Thank you. I appreciate the introduction. I just want to start by saying how special it is for me to be here in this space with all of you. I lived in pasadena about three blocks from here when i was in graduate school and i would come every wednesday with my mom, kathy was sitting right here and my cousin catherine. We would go see a movie and then come out and hang out here. Its special for me to be here with you tonight. Tonight i am going to talk with you about something that happened in this space february 18, 1965. Can you hear me in the back of . This space was filled with over 700 people. Every spot on the bench was taken. There were people sitting on the floor. It was in deep violation of the fire code. There were 500 more who wanted to get into this space but they couldnt because it was packed. They went to other rooms on the premise. This is the worlds oldest debating society. This student that wanted to get into the space but it was so full that they could not. Why were they all their . They were there to see James Baldwin, the poet, profit of the civil rights revolution. He was at that time one of the most famous writers of the world and these students were excited to see the poet in the flesh. They were also intrigued by the prospect of sharing the platform with william f. Buckley junior. 1965, buckley was the second most prominent conservative in the United States second only to Barry Goldwater did he wasnt quite done yet. The students heard about buckley and they knew he was a rightwing polemicist and a critic of the civil rights revolution and so they were intrigued by the prospect of an intellectual battle before their eyes. So the space filled, it got harder and harder. The bbc was there to record the event for an International Television audience. Buckley and baldwin wer baldwine two embodiments of two movements. Baldwin, the civil rights revolution and buckley, the american conservative movement. This book fires upon us is about the debate that its about more than that. It constitutes as you can see it is a thick book. It could be used as a door stop or 11. [laughter] you could do some crows with it. Its 2 pounds. Its the two chapters about the debate on about 250 pages into the book because buckley and baldwin are almost exact contemporaries. Buckley 41925, both in 1924, and they lived these parallel lives that are so radically different. Different life experiences. What i do in the book as they weave their biographies against the backdrop of the rise of the civil rights and conservative movement but they did respectively so much to shape. What i want to do tonight is give you a sense of some of the story leading up to the debate and we will probably end with the debate itself. We will see if we can get the audio to work or you can watch it on youtube later. I want to give you a sense of the books i want to get enough to intrigue but not satisfy you. This questions and we will have time for conversation at the end and i look forward to answering questions. Let me tell you a little bit about young James Baldwin born in august, 1924 in harlem. Hes the oldest of nine children born to his brother, married a man named David Baldwin when he was a toddler so he was the only father james ever knew. Baldwin described his life in harlem as being one marked for domination. He says that the experience of growing up in harlem in those days in the 20s and 30s he felt dominated by all sorts of individual people who were trying to limit his opportunities. He describes in the cambridge debate what he called a catalog of disaster. The policemen, taxi drivers, waiters, landlady, landlords, banks, insurance companies, millions of details of everyday that spilled ou spelled out to i was a worthless human being. Baldwin also describes the ways in which he felt oppressed and dominated by a kind of force that didnt have a human face. The vast merciless bottomless lake rule structures of power that limited his freedom and opportunities as a young man. Baldwin watched the system of domination consumed his father. David baldwin, james says, was one of the most sad human beings he ever witnessed. He said David Baldwin, father of nine children, james says he cannot remember a single time when many of davids nine children were happy to see him come home. As a father myself, when i read that, in his autobiographical writings i found it to be heartbreaking. As he grows up with a folder that is a devoutly religious man that is very cool to all of the human beings around, baldwin wonders if hes growing up, why is my father this way. As he gets older he realizes his father is this way because hes come to believe that white people say about him. He sees his father eaten alive by despair, he dies in 1943 in a mental institution. Baldwin as far as he can tell his father is literally dying of despair. So, he sets up a goal for himself i am not going to become my father. I am not going to be consumed by despair. How can i fight back against this and baldwin finds what he calls his leverage, his handle, something to hang onto is not saying his language. Its the power of words. Hes a young man and is obsessed with the. He is taken by the power of books to connect human beings across time and space. He reads Charles Dickens