My Conversation with Garry Wills about William F. Buckley, Jr.

Earlier today, I sat down with Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Garry Wills shortly after news broke about the death of conservative icon, William F. Buckley, Jr. Back in 1957, Buckley gave a young Garry Wills his first job, drama critic for The National Review. Among the questions I was eager to ask Mr. Wills what Buckley thought of the conservative movement and if it has moved away from some of the principles he championed.

My full conversation with Garry Wills airs Thursday night on PBS.

Comments

[SouthHouse]

Hi Folks--

In my humble opinion, William F. Buckley Jr. was not so much the founder of modern conservatism as he was the face of it. And, I suspect, he knew that and relished the role.

There were lots of Ivy-educated elitists in the 1950s who shared Buckley's assertions of entitlement to hereditary, financial, and racial privilege. But none of them felt ambitious (or audacious) enough to convince their respective Dad and his friends to put up thousands of dollars for starting a magazine that would serve as a platform for such assertions.

Buckley's voice resonates through a plethora of publications on Ivy and elite college campuses (like the Dartmouth Review, for example-- although with considerably less eloquence and class. But, like, Buckley's literary brainchild, they will never go wanting for generous, anonymous benefactors.

[MHainds]

Bill Buckley was an influential genius. It is amazing to contrast his voice with today's leading "Conservative" voices. Buckley was: intelligent, reasonable, respectful, and always willing to let the other side voice their opinion without resorting to personal attacks. Just how much more different could he be from Limbaugh, Cunningham, Savage, and Coulter?
When Buckley laid out his positions, he swung opinions his direction.
When Limbaugh, Cunningham, Savage, and Coulter talk, they send all the non-bigots running the other direction.

[amorosotom]

Bill Buckley...nothing more than an Archie Bunker with a Yale education. The harm this man did to people during the Red scare of the '50's can't be measured. Careers ruined. Families torn apart. Good names destroyed. I'm not going to speak well of a rich bastard who hated the common people.

[pedrothemigrant]

You mean the RED SCARE is over??? BWAHAHAHAHA

[ReginaW]

HE CAN'T HELP WHAT HE WAS BORN INTO, WHY ARE PEOPLE SO JUDGEMENTAL OF THE RICH, SOME OF THEM EMPLOY HUNDRES OF PEOPLE, PUMP MONEY INTO THE ECONOMY AND DO GREAT ACTS OF KINDNESS (BILL GATES) THE TERM RICH BASTARD IMPLIES RESENTMENT AND BITTERNESS. THERE ARE MANY POOR PEOPLE WHO DO TREAT OTHERS HORRIBLY AND NEVER CONTRIBUTE ANYTHING TO THIS WORLD.

[ReginaW]

EVERYTHING YOU SAID ABOUT BUCKLEY WAS RIGHT ON THE MONEY, BUT YOU HAVE TO UNDERSTAND THAT THE OTHERS HAVE DIFFERENT STYLES, CHECK OUT MARK LEVIN, A JEWISH CONVSERVATIVE, BRILLIANT AND VERY FUNNY. BUT, BUCKLEY WAS ONE OF A KIND, HE WAS SO SMART IT MADE MY BRAIN HURT JUST READING SOME OF HIS COLUMNS, I FEEL SO SAD THAT HE DIED.

[ntmessage]

Thanks for posting this Tavis. Bill Buckley will be missed. The world needs more quiet genius intellectuals like him and yourself. Not seeking the publicity, agreeing to disagree and the respectful of the nation, ideas and the public discourse.

[amorosotom]

Some intellectual genius. What has he written that will be remembered? Some intellectual. Vidal tore him up during the 68 convention debates. Reduced Bill to name calling. Some intellectual. Listen,Buckley was born to a rich family that robbed Mexico of its oil, and throughout his life felt he was royalty. It's because of his stupid selfishness this country has stumbled about for a half a century.

[FirstShirt]

He was a gentle man and one who I idolized as a young person wanting to be conservative and compassionate in practice, not in theory.

I loved his courage and desire to debate the tough issues with intellectual liberals in an appropriate and educational way. A way that brought out the best of american democracy...a place where you can be liberal and conservative and a gentleman at the same time.

He will be sorely missed. The Ann Coulters, Cunninghams, Rush Limbaughs of the world are a pathetic shadow of this great man.

[PhiloTheDialectician]

I am a progressive, not a conservative.

But I treasure the gifts of W.F.Buckley for his words, thoughts, and criticism.

