It was Buckley who for decades determined the boundaries of American conservatism. When he published his first book, God and Man at Yale, in 1951, there was no conservative journal of note, no mainstream challenge to liberalism. Philosophical conservatives such as Buckley’s teacher Willmoore Kendall, Eric Voegelin, Richard Weaver, and Leo Strauss were isolated. Like conservatism, they were ignored.

The American Mercury, for which Buckley worked briefly, was a nest of anti-Semites. The libertarian Freeman was beset with infighting, more interested in criticizing the New Deal than in coalition-building. Cranky, conspiratorial, bigoted, frustrated, powerless—this was the conservatism of William F. Buckley’s young adulthood.