and he can feel a connection. Baldwin begins to write and he never stops writing until the day he dies and he tries to make sense of his experience through language. Baldwin ends up following his father in an important way. He becomes a creature. His father is a late pentecostal preacher in the storefront and James Baldwin at the age of 14 he comes a young minister. Although baldwin only state in the church for three years, he remained a preacher until the day he died and you will see the cambridge speech is a sermon more than anything else. Baldwin says theres something about that experience in the church, the sense of connection that he felt to his congregation that really captured the sense of community that was very powerful and never left him. Its as he says when the church begins to rock and theres nothing quite like that. William f. Buckley junior is born in november 1925 just a little over a year after baldwin was born. Hes born in the same city but he may as well have been born on a different planet. Buckley is born into immense wealth and privilege. His father was a real estate and oil man who had made, lost and regained fortunes. He was awash in new money. William f. Buckley juniors mother was a proud father of the confederacy who came from new orleans old money. So you have data, new money, mom, old money, the key word is money. Lots and lots of money. With that money, the buckley is that something you would expect. They purchased 47acr a 47acree in connecticut they called the great elm. But they really devoted a lot of their resources to the education of their children. Buckley and his nine siblings received within their home sort of in homeschooling a very elaborate liberal arts education. One of buckleys sisters describes in this way, i wont read it all because it gets a little bit absurd, but one of his sisters says that the children received instruction in apologetics, art, ballroom dancing, banjo, birdwatching, building codes i boats in bottl, calligraphy, canoeing, she goes on in alphabetical order down to tennis, swimming, typing and wood carving. Now the sort of things they were learning in math we are important but whats more important is the worldview that they were taught. The buckley is, the family was dominated by two particular systems of thought. One was a devout, rigid, hierarchical brand of catholicism coming into the second was a political doctrine that they called individualism. Individualism is a catchall term that was meant to communicate the hostility for any form of collectivism, communism, socialism, the new deal policies of franklin ddelta roosevelt. The buckleys also taught to be suspicious of democracy. The buckley children were taught that there are some people in the world fit to rule and others fit to be ruled into the good news coming you are fit to rule. And so, this belief in hierarchy was central to the upbringing. And its important to note that it was racialized. They have many servants working for them and many of them are people of color. Buckleys parents taught their children that they were biologically, naturally superior to these people of color. But, they have a responsibility as a result of their superiority to treat those under them humanely, especially those who were loyal. You can see where this is going. [laughter] so, buckley spends his childhood in this setting, goes off to prep school and then serves for two years in the u. S. Army. After that, he enrolls as a 21yearold freshman. Then there he expects to find the professors at the lectern while a firm is christian and individual beliefs. He finds some of that. There are some mentors he finds that yale but he also finds a lot of professors who are skeptical of, maybe even hostile to christianity and individualism. So, buckley also taken by the power of language to change the world similar to baldwin in that regard, he decides to use his voice and pen to fight back against the liberals and collectivists who are dominating the faculty at yale from this perspective. So she begins a formal debate and is a master at taking on the other side and criticizing liberals and socialists and others. He also becomes chair man or manager in chief of the daily news and he uses that role to write editorials about National Politics in 1948 election happens when hes there which is a fascinating election, but he also uses the editorial post to write, and i cant imagine this creaky right these critiques of his professors. Those professors who are engaged in this undermining values of these young folks at yale and then he does something even bolder than that after he graduates he sits down to write a book length and indictment of his alma mater in. Can you imagine. In this book, buckley says yale and much of Higher Education in the country is marked by this paradox. Christian individualist and send their kids off to college only to have them converted into atheistic socialists. So, buckley says that we need to do is get rid of this hoax called Academic Freedom and what we need to do is have alumni and boards of trustees control the hiring and curriculum on which campuses. Buckley then if that isnt controversial enough, but what annoys a lothatannoys a lot of t certainly gets peoples of the end. He is arriving