Preview: 04/05/2024 | 2m 31s | Video has closed captioning.
Discover the intellectual evolution and political legacy of William F. Buckley, Jr. See how the author and commentator, one of the foremost public intellectuals in American history, galvanized the modern conservative movement.
Aired: 04/05/24
- My guest tonight has probably appeared more hours on television talk shows than anyone in the history of television, which may or may not have something to do with the unhappy state of our universe, Mr. Susskind, you are most welcome.
- I wonder if I were unwelcome, how you'd introduce me.
(audience laughing) - [Narrator] Bill was a provocateur, a public brawler.
- Please don't proceed as though you had just made a cosmic breakthrough.
(audience laughing) - [Narrator 2] Buckley spends a great deal of his time in New York City, where he works at editing his magazine, National Review.
(coworkers laughing) - [Narrator 3] Without William Buckley, conservatism as we understand it would never have happened.
- [Narrator 4] He met young people all the time, and what he found was they liked him.
He was anti-establishment.
- [Narrator] He was everywhere.
You'd open up a newspaper and see him there.
You'd see his books in the bookstore.
You almost couldn't escape Bill Buckley.
- So the subject of your own intolerance of other people's point of view is I think itself linguistically interesting.
- [Narrator 3] Or he would have Noam Chomsky or he would have Huey Newton, William Kunstler, people that he disagreed with profoundly.
- See, the trouble with you is that you get very resentful whenever anybody reminds you of what you say.
If I said what you said, I'd feel the same way.
- [Narrator] It was an almost unstoppable energy.
- Much better looking, much younger looking than on television.
- [Narrator 3] So he decides to run for mayor.
- It is instructive to meditate upon the rise of crime and our apparent acclimation to it.
- [Narrator] They're upset about drugs, they're upset about crime, and they saw Buckley, they saw themselves.
- [Narrator 3] One of the slogans of the Civil Rights Movement in those days was freedom now.
Buckley's slogan for the Civil Rights Movement would've been some freedom one day, when you're ready.
This is the beginning of the movement of the white working class into the Republican party.
- We need your help in a crusade to change the direction of this country.
(audience applauding) - [Narrator] Conservative movement had become a machine that Buckley had helped build, but now was beyond his ability to fully control.
- [Narrator] You know, when you're on the boat, it doesn't matter how fast you're moving, you just have to keep moving some way.
And that's what Buckley was like.
- [Narrator 4] Bill didn't want merely to taste life, he wanted to drink it and he wanted to gulp it.
- [Bill] Ninety-nine people out of 100 are interesting, and the hundredth is interesting because he is the exception.
(gentle music)
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