Episode Guide
1966-1999
Scope and Contents note
The Episode Guide is arranged by show number. Numbers that are followed by an
"R" are repeat broadcasts of the same program, while numbers followed by an
"E" are edited repeat broadcasts. Guests are listed with the program title,
using Library of Congress name authorities, in a last name, first name
sequence.
When applicable, links for purchasing full-length episodes and the
availability of special order DVDs are also included. The Episode Guide also
includes links to Hoover's digital collections website for each program and
information about the three types of program research materials: background
files, publicity files, and transcripts.
Background files include materials such as clippings, correspondence,
transcripts, histories, press summaries, and printed matter, as well as
other collected materials on speakers and their appearances on
Firing
Line
.
Publicity files are available for public television shows produced by SECA
and contain materials such as photographs, negatives, slides, transcripts,
newsletters, and other materials, The types of materials available for each
show vary.
Transcripts of
Firing
Line
are both
typewritten and printed. Also included among transcripts are two productions
hosted by William F. Buckley Jr. that were not
Firing
Line
programs. The shows have been designated as 000a and 000b.
These programs are included in the Episode Guide, and the transcripts are
located in box 159. Downloadable transcripts for most
Firing
Line
programs are available on Hoover's digital
collections website and can be accessed through the links that accompany
each program entry in the Episode Guide.
item Program Number 1
"Poverty: Hopeful or Hopeless?"
Guests: Harrington, Michael,
1928-
4 April 1966
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 70 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 159 : 4
Program details: President Johnson had just declared war on poverty, and
Mr. Harrington, an avowed socialist who had started out on the staff of
Dorothy Day's Catholic Worker, had been among the first to enlist. On
this show (the first
Firing
Line
taped, though not the first aired), Mr.
Harrington begins by describing the despair and consequent lack of
initiative engendered by poverty; WFB engages him on the issue of
whether we can hope to alleviate either material or emotional poverty
through government action. MH: "Being kicked around and being pushed
down, living in dense, miserable housing, and dealing with cockroaches
and rats are not the kinds of things that make one a balanced, content,
normal, and adjusted healthy personality." WFB: "I couldn't agree with
you more. But I'm trying to raise the following question: To what
extent... can we count on [a poverty program] to alleviate all these
concomitant miseries?"
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001MBTSD6
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5935
item Program Number 2
"Prayer in the Public Schools"
Guests: Pike, James A. (James
Albert), 1913-1969.
6 April 1966
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 70 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 159 : 5
Program details: Bishop Pike was thought of as the wild man of the
Episcopal Church (by this time he had been put on trial for heresy,
though he had emerged still wearing the Episcopal purple), but on this
show he is genial and persuasive on the subject of school prayer
specifically and the First Amendment generally. JAP: "I think [the
Supreme Court Justices] use the First Amendment in a way it was never
intended to be used. [The Founding Fathers] talked about establishment
of religion. And they meant, really, establishment like the Church of
England is. ... It was forbidding the federal agency, the Congress, from
interfering with the existing states' establishment." ... "I personally
do not see the value of state-prescribed prayer or of the reading of the
Bible, for instance, without study of the background, the context, the
thoughtful criticism of the passages, in school. And I think it's a
disservice to the Church, too, because it gives parents the illusion
that this side of life is being covered by the public agency when, in
fact, it's very trivial and perfunctory."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.2
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001N0LEII
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5936
item Program Number 3
"Vietnam: Pull Out? Stay In? Escalate?"
Guests: Thomas,
Norman, 1884-1968.
8 April 1966
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 70 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 159 : 6
Program details: Mr. Thomas--the grand old man of the American Left,
six-time Socialist Party candidate for President--was by this point
focusing all his energies on opposition to America's involvement in the
Vietnam War. This often fierce exchange, which places both men on the
firing
line
, begins with WFB's asking why his guest supported the Korean
War but opposes the Vietnam War and goes on to explore whether it is
realistic even to aspire to contain Communism. NT: "Mr. Buckley, you
seem to believe in cruelty as a necessary adjunct to this kind of war.
Your main point is that somehow we're going to contain Communism this
way, and we aren't. We may delay certain events in Communism. We're not
going to contain it. We-" WFB: "Excuse me, was the war in Greece cruel?
Did we contain the Communists in Greece?"
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.3
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001MBTSE0
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5937
item Program Number 4
"Capital Punishment"
Guests: Allen, Steve, 1921-
11 April 1966
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 70 : 4
Transcript: Box/Folder 159 : 7
Program details: The death penalty was under heavy attack in the courts
and in public forums, and polls indicated that it was the issue that
most sharply divided liberals from conservatives. Messrs. Buckley and
Allen begin by discussing why this should be a touchstone issue, and
progress to considerations of whether the death penalty in fact deters,
and whether, even if it does, it can be morally defended. SA: I think
there are probably various reasons why conservatives generally favor
capital punishment. I think one of them maybe so obvious there is the
traditional risk of overlooking it, and that is simply that it exists
and that it has existed for a long time."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.4
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001MBTSEK
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5938
item Program Number 5
"Where Does the Civil-Rights Movement Go Now?"
Guests:
Farmer, James, 1920-
18 April 1966
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 70 : 5
Transcript: Box/Folder 159 : 8
Program details: "Two years after the Civil Rights Act was passed, Mr.
Farmer was arguing for what he called affirmative action," WFB suggests,
and Mr. Farmer denies hotly and cogently--though not, as it would turn
out, presciently--that affirmative action would almost certainly turn
into numerical quotas. One sample: JF: "President Kennedy, incidentally,
adopted the same idea. It's said that he stepped off a plane in
Washington. There was an honor guard there to meet him. He saw no
Negroes. He called an officer, and said, 'I see no Negroes here.' The
officer said, 'Mr. President, no Negroes have applied.' He said, 'Go out
and find some.'" WFB: "Well, one hopes he will find more productive jobs
for Negroes than simply to make them stand parade for dignitaries."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.5
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5939
item Program Number 6
"Should the House Committee on Un-American Activities Be
Abolished?"
Guests: Faulk, John Henry.
21 April 1966
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 70 : 6
Transcript: Box/Folder 159 : 9
Program details: "Mr. Faulk is primarily known," WFB begins, "as a
certified victim of an anti-Communist organization called Aware," which
had brought him to the attention of the House Committee on Un-American
Activities. Mr. Faulk had sued Aware and been awarded "the most colossal
judgment in libel history"; he was now seeking the abolition of the
committee. On this show, Mr. Faulk begins, in his down-home sort of
voice, by quoting the then-Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan as having
said that "the committee's program so closely parallels the program of
the Ku Klux Klan that there is no distinguishable difference between
them," and we're off to the races.
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.6
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001MBTSF4
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5940
item Program Number 7
"The Prevailing Bias"
Guests: Susskind, David, 1920-
2 May 1966
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 70 : 7
Transcript: Box/Folder 159 : 10
Program details: The tone is set in the first few minutes, when Mr.
Susskind responds to the introduction (in which WFB had said, among
other things, "Mr. Susskind is a staunch liberal. If there were a
contest for the title Mr. Eleanor Roosevelt, he would unquestionably win
it") by saying: "I must say that I regard that introduction as somewhat
rude and insulting, Mr. Buckley. I had hoped, on the occasion of your
having your own television program, you would abandon your traditional
penchant for personal bitchiness and stick to facts and issues; but
evidently your rude behavior is congenital and compulsive. And so I
forgive you." But among the billingsgate there is serious discussion of
the current offerings on the airwaves, the tendency of the Jewish
community to resist the anti-Communist movement, and more.
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.7
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E50RQ2
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5941
item Program Number 8
"The New Frontier: The Great Society"
Guests: Goodwin,
Richard N.
6 May 1966
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 70 : 8
Transcript: Box/Folder 159 : 11
Program details: Mr. Goodwin was present at the creation--as WFB reminds
us, "he is credited with supplying that ominous phrase, 'The Great
Society' "--and he defends the Johnson program ably in this
good-tempered session. RG: "Well, I think the Great Society
...represents a change or a breaking point from the ideas of the New
Deal. I think the essential idea behind the New Deal was that rising
prosperity, more equitably distributed among the people, would solve
most of the problems of the country. . . . Now, having succeeded-not
completely, but to quite a degree-in that effort ... we find it doesn't
solve the major problems, the kinds of problems you talked about in your
campaign [for Mayor of New York] ...and that now we have to turn our
attention, not only ... to relief of the poor or dispossessed, but to
the quality of life of every American ..."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.8
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001MBTSFO
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5942
item Program Number 9
"Civil Disobedience: How Far Can It Go?"
Guests: Gregory,
Dick.
16 May 1966
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 70 : 9
Transcript: Box/Folder 159 : 12
Program details: Mr. Gregory had been arrested many times for his civil
disobedience, and he had been shot during the Watts riots. As
conversation, this show never quite clicks: Mr. Buckley is trying to
clarify the line between peaceful protest and civil disobedience, while
Mr. Gregory is engaged in blurring it. Still, a fascinating glimpse of
the worldview of an inveterate protestor. DG: When these people [the
Nuremberg defendants] pleaded that they were only obeying the law ...
the world's justices declared that they were guilty and that man has a
duty to disobey laws that are contrary to great moral laws. One day we
might have another trial, be it in Heaven, be it in Asia--I don't know
if we'll be judged by the Chinese or by the angels--but I want to be
able to plead not guilty."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.9
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5943
item Program Number 10
"McCarthyism: Past, Present, Future"
Guests: Cherne, Leo,
1912-
16 May 1966
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 70 : 10
Transcript: Box/Folder 159 : 13
Program details: Mr. Buckley seeks, with his old friend and adversary Mr.
Cherne, to explore, as he puts it, why Joseph McCarthy's
oversimplifications were judged to be almost unique and highly damaging
... whereas the contemporary oversimplifications of, say, a Harry
Truman, or, before that, of a Franklin Roosevelt, or subsequently of a
Lyndon Johnson, are not seen as that offensive." A rich conversation,
full of detail. LC: "Well, to suggest, for example, that General
Marshall lied about his whereabouts on the morning of Pearl Harbor, and
to suggest, as Senator McCarthy did, that in fact he was meeting Maksim
Litvinov at the Washington airport when in fact this was not true--this
is not oversimplification in the normal language of political
discourse."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.10
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001MBTSG8
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5944
item Program Number 11
"Vietnam: What Next?"
Guests: Lynd, Staughton.
23 May 1966
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 70 : 11
Transcript: Box/Folder 159 : 14
Program details: "Mr. Lynd had recently visited Hanoi--to propagandize
for the Vietcong," Mr. Buckley suggests; to "clarify, if we could, the
approach to peace negotiations from the other side," Mr. Lynd insists. A
spirited exchange with a scholar whose specialty is "the Radical
Tradition in America before 1900." WFB: "Listen, Professor, let's stop
dropping these little statistical gems around the place. What Eisenhower
said when he used the term 80 per cent was that 80 per cent of the
[Vietnamese] people would have joined in any war against the French. He
didn't say that 80 per cent were in favor of Ho Chi Minh. . . ." SL:
"Well, what President Eisenhower said, in fact, ... is that at the time
of the end of the war against the French, in 1954, ... 80 per cent of
the people of Vietnam as a whole would have voted for Ho Chi Minh in an
election." WFB: "As an alternative to Bao Dai. Ho Chi Minh had not
started his rather systematic euthanasia of people who disagreed with
him, however, as of 1954. He was considered the George Washington of
that area."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.11
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001MBTSH2
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5945
item Program Number 12
"The Future of States' Rights"
Guests: Golden, Harry, 1902-
23 May 1966
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 70 : 12
Transcript: Box/Folder 159 : 15
Program details: A lively discussion that begins with the states' rights
movement in Mr. Golden's adopted South and deepens to cover the origins
of our federal system and the way it has evolved. WFB: "Aren't you going
to acknowledge at least this much tonight: that there are people who
bear no ill will whatsoever to the Negro, who nevertheless believe that
Jefferson and Madison ... had something interesting to say when they
devised the federal system? ..." HG: "... The Founding Fathers could be
forgiven, Mr. Buckley, for not having known that we would ... turn an
agricultural society into an industrial society ..." WFB: "They can be
forgiven for not predicting Earl Warren, for that matter." HG: "But,
however, they were wonderful men ... because the Constitution they
devised was not statutes, it was a pattern of behavior. And a pattern
which in their tremendous wisdom they figured that maybe things will
come about that will require constant change."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.12
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E53T1C
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5946
item Program Number 13
"The Future of the Republican Party"
Guests: Luce, Clare
Boothe, 1903-1987.
26 May 1966
Scope and Contents note
Transcript: Box/Folder 159 : 16
Program details: The first of several
Firing
Line
appearances by the
sharp-tongued Mrs. Luce, who here takes on the party she has served in
many capacities--as keynoter at the 1948 National Convention, as
legislator and diplomat, as Co-Chairman of the National Citizens'
Committee for Goldwater. The crackling conversation ranges back to
Thomas Jefferson and forward to the next election. CBL: "Well, the Whigs
went out of existence on the slavery issue. And I don't think that
parties make issues. Issues make parties. And the Republican Party seems
to be fresh out of issues, fresh out of programs, fresh out of ideas,
after a period of almost sixty years as the dominant party [from 1861 to
1932].... I don't care who the Republicans nominate [in 1968]: unless
there is a war, a wounding war, or a depression, the Democrats are going
to win."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.13
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5947
item Program Number 14
"The Future of the American Theater"
Guests: Merrick, David,
1911-
6 June 1966
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 70 : 13
Transcript: Box/Folder 159 : 17
Program details: Mr. Merrick is not just any producer but, as WFB puts
it, "the most successful producer on Broadway"--and one whom the critics
have accused of "inveigling audiences into going to [his shows] ... and
the audiences are thereupon so ashamed of their gullibility in
succumbing to Mr. Merrick's publicity, they will laugh at bad jokes,
allow their hearts to break at the sight of a valentine, and leave the
theater humming untuneful songs." (Mr. Merrick asks to correct the
record: "I can't recall that I've ever had a bad joke in one of my
plays, or an untuneful song, or that I've ever produced a bad play.")
The conversation, rich with anecdote, winds up being less about the
future of the theater than about the relation of the critic, on the one
hand, to the theater company and, on the other hand, to the
audience--"sort of a necessary evil," says Mr. Merrick. "... So, I bark
at the critics and snipe at them, that's part of the game, because I
think I have the right to criticize them if they have the right to
criticize my product."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.14
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E52U26
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5948
item Program Number 15
"Bobby Kennedy and Other Mixed Blessings"
Guests: Kempton,
Murray, 1917-
6 June 1966
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 70 : 14
Transcript: Box/Folder 159 : 18
Program details: The first
Firing
Line
appearance of Mr. Kempton, of whom
WFB says that "he is the finest writer in the newspaper profession," but
"his specialty is not, in this critic's opinion, logic." On the subject
of Bobby Kennedy's motivations in attacking Lyndon Johnson, however
(Johnson "cannot win with Robert Kennedy because he's William of
Orange"), these two old friends and adversaries see pretty much eye to
eye. As Mr. Kempton puts it, "[RFK] lacks his brother's real
appreciation for people who were a little older than he was and a little
more stable and a little more serious. It seems to me that his
radicalism is a total hangup on the young.... And what his brother would
have regarded as nonsense in conduct, he refuses to regard as nonsense
as long as it isn't done by somebody who is older than 25 years of
age."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.15
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001MBTSHW
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5949
item Program Number 16
"The Future of Conservatism"
Guests: Goldwater, Barry M.
(Barry Morris), 1909-1998.
9 June 1966
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 70 : 15
Transcript: Box/Folder 159 : 19
Program details: Under Arizona law, Mr. Goldwater had had to give up his
Senate seat to run for the Presidency, and so at the moment he was a
private citizen--though still, even after his disastrous defeat, the
acknowledged leader of the conservative wing of the Republican Party.
This rich conversation ranges from the specific and immediate (Medicare,
the prospects for the 1968 election) to the general (Has too much power
accrued to the Presidency? How can it be curbed?). BG: "I think the
country has become pretty much a two-term country. So I think it's
pretty much up to the President. If he decides to run again, the chances
of the Republicans beating him are not excellent. However, if he keeps
on with his lack of success in Vietnam, the downfall of NATO, ... the
growing cost of living in our country, the chances get better. But we
don't like to win on those kinds of chances."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.16
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E52U2G
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5950
item Program Number 17
"Public Power vs. Private Power"
Guests: Gore, Albert, 1907-
9 June 1966
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 70 : 16
Transcript: Box/Folder 159 : 20
Program details: Mr. Buckley describes his guest as "a tough and
knowledgeable controversialist," and Senator Gore sets about proving him
right with his passionate defense of the Tennessee Valley Authority,
which Barry Goldwater, in 1964, had proposed selling to private
enterprise. WFB: "Why, Senator Gore, shouldn't parts of the TVA be sold
to privately owned companies?" AG: "... I'll ask you: Why should it? I
know of no reason why it should." WFB: "Well, the presumption is, isn't
it, that that which can be owned privately ought to be, in a
non-socialist society?" AG: "Well, is there any reason why any part of
the TVA should be owned privately? It seems to me that this is an
integrated, successfully operating utility, one of the greatest
successes of the world ...Unless we want to sell all of it, why do we
wish to dismember it?" WFB: "Well, it seems to me that it breaks down
rather naturally into component parts. I can't imagine anybody..." AG:
"Well, so does your hand, but why would you sell one finger?"
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.17
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5951
item Program Number 18
"Communists and Civil Liberties"
Guests: Rauh, Joseph L.,
1911-
10 June 1966
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 71 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 159 : 21
Program details: After a bristly beginning (JLR: "I won't say thank you
for that insulting introduction"), guest and host settle down for a
serious debate on the best way to protect our national security. JLR:
"The method of checking on everybody in the hope of getting the spies
doesn't work. A Harvard professor, a physicist, said it better than I
can.... He said, 'When you watch diamond rings and toothbrushes with the
same intensity, it's true that you lose less toothbrushes, but you lose
a lot more diamond rings.' ... Let's take the Rosenbergs. There's a
perfectly good case. [J. Edgar] Hoover had leads that would have led him
to the Rosenbergs years earlier, but [the FBI] had so much material,they
could never get to it."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.18
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5952
item Program Number 19
"The Role of the Church Militant"
Guests: Coffin, William
Sloane.
27 June 1966
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 71 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 159 : 22
Program details: WFB and his guest--an old friend and adversary from
undergraduate days and now a Presbyterian minister--agree that the
Christian Church in all its denominations is in trouble, increasingly
ignored by the young and regarded as irrelevant. Mr. Coffin, however,
argues that this is largely because the churches have not taken up the
cause of civil rights for black Americans; Mr. Buckley maintains that it
has more to do with their ignoring the oppression behind the Iron
Curtain. One sample: WSC: "I'll tell you, Bill, why James Baldwin is
down on the Church. And Louis Lomax and also many of the rest of [the
black leaders]. Because they have told me, 'Every time we see that cross
we think, There's a place where they call us niggers.' The primary
problem of the Church in our time is not that people don't believe in
God, it's that the prosperous Church in our time has failed to make
common cause with the sufferers of this world."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.19
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E50RQW
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5953
item Program Number 20
"Why Are the Students Unhappy?"
Guests: Bikel, Theodore.
27 June 1966
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 71 : 4
Transcript: Box/Folder 159 : 23
Program details: Student unrest was not yet at its most virulent, but
many campuses had seen sit-ins and other disruptions. WFB posits that a
chief cause of the problems is adult unwillingness to enforce
discipline. Mr. Bikel, who had grown up in a kibbutz in Israel but
quickly rebelled against its strictures, posits that the younger
generation must be left free to develop its own values, even if these do
not include what the older generation would call civility. TB: "Do you
really think that we live in the kind of an age where ... a parent can
obstinately cling to the belief that the values of today are not
substantially different from the values of yesterday?" WFB: "But the
parents are right." TB: "I knew that you would say that."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.20
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E50RR6
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5954
item Program Number 21
"Senator Dodd and General Klein"
Guests: Dodd, Thomas J.
(Thomas Joseph), 1907-1971.
22 August 1966
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 71 : 5
Transcript: Box/Folder 159 : 24
Program details: Senator Dodd had been accused by the muckraking
columnist Drew Pearson of having had improper dealings with one General
Julius Klein, an agent of the West German government--as WFB paraphrases
the Pearson charge, "instead of serving his constituents in Connecticut
and the nation as a whole, Senator Dodd has been primarily concerned to
serve the interests of General Julius Klein." This old controversy
doesn't wear as well as some, but along the way we get interesting
insights into the propriety of Americans representing foreign countries
(as WFB points out, John Foster Dulles and Dean Acheson each did at one
time or another) and into how a newspaper columnist with an axe to grind
and a Senate investigating committee can work hand in hand. TD:
"Unfortunately, the terminology 'foreign agent' has an ugly connotation,
I think, for most people-the two-peaked-hat character who's spying on
Washington. The truth of the matter is that there are many
distinguished, celebrated lawyers and citizens who are representatives
of foreign governments, and they serve a very useful purpose."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.21
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E52U30
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5955
item Program Number 22
"Extremism"
Guests: Schary, Dore.
22 August 1966
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 71 : 6
Transcript: Box/Folder 159 : 25
Program details: A crackling debate on political extremism, Right and
Left. It is our host's contention that Mr. Schary and his organization
are rather more alert to the former than to the latter: "It's awfully
hard to discuss these questions, Mr. Schary, because you have been, I
think, so amiable and so reasonable and so soft-spoken; but when you get
on the typewriter, it sort of comes out different." Why, for instance,
do Mr. Schary and the ADL regularly attack the John Birch Society and
the Ku Klux Klan (and point out that some of their members actively
supported Barry Goldwater's campaign) but not attack the equal and
opposite extremism of Women's Strike for Peace or the Fair Play for Cuba
Committee or the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee? DS:
"Nobody's ever asked me to write anything about it ... Not everything I
say, you see, gets into print."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.22
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E52U3A
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5956
item Program Number 23
"Civil Rights and Foreign Policy"
Guests: McKissick, Floyd
B. (Floyd Bixler), 1922-
22 August 1966
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 71 : 7
Transcript: Box/Folder 160 : 1
Program details: Mr. McKissick had taken over the leadership of CORE from
James Farmer (see
Firing
Line
005) and had led the organization in a
more militant direction, and not only concerning race relations within
the United States. As WFB puts it, his guest "proceeds on the assumption
that there is a nexus between" civil rights and America's foreign
policy. Hence, for example, Mr. McKissick had visited Cambodia and had
determined that American bombing there was unjustified. This often
heated exchange begins with the Henry Wallace movement of 1948 and goes
on from there. WFB: "The point is whether you are going to exercise the
kind of prudence that will keep CORE from perhaps becoming what the
Progressive Party of 1948 became, which is simply a pawn of the Soviet
Union." FM: "Well, I know a lot of people who worked in that campaign
for Wallace who were not Communists, and ... there were many good
people. I think to put a label on people, I've never been one who wanted
to put a label on people ..."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.23
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E52U3K
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5957
item Program Number 24
"The President and the Press"
Guests: Salinger, Pierre.
12 September 1966
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 71 : 8
Transcript: Box/Folder 160 : 2
Program details: A masterly performance from Mr. Salinger, who reacts
smoothly, very smoothly, to Mr. Buckley's attempts to get him to admit
that the press generally gave President Kennedy a free ride. PS: "The
objective of a Presidential Press Conference is not, in my opinion, for
reporters to have the opportunity to embarrass and harass the President,
but rather to elicit from him the information which is of value to the
country." ... "I'm getting a new vision on my ability at the White
House, and I must say that I'm indebted to you for it, because if I was
as successful as you say I was, then, obviously, my services should be
sought by others who have not quite come around to see me since the days
of the '64 debacle [when he lost his Senate seat to George Murphy]."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.24
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E50RRG
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5958
item Program Number 25
"Are Public Schools Necessary?"
Guests: Goodman, Paul,
1911-1972.
12 September 1966
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 71 : 9
Transcript: Box/Folder 160 : 3
Program details: Mr. Buckley begins by saying of his guest, "Where he
stands, ideologically, in conventional terms, it is hard to say.
Probably no one would wish either to claim him altogether, or to
disclaim him altogether." And we soon see why, in this exhilarating
discussion of education, poverty, and American society. PG: "Now if we
mean by literacy, knowing the art of reading and writing, where the
objects of the art are imagination and truth, then, of course, to be
literate is, you know, importantly to be fulfilling yourself as a human
being; but if we mean by literacy, being processed so that you can
understand the code in order to buy products, or obey orders, or the
rest, then it's a question whether most people wouldn't be freer if they
weren't quite so caught in this code."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.25
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00G707G2W
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5959
item Program Number 26
"The Playboy Philosophy"
Guests: Hefner, Hugh M. (Hugh
Marston), 1926-
12 September 1966
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 71 : 10
Transcript: Box/Folder 160 : 4
Program details: Between these two antagonists one might have expected a
heated debate, but what we get instead is a serious discussion of sexual
ethics in the latter part of the 20th century. HH: "The philosophy
really I think is an anti-Puritanism, a response really to the puritan
part of our culture...." WFB: "I'm not worrying about whether you reject
Cotton Mather's accretions on the Mosaic Law, but whether you reject the
Mosaic Law. Do you reject, for instance, monogamy? Do you reject the
notion of sexual continence before marriage? ..." HH: "Well, I think
what it really comes down to is an attempt to establish a ... new
morality, and I really think that's what the American ... sexual
revolution's really all about. It's an attempt to replace the old
legalism. It's certainly not a rejection of monogamy as such, but very
much an attempt- In the case of premarital sex, there really hasn't been
any moral code in the past except simply that thou shalt not. And-" WFB:
"Well, that's a code, isn't it?" HH: "Well, perhaps. I don't think it's
a very realistic one."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.26
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E52U44
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5960
item Program Number 27
"Do Liberals Make Good Republicans?"
Guests: Chafee, John
H., 1922-
15 September 1966
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 71 : 11
Transcript: Box/Folder 160 : 5
Program details: A sparkling exchange with a very successful liberal
Republican, who, unlike some other liberal Republicans, backed his
party's presidential candidate in 1964. Messrs. Buckley and Chafee
address policy issues (taxation, federal subsidies) and also intra-party
relations. WFB: "Suppose you were to run for President, and somebody
started calling you a fascist. Presumably, you are no more a fascist
than Senator Goldwater is, but are we up against here something which
suggests the special difficulty of the Republican Party ... because of
the excesses which the opposition feels free to use? ..." JC: "I agree
with you that the Republicans just cannot spend their time chopping up
Republicans, and I think this so-called eleventh commandment that they
adopted out there in California, which was that a Republican shall not
say an evil word about another Republican, is something we've just got
to have...." WFB: "Well, what about an evil Republican? What do you say
about him?" JC: "I find that rather a contradiction in terms. I haven't
yet found an evil Republican."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.27
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5961
item Program Number 28
"Should Labor Power Be Reduced?"
Guests: Riesel, Victor.
19 September 1966
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 71 : 12
Transcript: Box/Folder 160 : 6
Program details: Mr. Riesel, as Mr. Buckley recounts in his introduction,
"considers himself... a militant unionist"; despite, or because of,
this, he is relentless in his exposure of union corruption, which is
what led one of the corrupted, in 1956, to throw acid in his face,
blinding him but by no means putting him out of action. An illuminating
discussion of the history and present of trade unionism in this country.
VR: "Bill, the whole business of using the word 'metaphysical' with
George Meany has so discombobulated me, I'm going to have to recollect
all my thoughts. But no, seriously, the fact is that when you're talking
about new laws, I mean the Sherman Act, the Clayton Act ..., you're
going back 85 years to an era when ... the robber baron had the power
... Sure, you have a parallel now, there's enormous industrial power in
the trade-union movement, but we have laws, and I say, enforce those
laws."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.28
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E52U4E
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5962
item Program Number 29
"Communist China and the United Nations"
Guests: Lerner,
Max, 1902-
19 September 1966
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 71 : 13
Transcript: Box/Folder 160 : 7
Program details: Should Red China be admitted to the United Nations, at
the expense of expelling Nationalist China? Mr. Lerner has come to
believe it should: "It would help a good deal if we can show them [the
up-and-coming generation in the Third World] that we're not fighting
men. We're not a fighting nation. We do not depend upon the exclusion of
Communist China from the UN in order to really show what we stand for
and what we're about." To Mr. Buckley, the problem is less the admission
than the expulsion: "I'm simply saying that as a pragmatic fact I don't
think anybody thinks that we are 'afraid' to bring Red China in except
to the extent that we are afraid of doing something wrong....And also
that we are afraid of, for instance, the fate of fifteen million
overseas Chinese, that we are afraid of the fate of twelve million
Chinese in Taiwan, and we're afraid of the collapse of morale in the
free sectors of Asia."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.29
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5963
item Program Number 30
"National Priorities and Disarmament"
Guests: Melman,
Seymour.
3 October 1966
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 71 : 14
Transcript: Box/Folder 160 : 8
Program details: Mr. Melman was a prominent opponent of our part in the
arms race--it was he who coined the term "overkill." His opposition is
based partly on an opposition to the arms race per se, partly on the
assertion that "embedded in the activity that is paid for out of these
defense funds is about two-thirds, or perhaps even a bit more, of the
prime skilled talent of the country, research engineers and scientists
of the nation." WFB takes issue with his numbers, and we're off and
running.
