This week will mark the 17th anniversary (on Thursday, February 27) of the death of William F. Buckley Jr. There is never a bad time to reflect on Bill and what he meant to conservatism and to America, but this week in particular seems fitting for the excellent analysis Richard Reinsch, editor in chief of Civitas Outlook — a terrific new site of conservative writing — gives to WFB’s 1959 classic, Up from Liberalism. It has aged extremely well. Reinsch prompts us why we should take it off the shelf and reread it:

And yet, reading Buckley’s book should remind the careful observer that what is occurring is more of a continuation of conservatism’s long-running confrontation with progressivism. But the business end of that conflict has become incredibly sharp. Up From Liberalism unlocks how liberalism in America in the mid-twentieth century was unbound, open-ended, forever pointing in a scientific materialist and egalitarian direction. Liberalism’s true opponents, Buckley avers, were never communists or socialists but their fellow Americans who disagreed with them, namely the conservatives.

The book, concludes Reinsch, is “a viable conservative program capable of turning the tide.” It was so then, it is so now. This review is a deeply needed reminder.