William F. Buckley Jr., RIP

One of my dirtiest secrets is this: William F. Buckley, Jr., who died two days ago, ushered me through the political door that led me rather quickly to radical libertarianism. At 14, I watched Firing Line every week with my dad. By the time I was 15, I had subscribed to National Review and joined Young Americans for Freedom. Through the monthly YAF magazine New Guard, I learned about Ayn Rand and Objectivism; I also began reading columns and articles in that mag by libertarians like Jerome Tuccille and David Friedman and even first heard of Karl Hess in those pages. In summer 1970, at age 16, I attended my one and only YAF leadership conference in Glendale, California; it was at that conference that I met a handful of free market anarchists who stuffed photocopies of Murray Rothbard articles and copies of The Match! into my paws. Within a few months, I’d subscribed to Murray’s Libertarian Forum, read Tuccille’s Radical Libertarianism, attended the notorious Left-Right Festival of Mind Liberation at USC (sponsored by Rampart College and California Libertarian Alliance), and was calling myself an anarchist.

God love ya, Bill. Rest in peace.