on the intellectual scene when he publishes it. The next book is the defense of Joseph Mccarthy. Mccarthy and his enemies as they both buckley coauthors with his brotherinlaw and in this book, buckley says Joseph Mccarthy has his flaws. He is an imperfect instrument. But hes playing a vital role in American Political Culture. Buckley had been taught by one of the professors that the idea of an open society is an insane idea. Any society must be a closed society. A society that enforces a public orthodox there are some things that are okay to be leaving others that ar are not. Clearly communism is not and so were they talkinwhat they taughs the communists of course needed to be excluded from public life and suppressed in various ways. But perhaps more ominously, buckley also came to believe that liberals, one of the accusations against mccarthy is that arent some people getting caught up in the net . Well, buckley says if thats the case, mccarthy is doing a terrible job and they are still dominating the media and academia and then he says even if it was the case, is it true liberals dont deserve to be targeted . Not because they are evil like communists but because they are mistaken in their analysis of political life so it is kind of an ominous thing they leave hanging whether or not they deserve to be targeted. Meanwhile, James Baldwin leaves the United States in 1948 for paris. Hes trying to become as i as as here an honest man and a good writer and hes struggling. He wants to write an autobiographical novel about his experiences in harlem but hes having a hard time doing that and he thinks what he needs us tisto leave the United States in order to reflect so he goes to paris and begins work first as a literary critic reviewing the works of others and then writing his own pieces, essays, short stories individually a novel called go tell it on the mountain, his autobiographical novel. What baldwin tries to do in this novel is to write a novel that doesnt fall into the trap of being purchased fiction. He goes back to his publisher and says i have another novel for you, very prominent publisher in the United States. He looks at it and says what is this and this is roughly a quote. You are a promising young negro writer. Why are you giving me an allwhite novel . For those of you that havent read the book its about a Young American who goes to paris and falls in love with an italian bartender. So, baldwin is you know, 1956 remember if you are taking on the subject in 1956. So, baldwin says t two others tt were skeptical if you think my primary subject is race or if you think my primary subject and giovanni is sex, you are missing the point. My primary subject is the freedom and fulfillment of human beings come and what obstacles are there to the freedom and fulfillment of human beings. Both of these are stories about that. And i will not be constrained by your expectations. Thank you very much. She didnt work with him after that. [laughter] so, baldwin in both his fiction and nonfiction writings in this period is obsessed with the nexis of identity, morality and power. Who do we take ourselves to be and how does that lead us to treat ourselves and other people . And who has power, who doesnt and why. This is what baldwin is thinking about in his writing all the way down to the end of his life. As he reflects on the questions, he says most of us, all of us really are in a state of identity crisis. We dont really want to come to terms with who we are because that is a terrifying thing. And so he says what we do instead is we claim to the solutions that help us feel safe. He says most americans and most human beings really are sort of caught in the peril of what he calls social panic where we are trying to make ourselves feel safe by trying to capture a feeling of superiority to others. So he says if you want to understand race in america or you want to understand any thing we do, you have to reflect on this identity crisis. So, he says if you want to get him upset you ask about the quote on quote negro problem which of course is the terminology of the day and baldwin says there is no negro problem. If anything there is a white problem. But he says what we have to figure out is why was it necessary to invent a negro in the first place. And you can fill in a category from any category of the other enough space. So, in this period he writes that he thinks this idea has been created as he was the antidote to the social panic caused by the constant fear of losing status. When one slips one slips back into chaos and no longer knows who he is. In this reason it suggests to me one of the reasons for the status in this country in a way they tell us where the bottom is. Because he is better and where he is beneath us, we know where the limits are and how far we must not fall. We must not fall beneath him. So, baldwin after he offers this diagnosis he offers the following prescription, which is a politics of love and for James Baldwin isnt a sentimental thing. Its a tough thing. Its confrontation, battle and for. In order to love ourselves we have to engage in a ruthless introspection and look into ourselves and be honest about the sea. He wants us all to ask that question. He says also to love another human being