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.30
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5964
item Program Number 31
"LBJ and Evans and Novak"
Guests: Evans, Rowland, 1921-
3 October 1966
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 71 : 15
Transcript: Box/Folder 160 : 9
Program details: We eventually get to LBJ, but first Mr. Buckley leads
his guest into a lively though cautious discussion of how a journalist's
own politics affect his writing and, specifically, whether Evans and
Novak give equal treatment to liberals and conservatives. WFB: "It may
sound like rather a personal question, but I think it's objectively
interesting. You wrote in your column a few months ago that you had
heard Nixon say that the, quotes, Buckleyites were more dangerous to the
Republican Party than the Birchites...." RE: "I think that what Nixon
meant was that the Buckleyites are very persuasive, they're very able,
they have an outlet in the National Review and other publications, they
are extremely intelligent ... whereas ... the Birchers are rather ..."
WFB: "Does all that make it anti-Republican? To be intelligent and
persuasive?" RN: "... I think he probably felt you should ask Mr. Nixon
this ... that the Buckleyites are to the right of the mainstream of the
Republican Party and because they do have this forensic and persuasive
ability ... that they represent a greater threat. But I beg you to ask
Mr. Nixon that question...."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.31
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5965
item Program Number 32
"Civilian Review Board: Yes or No?"
Guests: Kheel, Theodore
Woodrow.
7 October 1966
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 71 : 16
Transcript: Box/Folder 160 : 10
Program details: The hottest of many hot issues in New York City in the
first year of the Lindsay administration--and in a period when the major
cities of America were erupting with race riots--was whether there
should be a civilian-dominated review board overseeing the police. Mayor
Lindsay had made establishing such a board an important part of his
mayoral campaign and had instituted it in July; Mr. Kheel ably defends
it as affording protection (especially for minorities) against police
brutality without hampering their legitimate law-enforcement capability.
Mr. Buckley, who had made opposition to the board an important part of
his campaign against Mr. Lindsay, quotes J. Edgar Hoover as saying of
Rochester, N.Y., a city with a civilian review board, that "the police
were so careful to avoid accusations of improper conduct that they were
virtually paralyzed." Note: A month after this show, New York City's
voters rejected the board 2 to 1.
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.32
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E53T26
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5966
item Program Number 33
"Criminals and the Supreme Court"
Guests: Neier, Aryeh,
1937-
7 November 1966
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 71 : 17
Transcript: Box/Folder 160 : 11
Program details: Was the Supreme Court "coddling criminals," as the
common accusation had it? Or was it properly securing rights frequently
trampled on by jaded police, even if this meant that some criminals went
free? An illuminating discussion in which useful distinctions are made,
e.g., between search-and-seizure cases, where the only people helped by
the exclusionary rule are those found with incriminating evidence, and
right-to-counsel cases, in some of which--Mr. Neier asserts, referring
to recent incidents in New York City--"district attorneys, of all
people, had to move for dismissal of indictments ...after murder
confessions were secured, after between 10 and 26 hours of police
questioning. In none of those cases is it clear that police used actual
physical coercion. In each of those cases it is clear that police
engaged in standard forms of questioning designed to, on the one hand,
terrify the person; on the other hand, to make him think he's confessing
to a buddy."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.33
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5967
item Program Number 34
"Open Housing"
Guests: Morsell, John A.
7 November 1966
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 71 : 18
Transcript: Box/Folder 160 : 12
Program details: A civil and illuminating exchange on a potentially
explosive question, raised by a proposed Federal Open Housing Law that
would ban racial discrimination in the sale of housing. JM: "The ways in
which people learn are also very, very diverse. I happen to believe very
implicitly that the force of law is in itself an educative force, and
that if it is illegal for your man who wants to be with Irishmen to
exercise that preference at the expense of someone else's right to live
in a decent home, then the second right, it seems to me, prevails; and
in the course of time, as behavior conforms to law, people's attitudes
and views will also tend to change."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.34
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5968
item Program Number 35
"The Failure of Organized Religion"
Guests: Weiss, Paul,
1901-
14 November 1966
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 72 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 160 : 13
Program details: When Mr. Buckley meets his old philosophy teacher on
Firing
Line
, it's thrust and parry from the start: WFB: "Tonight,
Professor Weiss seeks to inform God that it was a mistake to organize
religion. Organized religion, he will argue, has failed." PW: "I don't
remember when God organized religion. Is there any time when God
organized religion?" WFB: "Well, the situation was like this: There was
God and there was Peter, you see-" PW: "I thought they were distinct."
WFB: "They were." PW: "Oh, good! Now-then what?"
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.35
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E50RS0
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5969
item Program Number 36
"What to Do with the American Teenager?"
Guests: Kaufman,
Murray.
14 November 1966
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 72 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 160 : 14
Program details: A culture clash of the first order between a host who
believes in the accumulated wisdom of the ages and a guest ("the Fifth
Beatle, as he has been called by one of the original four") who believes
that people under 25 are more honest and more perceptive than their
elders-with the exception of Mr. Kaufman, whose new book was called:
Murray the K Tells It like It Is, Baby. MK: "The commentary [in today's
lyrics] is not on the life of the teenager. It is on Vietnam, it is on
the double facades of the so-called establishment ... and I will admit
that there are times that you have to dig kind of deep, beyond the maze
or, as maybe you would say, the cacophony of sound ..."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.36
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5970
item Program Number 37
"Elections 1966 and 1968"
Guests: Novak, Robert D.
21 November 1966
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 72 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 160 : 15
Program details: We recently heard from Mr. Novak's partner in
column--and book--writing, Rowland Evans (
Firing
Line
031); this time it
is Mr. Novak's turn to talk about the political scene--and to give an
unintended cautionary lesson to would-be prognosticators. WFB: "I'd like
to begin by asking Mr. Novak whether he thinks it likely that Mr. Nixon
will be nominated in 1968." RN: "I think it's very unlikely. I think ...
[the Republicans] think now, with good reason, they have a chance of
beating Mr. Johnson in 1968. So this is not a throwaway election, this
is a serious election. They want a winner, and Mr. Nixon is a loser. So
I think they'll look primarily to George Romney."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.37
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5971
item Program Number 38
"Sports, Persecution, and Christians"
Guests: Lunn, Arnold
Henry Moore, Sir, 1888-1974.
28 November 1966
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 72 : 4
Transcript: Box/Folder 160 : 16
Program details: Sir Arnold was campaigning to persuade the Western world
to stop engaging in sports contests (principally the Olympic Games) with
Communist countries. This deep and rich conversation engages Christians'
failure of nerve, as Sir Arnold sees it, in confronting what we would
come to know as the Evil Empire. WFB: "Sir Arnold, the saying is that
sports and politics don't mix. Do you agree?" AL: "Well, it depends what
you mean by politics. The old classical Olympic Games were restricted,
in the words of Herodotus, to those of common temples and sacrifices and
like ways of life. The barbarians were excluded. The classical Greeks
didn't regard that as a political difference, but the difference between
civilized people and barbarians. When I broke off relations with the
Nazis in skiing, I didn't consider the difference between myself and
Hitler was a political difference. It was a difference between a
civilized man and an assassin."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.38
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E50RSA
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5972
item Program Number 39
"The Warren Report: Fact or Fiction?"
Guests: Lane, Mark.
1 December 1966
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 72 : 5
Transcript: Box/Folder 160 : 17
Program details: While many people had been skeptical of the Warren
Report's conclusion that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone in the
assassination of President Kennedy, Mr. Lane's book was the first to lay
out the argument seriously. He defends himself ably in this spirited
exchange. ML: "I take really the same position Alfreda Scoby, one of the
lawyers for the Warren Commission, takes, and that is, had Oswald lived,
he could not have been proven guilty, had he faced trial, based upon the
evidence the Commission was able to secure." WFB: "And of course Warren
says that he was a practicing district attorney for ten or twelve years
and he could have gotten a conviction in 48 hours with the evidence. You
simply disagree with him professionally." ML: "That's nonsense. It would
take longer than that to pick a jury, of course." WFB: "Do you think
Warren should be impeached?" ML: "I don't think he should be impeached.
I think the report should be impeached."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.39
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E50RSK
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5973
item Program Number 40
"Rhodesia, the UN, and Southern Africa"
Guests: O'Brien,
Conor Cruise, 1917-
12 January 1967
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 72 : 6
Transcript: Box/Folder 160 : 18
Program details: The gloves are off in this debate on the role of the
West in general and America in particular in post-colonial Africa.
Specifically, how should we react to the Rhodesian government's
Unilateral Declaration of Independence? CCO: "Would you please allow me
to proceed without interruption as I allowed you? ... The [United
Nations] Security Council has decided certain actions which you know of.
Are you in favor of your country carrying out its obligations?" WFB:
"Absolutely not, under those circumstances where the United Nations is
clearly acting illegally and against the best interests of the United
States." Note: The transcript lists the title of this episode as:
"Discussion with Conor Cruse O'Brien."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.40
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5974
item Program Number 41
"LBJ and the Intellectuals"
Guests: Morgenthau, Hans
Joachim, 1904-
12 January 1967
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 72 : 7
Transcript: Box/Folder 160 : 19
Program details: A rich discussion of our political culture, starting
with the Johnson Administration's confused objectives in Vietnam (HM:
"Does it want self-determination for South Vietnam at the risk of a
Communist takeover, or does it want to stop Communism at any price, even
at the price of self-determination?") and ranging far and wide. WFB:
"Well, then, how do you account for the enthusiasm of the intellectuals
for Mr. Kennedy, when in fact it could be demonstrated that his own
rhetoric and actions were at least as schizophrenic as President
Johnson's?" HM: "It's a very good question. I addressed myself to that
question in '61.... The intellectuals ... had been in the wilderness for
eight years and all of a sudden, here comes Mr. Kennedy,
Harvard-educated, surrounded by members of the Harvard faculty-there
were a few from Yale, in order to satisfy you, but very few, so you were
not very much satisfied. And of course many intellectuals, not myself
included, thought this was the golden Augustan age for
intellectuals."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.41
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E52U4Y
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5975
item Program Number 42
"Academic Freedom and Berkeley"
Guests: Taylor, Harold,
1914-
16 January 1967
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 72 : 8
Transcript: Box/Folder 160 : 20
Program details: We eventually get to Berkeley-where the Free Speech
Movement and associated radicalisms had completely broken down academic
discipline--but before that, we have a never-the-twain-shall-meet
discussion of which views might and which might not, under the tenets of
academic freedom, disqualify a scholar from being hired by a university.
WFB: "You, despising racism as much as I do, are prepared to assert that
no one who is a racist actually would get into a college of which you
were president, but that in fact people can be well-qualified
Communists." HT: "... there is a sharp distinction to be made between a
philosophy of racism, affirming the notion that there is one race
superior to another, ... and a political philosophy which one identifies
as Communism. I think you have to talk about those in different
categories."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.42
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E52U58
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5976
item Program Number 43
"Presidential Politics"
Guests: White, F. Clifton.
16 January 1967
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 72 : 9
Transcript: Box/Folder 160 : 21
Program details: WFB and a fellow conservative Republican focus on the
Democratic scene, where already--nearly two years before the
presidential election-it was clear that LBJ was in serious trouble. WFB:
"But then aren't you really saying this: that Lyndon Johnson could force
his own renomination? But mightn't Bobby Kennedy make it almost
psychologically impossible for him to do so?" FCW: "Yes, he could
conceivably do that, and of course ... from a Republican point of view
this would be delightful and highly desirable, because I think under
those circumstances it would make it almost assured that the Republican
nominee would win the general election." WFB: "Why do you say that? If
Lyndon Johnson stepped down in favor of Kennedy, ... why wouldn't
Kennedy go on to win the election?" FCW: "Do you really think that
Lyndon Johnson would step down charitably, for a Bobby Kennedy?"
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.43
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5977
item Program Number 44
"The Role of the Advocate"
Guests: Bailey, F. Lee (Francis
Lee), 1933-
19 January 1967
Scope and Contents note
Transcript: Box/Folder 160 : 22
Program details: An often surprising exploration of criminal
jurisprudence with a guest who, as Mr. Buckley puts it, "if any of you
should commit a murder ... is your man." WFB: "Do you believe that the
right to refuse to testify is a right that is integral to the whole
process of the presumption of innocence?" FB: "Yes, it's as integral as
it is illogical." WFB: "... And why is it illogical?" FLB: "The most
efficient way to try a man is to put him on the stand first and ask him
what he knows about the case; then if more evidence is needed, put that
on, too. The defendant always knows, except in very rare cases of clear
insanity, whether or not he is guilty or at least whether or not he
committed the acts charged. His degree of guilt may be fixed with some
inference or some judgment by the jury, but he would be the easiest
source of information, and in some countries he's called first." WFB:
"Well, do you understand yourself to be an advocate of the cause of
defendants?" FLB: "Just an advocate. I could try a case from either side
of the fence."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.44
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E50RSU
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5978
item Program Number 45
"The Future of the UN"
Guests: Plimpton, Francis T. P.
(Francis Taylor Pearsons), 1900-1983.
19 January 1967
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 72 : 10
Transcript: Box/Folder 160 : 23
Program details: The United Nations had been energetically debating the
right of Rhodesia to declare independence unilaterally and the right of
South Africa to continue to exercise its League of Nations mandate over
South West Africa. But was anybody listening? A serious discussion with
a man whose public career began with the Reconstruction Finance
Corporation in 1932. FP: "In the case of South West Africa you have that
very unfortunate decision of the International Court of Justice, which
after six years of deliberation, decided that it didn't have
jurisdiction over the South West Africa case." WFB: "Rather, the
plaintiff didn't have standing." FP: That's right. They once held four
or five years ago that there were very fine distinctions here. One has
to dance on the point of a pin to get them entirely."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.45
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E50RT4
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5979
item Program Number 46
"Do the States Have a Chance?"
Guests: Unruh, Jesse,
1922-1987.
6 March 1967
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 72 : 11
Transcript: Box/Folder 160 : 24
Program details: Do the states have a chance, that is, to carve out some
freedom of action vis-a-vis the Federal Government? "Big Daddy" Jesse
Unruh was, since Ronald Reagan's defeat of Governor Pat Brown, the
leading Democrat in California. Unfortunately, Mr. Buckley is unable to
coax him down from a high level of generality. One sample, re states'
rights: "Well, I think that's what's been happening in a great respect
and I think that too much Federal Government is attuned to your Eastern
establishment and the problems of the Southern states and the reluctance
of the Southern states so that many times those of us who feel we have
earned the right to handle our own problems are simply ignored in an
overall position that is designed to fit the desires of the Eastern
establishment or the problems of the Southern states."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.46
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5980
item Program Number 47
"LBJ and Vietnam"
Guests: Hartke, Vance. : Williams, C.
Dickerman
6 March 1967
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 72 : 12
Transcript: Box/Folder 160 : 25
Program details: As WFB introduces him, "Senator Hartke is perhaps best
known, at this point in his career, as one of the leaders in the growing
army of former friends and admirers of Lyndon Johnson." This crackling
exchange focuses on the main source of his and the others' disaffection,
Vietnam. VH: "I don't know whether you can say that or not [about the
previous November's elections in Vietnam].... If you have some special
information source that I do not have available to me-" WFB: "You have
the U.S. Government." VH: "The government's been wrong on so many things
it's hard to tell. The colossal blunder that they made in the cost of
this war, for example, when they tried to ridicule my statement in front
of the Finance Committee ... Well, they come back to this in January and
they admit that this is true." Note: The transcript lists the title for
this episode as: "Vietnam."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.47
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E52U5I
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5981
item Program Number 48
"Politics and the President"
Guests: Wicker, Tom.
7 March 1967
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 72 : 13
Transcript: Box/Folder 160 : 26
Program details: A colorful discussion of that already old topic, bias in
the media, in this case starting with the question, "Would the New York
Times ever refer to an 'ultra-liberal Republican'?" TW: " 'Ultra-liberal
Republican'? I doubt it, since there are very few such animals, but I
don't know if there's any particular ban against this in the New York
Times. We have some bans on certain words but that's not one of them so
far as I know." WFB: "Yeah. But aren't those bans most interesting which
are sort of self-enforcing and inexplicit? ... It's easy for the New
York Times to refer to ultra-conservative Republicans, but for some
reason you'd have to get a sort of special dispensation, the typewriters
would reject it, if you referred to an ultra-liberal Republican." TW:
"Well, I think so. Typewriters have a high regard for the facts." WFB:
"OK. Now you're saying that there's no such thing as an ultra-liberal
Republican." TW: "Well, only if you consider them in the Republican
spectrum."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.48
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003GXE9Q4
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5982
item Program Number 49
"Black Power"
Guests: Hentoff, Nat.
7 March 1967
Scope and Contents note
Transcript: Box/Folder 160 : 27
Program details: Mr. Hentoff had, Mr. Buckley tells us, written that "We
must have black power to overcome white power." What exactly is meant by
black power? Does it matter whether the person talking about it is the
Harlem teacher who is the subject of Mr. Hentoff's book, or Elijah
Muhammad? And why are the New York Times and the New York Post so chary
of it? NH: "I suppose they think of the doctrine as a racist doctrine
and the corollary concern seems to be that thereby the Negroes will
alienate their good white friends and make things much more difficult
for the coalition--that luminous coalition of labor, the Church, and
civil-rights groups and the like which is apparently about to end the
final verse of 'We Shall Overcome'." In fact, suggests Mr. Hentoff, what
black power is properly about is the power of blacks to have some say in
the running of their own neighborhoods and their own children's
schools.
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.49
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001MBTSIG
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5983
item Program Number 50
"Is There a Role for a Third Party?"
Guests: Roosevelt,
Franklin D. (Franklin Delano), 1914-1988.
8 March 1967
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 73 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 160 : 28
Program details: Despite his own defeat, Mr. Roosevelt answers the title
question with an emphatic "Yes. I think that the role of the third party
has been, especially the Liberal Party- It has been often said in jest
that its role in New York politics has been to keep the Democratic Party
honest and the Republican Party more liberal. Now, I suppose you could
turn that to say that the Conservative Party, on whose line you ran for
Mayor a year and a half ago-their role, I suppose, would be to make the
Republican Party more the party of McKinley, or Adam Smith, and-" WFB:
"Are you against Adam Smith?" FDR: "I think that he's a bit out of
date."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.50
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E50RTE
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5984
item Program Number 51
"U.S. Policy in Southeast Asia"
Guests: Fritchey, Clayton.
8 March 1967
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 73 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 161 : 1
Program details: Mr. Fritchey was a devoted Democrat who had become more
and more dubious about President Johnson as our involvement in Vietnam
had escalated. He demonstrates here that there is nothing reflexive
about his dubiety, as the conversation ranges across wars cold and hot.
WFB: "For instance, Paul Henri Spaak, who was so much admired by Adlai
Stevenson, ... said, 'I think there is a real parallel between the
United States policy in 1949 and the situation in Asia now. It seems to
me the same policy.' He went on to say that the United States believes
that they have to defend people against Communism when they refuse to
adopt Communism.... Then he says, 'I see no contradiction between what
the United States did in Europe in 1949 and what they did in Vietnam and
Southeast Asia.' But you do." CF: "Well, if I could be sure from day to
day what the government's principal justification for being in South
Vietnam was, I would be in a better position to discuss it. But, as you
know, it changes from day to day."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.51
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5985
item Program Number 52
"Do We Have Anything Left to Fear from Socialism?"
Guests:
Hook, Sidney, 1902-1989.
9 March 1967
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 73 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 161 : 2
Program details: Mr. Hook answers the title question, as he answers every
question, forthrightly: "Well, that depends upon what you mean by
socialism. In one sense there was a great deal to fear from dogmatic
socialism.... But on the whole, if one doesn't take a dogmatic position,
I would say there never was anything to fear from socialism.... The...
real issue that separates the Communist countries from the free Western
democratic countries is not socialism or capitalism as economic systems,
but the freedom to choose between them or among other economic forms of
life. As a democratic socialist, I have been opposed to Communism
because I believe in freedom." A rousing discussion of how best that
freedom can actually be fostered.
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.52
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5986
item Program Number 53
"The World of LSD"
Guests: Leary, Timothy Francis, 1920-
10 April 1967
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 73 : 4
Transcript: Box/Folder 161 : 3
Program details: We all remember Dr. Leary as a proselytizer for LSD;
we've mostly forgotten that he had started out as a doctor of clinical
psychology and that he had made LSD the basis of a "new religion." On
this show, he makes his opening statement before he ever says a word, by
appearing not in a business suit but in a flower child get-up-ruffled
shirt, no jacket or tie. He argues that WFB is confusing psychedelic
drugs, which Dr. Leary says "intensify consciousness," with opiates and
alcohol, "something that is an escape, something that takes you away
from reality." WFB: "Let's go ahead and agree that LSD seems to be in
some particulars different from other opiates or drugs or chemicals, at
the same time agreeing that LSD is a departure from the normal world-"
TL: "But what do you mean by 'normal world'? You mean Harry Truman! Is
that normal?"
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.53
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E50RTO
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5987
item Program Number 54
"Censorship and the Production Code"
Guests: Preminger,
Otto.
10 April 1967
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 73 : 5
Transcript: Box/Folder 161 : 4
Program details: A discussion of artistic freedom and censorship with a
leading producer, one of whose films (The Moon Is Blue) had run into
trouble with the Motion Picture Production Code. A spirited discussion
with a man who, despite the modern-Americanness of his films (including
Anatomy of a Murder and The Man with the Golden Arm), retains, however
unpresciently, an Old World sense of the order of things: "I have said
that an immoral film could not be successful. I think there is morality
built into any dramatic medium, whether it's a play or a television
show. You cannot mention one successful play or film where the bad
principle won."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.54
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E52U5S
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5988
item Program Number 55
"The Regular in Politics"
Guests: De Sapio, Carmine.
1 May 1967
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 73 : 6
Transcript: Box/Folder 161 : 5
Program details: Mr. De Sapio was the "Tammany Hall boss" defeated in
1963 by a young "reform Democrat" named Edward Koch. WFB attempts in
this hour to explore how party leaders actually wield their power, but
Mr. De Sapio is wary and can't be drawn. WFB: "Suppose I had been a
district leader and said, 'Mr. De Sapio, I love you like a brother, but,
in fact, I want Adlai Stevenson nominated [as opposed to JFK].' What
happens to me? Do I get thrown in the East River?" CDS: "You are
applauded for your candor." WFB: "You are not suggesting that you
wouldn't put-pressure on me? Unless you were in a position to put
pressure on me, Mr. Kennedy wouldn't be so concerned to get your
support-isn't that the way it works?" CDS: "Not necessarily." WFB: "I'm
not necessarily against pressure, I just want to know more about the
mechanics-" CDS: "I don't think that's the proper word; I think that a
better word would be an understanding."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.55
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E52U62
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5989
item Program Number 56
"How to Protest"
Guests: Macdonald, Dwight.
1 May 1967
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 73 : 7
Transcript: Box/Folder 161 : 6
Program details: Mr. Macdonald had recently been an organizer of the
"Step Out Movement"-i.e., to step out of a hall where Vice President
Humphrey would be speaking, in protest against the Vietnam War. This
show offers a fast-paced duel between two longtime adversaries. WFB:
"Well, Mr. Macdonald, why don't we try to isolate those forms of protest
that you disagree with? You would disagree with, let's say, shooting the
President?" DM: "Yes." WFB: "Would you disagree with forming the
equivalent of an Abraham Lincoln Brigade to go to North Vietnam to fight
on the side of the Vietcong?" DM: "Yes, I would." WFB: "Would you
disapprove of discounting from your income tax that sum of money we have
roughly spent on defense?" DM: "I approve of that. I haven't done it,
however, because it occurred to me that the net result would be that
they would get the money anyway plus a certain amount of penalties,
which in effect would amount to more." Note: The title on the transcript
is: "Dwight Macdonald."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.56
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E55X8O
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5990
item Program Number 57
"The Liberals and LBJ"
Guests: Roche, John Pearson, 1923-
15 May 1967
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 73 : 8
Transcript: Box/Folder 161 : 7
Program details: Mr. Roche had incurred the wrath of many of his former
associates by going to work for Lyndon Johnson. As WFB puts it, "One of
[his colleagues in ADA] has said that President Johnson picked Mr. Roche
as his intellectual-in-residence simply because he was the only ADA-er
around who approved of Vietnam, and that if Mr. Johnson had found one
other ... he'd have made him Secretary of State." A delicious hour with
a guest who comes out swinging and never stops: "As far as the inner
life of ADA, it's something which it must be very difficult for someone
from a conservative background to understand because they're used to
monolithicism and the leader blows the whistle, everybody lines up? ADA
is an organization that is made up of strong-minded people who have been
for twenty years engaged in all kinds of internecine and intestine
brawls."... "A while ago a fellow named Chomsky wanted to organize an
International Brigade to go fight in Vietnam. I'll be glad to help. My
feeling about it was I'll go over to the State Department and help get
his passport cleared for North Vietnam, if necessary, and even
contribute to his passage."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.57
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5991
item Program Number 58
"The Poverty Problem"
Guests: Clark, Joseph S.
15 May 1967
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 73 : 9
Transcript: Box/Folder 161 : 8
Program details: Senator Clark was one of the generals in President
Johnson's War on Poverty. This serious discussion of what causes poverty
and which remedies are least likely to be counterproductive starts with
a smooth thrust and parry. WFB: "Do you believe that poverty is
something that especially happens in a free-enterprise system?" JC: "...
Of course I don't think that we could do better with poverty under a
socialist system. The free-enterprise system is much the best way to
deal with poverty. Franklin D. Roosevelt pointed that out when he really
initiated the war on poverty back in 1937. You remember he said he found
one-third of a nation ill housed, ill clad, and ill fed.... We hope that
it is now only one-fifth of a nation. We hope, Bill, that by the time
you and I have gone to our ultimate reward, it will be one-tenth of a
nation ..."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.58
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5992
item Program Number 59
"Is Ramparts Magazine Un-American?"
Guests: Scheer, Robert.
26 June 1967
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 73 : 10
Transcript: Box/Folder 161 : 9
Program details: Ramparts was one of the leading organs of the New Left,
primarily known at this time for its attacks on the CIA and on American
foreign policy generally. Messrs. Buckley and Scheer wrangle amusingly,
though not always productively. WFB: "[Why don't you just say], "Sure,
Bertrand Russell's anti-American, but he has a damn good right to be
anti-American because during the 1960s we became a highly unlovely
country and anybody who was pro-American at that point has an addled
wit, to say nothing of an unserviceable moral sense?" Now why don't you
say, "Yes, I too am anti-American?" RS: "Because you still haven't
defined the term. And the reason I used the term is not because it is a
term of my choosing but rather because Russell's critics accused him of
being systematically anti-American."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.59
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5993
item Program Number 60
"Vietnam Protests"
Guests: Spock, Benjamin, 1903-
26 June 1967
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 73 : 11
Transcript: Box/Folder 161 : 10
Program details: Dr. Spock, Mr. Buckley begins by recounting, "has said
that the threat to our children from nuclear annihilation" is "a
thousand times greater than all the dangers from the usual children's
diseases." So, "I'd like to begin by asking Dr. Spock whether he carries
in his head a comparison of the number of people who have died during
this century from disease in contrast to those who have died, not from
war, but from persecution, for instance the 6 million Jewish dead in
Nazi Germany." (The answer is, No, he doesn't.) There is sometimes more
heat than light generated here, but whether one views Dr. Spock as
specimen or hero, the exchanges are fascinating. BS: "I don't know
Bettina Aptheker but I have met Stokely Carmichael on a number of
occasions, and I got the feeling he is a very sincere and America-loving
person, even though he says things that distress some people from time
to time." WFB: "He'd be incensed if you called him an America-lover. I
mean that quite seriously. For the last two years he's been going around
the country begging people to believe that he hates America, and here
you are accusing me of taking him seriously."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.60
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E52U6C
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5994
item Program Number 61
"The Mideast Crisis"
Guests: Lilienthal, Alfred M.
29 June 1967
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 73 : 12
Transcript: Box/Folder 161 : 11
Program details: Mr. Lilienthal, himself Jewish, had antagonized many
Jews by arguing forcefully that the existence of Israel posed a threat
to world peace. This hour offers a serious discussion of the history of
the state of Israel, its present behavior towards its neighbors and
towards the Arabs within its borders, and America's role in all of this.
