Transcripts For CSPAN2 Alvin Felzenberg Discusses A Man And His Presidents 20170514

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Of course, Like Princeton University as a whole, were a Nonpartisan Organization and we welcome all points of view. In fact we encourage a wide diversity of viewpoints. E we believe what many people preach but perhaps are not so strict about actually practicing, as well as preaching, and that is the true civil engagement of ideas, true civil dialogue, including or perhaps especially among people who disagree. We know in our society, there are people who disagree, reasonable people of good will who disagree about many, many issues. Always been the case in United States. But we believe in common that the way to handle disagreement is by engaging each other inn civic civil discourse. By doing business in the currency of intellectual discourse. That currency consists of reasons and arguments and evidence. So were proud here the Madison Program to be contributing to that mission and by doing that we have to the common good of the United States. Im absolutely deright there welcome back to princeton one of her most distinguished sons, Alvin Felzenberg. He is new jersey through and through. Al is a lecturer the an enburg school or mexico the university of pennsylvania, the principal spokesman for the 9 11 commission. Serve in n two president ial administrations, held several high level putts with the house of representatives and was new jerseys assistant secretary of state in the administration of governor thomas h. Kean. A fellow the institute of politics as harvards jfk school of government and taught at yale, here at princeton, at Johns Hopkins and George Washington in washington, dc. He has appeared as commentator on major Public Affairs Television Shows including cnns crossfire. He survived crossfire. Cnbcs washington gorgeous, a more dignified police to be a commentator, and msnbcs morning joe, nprs sorry. Were nonpartisan talk of the nation. His writings appeared in the Washington Post, weekly standard, contributed to National Review online, a journal whose significance welc be exploring in this conversation. Ntribute u. S. News. Com and politico. The book well be discussing today is his new book a man and his president s the political odyssey of william f. Buckley, jr. Publishe the other writings including the leaders we deperfect those we didnt, rethinkingthinking the president ial rating game. Le a conversation between the two of us here at princeton after the publication of that book. If you keep writing books well keep having conversations. And the biography of tom cain. 06 joan join me in welcoming dr. Al felzenberg. William f. Back here was the founding father of the modern conservative movement, and yet some of my students issue might even say many of my students, past most off my students, including my conservety students, dont really know who william f. Buckley was, whichll makes me gasp since the both of us of a certain age, william f. Buckley was a fixture in our homes through his television program, firing line which aired for seemed like generations. 34 years. On pbs and a fixture in our lives, not only of conservatives but of liberals as well. A famous practitioner of the kind of civil discourse and engagement of ideas that we stand for here in the Madison Program at princeton. His guests on firing line included not only fellow conservatives, of various stripes, traditionalists and libertarians and moderate republicans and people on the liberal and further to the left side of the spectrum. In fact, i think his favorite guest host, subbing for him, was michael kinsley, who is a famous liberal commentator. So al, say word why our students should care about william f. Buckley. Who was william are buckley. Guest well, fit of all, its a great honor to be back the Madison Program, and in this room. Remember many lectures in it. Most recently as a harvard professor. Its flour be back. William f. Buckley in short, i think, was probably the most influential private citizen in American History. You think about this. Never had a government job. He had a few honorary commissions that. He ran for office one time. Got 13 . One ti she forced his way on the public station the age of 25 when he decided to write a book that criticized of all things Yale University. His firstarch opponent was Yale University. Yale University Made one major mistake that i tell my students at annenberg not to do. A more powerful subject should never try to squash at the time a minor critic. Yale, as one new yorker pointed out, reacted to his criticism with all the rigor of an elephant terrified by a little mouse, and the american sense of fair play, young journalist, also same age as bill buckley, you know him as the host and founder of 60 minutes, mike wallace, had mike wallace on a radio show, 1953, and one of the first questions was why is Yale University picking on you . So, pick a fight with somebody bigger and you launch a career in many, many ways. But i would say that as a commentator, as a political figure of his time, and something i discovered as i get into the papers, as a political operative, he was second to none. The only person i could think of who is very, very close to buckley was probably Frederick Douglass in the last century. Why . He was an editor, as he was a writer. He formed organizations. Bill buckley was not just a columnist. Somebody asked me this morning, who is like bull buckley today. Cant thing of any columnist who founds political movements and organizations who is out there. He founded cpac, the american conservative union, young americans. Whenever there was a cause, he was out there mobilizing. Ic he was a campus politician and many of those traits he brought into the Public Square of behalf of other candidates. Because he was a charismatic personality, with extraordinary sense of wit, he was able to mobilize audiences, particularly young people. He loved talking to young people. He did 70 campuses a year in his prime. That, plus a newspaper column, editing a magazine, running aap show. President s all came acourting. People wanted his endorsement, as much has the wanted a political boss. Two bad he didnt live a few more years to perfect his skills on the internet. He mastered every form of communication in his time. Wherever you were, he would fine you. Or you would find him. Whether its on your car radio, in your newspaper, whether its