E. Victor Milione, R.I.P.(OBITUARY)(Obituary)

THERE wasn't yet a "conservative movement" in the early 1950s, but there was bustling activity on the right side of the political spectrum. The great Austrian economists Friedrich Hayek and Ludwig von Mises had come to America, and Leonard Read had launched the Foundation for Economic Education to give their libertarian ("classical liberal") ideas wide exposure. Richard Weaver and Russell Kirk were writing their seminal works, and Henry Regnery was publishing them. Human Events and The Freeman were bringing conservative analysis to the general public. The 25-year-old Bill Buckley burst on the national scene with God and Man at Yale (also published by Regnery), and another Austrian expatriate, Willi Schlamm, started plying Buckley with the idea of a conservative journal--which four years later made its appearance as NATIONAL REVIEW.

Another of Buckley's mentors, the libertarian Frank Chodorov (whom WFB later described as a "gentle, elderly anarchist"), recognized that the left-wing ideas criticized in God and Man were by no means confined to Yale. The Left was making its long march through the institutions. If the Right was not to cede the next generation, action was needed. In 1953, Chodorov founded the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists, grandly announcing that he had a "fifty-year project" to defeat collectivism in all its manifestations.

At first, though, Chodorov's endeavor was more a hope than a plan. Then he received a windfall donation from a wealthy Midwesterner and made the best investment of his life: He hired a 28-year-old Pennsylvanian named Vic Milione to run ISI and spread the word on the campuses. Chodorov told Milione, "Vic, I have this money and as long as it lasts, you will get $75 a week and expense money. You'll have to take your chances on the future."

Milione took the chance. When the money ran out, he raised more. And he formed a plan to do an end run around the leftists' march. As his eventual successor, Ken Cribb, put it, ...