This past Wednesday, my hero and role model died. Across the world, many, many others were thinking the same – not just among members of the conservative movement.

 
William F. Buckley Jr. was the man who gave birth to the conservative movement, who nurtured and guided it as it grew into a major political force. Now, he has gone to his reward, and he belongs to the ages.

 
All those who cherish freedom are forever in Bill Buckley’s debt. Barry Goldwater and Ronald Reagan were the political fathers of today’s conservative movement, but Buckley was the movement’s intellectual father.

 
Without Buckley’s pioneering work, including his first book, God and Man at Yale (1951), and his launching of the National Review in 1955, there very well may never have been a successful conservative movement. Today, we often take conservative alternative media for granted, but for many years Buckley’s program, “Firing Line,” was almost the only conservative show on TV. 

 
During a flight from Washington DC’s Reagan National Airport to LaGuardia Airport in May 2006, I told Bill Buckley that I wanted him to hear this: that I and every conservative would go to our graves not even beginning to understand the debt we owe him.

 
It was Bill Buckley, flying under the radar, who watched over the young conservative movement, providing encouragement to generations of young activists, writers, and politicians. It was Buckley who provided the intellectual foundation for, and drew a bright light onto, the conservative cause. 

 
And, whenever an extremist would claim falsely to be a conservative, it was Buckley who took the lead in differentiating true conservatives from opportunists and kooks.

Buckley guided our movement in ways that will never be known to the public, or even to most conservatives. Often, his was an invisible hand behind conservative success.

 
Every conservative – every person who loves freedom – should thank God for William Buckley… and thank God for not giving the Left a William Buckley.