Transcripts For CSPAN2 Summer Series With William F. Buckley Jr. 20240712

Nonfiction books and authors. Cspan2 created by americas Cable Television companies of the Public Service and brought to you today by your television provider. Beginning now on booktv we will spend time with the late author and columnist William F Buckley. This is part of our summer bins watch series which features one wellknown author. He found the National Review and help to the political Debate Program firing line for several years, also the author of 50 books which included his thoughts on politics, religion, culture, literature and other topics. He appeared on booktv and cspan at 45, we will share those programs with you. First up tonight, in 1993 Mister Buckley sat down to discuss the collection of his essays from his book happy days were here again. Here he is on cspans Interview Program from 1993 book notes. Cspan on the cover of your book it says reflections of a libertarian journalist. You always call yourself a libertarian . Guest as of course you know, something called the fusion movements was encouraged by National Review in the late 50s. The idea was to point out to conservatives how much they had in common and how effective it would be between them. Every now and then i am a libertarian. In most of what i write is oriented to does this augment or diminish human liberty . Cspan i remember when you ran for mayor of new york that you would throw the garbage out the window rather than having them deal with it . Guest your memory of the exchange with James Baldwin in which he was defending the littering of the streets as a form of protest against the city, not paying close enough attention. They use that as a means of protesting, down the street john lindsay walked down. I dont think he would make a good mayor. Cspan if you buy that book, what do you get . Guest the best i can give them. In various modes in the last eight years, recover the collapse of the soviet union, they covered the death of some very important people and personal episodes assisted by my sister who served as assistant editor to divide appropriate sections, jesse jackson, mary o cuomo and so on, analyzing specific problems, assuredly commenting on reflecting and celebrating various people, it is a wideranging collection, my ninth. I hope this will be. Cspan to people by former articles when you put them in a compendium like this . Guest people buy anything unless they are part of a hard constituency. On selling 400,000 outside this new book. The ninth collection, what they had. Cspan what is this in numbers . Guest the fifth. Cspan they sold the best . Guest it was the second of my four sailing books, automatic high. At the last one at the end of the cold war, i was a casualty of the end of the cold war. Every book i have written were on the sell list. Cspan which ones did you enjoy the writing part of it the most . Guest i dont like to write. It is terribly hard work. To develop the facility very quickly. If i had the same kind of language, gets up with a light in the eyes which i write, i can answer your question with a sense of hedonism. When i wake up in the morning, the question is this the day to do that. To have the same reverse with me. Cspan do you write for end . What you are trying to do . Guest a lot of us, for the after pleasure of it. Seeing the roses, the pleasure of developing your technique. I like to have it is so onerous. Cspan other names like ronald reagan, do you know which person you quoted the most or talked about the most in this book . Guest now i dont. Cspan would it surprise you if i said Whittaker Chambers . Guest you obviously surprised me and i am weighing what you said. During the period of the trends, such beautiful letters published as a book which he said things that were very arresting, as a matter of fact january, having to do with the discovery by young veterans of the afghan war. And Whittaker Chambers, a group of young people, swore to give their lives to the assassination of a tyrant. As Whittaker Chambers pointed out, it was dangerous because people couldnt get the same idea, it was removed from the literature. You had to have Whittaker Chambers to find out but almost as important. What impact did he have on you and when do you know him . Guest Whittaker Chambers was Time Magazine Senior Editor who in sworn testimony named people he had known when working as a secret intelligence agent to the soviet union. And in American Culture on the question, and who is still alive right away, we when he became the National Review came up frequently at died at a young age of a heart attack but he had enormous impact when his book witness was written. What he said when i left the soviet union, left the communist caused to join the cause of the west i couldnt help feeling that perhaps i was joining the losing side. The great sense of melancholy, they serialized the first chapter of his book, 500,000 more copies than normal. A huge impact and from that moment on he became an American Legend and still is so i dont think any quotation from him is likely cspan i saw a reference that in august of 1948 in that hearing, the first ever televised, the house unamerican activities committee. I want to go back and ask you, Richard Nixon was on that committee . Guest yes, that was the First Episode in nixons career, an enormous launch because the committee was a little bit dazzled by the higher power of their forces and they were about to pull away and this is why Whittaker Chambers is a liar when nixon moved in and mobilized, persuaded the Congressional Committee that he was probably lying, not chambers so he became conspicuous in that period and it was that that gave him the reputation that awarded him a seat in the senate two years later. Cspan where reason . Guest left in 1952. The history chambers drama was a significant episode at school. Liberals tended to assume it was correct because of his pedigree that was so formidable. He had gone to Johns Hopkins and Harvard Law School and clerked with, was it, the Supreme Court, famous jewish liberal. Then dean edison testified to the nobility of his character and all this time secrets to the soviet union with his wife priscilla so a tremendous blow to the liberal establishment, a shining legacy that was part of that. Most people who identify, conceded that is what he was but some people are hypnotized like the grassy knoll on jfk. More fun to believe there was a conspiracy. Cspan do you remember who was influencing you the most . A few professors who were influential. I find it hard to answer to most because it seems to me in retrospect it is a kind of collage of people and very hard to sort out who influenced you in respect to this particular thing. For 25 years, the best known american geophysicist strategist, first in his class in princeton, influenced me enormously but didnt meet him until the night it began. It began in 55. Cspan in the back of your book there is a section called appreciated. A number of people you write about are no longer alive. Let me pick a couple of these. Malcolm muggeridge . Guest malcolm was the best known british journalist, he was married to the needs of Beatrice Webb and went to the soviet union as a committed young socialist procommunist and he was a and wrote a devastating critique of life under stalin, stayed pretty much on the socialist side of the world and wrote industriously for several books and during the war he was very active and after the war punch magazine, one had to be a humorist to do that. He was simultaneously editing but little by little he began a march that began directional towards damascus. He became a christian. He was talking about christ or the commandments or duty to one another he would manage to do so as a humorist and give a kind of lift to his evangelism that was quite distinctive. I saw him do the nod, speak to newspaper editors in washington and after dinner speaker, he ended up with a paragraph that embellished the idea of the meaning of the soul of bethlehem, pagans typified by the beauty of it. The intellectual cspan what about it . Guest quite a lot of times, very close personal friends in the program in the vatican with the 16 the Sistine Chapel. I hate famous people, i have known them all, i want to meet this pope. He and i had an audience with the pope which was very amusing. When he came, there was cspan the current pope . Guest yes. However often you ask that question, hard to come up with one. A great friend of my predecessor, never even heard of pope paul the fourth but it quickly became plain that the pope thought it was basketball manager or something. Vastly amused by that episode. Cspan he knew you were guest had access to a chapel for the first time in history as a result of being in the media to make our documentaries so that very hard to get used to my private chapel when i get home having had access to yours. When he showed up, the picture was taken. After that the mother said to me, why i am not a catholic, we did it ends i was a catholic and he said i want to do the show with you and he had hoped as they say in england, was a wonderful man, a great wit and a brilliant analyst. Cspan quote you put in your column, how often do you put rip after it, do you often do it . Guest i have been doing it for National Review for years and years and years. That is not my profession. Cspan what about writing his obituary, do you have to like him . Guest one way or the other. The National Review of mine. Now that sullivan was the editor he asked me to and would do so and as a regular column, may be the only one here. Cspan i will ask this. As an old man looking back on ones life, is one of the things that strikes you most forcibly that the only thing that taught anything is suffering, not happiness or anything like it. The only thing teaching what life is about, the joy of understanding or coming in contact is suffering. Guest let me comment on that. The lesson of job, that job taught us, that suffering can be and no bowling and in the case of malcolm, he seemed, a certain sense his doom about the materialism of man, to be inspired, be inspired by that particular part of it. Since he became a vegetarian and didnt bring any booze or wine, didnt used to be that way. That pleasure from the mortification of the flesh. That his mood the john lennon introduction, thinking back on his days in National Review, the very things he did, had lunch with Whittaker Chambers, it is incorrect to say he emanated melancholia. It is not incorrect to say you felt the power probability of his melancholy. It was a consistent entertainer without getting in the way of his own message. Host do you feel you will entertain them all . Guest i think it is a terrible sin to bore people and i am easily bored myself. I am prepared to admit i attended a lecture by emmanuel cant, that is my fault, not his. Under the circumstances when i write i make an effort to please the reader in the same way a pianist at a dive wants to use cords that please the listener. If you sit down to play a musical repertoire with an endowment on a topic you are never going to give music the kind of variety that makes it special. It seems to be if you deny your self the hard work and at the same time of pleasure using the language exploited tate of lee you shouldnt be writing professionally. Cspan you got a bunch of letters sent to you. Dear Mister Buckley, from hamilton from harrison, new york, regarding your interview with Henry Kissinger from a qualified tv professional objectively concerned americans, number one. The manner in which you say it is rude. Do you remember this . Guest now. Of the 16 cant you sit upright in an adult fashion . In single shots you appear in two shots you sit is if your guest has be oh. 2, even in question you appear rude, dont ask question of the guests even whose opinions you favor but it is in a form of interrogation. You always come up with personal insecurity, attempting to show what you know, you answer him, i cant think straight, congenital. When you get a letter like this. Guest my comment. Cspan most people dont talk about it. If you think my questions are long, i will share what i know. I spent triage reading up on it from a night before and you jumped out of an airplane with a parachute with the mission of eliminating the guard at the end of the bridge. And introductory instructions. Guest i take it more seriously having brought the subject up. A 2000 mile height and kindly gave it to me. He is wrong on point, my Program Going after 29 years is the longest Running Program in america. I have one complaint in those ideas for my guests, give them all the time i wanted to say what they wanted to say. In the matter of introducing guests, people who were not widely known as philosophers or poets, to equate the listener, if you take a couple minutes to do that it is inordinate especially when the program is one hour. Host cspan what is your reaction . Do you smile . Guest the first thing is is this a letter i should publish, note on a side which is a column directed to me which is instructive or bellicose or interesting or whatever. In respect to what you just read me my reaction was a couple things. Why shouldnt shield from my readers the fact that some people react this way with hostility to my behavior on the program. Cspan you wrote this letter to the editor of the Baltimore Sun. How many letters did your sister pick all these herself . Guest she nominated it. Cspan you are commenting on what the Baltimore Sun said and you write you are talking to the Baltimore Sun. William f buckley junior whose elegant arrogance, do you think you have elegant arrogance . Guest this is a quote from them . Persons of a british accent won him fame and fortune. Guest that is kind of dumb. People with a fake accent dont have a fortune. Guest arrogance and affectation require the use of the plural word. Guest you list stuff earlier than that. When people talk about the tilt and your presence on the set and your affectation and accent do you know that is the way you look to people . Guest in some ways may be. Up until age 6 i still believed in the way i spoke then i went to school in paris, then at age 7 i went to london and learned english for the first time. What does that sound like . You tell me. Nobody who is british thinks i have a british accent. Where are you from . Maybe that is not it speaking. Nothing cultivated, my family and friends will tell you. Cspan what are you doing all those places . Guest the oil business, my father had very Little Family and he was bilingual himself and had a family staff. Cspan how many brothers and sisters . How many are alive . 11. I got 13 . My joke made for the benefit of people to having done support as i think if you get 30 it dangerously close to winning. If i were to win again my Campaign Slogan would be voting by invitation only. Host what is your life like today . Youre no longer running the National Review treasury no. Im no longer the editor but im the president of the board and the owner and i rejoice every day that sullivan is such a brilliant editor. I have a book about discussing a novel come out in january and ill write another one in the switzerland. I have a piece coming out on the 40th anniversary of playboy and one on the 60th anniversary of esquire. Im redoing a 1600 page travel book by henry james for the New York Times and i lecture a lot so i think host where do you live it . Guest stanford connecticut. Host where do you spend most of your time . Guest on boats and traveling around but my wife and i go to switzerland, thats right to my book writing in february and in march. Host how long do you plan to do firing line . Guest i dont plan not to do it. So presumably they will continue to go out as long as it serves a purpose. Host has the fact that firing light is on Public Television network tax supported ever bothered you in relationship to your politics . Guest no, because i came to terms very early with the proposition that a minority in a democracy list by the rules of the majority and even if i wanted to see the post office privatized im not going to pretested by not using the facilities of the post office. On this i agree 100 with Milton Friedman and as recently as a few years, as a few months ago he wrote a letter to the National Review agree with the position i took over against a former editor of National Review who is not wanted to take National Security because he was supposed to Social Security law. His answer was no, Social Security was voted in, continue to criticize that aspect of it that you think is wrong, how it is run. But to fully participate in it is a failure to live by the verdict of the majority which dominates, which you are a participant and whose rules you agree to abide by unless they become tyrannical. Host has National Review ever made any money . Guest no. No, no. I dont know pratts exception of the new republic when it was the household progressive of america which was then a traveling outfit designed to make Andrew Wallace president of United States. We are doing better than ever before trim how do you keep it going . Guest of fund appeal plus an amount of my own income in its direction. Host back to the back of the book again. William shawn, this this is a n january 18, 1993. He was i assume published the National Review. Who was William Shawn . Guest William Shawn became the editor of the new yorker in 1953 right after mr. Roys died. He was editor for about 35 or 35 years up until three or four years ago. He was a menace rectangular talent and very idiosyncratic personal manners. He was terrifyingly shy and a very reclusive. Nervously well organized and when i sent a manuscript of a book in which i simply recount what i done drink week of that year and he accepted it, the publication, i couldnt believe it because im a conservative and that new yorker is pretty liberal. Host what year is this . Guest 1970. So then i sent him a second book in the excepted. That a third book and accepted. That a fourth book the fifth book. So that i had this extraordinary hospitality by this extraordinary man. Now, about once a year he assigned himself the job of editing line by line a book that had been accepted by the new yorker and it fell on his personal direction for the first of these books which meant having a lunch with him, having a lunch with William Shawn was, well, the next thing to a declaration. Host why . Guest because you felt he felt he was giving away his privacy. He was very genial, always mr. Buckley. He wouldnt think of called me by buy my first day but it was an enormous expense because of the care and love he devoted to every single sentence. He once said to me mr. Buckley, i really dont think you know the proper use of a comma. Enormously amused me. Every now and then you would never publish anything except after your approval of exactly what it would appear. My association with him was wonderful, and then when he retired as i recount in his obituary, i thought now he is no longer a man who is in charge of my literary fortune, so i asked him to lunch. I never wouldve asked him to lunch while he was still editor. So i did and he accepted. We had a lunch. Then a number of years come by, i thought should ask them for lunch again . The arguments against doing it was it would be against his privacy. The arguments against it, even the impression i was discharging obligation and now having discharged it i could let him go ahead and rusty gate. So i did. He accepted but didnt make a date. And then i received the day he died a letter written me the day before making pleasant references to a couple of books i have done. He was an unusual man who had an enormous influence on american letters. Host did you also say he would call up months in advance with your secretary and check to make sure when youre trying to get a date set, we better do that on the couple months from now . Guest yeah, he loved, he loved to talk to your secretary as distinguished speaking from you. He would always be by his standard informal with the secretary but he would say yes, i would like very much to lunch with mr. Buckley and i will call back and see if its all right with him, that kind of stuff. He wasnt at all shy talking to the secretary but was reluctant to call you. Host you have treated in the back under the appreciating section to nancy and ronald reagan, and at some point i remember you writing about their dancing together. Did you remember that . Guest i did a piece for vanity fair, they ran it on the cover, a picture, they can interview with the reagans, tina browns, and the interviewer, this was in a private quarters of the white house, and said would you consent to dance for us . Meaning for the photographer. Instantly he said of course. The music went on and it started to district the photographer took his picture thinking he would have 15 seconds to do it but they kept on dancing. Vanity fair isnt used to pictures like that with the president of the United States and his wife dance as though they are just extreme commitment to marriage. Thats the way ar and nobody who has seen it close up tanks its phony. It isnt only. It is perpetual dividing devotion. Host another line mentioned earlier the name i saw the most often was Whittaker Chambers. Its in that piece where you sae the last time i heard the legend of philemon services was in the final paragraphs of Whittaker Chambers was given to melodrama but those who knew him and his wife never doubted that it was so between them. Guest thats a beautiful story, isnt it . A god, a greek god, dressed like a beggar appears in this humble little shed where this old couple are looking with some longing at the little porridge they had saved to eat that night and he says, can he had something to eat . Without hesitation they take half of it and give it to him. Whereupon having tested their capacity entirely, he transfigured himself and the sea he is a resplendent god and in Whittaker Chambers faith he raises his staff and says tell me, what one wish you desire. They stammer out the wish that they wish to die at the same time. No one wants to outlive the other. So with his staff he catches them on the head and suddenly they are transformed into to my countries which two trees which nestle together in the breeze and leave the impression of a continuum and perpetual symbolism of attainder and beautiful love. Its a beautiful story. Host theodore white, teddy white. Guest well, teddy white once said to me, you know, im probably the most expensive journalist in america. And i said teddy, thats terrific. He said, you know i dont like to boast but it is probably true. That was about 15 euros ago and it is probably correct. He was the most sought after journalist and for several reasons. One was terrific writer. Second, he was a terribly industrious reporter. Three, he everybody. He also had a capacity to make you talk to him and say things that probably you were not really predisposed to tell them. He had that extraordinary bob woodward has the same gift. Anyway, teddy wanted to do a piece on john lindsay which required also to do a a piece n me at the same time because i was running for mayor. He came to see me and and i sad something pleasant to him. He said First Business we will become friends litter. Later we became very good friends. In fact, we both followed nixon to china. We were two of the journalists i went to china in 1972. Spent a lot of time together and he and i and three or four other friends met always six or seven times a year for lunch. So it was a deal, wonderful, talented human being. He came from very poor jewish ghetto in boston which you like to write about, sort of worked his way through harvard, became a psychologist, was in entrance by milestone for a while. Mao zedong. Saw the light a few years later. Was a very close friend of henry luce but they had an ideological parting of the ways. He had a a very vivid, wonderf, productive life. Host what do you mean by fellow traveler . Guest well, he tended to think everything that mao zedong came up with was probably correct on talking about the late 30s and early 40s during the time when time shall check was with the undefined and there was a lot of corruption but his