William F. Buckley Jr.

In 1965, the two intellectual giants squared off in a debate at Cambridge. It didn’t go quite as Buckley hoped.

A new PBS documentary whitewashes the conservative founder of National Review.

Buckley’s seldom-acknowledged fluency in Spanish shaped his worldview—including his admiration for dictators from Spain to Chile and beyond.

The John Birch Society pushed a darker, more conspiratorial politics in the ’50s and ’60s — and looms large over today’s GOP.

Why did William F. Buckley campaign to free Edgar Smith?

The impeachment exposed the need for Republican leaders to banish the extremists and bigots from their movement.

Six decades ago, leaders in the GOP backed away from the conspiracy theories peddled by the leader of the increasingly influential John Birch Society.

How the right created the illusion of colorblindness.

A new documentary explores the infamous 1968 dispute between William Buckley and Gore Vidal.

Pete Seeger, William F. Buckley, Jr., and public history.

The uproar over Trump’s remarks about the Canal recalls a lively debate from the late 1970s.

Today’s Trumpist radicals are not (small-c) conservatives – but they stand in the continuity of Modern Conservatism’s defining political project.

Today’s Trumpist radicals are not (small-c) conservatives – but they stand in the continuity of Modern Conservatism’s defining political project.

Stephen Bright and Bryan Stevenson defended the abolition of capital punishment at a moment when political support for that movement reached its nadir.

Long before the rise of Trump, the American conservative mainstream enjoyed a complex partnership with the Far Right.

Why the far right embraces foreign tyrants.

The right’s long and all-too-unanswered war on liberal institutions claims a big one.

The modern Republican Party has always exploited and encouraged extremism.

A new biography of Robert Welch traces the origins and history of the anti-Communist John Birch Society and provides historical perspective on the Trump era.

Is the Republican Party compatible with democracy?