means you have to confront that human being and try to help them liberate themselves from the delusions under which they live, so baldwin prescribes the gospel of love and the philosophy of love that he devotes the rest of his life to. Meanwhile, william f. Buckley junior has a lot of success in the first two books. He is frustrated with the pace of book publishing. I can relate to that. [laughter] buckley recognizes something. He recognizes in the first half of 20t the 20th century magazins played a really Important Role in American Political Culture on the left. So, the magazines like the nation, the new republic did so much to help shape the Progressive Movement the first half of the 20th century. So what he wants is a magazine of his own that can help to do the same thing on the right and the second half of the 20th century. Fortunately, he had a wealthy father and said we really want a magazines with his dad gave him an advance on his inheritance and hes able to start a magazine and also he was a very gifted fundraiser. So, buckley and the first issue of National Review appears in november 1955 minutes, you know, over a year in the making before the first issue appears. What buckley is trying to do is make a movement. We forget the conservative movement didnt exist as a coherent thing at the time he is starting the project and so buckley sets out to get the groups on the right wing who otherwise disagree to unite together. Species libertarians are especially worried about state power in Economic Affairs and they are especially worried about the decline and morality and religion in the west and he says i know you all dont agree on everything but maybe you could agree on forming a coalition coming into the coalition that will hold us together is anticommunism. We might disagree on a lot of things that we agree about that so he has this idea i will bring the groups together, but theres one big question hanging out there which is how will the magazine come down on question of race. 1954 we have brown v. Board of school segregation. We have a backlash against the decision in the south, the southern manifesto from congress or the rise of the white citizens council. The lynching of emmett till, 1955, the arrest of rosa parks, the montgomery bus boycott. All of this is happening at the moment that buckley is starting this magazine. So, how will the magazine come down on the questions of race . Isnt a foregone conclusion and this is important to remember. A rightwing magazine at this time will come down the way that his does. If a conservative politicians thought of themselves as friendly to civil rights including the senator from here in california who buckley had contributed to the very first issue of the National Review. He actually wanted no wind to run against eisenhower in 1956, the primary as we see nowadays. So, he was somebody that was quite friendly to the civil rights in a lot of different ways that buckley chooses another end of the course he chooses i argue in the book is how to have lasting consequences down to today. Buckley says ten years after the founding of the National Review that his goal on the race matters most for the magazine to be extremely articulate, nonracist but not reflexively racially egalitarian. Nonracist, but not necessarily racially egalitarian. That is a fine line. What that amounts to come as a result of that or that the magazine makes very clear from the very beginning they are deeply antifederal intervention to end segregation. Severe against brown v. Board not only because the court intervened but it wouldnt have been acceptable if it were congress intervened. The magazine is against every Civil Rights Act, the act of 1964, Voting Rights act of 1965. They are critics of the sit in protesters, freedom writers, and almost every way the magazine resists the black liberation struggle with one exception is the montgomery bus boycott and generally speaking the magazine was okay with economic boycotts. We can talk more about that in the qanda if you like, but that was it. Critics of Martin Luther king, critics of the march etc. So he finds himself aligned with an interesting crew. He then begins commissioning people for the magazine who can articulate a what he calls the nonracist resistance to civil rights. So he recruits people with richard in the bottom right there was a professor of rhetoric at the university of chicago. A southerner who provides elaborate philosophical differences of what he calls the southern way of life. A philosophical defense th defet sort of thing buckley was taught as a young man. She cozies up with people like Strom Thurmond who i will get back to in a minute on the bottom left. James Jackson Kilpatrick a very powerful journalist in those days who devoted his professional life in this period to articulating claus caused by constitutional defenses of segregation. He becomes buckleys go to guy on race. He even cozies up to people like william j. Simmons, the leader of the white citizens council. Which for those of you who dont know about th citizens council, this was in the words of the october paris club version of the ku klux klan. Sam values they just did and where the hoods. They wore business suits and went about pursuing their resistance