hospitality to the Maoist Movement alienated henry luce was very, very from on the other side and closed that resignation. Host we are used to see you playing box at the phoenix symphony arbeit about bach but in this appreciating section you have a column is beethoven a monument . Whats that all about . Guest well, thats an interesting point. Adam smith said the state can legitimately do certain things and those are a very short list. It can look after the common sense and it can be the custodian of monuments. So i asked myself the question, does the authority of adam smith attached to a state enterprise that takes dead musicians and makes the music available . I had a symphony in line something that happened in switzerland. In switzerland for a buck a month you can plug your telephone line into six channels and one of those channels if you push number three has nothing but Classical Music day and night. It is simply a marvelous amenity. I was trying to manipulate conservative orthodoxy in such a way as to suggest that monument need not only be something chiseled in marble city in the middle of the park but might also be keeping alive a musician and providing the wonderful amenity of access to them chiefly. Host of all the things you do in the public, speak, interview on television, being interviewed, writing books, writing columns, whats, what brings the most fun and joy to you and what is the most difficult . Guest well, the most and easiest pleasure is sailing. I sail a lot and it done it since i was 13 and it is to me a marvelous marvelous form of recreation but it is a recreation. I used to write about when i was a boy. In terms of whats most difficult there is nothing as difficult as trying to amass a piece of music, in part because i very bad fingerstick they dont be a whale and they are independently undisciplined, what about the things like which rather be interviewed would you rather do the interviewing . Guest i think it probably depends on the person. Sometimes one has a guest whom one feels one to have on because hes on something important and we want to talk about. But he might be an awfully boring human being and after one hour you sort of, you are glad its over. By contrast, an hour with some people, i think of harold macmillan. At the end of 42 minutes he said, i say, are we not through yet . No, 70 more minutes to go. More marvelous what you said to churchill. That was a sheer joy. I think it depends purely on the person. An interview of somebody who really doesnt follow what you are saying is hell. Because you feel you have explained something and the next question actually establishes they havent the remotest idea what you said, or if they heard it they didnt understand it, and that hurts. Sometimes people have okay, 30 questions or to ask mr. Buckley so they asked question number one, you give a reply to it but it is a reply that i believe takes you through act two, not act iii of the exchange but they dont know enough to lead you into act iii. They go right into the next question is that shows there is a discontinuity there that makes it very unsatisfying. Host it you ever have anybody get up and walk off the set on fire line . Guest no. No, i think its very bad manners to do that, and less somebody engages in a profanity or as a novelist i could write a situation in which my guy would walk off the set and people would report him for doing so. But i but i has never been in tt situation. Host what year was it that you and john slug it out . Guest we did in 1972 and in 1976. Host as i remember and its a little bit a few years of past actually cut at each other trying to in 1972 in miami rewrote the book and we had 25 minutes. In 25 minutes you can get a a certain amount of done. By 1976 all the four in the morning new shows had changed and you had to have a meeting with the board of directors have more than seven minutes. Seven minutes now you could unwind and our specialty is not the Johnny Carson jab, but something which to the extent that it has a point might require a minute of analytical overture. Both of us agree we simply didnt work attempting to exchange views in seven minutes. We never asked to do again. Host was at ever person . You were saying some pretty strong things. Guest yeah. He and i Thomas Wright at a mutual comfort and because were close personal friends we were under no circumstances going to let that friendship mitigate the harshest that we feel of our position. Im not saying even if president of the United States we wouldve been a soviet republic which is absolutely correct. He says Company Great things about me. Host some conservatives have criticized you for living in two different worlds. I have seen various times i got to interview bob carroll and his book where he talks about a dinner he had in new york with you. In which when they criticize you they criticize you for being a powell of the liberals. You go to dinner with them and your lunch with them and your friends at the New York Times and things like that. You undoubtedly observe these criticisms. What you say to someone . Guest its odd because you can meet discretely pointed with somebody and still have an enormous curiously this is absolutely routinely the edit of the newspaper in the nation might be the godfather of the new child of the editor of the tablet. Theres nothing there that is considered unusual about any member of the labor party and member of the conservative party being very close friends. I dont think thats unusual to have somebody with whom you disagree. In the first place i dont spend my time talking politics. I go to london tomorrow. I have to talk politics three days for that because it is a political similar but i will not talk politics to anybody, not my wife, not anybody. Its not that interesting that much. Theres other things to talk about so that i could spend time with ken gall birth, i have, in which politics never came up. Host what do you talk about . Guest skiing, what he did when he left canada and came over here as a scholar. Theres nothing we dont talk about. No problem at all. Mostly he talks but hes so indicating that one doesnt mind. Host on the cover of your book and inside the flap it says and introduction by john leonard, st. Johns and we see on cbs on sunday morning . Guest yes. Host isnt he a liberal . Guest very much so, as he thats why one confesses. When i saw the National Review i saw an essay which was 1955. There was an essay by him so i called them up because it was beautifully written and said to him would be like to take a summer job with National Review . He said ill take a job anytime with anybody. He said ive just been kicked out of harvard. He worked for us and you and have commented marvelous work. Then he went up to berkeley to be radicalized, which is a very completely done but hes a brilliant, brilliant writer. Host in the acknowledgment in the beginning you say im indebted primarily to Senior Editor of regnery gateway. Who is she . Guest she is my sister. Shes a fulltime editors for regnery gateway. Host this is random house. Just as a friend or a sister . Guest yes, you say i would not give up the date of declaration of independence without first checking with her tragic we are talking about the chief researcher of National Review source paying her a compliment that she is owed. Host other than the novel thats coming out in january, whats next in nonfiction . Guest in nonfiction, well, im about onethird of the way through a book on the catholic religion which i suspended because he didnt have enough time to do the reading i thought i had to deal. Whether i will crank up or not i dont know. A couple of ideas floating about which i havent yet decided. I will write a book though. Host happy days were here again is meant of the book. Its reflections of a libertarian journalist. Our guest william f. Buckley, jr. Thank you very much. Guest thank you. Host every saturday evening this summer were taking the opportunity to open our archives and focus on a wellknown author. Tonight its a look at the late author, columnist, Television Host william f. Buckley. The founder of the Politico Magazine National Review and author of a longrunning newspaper column. He had a great affinity for words and language. According to his obituary in the New York Times, when he donated his materials to his alma mater Yale University they weighed seven times. Up next in 1996, mr. Buckley offers up his thoughts on the proper and improper uses of the english language. [applause] good evening, everyone and welcome here we are delighted to have william f. Buckley, jr. With us tonight to share his thoughts on the uses and abuses of the english language. His new book is called buckley the right word and is a subject of the conversation the seat between mr. Buckley and his longtime editor samuel vaughan. As of the program he will be happy to take a few of your questions and send copies of your book. Samuel vaughan is edited 22 of mr. Buckley is booked turkey was president and publisher of doubleday and is currently editor at large at random house and you have entered is mr. Buckley. Thank you. This is the first time ive ever had mr. Buckley on the left. [laughing] the book is called buckley the right word and after i read the subtitle, the evening is over. Its about the uses, abusive language and about vocabulary, about uses, style in speaking, fiction, fiction and dictionaries with reviews and interviews on latin and letters eloquent journalism and more. It shouldve been edited. [laughing] in the lengthy introduction of buckley would be superfluous, supererogatory, unnecessary, and also dumb. In a perfectly good biographical sketch of them in the book and if you dont know who he is i dont know why you are here. So violating the iron rule of those who introduce speakers by saying they need no introduction, ill go right to the interview. Buckley, what in the world ever possessed you to do this book . Guest what possessed me to do this book is samhan is committed to consummating it. Hes been for about eight or ten years saying things like we really ought to do a book focus on language. Focus not only on the use of language but also how it can be spoken, how it can be used in writing introductions or obituaries or doing interviews. So i was finally so bored by his exultation of a subject, i said okay, go ahead and do it. So he did. Whether hes happy he did i dont know, here i hope certainly im happy with the result but it took an awful lot of time. What you came up with is a book really that sings the praise of language. I think in one of his autobiographies, churchill said i dont believe in Corporal Punishment but i believe any child who doesnt appreciate the language should be flogged. I have a son about whom this was not a problem, but i do think that the beauty of the language is something about which there should be universal enthusiasm. I am very grateful to sam are bringing the book off. Host you say in the book, you write a lot, you hate to write. What are we to make of this . Guest i dont think thats so odd, isnt it . Is it . People who dig ditches dont enjoy digging ditches. So to the extent that they can dig them fast and if they are being paid by ditch dug, then thats a good, isnt it . Writing is for some people including me excruciatingly painful because you are using your entire nervous apparatus. So if you have a column to write for an essay or a book review you are burning up a lot of stuff that would prefer to be lying around sitting and i spoke of essays by other people. Now i know this isnt universally the case. My dear friend george will told me once when i wake up in the morning before and completely awake, i asked myself the question, is this a day in which i have to write a column . If the answer is yes, i wake up happy. Mine is exactly the opposite reaction. If it today which i want to wakp unhappy until it is done. I dont understand why people should be surprised that he faced something that is painful to do, you should be surprised that you apply the skills of doing it quickly. If you dont like to change diapers, that doesnt make sense to learn how to do it quickly . I think it should. So ask me a more intelligent question. [laughing] would you rather what would you rather do than right . What would you be doing with your time . Guest sleeping or reading. No, writing is simply what some people do and thats what i do. Whittaker chambers said to me one time i would like to have written, and that sounds like a banality but it really isnt. He means he likes to sit down at supper and said okay, i worked hard all afternoon and i wrote i have a chapter of my book, and that gives you retrospectively satisfaction. So i think that will this is all, painters like to paint. Or do they feel after spending a hard days paid to come gee, i feel good for having what you think about that . Trauma i think all painters do not like to paint all of the time trade you are maybe they paint what appeals to them but not the portrait of the princess. But i but i painted a little bi. I am actually terrible at it. I absolutely love it and it never occurred to me that maybe painters, they have some of the same since of labor, the process, the pains of it that writers have. Host speaking of guest enlighten me on that, same. Host im going to go on to the next question. I cant enlighten you. Guest you tried. Host your use of rare arcane or difficult words has put you in a position often of having to defend yourself against this outrage. Explain yourself in less than 20 words. Guest well, i cant do that in less than 20 you words that allow me or the just a few more words. The current edition of National Review has a review of my book by james kilpatrick. I think of him as a marvelous critic and a marvelous columnist, and is written a terrific book unlike which himself for which i wrote the forward. But he has this 100 years war against unusual words. I thought i was flattened him on the question by sneakily with my computer singling out unusual words he had used in the course of the year. It was a terrific demonstration. I thought he would crawl up on his knees and surrender, but he forgot about so in the Current Issue he renews this war. What he says is the purpose of journalism is communication, and to the extent that one risks a lack of communication, one is in discharging ones responsibilities. To which when you first races quite a few years ago i said look, if i was writing the recipe for what to take when the rattlesnake that you, i would be absolutely certain that there was no ambiguity in the instructions i gave. Take a pill from bala stick it in your mouth, chew, swallow. Nothing unusual there. But, said i, if you got a newspaper 20 or 25 pages, there ought to be little corners of it in which people can attempt not only to communicate but to entertain and to edify and sometimes that means using a slightly unusual word. The notion that what youre trying to communicate is lost by that is that they extremely hard to establish. I cant think of anything written here, in fact, i know theres nothing written there about which somebody could say because that word exists i didnt understand what you are saying. When one runs into a slightly unusual word, either one gets it from the context as being, or one recalls that one had learned it somewhere back, or one says ill look it up. I made the point in one of my exchanges, this was in the New York Times, that you werent that exists, exists because that was what the economists would call a felt need for it. I. E. , in other words, didnt serve the purpose. Therefore, this word gestated found its way ultimately into the dictionary. If it found its way there, it must have been in satisfaction of a curiosity or a word that served just that purpose. I thought i really look, if you were to hear Thelonious Monk play on the piano and plays an unusual courtroom he said she, thats kind nice. I try very hard not to use words so before exhibitions purposes by hate to not use the word if i think that word is just right for the situation. Host sometimes its a matter of rhythm or guest i think there is that, to. I think there is that, also. Heres a useful tribute, trivial piece. Shakespeare used 28,000 words. 40 of the words it used hes used only once. Thats quite extraordinary to contemplate on. If he found it was just right then and and i was doing time s absolutely just right. In that sense i think that a devotion to the music of the language satisfies appetites which ought not be discouraged. If video times or the New York Post says okay, you may not use any work outside of the 11,000 words that we authorize, i really think there would be resentment by readers who felt that they were not say aloud in on the news of the language. Host what is that business about, the word, is it pronounced irenic . Guest thats interesting. Something kilpatrick says, its okay to select a word for rhythm. And he puts me in some situation in which i use the word irenic, the word useful. And someone said welcome why did you use the word irenic instead of the word peaceful . To which i apparently replied, because it has that extra syllable. He thought that was okay. He understands the rhythmic requirements of language and doesnt deny you the recourse of synonyms for rhythmic purposes. But the reason i found odd that he said that is that it is an unusual word. So for why he should waive his antagonism to unusual words in that circumstances and not in others i can understand why dont you explain that . Host you spoke it fantastic. It surprises some people when they learn that english was not your first language, or even your second, why is that . What was it . Guest i was brought up in odd circumstances and there were ten children. The oldest five spoke french and the youngest five in spanish. I father lived in mexico, and by the time i was born we lived in paris in switzerland. He was bilingual in the spoke to each other in spanish and also my mother in spanish, then when he went to school at age six in france, i learned what very little spanish what very Little French i remember but it wasnt until i was seven in london that i was exposed to english. That kind of think the stuff that unusual in america. Tons of people arrive at the age of six or seven never having spoken a word of english and have manifestly no problem with it. I sat yesterday at a lunch with my students at yale. Im teaching a course in composition and we had lunch. On my right is this lovely girl, about whom i told about an amusing incident involving sam and me when we did a transsiberian trip from peking to moscow a couple months ago. I told her about being lost in this market and tried to remember the words that a been given to me that morning, 20 words that are useful. So use the word caviar, so this nice woman came up with two moth looking cans which a few hours later seminary open and they were full of the most awful, blobby, inc. Sturgeon which we were not anticipated. But the point of that particular story is she arrived at six speaking not one word of english and english is cosmically fluid. At age 20 he called in his friend and said i havent decided whether to continue right to french or english. I guess what im trying to say is in america the assumption is that the native language is the only language in which one is really at home. I dont think thats true. I think that especially when one is very young its extremely easy to learn and become fluent in another language. You see traces of spanish in a language . Host yes. When i think of conrad and buckley, i think it may be an advantage of having english as a second language. You have written 11 novels, ten of them about a cia man. Did you grow up wanting to be a novelist or a cia agent . Guest its not easy for last couple of days to defend the cia. I remember about 30 years ago in National Review just as we began publishing we were defending the mission of the cia but not defending the cia. We ran a paragraph that read the attempted assassination yesterday had all the earmarks of a cia operation. Everybody in the room was killed except one. The cia has screwed up terribly. I wrote a piece for playboy two or three years ago called why spy, in which i asserted the importance of intelligence. If somebody threatens to blow up the next twa flight to rome, it made sense to hope someone finds a two guard who also they are threatening. Certainly in terms of the cold war it was an extremely Important Mission but its also true that they are demoralized and scandalized as a sort of richard ames and this last guy. I served in the cia for about nine months. I was in mexico. I was a covert agent so that i was not been free nor am i now free to say what he did. I think i can say i didnt kill anybody. But after a while it became sort of tedious. The covert agent is his cover is a perfect. If your cultural attache most people know you are in cia. But if you actually do anything which you may very well be doing normally and youre just called then for the ad hoc assignment, then you can effectively serve as a covert agent, which is what i was. Host now you have written many books and you have been reviewed many times, once or twice even fairly. This book contains examples of your own reviewing. Isnt it dangerous for a novelist, say, to review novels by john updike or somebody of the sort . Guest im not sure what your point is. My rule i hope is a real about which i have been fastidiously correct. I always appraise a book on the basis of which i think it is good or bad. It makes no difference at all who wrote it, what his political opinions are. I think its an obligation. I dont what sam is referring to some people who review my books came about saying hes a a rightwing sound of a bitch now lets get down to what he just finished, boring us with. That does, in fact, hurt. When joe klein wrote his book primary colors, gee, what a Wonderful World idea. What a terrific idea. It would be easy to do and especially its that easy to certain texts which are observable. So we comes in the room and says falsetto voice, blah, blah, blah. Hi, in fact, many. How are you doing . Is a sense of which im the would be difficult my authors of a particular book but it is true its, it is a barrier to be known for particular views that are hated by the reviewer and asking that reviewer to read your book as though it was written by someone else. Host whats the most potent review you have ever written . Guest potent in what sets . Host effective track your thats easy. About a year ago the chapel hill press they sent me a book about a sailing invention because of written books about saving. I get one of those about every three weeks. I thought, well, ill read a couple pages pages of it. I was absolutely overwhelmed. I couldnt believe how terrific it was. It was a father and son who took a 25foot sailboat around cape horn, and coordinated their chronicles, that trip. It was so exquisitely written, so marvelously manifested. So i sent an email to a lady in the New York Times with whom i dealt in the 40 years that ive been associated with the New York Times, ive only twice as to review a book as opposed to them asking me i would like to review this book. She came back a day or two later and said okay, we had not planned to review it but you can have 700 words. So i sent them 2700 words. Tick tick tick, suspense. Three weeks later i was informed there are going to run all 2700 on the cover. It was the last cover reviewed the New York Times ran and it did propel the book into the bestsellers didnt. In my lead paragraph this is a book about a father and his son who had traveled from so on and so on. I came to the last sentence in paragraph and then they wrote a book which we read with all and delight when hundred years from now. With the editor of the new times came back with sort of their version of couple of changes, that 100 years from now was reduced to a year or two. [laughing] gee, that isnt we thought that was kind of exaggerated. Thats my responsibility. Well, okay. Another change i remember was there was a little kitten on the vote that had been given to the kid when he pulled out of london. That became his primary campaign especially when his father wasnt setting within which was