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  • 5 weeks ago
See how one of the architects of the modern conservative movement rose to prominence as a public intellectual and influe | dG1fU0Z5Z3E0X0Utd2s
Transcript
00:00My guest tonight has probably appeared more hours on television talk shows than anyone in the history of television,
00:06which may or may not have something to do with the unhappy state of our universe.
00:09Mr. Susskind, you are most welcome.
00:12I wonder if I were unwelcome how you'd introduce me.
00:15Bill was a provocateur, a public brawler.
00:18Please don't proceed as though you just made a cosmic breakthrough.
00:22Buckley spends a great deal of his time in New York City, where he works at editing his magazine, National Review.
00:30Without William Buckley, conservatism, as we understand it, would never have happened.
00:35He met young people all the time, and what he found was they liked him.
00:39He was anti-establishment.
00:42He was everywhere.
00:44You'd open up a newspaper and see him there.
00:46You'd see his books in the bookstore.
00:49You almost couldn't escape Bill Buckley.
00:51So the subject of your own intolerance of other people's point of view is, I think, itself, linguistically interesting.
00:56Or he would have known Chomsky, or he would have Huey Newton, William Kuntzler.
01:02People that he disagreed with profoundly.
01:05See, the trouble with you is that you get very resentful whenever anybody reminds you of what you say.
01:08If I said what you said, I'd feel the same way.
01:10It was an almost unstoppable energy.
01:15Much better looking, much younger looking than on television.
01:18So he decides to run for mayor.
01:22It is instructive to meditate upon the rise of crime and our apparent acclamation to it.
01:27They're upset about drugs.
01:28They're upset about crime.
01:30And they saw Buckley, and they saw themselves.
01:32One of the slogans of the civil rights movement in those days was,
01:35Freedom Now.
01:36Buckley's slogan for the civil rights movement would have been,
01:39Some freedom one day when you're ready.
01:41This is the beginning of the movement of the white working class into the Republican Party.
01:48We need your help in a crusade to change the direction of this country.
01:54The conservative movement had become a machine that Buckley had helped build,
01:58but now was beyond his ability to fully control.
02:01You know, when you're on the boat, it doesn't matter how fast you're moving.
02:04You just have to keep moving some way.
02:06And that's what Buckley was like.
02:07Bill didn't want merely to taste like it.
02:10He wanted to drink it in.
02:11He wanted to gulp it.
02:1299 people out of 100 are interesting,
02:15and the 100th is interesting because he is the exception.
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