The US Postal Service unveiled a new postage stamp on Thursday, featuring conservative icon William F. Buckley Jr., founder of the conservative editorial magazine National Review.
A key voice of the contemporary conservative movement, Buckley founded the National Review in 1955 to publish conservative commentary and analysis focusing on politics, current events and culture. Magazines still exist today, publishing 12 magazines each year in addition to their daily news sites.
The stamp features Buckley's graphite and charcoal portraits painted by Dale Stefanos, according to the US Postal Service.
Historian George Nash described Buckley in 2008 after Buckley's death as “the most important public intellectual in the United States in the last half century.”
“For a whole generation, he was the outstanding voice of American conservatism and its first great ecumenical figure,” Nash wrote in the National Review.
The magazine has created several ideological branches and provided outlets of opinions such as free market capitalism, liberalism, traditionalism, and anti-communism, according to the Bill of Rights Institute.
William F. Buckley: From the beginning
William F. Buckley Jr. founded the conservative commentary magazine National Review in 1955. (Getty)
In addition to spearheading the National Review, Buckley also hosted the Emmy Award-winning TV show “Fire Line.”
“The success of the firing line and, in the long run, proved that there is a place on television for civilized discussions between conflicting ideologies that can entertain and inform the American people.
The public policy think tank, led by former Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice, has a large videotape collection of over 1,500 episodes of “fire line” episodes, in addition to program preparation materials, photos, transcripts and sound recordings.
Buckley, a devout Catholic, has written dozens of books, including “The Gods and Man of Yale: Superstitions of “Academic Freedom.” The book provided a rigorous assessment of Yale's secular academic environment, and Time Magazine cited in 2011 as one of the top 100 “best and most influential” books written in English since 1923.
James Rosen: The death of Bill Buckley and the “Transideological” friendship
William F. Buckley Jr. hosted the TV show “The Shooting Line” for more than 30 years. (Getty)
New York Times columnist David Brooks began his career as an intern at National Review, but after Buckley's death in 2008, he wrote that Buckley's “big talent was friendship,” and that the conservative icon is an avid letter writer.
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“His second greatest talent was leadership,” Brooks wrote in the New York Times. “In his youth he was surrounded by a famous band of elders who formed the editorial board of national reviews. He changed the contemporary conservative personality, created a national movement, and expelled the crackpot from there.”
“He loved freedom and felt it had to be constrained by the invisible bonds of transcendental order,” Brooks wrote.