from time to time. He recorded in his journal, tiger, that was the name of the kitten, came up to me this morning when i was driving my journal and he said, what are you doing . I said, tiger, im writing in my journal. Well, am i in it . Well, you are in it but you will not end it if you mess on my bedroom again tonight. So he wont be in it, this is the New York Times editor, you wont be in it if you misbehave. You cant do that. It takes the ginger out of the sentence. But we dont ass on the new times i was told. I think it came out misbehaved. I am being too wordy. Host you are fine. In fact, guest hes my editor. Host another minute youll be too wordy but you are fine now. I think would be better if we brought the audience in because i would rather hear your questions than mine. And so i see your hand. Have you read michael lenz book [inaudible] trekkie, yes, i have. [inaudible question] i had a problem with that but because it struck me that michael, i use to was attempting sort of a cross the lines of physician which required to be one of arrogant about this is to burkeans, not burkeans enough. To libertarian, not libertarian enough. I dont think it was entirely beautiful by which the meat i mean the average person reading the book would say thats the position of this or that political sentences. Therefore, however persuasive he was inside those paragraphs, he didnt invite judgment come up with a communicable political cosmos, and for that reason it would be very hard today to find three people in this room who could recite his position persuasively. Host there is a lady back there. One of the things i have grown to admire that you over the years is your ability to carry a thought to its logical conclusion, whereas when it starts to get scary, or bigger than i can handle will pull back. How do you break through that barrier . Guest well, i try not to. Host repeat the question. The women asked bill, she admires his ability to carry a thought through to a logical conclusion, but sometimes things go be on that to the point where it is almost scary. How does he manage of this problem. Guest theres really nothing scarier than the bible, because it tells you the consequences of certain kinds of behavior are really in the book that i am just finishing which will be published a year or so from now, its a book about the catholic faith and in it i recall my terribly amusing oldest sister. She is dead. She had cancer, but she was always entirely prepared for polemical grueling and eyeball combat. It wasnt an afternoon tea situation or there was one sort of tweedy young faculty member, at the past around the orders and he saw her fishing around something that did that meat on it because it was on a friday. So said he, why dont you eat meat on friday . And she said because i will go to hell. So he was very amused about that. Well, i suppose you believe in the assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary . My sister said, not only do i believe it, i believe in the moment it happened the earth was this way on its axis, she went like this. That was wonderful. The consequences of hard disciplines. To answer your question, dont i find those consequences sometimes scary . Yes, absolutely. There are really no scarier than the fact that if you become an alcoholic, you run certain risk if you cross the road with a lot of traffic, you run certain risk. And if you believe in gods word, you run certain risk to define his orders. Remember, i didnt make up the scary things. Who says this must say the . If it has consequences, it must not remain unspoken. Or if it is unspoken it should not surprise you when it is spoken. Is that everybody to ever run into say how awful they are. So, you know, i would like to run into somebody who said, i thought that it was terrific, or i thought dole was terrific. And who are they talking to . Not my neighbor, not your neighbor, so, obviously some machine is churning out the listener who wants to hear medicare refer to in just this way and so you tune in and try to get exactly that pitch. And when you find it, it becomes disappointed for the people. The position, for those people i dont know whether thats true. And franklin write the average american is average. You can never go broke overestimating the intelligence of the in any case i if what youre saying is you regret the level at which a political discourse is engaged in. Yes, maam. What do you think of graham green as a novelist. I cant hear. What do you think of graham green as a novelist. The question is what do you think of graham green as a novelist. And what do you think of his personality. A little louder. Can you like graham green, mr. Buckley. The second part of your question . Were you interested in his personality as a convert and all that . I havent met graham green. Im sort of glad i didnt because i dont think he was an easy man to like. I almost went out of my way not to meet ian for the same reason. Green was passion, energy he was on a certain points and i remember turning me off 20 years ago, what is the single word in the english la lake language that you most dislike and he said america. He had the interesting collision in his aesthetic and political commitments. On the one hand, a kind of a recalcitrant devotion to the Catholic Church and a kind of a need for the complementary ic iconclasm. He was saying, okay, if i understand gods commandments and dispose however irregularly to abide by them, i will make up for it by offending every other social protocol. And i think he did that. I didnt know him in person, but i know someone very well to knew him very well. He was a hard man to live with, but hes kind of a one of his books with the New York Times, there was a book that was written during the war, but what he forgot about, he sort of recovered 10 or 15 years later. It was not a significant book of his. But he wrote some great, great books. And finally the quoted the other night saying, if you mention god in a gathering in new york, its met by silence. And if you mention god a second time, you never get invited back. [laughter] so youre saying cut it out, buckley, huh . [laughter] [inaudible] making a habit of mispronouncing french words saying its your job as a pronouncing foreign words and phrases in their own language, but when the right words happened to be one of those unpronounceable strings of words what do you do . Something less than what you can pronounce . I think i understand the question. Youre mostly, i think, guided by idiomatic presumptions. The guy who came back and said i had a wonderful time in pairs, cut it o paris, cut it out. Or i got my mercedes directly from the factory cannes and these are to disdain the pronunciation that belongs primarily to the word, is itself, i think, an act either of ignorance or indifference. I never a french girl i fell in love with, she was eight and i was seven. [laughter] and she told me this, we were living there and she had just come back and lived in london and she loved [inaudible]. Since she was only eight, anyway it was Trafalgar Square and people who mangle pronunciation in that sense as i say are either ignorant or indifferent to the better way to handle it. Sorry . [inaudible] shakespeare . No, churchill. Oh, churchill. Churchill was such a theatrical person. When i was at prep school, i heard the speech he gave to north africans to announce that the americans have landed there. 1943. And the orders to the british and the american radio were to repeat that. It was a minute long. And for like inaudible , apparently some people in north african surrendered. [laughter] and rather than have to continue to listen to this. But he was i learned later he was invited to have, you know, to just be sort of dressed up as french to make it sound more french. No, he wanted to given his sort of comprehensive understanding of the whole intellectual challenge, one had to assume this was intentional. He wanted to say, we are very much english and we understand it to be a globalist enterprise and were trying to come in and help you. Which is much more effective than the speech by de gaulle and his marvellous mandarin french. Mandarin french, thats okay . Mandarin as in orange. The english carry that churchill to the extreme by drinking two wines, french wines, called clarett and blanc. And french dont have those words. Sort of destroying the culture. Yes, maam. [inaudible] a woman whose book youre dying to review . Well, the reason i find that question, there isnt any book im dying to review, but the women writers are so triumphantly successful, i cant think of any woman writer whose book i wouldnt want to review because it was written by a woman. I think but sam was talking earlier today about a woman writer whose book he is currently editing and he spoke about it so persuasively that if it comes for review. Thank you. Speaking about the writer elizabeth spencer, who is writing a memoir. Its quite wonderful. But i wont take your time to sell it here. Ill be back in the morning. [laughte [laughter] a gentleman in the back. Years ago you [inaudibl [inaudible]. [laughter] back in 1935, mr. Lindsey was very with the republicans and he was a very eloquent and decisive member of the republican left. In fact, four or five years later he left the Republican Party and became a democrat, which he couraged him to do four years earlier. But then, and a machine democrat bright, anyway so 1965, the conservative alternative view of the municipal politic ought to be spoke about by somebody so i did it. It was inconceivable that i would win and i never thought anywhere in the prospect. I sometimes tease about the having a mere at one point, 13, dangerously close to being successful. If i ever ran again, my mar again would be voting by invitation only. [laughter] after that campaign you became thoroughly immortal when somebody said what will you do if you win and you said demand a recount. [laughter] my Campaign Manager didnt like that. Questions . Where is our leader. Oh, sorry. [inaudible] could you define genius for us . Would i define the word genius . I wouldnt define it attempting anything novel. I use the word a little bit loosely as somebody with extraordinary gifts. I know that there are purists who say you mustnt use the word except maybe three times per century. Yeah, okay, shakespeare was a genius, that doesnt make Norman Mailer a genius, i understand that. But if youre more generous, you can say, well, youre not shakespeare, but ill call you a genius because of the singularity of your talents. And Norman Mailer with words he was a genius. One more . Theres a woman yes. I know that youre [inaudible] t shes asked bill to comment on bill moyer genesis search. I didnt see it, so im sorry, i cant. You know, i have a sense of bill moyers that he is so ecumenical in the vector of his fort. That hes terribly anxious in the last analysis to dissipate all the differences between and judeo christianity. I understand the ecumenical impul impulse, but if you applied it to music or to color, all shades of color, sort of also all totalry. The reason that people are ardent baptistists or they find in their versions a singularity which makes it super or others. Im a catholic and thats the way i feel about it. This doesnt mean you want to make other people uncomfortable, but it is to resist such efforts as bill moyer makes that there is no difference. And simply acknowledge the differences which is what i try to do and in my book, zero curiosity until this one is sold out. Right, tom . Right. Thanks. Thanks. Are we dismissed . I think so. Youre not. Thank you all for coming. [applaus [applause] he will be happy to sign copies of his book. You can sign a line over here where amber is. Thank you very much. Right here. You all can exit toward the back. Back. And youre watching book tv on cspan2, its television for serious readers. Were spending the night with columnist William F Buckley, jr. He had a Television Program and long running column. He reflected on his faith in his autobiography, nearer my god. [inaudible conversations] [inaudible conversations]. Could you please be seated . Good evening. Welcome to our Civic Affairs Speaker Series. Im lila president of the Womens National republican club. Our organization was founded by the suffergettes to teach the woman about the ballots and our founders built in Historic Town house in 1934. Today the Womens National Republic Club continues its goal of furthering political education and promoting good government. The chairman of our Civic Affairs Speaker Series will introduce our renowned author this evening. [applaus [applause] good evening, ladies and gentlemen, im the civic affair speaker committee, tonight i have the great privilege and honor to present to you our speaker, mr. William f buckley, jr. , the renowned social and political commentator, journalist and author of 37 books which range from his adventure to political commentary and Award Winning fiction. Mr. Buckley needs no introduction. Everyone in this room is familiar with his mega achiever. We all have read his syndicated articles, such as his column on the right, the National Review which he founded and until recently edited and of course, watched him on the long feeling fire line on saturday mornings. Tonight mr. Buckley will speak to us about his latest and most personal book nearer my god an autobiography of faith. Here is what one critic, william bennett, has to say about mr. Buckleys latest work. Nearer my god is a splendid story about a modern pilgrims process. He has written this witty, poignant and inspired which is what we expect to come from him. It is an added blessing, however, to us all that he engages us with his rare and illuminating intelligence with i has now graced this country for several generations. Please welcome our speaker for tonight, mr. William f. Buckley, jr. [applaus [applause] thank you so much, madam chairman. Ladies and gentlemen, i hate to start my few minutes here with a personal remark, but i have to do so, which is that im suffering from a dreadful cold in the throat, so please be patient with me speaking of disabilities and the theme of tonights extremes. I remember hearing when i was running for mayor the story of a man poised at the corner of park avenue with his huge limousine goes by and touches his trousers. He looks inside and sees in the back seat is nelson rockefeller. Immediately he throws himself to the ground prostrate. [laughter] one year later hes in the suite at the waldorf astoria and the courier from brinks gives him a chuck for a Million Dollars and says i just want to tell you something, littleton, if i see you move one arm or one leg anytime in the next in your lifetime, youll spend the rest of the time in jail. So lying he said, well, he says, if you want to ill tell you how to make it easier for you. In a few minutes im going to be met by a cadillac limousine to take me to the United States line. Im going to get off that at cha charbborg and met by a mercedes limousine and it will be the miracle you ever saw. [applause] im here by invitation of your hostess to speak on religion, not on the Republican Party. We must sometimes struggle to make the distinction. [laughte [laughter] my book nearer my god was the idea of a Publishing Company here in new york. I was asked almost 10 years ago to undertake it. I begged off for a couple of seasons on the ground that i was heavily mortgaged on other books, but undertook it in 1992. I write my books in switzerland where my wife and i go for six, seven weeks during the winter. At the end of my writing season, i was pretty dismayed because i found that the subject was so vast and so intimidating that i was afraid i couldnt do it justice. So when i came back to new york, i returned the advance and said, sorry, im begging out. But then that little itch began. Probably most of you at some point in your life know what im talking about, that little itch of something you should have undertaken and decided not to undertake and you think back on it and it doesnt quite leave the memory. When i sat down to attempt to define that particular little aggravation of conscience, i wrote a introductin introductio which i quote, i recalled that i frances story of the juggler in the familiar tale of the monk who sought to express devotion to our lady, having the first week the fellow monks. Some played, and had the tongues of poets, learning to do before entering the monastery was to be on the streets as a jugglerment in the he makes his way through the chapel up to the altar with his wooden mallets and balls and then does his act for our lady. I applaud the force of this act, unrivalled in devotional literature, the 0s sentence 0stensible i set ourselves out thinking of our ladys juggler taking this particular enterprise and undertook to probe some of the questions that arrest christians, active christians and fellow travelling christians. I undertook a special look at a marvellous book widely forgotten called difficulties. What happened in 1933 arnold lund, later sir arnold lund, famous at that time as a mountaineer, as an explorer, as a philosopher, as a historian, found himself up against the kind of a fellow travelling christian, he couldnt convince himself he ought to go all the way so he thought and this was a fear in arnold lund because he so often activated impulses of this kind. He wrote the most prominent theologian in england, arnold knox. He had been at oxford. He became a catholic somewhere along the line so he invited father knox to explore with him publicly certain publicly certain difficulties he had with religion, how can human beings, for instance, be how can they exercise free will while god is omniscient. He said what do you think happened when christ told peter he would be betrayed three times the next morning. Peter, we acknowledge, had free will when he nevertheless proceeded to betray him. That was one of difficulties as phrased in which the two exchange magnificent essays. So i revisited those and dwelt in them and asked ourselves whether there are modern perspectives on the basis of which we have fresh views on these difficulties. The opening chapter is a chapter you might have caught in the National Review where it was published. Its an account of a year i spent in an a jesuit Public School in england. I was 12 years old. The day that my father drove me there, he noted a certain commotion in the airport. So he told the driver to stop by and we saw Dennis Chamberlain descend from an airplane coming back from munich and bringing peace to our time. That was in 1938. I speak about the school ap experience at school and the sense in which the christian imagination is sometimes caught, as it was in my case, not unusual since im one of 10 children with a devout mother and father. And christianity, specifically catholocism was a way of life as we understood it. I went on then in my book auto by ogg biographically, and namely a 0stensible, and i have an examination of the doctrine, how does Christian Doctrine become christian since we dont have a Supreme Court . The answer, of course, in the church, in my church, it is done as a result of an evolution, wonderfully described by cardinal newman, whom i quote extensively. I have tapped on the ordination of my nephew. One doesnt quite know when it was one is beckoned to become a priest. Many monks dont want to become priests, but he was indeed, so, 100 of his friends and nephews and brothers and sisters were uproarously there. And i gave him the night he was admitted into the order a questionnaire that i batted out on my travelling word processor and recorded his answers, which i think are very eloquent. Theres a chapter, also, on a visit to lourde which i did two or three years ago with bill simon. The story is so dramatic that its that the implications of it are very often neglected. People simply dont quite understand what, in fact, happens there. The miracles are very few and highly numbered. No enterprise is bound to the lack of success as that of somebody who pretends to be a curetop in lourdes because those who affect a cure have examinations that cant be survived by anybody who is faking anything, but the visit to lourdes has that effect which is difficult to describe. And reminder that william shaun, the first first editor of the new yorker says nothing is indescribable, the artistic talent of the writer to describe it. I attempt to do so. And so there is material of various kinds in the book. Two substantial chapters are devoted to exchanges between me and my forum. My forum consisting of seven or eight scholars to are converts to christianity, questioning them about aspects of it in the hopes that their illumination on the point will spread their illumination will be more distinctive than my own and reach some people not reached by my own explorations. I devote a little time, not an awful lot of time, to the problem of religion in america. Most conspicuously, its a problem of inattention in the Public Schools. So ordained by a Supreme Court which in my judgment and in the judgment of others, including many Supreme Court justices, misreads the first amendment. In order to transform the constitution into a kind of antireligious instrument. The subject is always in the news in some way or another. You may have read about the judge in alabama. He has he was detected with a copy of the 10 commandments hanging in his courtroom. It had been quite a while and om now noticed. The a. C. L. U. Went into a dizzy spin at this terrible discovery on the separation of church and state and is even now appealing to have a, quote, order there, coming down. The scene is complicated by governor bob james. Governor james has said that he was going to not give the order it comes down, somebody else would have to do it. On another front, the very month that the Ten Commandments were discovered in alabama. [laughter] a young lady, 15 years old, called Heather Crowley was detected of mischief in milwaukee. What she had done was seek subscriptions to a pledge. The pledge was called lets wait until then and she had 50 girls committed to this covenant which was to postpone sexual experience until marriage. When it was detected that heather was also a member of the girls Christian League in milwaukee, under the circumstances, the superintendent said this is a clear violation of the constitution and her activity would have to cease. I remember at the time reflecting on it and it was too late to insert into my book, but my reflection was everyone is familiar with Nancy Reagans victim, just say no, what would happen hypothetically if nancy reagan were canonized, would it then be unconstitutional to circulate a pledge offered by st. Nancy reagan saying say no . What if it were discovered by the incremental dead sea scroll, that the last minute moses confessed, the Ten Commandments were really a personal invention . Under the circumstances would it be all right to hang the 10 commandments as long as established there is no religious auspices involved . These are questions which in whatever form, i do talk a little about in a book. Which is mostly noncontroversial except to the extend that except to the extent that religion is often controversial, especially in a highly secularized world. They were there were a couple of concrete events recorded in the book. One of which may interest you. I read now from the text. In february of 1980, a wealthy romanian canadian approached me through an intermediary asking me if i could undertake a documentary exact shape and size undecided. That would be left in my hand. Single asset for the canadian, apart from money, was exclusive access to the sistene chapel on an appointed day one month away for 48 hours. This privilege had never before been extended and i never learned how it came to be that the canadian magnate had got it, but the invitation to me was to fashion two half hour programs to be filmed in the sistene chapel. I accepted the commission and i called on malcolm and asked mimm if he would serve as my cohost. He readily agreed. It was expected that i would attract a star or two to participate in the extravaganza, only two weeks befo before, i contacted david niven, and princess grace of monaco who stayed