watching pbs, whether news is being made that he is now resigning an honorary board, he had a tremendous impact and we still see it today. Now, my students, same thing as yours, when he died, they knew that an important person died because they kept getting little messages on the internet, whether they describe to the New York Times or the Washington Post or whatever it was. This is an important person tha americans should stop and take note. They couldnt remember why he was an important person. Thought what an extraordinary life to bring back to open it up anew, for a new generation to reintroduce him to new generations. The rest of us have some nostalgia. Host lets talk about in the first book, called god and man at yale. And it was an indictment of Yale University. Now, why . He was a student at Yale University. I notice when i went back looked at reviews written by the great and the good of the wasped establishment of the United States, that the reviewers were outraged, among other reasons,s, because buckley had accused yale of abandonnen its christian heritage and of adopting a sort of new religion, pseudo religion of liberal secularism, and so the responses of some of the l great and good were this is outrageous, the upstart who by the way is a whack this upstart catholic at yale, ourli university, comes in and accuses us of abandoning christian university. One thing about yale it has not abandoned no will every abandon its christian heritage. Guest well, let me begin by saying that you good down to the Jefferson Memorial a great quote of jefferson, pledge eternal buckley would agree with that but would also say, even a greater opponent of a would say, what is moral equivalency . Well, he explained it like this. Imagine a wheelchairbound person is about to cross the street and a passerby appears and he pushes the wheelchair inp the way of an oncoming bus. A table tend to the story. Le ent but imagine the person is halfway across the street, the light changes, and a bus is approaching the person and a Good Samaritan appears and pushes the while chair out of the way of ooncoming bus. Happy ending. Therefore, both stories theres a wheelchair, therespp possibly a Good Samaritan or bad samaritan. That doesnt make their motives equivalent. And what barretted hmm, he thought, at yale, as it was teaching era after worldis t war ii where first of all the economicked department he was born in 1925. Calvin coolidge was in the white house. Didnt say very much. Didnt think he had to impose himself every five minutes on the American People like othermu president s we can think about. He was attacked for not saying very much at all. Government did much less. America thought it had learned from its crusade in europe, wag trying hard not to repeat. The world was at peace and the countrys economic was booming. Well, as bill was getting older, he is witnessing the by the time of his teen years, completely new world when he returns from the army in 1945. Suddenly were talking about mixed economies, not free markets. Which he thought was really sing exceptionalism bit another name. We hat the aggrieves kind lie remember the parades of the g. I. S coming home after world war ii. In eastern europe, the soviet state, they were. So we had that form of tyranny, and socialism. Then the benign kind, the kind that gets elected in a free democracy but then suddenly feels it has to run more and more of the economy. They were teaching this at yale. Very few free market economist were around. All the text books talked about how successful societies have excessive welfare state, excessive regulations. More importantly in the religions department, he did not feel they should teach one form of religion. But he did feel that christianity, or our judeochristian tradition was superior to the other forms. Risa why . Because it informed us our founding nation, informed the founding documents, we were a judayey christian society, judeochristian tradition teaches were all made in gods image, and, therefore, the source of all freedom. All freedom from government interference, all born equal, all equal in the eyes of eachl other, in the eyes of the state, the eyes of god, and that is what he believed. He said its great to have other religions, great to learn about other religions, but dont tell us that some of the traditions of the Samoa Islands that Margaret Mead were writing about were untouchable and god knows what is the same as ours, we should teach there is a difference. At there is not a moral equivalent. That is obviously got him into a great deal of trouble. And that was the name of thesl book god and man at yale because theres a fighting son now the yale anthem, the lastt line is for god, for man and for yale. He turn it god and man at yale means that secular humanism is pushing man to the center between god and of course yale. A little bit of a play on words. Okay. Why was this important . Other than the religionit department and life why was this important . Well, what was going on at that time, two famous espionage cases gore on, one in the uk the cambridge five. Names like kim selby, and buy burgess, the best and brightest of their generation. Recruited by communists to do two things. First of all, to infiltrate British Intelligence to help the brits crack the code and win the war and tools share whatever information they possibly could with joe stalin because, after all, he was aligned with the uk, wasnt he . So we get red of the menace of hitler and can now bring heaven on earth in form of marxism. They learned the theory in the 30s, just around the time of the purges or just before the burns. What happened in the United States . In my generation, probably the vietnam war was probably the most galvanizing issue for those of white house were politically engaged. Bill crystal likes to say tell me where you were in vietnam and i can tell you where queue voted the next five elects. In 1945, 46, 47, 48, we had the hiss case. A very prominent person, had the best possible education you could get. Et. Harvard law school, clerk to al oliver wendall holmes, social friends of franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, groomed to be a future cabinet member or head oh the u. N. Algier hiss was accused oft having been a spy for the soviet union and hi accuser was Whittaker Chambers, and chambers was a former communist, hiss goto guy for the communist party and eventually leaves the party. Well, buckley comes