AL: "I feel that the whole problem today is not so much Israel's
existence in the Middle East, but the kind of a state which Israel is
and has become since its foundation.... Israel was set up... [as] a
haven to the oppressed, as a small refugee state. In fact, Israel is a
Zionist state, an expanding state, and were Israel only to promulgate
the nationalism of the Israelis, rather than a worldwide Jewish
nationalism ... we would not have the problems we have today."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.61
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5995
item Program Number 62
"The Decline of Anti-Communism [1967]"
Guests: Schwarz,
Fred, 1913-
29 June 1967
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 73 : 13
Transcript: Box/Folder 161 : 12
Program details: WFB introduces his guest as a "full-time anti-Communist
who has never made it easy for his critics. He is infuriatingly sober
and ... he has shown an understanding of the humorous dimension of it
all." This show offers a rich discussion between two deep students of
the subject, starting with Dr. Schwarz's brilliant account of Nikita
Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin in 1956. FS: "What it revealed about
Khrushchev and his allegiance to Communist doctrine is possibly more
significant than what it revealed about Stalin.... Now, how did
[Khrushchev] discuss their [Stalin's victims'] guilt or innocence? He
didn't mention one of them by name ... He got right to basic Communist
fundamentals: he said, I investigated their class of social origin, and
60 per cent were working class ... therefore it is inconceivable that
there could have been 70 per cent treasonable.... And in that one
statement, Khrushchev revealed that he was a fundamental
Marxist-Leninist in exactly the same mold as Stalin ..."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.62
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E52U6M
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5996
item Program Number 63
"Is It Possible to Be a Good Governor? [1967]"
Guests:
Reagan, Ronald.
6 July 1967
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 74 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 161 : 13
Program details: This first appearance of Ronald Reagan on
Firing
Line
took place six months after he had been sworn in as governor. "There is
much speculation," WFB begins, "on the subject of his future,
speculation which I intend to avoid, because the purpose of this program
is to ask whether it is possible to be a good governor. By that I mean
this: Are we now so dependent on the Federal Government that the
individual state is left without the scope to make its own crucial
decisions?" A meaty discussion ranging from the way the states in turn
squeeze the local communities, to comparative welfare payments in
different states, to a favorite subject of WFB's: as Mr. Reagan puts it,
"I know I'm accused of oversimplifying, but it doesn't make sense to me
for the Federal Government to ... insist that the only solution to our
local problems is for them to take the money and then dispense it back
to you in grants in which they tell you how to spend it from Washington,
D.C. And of course, like an agent for a Hollywood actor, there's a
certain carrying charge that's deducted in Washington before you get it
back again."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.63
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E50RUS
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5997
item Program Number 64
"Is the World Funny?"
Guests: Marx, Groucho, 1891-1977.
7 July 1967
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 74 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 161 : 14
Program details: The exchanges are frustrating at times, Mr. Marx being
so relentlessly, well,Groucho. But it's fun and sometimes illuminating
to see this mythic figure on someone else's turf. (The answer to the
title question, by the way is: "No, it's damned sad.") GM: "I have said
the things that no one else has dared to say." WFB: "Why? Why?" GM:
"Because the audience loves it." WFB: "All right." GM: "If you have a
general, like I had General Bradley on the quiz show--nice man, very
nice man; might even conceivably be a good general--well, I kidded him
all through the show and the audience loves that because they don't get
a chance to do that to mayors or politicians or bank presidents..." WFB:
"But it's very healthy, isn't it?" GM: "Yes, it is. There's not enough
of it."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.64
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003GXE9QE
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5998
item Program Number 65
"Vietnam"
Guests: Vaughn, Robert, 1932-
8 July 1967
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 74 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 161 : 15
Program details: Mr. Vaughn--who in his best-known TV role, Napoleon Solo
on The Man from UNCLE, hunted bad guys on behalf of the United
Nations--was on record as saying that "the war in Vietnam cannot be
rationalized by moral man." His reasons go back to the Geneva accord of
1954 and the ways in which the United States abetted Ngo Dinh Diem in
avoiding elections in 1956. RV: "I don't believe that we can stop the
spread of Communism by sacrificing the principles of democracy." An
often heated discussion that helps us focus on the whole background to
the late-Sixties divisions.
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.65
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00G707OJW
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/5999
item Program Number 66
"The Ghetto"
Guests: Clark, Kenneth Bancroft, 1914-
28 August 1967
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 74 : 4
Transcript: Box/Folder 161 : 16
Program details: Kenneth Clark's work had been cited by Earl Warren in a
decision outlawing segregated schools, but on the basis of something Mr.
Clark had recently said, WFB wonders whether integration is no longer
his main priority. KC: "I think that what has become increasingly clear
to me is the limitation of the American people in terms of concern for
human beings. I think there is now clear evidence that the vast majority
of Americans are perfectly willing to sacrifice hundreds of thousands,
if not millions, of children who are brown on the altar of race. I think
that it is clear that de facto segregated schools in the North are as
damaging and detrimental to the human spirit and human potential as the
segregated schools which we fought so valiantly against in the South." A
sometimes-depressing show, but one that gives real insight into how our
country's efforts at integration look from the ghetto.
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.66
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6000
item Program Number 67
"Municipal Government"
Guests: Yorty, Sam, 1909-
28 August 1967
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 74 : 5
Transcript: Box/Folder 161 : 17
Program details: It was two years since the Watts riots, and Mayor Yorty
was regularly attacked by his fellow Democrats for the way he handled
that situation. But, as Mr. Buckley says, "he is well equipped to fight
back." WFB: "Do you consider yourself actively, or negligibly,
responsible for the Watts crisis?" SY: "... I wouldn't want to consider
myself responsible for the explosion, and neither will I consider myself
responsible for the two summers during which Los Angeles has not had an
explosion while other cities have had it." The discussion ranges
productively from the vagaries of our judicial system, to the possible
effects of television in stirring up racial animosities, to the details
of how the LAPD handled Watts.
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.67
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6001
item Program Number 68
"A Foreign Policy for the GOP"
Guests: Percy, Charles H.,
1919-
11 September 1967
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 74 : 6
Transcript: Box/Folder 161 : 18
Program details: Senator Percy is a bit given to the stump-speech mode
("I truly believe that we will fight Communism just as effectively, if
not more so, [by not] fighting it just in Havana and in Hanoi. We have
to fight Communism in Watts; we have to fight it in Newark, and we have
to fight it in Harlem; and we have to fight it by building a better
America there, and not giving any chance for a Communist society to
point to the hypocrisy of America and say that the American dream is
only available to some people"), but we do come down to earth
periodically, with concrete observations about, e.g., Yugoslavia,
Poland,and Red China.
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.68
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003GXE9QO
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6002
item Program Number 69
"The Future of the GOP"
Guests: Nixon, Richard M. (Richard
Milhous), 1913-1994.
14 September 1967
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 74 : 7
Transcript: Box/Folder 161 : 19
Program details: Mr. Nixon, attempting to come back after losing the
presidential election in 1960 and the California gubernatorial election
in 1962, casts his remarks so as to hold onto conservatives who had
voted for Goldwater without losing the many Americans who had not voted
for Goldwater. The result is mostly bland, but there is considerable
historical interest in encountering the pre-presidential Nixon:
"Naturally I'm a prejudiced witness... But I believe that as this
campaign in 1968 unfolds, that the nation will see that the new
Republican Party is one which advocates change, but advocates change in
a different way from the irresponsibles. And I mean by that, that in
changing those things that are wrong in America, we must not destroy the
things that are right. That to me is the essence of true
conservatism."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.69
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E52U6W
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6003
item Program Number 70
"Vietnam and the GOP"
Guests: Morton, Thruston B. (Thruston
Ballard), 1907-1982.
25 September 1967
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 74 : 8
Transcript: Box/Folder 161 : 20
Program details: Senator Morton had been known, WFB reminds us, as "a
middle-of-the-roader with perhaps a little granitic anti-Communism."
Then suddenly he had come out for various measures, including increasing
trade with the Soviet Union and disengaging from Vietnam, that had
dismayed many Republicans, not least because they wondered if this was a
harbinger of the 1968 Republican platform. One may sometimes feel during
this hour that Senator Morton is hedging his bets, but the conversation
does bring out some of the ways in which the scene changed during the
mid Sixties. TM: "When Mr. Eisenhower left office there were six hundred
men in uniform. He thought, as I thought then, that if we helped these
people to offset aggression--if we helped them to resist--they would do
the job themselves. Now we've Americanized the war, and in my book it's
an entirely different premise. They're not fighting for themselves."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.70
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6004
item Program Number 71
"Medicare"
Guests: Cohen, Wilbur J. (Wilbur Joseph),
1913-1987.
25 September 1967
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 74 : 9
Transcript: Box/Folder 161 : 21
Program details: Mr. Cohen's public career had begun, as WFB reminds us,
in the Roosevelt Administration, where he was research head of the
Committee on Economic Security, which drafted the original Social
Security Act. In this return engagement in Washington, he was largely
responsible for the recently enacted Medicare. Mr. Cohen speaks
compellingly of the needs of our country, although in ways that lead his
host to ask, "Have you arrived in your mind at a point beyond which you
wouldn't, for instance, want a tax--on the grounds that you were
interfering with the free function of human beings?" WJC: "I think there
is such a point. I don't know exactly where it is." WFB: "Maybe you
could think of it on this program and make headlines." WJC: "Yes. It
really would, wouldn't it?"
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.71
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003GXE9QY
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6005
item Program Number 72
"Is There a New God?"
Guests: Robinson, John A. T. (John
Arthur Thomas), 1919-1983.
6 October 1967
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 74 : 10
Transcript: Box/Folder 161 : 22
Program details: Many of Bishop Robinson's fellow Anglicans would
subscribe to WFB's assertion that "if this were an age in which it was
fashionable to go after heresy, I would be addressing tonight the former
Bishop of Woolwich," although it would be hard to either substantiate or
refute that assertion on the basis of this exchange, in which His Grace
is relentlessly bland and benevolent. JATR: "Christians like myself ...
feel in their bones that so much of this traditional language is not
wrong if it makes God real for people, well and good, but for a good
many it makes him remote and unreal. It's not basically any new
scientific discovery but simply catching up on the fact that the
traditional set of answers is rather like the set of answers that you
got in medieval Christianity, which no longer corresponded to questions
people were really asking."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.72
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6006
item Program Number 73
"The English Conservatives"
Guests: Worsthorne, Peregrine.
6 October 1967
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 74 : 11
Transcript: Box/Folder 161 : 23
Program details: A bracing discussion of British politics in particular
and politics in general--e.g., the degree to which a candidate, once
elected, can or cannot carry out the platform on which he campaigned.
PW: "And I think where I would disagree with Mr. Buckley, primarily, is
that he is a great doctrinaire, a great dogmatist--passionately believes
in certain things, passionately disbelieves in certain things, and
thinks it's very important to send out anathemas against certain kinds
of politicians and be very enthusiastic in favor of others. I don't see
it like that; ... the essence of my kind of conservatism really is that
it is rather pragmatic and judges by results.... It's rather an
18th-century attitude; yours is essentially a modern one."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.73
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6007
item Program Number 74
"The Union in Modern Society"
Guests: Jenkins, Clive.
7 October 1967
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 74 : 12
Transcript: Box/Folder 161 : 24
Program details: Mr. Jenkins's white-collar union, 50,000 strong, had
lined up with Britain's militant Left, frequently finding Harold
Wilson's Labour government too soft on capitalism. To Mr. Buckley's
opening question--"In a class-conscious society are there grounds for
thinking of the monopoly labor unions as a class enemy?"--he replies:
"But of course there's no such thing as a monopoly labor union. This is
one of the favorite tricks of the anti-working-class publicists. After
all, the true monopolies are those who manufacture exclusively or market
exclusively. And labor unions are perhaps an ineffective but certainly
the best kind of weapon the worker's got against the kind of monopolies
Mr. Buckley adores," and we're off to the races.
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.74
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6008
item Program Number 75
"Is Socialism the Answer?"
Guests: Foot, Michael, 1913-
7 October 1967
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 74 : 13
Transcript: Box/Folder 161 : 25
Program details: Mr. Foot was known as a leader of the leftward most wing
of his generally left-wing party. Even so, the degree of his commitment
to socialism, as brought out by his host's questioning, is breathtaking.
WFB: "... Do I understand that you would pass laws that would forbid him
[a hypothetical retired candy-store owner] from taking his savings out
of the country?" MF: "I'm in favor of the right of people to move to
other countries and take what belongings they've got, and I would like
to see a world in which people could move freely across all these
frontiers, and indeed I would like to see the frontiers abolished. But I
do not believe that you can do that until you have established a
full-employment society over many years in different parts of the
world." WFB: "In other words, you wouldn't permit it." MF: "No, I
wouldn't permit it at the present time."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.75
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6009
item Program Number 76
"War Crimes"
Guests: Schoenman, Ralph.
13 November 1967
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 75 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 162 : 1
Program details: We get the flavor of this show from Mr. Schoenman's
reply the fourth time Mr. Buckley asks his opening question (to which
our guest had yet to give an answer, even a dismissive one). WFB asks:
"When last did you notice a war crime committed by a Communist nation?"
RS replies: "Now, the reasons for the tribunal and the reason for the
bringing together of the members of the tribunal were the enormous,
overwhelming prima-facie case documented largely in the Western media
concerning the crimes of the United States in Vietnam. I don't think
that it is sufficiently understood that the sole object of this war is
that of devastation of a small people, occupation of their land, and the
rape of their resources."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.76
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6010
item Program Number 77
"The Struggle for Democracy in Brazil"
Guests: Lacerda,
Carlos.
13 November 1967
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 75 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 162 : 2
Program details: Mr. Lacerda had been known for decades as a vigorous
opponent of most of Brazil's political class. Today's discussion focuses
on the difficulties of establishing democracy in a region traditionally
ruled by an oligopoly and on the limitations of democracy per se: CL:
"In Latin America you cannot speak of freedom in an abstract sense.
Freedom is connected with lots of things such as food, such as
education. And such as real freedom for all-not only for those who are
in power. In other words, we are a little tired of just the juridical
aspects of democracy."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.77
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6011
item Program Number 78
"Do We Need Public Schools?"
Guests: Van den Haag, Ernest.
11 December 1967
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 75 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 162 : 3
Program details: As Mr. Buckley rephrases the title question, "I'd like
to begin by asking you whether the abolition of the public schools is in
effect something of a laboratory discussion or whether you think it
likely to emerge as a genuine public issue." The latter, replies
Professor van den Haag; "However, Bill, I wouldn't call it abolition."
Instead, what he is advocating--and he was one of the first to do so--is
vouchers, permitting parents to exercise a choice of schools. This would
eventually become a staple of national discussion, but Professor van den
Haag was admirably prescient, as well as informative on the question of
what was wrong with the public schools."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.78
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6012
item Program Number 79
"Mobilizing the Poor"
Guests: Alinsky, Saul David,
1909-1972.
11 December 1967
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 75 : 4
Transcript: Box/Folder 162 : 4
Program details: The common aim of all Mr. Alinsky's organizations is to
mobilize the poor--mobilize them by whatever mean comes to hand
(marches, sit-ins)--to demand decent housing conditions or whatever the
local need may be. This one is a knock-down, drag-out from start to
finish. SA: "I refuse to debate with him [David Riesman], which only
came up recently ... I made the remark that any time I see any of his
stuff, it sort of makes me feel like a grizzled, battle-scarred dog
going down the street while way back, say, six blocks back or so, this
little whining Pekingese comes out sniffing, yipping, and licking and
growling at my leavings. And I'm not going to waste my time turning
around."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.79
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004SQFQHO
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6013
item Program Number 80
"Is There a Need for Intelligence?"
Guests: Dulles, Allen
Welsh, 1893-1969.
14 December 1967
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 75 : 5
Transcript: Box/Folder 162 : 5
Program details: Why is the CIA so widely derogated? Is it merely an
expression of Vietnam-era anti-Americanism, or does it have to do with a
(possibly naive) perception of dishonesty? Mr. Dulles was a legendary
figure: his activity on the world stage had begun when, as a very young
man, he attended the Versailles Conference; he had organized the CIA, on
the foundation of the wartime OSS, and had given it its shape as its
first director. However, this show suffers from the degree to which,
although four years retired from active duty, Mr. Dulles was imbued with
the ethos of secrecy. WFB: "What is it that gave the CIA its bad name?
Is it the fact that you have to lie?" AD: "No, I don't think- Let me say
as to that, how do you mean 'lie'? ..." WFB: "Well, for instance, the
President of the United States lied about the U-2 plane, and he was
thought to have done so at the suggestion of the CIA ..." AD: "Well,
that was a decision made at a very high level, by the President himself.
And I don't think the mere fact you don't admit everything, that doesn't
mean you're lying all the time." Note: Title on transcript is "Is There
a Need for Central Intelligence."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.80
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6014
item Program Number 81
"Was Goldwater a Mistake?"
Guests: Hatfield, Mark O., 1922-
14 December 1967
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 75 : 6
Transcript: Box/Folder 162 : 6
Program details: Senator Hatfield, from the liberal side of the
Republican Party, positions himself perfectly in his opening answer:
"Goldwater wasn't a mistake in a parliamentary sense, because the
Republican Party deliberately nominated [him] in open convention," after
primaries and state conventions made it clear he was grass-roots
Republicans' choice. However, "I don't think Senator Goldwater as a
person was rejected so much as was Senator Goldwater's basic approach to
problems. He tended to evoke fear." Much is discussed--from the
leadership qualities a President needs, to the different factions within
the Republican Party--but Senator Hatfield, who attributes much of
Goldwater's fear-evoking to his "off-the-cuff types of responses," never
says anything that could disqualify him as the Republican
vice-presidential candidate in 1968.
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.81
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004VGGY40
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6015
item Program Number 82
"The John Birch Society"
Guests: Draskovich, Slobodan M.,
1910-
8 January 1968
Scope and Contents note
Transcript: Box/Folder 162 : 7
Program details: As Mr. Buckley recounts, Slobodan Draskovich--who had
spent four years in a Nazi concentration camp during the War and, two
decades before that, had seen a band of Communist assassins kill his
father--had in 1958 become a charter member of the John Birch Society.
Then in 1966 he publicly resigned from the Society, on the grounds of
dissatisfaction with Robert Welch's leadership. This proves to be (as
one might expect from Mr. Draskovich's background) a rich discussion of
how a person judges whether a flawed organization is still doing more
good than harm. SD: "I thought, and I was free to take that view, that
beyond the National Review there was need for an organization which
would reach not only the intellectuals [and] fight the Communists -- on
a philosophical level and a literary level -- but would reach many more
people."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.82
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6016
item Program Number 83
"The Economic Crisis"
Guests: Friedman, Milton, 1912-
8 January 1968
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 75 :7
Transcript: Box/Folder 162 : 8
Program details: Perhaps the economy had not yet truly reached the point
of crisis, but it was beginning to feel the strain of President
Johnson's attempts to keep the guns and butter coming at ever faster
rates. This splendid economics lesson from one of the country's leading
teachers begins with a little historical biography (MF: "Keynes,
himself, was very much of a scientist. I think he was wrong on various
things, but he certainly had a scientific approach. And indeed, I've
always regarded it as a great tragedy that Keynes died when he did.
Because one of his great capacities was flexibility"), and then goes
onto the importance of monetary policy, how we might better handle
taxation and welfare, and much else.
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.83
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004SQFQL0
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6017
item Program Number 84
"Was the Civil-Rights Crusade a Mistake?"
Guests: Cambridge,
Godfrey, 1929-1976.
15 January 1968
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 75 : 8
Transcript: Box/Folder 162 : 9
Program details: Mr. Cambridge was sometimes accused of being too
unwilling to put himself forward as a civil-rights leader ("I have a
phrase where I say, 'A Negro leader is anybody with $5 and a suit.' It's
true, white people will listen to anybody; they'll stop a guy in the
street: 'What do you feel?' 'Whitney Young, you're on today, say
something nice.'' No, you didn't say it. OK, we'll go to Martin
tomorrow?' "). But it's clear from this conversation--sometimes
rambling, but always full of interesting detail--that while Mr.
Cambridge admits that the civil-rights movement has made mistakes, he
cannot agree that it was a mistake.
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.84
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004SQFQN8
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6018
item Program Number 85
"Student Power"
Guests: Theobald, Robert.
15 January 1968
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 75 : 9
Transcript: Box/Folder 162 : 10
Program details: Campus disruptions, some of them violent, had been going
on for a full three years and were about to escalate. Students were
demanding not only an end to the Vietnam War but also significant roles
in deciding what should be in the college curriculum and who should
teach it. Host and guest sometimes talk at cross-purposes, but mostly
this is a productive exploration of what might usefully be changed and
what are the limits of change. RT: "I approve of student power in
certain definitions. I very deeply disapprove of some of the definitions
of student power ... I think that some of the statements of student
power have essentially said, 'We have the right not only to live our own
lives, but to take over everybody else's life as well.' And this seems
to me to be a very dangerous thing."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.85
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6019
item Program Number 86
"The Ghost of the Army-McCarthy Hearings: Part I"
Guests:
St. Clair, James. : Cohn, Roy M. : Cherne, Leo, 1912- : De Antonio,
Emile.
19 January 1968
Scope and Contents note
Transcript: Box/Folder 162 : 11
Program details: We begin each half of this two-part
Firing
Line
by
viewing a clip from Mr. de Antonio's film, which was an edited version
of the Army-McCarthy hearings: first the passage known as The Cropped
Photograph (which had been cropped, Joseph Welch argued, to make it
appear that Army Secretary Stevens was talking alone with Roy Cohn's
friend David Schine, when in fact other people were present), and then
the passage that includes Mr. Welch's coup de grace, "Have you no sense
of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" Not
surprisingly, the participants frequently reach the shouting stage, and
they frequently rehash what they or their friends had said 14 years
earlier; but for anyone who did not see the hearings at the time, or who
has forgotten the details, this show gives us another chance to make up
our own minds. RC: "The fact is, Joe Welch, whom I admired very much, at
that point was not somebody rising to protect Mr. Fisher. He was a good,
professional lawyer coming in for the kill...." JSC: "I couldn't
disagree with you more, Roy. He was a good trial lawyer, and this was a
serious tactical mistake on Senator McCarthy's part ... [but] there was
a deal made between you and Mr. Welch ..."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.86
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6020
item Program Number 87
"The Ghost of the Army-McCarthy Hearings: Part II"
Guests:
Cohn, Roy M. : St. Clair, James. : Cherne, Leo, 1912- : De Antonio,
Emile.
19 January 1968
Scope and Contents note
Transcript: Box/Folder 162 : 12
Program details: We begin each half of this two-part
Firing
Line
by
viewing a clip from Mr. de Antonio's film, which was an edited version
of the Army-McCarthy hearings: first the passage known as The Cropped
Photograph (which had been cropped, Joseph Welch argued, to make it
appear that Army Secretary Stevens was talking alone with Roy Cohn's
friend David Schine, when in fact other people were present), and then
the passage that includes Mr. Welch's coup de grace, "Have you no sense
of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?" Not
surprisingly, the participants frequently reach the shouting stage, and
they frequently rehash what they or their friends had said 14 years
earlier; but for anyone who did not see the hearings at the time, or who
has forgotten the details, this show gives us another chance to make up
our own minds. RC: "The fact is, Joe Welch, whom I admired very much, at
that point was not somebody rising to protect Mr. Fisher. He was a good,
professional lawyer coming in for the kill...." JSC: "I couldn't
disagree with you more, Roy. He was a good trial lawyer, and this was a
serious tactical mistake on Senator McCarthy's part ... [but] there was
a deal made between you and Mr. Welch ..."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.87
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6021
item Program Number 88
"The Wallace Crusade"
Guests: Wallace, George C. (George
Corley), 1919-1998.
24 January 1968
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 75 : 10
Transcript: Box/Folder 162 : 13
Program details: WFB had sharply criticized Mr. Wallace in print, both
for his once-adamant attachment to segregation and for his New Deal
statism, and Mr. Wallace came on
Firing
Line
determined not to give an
inch. GW: "Name one thing in Alabama that I have supported on the
governmental level that you are against." WFB: "You want the state to
take care of hospitalization, you want the state to take care of old
people, you want the state to take care of the poor." GW: "Are you
against caring for the poor and the old? ... I might say that no
conservative in this country who comes out against looking after
destitute elderly people ought to be elected to anything." WFB: "You
call yourself a populist, right?" GW: "If you mean by a populist a man
of the people, yes, I'm a populist. Let's get back to the old-age
pension. Let's see, you're against Alabama's looking after the elderly
destitute citizens of the state?" (The following month, Mr. Wallace
would declare his third-party candidacy for President.)
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.88
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001MBTSJ0
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6022
item Program Number 89
"Wiretapping--Electronic Bugging"
Guests: Long, Edward V.,
1908-
24 January 1968
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 75 : 11
Transcript: Box/Folder 162 : 14
Program details: Senator Long, as WFB introduces him, "is regarded as the
principal custodian of individual privacy in Washington.... Hardly a
week goes by that Senator Long doesn't rise from his seat to demonstrate
the latest use of American ingenuity against American privacy." But he
proves not to be totalist in his objections, and from the discussion
emerges a clear picture of the points at issue. As Mr. Buckley phrases
it, "As a practical matter, I would like to know how much more certain
it is that you and I can finish our lives peacefully, rather than at the
business end of a mugging ... assuming that certain characteristically
inclined criminals are bugged." Senator Long makes the point that many
police chiefs "don't use it; they say that it's a dirty business"; his
answer: only for"national security," and then "only under court
order."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.89
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004SQFQO2
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6023
item Program Number 90
"Philby and Treason"
Guests: West, Rebecca, Dame, 1892-
26 February 1968
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 75 : 12
Transcript: Box/Folder 162 : 15
Program details: Dame Rebecca, who had recently published The New Meaning
of Treason, was invited on
Firing
Line
to discuss Kim Philby and his
spectacular defection to the Soviet Union. For connoisseurs of a certain
sort of British intellectual, this show is hard to beat. RW: "... you
see, it is historically interesting that he wasn't really of a very
important family. He was of a very charming family. But he wasn't of a
very important family." WFB: "If he had been important, he wouldn't have
been discovered yet, do you mean?" RW: "No. What I mean is that Philby
had all the slight thrill that his father gave people. You see, his
father was pro-Arab. And the British Establishment, the British upper
class, has always been pro-Arab-I think because the British upper class
has always been very fond of horses-" WFB: "No, come on." RW: "-and it
all works together. Yes, that's quite true.... A great many of the
English upper-class people approved of Philby because he was on the
right side with those Bedouin chaps."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.90
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E50RV2
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6024
item Program Number 91
"The Culture of the Left"
Guests: Muggeridge, Malcolm,
1903-1990.
26 February 1968
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 75 : 13
Transcript: Box/Folder 162 : 16
Program details: "He calls himself," says WFB in his introduction to the
first of Mr. Muggeridge's several appearances on
Firing
Line
, "a man of
the Left... His apostasies from the Left are, however, so numerous as to
leave him a member of the Left in the same sense that, say, Bishop Pike
is a member of the Episcopal Church." But let Mr. Muggeridge speak for
himself: "Well, Bill, I think you must distinguish between being a
member of the Left and being a liberal. I regard liberalism as the great
disease of our society, and when I said that people like Mrs. Roosevelt,
admirable though they were in intentions, would be seen to have done
more damage than people like Hitler and Stalin, I meant precisely that.
Hitler and Stalin got a lot of people killed and precipitated the great
war, but they are now discredited. But liberalism, which has been the
dominant philosophy in the most influential and powerful nations of the
West, continues to thrive despite the fact that every time it's been
applied, the consequences have been disastrous."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.91
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E52U7G
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6025
item Program Number 92
"The Anti-Communist Left"
Guests: Lasky, Melvin J.
27 February 1968
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 75 : 14
Transcript: Box/Folder 162 : 17
Program details: The gaff had been blown on Encounter magazine: this
splendid journal, which, as WFB puts it, "served for a vital period as
the principal link between English and American intellectuals," had been
funded by the CIA. "There was a near universal dismay, and editors and
writers fled from Encounter as from an earthquake or a flood. Mr. Lasky
stayed on." In this illuminating discussion, Mr. Lasky defends his
journal ("anybody who has looked through any one single issue and thinks
that anybody pulled any strings ... has three more guesses coming") and
argues that "what was terribly important," in the ashes of World War II,
and with the Soviet Union just over there on the other side of that Iron
Curtain, "was that liberals, democrats, and socialists ... were to come
to grips with the experience of what had happened to socialism in their
time."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.92
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6026
item Program Number 93
"English Youth and Vietnam"
Guests: Martin, Ian. : Sears,
Hilary. : Johnson, Gerry. : Mathews, Bob.
27 February 1968
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 75 : 15
Transcript: Box/Folder 162 : 18
Program details: Our four guests-all left of center, all thoughtful and
well spoken-give us a good perspective, by way of comparison, on our own
student activism. One sample, from Mr. Martin: "When I look at the
Vietnam War, for instance, I tend to think of it probably more in
political terms than some of the Americans ... They tend to think of it
very much in moral terms, I think, and if I had moral judgments I would
make them. But the decisions I would come to on the Vietnam War would be
far more objective, I think, than an American would make. I think it
comes back to the fact that an American young lad of 18, 19, is going to
have to fight there. I'm not."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.93
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6027
item Program Number 94
"Robert F. Kennedy"
Guests: Carter, Hodding, 1907-1972.