with her family nearby. And by telephone i got charlton heston, whod played john the baptist greatest story ever told and moses in the third, the Ten Commandments, so i was enticed by the process of doing something in michelangelos primary shrine adorned by the great painting of the creation. A few days before we convened in rome i had a telephone call from munngraves. In the course of my lifetime ive met most of the famous people of the world and almost uniformly, i find myself wishing i hadnt. [laughter] i think this is different. I wonder if you can arrange an audience with him so i suggested that he use his resources and i use mine and we would and on arriving in rome malcolm and i were notified by written message, we had a private audience with the pope the following day at 1 00. We proceeded with the parables that we had yet to do. The idea was to have grace monaco read two parables. One was on the and then to ask of her and niven and heston, whether in their own experience there was something that could rival that parable, to say whether the point of the parable had a contemporary application. All of them performed marvelously and when it was over, we prepared to the vatican for our scheduled appointment. It was wonderful. We were some monned to his private quarters at 12 45 for our 1 00 appointment. Wednesday was the day before any private audience he met with pilgrims to rome. We could see on the Television Screen in the private chamber where we sat, it was after 12 00 the appointed hour for the end of his public conferences. John paul ii was still talking, making in a half dozen languages, statements addressed to the curiosities of the world to the assembly. Finally gave him his blessing and we were asked to stand abreast of each other, and he would arrive soon. He was there. Slight, benign smile still on his face though fatigue was discernible, the next day he was hospitalized with influenza. In the auditorium he wore his white pasack on his head and around his neck, loose gold neck last with the cross, several clerical aides were in attention. He approached malcolm margraves and extended his hand. The words in the ensuing exchanges are exactly etched in my memory. The pope now addressed margraves in his service in slightly accented english, yes, he said, you are radio. What possible answer can one give to that question so posed . Malcolm smiled and managed to say he had done some simple work on radio. The pope wished nothing further. Smiled. And offered his hand to david niven to whom he said you. Yesments you were yes. You were close to my predecessor. Davids eyes widened and said i had great admiration for him your holiness. So much for david niven whom he smiled and turned and extended his hand to me. I had to act quickly, i thought. If there was any hope of rescuing our papal audience clearly the machinery in the vatican had got tangled. One bureaucracy had authorized the private interview with the important gentleman who had been given the Sistine Chapel for his work. And one of the visitors perhaps the most eloquent speaking christian alive. Another was a renowned and greatly loved actor and together with princess grace, and another famous actress, all would work on an unprecedented documentary in the Sistine Chapel with the catholicamerican journalist, influential in conservative circles. It flashed through my mind that a second bureaucracy had probably briefed the pope about an entirely different set of people, one whom was radio, another perhaps a biographer of pipe paul vi. I thought i might give the pope a life saving lead. Before shaking hands i said its hard, your holiness to get used to my own private chapel back home having spent in ours. Far from alerting the holy father what was going on, my words started him. He stepped back a pace and signaled to his aide and escorted him to the center of the room, politely nudging my wife and me to the company. A photograph materialized. Shot his picture, the pope blessed us, smiled again and left the chamber. There can never have been such revelry in the vatican elevator that took us down to our waiting car. At lunch, malcolm practiced being radio and david, demanded a pencil so he could procedure with a life story of pope pius, pope paul vi, todays malcolms voice would come in over Long Distance line, he would always hear from him, is this radio on the line . [laughter] and when i visited him at his Little Country cottage in sussex, there were here and there a few pictures. Family and one of him and Pope John Paul ii. And so it goes, my instructions were to stick to this theme, to invite questions on it and to agree to share with you whatever it is you wished to share of a secular concern and so, so i close by giving you two paragraphs written about my mother, to whom the book is dedicated. I wrote a few years earlier, she had raised her glass on my fathers 75th birthday to say, darling, here is to 15 more years together and then well both go. But my father did not but my father died not 15 years, but three years later. Her grief was profound and she emerged from it through prayer. Her belief in submission to a divine order and irrepressible delight in her family and friends, a few years later, her daughter maureen died at age 31 and she struggled to fight her desolation though not with complete success, her oldest daughter died before that. And three months before her own death, john, my oldest brother. She was by then in retirement home totally absentminded. She knew us all, but vague when we had last seen us and where and making references to my father will. And the trip they planned next week to mexico or to paris. But she sensed that what had happened and instructed her nurse, she was endearlying under the impression, she owned the establishment in which she had quarters, to drive her to the cemetery and there be, unknown to us until later this afternoon, she witnessed from inside the car at the edge of the assembly of cars, her oldest son lowered into the earth. He had been visiting her every day, often taking her to a local restaurant for lunch and her grief was, by her standards, convulsive, but she did not break her rule, never broke it, which was never ever to complain because she explained, she could never repay god the favors he had done her no matter what tribulations she might be made to suffer. Ten years before she died my wiven i arrived in sharon from new york, much later than we had expected and mother had given up waiting for us. So we went directly to the guest room. There was a little slip of blue paper on the bed lamp, another on the mirror, they were love notes little valentines of welcome as if we were back to searching the globe. There were no sensation to match the timber of her pleasure on hearing from you when you called her on the telephone or the vibrations of her embrace when she lied eyes on you, something truly unique. Five days before she died, one week having gone by without her saying anything. Though she clutched their hands to say goodbye. The nurse brought her from the bathroom to the armchair, an inflectionable rule, she put on lipstick, rouge and pearls. Suddenly for the First Time Since the terminal dissent, she reached out for the mir and with effort raised it in front of her face and then said, a teasing smile on her face as she turned to the nurse, isnt it amazing anyone so old can be so beautiful . [laughter] the answer was yes, it was amazing that anyone could be so beautiful. Thank you. [applaus [applause] mr. Buckley will take questions, but could you please step up to the mic because we are being recorded by cspan. Dont misbehave in front of cspan. [laughte [laughter]. Hello. Thank you for your very inspiring comments and i have already read the book. Its very worthwhile. I have a comment thats general. Is it ever worthy today to compromise ones religious beliefs in order to promote unity, whether here in america or abroad . Well, i think the critical word there is compromise. The pope is very straightforward on the matter of the Political Correctness of trying to do that much that can be done. So that, for instance, if one were to vote for one candidate who said well, im in favor of abortion, but i insist that the mother be notified, to vote for him as against the person who said, no, the matter should never be notified, would be a politically prudent and understandable step. In those circumstances under christian theology, is one justified in effecting a mortal sin for whatever purpose. Under the christian, catholic or whatever, it would never be justified for a cia spy to seduce somebody, or to assassinate somebody. It would have to be a civil understanding in the latter case, that if a protective shield to act otherwise thee logically would be forbidden. If anyone wants to contradict me, wouldnt hurt my feelings at all. With reference to middle east theres a trouble spot ordinary docks jewish law and conservative movement in america, whereby orthodoxy seeks control and to have a say. Do you have any suggestions . Well, the religious dissension within israel was for many years thought of as entirely private matter. It is no longer that because israel, to be sure, is a discrete national community, but its also an International Shelter and under the circumstances, the concern of people who dont live in israel, of jews, for instance, in america, is a felt concern and what we see now of course the situation in which a small, but extreme militant, and demanding session is withholding or not withholding its sanction to a Coalition Government depending on whether certain laws are enforced, which the majority apparently are against enforcing. So, we have there a genuine problem that weve all read about the extent to which it has decided many of israels supporters here in america. Some people who think that the old order should hold fast. Others thinking that conciliation is in order. [inaudible] im veronica simpson. Im on the board of governors here. We thank you for coming here, mr. Buckley. And my question for the audience, about 20 years ago i purchased, bought at a charity ball, one of your beautiful paintings. And one of my what . Beautiful paintings, its a boat scene on water and ive always been a fan, so i was happy to have a painting by william buckley, which you signed for me. Now, my question, i have two questions, one, are you still painting . And the second question is, is my painting more valuable . [laughte [laughter] this will sound like a plant, but i promise it isnt. When my brother was elected to the senate he had, of course, a deficit and two events were scheduled to try to collect money to defray that deficit. Both of them were auctions, one here and one in rochester the next night. I was the auctioneer and among the items listed was to be a painting to which i devoted much time in switzerland under the tutelage of david niven who painted every night. The great moment came and the crowd really wasnt watching its wallets fiercely because everything sold, extravagant prices. So i kept egging up the price of this painting. It was 1875. I practically fainted and rushed to offer myself for the next season. At the end of the evening it was a little humiliating because the gentleman who bought it turned to my wife and said, here, you can have it. [laughte [laughter] so, the succeeding night it was up for auction again in rochester, but in rochester theyre much less exhibitionistic than manhattan and i could see early on the enthusiasm generated for anything in new york wasnt going to go. The time came to auction my beautiful painting, who will bid 1,000. Dead silence. [laughter] well, who will bid 500 . Dead silence. Well, who will bid 250 . Well, i will i recognized it was my dear wife. [laughter] so she got it for 250 and im delighted you now have it. I hope you enjoy it. [applaus [applause] as long as im married, which is 45 years, i think i first saw you interviewed by mike wallace on late night television. I was wondering if you could comment, do you think your americanirish heritage has been a help or detriment to your political career . Well, im terribly pro irish, so, i dont know what you expect me to answer to that. Unfortunately, i dont qualify completely to serve under that manner. I was invited to join the order of the order of st. Patrick a few years ago in new york. So they asked for my credentials and it didnt work. You have to have three grandparents who are irish and i failed, there being no irish blood in my mothers side, but the irish are the salt of the earth and there is a heavy influence of. Trying to ask any black american to express discontent and a fatigue with the high mobilization of the mobilization of america. At the end the evening just before i came on he said well, do you worry about how much time we are wasting and how many risks we are taking on the military and internal front . No, sir, mr. Wallace i dont worry at all. I just renumbered to say my prayers every night for j. Edgar hoover and senator joe mccarthy. [applause] [laughing] mike waltz was very discomforted by that. I once asked who is the founder of meet the press . Whats the name . [inaudible] i once asked, i said larry, have you ever been completely wasted, just devastated by one of your guests . He suggests. He said about a year ago i had on the man i hate most in the United States. No, that i hate most in the world. So i saved my haymaker until the last 22 seconds. And he said, senator bilbo, last week senator pat called you probably the worst band ever to have been elected to the senate in the history of the United States. What is your comment on that . Bill said, dont you understand . Hes a communist. [laughing] thats one way of closing that narrative. Sorry, im rambling. [inaudible] mr. Buckley, to great to have you tonight. You and your sons look more like brothers. I know youre a staunch Roman Catholic and the havent read your book yet except the first chapter because i subscribe to the National Review and i intend to read, get the book tonight to read the whole thing. My question to you is how you had any doubts come have you gone into any of the metaphysical religions which give an entirely different access to the great creator . For instance, the only route is consciousness and, therefore, it is in all, through all and as all. I could go on but i wont. Im just wondering if you had any problems about that . Obviously youve never any problems but how did you arrive at your solution . Thats what im asking. I do, i think i note here and in the book though not by any means profoundly the enticement of this or that span on religion. I remember when all four beatles took to going to somma magic yoga in india to get their inspiration and it didnt last and it dont mean to denigrate those other religions but all i can say is that when once in the past a classmate expressed his restlessness with christianity, i urged him to read two books both by the same man, orthodoxy and then the everlasting man, in which he compares the credentials of the principal competing phase. Arrived at his conclusions. I wish i could exactly the same phrase about went all over the world anxiously seeking something until he finally found it was orthodoxy. To answer your question at a personal level i am aware though not profoundly of these what you call these metaphysical phase. And am never troubled with any worry that anything has come up that hasnt been plumbed by men and women of intellect who settle for christianity. I was debating last week, a Television Debate a couple hours on evolution and creation, four a very, very formal people on both sides and one made it one of them, a brilliant professor said i had made a point that much evolutionary thought is now dogmatic. They say they must have been there must be materialist Natural Selection untroubled by prime mover or by divine intervention. The following has to be deduced because that is their dogmatic commitment, and i was asked to i believe . Yes, i yes, i do. On the other darwin didnt rise again on the third day. So there is i think, there are several perception on the basis of which christianity can never be selfsatisfied. That would be wrong but proud and confidence. [applause] we fake mr. Buckley for being with us this evening. I also want to thank the committee and jane randall of the Calvin Coolidge Library Committee for having this event this evening. Thank you all for coming, and mr. Buckley has consented to sign your books so please come forward. [applause] [inaudible conversations] nice to meet you. To cindy. Thanks very much. Nice to meet you. Thank you. How are you doing . Fine. My wife says make it to mary ntm, thats me. One of my greatest memory of you was an interview. To peter and joan. Thanks very much. To ellie and bert. Say hello to bert. [laughing] mr. Buckley, can you make it to my wife, donna, a fellow sailor. Thank you. Howre you . Fine, thanks. Who is this for . Virginia. Thank you very much. Can ask you to write to ingrid and john. Thanks so much. Appreciate it. My pleasure. Thanks a lot. Teresa. Its a pleasure meeting you. Thank you so much. You are watching booktv in cspan2 and tonight we are Binge Watching with the late author william f. Buckley, jr. We have one more program tonight to show you. In april 2000000 mr. Buckley sat down for three hours to talk about his life and his work. This is from booktvs in book program. Here it is. Host welcome to booktv in depth. These of the books of william f. Buckley, jr. , 41 in total. Ranging from his first book in 1951 god and man at yale, 1985 right reason through his entire Blackford Oakes mystery series twos latest collection of speeches, let us talk of many things due out at the end of this month. For the next three hours mr. Buckley joints to take your calls and questions as we explore his complete body of works and is like inviting and politics. Welcome, mr. Buckley. Guest thank you very much. Host this is old and musty. Musty. This is what, 49 years old . Guest yes. Came out in 1951. It was rather amusingly supposed i had calculated for it to come out on the 250th anniversary of the founding of yale. In fact, that was coincidental, the picture on the back. Remember those days . Guest no. [laughing] not conceivably. Host what is in the book . Guest the book was an examination of life that yale for the undergraduate with special attention given to the impulses in the two to whics exposed having to do with government. Enthusiasm for greater government or was it enthusiasm for Less Government . And also in respect of original. What was encouraged in those courses in which religion touched. They or skepticism . I concluded that the teaching in those days was collectivist in impulses and agnostic in respect of the other. So i should a i rattle on or yu want to i was going to say as recently as four years ago at a reunion someone who is now minister, protestant minister, reminded me that i volunteered to read aloud the section that bore on christianity to dwight hall, one of the paternity of the christian minded young men. I regret you chose that everything you said was proved correct. By which he meant the gradual sort of disappearance of the strong Christian Faith was accurately predicted to the best of his knowledge of what went on and subsequent what happened. Host did you ever figure out how many of those books you sold over the last 49 years, god and man at you . Guest wasnt an enormous selling. Got a lot of attention. It at three reviews in the the saturday the review what one bowl surveyed we decide what books to buy. I guess under 100,000. Host this is mccarthy and his friends. What year did that come out . Guest that came out in 1954. Its a book written at the highpitched of the mccarthy movement my bring boesel and knee. He was during his last year at the law school and had to pull out of the cia and was making my way as an independent writer. In 1954 the country was enormously promccarthy and especially those elements of the country that were mobilized and the mccarthy, under communist issue. We closed the book in september 1953, and as i recall in a novel most of is really crazy mistakes were done later with one important exception. So the book is a very good resource, resource for anybody when Whittaker Chambers wrote to the publisher, thats what i want the book here i want Solid Research on the hearings. They were the great question mark during that period of mccarthy that completely disappeared when the army charges came along. That proved to be the battlefield over which mccarthy fought for, will be talking with mr. Buckley until the bottom of the hour and that it will be open phones to you for two and half hours as return to work through all these books that you publish. Heres one called up with liberalism. Its a paperback your but what was the purpose of this book when you wrote it . Guest that book was written in 195859, and what it attempted to do was to distill what i thought were the postulates of american liberalism and hold them up to the scrutiny of the fence. And asked really shouldnt we move up in the direction of policies that were more successful . Host the foreword, why . Guest john was a spectacular leftist during the 30s. He was a socialist and utopian, and he came around on that and shocked his huge constituency by becoming conservative. So when i suggested he might consent to write the foreword, he enthusiastically agree to do so. Host heres one called the jewelers i and you are on some kind of a scooter. Guest i use to get around for a while on a scooter of this particular photographer shot that and a few others for some magazine. The publisher like it. That book came out as the first i think the first of my collections and was very successful. It happened to come out at a moment when there was a lot of publicity being given to my exchanges with gore vidal on the political conventions. And that probably had something to do with his success. What it is is a collection of material in 1958. I thought it would be a market to make a book. Host 41 books. When we went to try to find that we learned you didnt even have all 41. Or do you . Guest i try to keep a balance copy but maybe i missed one or two. Host some of these are yours and some of these belong to nick who works here was collected lots of books and some of them we had. Rumbles left and right tractor thats the second of my collection. That has a long essay i wrote on Whittaker Chambers when he died in incorporating material that he had sent me with subsequent evolutions into a book of its own that was published in esquire magazine and got a fair amount of attention. Somebody did rumbles is a perfect title for mr. Buckley his book. Thats really all that he is engaged in his street fight. Host where have you written most of your books . Guest almost all in switzerland except for two or three. I have a routine which takes us to switzerland the end of january and i sit down and write my books. Host how long do you stay there . Guest six weeks, six, seven weeks. Host at the time were talking today life youve been back for how long . Guest ive been every year turn this time. When did you get back from switzerland . Guest about ten days ago drama you are rested and guest not rested. The New York Times perhaps there was a reason, but he says in it ever since he used up his energy level is completely not talking about better sex lr whatever. I thought that might be a good thing to investigate at my age. Maybe i could write two books per year. Host born in 1925, still 74 years old. Guest yeah. Host anytime over these 41 books that you enjoyed the most . Guest well, i find writing hard by which i mean im not in the company of those who look forward to writing. A critic who died seven or eight years ago, very, very shy, he told me that he had a hard time sleeping and he could understand why because he was very about 3 00 in the morning he woke up and realized he hadnt written anything that they got up, went to his death, hold at his typewriter and wrote an essay or something and went back to sleep. I know a few people like that who is need to write can be compared with some peoples need to eat or to take exercise. I dont have that. I dont think its terribly, terribly hard sweaty work and i