First speaker. Our topic is the fascinating friendship between two towering figures. The conservative torchbearer william f buckler and norman baylor. At the risk of sounding too cheerful, i must say that beginning with friendship kicks off the possibility of Common Ground between progressives and conservatives. It does seem unlikely that the buckleymailer relationship has an equivalent today. Seeing as we have historians and public intellectuals such as our speaker writing eloquently and persuasively about such friendship, the prospect seems far from lost. Our speaker, Kevin Schultz is the author of buckley and mailer. He is an associate professor of history, catholic studies at illinois in chicago, winning several awards for his teaching on the ethnoracial and intellectual history of america. Receiving his phd from berkeley in 2005, he began an academic and public intellectual career. He has published articles in journal of American History and american quarterly as well as essays in the Huffington Post and historically speaking. His book from oxford Universities Press how postwar catholics and jews held america to its promise and promise was reviewed in the wall street journal, the new yorker, and elsewhere. He serves as president of the society for he was intellectual history. In his writing, professor schultz achieves something that we endeavor to promote the compelling presentation of nuanced, rigorous Historical Research to the educated public. Especially with buckley and mailer, scholz approaches an important and timely matter and incisive scholarly eye as well as with a prose style that is called funny, sexy, and deliriously good. We are proud to have him kick off the morning. Please welcome Kevin Schultz. [applause] prof. Schultz good morning. Thank you for that marvelous introduction. Thank you for putting together this center. Thank you for showing up at this distinctly unbuckley and absolutely unmailer time of the morning. [laughter] you learn weird things when you learn about people. Norman mailer was incredibly disciplined. He got up early no matter how late he stayed up. He taught each of his 6 wives exactly how he liked his scrambled eggs every morning. Thank you to the center for the work that you do. Thank you to ann okeefe for making this happen so flawlessly. It was marvelous. My name is kevin scholes. I am lucky enough to detect the university of illinois at chicago, a marvelous place that is changing lives. Giving First Generation College students degrees, changing lives. I feel lucky to come to a place like this where i can talk about Common Ground and things that i find important in our political life. I was invited to talk about the book. Although both of these guys died 8 plus years ago now and had their heyday much earlier than that, i still think starting with them in their prime in the 1960s is fitting for this conference. I was trying to figure out why i was the 8 00 a. M. Speaker i thought maybe this is why. Not only do buckley and mailer articulate some of the key divisions between left and right then american political life today, buckley was his hundreds of news articles and books. Things im sure many of you are familiar with. Mailer with his novels and unbelievable repertoire of 1960s events, the antivietnam war struggle. Not only to these guys define the difference between the left and right, that i think in some ways, exists in america today, they also both recoiled intellectually, viscerally, physically, when those divisions that they helped articulate moved in two ideologically drastic directions. When that happened, the center was challenged, maybe not able to hold. What mailer called a searing love of country force them to record in the late 1960s. We are sitting in a center trying to find Common Ground among the left and right in american politics today. But wait, i am moving too fast. I always like to start lectures with a story. Plus, its early, so lets get a story going. Its part of a letter, a letter that started this whole project. Realizing that Norman Mailer and William Buckley were friends, and not only that they were friends and had this fascinating romance, but they were actually debating the life of the nation through the 1960s when they were players in it all. Dear bill, wrote Norman Mailer and 55, i write this letter i think you will displease me in the most hated man in american life. [laughter] of course the position is terrible only if one is number one. To be the second most hated man more like working behind a mule for years. [laughter] their letters were so funny and so mean to each other, they were so great. In a way that you can be with friends. Buckley a must certainly laughed at the line great sense of humor. But this letter had a lot more substance than some of the rest. This letter was sent to buckley just days after he gave one of his most vitriolic speeches. It was a speech to the new York City Police officers, to the Holy Name Society of new york city cops. The vast majority of officers were catholic, so it was the Largest Group of Police Officers. Buckley was invited to prop them up. This was after the riot strewn summers of the 1960s. It was right after selma. Many of us have seen the movie selma. We know that the actions of the police are unjustifiable. Historians have rightly complained about the atrocious way that lbj was divided into movie. Those historians are right. No one says they got the actions of the police wrong. Billy clubs with barb dwyer, rapid dispersal of people across a narrow bridge. It was a bad scene. Bill buckley defended them. He did that by saying, of course this is what the cops are going to do, did you expect anything less . By doing this march, you set this up to happen, and now you are angry at it happened . How could you possibly be angry . That did not go over well in the press. They pillared him. Newspaper headline says buckley defense