NEW HAVEN, Conn. — On a tranquil, sun-dappled afternoon here, the day before the killing of Charlie Kirk on a university campus more than 2,000 miles west, Yale University hosted a ceremony at which the U.S. Postal Service unveiled a commemorative stamp honoring the 100th anniversary of the birth of a Yale man in whose large footsteps Kirk had walked. William F. Buckley Jr., who died in 2008 at age 82, would have recognized the 31-year-old Kirk as a kindred spirit.

The poet Robert Frost wrote of his “lover’s quarrel with the world.” Buckley burst upon the national scene in 1951, at age 25, by announcing such a quarrel with his alma mater. It was heatedly explained in his first book, “God and Man at Yale.” Looking back, this volume was an early spark that lit the fuse that led to the explo

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