happily write quickly, in part no doubt to contract the pain. Host what do you write with, on . Guest i write with a computer. Host how long have you done that . Guest since they existed. Host what did you do before that . Guest a typewriter. Never wrote with my pencil, not its college. I would write an editorial everyday and for the first week or two i will write by hand but then back to a typewriter. Host what time of day do you write . Guest it depends on the deadline, but my routine, my book writing routine is to start writing at 4 30 in the afternoon. Gives me time to ski before come to your regular work in the morning. Host you refer to your wife something happened with risky over in switzerland . Guest no, she broke her leg back in 65. So she has not skied since then. So ive got to do that on my own. Host did you ski . Guest i had a long fluker i had a cranky flu that didnt immobilize me but made almost impossible to ski. Sort of weathered the limbs. Host this book, United Nations journal a delegates odyssey. Guest a wonderful book. I was asked by nixon to be a public member of the United Nations, 1973, so i did. About two and half months assignment. In order to justify this terrible dissertation im going to write about it. I looked for a bibliography of United Nations. Nothing has ever been written about it except a book by a photographer in the brazilian delegation. The reason it was such a bore, so i wrote this book and i sent it to the new yorker, and it was accepted right away. I wish they said they would have to have, it would have to delay this publication by six months. So i pulled it out and published it in the normal way. Its a really interesting book because it was at the height of the cold war, plus also it was at the moment in which pinochet took over in chile, plus also it was the threeday war. So thats pretty exciting time september 1973. Host your opinion of the u. N. . Guest well, i wrote about it at the time that it was the most extraordinary and concentrated deposit of prejudice and hypocrisy in the history of civilization. Everyone knew that the spokesman from east germany was going to sylvia say what is going to say in moscow. Everybody knew this spokesman from saudi arabia would challenge the credentials of israel using pretty much language that used the last 25 years. Everybody referred to themselves as this exaggerated deference. It was a pretty ugly, ugly site. At the same time one recognized that certain arrangements are expedited by having in the international body. You have to know where your right to transmit a rate of being and in mind begins. So for stuff like that it was useful. Im not making suggestion at the time. The way, what the United States i to do, this was less much important outcome was to never ever wrote in the General Assembly or plead or cajole, threatened to all those things but never vote. Because the minute you go and you lose the vote, you subscribe to the superstition that the democratic process should be listened to even when it is completely devoid of truth and a rally. What did was people adored the vote. Gradually the power accumulated in the Security Council where it much rest today. Host bill buckley will be with us another two hours and 45 minister this is our segment and death. I have an email here that says you know guest very well. I have known him. Host Richard Rhodes is our second guest. The idea is to spend three hours with an author was read a lot of books and give the audience a chance to talk you through the books so the program is about the books. I will try to stand that. Another one called the unmaking of the mayor. We dont have a cover per se because somebody has taken it. Guest i decided to run for mayor of new york on the conservative party ticket in 1965. My point being the republican candidate john lucy was trying to forward ideas indistinguishable from those being forwarded by the democratic candidate. So i did run and it was a rather dramatic vacation in part because there was a newspaper strike as result of the newspaper strike which lasted for several weeks all of the newspapers were on television and that way john lindsay equal time and that gave exposure to my positions which not have been had if routine newspaper accounts were given to them. It was an extremely solid interesting opportunity to try to express conservative views on urban problems. I was in a sense prophetic in that i kept insisting john lindsay was really a democrat, though he became a democrat five years later having been defeated off the nomination of the Republican Party. Host this book is dedicated to Kathleen Taylor from a a grateful and devoted n along, new york city may 1, 1966. What is your philosophy of the dedications . Guest i try, i acknowledge people who are important to me. Personally or professionally. Theres a wide variety of this because the business of, you may forget someone else, its depressing. So you end up say with 40 dedications and you forgot your own mother, lets say. Thats a problem. Its not impulsive to who sort of comes to mind when time comes to do the dedication. Host Kathleen Elliott taylor was your motherinlaw, and your wife, her daughter ce when did you meet her . Guest i matter when she was a freshman and i was she was a sophomore and i was a freshman. Then we sort of renewed courtship i guess then begin in vancouver. Shes from vancouver. She lived across the way from my sister. It matured and that was 50 years ago. Host this book, right reason. Guest thats from my collection. I think a document peace, if there is one. Oh, yes. Its the first one of my collections which i asked somebody else to edit. To Read Everything that you have written in the last seven years, if you write regularly, its an enormous task. So i asked an associate, now highly paid biographer to do me the favor of singling out the material from what appealed to him. So we had the dreary job of reading it all done what i have something here familiar with the National Review. When did you start this magazine . Guest it launched in november 1955. Host what is your relationship to it now . Guest im an editor at large over the magazine. Host do you own it . Guest yes, i yes, i do. I recite as editor in 1990. Host has ever made any money . Guest no. Host doesnt bother you . Guest yeah. Yeah, it does but only in the sense if you are bothered if you run a hospital, doesnt make money or school doesnt make money. We are an educational effort primarily, and for that reason we absorb the vicissitudes of philanthropic enterprise. Host in this book you dedicated for roger. Guest roger, one of my dearest old friends and support of the magazine. We differ now on, hes very pronounced in protectionism, which im not. But the great thing to say that it is that he didnt withdraw his advertisement in the National Review. Host here it is. Where is guest i hope everyone agonizes him. Host has happened tough over the years when supporters dont like what you are saying . Guest yeah. One company we were attacked the John Birch Society stopped its advertising. But theres been this may interest you. When the idea of the magazine came up, the idea was a vietnamese intellectual who would come to america. He became very close to henry luce. When youve ftb came one came one of the three editors of freeman which was a conservative nightly. It had 17 trustees. There always meeting and disagree on such issues as whether i should back tap eisenhower for presidency. So it was idea that i start a magazine for the absolute important thing is to keep all the voting fair because if you have all the voting shares, the magazine may prosper or may not prosper. But it will be on account of people staying up until 3 00 in the morning trying to decide who has the votes. And its extraordinary how tranquil life can be if it is known for makes these decisions. We dont get an advertiser to call up and say we demand, or an editor you have to use your authority persuasively which obviously maybe i should write a book about that, in five minutes we will go to calls. I notice theres a comma here between buckley and judy. I didnt think you like that . Guest i dont. I just didnt proofread that carefully. Host why dont you like it . Guest that yale style books always said without the comma. If you want to construct a large record you can do that by saying your name is william f. Buckley, jr. Host it has an introduction by Alastair Cook. To set make him a conservative . Guest no, no, no. People can introduce books without being ideological soulmates. It happens, Alastair Cook wrote a long review in one of my books in the Washington Post 1971. It was a very nice review. I wrote and said maybe we should meet. We had lunch every three months last 30 years all because of that. He has become very conservative on the certain issues extremely but he would not be a conservative in the National Review since, how old is he . Guest 97. Host what kind of life desi leads now . Guest hes 91. In fact, hes the same age as john kenneth galbraith. He still plays golf. Yet a little about of pneumonia type thing. Host on the firing lines, the dedication. What was by relying, how long itll last . Guest lawrence firing line began in 1966. It had been scheduled to run in 1965 but the fact i was running for mayor disqualified it. It was thought it would last 13 weeks. The idea was to have confrontational exercises with conspicuous liberals. It was quite successful, quite successful. It was renewed another 13 weeks. I ended up say i dont go any longer and i killed it at the end of the the last show was run in december 1999. 33 years. Host why did you want to kill it . Guest well, because i felt that things have to end the way i i put it was i didnt want to die on the stage. Things do have to end, and its not that idea to take a propitious moment to let it end. I i didnt answer any out of gas particularly. Also it was a strain to get it finance because as you of all people know, public broadcasting stations dont like to pay for anything because there was everything free which event the entire overhead provided by us. Host nearer, my god i william f. Buckley, jr. What is this . Guest i am a catholic, a believing catholic and christian. And it kept creeping up and i felt that i should realize an obligation to write about my faith both to express gratitude for it and pass along certain points that i have found persuasive over the years. Host who is the dedication to . Guest it to my mother. She died at age 90 and was a very devout, marvelous woman. I wish you had known her. Host what was she like . Guest she was from new orleans. She was sort of a beauty, had ten children and had sort of a twitter reway, plenty of steel, differed in all sorts of situations to my father. On the other hand, everybody who saw, new pretty much life was as she dictated. She was a total softener and we lived, we were brought up in europe and in connecticut. Connecticut was october but along 1936, they bought a place in South Carolina and that is where they are both buried. He was a texan. They were both southern oriented trend if youre watching this program live on april 2, 2000, in a in the new type our on east coast lines are open. Another book here is the governor. Guest tractor thats taken, a phrase in the Old Testament that if the lord things shall be as the governor then, as the lord desires or specifies. Theres a lot of fun stuff in that book. Host do you have a favorite . Guest you know, i do but it is a book that hasnt quite been published yet. Its a book on my speeches very carefully selected. 150,000 words out of half a million. Host isnt this one right here . We dont have the actual book, cover only. Go ahead. Guest everything i have to say is there beginning with a speech i gave as a senior at yale at commencement time to the speech i gave her in washington for the heritage society. Celebrating the 20th anniversary. Its a rather nicely read. People find it interesting and amusing and historically important. That book was sent by the publisher rather ingeniously to a dozen or so people and they shot back with terrific stuff. Even George Mcgovern says its a wonderful book. Host bill buckley as a master of english dictionary. The shop is my contemporary conservatives. Guest who wrote that . Thats a conflicted county we made a mistake with him. Host and confirmed a liberal whos dissenting friend i recommend this to conservatives and liberals alike. The click is a national treasure. Try to geewhiz, i will have to crank georgia for another run. Host you have a bunch of novels. This is your latest, 1999 novel about what is this about . Guest that book is about joe mccarthy. The 40 years after writing the first one, the whole mccarthy scene really needs to be explained as a novel so that you can say things you know to have been true and those that are revealing, which got left out in the cross antagonisms of the journalistic approach to the problem back then. I think its a very, very effective novel. I was delighted just yesterday by the review of it by powers, very antimccarthy but also a student of the cold war. He thinks the portraiture in that book is very important and readable. Host will go to her audience that and ask our audience to try to focus in on books that you have read of william f. Buckley. Got stacked here whole bunch of novels of on the skill of what you like and not like the best. How many novels have you written . Guest 12. Host whats that like compared to writing guest actually 13. Host what do you like best . Guest i think it generally is a you to write a novel because it is marginally less research. On the other hand, if you decide youre going to write the book in six weeks, you do and you get the research windup and but the wonderful thing about the novel is the temptation to improvise. You finish at 7 00 and the guy does know the killer is coming in the other way. Something has to happen and you have got to make it, youve got to make the surprise relevant. If you live high threshold of boredom come as a do, you cannot to write boring things because you bore yourself. Someone can write pages on the wisteria tree, and i love them for, i can do that. And any attempt to do so cripples me. And for that reason i like to think that none of my books is boring. Host two hours and 25 minutes to go with william f. Buckley, jr. New york city you are our first call the go ahead, first, its good to see in the audience at Carnegie Hall a week ago saturday and that reminds me that it dont think giving any books about music. I know you have an intense interest in music and of wondering why you havent done that and why giving your harpsichord versatility you have it recorded . Could you please answer those questions and also tell us about your relationship to music . Thank you. Guest i didnt hear him, we will try to figure it up if he wants to know why you havent written about music. He says his site at Carnegie Hall a few days ago, and why youve never recorded your harpsichord . Guest the answer to that is easy. Im not good enough. In fact, i played the harpsichord at a a yield reunin for a five years ago, and anyway, it was recorded and i heard it. I made so many mistakes that i doubt i would never ever, ever play it in public. But on the matter of whining about music, its a very special challenge. The very first writing i ever did was as a music critic at age 15. I went to the Chamber Music concerts, they call the music mountain, and i published every week for a couple of years. But somewhere along the line two things happen. Number one, i recognize that man knows the music was really superficial. I was a total consumer. I didnt have the authority to write about it structurally. Secondly, i faced a problem that some people simply transcend so theres no way to communicate your music through writing. Under the circumstances theres a kind of a barrenness in the effort which i think itself is rather depressing. Host little rock, arkansas, you are next. Caller good morning. Mr. Buckley, theres a story in little rock something of an urban legend about you came to town one time to speak and that you stop at a pay phone at the airport and on the way out they had given you the key to the city on your way out and that you stop at a paper on the way out and went and conjure up with the same person came back and a key to the city was stuck behind the pay phone. And i just thought that was wonderful. Guest i was what works. Host did you hear, youd been given the key to the city and you are on a pay phone and you left and his fellow came back to the payphone and found the key to the city thank you i missed that. That, that implies no lack of gratitude for the gentility of whoever gave me the key. It just an aspect of forgetfulness. Host assuming over the years youve been given lots of things when you go out and speak, do you make any effort to save them all . Guest no. Host villanova pennsylvania you are next. Caller good afternoon. I feel as though youve been a part of my story for the last 35 or 40 years. Back in late 60s and out i got a hold of your home address and we corresponded occasionally and youve been a real intellectual and ethical touchstone for me for years. Id appreciate the writing and the various ways that various places where you have done that, particularly appreciated the book you get on your transatlantic sailing venture. That was a real armchair adventure for me. I did have one question. You a few moments ago describe yourself or identified yourself as a believing catholic. Somewhere during the midpoint of my time at connecting with your i became a christian myself and i was wondering whether you use the word believing catholic in a way that you could explain . Guest well, there were a lot of references especially in political seasons to look catholic vote and by that is most often meant people who spares are irish for italians or whatever, and in that sense the word is used without severity. By accessing catholic i meant i attempt to live and be covered, unsuccessfully, why the code so that how should we i heard someone the other day, 18 of catholics attend church every week. Now, to fail to attend church is a mortal sin. So that that kind of lackadaisical attention to the sabbath suggests an informality to the religion which i find saddening turn if you just joined us were talking about the 41 books at a a minimum that bl buckley has written, and is written one almost every year, theres a couple of years over the thai prince since 1961 he has a written a book book but not very often. California, you are next. Caller you basically turned my head around back in 1962 when i was i was in the service. My name is keyboard. You probably remember. But in any case i wanted to ask you where do you think the conservatives deigned the justification for certain measure of Public Authority over our conduct but the liberals or the left fails to gain that justification . Guest i think thats because the constituency to which the conservatives appeal is a less transitory, by which i mean i understand conservatives are attempting to revive and to celebrate a criteria that dont merely justify that are not really described by fitful democratic was it, yeah, the democracy of the dead. The reasons we feel, ought to feel to a number of decisions that were made even before we were born, most notable the constitution of the United States and bill of rights, i follow the . Caller i wanted to ask a measure such as the flagburning constitutional amendment effort which is a conservative, populist type of effort has very little to do with history, and yet it seems to be that those who are conservatives have no problem with the line the power of a state in these kinds of instances that minimumwage upsets them. Im just trying to find out the consistency here. Guest i missed the first half. Theres a lack of consistency between something in the middle age, i didnt hear. To her audience were having trouble with our earpieces. Did you hear the last half of it . Guest yes, why dont i move on and we will take another call and get a little more see if you can do this one. Memphis against the go ahead. Guest . Caller thank you for cspan. Mr. Buckley, again watching firing line in high school in the mid1970s and following your writings what in your book nearer, my god you discuss actually quite a long time that i was wondering what relationship with them hot you about your faith and maybe what he could teach the rest of us . Guest malcolm is as you may recall was brought up a christian and then left the faith and rediscovered turkey was quote reborn to use modern terminology. He did so with the most marvelous enthusiasm. He spoke about christianity much as one might speak about my fair lady, the first you saw on broadway. That enthusiasm, plus his marvelous powers of expressing himself, as done in many essays and a couple of books, we became very close friends. He asked to be on firing line, the sixth time. I want to a firing line called why i am not a catholic. I said okay. So we did. He became a catholic and we had yet another come with yet another final firing line. During his home in wilshire i think it was, and there was a kind of augustus in which come he had a faith that look like the faith of the face of the clown in 17th century and 18th century drama. But his passion for the relevance of the christianity shown through it. It is, by the way, its a program that produced, ran every year christmastime the last few years. People clamored to see it again. Others will not run anymore but thats the program was talking about. Host is there a place where people can see all the old firing line . Guest the museum of television and radio over here on 52nd street, 51st street in new york, i have 150 of them. Host fort myers, you are next comic greetings, mr. Buckley. My name is tom and in 1972 i had a had a chance meeting with you on madison avenue and you had granted me, i was the first editor of a local paper there called our town. And you granted me a 15 minute interview at a later date which turned into an hour and half of talk, and it was just wonderful. I play the tapes for people, it was just wonderful and we discussed quite a bit about the mcgovern and nixon campaign. And i would like your opinion now on two things if i could. And that is the candidacy of Hillary Clinton for senate in new york, what you think would happen . And number two, are you ever planning on writing anything about the Clinton Presidency . And what would you think the first three lines of his obituary would read . And i thank you, sir, for everything you have given us. You really are a great man. Guest well, thats very nice of you. I appreciate that a lot. I wish i could read or hear what it was i said in 1972, see if it is anything that survived the time that i can quote you never on the matter of the race in new york, im not very much impressed by the notion that mrs. Clinton is an outsider. Shes a very cosmopolitan woman, and Bobby Kennedy was formerly an outsider. So i think, i think if people who want to vote the other side cant come up with a better argument than that, she has a chance. He never spoke a word or had a memorable thought under the circumstances, improvisation but one doesnt feel like precipitating a funeral at the state of the game. Gratitude was prompted by the feeling, like ortega said but most keenly, the thing of print of the masked man in 1932, any appreciation, and write this book urging, the expection of how much we have for a years service. A years service, helping in the environment. Interestingly enough, making it obligatory, i was very enthusiastic about that which said to the 22yearold if you have that dont come around. And the idea appealed to one that presented it, we wont take anybody who has another year of service but if harvard did it everybody else would do it. I very much encouraged that idea, never got off the ground and was furious with me about ethos which isnt backed by government power and still persuasive, is resisted, if government isnt behind it and it doesnt work what do you then do . Ethos can be long and this is what should happen. Cspan in breckenridge, colorado, go ahead. A forward for the National Review to colleges and universities, the