to the conclusion that we need sterner stuff. Theyre getting to the prime of our youth. Theyve singled out the kind ofr kids that would good to yale in 1948 for this kind of activity. So a lot of this going on. Even though then i would say the student body at yale more hoe all white, all male, not what you into now there or here. The breakdown of the campus in 46, 60 for dewey, 40 for truman. So, i dont you look at any campus since then, republicans have out inas well. On the faculty it was a fight o between harry truman and not tom dewey. Harry truman and Harry Wallace. Host my students dont mow who hari Harry Wallace is. Think Bernie Sanders and you got it. Guest wallace was rather weird. If you ever get tested the Current Administration ever decides to appoint people and some of you get tapped,stration youll they ask you name, address, Social Security number maybe your religion. Henry hall was was the secretarr of. Agriculture under appropriate roosevelt. The religious wag mystic. He calls himself a mystic. Can see Franklin Roosevelt shaking his glass saying, what the hell is that . In any event, he became a pretty good politician, very good at p handling congress. Very good hat hasnting republicans because his father was agriculture secretary, and roosevelt decides that when james garner by the way, roosevelts first Vice President was james garner, the former v speaker of the house. Jew have your old democratic coalition. You can see it again withe kennedy and johnson. Gardner is going to oppose roosevelt and is going to run against him. Roosevelts great meant was i think the Vice President hasas thrown his bottle into the ring. And runs as Henry Wallace, the win their third team and everything is fine. We talk about he change of the party system. You have Franklin Roosevelt, four times candidate for president , and the middle of a world war, is playing poker on the white house boat, the pay mayflower, and sitting women if is a fellow named kelly, the labor leader; a mayor of chicago, another union leader and a governor. They tell him we cant sell your friend Henry Wallace in the wards. What wards . Wards of chicago where real people live. Poll pols and ruianans. They think the is too close to the redded so he dumps Henry Wallace, and then after the world war imagine this, we nominate a president , we think we do and then we wait around to see who what name will fall from the lips for Vice President. And these bosses had the power to you cant run with him. Well, roosevelt dies and truman is now president. Wallace begins to criticize trumans tough cold war policy, and truman fires him. And he runs for heres glad were getting to this, buckley is watching this while he is at yale and wallace runs as a Progressive Party candidate for president. Now, buckley knows that wallace is not going to be president. But he is terrified that about maybe wallace will get one or two percent of the vote. What he is terrified of is probably 60 to 70 of the one or two percent of the voter going be to artists, writers and of course, yale professors. Well, ideas matter. Ideas have consequences. Wallace wont be important but his followerred will be around for a very long time, and im going to set up my own movement to resist that and push the kini of politic its want. So, even though he is technically a member of the yale Republican Club and all of that stuff. Ca going around various radio stations, the press, debating half the yale faculty on various connecticut radio station. A very seminal event for him. The fact the communist party it was directed from moings scow openly running a president ial campaign and he got intellectualment. He said we have to do the same thing. Im talking to much. Host you got to us an interesting point, because one y of the remarkable things about buckley, taking charge of the conservative movement as a very young man, was he faced a movement or he encounters a movement he sought to transform a movement to take over a movement that was a motley crew that included guest some cranks. Host more than a fewer. Guest people who hated each other more than they hate they would other side, which is why he figured out there was movement. Host one thing buckley did, quite remarkable achievement was to marginalize, sideline the john birchers, theaves, antisemites. A purpose of these el elements of the moment to stab the modern conservative movement. Before you get the rice risev of neoconservativism. Before you get a lot of catholics moving into the conservative movement. When catholics were still ethnic democrats by and large. O how on earth did he pull that off at his age. Well to begin we, they were a disparate lot. E if you were around in 1948, what first of all, no movement. What was a conservative to begin with . Well, probably the ideal of a conservative was robert taft, who was the senator from ohio. He was famous for isolationism between the wars. But he wasnt didnt quite fit the view of conservative asa we dough tined. He had some peculiarities. We consider conservatives small government, but he was one of the first senators to say there should be a federal housing because its throughrst se neighborhoods and housing we transfer value to the nextxt generation and wanted a federal Rural Housing and a department of education on the grounds that if these segregationists arent going to educate children, well do it. We have a role to do it. If they wont integrate wellin educate them. That was very early, 1948. But he was called a conservative. He tried to be president for a time in various republican primaries. What the problem with taft buckley said this loudly once stalin got the bomb, our idea about limited government, we lad to have a couple of exceptions because as long as this cold war, which john kennedy would call this hard and bitter peace we have to nato is an issue in the last campaign. Tafts opponent in 1972 is eisenhower, and eisenhower goes to see taft and says i will not run for president , will endorse you no problem with your Domestic Program but i did run nato if you endorse nato i will not run. And taft will not support nato, and buckley right is his editor mayoral saying maybe hell change his mind. The best man in america to be president. Then who else do you have . Well, you have the southern segregationists. They call themselves conservatives because they didnt like federal intervention in the economy. They were very antilabor union, number one. And antithat path to