15 April 1968
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 75 : 16
Transcript: Box/Folder 162 : 19
Program details: This discussion of Senator Kennedy and his prospects
comes to us without the blurring of hindsight that would settle in two
months later. Mr. Buckley reminds us of how Bobby was viewed in those
days, even by many liberals: a ruthless tactician, a cynical exploiter
of his dead brother, a master of political expediency. Mr. Carter (who
had come to prominence in the Thirties and Forties attacking the likes
of Governor Huey Long and Senator Theodore Bilbo) defends Senator
Kennedy ably-but without softening the edges of this picture. One
sample: WFB: "Under the circumstances, the burden is on you to find some
cosmic consistency in [someone who] has taken every position there is to
take on Vietnam, on Lyndon Johnson, on Joe McCarthy, on liberalism, on
Chiang Kai-shek. For all I know, on you." HC: "I'm afraid to get cosmic,
but I think he has been consistent in his reaction against labor
racketeering, his reaction against the Mafia. They've gone underground,
Hoffa went to jail, and Ross Barnett went back to private life. And I
think in every case it has been in great part because of his unswerving
determination to-uh-to do these people in."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.94
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6028
item Program Number 95
"The Wallace Movement"
Guests: Perez, Leander, 1891-1969.
15 April 1968
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 75 : 17
Transcript: Box/Folder 162 : 20
Program details: We met George Wallace himself a few weeks ago (
Firing
Line
088); now that he has officially declared his candidacy, we meet
one of his leading supporters. Listening to Judge Perez, born in
Louisiana in 1891 and a specimen of one strain of the Old South, helps
us, if we can stand it, to understand what men like Hodding Carter had
been fighting against. LP: "First I would like to make a comment on Mr.
Buckley's introduction, because there are a couple of notable errors. In
the first place, I am not a racist. I might mention I am against the
Federal Government using its coercive power to force racial integration
upon an unwilling free people... " WFB: "Well, ... have you been widely
misquoted? For instance, you're quoted as having said, 'Yes, the Negro
is inherently immoral-yes, I think it's the brain capacity.' Is that a
misquotation?" LP: "It's not a misquotation. It's the truth." WFB:
"Uh-huh" LP: "Because I know Negroes. We have a number of Negroes in our
community, and I know that basically and mentally they are immoral."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.95
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6029
item Program Number 96
"The New Left"
Guests: Dellinger, David T., 1915-
25 April 1968
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 75 : 18
Transcript: Box/Folder 162 : 21
Program details: Some of us have forgotten that Mr. Dellinger was not
"one of the Kids": he was old enough to have been jailed for refusing to
register for the draft in World War II. At the time of this show he was
best known as the organizer of the big march on the Pentagon; in a few
months' time he would become one of the Chicago 8 (later known as the
Chicago 7, after Bobby Seale was separated from the other defendants),
prosecuted for their disruption of the Democratic National Convention.
Today, guest and host come out swinging and stop only at the final bell:
DD: "But anyway, I think it's very important in terms of the New Left to
realize that there are no 'foremost peaceniks.' Now, ... for one reason
or another, the press focuses more on me than on some other people. But
the strength, the heart, the guts of the movement comes not from leaders
but from people who are fed up with ... American society in many of its
manifestations ..." WFB: "Well, doesn't everybody say that? You know: It
wasn't really I-it was all the people who provided all the work and
inspiration. That's sort of an after-dinner affectation, isn't it?" DD:
"No, it's not an affectation. You know, that's one of the problems-that
we can't sort of take people seriously in their sincerity."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.96
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6030
item Program Number 97
"The Middle East [1968]"
Guests: Utley, Freda, 1898-
25 April 1968
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 75 : 19
Transcript: Box/Folder 162 : 22
Program details: In this crackling discussion, Miss Utley takes a
position vis-a-vis the Middle East not unlike that of many British and
American foreign-service professionals-but with a special twist born of
her study of Communism. WFB: "She feels the United States is committing
a great error by its apparent hostility to the Arab world. I should like
to begin by asking Miss Utley whether she believes that that hostility,
if that is the word for it, is primarily a reaction to the Communist
support of the Arabs." FU: "No, I put it the other way around. The Arabs
only turned to Moscow when they could not get any help or any
fulfillment of their national aspirations from the West. The analogy I'm
always making [is to] ... the Far East.... In 1923, after the First
World War, when the West would not give up its imperialist privileges in
China, Sun Yat-sen turned to Moscow for aid. This collaboration between
the Nationalists in China and Moscow didn't last long ... but this was
the beginning of the roots of Communism in China."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.97
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6031
item Program Number 98
"Can We Win in Vietnam?"
Guests: Kahn, Herman, 1922-
7 May 1968
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 76 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 162 : 23
Program details: The short answer to the title question is: "Yes, if we
don't lose the war here at home. Mr. Kahn, a veteran student of military
affairs, points out in this informative discussion that the Tet
Offensive seriously demoralized our own leaders even though we wound up
winning that engagement-because they had not believed that North Vietnam
could, at that stage, mobilize an attack of that magnitude. As for the
press, it is reflecting the culture it lives in. HK: We don't live in an
heroic culture, so you can't report heroism... We don't live in a
religious culture, so you can't report it as an anti-Communist
crusade-that looks indecent. So you have to report it at the human
level-the tired Marine, the child-mother, and so on ..."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.98
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6032
item Program Number 99
"The Avant Garde"
Guests: Ginsberg, Allen, 1926-
7 May 1968
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 76 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 162 : 24
Program details: Some installments of
Firing
Line
would not lose much if
the video faded out, but this one is an exception: Mr. Ginsberg's hair
(as WFB puts it, "he will wear his hair long until everybody else does;
then he will cut it"), his glittering eyes, and the little harmonium
with which he accompanies his chant of Ommm are half the story. But,
agree with him or not, the words are worth hearing too, as an
encapsulation of this time: "One of the problems is, critically
speaking, no one can understand the problem of police brutality in
America, or the police-state we are going through as I see it, without
understanding the language of the police. The language that the police
use on hippies or Negroes is such that I can't pronounce it to the
middle-class audience. So the middle-class audience doesn't have the
data or some portion of the data to judge the situation between the
Negroes and the police."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.99
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E50RVC
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6033
item Program Number 100
"Governing the Cities"
Guests: Stokes, Carl.
24 May 1968
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 76 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 162 : 25
Program details: Mr. Stokes was the first black mayor of a major American
city, and he had inherited an explosive situation-due partly, as he
tells us here, to the patterns of migration from the rural South to the
large Northern cities; partly to the general discontent in America in
the Sixties. CS: "So much of the reason I got the kind of vote I got
from the Negro community-close to 96 per cent-... was because of a great
investment of hope in me ... Now, however, the great burden upon me is
to produce ... If I don't produce and start showing where you can touch
the foundation of a new house going up or a new business within the
black community that's going to produce jobs right there, then the
reaction toward me, at the minimum, would be the same as toward anybody
else, any other mayor whatever his color, and maybe-" WFB: "Even worse."
CS: "Even worse, because, of course, of the level of hope to which I had
raised the community."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.100
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6034
item Program Number 101
"The Republicans and the Cities"
Guests: Taft, Seth Chase,
1922-
24 May 1968
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 76 : 4
Transcript: Box/Folder 163 : 1
Program details: This leisurely and productive discussion with a nephew
of Robert A. Taft starts with the question: "Is there a 'Republican' as
distinct from a 'Democratic' approach to the problem of the cities?" Mr.
Taft is inclined to think there is, and that it has to do with "the
individual doing things for himself: "After you're sure they care, then
you can start talking about what help do you have to give them to make
it worth while for them to care; what kind of elements of discrimination
do you have to get rid of; what kind of historical inadequate education,
so that a guy doesn't know how to use a hammer or a paintbrush to fix up
his own property ... You'd be amazed at what happens if you talk
somebody into growing some grass in front of where they live, or
slapping some paint on a porch in front of their house-this makes a
tremendous difference."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.101
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6035
item Program Number 102
"Armies of the Night"
Guests: Mailer, Norman.
28 May 1968
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 76 : 5
Transcript: Box/Folder 163 : 2
Program details: This surprisingly genial conversation starts with the
subject of Norman Mailer-a-s most conversations with Norman Mailer
do--and goes on from there. WFB: "Oh, sure, I'm very anxious to discuss
[Mr. Mailer's latest book, Armies of the Night]... [which] I think
everyone should read, because I think it's an extremely interesting and
enjoyable book, if that's the right word for it." NM: "Well, I wish
someone on the right wing would write a book that would be as good,
because it would be a great help to us on the Left. I wanted to help the
right wing understand-" WFB: "You wouldn't notice it if it were
written." NM: "No, I would notice it. You know I'm a lover of
literature." WFB: "Yes." NM: "I think Evelyn Waugh is a marvelous
writer.... Unfortunately, he's not an American." WFB: "Yeah.
Unfortunately, he's dead." NM: "That too."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.102
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001MBTSJK
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6036
item Program Number 103
"Journals of News and Opinion"
Guests: Fuerbringer, Otto.
28 May 1968
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 76 : 6
Transcript: Box/Folder 163 : 3
Program details: Shop talk at a high level between the man who had run
the week-to-week operations of Time for two decades and the man who
founded and has the final say at National Review. Time does not, as
we're reminded on this show, maintain the fiction that most of our daily
newspapers do-the fiction of reporting the news "straight" and
commenting only in editorials or "news analyses." As for National
Review, it used to bill itself on every cover as "a journal of fact and
opinion." WFB: "At some point, the brass at Time magazine will decide,
will it not, whether it desires the election of Nixon or let's say
Humphrey ... How will that communicate itself to the readers-or am I
being terribly naive?" OF: "Oh, I would say you're fairly naive, yeah. I
think there's never been any doubt as to whom Time was for in any
election."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.103
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6037
item Program Number 104
"Unrest on the Campus"
Guests: Boles, Allan. : Rapoport,
Roger. : Kramer, Joel.
20 June 1968
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 76 : 7
Transcript: Box/Folder 163 : 4
Program details: "Unrest" was becoming a euphemism for vandalism,
hostage-taking, and outright rebellion-Columbia being, as WFB puts it,
"the goriest recent example-I thought it charitable not to invite the
editor of the Columbia Spectator to discuss the question." Our student
guests place the problem squarely on the shoulders of the college
administrations-and, while we're at it, the Judaeo-Christian tradition.
RR: "You can start right down the line starting with Columbia and
Grayson Kirk, whose idea of running a university is to start out by
putting a $450,000 Rembrandt on your office wall to let everybody in
Harlem know that you're there."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.104
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6038
item Program Number 105
"Violence"
Guests: Wertham, Fredric, 1895-1981.
20 June 1968
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 76 : 9
Transcript: Box/Folder 163 : 5
Program details: Martin Luther King had been killed in April, Bobby
Kennedy the first week in June. Dr. Wertham, a practicing psychiatrist,
was a longtime clinical student of violence, and in this rich discussion
he helps us cut through the rhetorical excesses. FW: "After the killing
of Dr. King and after the killing of Robert Kennedy many, many people
... gave their opinions, and I would like to tell you first that
everybody seems to know where violence comes from-they know where the
riots come from, where the wars come from, where murder comes from. I'm
the only one who doesn't know, so I'm considered an expert-at least I
know one should find it out. But this particular notion that everybody's
responsible, that everybody's guilty, I consider not only wrong but very
pernicious. Because if everybody is responsible, nobody is responsible.
If everybody is guilty, nobody's guilty. And this is just one of the
great evasions."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.105
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6039
item Program Number 106
"The Rib Uncaged: Women and the Church"
Guests: Ruether,
Rosemary Radford. : Daly, Mary, 1928- : Callahan, Sidney Cornelia.
24 June 1968
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 76 : 10
Transcript: Box/Folder 163 : 6
Program details: This show proves to be less of a bare-knuckle battle and
more of a conversation than one might have expected, ranging back and
forth from the historical development of Christianity--especially
Catholic Christianity--to the effect of women's changing roles in the
secular world. One sample: RR: "I am more interested in this, sort of,
threatening the Church with women; it's mostly a way of breaking up the
clerical bag, because I don't think you can put that into it without the
bag breaking." MD: "Luckily the clerical bag is falling apart. Both
forces are working at the same time." WFB: "When you refer to 'the
clerical bag' do you mean the series of perquisites that they uniquely
enjoy?" MD: "Yeah. I think the whole concept of ministry, a special
state of life ... I think that we will have much more community
ministry, part of each other." SC: "That whole rectory culture. You
know, Christian gentlemen-there's a whole thing that goes with it."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.106
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6040
item Program Number 107
"Obscenity and the Supreme Court"
Guests: Rembar, Charles. :
Kuh, Richard H.
24 June 1968
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 76 : 11
Transcript: Box/Folder 163 : 7
Program details: Our guests have both spent more time with pornography
than either might have liked. As WFB introduces them, "Mr. Rembar is
uniquely situated to write about those trials [listed in the subtitle to
his book], since he was in all cases counsel for the defense and the
author of the triumphant legal strategy." Mr. Kuh, meanwhile, "observed
the anti-obscenity laws being shot down one after the other and
elaborated a theory on how to write statutes that would control the
traffic of smut in such a way as to get them by the Supreme Court." Mr.
Rembar proves not to be a First Amendment absolutist (although he
maintains that, "so far as books are concerned-the printed word-the
government ought to stay out of things"), and he is willing to entertain
Mr. Kuh's arguments, e.g., regarding books with highly explicit
pictures, and regarding sales to children. At one point, indeed, Mr.
Buckley is moved to say, "We're making progress here (we're not used to
that)."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.107
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6041
item Program Number 108
"Has the Republican Party Anything to Offer?"
Guests: Ford,
Gerald R., 1913-
8 July 1968
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 76 : 12
Transcript: Box/Folder 163 : 8
Program details: Gerald Ford had been in the unenviable position of
becoming the House Republicans' leader following the 1964 debacle, in
which his troops were reduced to a minority of 140, as against 295
Democrats. Then again, as Mr. Buckley suggests, "there was nowhere to go
but up, and the GOP had rebounded nicely in 1966. Mr. Ford--as the
nation would learn more extensively a few years later on--is not the
liveliest speaker, but he does a good job of explaining what he and his
colleagues mean by constructive alternatives" to the Democrats'
initiatives, and there are some good exchanges-e.g., on the minimum
wage, and on Hubert Humphrey. WFB: "And [Humphrey] may have an
interesting future." GF: "Well, not as interesting as he would like, but
it is going to be interesting."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.108
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6042
item Program Number 109
"The Washington Press"
Guests: Means, Marianne. : Kraslow,
David. : Broder, David S.
8 July 1968
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 76 : 13
Transcript: Box/Folder 163 : 9
Program details: "The idea," WFB begins, "is to discuss the Washington
press and see if we can throw more light on it than it sometimes seems
to throw on Washington." Not much of what he and his guests go on to say
is a scoop (reporters tend to be liberal; the press helps bring
candidates to prominence), but they say it so well. DB: "The last four
years, it seems to me, the Republicans have received more sympathetic
treatment in the Washington press than their performance deserves." WFB:
"Is it because of the growing probity of the press or the contribution
of Lyndon Johnson?" DB: "Probably more of the latter than the former.
Also, I think there is always an interest in the out party and what it's
doing. They stir up the fights, and we are in the business of ... being
fight promoters."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.109
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6043
item Program Number 110
"Liberalism and the Intellectuals"
Guests: Mannes, Marya.
10 July 1968
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 76 : 14
Transcript: Box/Folder 163 : 10
Program details: Another go at the often-asked question, "Why do
intellectuals tend to be liberal? Miss Mannes's answer may not be
especially startling, but she and her host strike sparks off each other
in delightful ways. And, in retrospect, an exchange like the following
illuminates what would be different about the Reagan Presidency. MM:
"You know, there's been awfully little fun in conservative and
Republican politics, terribly little fun." WFB: "You don't think Herbert
Hoover was fun, huh?" MM: "Not riotously, no....I think that the gaiety,
the fun, the vitality, the feeling of adventure has resided far more,
certainly in the last decades, in the Democratic end of things than in
the Republican."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.110
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6044
item Program Number 111
"The Socialist Workers' Party and American Politics"
Guests:
Halstead, Fred. : Boutelle, Paul.
10 July 1968
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 76 : 15
Transcript: Box/Folder 163 : 11
Program details: WFB starts off by reminding us that "the Socialist
Workers are the principal political heirs of Leon Trotsky in this
country," and one might expect a certain amount of acrimony to follow.
In fact, while the ideological edge is always there, many of the
exchanges are great fun. FH: "I don't know that it's the obligation of
any militant to be rude. I wish the capitalists would be gentlemanly
toward us." WFB: "Yeah." FH: "Occasionally, they throw us in jail, and
things like that." WFB: "Well, considering that you want to sort of, you
know, do away with capitalists-" FH: "... Not with the individual human
beings-with the system. I suspect that even you would find a place in
the socialist system." WFB: "Well, sure. I'm a very good typist, and I'm
sure you'd have a lot of forms." FH: "Maybe lectures, on the
past...."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.111
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6045
item Program Number 112
"Capital Punishment"
Guests: Capote, Truman, 1924-
3 September 1968
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 76 : 16
Transcript: Box/Folder 163 : 12
Program details: Some of Mr. Capote's suggestions seem more interesting
than practical (never let a psychopathic killer out of prison, but never
let him know you're not going to let him out), but in the course of
researching his book he acquired a deep knowledge of the homicidal mind
and the implications for deterrence, punishment, and rehabilitation.
"I'd known this boy was a psychopathic murderer, and I had known that if
he went back into the prison population that it was inevitable that he
would kill somebody again. So, I mean, there he is loose in the prison
population still, and, of course, cannot be returned to death row and
cannot be executed, having got a commutation. So what is the answer to
this problem, where you have compulsive homicidal minds who are
incapable of controlling this violence of theirs?"
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.112
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004SQFQRE
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6046
item Program Number 113
"The Hippies"
Guests: Yablonsky, Lewis. : Sanders, Ed. :
Kerouac, Jack, 1922-1969.
3 September 1968
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 76 : 17
Transcript: Box/Folder 163 : 13
Program details: Hold onto your hat for this free-for-all among four men
who aren't simply coming from different directions--they're in different
universes. ES: "The problem with terms like 'hippie' is that they have a
definition forced on them by the media . . . And you know, you can't
rely on the name 'hippie' to include a human being, you know, everything
about a particular human being. You know? . . ." LY: "I kinda disagree
with that. I spent last year traveling around the country, various
communes and various- Haight-Ashbury, Lower East Side, various city
scenes, and there was an identifiable . . . people trying, searching for
some loving solutions to society's ills, trying to tune in to the
cosmos, whatever that means." ... WFB: "To what extent do you believe
the Beat Generation is related to the hippies ... ?" JK: "I'm 46 years
old, these kids are 18, but it's the same movement, which is apparently
some kind of Dionysian movement, in late civilization, which I did not
intend, any more than, I suppose, Dionysus did, or whatever, his name
was. Although I'm not Dionysus to your Euripides, I should have
been."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.113
DVD Link:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/product/B001MBTSK4
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6047
item Program Number 114
"Money Troubles"
Guests: Barr, Joseph. : Burns, Arthur
Edward, 1908-1986.
9 September 1968
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 76 : 18
Transcript: Box/Folder 163 : 14
Program details: The federal deficits were becoming a matter of serious
worry, and not only to Republicans. Although Mr. Barr is a member of the
Johnson Administration and Mr. Burns is a lifelong Democrat, both
agree--and give compelling supporting evidence--that we need either to
cut expenditures or to raise taxes (although Mr. Barr also explains
cogently why, with our system of congressional appropriations, a
decision to reduce expenditures may not reduce next year's expenditures
very much). One sample: JB: "You're not going to get me in a partisan
whipsaw right at the start. It [the failure to raise taxes] was the
fault of the American people.... Every leader in the society-business,
finance, academic, you name it-every leader said we were right, but the
American people didn't agree with them. Sixty per cent of the American
people said, No, you're wrong, we're gonna be worse off if we pay more
taxes."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.114
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6048
item Program Number 115
"The McCarthy Phenomenon"
Guests: Lowenstein, Allard K.
9 September 1968
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 77 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 163 : 15
Program details: The Eugene McCarthy Phenomenon, that is. Mr. Lowenstein,
a vigorous opponent of our involvement in Vietnam, had spearheaded the
anti-LBJ campaign, persuading Senator McCarthy to enter the Democratic
primaries (having gone first, as WFB recalls, "to Senator Robert
Kennedy, but was turned down, then Senator McGovern, ditto"). This
lively duel with a man who would become a favorite
Firing
Line
guest
starts with Mr. Lowenstein's reluctance to back the Humphrey-Muskie
ticket. WFB: "No, but they won't withdraw your nomination from the
Democratic Party, surely. That's yours, correct?" AL: "Well ... The
problem is that the possibility of running an alternative Democrat to
split the vote among Democrats exists and [may not be] accompanied by
massive defections from the Republicans who appreciate my
public-spiritedness ..."WFB: "You mean, do I understand you?, that there
would still be time for somebody to run on a pro-Humphrey ticket?" AL:
"Yes." WFB: "But your name, however, would appear, geographically, under
Humphrey's, wouldn't it?" AL: "Uh, I think it's geographically right of
Humphrey's, which is perhaps more sinister than it seems.""
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.115
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6049
item Program Number 116
"The Cold War"
Guests: Brzezinski, Zbigniew, 1928-
23 September 1968
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 77 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 163 : 16
Program details: A splendid discussion of the Cold War with a man whose
views are informed by his Polish upbringing, his academic studies, and
his experience at the Policy Planning Council of the State Department.
One sample: WFB: "I should like to begin by asking Mr. Brzezinski
whether he anticipated the Soviet Union's crushing of Czechoslovakia."
ZB: "... Back in June, I thought they would invade ... I thought at that
time that the Soviet Union could not afford to let Czechoslovakia go the
way it was going. By August I was inclined to feel that ... the Soviet
Union had developed certain internal incapacities for deliberate brutal
action.... On the eve of the actual invasion ... I thought that rather
there would be a change of leadership, rather than an invasion...." WFB:
"Now, might a careful student of your writings infer that [the invasion]
took you by surprise as a result of your own apparent recent addiction
to a thesis of deideologization which in fact history isn't validating?"
ZB: "A sloppy reader might infer that." WFB: "Well, would the careful
reader of your writing be careful not to read certain of your books?"
ZB: "No, but a sloppy reader might skip passages, and just find the ones
that confirm his view."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.116
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6050
item Program Number 117
"Some Problems of the Freshman Senator"
Guests: Goodell,
Charles E. (Charles Ellsworth), 1926-1987.
23 September 1968
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 77 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 163 : 17
Program details: "When Governor Rockefeller appointed Charles Goodell to
the vacancy left in the Senate on the death of Senator Robert Kennedy,"
WFB recalls, "observers struggled to situate him in the ideological
spectrum. On the one hand his [American Conservative Union] rating was
very high; on the other hand, his biography handout appears to qualify
him for the presidency of the ADA." On this show, Senator Goodell
adroitly sidesteps any attempt so to situate him. (Two years later, Mr.
Buckley's brother James, running on the Conservative line, unseated Mr.
Goodell.) WFB: "I should like to begin by asking Senator Goodell whether
he feels any sense of ideological obligation either to his predecessor,
Senator Kennedy, or to his benefactor, Governor Rockefeller." CG: "I
think my sense of ideological identification is with the things I
believe in very deeply....They call me Mr. Constructive Alternative in
the Republican Party, because I did feel that it was not enough to say
'No' to programs that were offered that were deficient; that we should
offer a better answer."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.117
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6051
item Program Number 118
"Korean War Defectors"
Guests: Wills, Morris R., 1933- :
Tenneson, Richard. : Pasley, Virginia, 1905-
7 October 1968
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 77 : 4
Transcript: Box/Folder 163 : 18
Program details: Messrs. Tenneson and Wills were, as WFB relates,
"captured by the North Koreans 15 years ago, and after a long period in
prisoner-of-war camps, elected to abandon the United States and go to
live in China. Mr. Tenneson stayed for only a few years, Mr. Wills for a
much longer time, returning only in 1965." Neither Mr. Tenneson nor Mr.
Wills proves to be madly articulate, but perhaps for that very reason we
get something of a sense of how the ordinary GI was likely to react. One
factor in Mr. Tenneson's defection was Joe McCarthy ("That doesn't make
[America] that much better a place to come back to than where you're
at"); in Mr. Wills's case, it was "complete, total dissatisfaction with
our own side, with the way they were running things ... In fact, I was
caught during one marvelous confusing event, you see, one that lasted
three days, and we didn't know where the front line was and where our
rear was, or anything."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.118
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6052
item Program Number 119
"Politics and Show Biz"
Guests: Bean, Orson.
7 October 1968
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 77 : 5
Transcript: Box/Folder 163 : 19
Program details: Another look, deliciously offbeat, at artists' tendency
to go left. One sample from Mr. Bean: "The principle of love is one
thing, and love is another. Anyone who is capable of loving has to be
capable of hating. And most liberals would deny that they really hate
anybody in principle, although they act very hateful. A liberal is
someone who will fight to the death for your right to agree with him. He
is always very intolerant compared to most conservatives I know, and
that's always been the case even back in my liberal days." And on to the
movies' current tendency toward anti-heroes, to whether Paul Newman
deserves his salary, and to farmers and the meaning of life.
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.119
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6053
item Program Number 120
"Why Do So Many Canadians Hate America?"
Guests: Zolf,
Larry. : Lee, Dennis, 1939- : Purdy, Al, 1918-
21 October 1968
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 77 : 6
Transcript: Box/Folder 163 : 20
Program details: Mr. Purdy, WFB begins by explaining, is "the editor of
the best-seller The New Romans, in which forty Canadians, including the
gentlemen present, discuss America's shortcomings in prose and in
verse." As they proceed to do on this show, starting, of course, with
Vietnam (one of Mr. Lee's poems goes: "For a man who fries the skin of
kids with burning jelly is a criminal, even though he loves children, he
is a criminal, even though his money pumps your oil, he is a criminal"),
going on to Americans owning industrial plants in Canada, but also to
something more fundamental. LZ: "I'm going to say something that perhaps
might shock you, that if you take Mr. William Buckley with his
conservative views and make him live in Canada, he would be an
anti-American." WFB: "All right, why?" LZ: "... Because the whole point
of the conservative tradition in Canada was that we were not to
duplicate the republican experiment. We wanted to have a constitutional
monarchy, we wanted to evolve slowly into responsible government."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.120
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6054
item Program Number 121
"Is South Africa Everybody's Business?"
Guests: Steyn,
Stephanus. : Houser, George M.
4 November 1968
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 77 : 7
Transcript: Box/Folder 163 : 21
Program details: Some wrangling, some genuine and illuminating debate
among Mr. Steyn, who loves his country but sees a great need to bring
all its people into real participation; Mr. Houser, who favors a policy
of U.S. "disengagement" from South Africa unless petty apartheid is
abolished and black workers are paid the same as white; and Mr. Buckley,
who objects to the "tendentious hostilities" of people who "feel a
considerable passion towards the policies of, let's say, South Africa,
which [they] do not feel towards the policies of, oh, any of a number of
... countries in Africa, which are also racist, and which also are
imperialistic, or towards the policies of, let's say, Israel ... or
towards parts of Pakistan or India ..."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.121
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6055
item Program Number 122
"The Influence of TV on American Politics"
Guests: Cooke,
Alistair, 1908- : MacNeil, Robert, 1931- : White, F. Clifton.
4 November 1968
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 77 : 8
Transcript: Box/Folder 163 : 22
Program details: An entertaining and informative discussion among four
old pros, at a time when television as a political medium was
comparatively new. A highlight, especially in retrospect, is the
discussion of Ronald Reagan. Mr. White had spearheaded the effort to get
Governor Reagan the 1968 Republican nomination. Although it failed, it
helped make Mr. Reagan a national figure. AC: "I saw that Reagan-Kennedy
debate [on the Vietnam War] and changed dramatically my feelings about
Mr. Reagan ... First, I think Bobby Kennedy was unprepared, unbriefed,
but that's a sort of inside view. I think the average viewer looks at it
and says, He's just all over the place, he doesn't know what he's
talking about. Reagan is in complete command, and he's a natural man.
Now, I think this came from his training as an actor, because you have
to learn to be natural [on camera]."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.122
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6056
item Program Number 123
"Cracking the Cities' Problem"
Guests: Alioto, Joseph L.
13 November 1968
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 77 : 9
Transcript: Box/Folder 163 : 23
Program details: A crackling exchange with a guest who, before he went
into politics, had been one of the country's leading litigators.
Although on the left side of the Democratic Party, Mayor Alioto is
forthright in asserting the need for order (in the face, specifically,
of student disruptions). He will not budge from his unconditional
support for labor unions,but the level of discourse is not what one
hears every day from politicians: JA: "... if you give people enough
time to talk about their differences, enough time to know the facts, all
of those things happen, I think ..." WFB: "Your faith is of Platonic
interest tome, and I would say ..." JA: "This is a very realistic,
Aristotelian type of faith that I'm talking about--not a faith in ideas,
but a faith in the realities of things."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.123
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6057
item Program Number 124
"The Black Panthers"
Guests: Cleaver, Eldridge, 1935-
13 November 1968
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 77 : 10
Transcript: Box/Folder 163 : 24
Program details: Ten years earlier, Mr. Cleaver had been convicted of
assault with intent to rape. While out on parole, he had been involved
in a shootout in which one Black Panther was killed and two policemen
were wounded. This violated the terms of his parole, and he was about to
be returned to jail. Just a few days after this show was filmed, he fled
the United States for Havana and then Algiers. On the show itself, Mr.