oldest of 6 children applying for college, there has not been a die version of that, it is very helpful, wonder if there is a new version that would be forthcoming and any other resources to help with that decision. Guest i dont know if there is one plan on the drawing board. The isi, our study has its own and we are governed by the same criteria and i recommend you go there. Minneapolis, your next. I want to say since the end of the year there has been a void in my life, i hope this program will fill some of that. One time you quoted someone who said he learned throughout his long life could be expressed with the simple quote jesus loves me, just say no, i dont remember who it was that maybe you could tell me and secondly i thought the best inspiring line was for abner and unfortunately i havent seen anything about him recently, i guess its possible he has died. Do you know how he is doing . Guest he is alive but he is not active. Given his enormous energy and diligence, must be that he is incapacitated. It seems he is 91. In his late 90s. He wrote a book of the year, marvelous, recommend his book. Cspan i remember asking what his favorite was. Guest that was a mammoth bestseller, gave him a name and Financial Independence and that was very important. I dont remember that quote. Cspan california next. Caller explain your taped introductions your novel, you edify joe mccarthy by giving intellectual but you dont mention the irreparable damage he did to americans. I am conservative and until last evening i admired you greatly. Guest geewhiz. It is extraordinary what one sentence or lack of it can do to you. The question of who mccarthy damage it is never easy to answer. In this investing in that came to the conclusion that the people who he named were by no means, utterly clued records. Exactly what he was named by the committee. The people mccarthy hurt worse was people like me. As richard says the damage he did to the anticommunist movement, even today, any criticism of somebody, to say mic reasoning but i dont think there are all that many people who suffered didnt deserve Something Like that. If i came up with a plan and somebody running against this, who belongs to the ku klux klan, completely reformed, what it said about my background. Joseph allen and the trials, twee 7 years were confronted with it but they might have been completely liberated from that kind of temptation but they didnt in my judgment win immunity with him blowing up. Cspan the collar, the want to follow up . Caller i think, Mister Buckley, you overlook the trickle down to the level that it went to. People who might have subscribed to a left magazine and did, i am aware, lost their jobs. These are not people who endorse stalin but people who were in college, and lost credibility. And questioned left physician. His endowment was to really hurt many people, many innocent intellectuals i might add who were not thinking conservatively but as young people were thinking liberally. Guest if you are saying because of the consequences of deifying a social position can be overstressed i agree with you. And burning which is at some point, with the consequence, the effort to suggest, this was reflected in mccarthyism with that experience, i remember one man saying mccarthys efforts to shut him up would not prevail, no question about his being shut up. If somewhere down the line you find a professor who didnt get promoted because the trustees said he severed a soviet american friendship, that kind of thing does happen so fast, somebody accused of antiwoman prejudice because he voted against the type of southerners but to reach back and seek to discredit a movement that gave us correct perspective, the big struggle in political history after the war was to reconcile our enthusiasm for our partner Joseph Stalin and acknowledge that he ran a terrible despotic regime. The politics were very much influenced by people who said you got to come out on the side of peace and recognize the soviet union moving towards socialism and bake a few eggs, america put that around 1940, conviction of loss of czechoslovakia, the detonation of the bomb, the loss of china. Becoming was not as easy, mccarthy screwed things up by going so far, with outside extensions. Cspan will buckley will be with us another two hours on a series called in depth where we invite an author to come with us and three hours, Mister Buckley has written 41 books and talking about some of them. Next month will be joan didion, Richard Rhodes, but john lucas in the st. Louis, missouri. Caller thank you for this in depth program, a more intimate knowledge of the authors that you have, appreciate your program. Mister buckley, i havent read any of your books, i have a lot of writing of my own to do. I hope you will forgive me for that. I like one of the things you sort of rattle my cage was positive at the end of your name. Never looked on it as an appositive. I looked on it as something i added to differentiate between my greatgrandfather, my grandfather, my father and myself. Never thought about doing that. The other thing is you talk about your book on christianity and nearer my god to thee, writing a few Different Things on that subject recently, more on christianity, recently recognized, it is not published, but it is called the 12 gifts of christmas. A lot of people dont know what that is but basically it is a small primer for christianity, what i want to say, a catechism if you will. There are other things to do but i appreciate the honor of talking to you directly. Cspan this book on antisemitism. What is this about . Guest in 1992, a lot of allegations on the general theme of antisemitism, was charged by pat buchanan, was charged with the review that was antisemitic as a result of a couple things that had been published. I thought it was a good idea to explore that so i did. As one of our college thought it was important to distinguish a position that is soft on communism. With foreign policy. Antisemitism, to make those decisions. A lot of conservatives were associated with antisemitism and antisemitism was pretty much a way of life. When i was a freshman at yale, they had to warn jewish faculty, paul white was the first, in an effort to get out of the a conservative position. That was engaged in but this book goes over that grounds host athens, georgia. Caller my name is out of hours and i live in athens, georgia. I wanted to call the program. When i was a young student at Northwestern University in the 1960s, i read your book up from liberalism and it remains today the most important book i ever read, just a fabulous thing to me and i bought the commemorative additions that came out to the American Spectator and my wife has taken your brother reads course twice, one of the times i accompanied her, close to athens, had the opportunity, a delightful, intelligent and delightful person. Big buckley fans. Cspan what is it you got from up from liberalism that stayed with you so long . Caller the way Mister Buckley explained it earlier. It took the tenets of liberalism, to the glare of factual realities, not raise ourselves up from this thing that has been proven over and over and continues to be proven over and over, the basic tenets of liberalism were wrong. Guest i will show you an ad in the National Review, the Buckley School of written expression, and featuring john buckley, how do you pronounce that. On style, with and humor presided over by reed buckley caller dont know how that happened. Guest by living in paris. John buckley lived in washington, and cspan Christopher Buckley told him that. Guest a smashing good thing. Go ahead. Caller my question is if this. It seems to me from watching television which i do every day that the major networks, abc, nbc, cnn especially have seem to be increasingly liberal in their slant on the news and sometimes in just ignoring stories like the recent story about the privacy act that are harmful to their side. My question is do you see this and if you do, what do you think about it . Guest i think it is one of the forces of nature, the Critical Community tends to get its life and inspiration from the temptation to criticize not so much the establishment now, but between 75 , and 80 of people engaged in Television Journalism had voted democrat in the last election. When i was at yale a professor disclosed tenured professors, do your truman, and then one doesnt do that, it is colorfully known. By and large the academic and television and radio, democrat versus republican. Cspan go ahead, santa barbara. Caller did what you think of Hannah Carrigan did you engage in a discussion with her . I never did. An important philosophical, her most conspicuous work from the eichmann file, the banality of evil and this distressed a lot of people who discuss the singularity of the holocaust. Explains this as one more expression of the hideous capacity. Never did run into her, she became a little bit eccentric, in mccarthy, which is, had been published. Cspan Oklahoma City next. Caller youve been a member of the montpelier society which was founded 53 years ago by frederick kayak and another freemarket intellectual and it seems to me there are two or three individuals who are critical in securing liberty and some of visit civilization we know of and one of them would be higher in my opinion that you have written some essays and i would like to know just how important you believe his contribution is too young people coming into the 21stcentury. Cspan what was the name of the society . Guest the montpelier society. Rounded up a few remarkables, they found 25 or 45, the founding the influential, as a journalist was actually serialized, pretty heady but the constitutional liberty, the philosophical case. The nobel prize and accomplishments, technical accomplishments that were taken in london in the 30s. He went to the university of chicago, and there they couldnt, wouldnt give him a tenured seat. It was sort of odd in the university of chicago. Cspan what you did he die . 1999 . Guest i remember giving a speech on his 70 fifth birthday. Cspan anybody else you would put in that category that had an impact . Guest henry had enormous impact. Dont think he was a phd, put economics in one lesson hailed by a lot of important time. On the free market idea. Cspan california your on with bill buckley. Caller does Mister Buckley have comments on corporate all who was on Television Many years ago . Guest and essay was published and that is are liable say. Cspan hastings, new york. Im a 23yearold College Student who spent a few years abroad and recently read your book god and man at yale, on a dusty shelf and i was wondering if you could give your impression of the destiny of the campus conservatives at Ivy League Institutions particularly at yale, it sounds like the liberal tear any on campuses these days has heightened to a fever pitch. Give me your impressions on that. Most universities have a vocal conservative dissent for instance at yale the yale free press, very lively, comes out everyones in a while, a weekly review, in every situation there tends to be an expensive voice, why should they be dissenters rather than be acknowledged as folks in the community. I was there in 1949, i didnt think there was a conservative soup line which simply fortifies the general impression that i had that the Critical Community tends to gravitate in the direction, others in other terms. Looking at page 111 and there is a letter to the yale daily news signed in 1949. Guest that is a physicist. Cspan i didnt have time to look the whole thing up, just saw it. Lets go to long island. Lets go to la mesa, laura is up next in california. You do a lot for the public good and proliferation of knowledge. Considering his practical and philosophical wisdom that our forefathers set up a republican form of government because they knew that man could be good and set high distress and selfinterest. I havent read it yet. I got it tomorrow. Regarding in the 60s a child of the baby boomers, into what is known as a democracy, just any sort of wisdom you have on that trend and how we can turn the boat back to the course we once were on . Guest from 20 years ago, whether we are properly a republic or a democracy. I tend to think that tends to surrender the subject to usage. People want to be clear about it, a republic understands, the public, by and large to the extent there is any agreement on the subject, republicanism unlike democracy acknowledges the limitations of government power and for that reason encourages government restraint. Cspan according to our producer doug johnson, 19 of your books are still in print, 21 are outofprint, theres one only available on audio. What is your sense, if a book is outofprint can they go through the dot. Coms or the bookstores . Guest asking for a copy, lovely ingenious always finds them. Dont think theres anything you cant find. Dirksen Senate Office building 0 where are the William F Buckley papers . You have reconciled them after all these years . Guest you dont have to reconcile with a repository. Music and allegiances to yale and have them in your pictures. Cspan which library . Long island for nobody . Caller your feelings on the relationship with stalin, not exactly to that, the fascist government, overthrow by them in the administration and after the war there was an attempt to reconcile with roosevelt and stalin and socialism and there was a thing that is not capitalism or fascism but capitalism and socialism and the original agreement to unify germany and build the German Economy up, 20 billion, they did most of the dying and most of the fighting, we only lost 300,000 and it was the United States that the conservatives and dixiecrat against the agreement and isolating russia and causing this insane cold war that lasted 35 years and we are responsible for the cold war, not the russians. Guest are we responsible for the Stalin Hitler pact . Caller in a way we are because the paranoia of the bolsheviks because of the alignment of the white army against the red army, the suppression of anyone with connections, what scruple did stalin have that about the human being that hitler didnt have . Caller stalin was a thug, no doubt about it, but the only culprit guest stalin dominated the policy of the soviet union to 1924 and his death in 1953 and his legacy continued many of those practices. A renunciation of stalin in 1966 that confirmed everything we always said about the soviet union, not everything but enough to justify the crazy cold war. That was our opportunity, khrushchev announcing stalin to soften the lie, the overflights that eisenhower had examining everything in the soviet union. An opportunity for eisenhower to apologize instead of apologizing, he didnt apologize, the cold war continued. Every chance, if you go back a little ways, the burns communique, a combination of the dixiecrat to voted against the communique. We were told the russians, agree to anything even if you agree to everything because we had the bomb and we could incinerate the russians and the japanese and didnt have to agree to anything. We could isolate them. Guest they were bringing 289 bombs into cuba. I find this a fantasy. One of my connections what do you want to say about it . Cspan anything you remember of note . Do you find that you do forget . Guest she is my sister. This is from lewistown, montana. Guest caller Mister Buckley, a pleasure. I am somewhat of a high acten and im on my second reading of the road to serfdom. He was affected somewhat by his Close Association with people involved with austrian economic theory and i am wondering how the austrian theory such as that, a relationship to what you publish. Guest it is not a running that called a lot of attention. It tends to be a factual list. The rough understanding is the austrian school, by contrast with the british Chicago School which takes data, reasoning on the business that actually happens. The influence is enormous, but as a General Social thinker, it sees them uses. It is not a kindness. You have to get away with saying that but what he was saying primarily was he was a man who leads from archetypes and they are useful but not all that useful as far as planning what to do. Cspan how many languages have you learned . Guest a little bit, that is all. Cspan winter you speech teach spanish . Cspan guest is a sophomore for four years, they were fond of that at yale. In mexico before the war, to get up a little bit. Cspan you have some of these asides, the letters, you poses one of the most unacceptable and unpleasant faces of capitalism i have ever seen. Michael from york, england and you write back have you ever seen the face of Ulysses S Grant . To my dearest Mister Buckley, where would you be today if you were puerto rican, Colleen Baldwin of texas. Do you remember . The answer is probably i would be minister of propaganda in the administration of governor Carlos Barcelo at yale. Guest amusing journalistically. Nobody knows who this fellow is. Cspan the book was published in 1975, this note, bill buckley deserves his reputation as one of the wittiest political satirists writing today by a man who still and then was, Stephen Wiseman. Is it the same the same Stephen Wiseman . Lets go to florence, alabama. Caller it is fortuitous i have the privilege of speaking with both of you at the same time because you fellows are both my heroes and done so much for the edification of america and the american dialogue. My question is about Whittaker Chambers and alger his. When did you first believed mister chamberss allegations against mister his . Why did you believe him . Did you ever meet alger his . If i could ask about the earlier collars question about jesus loves me quote, it has been attributed to the late professor karl marx if i am not mistaken. Thank you very much. Guest i never met outer hiss, the moon with the charge was made and i thought there was authenticity in his language, in part because i thought there was a horrible possibility in what he said by which he knew there were fires that did not make it worse until later and it was inconceivable that Whittaker Chambers could charge that unless it were grounded in reality. Cspan bakersfield, how are you . Caller i enjoy your show very much two quick questions. I am studying 64 president ial race, wrote an essay, not being a conservative or true conservative. Where what i find that . What is your opinion of him and the opinion of clinton in history as a president . Guest could have done that. I would never say he was not a conservative. I knew him very well. What is correct about goldwater is the last eight or ten years of his life he adjusted his position in such a way as to say if the Supreme Court says so i will go along and this is a different position than that adopted in his famous book on conservatism and it has been said and was affected by his wife and he remarried. I sat next to him, giving the annual goldwater award. Cspan first or second . Guest the second and turned to me and said who are your heroes . I said your husband and ronald reagan. Add lie stevenson and i thought a case could be made for that, senator goldwater, what i am simply saying is what one hears about goldwater has to do with positions that were traceable to his belief to decide questions about abortion and so on. Caller this is james from las vegas, good morning. The questions, first of all is it true that sam tannen house is going to be your biographer . Guest yes it is. Caller i enjoyed his book on Whittaker Chambers. Also one of the hosts. On gratitude. The plans you outlined, part of the National Service plan, you contrast that to what Mister Clinton had with the americorps program, the liberal ideology, paying students 18, 20, 000 a year to quote volunteer caller guest you put your finger on it. The expression of i ou this. It is a marketplace transaction of what keeps edging up what they are willing to pay. I dont think it has caught the american imagination as much as reciprocity by advising a young woman or man. Cspan when is santana houses book coming out . Guest i dont know. Cspan how are you related to him during this period . Guest a little bit. I dont think he had started writing it but keep a long time on the Whittaker Chambers book. He took 6 or 7 years. Cspan how much of your papers are available to him . Guest at yale, he has access, subject to my right to prohibit, i give a lot of people access to the paper but there is always the proviso that i must be shown what is published. There is enormous life on james burnham, 20 or 30 communications between him and me none of which i ended up detailing, but if it was an entirely personal one of historical interest i would feel a commitment to privacy would outweigh that. Cspan cleveland, you are next. Caller i will tell you firing line had not been on any station for 15 years. Guest something i got there. Caller it was outrageous but wont go into that and also my comment, i would like to say that your colleague william rusher is the man who made my brain sink at work. He had that program, i have never seen a better debater. He changed my mind on so many issues. Guest he was a terrific program. Caller hes a terrific man. I adore him. I noticed when you talk about mcgovern, he didnt call him a communist. And being a communist means you never have to say you are sorry. We dont have the stores going around with communists, they dont lie in their beds, they never go around saying how sorry they were because they are never sorry. That is one reason and the same is true of democrats in this country who have destroyed the education system, destroying the neighborhood school, having this union of teachers who care only about union issues, not only but this is what they do. The idea of a striking teacher to be growing up was just, no one would have even thought of it. You never have to say you are sorry for all the things you do that are so destructive and horrible and yet if you are conservative you are always supposed to be apologizing for things. I noticed when you were talking about pat buchanan, you say he had tendencies toward fascism. Guest i didnt say that. I said i examined what he had said and some of the things he said were antisemitic. Some of them were. I dont happen to think he is, pretty much intrigued by the imperative but to see who is fascist. I apologize for that. Caller you have the entire europe edging toward communism and czechoslovakia and other states and poland and whatnot they are having communist and at least socialist in every single state. This man isnt even arresting anything. His party has some power so now this man has to resign from the party, the European Unions that we are going to boycott. Guest you ask the government. Caller i am sorry to say, reside as head of the party i think it was but whatever it is the entire european even this criminal we have in the white house was making statements about we wont have much to do with austria. This is absolutely outrageous. These are the people who talk about democracy democracy which happens to be the real religion of america because it is something you have to believe in. It doesnt exist. You take it on faith. These are people on wall street who wrote 30 . Guest in the first place, we are currently in the twentieth century, very bad people making good points democratically, didnt have an absolute majority but if you add communism they will, their own. I dont think theres an obligation to say they have that authority and we have the enthusiasm, in the case of austria, it is almost embarrassing, the way we try to frighten ourselves but at the same time austria is where we are looking at it from. The hypersensitivity on that general subject may be as understandable. Cspan you mentioned bill rusher. Guest a former publisher of National Review, syndicated columnist. In San Francisco. Cspan how is he how old is he . Guest he is 77. Cspan your on with bill buckley. Caller it looks like you enjoy one another, two good peas in a pod and what i was going to ask Mister Buckley seeing he is such a vivid writer, what constitutes treason . When you look at that jewish couple word what were their names . Rosenberg . Gave the secret of the abomb to russia, and they were