Author, editor, and political activist, William F. Buckley, Jr. (born 1925) helped to create the modern conservative political movement. His journal, National Review, prepared the way for the presidential terms of Ronald Reagan and George Bush.

William F. Buckley, Jr., was born in New York City on November 24, 1925. His father made a fortune in the oil fields of Mexico and gave his ten children personal tutors and exclusive Roman Catholic private schools for their educations. Buckley spent his early years in England and France and inherited his father's self-confidence and strong convictions. As a child of six, for instance, he wrote the king of England demanding that Great Britain pay its World War I debts to the United States.

Buckley served in the U.S. Army from 1944 to 1946, then entered Yale University and graduated with honors in 1950. In 1951 he examined his university education in his first book, God and...