He was smart, especially for his gay rights support:

http://www.nationalreview.com/buckley/buckley032803.asp

"The Texas law says that gays cannot do what non-gays can do, and the facts of the matter weigh against Texas. Even if the prosecution was brought on by agents provocateurs furtively setting out to add one more right to the Bill of Rights, it's hard to defend what the Texans did. The only way to do it, of course, is to say that what Texas did/does is not the Supreme Court's business. But this will prove hard, because in the Bowers case in 1986, the Court acknowledged that it was the Court's business, and now it will need to ask again whether due process, or equal protection, is involved. Justice Scalia will say it is not, and his opinion will be interesting, as his opinions are always interesting. It would be nice if Texas simply repealed the law, and let Lambda's clients go back to their practices undisturbed."

[PerryLogan]

I love the way Buckley would bulge his eyes when he thought he'd said something clever.

[Puller58]

Buckely's book "On the Firing Line" is interesting since while it is so long, it fails to mention Gore Vidal. Vidal was about the only person I know of who got a rise out of WFB. That shows he could be had despite his intellectual pretensions. As far as being a consistant conservative, he has wandered around throughout his career. At one time he supported the John Birch society, then he changed his mind. Likewise with the religious right. Michael Lind has good insight as a former friend who fell out with WFB. So how much of the current state of conservatism reflects on him? It remains a Trojan Horse for political opportunists and that has been true since his start-up of the National Review.

[thebeerdoctor]

I am old enough to remember when William F. Buckley called Gore Vidal a "faggot" on national television, during the police riot at the Chicago Democratic convention in 1968. Gore Vidal referred to Buckley as either a neo-nazi or a krypto-nazi. They were on the verge of coming to blows. Is there a video record of this in the ABC archives? Howard K. Smith was the moderator, or should I say referee?

[situationcritical]

Even the nicest comments about Buckley are lined with resentment over his conservatism.

[FirstShirt]

I don't see it that way. He faced his critics and never asked for quarter. He was ripped right and left and never whined and sniveled the way MSM talk show hosts do these days, when they aren't being rude. Bring on the resentment over conservatism. It is a balance against extremism.

[FearlessFreep]

"If everybody is guilty of everything, then nobody is guilty of anything"--WFB (putting words into Noam Chomsky's mouth)

"If Hannah Arendt proved that evil can be banal, William F. Buckley proves that it can be fatuous as well"--Gore Vidal

BTW, anyone who thinks the NATIONAL REVIEW has ever had any journalistic integrity should consider that when that magazine did a report on Chile's assassination of Orlando Letelier, they ignored their own research! (The facts weren't telling them what they wanted to hear.)

[RogerHWerner]

I don't think Buckeley ever claimed to be anything but conservative and he used the National Review rather unabashedly to promote his views. You're right: NR didn't have much journalistic integrity owing to its bias but it certainly had an impact on American politics. If one wanted to find out what was happening inside American conservatism that's where on looked.

[antaeus]

And in that "unabashed promotion" he furthered the topsy-turvy custom of radicals who increasingly opposed the evolving status quo as "conservatives." In their sometimes violent activism this crowd has been among the busiest of busybodies. It's a usage that has done violence to the language, this radical "conservatism."

[AristophanesJones]

Christ, can we stop fawning over Buckley's debate behavior already? Apparently people seem to think that not being loud automatically equals civility. Buckley would cut off and misrepresent opponents, change the subject when he was losing, and, like Dinesh D'Souza, dazzle his opponents with litanies of misinformation that kept them too busy trying to correct him. Was he tamer than most of the right-wing blowhards on TV today? Yeah, but so what? He was still snide, pretentious, and liked to think he was lording his supposed intellect over his opponents. And to hell with that ridiculous affectation of an accent.

[antaeus]

Hehe, what WAS that accent? Was that like Aunt Vera from "Mame"?--when you're from Pittsburgh, you have to do something?

[FirstShirt]

"He was still snide, pretentious, and liked to think he was lording his supposed intellect over his opponents. "

Those who have intellect are the first to recognize it in others...even their political enemies. Those who don't, consider ideas they don't understand to be proof of the pretentiousness of the spokesperson.

I read online comments from liberals and progressives who enjoyed sitting in front of the TV with their dictionary looking up words used by Buckley. Great conservative thinkers, like great liberal thinkers [Hubert Humphrey comes to mind] make us all better people by challenging us. As a conservative I applaud and appreciate the great liberal intellectuals who gave me perspective [and still do]. Try to have a little respect for those who contribute so much to the dialogue.