properly executed and now we see the white house, and who knows how many secrets a Missile Technology they gave away and they walk this earth free. I was hoping one morning you would be prompted and inspired to write what constitutes treason. Guest treason is formerly formally defined in the constitution, giving aid to the enemy. The law under which the rosenbergs were executed did not have the word treason in it but was a law that levied a capital offense to anybody who expedited Nuclear Atomic information to anybody without a party. Treason is most often used, really treasonable, real ideas in the bag, loosely worded and it has been edgy for the views of treason, of misleading youth and theres a whole literature that focuses on how the loose of that term is given that socrates was given a capital sentence of treason. Treasonable activity was simply telling the youth the correct things. On the other hand it is true that he violated protocols that were rather gravely in athens. Anyway to answer your question, treason is defined in the constitution. Cspan you always have a red pen in your hand. Guest i have two or three idiosyncrasies and one of them is i write all the in red ink. Actually there is a reason for that. If you have a lot of people editing newspaper magazine as was the case with National Review you dont want to worry about whos marking you are looking at so i always used red, another used green and my other idiosyncrasy is i dont have Peanut Butter for breakfast. Cspan what time do you want your Peanut Butter . Guest when i have breakfast . Cspan what time . Guest 628. We 16 what form the week your Peanut Butter . Guest it must come with toast. It could be an english muffin or corn muffin. There should be a little honey and it. Cspan every day, how long have you done this . Guest four years. Cspan what started it . Guest natural attraction to it. Cspan a call from don rumsfeld. Guest he was the head of the board of trustees at teske. We are coming up on our one hundredth anniversary. I want to write about teske key. I like the fact that Peanut Butter was invented by George Washington carver. I wrote a column, i never wrote poetry in my entire life but if i did the first cup would be i doubt i shall ever see a poem lovely as skippys Peanut Butter. I went on to do that, from charlton heston, it is not skippy comes it is plantars, that is the best. You can go out and say that. You have to find it because say theres a store outside, lambs delicatessen. You might have read wayne and butter but it would be called lambs Peanut Butter. Host you have it shipped to switzerland when youre there . Guest i bring it. Caller first i would like to thank you for your many contributions to the intellectual and literary life of this country. Secondly, i would like to know what thoughts you may have on the many novels and writings of ayn rand and what you think or legacy may be in general and maybe in particular to philosophy . Guest i have an ayn rand problem because it goes back a long way. When Atlas Shrugged was published, Whittaker Chambers reviewed it in National Review and he gave it absolutely scathing review. And as a result of that ayn rand never consented to be in the same room with me. In fact, she reestablished i hadnt anybody, some Rightwing Party which is also invited. But the division ayn rand of course was the materialist and her ambition was to understand the World Without any possibility of transcendence. The notion of altruism, she thought that was a dirty word, and that she tells a very good story, much that she is admirable. But when she began diffusing herself with god, she became unconvincing. I very much regret her influence. Host mesa, arizona,. Guest let me tell you something that i said before. When that review was published a lot of people who were prorand wrote in. One letter said as a result of that terrible, hysterical, inexcusable review of ayn rand, i want you to cancel my subscription, never approach me again. Alan greenspan was an ayn rand also exercised people were back in 1957. Host mesa, arizona, go ahead please. Caller good afternoon, mr. I have read your books airborne in 1976 and racing through paradise. I am a sailor and i really enjoyed your books and its an honor to speak to you. Guest im delighted. Host skip to the light fantastic. I thought this is tongueincheek type of thing dash and since we gave panama canal [laughing] what about digging our own here through arizona to the baja straight . The concept will be a real estate boom that you would be long remembered and we would call it the Buckley Canal. Please give that some thought. Lets hear your word on that. Host tell us about these books airborne and five of them that guest four of them. Do you want me to start with that . Host just want to make sure people know what these books are all about. Guest i decided to cross the atlantic in my own sailboat in 1975, and and i had a wondel time, its a terrific experience, 30 days, six of us, plus a crew that would feed us. But we did all the ceiling. I sailed across then eddie get atlantic high, then i sailed across the pacific in racing through paradise and then i sailed westward from lisbon to barbados, 1990. I wrote books in each case. The question was about the canal. When the panama canal debate took place and i was in favor of confirming the treaty, i was convinced to take a trip to panama, that the weight of safeguards written into the treaty to authorize us to turn the situation around if he became threatening. But then sort of is our ideas were floated about where else where this Buckley Canal is supposed to go i have to be reminded. Arizona, right . Host i think so. Guest i dont remember if that was an alternative talk at the time but the depends on the canal diminishes. These of air travel and general globalization but but i dont e any threat. The fact that the chinese outfit, figures in that traffic. If you wanted to close the canal you could is overnight and we would have a right to do so if it threatened the integrity of the commerce. Host carlisle pennsylvania, and a wonderful opportunity to speak with both of you. Change the track here completely. I have thoroughly enjoyed the Blackford Oakes books that youve written, mr. Buckley. Any comment on them and how they came about . Drama let me ask you first about these books. Heres the Blackford Oakes reader. How many of them have you read . Comic i have read four i i have read the last one unfortunately. Whos on first and tuckers less stand. Host what have you liked . Caller had been in a similar business and find them very realistic and just super anyone help mr. Buckley got to writing these books . Thank you so much. Guest thank you. There are by the way ten of them in case you host we have all ten of them here and they are available, who publishes them now . Guest canterbury. Host when did you start writing these . Guest i wrote first in 1970. What happened was that my editor and two associates didnt want to have lunch to me. We had lunch and one of them said, have you ever a novel you to be yes, just finished reading the day of the jag corps. My editor said why dont you write a spy novel . So i said with my resourceful but why would you play trombone concerto . We lambs. The next day there is a contract for a novel published by doubleday. I had we struck a deal. They would pay a third of the advance and get 100 pages. Then they could say no, enough is enough and we terminate. Or they could say go ahead. And pay me a contract with the other twothirds of the advance. Anyway, it worked. It was on the bestseller list prepublication. But Blackford Oakes the protagonist goes from episode to episode, important dates of the cold war and the last one he makes a final appearance, just before the berlin wall comes down. So hes retired. Host are you through with these novels on Blackford Oakes . Guest yes, i am. Host el paso, texas. Go ahead, good afternoon, mr. Lamb, mr. Buckley. Mr. Buckley, i just want to call and tell you i am a 50yearold woman, not so much older then your son, and back when i was a liberal it was a good thing you are so charming and use the language so beautifully because i listen to you for that reason. And fortunately stuck around long enough to notice that what you were saying was also very fanciful. I am now as my children are grown going back to college to get a firsttime degree, and expect and also do a lot of volunteer work in my community, and i expect to be at the working and contributing something. And im interested to know what you think the political and social implications are of people in my age group as we get older and perhaps some of us have moved up from liberalism into conservatism. What do you see . Guest did you say implications or digital obligations . Host shes not on the line ideologue so well have to guess. Guest the obligations, always to try to understand what the contentions are and try to ask the primary question, is this necessary something that is done better by the government or might it be done by the private sector. If indeed it is done by the government is a best done by the federal government or by a small unit . I was in minneapolis a couple days ago and discussed a federal program on doing something about literacy in minneapolis. I asked, what on earth has washington d. C. Can tell people in minneapolis that they can figure out themselves for these kids to read . This is an obligation to that question, when social issues arise. Host how many speeches a year do you give . Guest about 2025. Host do you write them out . Guest sometimes. Sometimes not. Host what size and audience is best for you . Guest i like a smaller audience, 800, around there. Sort of chapel size. Its much easier to handle i think. Host do you prefer College Campus or another kind of guest College Campus. Host why . Guest it is livelier and by and large if you have 800 people in a college audience they quite are discriminatory. If they have come to hear you, they want to hear for whatever reason. By contrast, a lot of of the situation its a convention or whatever, you have to go because they have subscribed to the series. Other audiences can be terrific, but to answer your question i think you have more energy in a collegeage audience drama maryland, your next. Caller is a pleasure to talk with you. Actually i was channel surfing and saw this and i got really interested in it. My views are conservative and what i like to ask you beside your books like up from liberalism will be some of the books i could read to the idea and learn more about how to put this like debates for such to be able to do this . Also indie books by liberals which i could understand their views and see the fallacy of it . Guest the best thing to read is read National Review. National devotes itself to the whole set of the public scene, philosophically and politically, economically, constitutionally. And it publishes articles that are relevant and also from time to time acknowledges the important books. Give them your initial interest, thats the way i would go, read that magazine and take hints from it. Host what about of the books besides god and man at you, up from liberalism, what books of yours will he find the most useful . Guest oh, g, mr. Lamb, how can they do that . Host which ones are philosophy, the ones guest in all the collections but a heavy dosage of philosophy. In the unmaking of a mayor theres an enormous infusion of the philosophy by which you are governed in making this or the other decision. Thats true of latitude and host what about cruising speed . Guest cruising speed is a book about all week in my life, what actually did i do, what lectures that i give, what television shows, what letters that i answer here ive done two of those books. And it is dedicated to gertrude. Guest shes living in San Francisco come in california. Host that would be a book primarily of interest to people with a biographical interest in the subject. It was run in the new yorker as was the other one. Host 1971. California, good morning. Caller good morning. Its an honor. Would you please if you would comment on the writings of maliki martin, and in particular his novel windswept house. I understood in an interview i heard with him that he stated that that novel was 70 factual. Thank you. Guest might encounter with Malachi Martin was interrupted. He served briefly as a at the National Review. Very literate. He was an expriest, exjesuit. But i thought he went a little over the deep end and i havent read the last dozen of his books which tended to involve vatican plots and whether windswept was those or not i dont know but it think of him as a certain point of being an entirely reliable critic. Host about 53 minutes left with bill buckley, our signature series programmer started about four months ago and this is the first sunday of every month from noon to three east coast time, go to austin no lets you were are. We are going to austin, texas. Im sorry. Caller how are you . Ive enjoyed this book programs so much. Mr. Buckley, i know you own and your writing from Blackford Oakes and ive enjoyed them tremendously. I have seen you on firing line and i love that. I guess the dichotomy is ive only read the nonfiction and i loved it. Im not sure i could sit down and read the fiction, and i havent read the nonfiction. Guest you should try it, i should but i did love firing line. I guess i wanted to ask you on this business of you speaking about mccarthy. I was born in 43 so i didnt have a good picture of him except from the snippets of the films they show of the congressional hearings. I think im going to read that because the people who criticize you on writing that book are the same ones that defended alger hiss. To this day defend him as a wonderful fellow that was misunderstood. And yet they wont get even guest wait a minute. Thats not completely true. The overwhelming majority of the American People dont defend alger hiss anymore nor even the intellectuals. Its not quite right to say they are the same people but i interrupted you come sorry. Caller thats all right. Thats the impression you get when you say, when you hear people say buckley is writing this book about does no good, and we have heard them say you misunderstood alger hiss i think that book by tannenbaum was wonderful where they explained it to people who only get historical snippets here and there. And i like, i would like to hear finally when history is somewhat resolved and we get a better picture of it, im just not too adept at all this Political Correctness. Guest thats good. I hope you never are. Drama the book overdrive . Guest that was about a week in my life ten years later in 1980. Host where is that picture from . Guest is that on my vote maybe . Host may be in a limousine. I dont know. I cant tell. Guest limousine. Host a dog in there. Do you recognize any of those people traffic sure. I am there, my dog is there, my driver is there. My late my goodness, anyway, it was a scene of my movements traveling from across the country to a place in new york. With all the political baggage that ends up having to account ones writings in harlem and ugly the editors host champaign, illinois, thank you so much for sharing today. You have written is so beautifully in some of your major sailing experiences. My question is have your acquired lessons in seamanship impacted you particularly as concerned risktaking enterprise and even conservatism . Guest its a good question, and as one grows older, one reflects on certain things one has done in the past. Which one would not do again including a couple of adventures at sea. The extent to which seagoing experience comes in handy and other aspects of life is not an interesting. Its probably true that experience at sea is extremely useful in the flip side of life. If you are out there and got nowhere to go and get to stay up all night, you have to do it. You can live many years without facing that extremely. To the extent is it useful experience, the answer is yes, it is. Host how long was your yacht . Guest 60 feet. Host how many people on board when you sailed . Guest ten. Host what was the longest time you were out at sea . Guest longest stretch we ever did was from bermuda to barbados which is 1950 miles, 14 days. Host did you ever think you were not going make it . Guest no. Host never came close . Guest not on that particular trip but taking my counter to bermuda went one tiu ran into a hurricane and that was a hairy experience. If we had been dismastodon dis been a rough situation. Host how are you in those moments . Guest will come very interesting question because a lot of it has to do with fatigue. We survived the first hurricane and there were six of us onboard and all of a sudden we felt were going to hit bermuda at another storm came around your nobody would eat. Nobody would eat and thats the sign of demoralization. Wouldnt wash the dishes. And so if you served, we had hardtack import you have to know youre going in that direction if everybody is demoralized simultaneously, then any possibility of ingenuity has to dissipate. Host los angeles a go ahead you are on the air. Caller i am a fan of a long time. I am very interested in the 4000 books youve already written but in thinking of the future and one that you might write about the free speech that is being taken away. We cant say this, we cant say that. Im a reader of history and they were pretty loud and boisterous just a few years ago, and now we dont have that anymore. Thats all you want to say. Guest there are a lot of complaints of Political Correctness is a stamping out at certain impulses, often juvenile impulses. Impulses nevertheless, making it kind of risky taken unorthodox position, i think it is kenyan that has a very strict code of things you mustnt offend women by doing this or homosexuals by doing that, whatever. Whether they really amounts to a series of richmond of freedom of expression, i would hesitate. Host new york city you are on with bill buckley. Caller my name is im calling from new york city and im interested in whether you have read john cornyn walls the pope and what you think of his major thesis that the church is going more monarchical and also on pius the 12th position during the Second World War . Guest i think that there is a commercial power especially in doctrinal questions but this business of what is the 12th mightve done that he didnt do is a vexing question. I happen to have read it over the weekend a long paper which the author of it is a monsignor in stamford and he took only references to the pope in the New York Times period between 19391948. It was extraordinary accumulation of tributes to what the pope did in the situation of that situation to try to tilt the situation that way. Now, whether he should of done a whole lot more is very hard to say. Host chattanooga. Caller mr. Buckley, in the late 70s, early 80s you responded in the wall street journal with a brief letter about a a reporter who had attacked your family business. And you stated, you said attorneys were handling things so you couldnt comment, but your last sentence was, in case your interest in the news over here, you described that a woman had been raped by a monkey twice and you said i knew just how she feels. Amazing. What im curious about is perhaps you have cut people down to proper size similarly in some of your books. I would love to hear accounts of that. Guest well, i dont memorize those answers. If you have a huge, huge article to contend with and not much space to do it in, plus legal restraints, you just have to manage it as best you can. Ive engaged in so many exchanges. Let me say, in the 34 years, there was one exception, nobody else ever, ever complained about he or she had been treated. Not one complete. Thats not bad for 34 years. Im sure you havent had any but some people do. This one particular professor we did complain who is an antimarijuana drunk he and he was mad i didnt shut up the other guy who was taking a permissive position on marijuana. So in these exchanges for which you have singled out one, i dont think i have earned a reputation of being short or conclusory in an unfair way. Host where is this photograph . Guest on my desk in my office at National Review. Host where is that located . Wheres the Office Located in new york . Guest that was on 35th st. Its now one on 33rd street. Host right below come when was this done and what is it . Guest another of my collections. I think in the 70s. Host its in memorial to julie, 19 safety five72. Who is that . Guest sevenyearold daughter of a dear friend who died of cancer. Host this was 1969. Studio city, california, you are next. Caller i wanted to ask about your writing on mccarthyism by first wanted to say to you totally kick back of your the best. But you are just awesome. You rule, man. I wanted to make a note because you successfully defended the anticommunist activities this country had to do to survive. I thought it was interesting last week we had the Academy Awards and last year there was all of this liberal uproar over giving an award to india kazan because he has of the courage an american immigrant to oppose communism and then this year, the same Academy Committee gave an honorary oscar to the polish director andre vita or opposing the same communism but not having the luxury of doing it in manhattan. Or in america. Why is it that one year all the liberals got so upset that ilya gets an award by the categories and the oppose communism . But the nobody this year said a peep about an actual victim of communism in poland was given to the award by no less than jane fonda . Guest if memory serves, the people who were mad were mad at him for testifying to a Congressional Committee, am i correct . So this is what theyre mad at him for, whereas the subject would not have come up in the polish anticommunist you are talking about. Im glad although there was that fleury against kazan and some people stayed in their seats finally, they gave him an ovation when they were given the award. Host in 41 books which one or two or three have sold the most . Guest i i think the saving because sold the most. Its hard to keep track of sales in softcover. Four or five of those were selections of the book club. Its hard to count those. Just by the feel of it. Host could you have made a of the only Office Writing books . Guest oh, yeah. Heavens against. Host could you have lived the same lifestyle only after writing books . Guest you mean if i didnt have other worries. Host National Review, didnt didnt have your column. Hasnt been lucrative . Guest not really, no. Not that lucrative, no. Host cranston you are next, first of all what to say how indebted someone like i am to you and National Review. I got my conservatism from your early writings and National Review. You would like to give you with all the links in those days the yucatan income you look at other writings and other publications and we had a great deal of formulating my opinions. I have two quick questions. The first has to do with, have any of your opinions changed over the course of your writing . Ackerley, do you think with all the new Internet Services that publication and dissemination of ideas will change . Guest the latter question, i think that the omnipresence of data, of news have to have some affect. The speed of communication, the number of messages that will be given. One would like to think the internet will turn people on what sort of stopped writing letters if they ever did so because its so easy and so tempting. On the first question you raised, when i ran for mayor i was in favor of continuing to outlaw drugs. I changed that position not because i have enthusiasm for drugs but because i concluded that the war against them was simply not working and that the casualties of that war overcame the casualties of the drugs themselves. So thats the one major point i which in the last few years host this book is called four reforms, welfare welfare, tax and other things but program for the 70s. Why did you write this . Guest i felt the need in 1971 it was the face for questions that were being widely discussed and tried to find something useful about them. Our education and crime, and what we got drama