieved…‘Communism defeated, free market economics widely understood if not widely enough practiced, and some sense that government could be, not the solution, but the problem.’ William F. Buckley Jr.’s vision of ordered liberty shaped and guided American conservatism from its infancy to its maturity, from a cramped suite of offices on Manhattan’s East Side to the Oval Office of the White House, from a set of ‘irritable mental gestures’ to a political force that transformed American politics.”