Cleaver is surprisingly low-key in manner, though relentless in his
rhetorical style--e.g., about whether encouraging the assassination of
Richard Nixon would be consistent with the Panther ideology: "Mr. Nixon
is at this moment the pig waiting in the wings to take the place of the
other pig that is on his way out. I would say that if Richard Nixon was
assassinated it would only result in having another pig in line who
possibly would need to be assassinated. I don't see any reason for
having Richard Nixon alive today."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.124
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6058
item Program Number 125
"Jerusalem and the Middle East"
Guests: Kollek, Teddy, 1911-
18 November 1968
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 77 : 11
Transcript: Box/Folder 163 : 25
Program details: "Mr. Teddy Kollek," WFB begins, "is the Mayor of
Jerusalem, the city with the longest recorded history in the world ...
and at this moment [following the Six-Day War] the principal point of
contact between the Arab and the Israeli populations in perhaps the most
combustible area in the world." This serious conversation begins with
the United Nations proposal that Jerusalem be made an international
city. TK: "Well, I don't think there is a country or a city in the world
who would rely on the defense of the United Nations against aggressive
power from the outside, nor shall we." WFB: "Well, now, suppose that you
made the government of Jerusalem conditional on great-power guarantees
of defense. Would that be sufficient?" TK: "I wouldn't sleep, if I would
have to depend on that." WFB: "Well, I understand you don't sleep
anyway. You work all the time." TK: "Well, I would be very nervous if I
would have to rely on great powers. It is a small country, and before
the great powers would come to our assistance, as has been proven in the
past, you wouldn't exist any more."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.125
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6059
item Program Number 126
"The Republic of New Africa"
Guests: Henry, Milton.
18 November 1968
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 77 : 12
Transcript: Box/Folder 164 : 1
Program details: "The Republic of New Africa" is not a new name for, say,
South Africa: it refers instead to a proposal by a group of American
blacks who "don't believe," as Mr. Henry puts it, "there's ever been any
historical example of a successful bi-racial society," and who therefore
want to carve out a legally separate nation-formed, probably, from
Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and South Carolina. Agree with
him or not, Mr. Henry is well spoken and well traveled (he draws
illustrations from, e.g., Kenya, Tanzania, and Cuba, all of which he has
visited): "We are a nation, a distinctly separate nation with a
different set of humor, myths, way of looking at history, a totally
different view of ourselves in this country from I would imagine a view
which most white people have, and we are separated ... from most of the
good things of American life."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.126
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003GXE9RI
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6060
item Program Number 127
"Does Science Emerge Supreme?"
Guests: Barnard, Christiaan,
1922-
9 December 1968
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 77 : 13
Transcript: Box/Folder 164 : 2
Program details: In Dr. Barnard's first transplant, as Mr. Buckley puts
it, "The operation, as they say,was successful, but the patient died.
Not so the second transplant, who is alive today, drinking beer, writing
his autobiography, and thinking kind thoughts about the venturesome Dr.
Barnard." The conversation is a bit slow getting started, but host and
guest eventually engage in a rich discussion touching on what fields of
knowledge should inform life-or-death decisions, and what is the
scientist's responsibility qua scientist and qua human being. CB: "I'll
put it to you this way. Say, for example, that we from the time that we
were born, we were used to the idea that when somebody dies, his organs
are removed for transplantation. And at this stage, 1968, we've changed
this idea now to the idea that when a patient is dead he's buried and
his organs will be eaten up by the worms. We would revolt to that new
idea, wouldn't we?"
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.127
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6061
item Program Number 128
"The American Challenge"
Guests: Servan-Schreiber, Jean
Jacques. : Galbraith, Evan G.
9 December 1968
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 77 : 13
Transcript: Box/Folder 164 : 3
Program details: The "challenge" in question being, as WFB glosses it,
whether "France and Europe are permitting America to overtake them by
indulging us instead of emulating our extraordinary technological and
managerial breakthroughs." Despite occasional impasses (like one at the
beginning over whether the differences among various countries are
"racial" or "cultural"), this proves to be a fascinating three-way
discussion of economic competition, how having a Protestant versus a
Catholic culture affects a country's economic development, how companies
in different countries in Europe might learn to cooperate. JJSS: "You
see, for instance, a very Catholic country, the most Catholic country in
the Common Market, is Italy. And Italy was lagging industrially, even
under Mussolini--when all Italy geared up for a war effort, he could not
bring any industrial results in his country. But now this very Catholic
country is the fastest driving country in the Common Market."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.128
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6062
item Program Number 129
"The Uses of Animals"
Guests: Conrad, Barnaby, 1922- :
Amory, Cleveland.
12 December 1968
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 77 : 14
Transcript: Box/Folder 164 ; 4
Program details: Our guests are diametrically opposed on the subject of,
as WFB puts it, "the role of the animal on earth." Mr. Conrad is a bull
fighting enthusiast, the author of several books on the subject, of
which Matador is the latest; Mr. Amory's club advises its members, WFB
tells us, "After you have bagged your hunter do not drape him on the
automobile or mount him when you get home. Merely the cap or the jacket
will suffice." A brilliant three-way duel on a subject where Mr. Amory
would challenge many Western traditions, as in this comment after
quoting James Michener's account of a bull killed in the ring: "Well,
I'm just surprised that Michener could write so feelingly of that animal
in its last throes, and yet not feel the way I feel about the animal,
which is, Why do it to him? What did he ever do to deserve it? He didn't
decide it was an art."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.129
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6063
item Program Number 130
"Muhammad Ali and the Negro Movement"
Guests: Ali, Muhammad,
1942-
12 December 1968
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 77 : 15
Transcript: Box/Folder 164 : 5
Program details: When Mr. Clay joined the Black Muslims, his draft board
reversed its earlier determination (made in order to keep him out of the
Armed Forces so that he could continue to box) that he was not
sufficiently intelligent to serve. When he was reclassified, he pleaded
conscientious objection, was refused, and was about to begin a term in
jail. CC: "I have to be real cool and not savage and radical, because it
makes me angry when I think about it--when I see the white boys, who
really are the number-one citizens, the future rulers, when I see them,
by the hundreds, leaving the country, and I see the white preachers
breaking into draft-board houses in Wisconsin and Baltimore, tearing the
files out of the walls and making a bonfire out of 45,000 draft cards,
pouring blood on them, and I see them go to court and the juries say two
years, and I get five years for what's legal?"
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.130
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001MBTSKY
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6064
item Program Number 131
"The Issues in the School Strike"
Guests: Shanker, Albert.
6 January 1969
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 77 : 16
Transcript: Box/Folder 164 : 6
Program details: Mr. Shanker's union had gone on strike against the New
York City public schools and stayed out most of the fall of 1968. The
dispute had begun with, as WFB puts it, "an explosive disagreement
between [Mr. Shanker] and the superintendent of a school complex in an
area predominantly Negro and Puerto Rican," the main issue being
"community control," which various minority groups saw as necessary for
their own "empowerment" and which Mr. Shanker saw as directed against
his teachers. AS: "Well, I think that a decision has been made, and I
think it's been made by the Mayor, I think it's been made by the Ford
Foundation, I think it's been made by high executives in businesses, I
think it's been made by some liberal reformers, a decision [in favor of]
... community control. The liberals do it perhaps out of a sense of
guilt--black people have been slaves and persecuted for years, now let's
give them something."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.131
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6065
item Program Number 132
"The Plight of the American Novelist"
Guests: Maclnnes,
Helen, 1907- : Auchincloss, Louis.
6 January 1969
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 77 : 17
Transcript: Box/Folder 164 : 7
Program details: WFB begins by pointing out that notwithstanding the
success of his guests, novels were generally regarded as out of date,
and the novelists present (not including our host, who was six years
away from joining their ranks) take it from there. LA: "There's a
constant demand for forms that are relevant to our age. The screen,
painting, and sculpture can change their form. The novel tried to change
its form. The French novel carried it to the point where Nathalie
Sarraute has eliminated characters.... But it seems to me that the novel
is not capable of this adjustment to new forms.... I really don't think
Nathalie Sarraute is successful in eliminating characters." HM: "But she
isn't writing a novel. Why doesn't she call it something else? People
never used to get confused about what the novel was for."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.132
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6066
item Program Number 133
"The Walker Report"
Guests: Zion, Sidney. : Rumsfeld,
Donald, 1932-
13 January 1969
Scope and Contents note
Transcript: Box/Folder 164 : 8
Program details: "The dispute," WFB begins, "over just exactly what
happened in Chicago during the Democratic Convention-I mean other than
the nomination of Humphrey-was not settled by the so-called Walker
Report, which is itself at least as controversial as the Warren Report
on Dallas." The dispute on this show is at times nearly as heated as the
one in the Chicago streets five months before, the starting point being
the Walker Report's comparative figures for hospitalizations of rioters
and policemen. WFB: "It occurs to me that this surely would be the first
time in history that one talks about excessive police brutality when the
figures seem to suggest the reverse [192 policemen reporting to
emergency rooms, as opposed to 101 demonstrators]." SZ: "... Except that
I think in that situation, most of the demonstrators were being treated
by their own little Red Crosses, and probably didn't feel that they
should go to the Chicago hospitals...." WFB: "Oh, come on, Mr. Zion, are
you saying-" SZ: "Oh no, quite. You know, people were hysterical-" WFB:
"-that hospitals were under orders to what?" SZ: "I'm not saying that at
all." WFB: "Give them strychnine?" SZ: "No, but their reaction to what
might have happened in the hospitals may have been paranoiac."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.133
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6067
item Program Number 134
"The Tragedy of Lyndon Johnson"
Guests: Goldman, Eric
Frederick, 1915-
13 January 1969
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 77 : 18
Transcript: Box/Folder 164 : 9
Program details: A rich discussion ranging from Lyndon Johnson's
personality to the behavior of American intellectuals in the 1960s, the
link being Mr. Goldman's stint as "intellectual in residence" at the
White House: "Actually, that job, and ... my being offered it, is one of
the more rococo parts of my period in Washington. The President had
asked me to come down. I had never met the President in my life ... The
President at that meeting said that he wanted to be a very good
President of this country and he needed help and he wanted help from
what he called, excuse me, the best minds of our nation. That's a phrase
which seems to come easily to men who are just becoming President of the
United States. I notice Mr. Nixon, the other day, said he wanted help
from the best minds of the United States."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.134
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6068
item Program Number 135
"How Goes It with the Poverty Program?"
Guests: Shiffman,
Bernard. : Owens, Major.
27 January 1969
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 77 : 19
Transcript: Box/Folder 164 : 10
Program details: In addition to more philosophical (or ideological)
questions over how well the War on Poverty was working, specific
questions had been raised by the discovery of, as WFB puts it," enormous
graft" in the New York City office. Mitchell Ginsberg had accepted an
invitation to appear on
Firing
Line
but had been kept away by an
emergency, his place being taken by two of his deputies. Mr. Shiffman
begins by asking leave "to correct the record: to date ... to the best
of our knowledge, there's been the taking of one-half of one per cent
through what is believed to be conspiracy and fraud ... [by] a number of
people who have conspired to beat a bookkeeping system, and we are
hoping ... that there will be maximum recovery." An often heated
discussion that ranges over anti-Jewish (or is it generally anti-white?)
sentiment in the ghettoes, the state of public libraries in the inner
cities, and other urban ills.
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.135
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6069
item Program Number 136
"The Unfinished Odyssey of Robert Kennedy"
Guests:
Halberstam, David. : Toledano, Ralph de, 1916-
27 January 1969
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 78 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 164 : 11
Program details: Mr. Halberstam's book had been singled out by Russell
Baker as a rare thing, "a book on a Kennedy that was free of sycophantic
cant"; Mr. Toledano had written a book that was so far from sycophantic
as to get him accused of being a John Bircher. A lively conversation at
a time, six months before Chappaquiddick, when Teddy Kennedy was seen as
his brothers' successor in presidential politics. DH: "Well, I think the
Kennedys have been sort of particularly attractive, and romantic--you
used the word romantic ...and somehow, there might be a new kind of
idealism and a new sort of fresh spirit in America. This sort of myth, I
think, began to build, and it has continued. I don't think there's any
doubt that there's a fascination about the Kennedys, that they are
somehow bigger than life. They are handsome, they are star-crossed, they
achieve all and yet can be struck down...." WFB: "And this is something
to which, in your judgment,they primarily contribute, or do you find it
an expression of the public's hunger for these attributes which they
instantly see realized in the Kennedys?" DH: "Well, I think it's
probably a combination of both. I think, you know, the Kennedys are very
smart politicians, and I think that they, if they see that they have a
mystique working for them, that they would probably work on it rather
skillfully."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.136
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6070
item Program Number 137
"The Ripon Society"
Guests: Petri, Thomas E. : Auspitz, J.
Lee (Josiah Lee)
24 February 1969
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 78 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 164 : 12
Program details: During the battles for the Republican Party in the
1960s, the Ripon Society was founded in Massachusetts to further liberal
("moderate" in the Society's own terminology) tendencies in the
party--the Rockefeller, Scranton, Romney wing, as opposed to the
Goldwater, Reagan, and even Nixon wing. Today's conversation changes
none of the participants' minds, but it clearly lays out the two wings'
current positions. WFB: "The Ripon Society certainly seems to me to have
affected most people as an organization that is industriously engaged in
trying to persuade the Republican Party to be like the Democratic
Party." TEP: "No, it's engaged in persuading the Republican Party to do
those things that will enable it to compete with the Democratic Party in
states where the Democratic Party is strong. That's a bit different. We
try to take Republican ideas and formulate them so that they can embrace
the necessary role of government in the last few decades of this
century."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.137
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00G707LZO
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6071
item Program Number 138
"The Fifth Amendment"
Guests: Rothwax, Harold J. : Williams,
C. Dickerman.
24 February 1969
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 78 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 164 : 13
Program details: "The rise in the crime rate," WFB begins, "brings us to
reconsider existing legal dogma and protocols, and a while ago Thomas
Dewey startled the legal profession by recommending the outright repeal
of the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution, which has lately been
interpreted by the Supreme Court as an absolute guarantee to anybody to
be uncooperative." A deeply instructive program, in which Mr. Buckley
invites his guests to explain to a lay audience matters such as the
different protections granted witnesses in a civil and a criminal trial,
the reason why the Fifth Amendment applies to witnesses as well as to
the defendant, and how pre-trial discovery works.
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.138
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6072
item Program Number 139
"Black Anti-Semitism"
Guests: Galamison, Milton A. (Milton
Arthur), 1923-1988. : Perlmutter, Nate.
25 February 1969
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 78 : 4
Transcript: Box/Folder 164 : 14
Program details: Mr. Galamison is a supporter of school decentralization
in New York City (AKA community control, discussed with Albert Shanker
on
Firing
Line
131) who believes that "black anti-Semitism has been
exaggerated all out of proportion to what actually does exist, and,
strangely enough, [the charges have] been very well timed ... to disrupt
the motion toward school decentralization"--one of the villains, in his
view, being Albert Shanker. Mr. Perlmutter strongly disagrees, in a
frequently heated but informative exchange: "This question of the
timing. Suddenly it's almost as if Mr. Shanker had sat down with the
Jewish organizations and determined that this is the moment when this
conspiracy must come to bear on New York ... The fact of the matter is
that the larger Jewish organizations ... have from time to time endorsed
decentralization."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.139
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6073
item Program Number 140
"Restructuring the University"
Guests: Grossman, Allen R.,
1932- : Conrad, Alfred H. : Hart, Jeffrey Peter, 1930-
25 February 1969
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 78 : 5
Transcript: Box/Folder 164 : 15
Program details: "Probably the steadiest newsmaker these days, more even
than the Vietnam War," WFB begins, "is the university. The chaos is
widespread, and although all of us write and write and write about it,
we are as yet without a crystallized understanding of what is behind it
all." Professor Grossman proceeds to offer "the cause of violence at
universities." It is this: there have been times in the world's history
when social organization, when the business of civilization, promoted
the well-being of men as individuals. We live now in a time when social
organization, and the business of civilization, is hostile to the
well-being of men as individuals. The university, and I include my own,
and my own classroom, has ceased to be able to instruct in a credible
way, and this has led to a response which is as vivid and as meaningful
as every man's ability to care about themselves." To Professor Hart,
this is "the merest cliche," and we're off to the races.
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.140
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6074
item Program Number 141
"Police Power"
Guests: Heffernan, John J. : Chevigny, Paul,
1935-
26 February 1969
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 78 : 6
Transcript: Box/Folder 164 : 16
Program details: To most Americans, Mr. Buckley suggests, "the main
concern in matters of law enforcement is the ability of the police, or
more accurately the entire court system, to keep down the rate of crime,
or to prevent it from growing." To civil-libertarians like Mr. Chevigny,
a far greater concern is police going too far, and specifically bending
new rules intended to check their power, such as the exclusionary rule.
In this discussion rich with anecdote, Mr. Heffernan stoutly defends his
colleagues: "I think ... they're doing everything in their power to
comply with the laws of the land, as much as we do it sometimes with a
frown on our face ..."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.141
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6075
item Program Number 142
"Black Student Power"
Guests: Felder, John. : Swedan, David.
: Coyne, John R.
26 February 1969
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 78 : 7
Transcript: Box/Folder 164 : 17
Program details: Another look at the disruptions on campus, which, apart
from the Vietnam War, have most to do, as WFB puts it, with "the demands
of black students, or in some cases the demands made in behalf of black
students." These involved matters such as separate living quarters,
departments of Black Studies, and a voice in faculty hiring and
promotion. (JF: "We feel that black students and faculty ... are most
capable of determining who could teach from a black perspective"). Mr.
Swedan is deliberately unresponsive ("I can only speak for what the
white radical students like myself think"); Mr. Coyne, who had recently
escaped from the wars at Berkeley and was working on his book The
Kumquat Statement (a reply to James Kunen's Strawberry Statement),
brings his recent experience to bear in querying Mr. Felder on exactly
what he means by "Black Studies."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.142
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6076
item Program Number 143
"Vietnam and the Intellectuals"
Guests: Chomsky, Noam.
3 April 1969
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 78 : 8
Transcript: Box/Folder 164 : 18
Program details: A matter-versus-anti-matter meeting between WFB and a
man he characterizes as being "listed in anybody's catalogue as among
the half-dozen top heroes of the New Left." Mr. Chomsky says nothing to
belie his reputation: "I said that there are certain issues-for
example-Auschwitz, such that by consenting to discuss them one degrades
oneself and to some degree loses one's humanity ... Nevertheless, I can
easily imagine circumstances in which I would have been glad to debate
Auschwitz-for example, if there were some chance that by debating
Auschwitz it might have been possible to eliminate or to at least
mitigate the horror that was going on. And, I think, I feel the same way
about Vietnam."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.143
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003JMFB8W
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6077
item Program Number 144
"Urban Development and the Race Question"
Guests: Innis,
Roy, 1934-
3 April 1969
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 78 : 9
Transcript: Box/Folder 164 : 19
Program details: Mr. Innis, a dazzling speaker in the West Indian style,
had been urging separate development as the only way to allow the Negro
community to shoulder its own burdens. He had recently had an
acrimonious exchange with Roy Wilkins of the NAACP, who had called this
a return to segregation. RI: "My style is, and that of my organization
is, that, we feel that our ideology is so sound that we can persuade any
brother that it is in his best interest." WFB: "And if you fail to?" RI:
"We will try, try again." WFB: "How do you try-forcefully?" RI: "With
the most exquisite and persuasive rhetoric." WFB: "Rhetoric. Refine the
rhetoric. So that if Roy Wilkins Jr. matriculated at a college like this
and said, 'I don't want to join a black student union committed to
separatism,' he would not be molested, as far as you're concerned?" RI:
"No, not by my troops." WFB: "And are you in control of your troops?"
RI: "Oh yes, I have full control of my troops at all times."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.144
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6078
item Program Number 145
"Modernism in the Catholic Church"
Guests: Ward, Maisie,
1889- : Sheed, F. J. (Francis Joseph), 1897-1981.
21 April 1969
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 78 : 10
Transcript: Box/Folder 164 : 20
Program details: A luminous conversation with this magnificent couple,
who got their start as public figures at Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park,
London. Mrs. Sheed sees the convulsions in the Church today as having
less to do with the sort of tension that Browning chronicled ("He said
that unbelief shook the believer, and belief shook the unbeliever");
rather, "with a good many [young people] I think it's only that they
were frightfully ill instructed. I think nothing could be worse than the
religious teaching in most Catholic schools, and when they suddenly find
everything thrown open as it is today, they are unduly disturbed. But I
have a kind of hope that great good will come of it in the long run."
Mr. Sheed: "Well, I don't know what Maisie's view is, but mine is it's
one of the most extraordinary paradoxes, that a nun will devote forty
years of really dedicated sacrificial life to teaching children nonsense
about God."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.145
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6079
item Program Number 146
"The Campus Destroyers"
Guests: Capp, Al, 1909-
21 April 1969
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 78 : 11
Transcript: Box/Folder 165 : 1
Program details: Al Capp, a lifelong liberal, had been
counter-radicalized by the Sixties and had become a campus speaker the
students loved to hate. As he tells it, "Every now and then some student
arises, quivering with rage, and says, 'Mr. Capp, you detest us, so why
are you speaking here at Chapel Hill?' And I say, 'For three thousand
bucks, and I wouldn't spend an hour with a bunch like you for a nickel
less.' And you know, they're so relieved." But he is also thoughtful on
the question, How is it that a small group can get away with making life
miserable for the majority on campus? "This is a very, very sad state of
affairs. One could ask the same question of the city of Chicago, a city
of millions which permitted Capone and his gang to terrorize that city.
One could ask the same of any group of decent, orderly, busy citizens
who permit a tiny, active, delinquent minority to make hell out of their
lives."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.146
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004SQFQT2
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6080
item Program Number 147
"The ABM Conflict"
Guests: Gore, Albert, 1907- : Burnham,
James, 1905-1987.
28 April 1969
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 78 : 12
Transcript: Box/Folder 165 : 2
Program details: Senator Gore was Chairman of the Subcommittee on
International Organization and Disarmament and a leading proponent of
the proposed treaty to ban anti-ballistic missiles as a defensive
measure. Mr. Burnham had been a leading anti-Communist strategist for
thirty years. This show explores ABM in particular and nuclear
deterrence in general. JB: "It seems to me that the history of relations
between nations shows that the road to national suicide is very often
laid by over attention to what one thinks the motives and intentions of
the enemy are." ... AG: "We need, my friend Mr. Buckley, mankind needs
to develop a formula for coexistence. Unless we can find a formula by
which nations can live together in peace-" WFB: "Vote for peace." AG:
"-then we are going to have nuclear holocaust." WFB: "Let's skip that."
AG: "How can we skip it? That's what it's about." WFB: "Well, because
it's so obvious ..." JB: "Of course from one point of view it might not
be so obvious. We've had nuclear arms for a generation and not had
nuclear war."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.147
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6081
item Program Number 148
"Problems of a Chief Executive"
Guests: Price, Raymond K.
(Raymond Kissam), 1930- : Buchanan, Patrick J. (Patrick Joseph), 1938-
28 April 1969
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 78 : 13
Transcript: Box/Folder 165 : 3
Program details: Host and guests often do address the title
subject-specifically, the problems of taking over as Chief Executive in
a country whole sectors of which are openly mutinous. Along the way, we
get a fascinating look at the nuts and bolts of organizing a new
Administration-with glances backwards at Mr. Nixon's two
predecessors-from the men commonly identified as the liberal and the
conservative, respectively, on the President's speech writing team.
Especially interesting, in the light of developments in later
Administrations, is the discussion of speech writing protocols. WFB: "I
notice that there is much less diffidence about acknowledging the fact
of it now than there was a few years ago, so that people point to John
Jones as the author of that particular speech by the President, whereas
these used to be, as you know, highly regarded secrets ... Would you
feel free if somebody from the New York Times, say, asked who wrote the
speech, or who drafted it, would somebody around say, Oh, Buchanan did?"
PJB: "Well, what you would say, candidly, is that Buchanan worked with
the President on that issue.... But you take a speech where the
President is deeply concerned about it, and where he feels a great deal
depends upon it, like the acceptance speech, and the more important he
feels it is, the more involved he becomes."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.148
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6082
item Program Number 149
"Cornell and the Conflict of Generations"
Guests: Berns,
Walter, 1919- : Van den Haag, Ernest.
19 May 1969
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 78 : 14
Transcript: Box/Folder 165 : 4
Program details: Professor Berns, as WFB introduces him, was "one of
several faculty members who quit Cornell in protest against the
capitulations of President Perkins to the guerrilla students who took to
dictating academic policy a while ago." This passionate exchange begins
with the details of current events, but it goes much deeper, to the
nature of the university itself. WB: "Various visitors to the Cornell
campus ... remarked what was certainly true, that is to say, there was
something unique at Cornell, and what that thing was, was the extent to
which the administration was actually on the side of the militant
students. That is unique.... Mr. van den Haag is right, that the
President did manipulate the faculty, he failed to assert any authority
..." WFB: "Why?" WB: "That's an interesting question. Why would a man
stand by and see his university destroyed? Of course, he will deny that
it's being destroyed. He referred to this fascist-like scene that took
place ... as the most constructive event in the history of Cornell....
Academic freedom doesn't mean a doggone thing to him. And he can't
recognize it when it's gone."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.149
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6083
item Program Number 150
"The Trouble with Enoch"
Guests: Powell, J. Enoch (John
Enoch), 1912-1998.
19 May 1969
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 79 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 165 : 5
Program details: "A year or so back," as Mr. Buckley sets the scene,
"Enoch Powell was kicked out of the shadow cabinet by Conservative
leader Edward Heath, in punishment for a speech in which Mr. Powell
advocated an end to colored immigration into England ... It was
generally assumed that now, finally, Mr. Powell had gone too far, but on
the way to political extinction a funny thing happened, namely, the
overwhelming support of the British people and surprising support from
the colored minority." In his first of several
Firing
Line
appearances,
Mr. Powell takes us across centuries and continents and knocks any
facile egalitarianism sharply on the head: "Alone of all countries in
the world, until 1962 we had no definition of ourselves ... no
definition of a person belonging to the United Kingdom.... There was a
definition of a British subject, but that was a person who was a subject
of the King or Queen. And so as the British Empire extended, that
definition included hundreds of millions of people, wherever the sun had
not set on the British Empire. So there literally was no difference in
the law of Britain between myself coming back from a day's trip to
France, and an Indian from the Northwest Frontier entering Britain by
air for the first time."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.150
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6084
item Program Number 151
"ABM"
Guests: Bethe, Hans Albrecht, 1906- : Brennan, Donald
G.
2 June 1969
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 79 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 165 : 6
Program details: A second look at anti-ballistic missiles (taken up a few
weeks earlier in
Firing
Line
147), this time with a more technical edge.
Our guests--both experts who can illustrate their points
concretely--engage each other on questions such as "how likely is a
Soviet first strike, how hard" are our Minuteman missiles' silos, and
what is the morality of different counterattack scenarios. DB: "I think
I'd like to answer that with a parallel. I think it would be perhaps as
difficult as it was for the Japanese to execute a surprise attack on
Pearl Harbor and catch the battleship fleet at Pearl Harbor. It was very
hard for the Japanese to do that, and it would be very hard for the
Soviets to execute a nearly completely successful attack on the
strategic defensive forces." HB: "I would remind my friend Don Brennan
that the Japanese lost the war." ... HB: "I am sure if we sat by our
advanced radars, if we saw that a thousand missiles were coming at us,
and were coming into the areas of the Minuteman in particular ... we
would not wait." DB: "I'd just say I'm mildly surprised that Hans would
advocate what we call a launch-on-warning posture, if I understood you
right...-my Hudson Institute colleague Herman Kahn has a term ... He
used to speak of a thing called a doomsday-in-a-hurry machine."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.151
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6085
item Program Number 152
"Afro-American Studies"
Guests: Lincoln, C. Eric (Charles
Eric), 1924-2000. : Brudnoy, David, 1940-
2 June 1969
Scope and Contents note
Transcript: Box/Folder 165 : 7
Program details: The lively discussion centers on what black studies is
or should be: an academic discipline like any other, or a means, as
Professor Lincoln put it, "of deterring the sort of black prejudice
against blackness" that he himself had grown up with. EL: "I arrived on
the campus there and saw a vast sea of people who didn't look like me.
They were all white. Every person I saw was white.... This is the kind
of experience that you never-" DB: "Yes, I have-when I went to Texas
Southern to teach, which is a Negro college.... Suddenly all my
students, my chairman, my dean, my president, were Negro.... They're
sort of sitting around rapping in Texanese and I don't know what they're
saying, and I felt ghastly. I know exactly what you mean." EL: "No. Let
me tell you the difference. You were never unaware of the fact that
...all you had to do was walk off the campus ... and you suddenly
regained all the power and the prestige and the preference that is yours
in this society. I cannot do that in Chicago. I have nowhere to walk-but
back into the ghetto."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.152
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6086
item Program Number 153
"The Decline of Christianity"
Guests: Graham, Billy, 1918-
12 June 1969
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 79 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 165 : 8
Program details: Much of the considerable interest in this show derives
from hearing the famous preacher engaging in ordinary conversation. Dr.