the new deal, right to work states, mos. Of them southern or midwestern, and they were segregationist its. Taft was not. So how do you get a coalition out of this group of anymore its very difficult. And. Host its important to remember that this is the time long before you have the porlarization of the political party. We now think of republicans and conservatives and democrats as progressives or the liberal us but in those days, as professor felzenberg noted. The democratsre humphrey of minnesota and southern guest whatever they were, they werent liberals. They were segregationallists. Senator jim eastman of mississippi who used the nword to the fails of certain congressmen, a guy named ranken from mississippi, railing, nasty people here. Nwo irvin was but, yes, sam irvin, people forget, because the left made hem such a hero during watergate. Remember . Im just a country lawyer if dont know how to deal with these republicans. No one if write he was the author of the southern manifesto which all the southern senators signed as a way of resisting the brown decision. No one talk about that because it takes away from watergate. Host its like remembering that the role of j. William fulbright. He was the most effective chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in all of American History. Questions the vietnam war. John kennedy wanted fulbright to be the secretary of state and hh didnt think a democratic president start off the first 1 didnt with a fight over senator fulbrights segregationism. So kennedy had a nonentity secretary of state named dean rusk, and theres a book ill recommend, a best seller when i was starting my career in princeton called the best and the brightest. All about fulbright and mcnamara and another failed first 100 days. The context that buckley guest the context he is in. Host so he wants a conservative movement. Wants that movement to be free of the antisemites and segregationists and cranks. M havent talked about the john birch society. And he wants that movement toea win control of one of the Political Parties. And the obvious candidate for that role is the Republican Party. But he get runs into a big problem right awayment. I learned from your book because eisenhower does decide to run for president. Taft wont go along and heres the conservative republican, william f. Buckley, at odds with the first Republican Administration since Franklin Roosevelt came into office. Guest remember this. Republicans they lost five elections in a row, 1932 to 1948. They werent supposed to lose 1948 but tom dewey was given the same advice hillary was, sit onn your lead. And harry truman becomes not that im comparing our presidenv to harry truman but truman is not supposed to win. Never poll had him winning. But any event, theyre really stuck now. And republicans, like buckley and people who supported taft on the domestic side, wanted to shrink the new deal and get back to what life was like before the Great American state and get rid of agencies and taft was the guy to do that. Now they get eisenhower. Now, eisenhower was a very shrewd politician. And he let the party talk about roll back of the welfare state at home, which all republicans supported, and rollback of thei stalinist encroachment abroad. And buckleys surmised wasnt sure about what he was going to do about stalin. Did believe the nato argument, thought maybe he could do better on Foreign Policy than stevenson. Adlai fee stephenson. Guest not trying block. That that that he will be tougher on the cold war. But he had some doubts. He had some doubts about the domestic agenda. I discovered later that eisenhower rubbed his brother basically saying look, we just cant come in here and dismantle Social Security. And subsidies and federally subsidized mortgages and no sudden in one day or in one administration. Love, the American People not only have gotten used to it they support it. And if i do that, i will not have the opportunity to pres and which was basically the same strategy that went all the way to the reagan era so she said we are going to have to compromise it became the mouse that scared of the elephant and they wereo just the warmup act for the fivestar general that won thel big one and he writes a note to one of his prime and says dont tell anyone, but my goal is to bring him out of the conservative movement. He doesnt want to say this openly at the time. It became the flagship journal. He sounds the National Review and wants it to be on the right, the new republic, the review, so Walter Whitman started at theana republic and they started calling it the advisory. Eight hour day federal reserve, a lot of these things were first introduced by the new republic. Buckley studied the other side and said we need a policy journal for us that can give id ideas to the next president thinking there would be one. It becomes a place for conservatives and in all was for persuasions to find out whats going on, to publish the works of emerging letters. A couple of months later itt becomes clear the administration isnt going the way that he wants and youve got to be careful because half of the donors are pretty much republican and going to thelot f administration. The administration is defining itself as conservative. What do we mean by conservative . Think of eisenhower, stalin, balanced budgets, slow and steady. It talked about no drama obama to such a degree it was at a standstill and that is basically the caricature of the era. He appointed a billionaire of the cabinet said they would ahead of the plumber chain. You would be writing one of the Large Energy Companies you were conservative and had the administration on your side. He hated big business just as much as big labor. They were trying to take over the administration, nothing changes, none of the issues ever change but he has to be careful because they will be openly pushing the administration to the right, but he also has the most popular president at that point in American History can and as i pointed out, i could just go out and play golf and say everything is fine and everyone would agree with him. You look at the rating and it was a steady line. I think that he fell under 50 s once and then the second time was for about a week but it was a solid line of 60 . The president would kill for that now. Never the less he kept agitating and when he went out of office he said they could be fighting every Democratic Administration he said that they hate russia