crime, education, welfare and taxation. Guest and taxation. Theres nothing in there that embarrasses me at this point, i would say. It was reviewed prominently by pat moynihan in the New York Times, and he ended up agreeing with about half of it which is not bad, jackson hole, wyoming, go ahead please. Caller good afternoon. A quick question for mr. Buckley. First, in light of his response just a moment ago regarding his philosophical change on drugs, his views about drugs, i want to know what he thinks of the Libertarian Movement in this country . And secondly has he read a book called the perfect storm . Thank you tragic yes, i have read the book, its a wonderful book and terrifying what the author, his capacity in giving life is really memorable. The first question was what again . Host hes not on. I wish you strength member what his first question was. Cleveland, go ahead, in your genius wisdom could you elaborate more on divine intervention and have you ever thought about writing any books on that . Guest ive written a book called nearer, my god in which the subject is raised. I think it was expertly put by newman, one cannot deny miracles that have no reason to expect one. So that if you take your ailing self to lords which i will be doing at the end of this month, you mustnt expect you to come back with all your sinuses working. But it is wrong to suppose that it cant happen. So i think divine intervention is an absolute of a godhead, i. E. , i will not admit myself to deny that god wants to do what he wants do but i but i must nr expect that he will do so. Not even for a Football Team at the house or whatever it is, deemed disputed before the Supreme Court. Host why are you going to lords . Guest ive been there once before and its simply a devotional exercise. Its a two or three days in which you are very vigorously exposed to people, where people pray and all these cripples come from all over the world statistics, thereve only been like 92 certified miracles, by certified pain to actually withstand the toughest intellectual, scientific scrutiny and affirmed as miracles. But its the atmosphere, just memorable. Nobody in my experience leaves with that feeling, and thats justifies that long trip. Host how long will you stay there . Guest three days. Host ido, its a pleasure. Tragedy and hope is a book written by carol quickly. Have you read it . Guest no, i havent. Caller have you heard of the author . Guest i have indeed. Host the georgetown professor. Caller thats correct, who taught bill clinton. Caller i find it interesting because some of the information historically points to more conservative issues in my opinion than liberal issues. That was just my question if you care to expand anything about care quickly, i just picked up the book and a rented. Guest im sorry i cant. I dont have enough of a feel for her. Host an email from alfred professor of Political Science Department Government university of florida at pensacola, west florida pensacola. Please comment on the Election Member of john lucas, confessions of an original sin or a particular place, his criticism of conservatives that they abandon their critical faculties during the reagan years. His distantly from a National Review and self identification as a reactionary. In short, and flight is about the philosophical differences between you . Guest i have not read his comment that particular book but im aware of the criticism. In fact, i responded to it in a brief piece in the national interest. John lucas tends to have a reflexive opposition to what he considers to be a formalistic anticommunist conventions. And hes a a very original guyd hes always dissatisfied with any formulation that pieces three of the people, got to be completely individual to satisfy him. Host fort collins come your next comic i know you are friends with Alan Loewenstein and what if joint visit about a new and even though you are not politically again, how he became a confidant . Guest i knew him when he was at law school at you and i was teaching spanish, and he was very active in the federalist movement. I didnt get to experience until 1968 when in the Chicago Convention he, in my judgment, behave with considerable maturity. He was running for congress and the fact he was elected. He was so a peeling, so bright, such a good. In such a marvelous sense of humor that ended up urging his election i was asked how could i engage in such an active to which my answer was selfindulgence. Host when he was assassinated by a friend or guest i was one of the villages, one of several people who expressed i i have seen them recently in switzerland because he was the ambassador to Human Rights Committee in geneva towards the end and then he had this terrible, terrible creature who, he was deranged and had a sense that alan was giving him instructions via a gold thing, that he had to go and have him out. Ive been to a lot of funerals but very solemn, i can remember in which grief was so palpable as at his funeral. People just truly, truly loved alan tran 1980 . Guest yes, moving it to the last halfhour with our guest bill buckley on this indepth program. Are you going to make it . Guest you tell me. Host fort myers, florida, go ahead please. Caller thank thank you very much. This is quite an honor, cspan is incomparable and mr. Buckley again its been said over and over but you are one of my heroes also, not to be dealt into hero worship but in any case if i could mention back to the gentleman who was talking about how we thought maybe you very definitely insult people, i would certainly say i think most people probably havent written back to you about these insults on because they dont quite recognize them because of your eloquence when they are given. I would just remind one instance i can recollect, was with a debate i think you had with what was the actor macleod, i forget his name. He played dennis weaver. That was one of those beautiful, eloquent responses. I forget what it was about. I cant remember what the discussion was. My question is though, everybody seems to use these terms when we talk may be its even when you use the term conservative. Its almost as if a verb rather than an adjective it seems to me a conservator has been put in some kind of the context, a conservative commenters or a conservative socialist would be sorely at the other end of the spectrum from a conservative constitutionalist american constitutionalist. It seems like the conservatives almost is given a definition all and in and of itself completely devoid for many context. Could you answer that maybe . Guest its a wonderful question. What i remember most keenly about the confusion is a little line in the New York Times about 35 years ago, they used the word conservative communist, meaning the most conservative. And then says conservative communists have become so preponderant that orders have come out for bidding the conservative by goldwater. Their ruddy marvelous collision of those two words, the fondness against the importation of a conservative by goldwater. The conservatives come the word conservatism is used properly as an adjective even though its distracting. You can say the conservative socialist in that particular conclave came out them out against the proposal of mr. Harrison. And the words used in the same way that a moderate is used. Moderate republican, a moderate democrat, meaning more towards the center. But to define the word itself Richard Weaver was a professor of english at chicago, very shy guy, and in one similar he was pressed to define conservatism. He kept saying he cant do it. I said, well, conservatism is a paradigm of justices is towards which the phenomenology of the word will continue to approximation. Do you like that . Host washington, go ahead, hello. Well, good morning, gentlemen. Brian lamb, thank you. William f. Buckley, good morning. Mr. Buckley, ive had an expression down now over five decades now about my favorite ghosts including abraham lincoln, winston churchill. Eleanor roosevelt, inspiring line. Still among us thank god we had you. Now, this is my concern. I was able to read before i was preschool, reading when i was five years old. Would you consider my advanced ability to read hereditary eye naturally intelligent father who encouraged me to read . And living out the physical detriments, children have been, please comment on the present state of affairs in the United States of america on rampant illiteracy and how did my students get to grade five, six, high school, with the inability to read . Host when did you start reading . Guest well, we published an important piece in National Review in 1955 by isabel paterson. She was a book editor for the heraldtribune and had an important reputation as a libertarian philosopher. She was firm and all of her opinions but especially from on the matter of reading. She said youve got to learn how to read when you are four years old. If you wait until late five, you lose the possibility of cultivating your memory. I dont know whether this is true it but she said it so impressively its always stayed in my mind. I happen to have a terrible memory, and i wonder was i i 6 before i could read . I dont know. But i think its probably true that its been very early as this lady did, used certain powers would bite otherwise be fleeting. It is disastrous what a terrible time we are doing in reading literacy. Host this book came out in 1986 called the lexicon. Wonderful wood for the inquisitive word lover. Norwell massachusetts go ahead. [inaudible] its a pleasure to talk to you. Ive heard you describe yourself as a georges follow henry george but havent heard much in having to promote land value taxation in his theories and am wondering why that is the case . Guest its mostly because i am beatendown by my right wing there is an intellectual friends. They always find something wrong with a single tax idea. But i talk about ms. Landers. Henry george said look, theres infinite capacity to increase capital and to increase labor. But none to increase land. And since wealth is a a functin of how they play against each other, land should be thought of as common property. The effect of this would be that if you have a parking lot and the Empire State Building next to it, attacks on the portal should be the same as the tax on the Empire State Building because you shouldnt encourage land speculation. Anyway, i find a ton of such worship i think the single tax theory would be applicable which henry george was sort of want to buy the socialist in the 20s and 30s but he was not one at all. Plus also he believes in only that fact, there should be zero tax. Host i was going to ask you about this in the book. Im going to see if you can remember how to pronounce the word having Peanut Butter stuck to the work of your method this book starts off an associate is jesse. At the beginning he said the first top and it william f. Buckley were both members of a televised panel discussing words. Moderator introduced me with a pop quiz to test my credentials, as the define the word isil spike as the right to employ others problems when you dont damage of the mr. Buckley quoted an entire paragraph from the political economist henry george. This little book has did you write all these definitions out in this book . Guest no. Those were taken from a text. Thats the whole idea of that book them right out of your book . Guest to take words that have been used and supply the context in which it was used United States whats the word for fear of having Peanut Butter stuck to the roof of your mouth . Guest erica skinny phobia. Somebody told me that exists at a never looked im sure its not in any dictionary we had, but you had to learn it. Guest i dont have that. Caller yes, its a pleasure to talk to you. Ive been a tremendous fan for all these years and read a lot of your fiction and nonfiction and unkind recall, it seems an overdrive or one of the books about your weeks. You made mention of the fact that you are, you have considered the issue of the 17th earl of oxford as the author of the word distributed in shakespeare. I recall said the late on one of your shows. What is your definitive position on 17th earl of oxford . Guest i dont have a definitive position. I was very much influenced by joe soper who also wrote book on it. On the other hand, how to get around the eternal fact that he died, arthur died in 07, oh six, and king lear and i think romeo and another. Two, three, four years later and shakespeare died in 1616 now, they have elaborate explanation. He wrote these but they only be eased out after they had been sort of a lull in the appearance of his however, the etymological case is very striking by which i mean that oxford did write like shakespeare. Im interrupting you, no. I have so many books around and so many cameras that william f. Buckley, this is execution eve from about 1972 and is dedicated to sophie wilkins. Guest shes a great famous translator. She lives in the columbia area. The book is once again another collection and in this collection i stick in articles i wrote that i think have perennial interest. And some columns and some of those from the magazine that you pulled out a few moments ago. Host denver you are next, im interested on a couple of contemporary female writers. Notably Florence King who writes in National Review and also i would like his, on the writings of thank you. Guest they are both brilliant writers. Florence king of course right for every issue of National Review and she classifies herself as a terribly selfsatisfied misogynist. She said i never could understand why people consider solitary confinement as a punishment. And again an extremely iconic classism is devastating. She sometimes takes a position or at least thats my feel of it because so shocking. Involving sex, involving everything which i think Florence King is kind of an obsolete come should hate this word, lovable convincing. Host when your editor was on the program would i asked if you ask Florence King to come on and do one of these programs. It you ever who were saying that . He did ask her and she sent a letter absolute and utter no, sir contents of whatever consider your program. Does that fit . Guest absolutely. Actually fits on what i will ask you to reiterate we would like to have on the program something i know she lives down here in fredericksburg but maybe guest im not sure i would. Im not sure i would because my fascination and my devotion to her almost requires that remoteness and what do you know her . Guest no. But we exchanged emails. Host have you ever seen a picture . Guest always assign of love. Then we rate the rest of mankind. Host have you ever seen a picture of her . Guest yes, on the books. Host concord california you are next on the first of all its a pleasure to speak with you. I know thats a bit redundant but i have amended my question somewhat after three hours here. Three individuals, you would prefer to have dinner with. And secondly, i am being made on april 28 out at berkeley, california, and thats a coincidence, but nonetheless i would love for you to write a toast if you could possibly send it to me and i could leave my address at the three people you would prefer to have dinner with ankle to get a toast for my wedding . Thank you very much for its been a pleasure, i will put trundled just in case he wants to write a toast to look at your address. Guest if you send me the address i be glad to write a toast for you. Its at 215 lexington avenue new york 10016 tremont its on the screen. Guest of course if you have internet it will give you the zip code for any address. Did you know that . Host have three people at the dinner table . Guest i would settle for my wife, my son and one of my sisters. Get an education that was less prone to postmodernism and revisionism and some of the things that liberal education suffered from recently . Guest early on somebody asked about National Reviews guide 200good colleges. That would be something worth consuming in your situation but heres something to remember. In any college , any university, theres always going to be more learned than any individual can possibly learn so that the challenge becomes to select in that college either something thats congruent with the federal tradition or individual people. When Peter Abelard was teaching and science, people would go, theyd decide to go where he was teaching. And bigname professors are that ambulatory but they do help build a reputation and its one launched since classical economics at university of chicago, they have an illustrious Science Community but i repeat, wherever you go there will be much more scholarship and you can possibly imbibe so the challenge becomes therefore for the student to seek it out and therefore cultivate the processes of discrimination. Email from robert perez senior of california,if you have the opportunity to address a young audience in say the year 2050 , what would you say about current president ial administrations and what would you want them to remember about the last 7 and a half years. I want them to forgetabout the last 7 and a half years. You cant, at least i cant decide what at any given moment that far away would be needed to say. I believe that there are certain imperishable things. God is not mocked and that the church exists, to what extent that will be a news worthy statement in that year i dont know. Host minneapolis minnesota, go ahead please. Caller hello Mister Buckley, i finished your book up from liberalism for the first time and after reading that i also read the pieces working liberalism and i notice liberalism hasshifted. The term, that is. We now talk about a 19th century liberalism which is the inverse of todays meaning of the word liberalism. In the book you discussed the fact that you dont know exactly where modern liberalism draws its heritage but its clear that they and others see a Rich Heritage and 19th century liberalism and they dont call it as such and the prognosis seems to be a little persistent and in not surrounding that term. Guest they refused togive it up , towards surrendering on liberalism and liberalism was defined, i kid you not in Woodrow Wilsons book a history of mans efforts to define the strength of government. 25 years later the only thing modern liberalism is liberating man from his man from his marriage contract and thus we have the definition of liberalism traveled even in 30 or 40 years, its pretty much now a lost word in the original sense of being an effort to restraingovernment. Were going to have to keep that in mind in using it. The right word, 1996. That book was put together by my editor sam gone but he decided to put in it what was anything i had written about the use of this language. Plus also that the supplemental business of 1000 words as used by me and their definition. Theres some stuff in that collection that includes a few reviews for the New York Times and others. Chicago, your next. Good afternoon, Mister Buckley id like to thank you for 30 years of wonderful entertainment. Iq. I like to ask your opinion, actually your evaluation of 2 figures, one of whom imsure you knew, the other i dont know if you did. The first one is edward teller. And the second is a person i consider one of the most underrated people in the last 50 years and thats edward shermer. Mister tully is not dead, i knew him, ive known him moderately well and i absolutely revere him. I think hes a tower of strength and a great human being. I know nothing about other than his narrative as an important russian figure in the New York Times and i cant say anything interesting about him. San juan capistrano california, your next. Its a real pleasure to meet and speak with you and i wanted to ask you about your prodigious vocabulary, how did you go aboutobtaining it . Its not that prodigious, when they kicked out the idea of having a calendar with words i use, they ran out after three years but theres only 1000 words that could conceivably be thought of as new. If you want a really prodigious, look at anything but update. In one book of his i think there were 26 words i had never laid eyes on. Its by and large and unusual word to define is the word you dont know. And unusual word, i dont know. Each person has an odd little spot of words that he sort of appropriates and what is true is that i tend to use words that i know whereas a lot of people tend to sort of pluck them into their collection and dont use them so frequently. Thats probably what gives me an undeserved reputation. Host this is a Childrens Book, the only oneyouve done. Whats theidea here . The idea was to do something on new years eve and i had a commission to write a book. Its kind of fun book about this kid and how he taps into a magic voice. I was told by the publisher a Childrens Book has to have a suspense. It has to have narrative and it has to be a moral end to it. And those are the only three writs i was given and its really all you need. Host springfield missouri, massachusetts go ahead. Caller Mister Buckley, i wanted to make a statement and ask you a question. As a College Student and a raised Irish Catholic democrat my first apostasy from liberalism was reading your book up from liberalism and at the same time i read Eugene Mccarthys book i believe it was a liberal take , looking at the conservative challenge and after weighing both books , you one and since then ive been progressively more conservative but i wanted you to know that and also your declining the invitation to the st. Patricks day parade some years ago. I was hoping it was due to a previous commitment and not the fact that we are a heavily democratic area. Could you comment on that . Guest when i ran for mayor i made a universal statement that people shouldnt identify with any particular ethnic or social Group Whether labor unions or management or italians and that was, got a little exposure. Ithink i ended up going to that parade anyway. For the sake of it. Sorry. Host we spent the last three hours with William F Buckley junior, no,. It started with this book god and man at yale, 1951 and the next book is this one on the chair here, William F Buckley junior, let us talk of many things, the collected speeches. Last question. Anything you want to accomplish for the rest of your lifethat you havent done so far thats right on the tip of your tongue . Guest go to the bathroom. Host on that we willthank you and wish everybody a happy day. That concludes another look into our archives. William f buckleys close to 40 appearances on tv and cspan are all available to watch online. Go to our website transit booktv. Org and type his name into the search box at the top of the page. Every weekend with the latest nonfiction books and authors. Cspan2 created by americas Television Companies as a Public Service and brought to you by your television provider. Weeknights we are featuring book tv programs as a preview of whats available every weekend on cspan2. Tonight at eight eastern several programs written by first ladies. Enjoy tv on cspan2. When you read the things that were said about thomas jefferson, that he was an infidel and he was a pagan of the french government, sounds a little reminiscent, doesnt it . The things said about abraham lincoln, the things said about fdr that he wantedto be a dictator. Though it does kind of come with the territory but i think in trumps case at least in the modern political era, postworld war ii , ive never seen anything like it. Sunday at noon eastern on indepth our life to our conversation with author and the faith and Freedom Coalition founder ralph reed was books include awakening, act of faith and his most recent, for god and country. Join in the conversation with your phone calls, text and tweets. Watch indepth sunday at noon eastern on cspan two. Beginning now, were going to spend some time with the late author and columnist William F Buckley read this is part of our summer bins watch series which features one wellknown author. Now, William F Buckley founded the National Review magazine and he hosted the political Debate Program firing line for several years area it was also the author of over 50 books included his thoughts onpolitics , religion, culture, literature and other topics. He appeared on book tv and