Thursday, February 28, 2008

WFB Changes His Mind   [Peter Robinson]

WFB was, of course, correct nearly all the time—he was a great man in many ways, but one of the most important was that he was right.  On Vietnam and civil rights, though, he changed his mind.

WFB discussed his thinking on both during an episode of Uncommon Knowledge, devoted to the signal year of 1968, that we taped with Christopher Hitchens during the thirtieth anniversary year, 1998. Regarding Vietnam, I asked if WFB regretted that we had ever gone into Indochina in the first place. His answer, simply: "Yes." And, regarding civil rights, the following:

BUCKLEY Well, we opposed that act on the grounds that it asked for constitutional liberties, in an age in which constitutional liberties were being mobilized for this cause and that, rather with abandon. And we saw them addressing a situation which we doubted could be addressed in that way, but I have a very full perspective on life in the South in those days, and it was life that simply assumed that whatever headway blacks made would be made within their own culture and that federal interposition would be simply a renewal of the Civil War. That was wrong. But that deception was very, very engaging.

ROBINSON And at what stage did you decide that it was wrong? What I'm interested in—did the movement itself change your thinking and that of your family?

BUCKLEY No, what changed it was 10 or 15 years after he had passed. I said to myself, "I don't think those constitutional arguments on which we relied were misspoken, nor do I think them opportunistic, but we've got here a situation in which a better thing happens...[even though it] would [also] have happened by orderly pursuit of a constitutional decorum. I feel the same way about getting to the war against Hitler. I think it was full of deception, hypocrisy. I think that Roosevelt did things entirely different from what he intended...[but] I'm glad he did.

For the entire exchange, in print or on MP3 player—including, of course, Christopher Hitchens's side of the arguments—click here.

02/28 01:15 PMShare