According to the conventional wisdom among self-declared representatives of the conservative movement, William F. Buckley is "the master" to whom conservatives owe an eternal debt of gratitude for expunging from their ranks the dregs--the racists, anti-Semites and extremists of all sorts--that threatened the movement's social respectability.

This account, however, isn't history at all. It is ideology or politics taking refuge behind the value-neutral guise of history. In reality, the conservative movement has long since been a predominantly neoconservative...