[amorosotom]

"Try to have a little respect for those who contribute so much to the dialogue". David Duke contributes so much to the dialogue. Should we respect him?

[Americanabroad]

My favorite Buckley red herring came during a debate held in Toronto on the pros and cons of a national healthcare system. It was on PBS, sometime in the mid 70s.

When his opponent gave Denmark as a postive example of a healthcare system, Buckley responded that in Denmark it was legal for a father to have sex with his 15-year-old daughter! Talk about misrepsresentation and changing the subject.

He did nothing to address the evidence presented. He simply dismissed the argument by essentially saying we don't have to consider anything that happens in Denmark

Having lived in Denmark for over a decade, I can attest to the fact the Danes do not condone incest, and when committed against children under the age of consent, it is prosecuted vigorously.

[Rog49Thomas]

WFB was from the "old school".

By and large he saw differences with many of his opponents as arising from their failure to think clearly and not from their innate malevolence. One might caveat that statement ot except certain opponents, e.g., communists.

Domestic opponents were wrong, not traitors.

One had the impression that if one's argument were strong enough, one could convince him to change his mind. Though Brother Bill was a man of solid principles and convictions.

He was definitely not in the camp of the ideologically blind - who follow the leader whatever idiocy he may initiate. And therefore on occasion opposed fellow conservaties. The most recent example was the debacle in Iraq.

And opposed the yahoo-type tactics practiced by the modern Republican Party and the loony interest groups they pandered to.

No man is perfect, but I for one would prefer WFB as a political opponent to Rush, Sean, Bill O'Bluster, Anne or others in the RP I could name.

[RogerHWerner]

I agree with your comments. I can't recall ever reading anything Buckeley wrote that I agreed with and while he was pretentious and pontifical he wasn't bombastic or rude. Half the trick to winning a debate is using the very tools Buckeley used. If your opponent let you get away with changing the subject or misrepresent facts...that's his problem. If I can find fault with Buckeley it is with his ideology: He was and is wrong about conservatism. It may have had some validity but I just don't see it as a viable approach to government at least not in a pluralistic, multicultural, multiracial society where too little of the total wealth is available to the majority. I don't think socialism is the solution either but somewhere between the two extremes is a system that can work. I certainly hope so.

[Rog49Thomas]

Agreed - especially your last point.

I think there is a tendency for any ideology which secures power to exhaust itself and to engage in excesses - however well meaning.

The benefit to having a responsible opposition is to pose reasonable alternatives which correct such exceses and force the other party to renew its thinking. A political theory of yin and yang, if you will.

The original conservative movement (WFB) was an antidote to problems that had occurred in the liberal model given its years of ascendancy.

The "trick" to making this system work is having vigorous rational debates on principles and policy while recognizing that one's opponents are necessarily stupid, venal or evil.

And having a little humility, very few if any have of us a direct 24/7 pipeline to ontological reality.

[Rog49Thomas]

Serious typo in penultimate paragraph "opponents are NOT necessarily"

[starboymikey]

My opinion? Bill Buckley should be mourned on his death as a Conservative who was first an American. Not perfect. But who among us is?
__________­__________­__________­__________­___

Very well said. Thank you.

[amorosotom]

Great American who loved Francisco Franco.

[starboymikey]

Even as a lifelong liberal, I was saddened to hear of William F. Buckley's passing. Although his views sometimes infuriated me, and I even enjoyed a laugh or two at his expense (political satirists had a field day with him, especially back in the sixties), I never felt he was mean or spiteful. In fact, one of the things I appreciated about him was his keen sense of humor, which extended to the ability to laugh at himself. How can you hate a political enemy who can laugh at himself?

I think that William Buckley was a Conservative in the purest sense of the word. His love of freedom is unquestioned and extended to his views on personal liberty and his disdain for the religious right.

Though I frequently disagreed with his commentary, I will actually miss the old fart.

Go with God, Bill.

[RogerHWerner]

What I enjoyed about Buckeley was his command of the language. And by any reasonable definition he was an intellectual and that puts him in some pretty august company.

[enoughoftheinsanity]

Buckley also scrubbed the conservative movement of crazies like Ayn Rand and the JOhn Birch Society. Not to mention his espousal of libertarianism.

I understand that most people on this site have a lot to disagree with him about, but he's no neocon and was a great asset to this country in more ways than one.

[RogerHWerner]

I wish he would have spoken out more forcefully against the Bush administration's excesses. he couldn't have approved of the erosion of constitutional guarantees but if he spoke out I'm not aware of it.