ever but as much as we do and thats fine. Once this happened now the fight is on. The Republican Party with a conservative nominee we could now realign the party and get the southern democrats that say they are conservatives to join with us and we would already hold of the midwest and could become a new majority. That was the goal through this in the 1940s. Goldwater will pick up where taft ended. Al said all movements start off this way and he wrote a year before i was born Calvin Coolidge won one of the largest in American History. There was no welfare state, no big army, all that. Eight years later Franklin Roosevelt wins the election. Thats what he wrote, take part in this. Of course you know they are back and nobody saw when they went down years later that we would be talking about a separate strategy with a much more moderate stands come even liberal. Let me ask about that. What was the attitude becausek b although nixon was reviled by the west mainly for excessive anticommunism, he was moreys t liberal comes to what was his attitude towards him . When nixon passed away, buckley said its amazing how through all of his battles even though he said what is it about this man and why is it that sohy many of my friends still cling to him and he said back to the case when Whittaker Chambers and alger hiss, it turns out by the qurightaway that he was guilty,w know this in the documents that they handed over to the department in that little window they turned over some documents and the burden of proof is now on the other side, but thegs burden has shifted. When chambers went ahead and out of the committee remember Adlai Stevenson and john fosterut dulles, dean acheson, the former secretary of state for alley are testifying hed look like cary grant, overweight, mixed career, not very successful, and who do you think the establishment believed . It was when freshman congressma on the committee who had taken a comber of courses that law school and he didnt like the way that alger hiss denied the various question. Dican you go Whittaker Chambers the answer would be i dont know anyone by that name. Did he have another name . So he says to chambers what would you name an Economist Party so he said let me bring his back. Nixon believed him, so as youe e say hes invited and eisenhower didnt like the politics, so nixon says they go to all these governors competence as a piece of shifting up delegates. Fe of course with buckley it was no compromise because nixon couldnt do anything right because it was the other step, so it was im steppin im stepping on the microphone. M sorry. Tu [inaudible] so, next because he is eisenhowers understudy, what they did is they say there isnt a dime of difference, but they dont support nixon in 1960. We are not a republican organization. There is not as much of a difference between nixon and noi kennedy who at that time was running claiming there was at tw missile gap 90 miles off the shore promising to get rid of castro, but that was the relationship. Now what is interesting out of office he realized by the biggest margin in history nixon made sure that he campaigned in 46. Rockefeller is taking a walk in the sky. These are the alternatives. Whatever we can say about the popularity and the nomination. Im going to get those delegates. As many as i can into becomes a fight between rockefeller and nixon who has an uneasy history with them that stood up when the others didnt and another young fellow named Ronald Reagan. This was a free obama era and he thought that it was impossible to go into politics and be in the government for one year and get the nominee. Buckley said if we nominate Ronald Reagan and they nominate humphrey into becomes the experience we lose twice in a row its going to be the movement severe series to the various movements that reagan would be better for it different time. Bill was very proud to say that he opposed it one way or another every time that he ran for public office. He was pushing them not to support bill and a Princeton Alumni and he was willing to split the magazine and he does two favors both relevant to our times. One is he nixon respectful of as conservative. You cant be tha beat that kindy that come around and second, a fellow named George Wallace, segregationist governor in alabama running another party. Getting both the northernndemocr democrats and campaigning as a conservative in his own mind what does he do, the only thing that he does is win the race let me tell you why because the welfare populace. He says for every kind of ath program, 60 of the budget is a fake conservative. The only thing that he does toly get people supporting him as ara big way they dont want to get benefits in washington and he calls him a phony. Wr writes his article for the magazine. Calling yourself a conservative [inaudible] you look at the minorities and others. That makes nixon respectful a second time. Is remarkable to think back that George Wallace was competing with whom in the northern states for the labor unions with robert f. Kennedy competing with robert f. Kennedy that is the situation. That brings up the racial issue. Buckley wasnt a racist, he was the guy that drove it out of the conservative movement and said there is no room for you here. The integrated their own Family Department in arizona, they opposed the 64 Civil Rights Act which i think played a veryvery significant role in giving the conservatives who themselves had been active in the Civil Rights Movement with Richard John Neuhaus gave the conservative movement a reputation for being so what accounts for buckley and goldwater refusing to support the Civil Rights Act . Before we do the civil righti act, the National Review begins in the 1970s, and its also a notch National Reviews finest hour. There have been many fine hours. I did see the finest hour was i the last few years, but it was under many. The lineage is what i would call the southerners who said we can take care of our problems, thank you very much we dont believe in violence or exploitation and we will take care of ourel community, thank you very much. These were very wealthy people in the southwest and ou south ty of the institutions as youthe mentioned. I believe in running it the way that we had it. Buckley writes to the editorial and says they continued to determine politics to the south because of the more advanced. We have a Civil Rights Organization that says only when they are coming around and have seen that