American conservatism may never have a better or more eloquent than Buckley, but the author and commentator was so much more than a political crusader. “Such a vortex of contradictions: the Roman Catholic prep-school Skull and Bones Yalie heir to an Irish family’s Mexican oil fortune… Foe of anti-Semites, advocate of tattooing AIDS carriers on the buttocks, champion of McCarthyist Communist-hunting, and of the legalization of marijuana. His outrageousness immunized him against effective condemnation.”