ABSTRACT
This chapter assesses the nature of William F. Buckley’s contribution to American conservatism. Although Buckley is aware of the tensions in a fusionist conservatism such as his own, he has never bothered to give them close scrutiny. Buckley has succeeded more than anyone else in changing the public image of conservatives. As a devout Catholic, Buckley professes to believe, among other things, in the incarnation of Christ, original sin, heaven and hell and the possibility of redemption for a fallen humanity. But the particular religious doctrines he embraces are in themselves less significant for conservative philosophy than are their implications for society and government. Buckley began his career in the early 1950s as an ardent libertarian completely convinced of the virtues of capitalism and the vices of collectivism. A sharp critic of the New Deal, he denounced even the mildest version of a planned economy as “the way station on the road to 1984.”.