its been extended to the point that we could have a biracial government if you were a conservative in1957 and lived down south, that would have appalled you. Certainly uphold eisenhower and newton. The one that made it effective he put something ahead of the Voting Rights petition in the majority amendment which said if you are accused of stopping Voting Rights then you have to have a jury trial by your peers. Who is going to convict the southern registrar both to begin with so that happened at the last minute, but that editorial if you wanted to find where conservatives were they voted for the bill that was supposed to. What was left for the wasnt a very happy moment for the National Review. They had a rather heated editorial meeting and said now listen, we say we believe in the discussion you cant ignore these amendments. What about the 14th amendment and the third and the fifth, and what the hell is the matter with you. So, buckley writes a clarifying editorial saying my problem is this. My problem with Voting Rights as you want to expand them with federal force is we have people voting in the north now, look at the whole and jersey city, philadelphia. The last thing we need is more of it so we would be happy toal allow them as this is where we are moving to. That was one issue. But to understand why it comes around, very quickly we have to understand what is going on in the southern politics. They have all of these runoffs in the south. These are descendents of what we would call the primary server to be the runoff. Africanamericans couldnt count, so you had these battles between the genteel nobility of the south and the wallace type. They criticized the old order for being benign and all these things that should be going to us. E goin that is what was happening. There were some unpleasant welfriences in these kinds of the populace. He the grandfather, imagined as he knew wyatt earp, buckleys grandfather knew wyatt earp and the guy that killed billy the kid. Is is imagine this committee was in a very protestant southern state. He went to mass and would go to the masses on sunday. Everything was fine and suddenly they wanted to put an end to this. Executable word but they rounded up all the white trash they could find to beat people up at the polls. So they had experience withhe ve violence. He thought he may be able to appeal but now that they are all gone i can go state by state and the vitamins they used to resist the struggle has one more thing you cant study without appreciating the deep and abiding catholic faith. Before he was anything else he was a man of god and talk to the religious Civil Rights Movement and had a cataclysmic conversi conversion. A week after the march on washington Condoleezza Rice knew some of them and buckley writes an editorial on this kind of hate. Then i didnt notice when i knoi started the research but he writes his mother a letter anduw says you have done a prayer every day. Where in our religion doesnt support this kind of system but nothing has ever questioned . 47yearsold is no religious sanction for this, so how do we support it. Private the private buckley is going through a great deal of turmoil so by the time of the civil rights bill, thats differentt from the others and they both said they had constitutional questions. Then they dont oppose the Voting Rights act and he says lets see how it goes. They brought it out themselvesi and people have a right to march. Maybe they shouldnt have the right to vote. This is just fascinating now. Did buckley or anyone in the family have a reaction where did you find anything about it in i reaction to the archbishop of new orleans with the communication and the other dliticians in louisiana in the 1950s . I do know that his mother was of these snyder and there are streets that are named in their honor. I would be surprised if they didnt know about it. T, what was that like because buckley was a mainstream catholic and i believe he named his own and formed his own existence and he and several elders were arrested. Al so he is a lot stronger on the issues of racial justice. A lot of it was pushed from what was going on in the violence and a lot of that was prayer and reflection. His mother would throw her hands up and say my god ive never had a question like this but im sure if you spoke to many other im sure of it and its beginning to ball away at it that is an interesting character they meet at yale. In 18 months hes catholic, hes a conservative republican and married the favorite sister. [laughter] who at that point was influencing who. Now it is a ten years later, what is the matter with you. Find Something Else so they come up with that one. Buckley wasnt a great believer or antidemocratic or in favor of. He didnt believe that expanding the franchise would lead to a nirvana. He had a paper and said this is all very nice and the idealism door telling us about i dont know if i can buy into this. I have seen these rallies. These people are not being forced. So what are they going to do about it. They didnt worship the franchise purse per se. So they wrote an editorial in the National Review where the act is actually being enforced and hes talking about the great hope and another indirect influence was a fella that we talked about the. When he was a freshman, Time Magazine made him the person of ise year and years after Eleanor Roosevelt allowed at the Lincoln Memorial it was a decade after a. They are the most despised and most religious. So in 1969, the head of the urban league would organize a tour of urban america for the white journalists and they were the radicals for the first timee and he writes that he sees a little bit of himself except for background obviously because just like we are, they are sassy and they want the selfhelp movement and want to teach their own joy and start businesses and dont want washington breathing down her throat. And he says he calls chambers and this is interesting. He calls chambers but not quite literally meaning it stuck in the back of his head for 35 years. So hes writing this column and i got out the Time Magazine column but it was in his memory. By now it is a lot different. They got 13 of the vote, really shook things up and laid out the foundation for the emergence of the movement is a movement that would elect a people. We would ask people to come down to the microphone and while people consider what question they might ab to the discussion in a certain sense