through economic pressure and they could ruin peoples lives if they were too friendly to the black liberation. So she cozies up with people like him but behind the scenes. Buckley himself states his views on civil rights very clearly in 1957 and one of the most infamous thesis called by the south must prevail. The approximate come and it should have been called by the white south must prevail. The cause for this piece of writing from buckley is the Civil Rights Act of 1957. A piece of legislation we dont talk much about anymore because it is a piece of legislation that was followed out of just ht about any meeting of senators like Strom Thurmond. So it was a bill that was going to help protect the civil rights of africanamericans in the south. Thurmond had a clause included in so many people like him that included in the bill would say any accusation of the violation of the civil rights would be decided by juries, not by federal judges. You know whats going on there. No jury is going to say any official from the south violated the civil rights of anyone and so this is a essentially and a brace of jury nullification that they will play the role of mollifying the federal law. So buckley writes a defensive and says the central question that emerges and isnt it elementary question is whether it is entitled to prevail politically and culturally in areas where it does not predominate numerically. It is the advanced race. It must supersede the claims of democracy and individual rights. So he publishes the piece and one of his colleagues associate editor he coauthored in the mccarthy book has a rebuttal that says youve gone too far. He was very deeply antifederal intervention in support of massive resistance but was also a lawyer. Wont we care about the rule of law or the constitution . When he says the law in question the 15th amendment guaranteeing the right to vote it was adopted after the civil war and we have to remember that many people in the south of the would have been in organic. If we must enforce the 15th amendment and this is important perhaps we can come up with a colorblind way to disenfranchise people it comes back to the debate and what we need to do is take the right to vote away from more people. So hes thinking about ways in which you can hollow out advances of civil rights already by 1987. Theres a part in the book that for me as a writer was one of the most powerful moments so if you will indulge me for a moment i just want to read you two paragraphs that describe his colleagues to James Baldwin who at the time was making his first trip to the American South at the same time. They were debating the finer points about how far the Southern Resistance off to go and he was staring into the eyes of a 15yearold boy who was among the First Student to attend a recently integrated high school in charlotte carolina. Its not only spoke registered volumes. The preoccupation with the eyes of the subject of great significance. To get as close as he could to see the eyes of the characters fictional and non fictional and the primary goal as a writer is to provide them with the chance to do the same. What had he seen lately . And physical assault at the hands of other students. As he listened to this nightmare he began to wonder how he managed to face but was surely the worst moment of his day. In the morning when he opened his eyes and realized that it all had to be gone through again. So he has a conversation with a man about what it looks like to wake up everyday and confront that sort of hostility simply because he wants to go to school. Baldwin notices hes talking to this young man and having a hard time getting a lot of information out of him and recognizes one of the reasons why. Hes one of a few dozen africanamerican parents with a city of 50,000 africanamerican people. Hero collects back to a moment he was in the church in 1943 and heres what he says about that. Its what he calls the implausibility. Every parent in the room faced how to prepare the child for the day that they would be despised and how to create in the child a stronger antidote then one have found for ones self. So hes talking to his mother to get a sense of how she managed to have the courage and audacity to try to create a better life for her son. He would have walked in ready for this fight but what he decides he wants to try to understand this man and world view. He along with so many others not only in the south but in the entire country denied the life and aspirations of the humanity hidden behind the dark skinned and by so doing he stayed insulated from any pain of conscience that might force a painful reexamination of his entire sense of reality perhaps it occurred when they looked into the principals eyes and said it must be very hard for you because of something you are no more responsible. Anguish, pain and bewilderment that filled his eyes of the moment, he caught a glimpse of the impossibility of a term he uses again that haunted them in harlem. 