Graham agrees with his host that the organized churches are in decline,
but he insists that in his travels throughout the country he has found
"no real revolt against the Person of Christ." BG: "I think the Church
is going to undergo restructuring. I suspect that the movement that is
under way now is to have small meetings in homes. You know, the early
Church, for the first three centuries, met in homes. I suspect the
movement is in this direction now. In coming to New York two years ago
we found more than a thousand of these groups already meeting. Since
then four thousand more groups have emerged."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.153
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003JMFB96
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6087
item Program Number 154
"Labor Unions and American Freedom"
Guests: Carey, James B.
12 June 1969
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 79 : 4
Transcript: Box/Folder 165 : 9
Program details: Mr. Carey, as Mr. Buckley tells us, had, with the help
of John L. Lewis, launched a counterattack when his union, the United
Electrical Union, had been taken over by the Communists. Host and guest
sometimes talk past each other, but even so we get a clear idea of what
is at issue between Mr. Carey's notion of "an effective union -- a union
that represents the views of the people effectively and can deal with
management on a basis of equality" and Mr. Buckley's observation that,
in the aftermath of the New York City newspaper strike, "the few who
survived ... did indeed get their 10, 15, 20, 25 percent raises, but a
lot of other people who would otherwise have survived, went from let's
say $250 a week to welfare."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.154
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004SQFQW4
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6088
item Program Number 155
"Violence in America"
Guests: Graham, Hugh Davis. : Gurr,
Ted Robert, 1936-
23 June 1969
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 79 : 5
Transcript: Box/Folder 165 : 10
Program details: Messrs. Graham and Gurr had both served on the staff of
the commission appointed by President Johnson to study violence in
America following the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert
Kennedy. Our guests are serious students of their subject and don't use
the term "violence" as a devil word (for example, Mr. Gurr cites the
vigilante movement on the American frontier as having succeeded in
maintaining order in regions where there was no lawfully constituted
authority). WFB: "Is it historically nonsensical to say, as for instance
Arthur Schlesinger said after the assassination of Mr. Kennedy, that 'We
killed Mr. Kennedy, we killed the three most idealistic people in public
life during a period of three years, and we have therefore justified the
odium of the world'? Or would you simply dismiss that as emotional
reaction?" TRG: "I would not be prepared to share Mr. Schlesinger's
collective guilt." WFB: "Would you be prepared to disavow it?" HDG: "I
would disavow it." TRG: "Personally I'd disavow it." HDG: "I have been
told by black militants that I killed Malcolm X."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.155
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6089
item Program Number 156
"The Population Explosion"
Guests: Clark, Colin, 1905- :
Sweezy, Alan.
23 June 1969
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 79 : 6
Transcript: Box/Folder 165 : 11
Program details: As Mr. Buckley introduces his two guests, "Dr. Sweezy is
quite orthodox, i.e., he thinks everything is lost, or just about lost,
thanks to the population explosion. Dr. Clark is terribly unorthodox. If
anything he seems to be saying we need more people." What follows is a
serious, though often heated, discussion of technical and moral
questions, ranging from whether we ought to spread industry more evenly
around the country to whether it would be permissible to put a
sterilizing agent in a city's water supply. WFB: "Let me give you a
reductio ad absurdum. One way to affect the population is simply
infanticide. Kill the third child or the fourth child, depending on what
you economists advise us at any given moment. But we do reject this for
moral reasons, do we not?" AS: "Yes." WFB: "There are no functional
reasons. It's rather neat, actually, a neat way of handling the
problem." AS: "Well, I don't think I'll subscribe to your use of the
adjective 'neat,' but I reject it." WFB: "Okay. For moral reasons?" AS:
"Yes."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.156
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6090
item Program Number 157
"Marijuana--How Harmful?"
Guests: Baird, Robert. : Smith,
David E. (David Elvin), 1939-
7 July 1969
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 79 : 7
Transcript: Box/Folder 165 : 12
Program details: The first of many
Firing
Line
discussions of marijuana
and other drugs. The fact that Dr. Smith's practice is among the
dropped-out children of the well to do in Haight-Ashbury, whereas Dr.
Baird's is among the poor in Harlem, may have something to do with their
diametrically opposed viewpoints. DS: "Many people in the suburbs use
marijuana, at low dosages, for anxiety relief-much as an individual
would come home and have a martini or a beer.... At higher dosages,
particularly in group settings, it is used as an intoxicant-in the way
you might have five martinis at your country-club cocktail party." ...
RB: "No person who is personally well adjusted would want to take
marijuana. Why would he want to take it unless he is doing a thoroughly
scientific research project?" WFB: "Well, presumably because it yields
pleasure." RB: "Well, the pleasure syndrome-if he has to seek that for
his own orientation-" WFB: "I didn't say he had to; I said he elects
to."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.157
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6091
item Program Number 158
"The Conservative Party and the Future of the GOP"
Guests:
Mahoney, J. Daniel, 1931-
7 July 1969
Scope and Contents note
Transcript: Box/Folder 165 : 13
Program details: "In New York," WFB begins, "there are not two political
parties, as in normal states, but four political parties." The Liberal
Party is an old-timer; the Conservative Party had been founded less than
a decade earlier, by, for the most part, Republicans concerned about
that party's drift to the left. It was on the Conservative Party ticket
that Mr. Buckley had run, four years earlier, for Mayor of New York. For
this show,
Firing
Line's
Producer, Warren Steibel, had invited
representatives of the Liberal Party to appear on this show, but they
had declined. In their absence, this is a genial discussion between two
old comrades in arms, five years after the defeat of Nelson Rockefeller
for the Republican presidential nomination, and of Barry Goldwater for
the Presidency itself. WFB: "Mr. Mahoney, would you be willing to
describe the circumstances that would bring you to endorse Governor
Rockefeller for Governor in 1970?" JDM: "I doubt it would take long. I
can't conceive of any, at this point." WFB: "Well, suppose he went to
Lourdes, or something? ... Are you the forgiving type?" JDM: "We might
under those circumstances, but I don't think that he's the supplicant
type ..."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.158
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6092
item Program Number 159
"The Irish Problem"
Guests: Donoghue, Denis. : O'Neill,
Terence, 1914-1990
22 July 1969
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 79 : 8
Transcript: Box/Folder 165 : 14
Program details:
Firing
Line's
first look at "the Irish Question"--still
very much a question fifty years after the country had been partitioned.
WFB begins by saying that Captain O'Neill had resigned "in protest
against his own party's failure to back him up with sufficient
conviction ... in his determination more or less moderately to provide
for the rights of Catholics." Captain O'Neill begins with a partial
correction: "I felt that if I were to resign at the time I did that my
policies might continue under somebody else, and ... in fact the reform
has indeed, though I say it myself, gathered pace since I resigned." A
genuine conversation, rich in anecdote, in which our guests-both born
and raised in Northern Ireland, the one Protestant, the other
Catholic-work to help an American audience understand this tangled
situation. DD: "Growing up in Northern Ireland, which I did, the
terminology which surrounded me ... in fact was a sectarian and
religious terminology. You know, in the sense that I could spot a
Protestant at a hundred yards, and, even more radically, he could spot
me." WFB: "You being a Catholic?" DD: "I was a Catholic and am ... It
was a sectarian division, it was really not a political division.
Certainly, it's true I believe even yet in Northern Ireland, that one is
not primarily aware of people as being Nationalists and Unionists, in a
political context, but rather of their being Catholics or Protestants,
in a sectarian context."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.159
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6093
item Program Number 160
"The Decline of Anti-Communism [1969]"
Guests: FitzGibbon,
Constantine, 1919-
22 July 1969
Scope and Contents note
Transcript: Box/Folder 165 : 15
Program details: "Mr. Constantine FitzGibbon," WFB starts by telling us,
"is not by any means primarily an anti-Communist, but he is unflinching
on the issue. A few years ago, tired of defending himself against the
derogations of the Communist press, he collected his essays and
published them under the title, Random Thoughts of a Fascist Hyena." A
conversation full of anecdote, starting with a comparison of the
protestors of the Sixties with the men of the Thirties (of whom Mr.
FitzGibbon was one) who pledged not to fight for King and country; and
going on to the West's "difficulty in thinking in triangulating terms,
if I may so put it. The Russians never doubted for a moment that they
were against both us and the Fascists. We tend to think that our enemy's
enemy must be our friend"; with a delicious digression describing a
luncheon at which Winston Churchill was given a medal bearing the image
of Napoleon: "I couldn't help thinking at that time that if Churchill
lived long enough, somebody would give him a large, gold German medal
bearing the head of you-know-who on it. Because there wasn't anybody
more anathema to Churchill, apart from Hitler, than Napoleon
Bonaparte."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.160
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6094
item Program Number 161
"Monarchy and the Modern World"
Guests: Habsburg, Otto,
1912-
23 July 1969
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 79 : 9
Transcript: Box/Folder 165 : 16
Program details: Archduke Otto had a few years earlier renounced his
claim to the throne of Austria so as to be permitted to return to his
native country, but in Britain Prince Charles had just been invested as
Prince of Wales, and in Spain, Prince Juan Carlos had been named
successor to Generalissimo Franco. A profound discussion, rich in
historical detail, of the survival of monarchy in the modern world, the
future of Europe, and what happens to regimes following a national
debacle. OvH: "You see, the Weimar Republic died not because it was
bad-it had its faults, indisputably-but especially because it was an
expression of Germany's defeat in the First World War. Hitler and his
people were able to hang onto the Weimar Republic the symbol and the
stigma of defeat. It's exactly the same thing we had with the First
Republic in Austria.... [It] began in disaster, that is to say, the
dissolution of the old Empire. And consequently, there was almost, I
would say, a built-in death wish in that regime."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.161
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6095
item Program Number 162
"The UN and World Affairs"
Guests: Caradon, Hugh Foot,
Baron, 1907-
23 July 1969
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 79 : 10
Transcript: Box/Folder 165 : 17
Program details: Lord Caradon is a true believer. As conversation this
show never clicks, but listening to our guest may help us understand why
the UN is as it is. Lord Caradon: "On all the great issues of race,
poverty, population- The younger generation, I believe that they are
going to save us, and I believe that they will do much better than we've
done. But particularly on these questions, it's the division of the
world between rich and poor. I believe the young people are right." ...
Mr. Buckley: "The notion of you and the Soviet Union sitting around
criticizing Rhodesia's imperialism or South Africa's racism, in the
light of the long-documented record of barbarity exercised by the Soviet
Union, is extremely hard to understand for anybody this side of
Talleyrand."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.162
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6096
item Program Number 163
"Is There a Place for the Old Order?"
Guests: Brophy,
Brigid, 1929- : Sparrow, John Hanbury Angus, 1906-
24 July 1969
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 79 : 11
Transcript: Box/Folder 165 : 18
Program details: A delicious duel over the place of tradition and
civility in the modern world. One sample: JS: "I think there is a
presumption in favor of what has been tried and tested by time, and if
we stopped every moment of the day to examine critically every statement
that was presented to us, or every convention that we were expected to
adopt, we'd never get on. I think there is a presumption in favor of
what has been used in the past." BB: "But I think that two world wars in
this century are a standing presumption against..."JS: "But how can a
world war be a presumption? ... I may seem to just object to words, but
loose phrases like that are very often the result of loose thought. Of
course we all know..." BB: "I'm sorry; I was trying to put the statement
in logical form. Let me substitute the word 'constitute' for the word
'is.'"
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.163
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6097
item Program Number 164
"American Popularity Abroad"
Guests: Lewis, Anthony, 1927-
24 July 1969
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 79 : 12
Transcript: Box/Folder 165 : 19
Program details: A thoughtful though not flashy discussion of how it can
be that America is regarded in much of the world as more repressive than
the Soviet Union, and what we might do to change this perception. WFB:
"It does occur to me that there is something in the American temperament
that desires to be rebuffed. That is to say, isn't it true that
Americans react so to being disliked that people look out for
opportunities to dislike [us]? ... " AL: "I think you put it backwards,
actually. We suffer from an excessive desire to be accepted. We're like
social climbers, nouveaux riches, who have this terrible fear that
people won't like us."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.164
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6098
item Program Number 165
"Post Office Reform"
Guests: Blount, Winton M., 1921-
9 September 1969
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 79 : 13
Transcript: Box/Folder 165 : 20
Program details: Mr. Blount, WFB begins, "finds himself in the
extraordinary position of seeking to liquidate his empire; for this, one
assumes, President Nixon appointed him," since Mr. Blount had proposed
to convert the Post Office into a public corporation. A perhaps
surprisingly interesting discussion of this problem, which, as we know
now, Mr. Blount's efforts were not sufficient to solve. Although some of
the specifics he tells us about have been remedied-the Post Office no
longer sorts mail with the technology Benjamin Franklin put in place
when he was the fourth Postmaster General-Congress still sets the prices
and makes the rules. "I note here that in 1789, which was the first year
of the operation of the Post Office under the more or less present
system, you ran a deficit of $40, thereby, somebody put it, establishing
a venerable American tradition."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.165
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6099
item Program Number 166
"Where Should the Nixon Administration Go?"
Guests:
Goldwater, Barry M. (Barry Morris), 1909-1998.
9 September 1969
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 79 : 14
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 4
Program details: Not only did Senator Goldwater take on, in 1964, a race
that he was bound to lose not so much against Lyndon Johnson as against
the memory of the fallen leader but under Arizona law he had had to
resign from the Senate in order to do so. In 1969 he had "triumphantly
returned to Washington, escorted," as WFB puts it, "by a Republican
President whose election in turn it is quite widely conceded would have
been unlikely but for the race of 1964." WFB begins by asking his guest
"what did he have in mind when, last spring, he chided dissatisfied
American conservatives who were critical of Mr. Nixon." The Senator
replies in pure Goldwater mode: "Well, nothing but the same thought that
I've always had when I've chided fellow conservatives who are acting as
conservatives should. To put it another way, they're speaking their own
minds." And we're off on an examination of the Nixon Administration, the
Vietnam War, and how one might begin rolling back "35 years of
statism."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.166
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6100
item Program Number 167
"Biafra and English Foreign Policy"
Guests: Waugh, Auberon.
22 September 1969
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 79 : 15
Transcript: Box/Folder 165 : 21
Program details: The Ibos in Biafra (the eastern region of Nigeria) had
attempted to secede, the Nigerian government had cracked down with all
its force-and the Labour government in Britain was backing the Nigerian
government. Mr. Waugh had visited the region as a journalist and come
back to write Biafra: Britain's Shame. A rich discussion of the state of
Africa, how a country decides when to intervene in others' disputes, and
much else. WFB: "Well, is it then your assumption that if the
consequences of backing the Nigerian government had been known, neither
the Labour government nor a Conservative government would have proceeded
to do so?" AW: "Well, I can't honestly believe that they're either so
wicked or so stupid as to dissent from that. On the other hand, when was
it? About nine months ago, I was going around, because my job takes me
among all the politicians in England, and telling them, 'If you go on
with this policy, [Colonel] Gowon [Nigeria's dictator] is going to kill
half a million people.' And they laughed at me and said, 'Where do you
get that figure from?' And of course I had invented it, but it was my
assessment of what it would cost. Well, now they know it's cost a
million and a half. You know, one does wonder whether in point of fact
they care, because politically they've got away with it. It hasn't made
a big impact politically, in England."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.167
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6101
item Program Number 168
"Looking Back on de Gaulle"
Guests: Soustelle, Jacques,
1912-
22 September 1969
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 80 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 166 : 1
Program details: If Charles de Gaulle was a mythic figure, so was his
sometime friend and ally: while le grand Charles headed the Free French
in exile during World War II, M. Soustelle headed the actual Resistance
at home. The two men had broken in 1960 over Algeria: "Should it be a
part of France, as President de Gaulle had once believed, or not? When
de Gaulle changed his mind and Soustelle didn't, de Gaulle literally
sent his former friend into exile. A superb hour with a man who is a
genuine scholar as well as a man of action. Whether he is discussing the
Constitution of the Fifth Republic or the economy of Algeria, he speaks
with the voice of authority. I was one of the few people who met [de
Gaulle] during those last few years before 1958, and I saw him more and
more bitter, more and more let's say desperate, because he thought that
he would never come back. And probably during those years a kind of
alchemy took place ... so that he became more self-centered, more
egotistical, more authoritarian.... And on certain points, not only did
he change his mind or his behavior, but he definitely changed his
doctrinal position, his philosophy of power and of politics."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.168
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6102
item Program Number 169
"The Making of the President 1968"
Guests: White, Theodore
Harold, 1915-
22 September 1969
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 80 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 166 : 2
Program details: Whether it is China in the Thirties and Forties or the
presidential campaign trail in the Sixties and Seventies, Mr. White
brings to the task a superb eye for detail and the ability to discern a
coherent pattern. One sample, in response to the question whether he
understands himself to be marching away from the dogmatism so generally
associated nowadays with American "liberalism": THW: "Let's say that
there is about conservatives and about liberals a quality of religion
sometimes useful, sometimes offensive.... There are holy truths. The
liberal holy truths at the moment are holy truths I share: that we
should have peace in Vietnam, that civil rights should be pushed as
quickly as possible. Now in the name of those holy truths the witch
burners among the liberals will try to bum anybody who doesn't want
instant peace in Vietnam, anybody who does not proclaim the cause in
Vietnam to have been utterly ignoble."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.169
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6103
item Program Number 170
"The Welfare-Reform Proposal"
Guests: Moynihan, Daniel P.
(Daniel Patrick), 1927-2003.
7 October 1969
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 80 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 166 : 3
Program details: Mr. Moynihan was the architect of the Nixon
Administration's Family Assistance Plan (FAP), the first attempt to
rationalize the federal welfare system that had grown up under the War
on Poverty. This hour offers a vivid exploration of the whole welfare
mess and the plight of the working poor. DPM: "I had just left the
Washington Administration of President Johnson, and I remember noticing
... a little announcement in the paper that Head Start-something new,
hadn't been heard of-was going to begin this summer in New York, under
the poverty program, and that the union scale for Head Start teachers
would be $9.75 an hour. And I'm a good trade unionist, and I'm for those
teachers, but ... I said, you know, here we are paying nice college
girls ... $9.75 an hour to teach the children of men we won't pay $2 an
hour. Now what kind of sense exactly is that? ... And of course five
years later we find that very little got taught, that there was no
change in the outcome."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.170
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6104
item Program Number 171
"Race and Conservatism"
Guests: Moss, John E. (John
Emerson), 1913- : Conyers, John, 1929- : Koch, Ed, 1924-
7 October 1969
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 80 : 4
Transcript: Box/Folder 166 : 4
Program details: "Some critics of this program, both friendly and
unfriendly," WFB begins, "have written in to complain that the host of
Firing
Line
is always asking the questions, so much so that the other
side doesn't often get an opportunity to go on the offensive.
Accordingly, we have invited three distinguished gentlemen, of
indistinguishable liberal reputation, to take the offensive and put
their questions on the general theme of race and conservatism." In this
first of what would become a more or less semi-annual feature of
Firing
Line
, Rep. Moss starts things off by saying that, "having just been
characterized as one having impeccable qualifications for that label, I
would like to have a brief definition from you as to what I am, as a
liberal." After a few minutes of genial political taxonomy, the
moderator, Lawrence Chickering, calls on Rep. Conyers, and we're off and
running. LC: "Congressman Conyers, would you like to ask Mr. Buckley
some questions?" JC: "Well, I should ask him how I got on this program.
I see now that this is a nice, all-white academic surrounding here; you
can't even find one black kid to put in the college crew."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.171
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6105
item Program Number 172
"Conservative vs. Progressive Republicanism"
Guests: Javits,
Jacob K. (Jacob Koppel), 1904-1986.
24 October 1969
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 80 : 5
Transcript: Box/Folder 166 : 5
Program details: "A couple of years ago," WFB recalls, "Vice President
Humphrey accosted Senator Javits amiably and remarked, 'If you get any
more forward than you are, you'll be head of the Democratic Party.'"
Senator Javits fluently defends his breed of Republicans as distinct
from liberal Democrats. JJ: "[The Democratic Party] seeks immediately to
find a choice in government for any public ill; any, that runs the wide
gamut from poverty to the necessity to encourage small business.... I
believe that one can be a liberal-and I accept that designation, not
because in the Republican Party we use the term particularly; we always
use the term progressive,... but I accept it because it defines a way of
thinking, an outlook, and I think that outlook, Bill,... is that if the
people have to have something done for them, then it's got to be done,
and you can't be doctrinaire about the method. I prefer, as a
Republican, the private-enterprise method, either as a sole reliance or
as a supplement. However, I do not go with the conservatives in
refraining from doing it, or rejecting it, because I can't do it through
private enterprise."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.172
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6106
item Program Number 173
"Abortion"
Guests: Ayd, Frank J. : Guttmacher, Alan Frank,
1898-
24 October 1969
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 80 : 6
Transcript: Box/Folder 166 : 6
Program details: The first
Firing
Line
, though by no means the last, on
abortion, which was just becoming a major national topic. There had been
agitation for years-strengthened by the thalidomide disaster-for
liberalizing abortion laws, and several states had done so. Our two
guests present the heart of the opposing positions as clearly as can be.
To Dr. Guttmacher, "My own feeling is that the mother-a living human
being, who has interaction with other human beings-her rights are so
powerfully more predominant than a mass of protoplasm which she carries
within her womb that there's no comparison between the two." To Dr. Ayd,
"The fact of the matter is from the very moment of conception, where the
sperm of the father contributes half of the chromosomes and the ovum of
the mother contributes the other half,... you now have a unique
individual who has never existed before and will never exist again. And
from that moment on, you have a continuum until death occurs, whenever
it may occur."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.173
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6107
item Program Number 174
"What Have We Learned from Socialism?"
Guests: Myrdal,
Gunnar, 1898-
4 November 1969
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 80 : 7
Transcript: Box/Folder 166 : 7
Program details: Gunnar Myrdal, WFB recalls, was "once described in
Newsday as the sanctimonious Swede who has been paid well for telling us
what's wrong with our country for a generation now." Mr. Myrdal jumps
right in: "Well, let me first say after all of this you've heard about
me, that's just cheap journalism, you know, which is under my level." In
exchanges that frequently draw blood, we get a clear picture of
asocialist's--as opposed to a totalitarian's--idea of how central
planning should work: "Of course, you know that this country, which is
supposed to be a free-enterprise country, you are so full of
bureaucratic rules and regulations, it's almost difficult to come and
visit you. Of course, we have a much freer life in Sweden.... The main
thing about planning is to change the big things. To have the big
controls higher up here and the purposes of planning,... then give the
greatest opportunity to private enterprise in individual life."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.174
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6108
item Program Number 175
"Salvation, Rock Music, and the New Iconoclasm"
Guests:
Courtney, C. C. : Link, Peter.
4 November 1969
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 80 : 8
Transcript: Box/Folder 166 : 8
Program details: "Our guests are the authors and stars of Salvation, a
rock show advertised and generally thought of," as WFB puts it, "as the
successor to Hair." We begin by listening to a few minutes of their
work, "at roughly the sound level," according to WFB, "the audience
hears it at" in the theater. Mr. Courtney demurs from that description:
"The playing of that music at the level at which you hear it in the
theater is impossible. Unfortunately, the people at home are sitting
there with three-inch speakers on their television sets, due to the
desire of the television manufacturers in this country to save as much
money as possible to rob you of your needed sound." And so on, through
denunciations of hypocrisy regarding sex, the importance of "vibrations"
in rock music, and the rest of the kid scene A.D. 1969. Where this show
sometimes misses as conversation, it works as illustration.
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.175
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6109
item Program Number 176
"The Selling of the President 1968"
Guests: McGinniss, Joe.
10 November 1969
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 80 : 9
Transcript: Box/Folder 166 : 9
Program details: Mr. McGinniss, WFB tells us, "dropped his column in June
of 1968, intending to do a book on the selling of the President. He
asked the Humphrey people if he might tag along, but they said, Hell,
no, you can't tag along. The Nixon people were less cautious..." The
"selling" in the title refers to the PR tricks used on television: "the
image-building, image-changing work," as Mr. McGinniss puts it: "They
completely eliminated the Tricky Dick, the loser image, all these bad
things that had been hangovers of 1962, and by the time Mr. Nixon went
to Miami, I think, it was almost to be coronated, not nominated." One
might question, as various reviewers had done, whether Mr. McGinniss had
played fair with the Nixon people in presenting his project; but today's
discussion proves illuminating on the way we choose our candidates.
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.176
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6110
item Program Number 177
"Negotiating for Peace"
Guests: Rostow, Eugene V. (Eugene
Victor), 1913- : Moskin, J. Robert.
10 November 1969
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 80 : 10
Transcript: Box/Folder 166 : 10
Program details: "The charge is constantly made," WFB begins-most
recently by Norman Cousins in Look magazine-"that the Government of the
United States has not pursued opportunities to bring peace in Vietnam
through negotiation." Mr. Rostow is willing and more than able to engage
the argument that was put forth by Mr. Cousins and is defended here by
his editor, Mr. Moskin. ER: "That affair was one of, I don't know,
sixty, perhaps seventy-five rabbits that we pursued down every hole.
Now, it's unimaginable, I think,... that any American President would
miss a bona fide opportunity for peace,...after the experience that
President Truman had with Korea, which destroyed his political career
... The temptation, the risk for the future, would be that the President
would be tempted to settle for less than true peace ... Now, the episode
that was recently written up by Mr. Cousins was one of a great many
similar episodes in which a hint would be made to an American official
in some remote corner of the world, and we would send officers ... to
meet secretly in hotel rooms, and behind potted plants in bazaars, and
try to open up a path to negotiation-a path to negotiation which could
lead to a peace that was compatible with our treaty commitments. None of
them worked."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.177
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6111
item Program Number 178
"Vietnam"
Guests: Cleveland, Harlan.
6 December 1969
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 81 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 166 : 11
Program details: When Moratorium Day hit the campuses in October 1969,
the new president of the University of Hawaii, as WFB relates, "closed
down the university at 11:30 and gave a speech recounting, for the first
time publicly, his position on Vietnam. We should extricate ourselves,
he told his audience, not with deliberate speed but with dedicated
dispatch"--which Mr. Cleveland later glosses as "speed that looks as if
you mean it." From Mr. Cleveland's point of view, Mr. Nixon's chief
problem is "wanting to get as much, squeeze as much out of the
negotiation, if there is a negotiation, or out of the mutual
de-escalation, if that's the way it works, as he can ... but that's
going to be a matter of judgment as you go along, as to how important it
is to hang onto that tray in your hand when you're really going to lose
the trick anyway." An absorbing discussion, ranging from recent events
in Vietnam, back to Korea (WFB: "You don't think we consulted
Hammarskjold about it. Can you see MacArthur calling up Hammarskjold and
asking for permission for the Inchon landing?"), and forward to the
future of Hong Kong.
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.178
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6112
item Program Number 179
"Reflections on the Current Scene"
Guests: Luce, Clare
Boothe, 1903-1987.
6 December 1969
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 81 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 166 : 12
Program details: A high-energy conversation ranging from conservatives'
views on environmental pollution, to population control in the
Philippines, to Middle Americans' embrace of Spiro Agnew, to the
Church's understanding that even saints are also sinners. An ominous
moment, in the light of developments just a few years away, is Mrs.
Luce's working out of her theory of what constitutes greatness in
Presidents: "I think there's no evidence whatsoever as of now that
President Nixon is or will become a great President. But you know I take
a rather simplistic view of what a great man is. I think a great man is
always the author of a unique and significant action. So far there is no
unique action of which Mr. Nixon is the author."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.179
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E52U8K
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6113
item Program Number 180
"The Future of the Democratic Party"
Guests: Brown, Edmund
G. (Edmund Gerald), 1905-1996.
9 December 1969
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 81 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 166 : 13
Program details: Mr. Brown, WFB recalls, was dubbed "the giant-killer"
when he decisively defeated for the governorship first William Knowland
in 1958, then Richard Nixon in 1962; "but then four years later the
giant-killer ran into the sheriff of the late, late show, and was
himself retired." We begin judiciously enough, with a discussion of the
effect the Watts riots and the sit-ins at the University of California
had on the 1966 campaign. But then we get to this real eye-opener, on
one of Mr. Brown's famous campaign commercials. "I walked in with two
little girls and they were obviously six or eight years of age, and I
said to them, are you going to vote for me? And they looked at me rather
quizzically, and ... as I walked away, I turned around to them and I
said, 'Remember, it was an actor that shot Lincoln.' ... Really it was
so obviously a facetious remark, and said with a smile, that anyone that
had seen the picture would have laughed at it. Before we showed the
picture, everybody looked at it, and I thought it was one of the
funniest things I've ever seen in my life."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.180
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6114
item Program Number 181
"Why Don't Conservatives Understand?"
Guests: Rapoport,
Roger. : Hukari, Harvey H. : Nisker, Wes.
9 December 1969
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 81 : 4
Transcript: Box/Folder 166 : 14
Program details: The second installment (see 171) of what will become a
regular
Firing
Line
feature: a show where host replaces guests on the
firing
line
. One of the guest-inquisitors in this case is a libertarian
conservative; the other two are double-distilled radicals. In reply to
Mr. Hukari's question about "how conservatives can escape the vicious
stereotype" of being "the son or daughter of a retired Army colonel,
combining the unctuousness of Bert Parks with the intellectual depth of
Max Rafferty," WFB suggests that "people who are a minority in the
intellectual community have got ... to strive harder to insist on the
making of proper distinctions." Messrs. Rapoport and Nisker, as young
radicals in San Francisco in 1969, don't need to worry about all that.