buckley was an inside player and yet as a conservative catholic he knew he could always be something as an outsider. Wherever they happene happene they were sort of an exile. They were southerners and catholic but now they are surrounded by the new england congregationalists. It is right next to even say hes told they are challenging the boys to a soccer match and the headmaster writes back to and the headmaster responds and says it i used to be trading ministers for the king in other words for the Catholic King said he develops this tremendous admiration. Ssuggest they arent the descendents of britain so who gets nominated, William Buckley junior so all the time they were kind of exiles of their own la land. We have a question over here. A lot of what you are talking about so far touches on the caricature that i would like yov to discuss if you might the populace, and in two ways one of the 2008 directory and the second is the mayoral run and how he connected with. I would like to talk on the populace and how the precursor. One of the tensions that was difficult to resolve a what is the solution to the curriculum problem with when he sees the threat and that the entire establishment is fighting with d occur chambers how are we going to deal with this, we will demand something be done. The administrations were dragging their feet. Youve got to go to the primary organizations but like i said earlier, he hated the mob and never really resolves that. The line you gave the i would rather be governed them by the first 200 names in the directory [inaudible] if you go the populist route you dont have the ability to. He knew it was his movement. Of all of these people i have to have an elite to do that and people like Ronald Reagan and george bush and others and get them to sign on with me because if i just do it it is a fight between me and welsh and the leaders in the world so he never quite resulted. It was a difficult dilemma for him to. I should tell you im a princeton graduate and spent a great deal of time at yale in the department of psychiatry. I was there when things began to explode very roughly between the populations which surroundedded dale. Things became greater and greater so there were a number of things happening. The issues at vietnam and being drafted, they would take a guy back to the. The other thing is we have ad whole thing erupt. We had to bring in not only the police did you know the story very well. T i i was there in the middle ofe me that and i found one gal bringing in a pistol. We found one bringing it in and it would have been that we have the situation of the shooting. That was the violence on both sides of. Then you have the black panther trial thats a very unfortunate thing. I was curious if in your research you found how the faith interact withthe politics and kind of rationalized theionalize conservatism with the sentiment of Love Thy Neighbor and care for the poor and disabled. I mentioned he would say we believe in tolerance and they can practice anything they want but dont tell me that our country was founded by the positions. They are not. I came from the true faith and that animals have the same rights as people but i believe in a faith that says that god created man in his image and the capacity to think and develop this potential and that is whether i believe in god or not. The other is a tribute to god. That is my tradition and i dont care if you agree with me or not, that is what i am and i feel our country was founded in a certain way formed not by race or blood or heredity but the idea that we are all each other as equal but without, that is who he was to his core. I dont care if what i see as politically correct or not. I think that the question recalls for us to buckley emerges in the wake of the Protestant Social Gospel Movement and the progressivism and the idea that for the true christian belief, the government must be an instrument of bringing comfort to the poor and begins to emerge in catholicism so what was the response to the claim not only must we work forr social justice but we must use the instrumentalities . There are some great quotes. Many people were the recipients and he said god knows how many people through college may or may not have even known about it and this was very much a tradition of the family. He would find people and stop them on the street and think them. They dont want people dying in the streets or starved. The main argument is that we are giving the gifts to glorify god. We are not giving that to make selfishness the goal. O when he decides to take somebody on some of the nuclear bomb is the default mechanism and we move up from that. There is a lady that writes this thing called atlas trust. I want to get Whittaker Chambers to blow her up and attack the atheism is a the is a lot thicker and we are going to put it on the site of the National Review with her bowing down to it. Talk about starting a war. They have libertarians, certainly. But when it got to atheism as the goal of itself are not interested in declaring certain human beings losers, takers as 47 . He bought the safety net and there are people that cannot care for themselves. No, we are all part of the same planet, but he was critical of the program because of the incentive. Can you say a word briefly about the concept because as you say she had these traditional elements of course the catholic social justice tradition of. [inaudible] so the footnote was my i definition doesnt come from the catholic writings. Buckley realized the importance of a common enemy so if you are a guardian and believe in the institutions that are organic things that attack and we accept the best of the old and move forward cautiously, what do you hate, what is the threat to all of you and its not just aggressive, it doesnt want to just. You better be careful because there are a lot of people who might answer that was a threat to all of these groups. He instructed the movement that comes back to the administrations of george bush. We will get better without the existential threat to. If george bush believed that ha saddam has a weapon it is much better to be embarrassed at not finding the weapons ban otherton stuff. What are we doing there. Left. They helped our own civil war. Why are we rebuilding a. Without the soviet union we had this test and a common enemy threatening to bring down the whole town and we have to have alliances. Is it a set of compromises or does it make a