Kathryn Lopez at National Review Online reports the sad news that the prolific author and conservative commentator William F. Buckley has died. Starting from when I read God and Man at Yale and Up from Liberalism in while in high school, and read all of his non-fiction books and fiction books (I especially enjoyed the Blackford Oates novels) while in College, no other author has had more of an impact on my life than Mr. Buckley. And I’ve always loved watching re-runs of PBS’s Firing Line, where he would, in his famously erudite style, skewer liberals with glee. I also learned from him the useful (and rather amusing) definition of what conservatism actually is: “a paradigm of essences toward which the phenomenology of the world is in continuing approximation.”

Not only was Mr. Buckley the founder of National Review, but he was the standard bearer for American conservatism. May he rest in peace.