1962, 63, 64 there is a lot i could say about this but i want to limit myself. You have mac or ebbers, the march on washington. They are invited onto the show that open mind. They published a book called in defense of southern segregation so the open mind has the idea to get these to sit across the table from each other. A friend and agents dont want him to do it but he thinks he has the duty to do it. Its important to note as they sit down to talk what is happening in the streets. In mississippi, the battle in ole ms. Is taking place. The battle in mississippi is the scene of the battle. The veteran is trying to register and all hell breaks loose. The first thing he says just do you think there is a difference between the mobs and people like you that wear nice suits and bright fancy books. Im here to tell you i hold you far more responsible than i hold those people. Its like a cross examining you claim to be a conservative but are you trying to conserve. You claim to care about western civilization ended up the Judeo Christian tradition. He says i accuse you of betraying the civilization. Its a complicated period keeps trying to figure out if he sees the tide is swinging against those that resist the black blak liberation and trying to figure out how that to the new circumstances. He sees the rise of publications and that concerns him but also because he isnt a very good politician. He isnt clever enough to defeat people like Martin Luther king. He undermines the cause of white people. Racial politics has to adapt so buckley says he sees things are changing its no goldwater country. They commissioned a special issue of the review on race and the election. He is accused by being racists like a lot of his critics the special editions has almost nothing. Hes a premium article he commissioned that about white backlash and that is a term he uses. He got over 30 in the primaries and buckley celebrates this. Wallace represents the backlash and what buckley wants to say is the white backlash is justified. The same electorate that overwhelmingly supported johnson here in california also voted to overturn the fair housing law so many of those people were supporters but a lot of them are also voting for johnson while at the same time overturning the fair housing so buckley sees the racial politics hes going to have to adapt in these new circumstances. Now if you will bear with me, we are going to try to listen to a couple of clips from the debate. If it doesnt work out i will reenact every stick and stone and faces white and since you have not seen a mirror you suppose that you are too. It comes as a great shock around the age of five or six or seven to discover that which you are faced along with everybody else not pledge allegiance to you than the indians were you it comes as a great shock to the country which is your birthplace to which your life and identity. The demoralization and the gap between one person and another only on the basis of the color of their skin begins there. And accelerates throughout a whole lifetime until youve managed to do realize you are having a terrible time managing your time and countrymen. By the time you are 30 youve been through a certain kind of know and the most serious effect is again not the catalogue of disaster, policemen, taxi drivers, landlady come landlord, the banks, the insurance companies, the millions of details, 24 hours of every day that fell out to you that you are a worthless human being. By that time with it happening to your father, Son Companies come in a niece, nephew. You can see the devotion it is at the expense of the American Negro and you can see what he is saying hes asking us to think deeply about the American Dream and to the extent we are failing to live up to it not only in the lives of one generation you are thinking about your own life but what can you do to escape the trap. If you cant succeed maybe the next generation can. He devotes part of the speech to reflect on that but also part of it to thinking about the sort of wouldbe beneficiaries of White Supremacy for the subjugated as he calls them in the speech but what about those that are supposedly the beneficiaries the same night here in the campaign and they are featured on newspapers and all over the world brandishing his cattle prod in the street against men and women and children and baldwin says lets think about jim clark. He says his life has been destroyed by the plague called color so he wants us to think about that as well. So he gets a standing ovation and i will give you a short [inaudible] is indeed quite probably contaminates [inaudible] it is impossible unless one is prepared to say the fact that your skin is black is utterly irrelevant or the fact that you [inaudible] to the argument that we are here to discuss. The charges are not so much that they failed him and his people, but that we have no ideals, but our ideas or a superficial coating that we come up with at any given moment to justify whatever commercial we are engaged in and perhaps he can write his book in which he threatens america he didnt speak with a british accent he used exclusively tonight which he threatened america to jettison the only thing that the white man has been the growth should want he said his power. Buckley goes on like that for a bit and then the major substantive argument he makes towards the end of the speeches he says the american racial situation is the product of an unfortunate conjunction of two factors. On the one hand there is individual races out there