U.S. National Review founder and conservative commentator William F. Buckley Jr. was found dead in his study on Wednesday morning in Stamford, Conn., at the age of 82, media reports said.
The cause of death was unknown, but he had suffered from emphysema for a few years, his assistant Linda Bridges said.
Buckley will be remembered as one of the most important builders of the conservative ascendancy in America as he makes intellectual conservatism respectable for the first time for a generation.
Buckley founded in 1955 the biweekly magazine National Review, which fused together the warring tribes of the American right and gave encouragement to an entire generation of rightwingers.
Born in New York City in 1926, Buckley gained public attention early in his career with a scathing attack against his alma mater, titled "God and Man at Yale: The Superstitions of Academic Freedom."
The book, published a year after Buckley graduated, accused his alma mater of fostering secular and leftist beliefs, according to the National Review.
Buckley began a syndicated column, "On the Right," in 1962, covering subjects as diverse as political campaigns, changes in the tax code and celebrities.
Buckley was an editor, columnist, novelist, debater and host of the TV talk show "Firing Line," which draws a wide array of guests, including Margaret Thatcher, Gerald Ford, Allen Ginsberg and Groucho Marx. The show ran until December 1999.
He wrote more than 50 books over his lifetime, managed to visit every continent and played harpsichord concertos, according to the magazine.
President George Bush offered his condolences in a statement Wednesday, calling Buckley a great political thinker, wit, author and leader.
"America has lost one of its finest writers and thinkers," Bush said.
Conservatives had been outsiders in both mind and spirit, marginalized by a generation of stands -- from opposing Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal to the isolationism that preceded the U.S. entry into World War II.
Before Buckley, liberals so dominated intellectual thought that critic Lionel Trilling claimed there were "no conservative or reactionary ideas in general circulation."
Source: Xinhua
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