William F. Buckley Jr. is a name that every conservative should know, especially in the year 2025, when he would have turned 100.

While I cannot say where in my activist career I first heard the name, nothing appealed to my freedom-thirsty heart quite like a man who wrote an entire book defending Sen. Joseph McCarthy, R-Wis., and his often-misrepresented crackdown on Communist infiltration of the U.S. government in mid-century America.

So, when my treasured supervisor at Newsmax, John Gizzi, told me about an event that reflected on the impact of the man who lit the Yale Daily News on fire before starting The National Review, I jumped at the opportunity to attend.

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