and he says that is a problem and its important you know the language, a few bad apples if you will. On the other side there are failures of the communities of users individuals on one side and community on the other. He says although it is important that more opportunities be afforded its also been present for people like baldwin to play the role of trying to encourage people within his community to take advantage of the opportunities that exist. Slogan is some freedom one day when we decide you are ready is the way that i would conclude that. They do need one more time so the debate happens fo happens ft 18th, march 71965 is known as bloody sunday. The debate transcript is published in the New York Times that same day that it appears in the magazine. Buckley and baldwin are there and invited onto television to meet again on the show with david, those of you that may be familiar with the show open end they can just keep talking and talking until they pass out so they sat there for two hours and it was great before they announced their candidacy for the mayor of york city and they discussed among other things Police Brutality in new york and the most accounts quickly got the better of him that night so he wins about 544. Buckley gets the better of him for various reason as they reflect on as many people reflect on the open and experience baldwin says theres one moment that caused me to my eternal dishonor to lose the debate and refuse to engage with buckley and that is when hes describing the conditions in harlem and conditions under which people live and buckley says to the landlords to veto of town and throw garbage in the streets and what baldwin heard he was saying the people in harlem deserve their fate and for baldwin thats about as low as you can go and when he was asked to reflect a few years later at the Beverly Hotel 1968 interviewed by the la Times Companies is after buckley said that, but they should have done is have him over the head with my coffee cup. [laughter] that was a joke that contained a serious idea late in its court and they said if we fail to hear each other the reason will lose its authority help relevant is that today if we fail to it will lose its authority and there will be blood, there will be fire next time and baldwin sayss that is what concerns me most. Theres the profile for esquire and he says of all of the debate debates that ive had, and he had hundreds and hundreds, i lost the debate at cambridge by the largest margin but its the one im the most proud of. Buckley says because i didnt give them 1 inch. You have people that are both so gifted in their ability to communicate and ability to express themselves and have these encounters that end in disaster and that is a lesson to think about. Baldwin said we make a mistake when we only focus on those that we see as our or politically illinformed or even evil. He says we have to think about the ways in which we are complicit. Thank you very much. I appreciate you being here. [applause] im happy to take questions. Raise your hand and i will acknowledge you. Yes, over here. Speak to youve got to read the book. No, [laughter] thats a good question. One way to answer the question as to say when baldwin reflects on buckley he asks this question which is i may have won the battle but you won the war. Hes able to achieve so much more power but baldwin is there to ask the question has it been worth it, has the staggering body count and injustice than worth it. The price of power for the american right has been a deal with the devil of White Supremacy. He made choices and those without consequences so thinking about where we are today i argument about that in some ways buckley and people like him thought he was doing something thats kind of middleoftheroad in a way. That is the conclusion that i have another. And i have to say with a march or bellevue. But i have to go where the evidence takes me. It was very profound about time. The opening remark when he talks about the level of responsibility for somebody that would never go out into the street and participate into the mob if it was Something LikeWhite Supremacy they are problems that need to be confronted, but there is another sort of more presentable form that is sinister. [inaudible] of their questions. I should say they live until 1987 and buckley until 2,008 and there are ways in which buckley evolves. The book wraps up in 1968. He believes hes right as a matter of principles and i recount the details of that late in his life. We do have to look at how this Buckley Eagles and what can we learn from the. This is what it requires that we do is in the time in the position of power they had a series of choices to make and these are the choices he made so we have to reflect on that and come to terms with that and so that is crucial as well. How long have you been focusing on this issue of race and what attracted you to it in the first place that is a great question. I was a graduate student in ended up writing my dissertation on frederick douglass. What attracted me to douglas and the africanamerican experience generally i would say is if i s reading i am a political theorist by training this is in youisntyour typical book but ie interested in these ultimate questions about