Mr. Rapoport talks about the effort during the last couple of years "to
exterminate the Black Panther Party": "I mean,... all of these incidents
have happened the same way. The police have surrounded all the
headquarters and charged in the same fashion,... and I mean if this
started happening to Republican headquarters or Democratic headquarters?
I just think-" WFB: "Well, I think any Republican headquarters that has
in it Thompson submachine guns and grenades and high-explosive dynamite
ought to be charged into, and if in the course of charging in there is
resistance and a Republican gets killed, we'll simply have to accept
that as one of the costs of doing social business."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.181
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6115
item Program Number 182
"Tariffs"
Guests: Wallich, Henry Christopher, 1914- :
Strackbein, O. R. (Oscar Robert), 1900-1993.
18 December 1969
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 81 : 5
Transcript: Box/Folder 166 : 15
Program details: Is protectionism the answer to rising unemployment? Our
guests strongly disagree, but in the courtliest possible way, in an
exceedingly informative discussion of the various types of trade
barriers (tariffs, import quotas, internal "turnover taxes" or VATs),
how they are applied in different countries, and the effect of different
levels of productivity. HW: "The point about wages is this: we pay maybe
five times as much per man hour as do the Japanese. We pay two or three
times as much as do the Germans, French, Italians. Now, does that ruin
us competitively? The answer is we use very little labor per unit of
input. And if you restate these wage comparisons, instead of wages paid
per hour, in terms of wages paid per unit of output, per slab of steel,
or per car, or pair of shoes?" WFB: "Then we do a lot better." ORS: "...
Now, Mr. Wallich has just said that there are some industries that are
capital intensive, so to speak, where the labor cost is not as high.
Well, now, I would like to demolish that theory."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.182
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6116
item Program Number 183
"The Kennedy Years"
Guests: Galbraith, John Kenneth,
1908-2006.
18 December 1969
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 81 : 6
Transcript: Box/Folder 166 : 16
Program details: Messrs. Buckley and Galbraith had been favorite fencing
partners on many platforms, but this was the latter's first appearance
on
Firing
Line
, prompted by the publication of Ambassador's Journal: A
Personal Account of the Kennedy Years. We get the flavor of their style
of thrust and parry right from the start (JKG: "Oh, sure, it was a great
piece of nonsense, I should- I was greatly tempted to take it out; but
once you start improving your record by hindsight-well, you know
yourself where it leads, you've done so much of it..." WFB: "Well, I may
be guilty of heresies, but I don't remember deserting any of my
heresies." JKG: "Oh, yes, yes, Bill-I remember that very good book of
yours on The Unmaking of a Mayor, where you deserted your whole
conservative doctrine ..."); but there is also serious discussion of the
way the State Department bureaucracy works, how a country decides when
to intervene abroad, and Mr. Galbraith's exhilarating account of China's
border conflict with India that "coincided with the missile crisis in
Cuba, and I had this war all to myself for several weeks ... and the
effect on a middle-aged intellectual of being able to run a war..."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.183
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6117
item Program Number 184
"Agnew and the Media"
Guests: Klein, Herbert G.
6 January 1970
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 81 : 7
Transcript: Box/Folder 166 : 17
Program details: Spiro Agnew had, as WFB puts it, "riveted the nation a
while ago by charging that those who control the television and news
media are a small, endogamous lot who moon their admiration of one
another at cocktail parties in New York City and Washington, D.C. It is
Mr. Agnew's spectacular charges that Mr. Klein is here to discuss,
calmly as ever, because there is nobody in the whole world who is calmer
than Mr. Klein." Our guest proceeds to live up to this description, and
so there are no fireworks on a topic that had been exploding around the
nation. However, he does provide a helpful double perspective, as
someone who now represents the Administration but who knows the news
media from the inside. HK: "I've heard many of those who reacted hardest
say worse things in criticism of the media than Mr. Agnew did. On the
other hand, it's like if you go outside of the fraternity and make this
type of statement, then it's illegal."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.184
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6118
item Program Number 185
"Dissent and Society"
Guests: Boorstin, Daniel J. (Daniel
Joseph), 1914-2004.
6 January 1970
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 81 : 8
Transcript: Box/Folder 166 : 18
Program details: Mr. Boorstin, as WFB introduces him, is "superbly
documented as a scholar ... but he is also adamant in his denunciation
of what one loosely calls the New Left. Indeed one might call him the
Spiro Agnew of the Highbrows." What follows is a splendid discussion,
rich in detail, of how a community coheres, how America had changed in
its perceptions of minorities, and how individuals now feel free "to
bollix up the works" in pressing their own demands. One sample from Mr.
Boorstin: "I think that if we start with the idea of community then we
can easily make a distinction between dissent and disagreement. I define
disagreement as the exchange of views over how to obtain the common ends
of the community. Dissent I identify ..., through its Latin origin, with
a feeling of separateness, the emphasis on that which separates rather
than that which unites people. And I think that there has been a
tendency to create a cliche, a new cliche in America, which is that it's
good for people to feel and emphasize their separateness from all other
people; and I think that much of what is glorified under the name of
dissent is really the exclamatory expression of the self..."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.185
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6119
item Program Number 186
"Skepticism and Disorder"
Guests: Sheen, Fulton J. (Fulton
John), 1895-1979.
6 January 1970
Scope and Contents note
Transcript: Box/Folder 166 : 19
Program details: A superb conversation that ranges from Vietnam and crime
in the streets to the beginning of the Cold War and the difficulty many
Americans had in believing that the Soviet Union, our recent ally in
World War II, wasn't a democracy in the same sense as the United States.
One sample: WFB: "Well, but is it always commendable to use restraint,
or is restraint sometimes an expression of cowardice or lack of
conviction?" FJS: "It can be both.... Take, for example, turning the
other cheek. If there are ten men in a line and I preach hate to them
and say you must destroy your brother, and one man turns and strikes his
neighbor, two strikes three, when will it ever stop? It will stop only
at a point where one man turns around and absorbs the evil. In that
sense, restraint can absorb evil. From another point of view restraint
does not absorb evil; it sometimes may increase it. The crimes certainly
on our streets, today, the turn of law by which there is compassion
shown more for the mugger than for the mugged, more for the one who does
the violence than for the victim-this is a kind of restraint which is
not commendable, and which I fear will bring some trouble to our
nation."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.186
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6120
item Program Number 187
"The Oppenheimer Case"
Guests: Stern, Philip M.
15 January 1970
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 81 : 9
Transcript: Box/Folder 166 : 20
Program details: Mr. Stern believes (a) that J. Robert Oppenheimer got a
raw deal, and (b) that our government harmed rather than helped our
security by denying itself his services. A rich discussion starting with
the security investigations of the early Fifties, but moving back to
World War II and the development of the hydrogen bomb, and forward to
the "current blacklisting of scientists by the Department of Health,
Education, and Welfare." Mr. Stern cites the wartime case of Edward
Teller, who was almost denied a security clearance because he had
relatives in Nazi Germany; Mr. Buckley cites the case of Suez in 1956,
where the Soviets found out about the proposed Israeli-French-British
invasion through the efforts of one of "these individuals that you
simply dismiss as ciphers [but who] are people who change events." PS:
"After World War II, when our armies went back in, they tried to find
out where the Germans were in their atomic research, and they found that
they were two years, at least, behind us, and one scientist tried to
find out why. And a cardinal reason was that Germany had done just what
we did in the Oppenheimer case ... They had politicalized their
science."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.187
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6121
item Program Number 188
"The Mylai Massacre"
Guests: Bennett, John Coleman, 1902- :
Frankel, Charles, 1917-
15 January 1970
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 81 : 10
Transcript: Box/Folder 166 : 21
Program details: A serious, though sometimes heated, discussion that
begins with who bears responsibility for the Mylai massacre (JCB: "Now I
do also believe that if you get American troops into a long and
indefinite war, going on for years and years in a strange country where
they don't understand people, where they can't communicate ... if you
search and destroy, and, worst of all, if you are always surrounded by
people of whom you can't be sure whether they're your friends or your
enemies ... statistically you've got to expect a certain number of
people to break loose and do something like this") but goes on to
questions such as, Was the attack on Hiroshima launched in cold blood?
Where did the word "gook" originate? (CF: "We used it in World War II,
against the enemy." WFB: "Did we?" CF: "Well, where I was.... We
talked-" WFB: "Surely not you?" CF: "Well, yes, surely me too. If I had
said 'Japanese' none of the fellows I was with would know what in the
devil I meant") and (from Mr. Frankel) "Aren't both you people sort of
forgetting the Hundred Years War?"
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.188
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6122
item Program Number 189
"Broadcasting and the Public"
Guests: Johnson, Nicholas,
1934-
26 January 1970
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 81 : 11
Transcript: Box/Folder 166 : 22
Program details: What business does the FCC have telling broadcasters
what to broadcast? Who decides what is in the public interest? At the
time of this show, when cable was in its infancy, how did the
broadcasting industry differ, from the automobile industry or the cereal
industry? Occasional sharp clashes and much good fun. NJ: "In Great
Britain there is commercial television service, and there are two
channels of BBC. British television has on it the same kind of trash
that we do-if anything, they have a wider diversity of trash than we and
giv[e] people really a choice of gradations of trashy programs.... But
the point is that in addition to that programming, there is also ... a
choice, and there is more of a choice every evening on British
television than probably on American television in a month." ... WFB:
"Well, you see, the paradoxical thing is I really agree with you on
practically everything-it pains me to do so-but it seems to me that what
you really are is sort of an aristocratic paternalist." NJ: "Gee, that's
something I've never thought of myself as ..."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.189
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6123
item Program Number 190
"Power"
Guests: Berle, Adolf Augustus, 1895-1971.
26 January 1970
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 81 : 12
Transcript: Box/Folder 166 : 23
Program details: Mr. Buckley describes his guest as "the last of the
great intellectual New Dealers"; his public career had begun at the
Paris Peace Conference, and during the New Deal itself he had, among
other things, drafted the Securities and Exchange Act. His newest book,
Power, was, as WFB puts it, "an attempt to ... decoct from human
experience some imperishable laws explaining and indeed governing the
uses of power." Serious political theory and lively exchanges-with one
of the most telling bits of humor being unintentional, apropos of the
Berle Law ("that wherever there is chaos it will always be occupied by
power"): WFB: "What about Colombia, for instance?" AB: "It is
interesting to note, since ... I crossed the picket line at Columbia
myself." WFB: "No, no, I meant the country." Many
Firing
Line
guests
speak from earned authority, but here is Mr. Berle explaining his
support of Lyndon Johnson's invasion of the Dominican Republic: "It just
happens that the Dominican Republic is a republic I know very, very well
indeed. I ... drew up the land law for it, in 1924 ..."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.190
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6124
item Program Number 191
"English and American Audiences"
Guests: Frost, David, 1939
Apr. 7-
11 March 1970
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 81 : 13
Transcript: Box/Folder 166 : 24
Program details: Mr. Frost, at the age of 28, was one of the best-known
figures on both the English and the American airwaves--and presumably
also airlines, since he crossed the Atlantic twice a week to maintain
his double hegemony. He argues stoutly, and with plausible
illustrations, that there really isn't much difference between English
and American audiences--despite, as Mr. Buckley puts it,"the expectation
that, because of the BBC, there would be in England ... a listening
audience that is more sophisticated, more inquisitive, more demanding
than the American audience." Not at all, says Mr. Frost. In fact, "I
think the picture of there being ... in some curious way ... lower taste
or less intelligence in the mass audience in America compared with
England is either a ludicrous piece of modesty on the part of Americans
or a plot by the East Coast and the West Coast to denigrate the people
in the middle of the country." Much about styles of public conversation
and interviewing, and a fascinating side-glance at Enoch Powell.
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.191
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6125
item Program Number 192
"Public Works"
Guests: Moses, Robert, 1888-1981.
11 March 1970
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 82 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 167 : 1
Program details: A bracing session with a man who never took "No" for an
answer. WFB: "Well, a lot of people are saying about you that ... your
impatience with people like John Lindsay is a failure on your part to
recognize that historically he is the counterpart of what you were fifty
years ago." RM: "No, I don't see anything in that at all. My criticism
of John Lindsay is based solely on one thing, that he doesn't get
anything done. He just advocates.... Anybody who has any capacity for
administration, even on a relatively small scale, like municipal
housekeeping, parks, street cleaning, goes along in a car, and he looks
at his particular domain, and he passes a place that's dirty, sloppy,
obviously isn't well run, and the benches are all torn to pieces, the
slats are off, and so forth. He doesn't go into a long disquisition
about [Black Panther] trials-" WFB: "Vietnam." RM: "-that kind of thing.
He sends for the top man in the borough, and he says, 'The general
foreman is out. He lives in the Bronx, send him to Staten Island for the
good of the service.' Forty-eight hours, that's all over the place."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.192
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6126
item Program Number 193
"The Idea of The Great Ideas"
Guests: Adler, Mortimer
Jerome, 1902-2001.
13 March 1970
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 82 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 167 : 2
Program details: The first
Firing
Line
appearance for Professor Adler, a
buoyant thinker and teacher. The "great ideas" get into the discussion,
but not separately from the way people are, or should be, introduced to
them. Mr. Adler is scathing on the effect our present graduate schools
have on undergraduate learning ("the college, instead of being an
institution of liberal learning, concerned only to liberate the mind, to
discipline it and liberate it,... becomes nothing but a channel, a
conduit, into the specializations of the graduate schools." ... "My
definition of a good teacher, which I have a hunch you will share, is a
person who is himself dedicated to continued general learning.... I know
it's kind of trite to say that Socrates was the greatest teacher, but he
was. And he was, simply because his teaching was the conduct of an
inquiry, in which the students were engaged in the inquiry with him. Now
that, it seems to me, is the kind of teaching that should go on in
college.") On to Thomas Aquinas, John Dewey, how to help the least able
child, and much more.
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.193
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004SQFQYM
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6127
item Program Number 194
"The New Realism in Movies"
Guests: Bloomfield, George. :
Kramer, Larry. : Kastle, Leonard.
13 March 1970
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 82 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 167 : 3
Program details: Our guests' new films, WFB begins by saying, "have in
common a realistic, not to say photographic, attitude towards crime and
sex." We begin with a clip from each, with its writer/director setting
the scene, and then move on to the discussion. Mr. Kramer has a
wonderful story about how he had tried to enlist F. R. Leavis's interest
in his version of Women in Love and what the great man did to him; Mr.
Kastle tells of the different ways a work in progress looks depending on
your perspective: "When I wrote the screenplay in this film there were
many scenes that I felt were right. And a lot of it involved nudity. And
when I became the director of the film, I had a terrible fight with
myself. The writer is always supposed to fight with the director, and I
was-I had a constant battle ... And I found that what I was doing was I
was taking out things that really happened [in the real-life story on
which his film was based] in order to make the movie more
truthful....It's a very difficult paradox."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.194
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6128
item Program Number 195
"ROTC"
Guests: Germino, Dante L. : Bierman, Arthur.
2 April 1970
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 82 : 4
Transcript: Box/Folder 167 : 4
Program details: In the spring of 1969, WFB begins, "all of a sudden
students and faculty discovered that ROTC was somehow intellectually
unfashionable. Their discovery had nothing whatever to do with the
Vietnam War, you understand, merely a coincidence." It turns out that
there are non-Vietnam-related reasons to oppose ROTC-reasons that Mr.
Germino is on record as having adduced for a different government
program long before we were involved in Vietnam, having to do with
"extramural control" and the fact that "the courses are designed for
recruitment and training for a single employer"-i.e., they are not
academic in the strict sense of the word. Mr. Bierman adds that "I
personally have, for example, fought not a very successful battle ...
trying to remove credit for physical education at my college, precisely
for the reason that you mention, in that I don't think it's an academic
subject either." But more important to him is the question "whether one
believes that the university should be an agent or an arm of whatever
institution pays the bill. Or whether you think that it should in fact
try to fight for a certain kind of autonomy."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.195
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6129
item Program Number 196
"National Review"
Guests: DuBois, L. Clayton (Larry Clayton)
: Leonard, John, 1939- : Cheshire, William.
2 April 1970
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 82 : 5
Transcript: Box/Folder 167 : 5
Program details: The third of the occasional programs in which the guests
question the host of
Firing
Line
(see 171). The idea this time is to
examine current American conservatism by looking at National Review, of
which Mr. Buckley is the founder and Editor. We start with the
magazine's position on the Nixon Justice Department and individual
liberties, the concerns of the young, the use of obscenity-and then the
trill: WFB: "I think a conservative is somebody who has a sense of
perspective ... I remember a story about Victor Borge. He was 12 years
old, and he was a child prodigy, so the Royal Copenhagen Symphony
Orchestra put him on to play a Schumann concerto, and .. .towards the
end of the first movement, he was doing a trill, and the entire
orchestra of 125 people was completely silent, and 3,000 people were
completely silent, and all of a sudden he was just carried away by how
ludicrous it was to play a trill while everybody was just sort of
sitting, so he just went on and on, and they broke out laughing. Now,
occasionally, when one finds oneself being very solemn, I think of
Victor Borge, and I think it is a part of the conservative view of
things to understand, for instance, that this isn't the terminal
experience of any human being, we're here at the pleasure of God, and
moving, one hopes, into far greener pastures, and that under the
circumstances, one must be careful not to become completely obsessed."
LCD: "Trill now and then." WFB: "You've got to trill now and then, yeah,
that's right; or recognize the trill."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.196
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6130
item Program Number 197
"The Uses of Radicalism"
Guests: Jacobs, Paul, 1918-
10 April 1970
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 82 : 6
Transcript: Box/Folder 167 : 6
Program details: Mr. Jacobs is by his own and most other people's
reckoning a radical, and part of the purpose of this show is to let him
tell us how a radical approaches things, which he does with some
panache. "I would distinguish myself from liberals and conservatives
somewhat in this fashion: the liberal ... will concede the existence of
the problem, and his response to it is to go: Tsk, tsk, tsk, tsk ... He
says yes, the problem is there and it's pretty terrible, and we probably
ought to do something about it ... The conservative ...says, 'What
problem? What problem? The only thing that's wrong is that there are
people who don't understand the true nature of American society and how
great it is and how it's moving on an upward trend all the time.' And so
what the radical seeks to do, not always successfully, is to search for
the roots of the problem ... it's as if you had a sick patient and the
doctors were to say to him, 'Yes, you're sick, I think aspirin will take
care of you,' when in fact what's needed is open-heart surgery." And on
to the history of race relations in America, and why students in Santa
Barbara burned down a bank in protest against their university-supplied
housing, and why people like Ted Sorensen and Arthur Schlesinger Jr.
aren't as important as conservatives think they are.
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.197
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6131
item Program Number 198
"Order and the Law"
Guests: Garry, Charles.
10 April 1970
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 82 : 7
Transcript: Box/Folder 167 : 7
Program details: WFB begins by quoting the celebrated exchange when Bobby
Seale had asked his prospective lawyer in the Chicago 8 trial, "Are you
as good as Perry Mason?" Mr. Garry had replied, "I'm better. Both of us
get our clients off, but Mason's are innocent." On to that trial itself,
where some of the defendants' disruptions were in protest at Judge
Hoffman's refusal to grant a delay until Mr. Garry had recovered from
gall-bladder surgery. CG: "Oh, I think the defendants were exceedingly
well behaved." WFB: "Okay. There was one defendant who shouted at Judge
Hoffman for having pictures on his wall of George Washington and
Benjamin Franklin, because he said they were slave owners. Now was
that-" CG: "Do you know why he said that?" WB: "Well, just tell me why
he said it." CG: "That was Bobby Seale who said that.... Do you know why
he said that?" WFB: "Why?" CG: "Because the judge said that he was not a
racist himself, and stated his own background ... to satisfy the old
doctrine that some of my best friends are Negroes, and Bobby Scale said,
How can you say that you're not a racist when in back of you you have
all of the racist so-called fathers of our country?"
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.198
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6132
item Program Number 199
"My Several Lives"
Guests: Conant, James Bryant, 1893-1978.
23 April 1970
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 82 : 8
Transcript: Box/Folder 167 : 8
Program details: Mr. Conant was one of the country's leading educational
theorists and had been a frequent target of the young Bill Buckley in
the Fifties. Now, in the turmoil of the Vietnam era, host and guest are
pretty much on the same side of the barricades. JBC: "You know, I feel,
if I may say so, a little bit aggrieved at the way Fate has treated me
on this question of education beyond the high school. I'm a little like
a cavalry officer who got ready to write his memoirs just about the time
they mechanized the cavalry." Some time is devoted to the two men's old
bone of contention (whether private, and particularly Church-related,
schools have a place in American society), but much more is spent on a
wonderfully rich exploration of morality and bravery in warfare. JBC: "I
said that I didn't see that there was any difference, really, between
attacking a person with poison gas, which would attack his lungs and
face, perhaps, and ripping him apart with machine guns or fragments of
shell.... Once you were in a war, I don't think that you had more or
less moral methods of carrying on a war, and this was very true about
all of this terrible bombing ... in World War II."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.199
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6133
item Program Number 200
"The New South"
Guests: McKeithen, John J. (John Julian),
1918-
23 April 1970
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 82 : 9
Transcript: Box/Folder 167 : 9
Program details: Supreme Court decisions of recent years had led to
massive busing-and massive resistance, in terms of "white flight" and
refusal to support school bonds. Governor McKeithen, as WFB puts it,
"argues ... not the virtues of compulsory segregation, but the necessity
of accepting de facto segregation.... [He] persuaded the legislature to
pass a law in every way identical to a law passed in New York State in
1969, even, as Governor McKeithen likes to point out, to the point of
duplicating a grammatical mistake in that law, in order to dramatize
that he doesn't want anything more than what New Yorkers are treating
themselves to." Integrationists had impugned Governor McKeithen's
motives; on this show he argues, with much supporting detail, "I think
it's going to take time. I think eventually, eventually the predominant
Negro school, the predominant white school, I think will come to an end
in this country. But I don't think we should force children ... into
something that their parents won't do themselves."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.200
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6134
item Program Number 201
"Hunger and the Government"
Guests: McGovern, George S.
(George Stanley), 1922-
5 May 1970
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 82 : 10
Transcript: Box/Folder 167 : 10
Program details: Senator McGovern--who had been a leader in the
anti-Johnson, anti-Humphrey forces in 1968, and who had already begun
running for the 1972 Democratic nomination--was probably best known for
his opposition to the Vietnam War; but his other big issue was, as WFB
puts it, "the inadequacy of our war against poverty, more concretely
against hunger." This proves to be a fast-moving and informative
exchange, beginning with the Soviet Union's routine agricultural
disasters and going on to our own "paradox," as Mr. McGovern puts it,
which is hunger "at a time when we can produce more than enough to take
care of all of our people." Specifics come from both the supply side (as
WFB puts it, we "send great gobs of money to rich farmers, like Senator
Eastland,... paying them not to grow food") and the demand side (Senator
McGovern quotes "studies show[ing] that poor people, dollar for dollar,
do a better job of buying what they ought to eat than the rich do").
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.201
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6135
item Program Number 202
"The Southern Strategy"
Guests: Thurmond, Strom, 1902-2003.
5 May 1970
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 82 : 11
Transcript: Box/Folder 167 : 11
Program details: Strom Thurmond had come over from the Democratic Party
in time for the 1968 election. He was still, as WFB puts it, "widely
acknowledged as among the two or three principal spokesmen for the
South. He is also widely applauded and widely reviled for having been a
major factor in the victory of Richard Nixon as President," having
helped persuade fellow conservative Southerners to vote for Mr. Nixon
rather than George Wallace. There is some talk here about that election,
but more of this often pungent discussion focuses on the South itself
and the way, according to Senator Thurmond, it is misrepresented in the
North, with some reminders of how he earned his standing to speak: "I
remember when I was governor [in the late Forties], anybody who wanted
to vote regardless of color could vote. And we put on campaigns to
provide better educational facilities for the black children. And at one
point I had to have some white men arrested for lynching a Negro in
South Carolina, brought them to trial. I was told it was the first time
in the history of the state that had been done. Well, it probably wasn't
a pleasant thing, maybe, where a state is predominated by whites, ruled
by whites, to do that, but it's the only right thing to do, is to give
equal justice to all people."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.202
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6136
item Program Number 203
"The Hess Story"
Guests: Hess, Wolf Rudiger. : Marreco,
Anthony.
8 May 1970
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 83 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 167 : 12
Program details: As WFB sketches the background, "it was 1941; France had
been conquered, and Hitler and Stalin had signed their non-aggression
pact. Suddenly and secretly, Deputy Fuhrer Rudolf Hess flew to Britain
and parachuted down, intending personally to negotiate a peace between
England and Germany. For his pains, Hitler sentenced him to death in
absentia, Churchill put him in jail, and the Nuremberg court, five years
later, sentenced him to life imprisonment." Twenty-four years after
that, he remained the only prisoner in Spandau--the next to last having
been released in 1966. Today's conversation is halting at times, owing
to Wolf Hess's imperfect English, but illuminating on the general
question of war crimes, and often moving on the specific case. AM: "I
remember your father today as a very straightforward and a very simple
man. And I think you'll agree, not a man of tremendous intellect. And I
have always believed that it was the planned attack on Russia [by
Germany] that completely unbalanced him. And he then searched back in
his memory; he quite wrongly thought the Duke of Hamilton, whom he had
met skiing ... before the war, was an important figure in England. As
you know, dukes aren't, but your father thought he was, and he flew to
Scotland in a brave, rash attempt to contact the Duke of Hamilton and
negotiate a peace."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.203
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6137
item Program Number 204
"English Youth"
Guests: Roth, Peter M. : Thorpe-Young,
Geoffrey A. : Gibson, Christopher. : Riddell, Peter. : Evans, Roger. :
Standlen, Nicholas.
8 May 1970
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 83 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 167 : 13
Program details: The first three young men, top students at one of
England's top public schools, evince little interest in the world
affairs convulsing campuses around the world; but the three university
men raise the energy level with their crackling disagreements about
whether there can ever be equality in England without a radical
revamping of the school system. NS: "... this is why it is crucial that
you should not segregate children in education at an early age, or
indeed at any age, because you are thereby saying,... If you pass this
exam [at age eleven], you are going to get a good education, and if you
fail it, you are going to get a bad one." RE: "... If you happen to be
born in a neighborhood comprehensive which is a bad school, you have no
opportunity whatsoever under Mr. Standlen's system; under the old
English system, if you had that spark of genius in you, you could
rise."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.204
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6138
item Program Number 205
"The British Abortion Act--Two Years Later"
Guests: St.
John-Stevas, Norman. : Steel, David, Sir, 1938-
9 May 1970
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 83 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 167 : 14
Program details: Mr. Steel had two years earlier, against an opposition
led by Mr. Stevas, guided through the House of Commons the Abortion
Reform Act, criticisms of which, Mr. Buckley suggests, are "as relevant
in America as in England." The audience may feel a bit left out at the
beginning, when Messrs. Stevas and Steel wrangle over who did or didn't
draft or redraft the "conscience clause" in that act (which states that
doctors and nurses are not obliged to perform abortions), but eventually
we get to the point at issue: "The really bad effects of the Abortion
Act, you know," says Mr. Stevas, "were that it has made people abortion
minded. That's what I object to. I freely can see that there's a case
for carrying out an abortion in very difficult circumstances; but now
it's the first option that people think of. We have this crazy social
policy, in which it's very difficult to get family planning out of the
National Health Service, and abortion is made easy. And you get an
extraordinary frame of discourse by people who seem to [believe] the
worst disaster that could overtake a woman is pregnancy."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.205
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6139
item Program Number 206
"The Road Back"
Guests: Braine, John. : Amis, Kingsley.
9 May 1970
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 83 : 4
Transcript: Box/Folder 167 : 15
Program details: The road back from socialism, that is. Both guests had
been Angry Young Men. "To be an Angry Young Man," WFB explains, "you had
to be young, angry about the insufficiency of Western institutions,
implacably anti-American, easy-going on the Soviet Union, and talented."
Have Messrs. Braine and Amis benefited materially from their apostasy?
JB: "I've never had a thing, not even a free ticket to Lord's." The
Left, Mr. Braine continues, "never plays fair, and the trouble with the
Right is that it does, because we have an entirely different set of
values. That's why we're such fools, and that's why the Left is forging
ahead of us." ... KA: "Anybody ... might, for arguable reasons, want the
American involvement in Southeast Asia to stop, as quickly as possible.
That seems to me tenable. I don't agree with it, but it's arguable. But
to support the other side, the North Vietnamese and the Vietcong, to go
around crying Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh, seems to me reprehensible on a very
broad front, morally and intellectually and politically, in the sense
that it makes political nonsense."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.206
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6140
item Program Number 207
"Politics and the Media"
Guests: Shakespeare, Frank.
