Sam Tanenhaus, author of Buckley: The Life and the Revolution That Changed America, argues in this first part of his conversation with Jacob Heilbrunn that William F. Buckley Jr. understood earlier than most that modern political struggles would not be fought only through government or electoral politics, but through culture.
For Tanenhaus, Buckley saw the conservative movement as a counter-revolution against the transformations brought by the New Deal and the liberal progressive order. His influence, he suggests, came from recognizing the power of magazines, television, newspapers, radio and universities as decisive battlegrounds in American public life.
