page_title: History of conservatism in the United States
section_title: William F. Buckley Jr. and the National Review
hierarchical_section_title: History of conservatism in the United States / 1950s / William F. Buckley Jr. and the National Review
caption_attribution_description: William F. Buckley, Jr. attends the second inauguration of President Ronald Reagan.
context_page_description: Except briefly in the 1860s–1870s, there has never been a national political party in the United States called the Conservative Party. All major American political parties support republicanism and the basic classical liberal ideals on which the country was founded in 1776, emphasizing liberty, the pursuit of happiness, the rule of law, the consent of the governed, opposition to aristocracy and fear of corruption, coupled with equal rights before the law. Political divisions inside the United States often seemed minor or trivial to Europeans, where the divide between the Left and the Right led to violent political polarization, starting with the French Revolution.
  No American party has advocated European ideals of conservatism such as a monarchy, an established church, or a hereditary aristocracy. American conservatism is best characterized as a reaction against utopian ideas of progress. Although the laissez-faire policy goals of American conservatives have never been popular, historian Patrick Allitt expresses the difference between conservative and liberal in terms not of policy but of attitude.
context_section_description: The most effective organizer and proponent of conservative ideas was William F. Buckley, Jr. (1925–2008), the founder of National Review in 1955 and a highly visible writer and media personality. Although before, there had been numerous small right-wing circulation magazines, the National Review was able to gain national attention and shaped the conservative movement due to strong editing and a strong stable of regular contributors. Erudite, witty and tireless, Buckley inspired a new enthusiasm for the movement.  Behind the scenes the magazine was handled by publisher William A. Rusher Geoffrey Kabaservice asserts, "in many ways it was Rusher, not Buckley who was the founding father of the conservative movement as it currently exists. We have Rusher, not Buckley, to thank for the populist, operationally sophisticated, and occasionally extremist elements that characterize the contemporary movement."
  Buckley and Rusher assembled an eclectic group of writers: traditionalists, Catholic intellectuals, libertarians and ex-Communists. They included: Russell Kirk, James Burnham, Frank Meyer, Willmoore Kendall, L. Brent Bozell, and Whittaker Chambers In the magazine's founding statement Buckley wrote:
  The launching of a conservative weekly journal of opinion in a country widely assumed to be a bastion of conservatism at first glance looks like a work of supererogation, rather like publishing a royalist weekly within the walls of Buckingham Palace. It is not that of course; if National Review is superfluous, it is so for very different reasons: It stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no other is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.
caption: William F. Buckley Jr.
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