the actions of selma. They align buckley with the ku klux klan. He felt like they were getting him wrong. When buckley got angry, things started to happen. He found out that one of the fathers for the Holy Name Society had recorded the speech he gave. He called together a hastily press conference in a room similar to this and has one of his staffers for the National Review get the tape that no one had heard yet. This poor staffer, 21yearold kid comes in and sees 100 journalists with Television Cameras staring at him, and he is holding the tape. They put it in the tape player, everybody leans int to listen. What did buckley really say about selma . The tape malfunctions. It breaks. They futz with the tape. Nobody can get it fixed. One of the Television Cameramen messes with it i think that got it fixed. About 45 seconds of tape are missing. It was the selma section. Buckley was furious, but what did he do . Newspapers struck at him again, and it was worse than the first time. It was in this spirit that is right laid low, fat Norman Mailer wrote this letter, the most hated man in america. The letter goes beyond condolences. After discussing the errors that buckley had made, mailer concluded thusly. I decided i had to write this book when i read this sentence. Our public debating days are over. As rustlers, we are now villains. That cites no proper passion. Still, it may open something interesting, wishes that the two of us have a long, careful, private discussion when a night. In all modesty, there is much in your thought that is innocent of its own implications. There is much surplus in mine that could profitably be sliced away by the powers of your logic. Hes opening himself up teach me, and be taught. He was in some ways trying to say, conservatism keeps us from a mindless law and order violence that buckley had spent his life building. He wanted to save his own leftism from the various pushes for freedom. Buckleys push from freedom from an onerous state. What mailer saw as bland American Culture left them vulnerable to extremism, positions where there could be no middle ground. Mailer, of all people, Norman Mailer thought to preserve that vital space. He signed the letter, incorrigibly yours, norman. I thought that was great. Buckley writes back almost immediately, thank you norman for your warm and amusing letter. Anyway, i have a lot more to teach you than how to reason. These guys were so funny. Can i quote that part that refers to the shameful destination of the press . Can recruit a lefty to say that the press got me wrong . Mailer said no, he did not want to appear to be defending the cops of selma. When buckley wrote about this incident, he left out mailers sympathetic line. They collected that essay that he wrote in a book a year later. Buckley send to the book to mailer. In the back of the book in the index, next to Norman Mailers name, buckley wrote hi because he knew mailer would look there first. [laughter] he did not quote mailer on selma. Buckley signs letter, corrigibly, bill. For me, this is what started off the project. After Norman Mailer died in 2007, he sold his papers for 2. 5 million. A magazine published some of these excerpts from these letters. I was sitting in bed reading and i sat up when i read this particular letter. I said, there is something rich here that i need to investigate. Here is my mailer, the enfant terrible of the post world war ii left, writing words with backwards in them, sometimes champion socialism, an iconoclast, a libertine, the husband of six women, the lovers of countless more, he once stabbed his wife with a penknife, missing by millimeters her heart, and she did not divorce him until a year after that. [laughter] he loved to headbutt people at parties. Five foot seven inches, like ive already to like a bull ready to gorge. Somebody that liked to dance the precipice of taste. How good that Norman Mailer be friends with someone like William F Buckley, the off want to replay of the postwar right . The traditionalist that loved to sail. The magazine that taught Ronald Reagan how to be a conservative. The host of the show that in weekly dismay his generous spirit, is expensive vocabulary, his wicked tongue, the crafter of the rights talking points for a generation, and maybe two. How could it be that these two guys could be friends, and not only that, left and right, trying to conserve some Common Ground as the late 1960s spiraled beyond what they had put forward . They referred to each other, often using bad words. Some times they called each other debating partners. As i got into the archives, into the Television Shows they did together, they were debating nothing less than the future of the United States and the kind of life worth living. There is no bigger question than that, at least i dont think that there is. How could postworld war ii america, fat and rich, how could it live a more fulfilling life . A life more fulfilling than that portrayed on leave it to beaver . Holden caulfield may have had the itch, but there was buckley and mailer trying to scratch it. They wanted to preserve americas virtuous hearts. That was a great phrase. It was buried under by all the politics and military industrial complex. At the heart, of the United States is virtuous. How do we keep that virtuous heart intact while shedding all that friends to overburden all that threatens to overburden it . I had to write this book. I thought i could get the answer to the key question of the 1960s how do people in the richest nation in the world end up at each others throats by the end of the decade . How does that happen . My hunch is that sitting fat and rich, americans began to to demand greater freedom. The key word for me became freedom. They had different. Definitions of freedom with buckley and miller being poster children for the left and right vision of freedom. They sought to preserve the virtuous