L. Brent Bozell Jr

In February 2021 the FBI indicted L. Brent Bozell IV for crimes committed during the Capitol riot. The significance of Bozell’s presence in the rabble that broke into the Senate chamber was not lost on the media. “Mr. Bozell’s father is a high-profile right-wing activist known for infusing his politics with Christian values,” the New York Times mentioned in its write-up of the arrest. And Bozell’s grandfather, L. Brent Bozell Jr., had been William F. Buckley Jr.’s debate partner, Joseph McCarthy’s and Barry Goldwater’s ghostwriter, the founder of Triumph and organizer of the first anti-abortion protest in the United States. Liberal critics traced the arc of the American right from Bozell Jr.

I suspect at least 10 times more Americans will have heard of William F. Buckley Jr than L. Brent Bozell Jr but things could have been very different. For years, Bozell was Buckley's closest collaborator and perhaps the second most influential ideologue in the nascent conservative movement. He helped with the founding of National Review, co-wrote McCarthy and His Enemies with his college friend Buckley and ghostwrote The Conscience of a Conservative for Barry Goldwater.Bozell was a fierce Cold Warrior. Even the hawkish Buckley might have blanched when his tall, red-headed, impetuous friend announced that the United States should be ‘disposed to use [nuclear weapons] in good conscience’ against the Soviet Union.