coherent philosophy by bringing the best of the traditional muslim clerics he said he spent most of his waking hours trying to negotiate differences. He said its hard to juggle them fight. They would never go to Town Together except for issues on communism. There was a unique philosophy for the incentive structure he had better sources around the world. Why do we hate him so much . We can fight about that later but usually it is a coalition in you want to be aligned interests but not overlapping. Quick question and click answer he coined the term and transferred, but in his view, both the libertarian and traditionalist blended in a way that would diffusion of some. Fe peter his big thing was restriction is on and he went on to form his own. He claimed the reason why in his later years they became old and two the image in the liberal ths media. What would they say in response to the plate . [laughter] the same charge was made around the time reagan went, a cemetery that was originally the restinge place. The issue was how to get him to change his mind. More vicious comments like that and buckley was accused of cultivating the jewish intelligentsia Norman Podhoretz and he said it was rubbish and i think he said the same thing did he excommunicate pat buchanan . What would happen is buchanan brought back Charles Lindberghs statement that it was the british interests of the jewish interests so you said that the only people were 1990. And b he read buchanan out of the movement and has the memoir out. I dont know if the current volume deals with his views and there were many others. I went through this one and he gets a letter from gerald smith saying you have to. Youre not helping me. His attack is made earlier. Ronald reagan was the great amnesty president and i dont remember that talks about that. But before i invite you to join me in thanking al for his wonderful conversation with me just a nine week to remind you he will be signing copies of hib book the political odyssey of william f. Buckley junior out in the library. Thank you all for coming. Plu [applause] the elite framers like hamilton, washington and madison were aghast that so much democracy had led to the federal tools in the paper money flaws in the 1780s and they wanted to move in a direction that would be a more constrained and in the end and popular opinion and could shut down the path of its forces in a state of some madison wanted to give a veto and they did write a provision which bars the state from adopting the paper money laws. Its the National Government with long terms in office, six your senators, four year president , there is nothing in outlook us to that in the state constitutions. In the direct, they pick the president , enormous constituencies in the lower half of the legislature over 350 delegate. They were antidemocratic and wanted to move from the more Democratic Institutions to the direction of the more elite rule because they thought it couldnt trust average. I one point they actually voted for the ten year president because they thought Property Rights would be protected in a more republican form of government. To take one thing, as it is often the case people have questions about how we got the Electoral College. Can we look at where that came from and what was the rationale . For much of the convention they thought the congress would pick the president. The problem with a single term as it would deprive the best incentive for Good Behavior to be elected. The problem giving the ability to be reelected is that he was then very dependent on congress and the point of having an independent president was to check into congress but if they were dependent for their reelection they would be weary about exercising the veto so another possibility would be direct attention by the people. They didnt trust the people with that task. One of my favorite quotes is george mason asking the people to choose the magistrate would be like referring the choice of colors to a blind man so thats one reason. The second problem is the southern slaves wouldnt count. 40 of the south population were slaves and they thought they ought to count in terms of increasing the power in the nation. Finally the small states would never have a president this is a poor communication, transportation and they were not assuming the existence of Political Parties so they figured people in states would vote for their candidate, but massachusetts would vote for hancock, pennsylvania would be james wilson, small states would never have a president so they compromised a lot of differenc differences. One thing is youre not going to have the president picked directly by the people but state legislators deciding how they are chosen then they apportion them in such a way that the south gets greater clout than they would in a direct election. So its the number of house and senators. Virginia has 12 times the population of delaware in the house there are ten virginia representatives but in the Electoral College you have done to the house members which means there are 12 electors from virginia and three from delaware that is an advantage rather than 101 advantages of the small states like that the house number includes the number and address other complications in their the only way to defend today is the now apportionment because now we have a popular election except for the possibility of electorate but it turns out basically what the college does is gives four times the power of the voters in california so 55 electoral votes in wyoming has three. California has 70 times the population of wyoming and if you can throw out they could account for why the voters are somehow it discriminated against minority there probably is no good defense anymore but the senate is subject to the same objection so the same senators frosenatorsfrom california but e two times the population a powerplay they tried to advance with philosophical reasons why the small states would be overwhelmed by the large states that it was just a powerplay basically are going to walk out of the convention if you dont get quality in the senate. Im sorry that was longwinded. [laughter] [applause] [inaudible conversations] thank you so much for being here. Im the director of investment marketing. We are delighted to have you here. If you are not already in touch with us, please like us on facebook we have so many things coming down the pike i just left this out of the bag last night, roxanne is coming. I