heart at the center. I dug into the archives. These two men were like forrest gump. A movie i hate. But like forrest gump, they showed up everywhere in the 1960s. Here they are coasting a statement, debating James Baldwin over the future of the civil rights movement. Here they are discussing selma, supporting over testing the vietnam war, the bay of pigs, jermaine greer, everything that goes on in the 1960s, buckley and mailer were there. So much fun to write this book. I wonder if they had any discussions with womens liberation people. There have been reams of debates. They first met in 1962. From the very first meeting, the scenes that persisted, how americans could live a more compelling life the debate about perpetuated their friendship, the debate started from the very first moment. They met in 1962. It was showbiz that brought them together. Mailer was already famous for his 1948 book, which some people still think is the best novel that came out of world war ii. He became an outspoken political thinker in the 1950s and reformed his image. With his 1957 book called advertisements for myself. Imagine himself as someone who has all the answers to this struggle with conformism that defines so much of the 1950s. He was a rebel with a cause, right . Buckley was already very famous for his 1951 book god and man and yale which sets the tone of conservatism for the rest of the 20th century, pushing back against nanny state economics and secular economics and filtering the center that he called the liberal establishment. Thank you very much William Buckley for giving us that phrase. Their parallels were shocking as i began investigating how they met. They were both born in the 1920s. They were mostly shielded from the great depression. They fought on the periphery of the second world war. Both had early precocious fame. Even within weeks of one another, within three weeks they both started writing journals that epitomized their positions. Buckleys was National Review, and mailers starts the village voice, with its radical critique of everything in the mainstream. In 1962, when they first meet, they are in their 30s. A producer named john golden at them to debate. His real name was robert golden, but he changed it to john, because as he said, nobody named robert got anywhere in life. A reporter said, i think we should have Robert Kennedy and robert frost debate that prospect. [laughter] but golden was no dummy. He timed this debate 2 days before a heavyweight boxing mesh. Match. This was back when boxing mattered in america. Many of the reporters for the boxing match showed up to the buckleymailer undercard. There were 4500 people at this theater, they paid 2. 5 to see it. It was billed on the marquee like a title fight. Buckley was favored 2. 5 to 1. You could get odds. [laughter] they had a booking there. If you needed it, mailer stayed at the playboy mansion. The debate didnt disappoint. They were fierce and funny from the get go. Buckleys opening line was that he did not think he could maintain mailers interest in the rightwing egos they do not have enough sexual neuroses. He would try to be interesting enough so that mailer would, for once, look up from the worlds genital glands. Its clear from reading the works of mr. Mailer that human swinishness is pleasing to him. Mailer interrupted him saying, do you want me to lay here a little longer so that the train of your logic can hit a target . [laughter] they put forward substantive arguments as well. Buckley said conservatives were worried about the country being unmoored from its foundations, laissezfaire economics, christianity, and locally controlled democracy. As he put it, the true meaning of the american right ring is commitment. A commitment on the basis of which it becomes possible to take measurement. Mailer had willingly sacrificed an operative set of values, values that had created the possibilities for the kinds of freedoms that americans were then enjoying. Laissezfaire was its commitments to making contracts under their own volition. Christianity in the sense that each individual has worth, etc. For lefties like mailer, there was no ground wire. Which could lead to fascism or serfdom. Buckley envisioned a state of limited powers, where he thought 1960s liberalism was a great hoax. Something that he was seeking to take his wealth and give it to the unworthy. He wanted to to send individual freedoms from the encroaching state. He wanted the image of the american individual. The state, as the 1940s and its totalitarianisms h taught him, was nothing that should or could be trusted. Freedom started with the individual mired in relationship with society. This could be called neorepublicanism. Buckleys definition of freedom was robust. The individual over society, but prioritizing an individuals responsibility to society and the common good. A haphazard follower of edmund burke, his conservatism is traditional in some ways at the expense of new ideas. It was also broadly rotarian, attempting broadly libertarian. It was also anticommunist. As he wrote in a 1959 book, he says what all conservatives in this country fear is the loss of freedom by attrition. It is there for the most realistic reasons that we must resist every accretion of power by the state, even while guarding our rhetoric against such i take the gloomy view that we are marching towards totalitarianism, i should not go so far to say that america is not now, free. He added, the more freedom, the better, which means that some freedom is better than not at all. And more is better than less. He was defending freedom as he understood it. As soon as buckley finished his over remarks in his debate, before the applause even died down, Norman Mailer puts his fists up, takes hold of the podium, and starts speaking. Which i think indicates some sort of psychological problem. [laughter] but he got up, literally jabbing his hands