Transcripts For CSPAN2 Summer Series With William F. Buckley

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 o