9 June 1970
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 83 : 5
Transcript: Box/Folder 167 : 16
Program details: There are few fireworks in this meeting between two old
comrades in arms. However, they have a solid and productive discussion
about how our information agencies operate, how they might be more
effective, and--in the light of 250 State Department officials signing a
protest to the Secretary of State over the Cambodian incursion--what are
the different obligations of the political appointee and the career
Foreign Service Officer. FS: "If a decision was undertaken by the
President, which I felt very deeply in my heart and in my mind was wrong
for the American people and would wreak lasting damage on the country, I
think that I really would have no alternative except to resign and then
publicly oppose the decision." For the career Foreign Service Officer,
on the other hand, "over the next ten or twenty years there are certain
to be a number of policies in any Administration that privately as a
citizen he would oppose. He must support those, to the best of his
ability, with the same degree of effort and professionalism as he would
those he happens to support."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.207
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6141
item Program Number 208
"The Escalation of Student Power"
Guests: Kelman, Steven. :
Klein, Alexander, 1918-
9 June 1970
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 83 : 6
Transcript: Box/Folder 167 : 17
Program details: To discuss, as WFB puts it, "the causes and directions
of student protest," we have a veteran observer and a young man who has
had recent experience with the Students for a Democratic Society, "some
of whose members, with only a perfunctory trace of sadness, hav[e]
advised Mr. Kelman that shortly after the consummation of their
revolution, it will prove quite necessary to shoot Mr. Kelman or to hang
him." The conversation frequently changes direction, since it is Mr.
Klein's thesis that "SDS and National Review and the Democratic Party
and the Republican Party are all symptoms of a failure to really come to
grips with the problems of America," whereas Mr. Kelman concentrates on
SDS: "I tried above all to, instead of attributing motives, to analyze
why their ideology degenerated in the way it did. Why an organization
which started off saying, 'Let the people decide,' and which started off
seeking certain things that I would feel are improvements in American
society, degenerated into an organization whose model for America would
be something like Mao Tse-tung's China."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.208
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6142
item Program Number 209
"The Twilight of the Presidency"
Guests: Reedy, George E.,
1917-
1 July 1970
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 83 : 7
Transcript: Box/Folder 167 : 18
Program details: A profound discussion of the Presidency, prompted by Mr.
Reedy' s own experiences at Lyndon Johnson's right hand, but going back
to the founding of our country ("They had no model for government other
than that of monarchy.... In those days, while there was a British
Parliament, ... the Prime Minister's] primary responsibility was still
to the King"). GR: "When I say that [the President] loses contact [with
the people], I do not mean that he is cut off from information. No....
In fact, he's smothered in information ... What I mean is that the man
is not living in an environment of adversary personal relationships,
which is something that is essential for maintaining psychic health....
Most of us go through the day plagued by unreasonable people - by bill
collectors - " WFB: "Wives." GR: "by wives, who burst into tears because
you've forgotten an anniversary ... by people that are quite likely to
punch you in the nose when you step on their toe ... None of these
things are pleasant. I don't regard exercise as pleasant, either. But,
nevertheless, I think they are essential to an understanding of our
fellow human beings, and this a President does not have."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.209
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6143
item Program Number 210
"The Stock Market--Ups and Downs"
Guests: Smith, Adam, 1930-
: Levy, Leon, 1929-
1 July 1970
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 83 : 8
Transcript: Box/Folder 167 : 19
Program details: Does the stock market go up and down because of real
events in the outside world--government actions, the level of inflation,
the earning power of particular companies at a particular time--or does
it have more to do with the emotional reactions of investors? As of July
1970, the stock market, which had been strong in the early 1960s, had
been lagging inflation for more than four years; as we know in
hindsight, not until 1981 would the Dow-Jones Industrial Average match
the high it had reached in 1965. This show offers a good, solid
discussion of an elusive topic. AS: "And no matter what the next thing
is that happens in the market-and there will be a next thing-it too is
born to die. The day it starts to happen, its days are numbered. You
simply don't know how many days there are."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.210
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6144
item Program Number 211
"Roosevelt: The Soldier of Freedom"
Guests: Burns, James
MacGregor.
28 August 1970
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 83 : 9
Transcript: Box/Folder 167 : 20
Program details: A rich discussion with a man who is not being ironical
in the title of his book (although he admits that there are ironies in
it) and who is capable of holding together both the sweep and the
details of World War II. In Mr. Burns's view, for example, "the
decision, made for military reasons, not to open a second front in
Europe in 1942 but rather to wait until 1944 wound up virtually
guaranteeing Soviet hegemony over Central Europe, because by the time of
Yalta we desperately wanted Soviet assistance in tackling Japan....
Russia had us just the other way around in Asia-that is, we wanted them
to create the Second Front... on the mainland in Asia, in order to cut
down on our casualties. And what Roosevelt did again, in his typically
opportunistic, short-run, realistic way, if you will, is to pay the
price [at Yalta] to get Soviet assistance against Japan, after we had
failed to come to Russia's assistance in Europe."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.211
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6145
item Program Number 212
"International Trade"
Guests: Stans, Maurice H., 1908-
28 August 1970
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 83 : 10
Transcript: Box/Folder 167 : 21
Program details: As Secretary of Commerce, Mr. Stans was involved, among
many other things, with world trade--specifically, at this time, with
trying to persuade Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong to stop
flooding our country with cheap textiles, and trying to persuade
Congress not to respond to domestic pressure by raising tariffs and
imposing import quotas. The discussion becomes quite technical at
times--in terms of balance of payments and what happens to a dollar that
a foreigner earns by selling goods here--but host and guest never lose
us as they explore the question, as Mr. Buckley phrases it, "Why
wouldn't a policy of unilateral free trade [i.e., not imposing tariffs
even if others do] ultimately work out economically?"
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.212
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6146
item Program Number 213
"Marijuana and the Law"
Guests: Kaplan, John, 1929-1989. :
Kleindienst, Richard G., 1923-
3 September 1970
Scope and Contents note
Transcript: Box/Folder 168 : 1
Program details: The second
Firing
Line
discussion of marijuana, this one
an often exciting duel between a committed drug warrior and a former
public prosecutor who, after working on a panel to recommend new drug
legislation in California, reversed his position and came out for
legalization of marijuana, on the analogy of repeal of Prohibition. Mr.
Buckley starts out by asking whether "... it is possible to discuss
marijuana and the law without arriving at any fixed conclusions on how
harmful marijuana is." Mr. Kleindienst's first reaction is Yes; but as
soon as Mr. Kaplan states that the enormous cost of criminalizing
marijuana use could be justified only "if the drug were as bad as some
people said it was," it becomes apparent that, in Mr. Kleindienst's
words, "You have to talk about the two at the same time,... because if
you took my theory that it is dangerous, then it would ... dissipate the
validity of his theory."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.213
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6147
item Program Number 214
"How Does It Look for the Dollar?"
Guests: Browne, Harry,
1933- : Janeway, Eliot.
3 September 1970
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 83 : 11
Transcript: Box/Folder 168 ; 2
Program details: Mr. Browne starts off by explaining that he isn't
"advocating devaluation--he is simply looking at the world as it is" and
saying that, "as an act of economic desperation," our government will
have to "renege on their promise to foreign governments to pay one ounce
of gold for every $35 turned in at the Treasury." (The Nixon
Administration did so on August 15, 1971.) Mr. Janeway replies
engagingly: "Frankly, I find myself a bit off balance being out flanked
on the pessimistic side;... they pun on my name all the time and call me
Calamity Janeway, and I really regard myself as the last optimist." And
we're off on a high-energy discussion of the differences between
domestic and international policies, or, as Mr. Janeway puts it, "the
hamburger dollar available to us nationals within the sovereignty here
[as against] the international dollar."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.214
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004SQFR6E
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6148
item Program Number 215
"The Pueblo Story"
Guests: Bucher, Lloyd M., 1927-
10 September 1970
Scope and Contents note
Transcript: Box/Folder 168 : 3
Program details: In January of 1968 North Korean boats surrounded the
Pueblo, an American intelligence ship sailing in international waters,
forced it to come into port in North Korea and imprisoned the crew for
11 months, and let them go only after the Johnson Administration
apologized, as WFB puts it, "for doing something the United States
Government wasn't guilty of doing." The often moving discussion with
this man who had narrowly avoided a court martial for surrendering his
ship ranges from the details of the Pueblo's, capture to general
questions of intelligence collecting, to, as WFB puts it, "the business
that you can only give your name, rank, and serial number" and whether
that ought to be changed. LB: "I would hesitate at the present time to
discuss actual recommendations ..." WFB: "Why would you be hesitant?"
LB: "Because there are several hundred POWs over there in North Vietnam
right now who are trying to live up to it, and with a statement that
might be made by myself or any other military person, it would be used
against those kids, and I wouldn't want to contribute to the problems
they've already got."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.215
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6149
item Program Number 216
"The Supreme Court, Rule of Law, and Academic Freedom"
Guests: Fellman, David, 1907- : Pritchett, C. Herman (Charles
Herman), 1907- : Kort, Fred.
10 September 1970
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 83 : 12
Transcript: Box/Folder 168 : 4
Program details: Our three guests were all attending the annual
convention of the American Political Science Association, whose more
traditional members were engaged in fending off a takeover by something
called "A Caucus for a New Political Science." As Mr. Pritchett
explains, "I think the initial concept of a professional association ...
was that this was a place where you came to meet your colleagues, talk
about ... our professional interests, our teaching problems, our
research problems." But now the association, like the campuses where its
members teach, has been politicized, and, as Mr. Fellman (whose campus
had been the scene of a fatal bombing at a research laboratory) puts it,
"we really haven't gotten accustomed to using the skills necessary to
deal with the kind of problems the association now has." An illuminating
discussion among men fighting to maintain standards of intellectual
discipline against the bomb throwers.
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.216
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6150
item Program Number 217
"Why Are They Afraid of Bach?"
Guests: Tureck, Rosalyn.
28 September 1970
Scope and Contents note
Transcript: Box/Folder 168 : 5
Program details: A lovely show with the keyboard artist who, according to
one reviewer, is "to Bach what Marilyn Monroe is to movies." The
question before the house is whether young rock fans can be shown that
Bach is not dry and academic; Miss Tureck illustrates her points
superbly at the keyboard, but, as her engagement with the young
panelists demonstrates, she is as much at home with words as with her
own craft. Miss Tureck, to panelist Phil Ardery: "I would like to ask
you a question, and that is, do you feel when you hear a composer
playing his own music, do you feel he's creating it on the spot? Is this
the excitement that you feel from him?" PA: "It's what I feel when I go
to concerts. I go to a Grateful Dead concert and look at Jerry Garcia
improvise on his guitar and listen with my ears to the sounds he gets
and it's different every time I hear him ..."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.217
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6151
item Program Number 218
"The Middle East"
Guests: Eban, Abba Solomon, 1915-2002.
28 September 1970
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 84 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 168 : 6
Program details: Minutes before the taping began, a messenger arrived to
tell Mr. Eban that Gamal Abdel Nasser-Israel's principal tormentor for
14 years-was dead. As Mr. Buckley puts it, "Such is the pace of events
in the Middle East that no conversation held about it on Monday appears
to be relevant on Tuesday ... On the other hand, the causes of the
tension do not change from day to day." The refugee camps are the main
focus of discussion with this man who had made an indelible imprint with
his internationally televised UN speech on the occasion of the Six-Day
War. AE: "We have no guilt ... for that problem; not at all. We have
responsibility with the rest of the international community. So, I am
responsible in the measure that you are responsible, and we must all do
what we can. But guilt, certainly not. Guilt lies with the governments
who declared that war" (against Israel, in 1948).
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.218
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6152
item Program Number 219
"Between Two Ages: America's Role in the Technetronic Era"
Guests: Brzezinski, Zbigniew K., 1928-
8 October 1970
Scope and Contents note
Transcript: Box/Folder 168 : 7
Program details: "Technetronic" being, as WFB explains, "a simple
agglutination of 'technological' and 'electronic'." It is Mr.
Brzezinski's thesis that the industrial age, "which, itself, produced
many strains and tensions, did lead after a time to a number of coherent
ideas as to how, more or less, to organize society, how to conduct
international politics." But now, as we enter the "technetronic age,"
the new phenomena-but especially "the impact of modern communications,
of modern means of calculations, of modern means of interacting"-have
led to the breakdown of "established values, established institutions."
And so we're off on a rich and, as it turns out, prophetic discussion of
this "messy, congested, chaotic, fragmented, barely structured,
partially orderly, partially disorderly" transition.
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.219
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6153
item Program Number 220
"Chile and the Future of South America"
Guests: Geyer,
Georgie Anne, 1935- : Rodman, Selden, 1909-
8 October 1970
Scope and Contents note
Transcript: Box/Folder 168 : 8
Program details: Chile, as Mr. Buckley sets the scene, is "in the news as
perhaps the first state that will have voted itself into Communism. Mr.
Allende is designated as the instrument for the scheduled
totalitarianization of the state." Why Chile? Why this country where
just six years earlier, as Miss Geyer tells it, "when Frei was elected
... there was a tremendously heady atmosphere ... a spontaneous
outpouring of simple joy and relief on the part of the Chilean people
that somehow they had voted for a reformist government without a Marxist
government"? This proves to be an extremely rich discussion with two
close observers of Latin America, explaining such matters as why there
has to be, in Miss Geyer's phrase, "a conscious redistribution of
wealth": "Largely because of the Spanish characteristics ... You have an
economic system that is only an extension of family groups.... There is
not much way for the aggressive young man to work in because he can't
get credit; the banks are controlled by one family group-the credit goes
to the people of that family."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.220
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6154
item Program Number 221
"Africa and Colonialism"
Guests: Huxley, Elspeth Joscelin
Grant, 1907-1997.
20 October 1970
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 84 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 168 : 9
Program details: Mrs. Huxley, who had been raised in Kenya, was highly
regarded as an observer of her own country and of Africa generally. This
fascinating conversation explores the whole subject of
decolonialization, including the limitations of Western democracy in a
region accustomed to other methods of decision-making, and the question
of how a colonial power should go about letting go. EH: "There does come
a point when you've got to choose. Either you say, 'We'll wait for an
ideal situation, when more people have had time to graduate from
universities and there are more skilled people equipped to takeover the
reins of government.' You can do this. Or you can say, 'That is
worse...because it involves shooting a lot of people.' Then there is the
question of any kind of future based on good will. If you leave in an
atmosphere of bloodshed and violence, you can't expect to attain what
you hope to be a commonwealth."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.221
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004VGGY7M
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6155
item Program Number 222
"Britain's Most Controversial MP"
Guests: Powell, J. Enoch
(John Enoch), 1912-1998.
20 October 1970
Scope and Contents note
Transcript: Box/Folder 168 : 10
Program details: "Since last appearing on this program," Mr. Buckley
begins, "Enoch Powell has made fresh-and very bitter-enemies.... [He]
repeated his warnings that England would be overwhelmed by colored
immigrants and added the suggestion that subversive forces in England
were arguing subtly for an end to the British way of life." And we're
off on a glorious ride with Britain's vieillard terrible. WFB: "Why do
they say about you that you have become the McCarthyite? ..." EP: "I
never understand-" WFB: "Did you think to ask?" EP: "I never understand
these American- I didn't ask Anthony Lewis, no; I wouldn't touch him
with a barge pole." WFB: "Would you touch the editors of the Guardian,
or the Telegraph and the Times, with a barge pole?" EP: "I don't think
the Telegraph probably applies this expression to me. The Times, as you
probably know, has become our leading Maoist daily. And so you go to the
Times in order to find examples of the very things I'm talking about."
WFB: "Are you using a metaphor?" EP: "Why no. No, I'm quite serious.
Indeed, perhaps-" WFB: "Is one of your fields of expertise the libel
law? I hope?"
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.222
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6156
item Program Number 223
"In Defense of Practical Socialism"
Guests: Crossman, R. H.
S. (Richard Howard Stafford), 1907-1974.
21 October 1970
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 84 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 168 : 11
Program details: A splendid session with the man regarded, as WFB puts
it, "as the most reliable exegete of practical socialism, if one will
permit the oxymoron." The discussion begins with the Wilson government's
failure to reduce, as Mr. Grossman puts it, "the gap between the
standard of living of the poor and the not-so-poor," given other
problems such as the balance of payments; and goes back and forth
between the practical and the theoretical. WFB: "What do you make of the
criticism ... that socialism is in a sense an exercise in utopianism,
and the balance of payments, mutatis mutandis, is always going to stand
in the way of executing socialism. If it isn't that, it's going to be
inflation, or it's going to be a lack of-" RC: "Yes. Well, you put it
that way; I'll put it another way. I think socialism is the belief in
the impossible. But then, you see, every good ideal is a belief in the
impossible. Remember when he said, 'Credo quia impossibile'-Tertullian,
the Christian, he said, 'I believe because it is impossible.' Now this
is something I've always thought was the essential about a radical."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.223
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6157
item Program Number 224
"Three British Journalists Question WFB"
Guests: Palmer,
John, 1930- : Steele, Jonathan. : Malcolm, Derrick.
21 October 1970
Scope and Contents note
Transcript: Box/Folder 168 : 12
Program details: Another of the approximately half-yearly occasions (see
Firing
Line
171 for background) when the tables are turned and the
guests question their host. Our three questioners this time are all
associated with the paper that, as WFB puts it, "is called, according as
you sympathize with it or not, a great newspaper or a roving assassin at
the service of socialists anywhere." Rapiers flash as we go from the
prerogatives of the state to the politics of the American establishment
to the Vietnam War. WFB: "Now, if you want to move from considerations
of politics to considerations of ethics, I'm prepared to do so. But ring
a bell and say we're moving from one area to another." JP: 'They have no
relationship with each other in your field?" WFB: "Not in the view in
which-not when I talk to adults. When I talk to adults and I say to
them, 'The state has the right to defend its independence,' I don't
expect that they will say, 'Well, does that mean they have the right to
eat children?'"
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.224
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6158
item Program Number 225
"Desegregation: How Far Should the Government Go?"
Guests:
Leonard, Jerris.
30 November 1970
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 84 : 4
Transcript: Box/Folder 168 : 13
Program details: In practice, what Mr. Leonard's title means is Assistant
Attorney General in charge of desegregating Southern schools-and, as WFB
puts it, "in applying himself to a program of rigid integration, he has
made many enemies," the more so because this is not what Southern voters
expected of the Nixon Administration. The hour at first bogs down a
little in hypotheticals, but we then get to a productive discussion of
dual school systems versus de facto segregation, of racial balance
versus simple desegregation, and of the beginnings of affirmative
action. WFB: "Why should you be puzzled by what the Supreme Court would
say? Is the Supreme Court that much of an enigma?" JL: "You asked the
question. I didn't. I'm not puzzled. I'm sure-" WFB: "Suppose I were
President of the United States and I called you and said, 'Mr. Leonard,
here we've got a situation in which everybody who is black elected to go
to this school, and everybody who is white elected to go to this one,
tell me, since you are in charge of these matters, is that legal?' Would
you say, 'God knows, Mr. President. It depends on what side of the bed
the Supreme Court woke up today'?" JL: "No. I think I would have to say
that based on decisions and language that the Court has used in the
past, it is likely that the Court would not accept that as being
constitutional."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.226
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6160
item Program Number 226
"What Is the Future of Catholic Education?"
Guests: Baker,
Kenneth, S. J. : McCormack, Elizabeth J.
30 November 1970
Scope and Contents note
Transcript: Box/Folder 168 : 14
Program details: While this absorbing discussion keeps opening out into
broader issues, the central point is money and control: i.e., how can a
school be governed, and what can it teach, and still be eligible for
state funds? WFB: "What about the teaching of religion? Do you do that
with intent to proselytize?" KB: "Well, I've been a theology teacher for
a number of years, and I don't think I've ever taught theology on the
basis of proselytizing. Theology is basically, going back to St.
Augustine-he called it, 'faith seeking understanding.' ..." EM: "If it's
taught as an academic discipline, rather than in a pastoral sense-" WFB:
"Would, say, Jonathan Edwards have been qualified to teach in your
college?" EM: "I think he would." WFB: "And would Martin Luther? ... Or
was he too hortatory?" EM: "I was never in a class of his."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.227
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6161
item Program Number 227
"The Vice President's Speeches"
Guests: Agnew, Spiro T.,
1918-1996.
8 December 1970
Scope and Contents note
Transcript: Box/Folder 168 : 15
Program details: To WFB's opening question--"I should like to begin by
asking Mr. Agnew what is his reply to the most frequent criticism
leveled against him, namely that he is dividing the country"--Mr. Agnew
begins with the fairly obvious but usually unnoticed point that our
politics is basically "an adversary system, and there isn't any such
thing as a divisive aspect to campaigning over and above the natural
divisions that result in a campaign" and then goes on to the more subtle
point that when we try to "avoid ... indicating our differences" we wind
up not "solv[ing] any problems; people walk away from each other
thinking they're in agreement, only to find they're really not." And
we're off on the dishonesty of the press, the difficulty with political
labels, and the strange new rhetoric of Teddy Kennedy.
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.228
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6162
item Program Number 228
"A Dialogue with Young Americans for Freedom"
Guests: Young
Americans for Freedom.
8 December 1970
Scope and Contents note
Transcript: Box/Folder 168 : 16
Program details: "A rather unconventional
Firing
Line
" as WFB introduces
it, in which the studio audience from the preceding show--made up
heavily though not entirely of members of YAF--is given the floor.
Topics range from the radicalism of Triumph (a Catholic magazine run by
a sister and brother-in-law of Mr. Buckley's), to Chiang Kai-shek's
failure to return triumphantly to Mainland China, to WFB's failure to
criticize the Nixon Administration as roundly as he might have
criticized a Humphrey Administration for similar actions. WFB: "I once
said, if the whole country was engaged in a debate over whether we
should demunicipalize the garbage collection, we wouldn't be talking
about whether to socialize medicine. By the same token, I suppose, if
the whole country were engaged in a debate on how exactly to emulate the
Christian way, we wouldn't have to worry about things like world
wars."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.229
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6163
item Program Number 229
"Radical Chic"
Guests: Wolfe, Tom.
17 December 1970
Scope and Contents note
Transcript: Box/Folder 168 : 17
Program details: Tom Wolfe--one of the leading exponents of the New
Journalism, wedding novelistic to journalistic skill--was now, with his
white suits and his dramatic manner, becoming a prominent public figure.
Radical Chic, describing Leonard Bernstein's party for the Black
Panthers, had roused the ire of the bien-pensants, led by Jason Epstein
in The New York Review of Books. Mr. Buckley starts by asking, "Now when
you read that passage [of Mr. Epstein's] did you feel guilty about how
you handled the situation?" TW: "... He really wanted to establish the
fact that somehow I was in league with...I believe he said Spiro Agnew,
the Kent State grand jury ... No, somehow I couldn't bring myself to
feel very guilty after reading that." And we're off on a joyous whirl
through the current scene and the writer's craft.
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.230
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00G707IBG
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6164
item Program Number 230
"Vietnamization"
Guests: Pike, Douglas Eugene, 1924- :
Salisbury, Harrison Evans, 1908-
17 December 1970
Scope and Contents note
Transcript: Box/Folder 168 : 18
Program details: The Nixon Administration had announced the policy of
Vietnamization"--turning the fighting over to our South Vietnamese
allies--but recently, as Mr. Buckley puts it, "we had resumed the
bombing, "in retaliation, said Washington, against the shooting down of
an American reconnaissance plane; actually, others have said, because
the accumulation of men and materiel preparing to move down through the
Ho Chi Minh Trail into South Vietnam threatens the entire concept of
Vietnamization." Mr. Pike is a leading student of the Vietcong; Mr.
Salisbury had notably reported from North Vietnam. They are not always
prescient (DP: "To me this is largely academic now because in my opinion
it just isn't in the cards for the Communists to win decisively") but
are nonetheless deeply informative. HS: "My own feeling has always been
that ... regardless of whether we should be there or shouldn't 't be
there ... if the time comes when we're going to get out, we have a
certain responsibility, perhaps you might say to humanity, to do it in
an orderly fashion and to leave behind us the best possible ingredients
which could be used in that part of the world towards stability and a
better kind of social and political structure."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.231
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6165
item Program Number 231
"The Karl Hess Phenomenon"
Guests: Hess, Karl, 1923-1994.
6 January 1971
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 84 : 5
Transcript: Box/Folder 168 : 19
Program details: Mr. Hess, a longtime conservative and Republican, had
split with both movements, declaring himself, as Mr. Buckley puts it,
"first a libertarian thoroughly out of sympathy with the large role
given to government in modern society, and finally an anarchist-the
exact meaning of which we shall explore today." Although Messrs. Buckley
and Hess had publicly used each other as bad examples, today's
conversation is never bad-tempered. KH: "Hermits never socially
organized. Ayn Rand never socially organized, perhaps. But anarchists
... left-wing or right-wing anarchists, so far as I know, would all
agree that the point is people can socially organize volitionally; they
do not need to live under established, institutionalized,
self-perpetuating institutions of power." WFB: "Well, the trouble with
your explanation of it, as I understand it, is that it sounds-" KH:
"Sounds good, doesn't it?" WFB: "Yeah, it sounds very good. The trouble
is-" KH: "Now that we've made a decision on that-" WFB: "-it simply
doesn't take into account certain rather obtrusive human data."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.232
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6166
item Program Number 232
"Amnesty and Counterrevolution"
Guests: Benenson, Mark. :
Cherne, Leo, 1912-
6 January 1971
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 84 : 6
Transcript: Box/Folder 168 : 20
Program details: Mr. Benenson's organization assists people who are
imprisoned for matters of conscience; Mr. Cherne's assists people who
have managed to escape from totalitarian countries. An often profound
discussion of how, theoretically and practically, people who seek to
help the oppressed go about their work. LC: "Mark, can I ask you this
question.... As I gather, you're selecting a kind of symmetrical ...
package-Communist, right-wing repression, and neutralist." MB: "Uh-huh."
LC: "With the implication that these three forms of society are likely
equally to punish dissent, imprison the conscientious objector; and
there's nothing in my experience-and this is what startles me-that leads
me to an understanding of what basis you can possibly have for what is
at best an artificial-" MB: "I'll admit immediately that it's artificial
and it's a tremendous oversimplification." LC: "Why? Why do you do it?"
MB: "The reason for it is very simple. When we go to a Communist
government to get somebody out, we want to be able to tell them that
we're working on some Greek cases; when we go to the Greeks, we want to
be able to tell them that we're devoting as much attention to the cases
of people who are imprisoned in Yugoslavia or Hungary or the Soviet
Union."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.233
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6167
item Program Number 233
"Ecology"
Guests: Dubos, Rene J. (Rene Jules), 1901-1982. :
Burnham, James, 1905-1987.
7 January 1971
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 84 : 7
Transcript: Box/Folder 168 : 21
Program details: An often surprising discussion of trade-offs and
freedom, and of the dangers of ideologizing ecology. RD: "As I have
thought about environments in this country that have been the most
productive with regard to the percentage of distinguished people, of
interesting people, that have emerged from them, I have always felt that
the best environment that ever existed ... was the small farm, the
operating family farm.... one has the wealth of stimuli that comes from
an extremely diversified environment." ... JB: "I prefer clean water to
polluted water and cleaner air to smog-bound air, but on the other hand,
it really always is a question of how clean ... For instance, to get it
perfectly clean, that last bit-you can't get it perfectly clean, but to
go from 99.2 per cent clean to 99.7 per cent clean, I understand ...
costs more than to bring it up to 99.2 per cent. Now is that worth it or
not? I don't know."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.234
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6168
item Program Number 234
"Colleges and the Youth Cult"
Guests: Banowsky, William
Slater. : Roche, John Pearson, 1923-
7 January 1971
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 94 : 10
Transcript: Box/Folder 168 : 22
Program details: Had we come through the worst of the student agitation,
or was there, as WFB puts it, "a great Gotterdammerung ahead of us"? Our
two guests, at opposite ends of the country, had both been treated to
hands-on student violence. Mr. Banowsky had arrived for work one morning
to find that "our major academic building was confiscated, and very
shrewdly ... chained from the inside. ... You've got to call the police,
you see; here are your own black students." Mr. Roche had returned to
Brandeis from a stint in the Johnson Administration to be greeted by
some "fortunately ... effete arsonists," who didn't succeed in burning
down the building where his office was located. A wide-ranging,
no-punches-pulled discussion of the current militants, the genuine
grievances they were playing on, and the proper model for a college
administration.
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.235
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6169
item Program Number 235
"Women's Lib"
Guests: Friedan, Betty.
11 January 1971
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 84 : 8
Transcript: Box/Folder 168 : 23
Program details: Moments before the taping began, Mrs. Friedan told WFB
that she had saved one of his sisters from disciplinary action at Smith
College thirty years earlier. Thus handicapped he has trouble gaining
momentum against this force of nature, who sweeps through the economics
of housekeeping, the liberation of men from the "masculine mystique" of
"bear-killing, big-muscle Ernest Hemingway," and the "right of every
woman to control her own body." WFB: "No, but the woman's body, as I
understand it-at least this has been a point of view that has been
accepted by women over the years, at least in many countries-the woman's
body, after conception, becomes simply a carrier of something which is
entitled to innate consideration." BF: "No, Bill, I can't accept-I mean
I don't think that." WFB: "There is a tradition of this." BF: "I can't
believe that you even believe it." WFB: "Of course I believe it."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.236
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6170
item Program Number 236
"The Crisis of Private Insurance"
Guests: Stone, Clement.
11 January 1971
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 84 : 9
Transcript: Box/Folder 168 : 24
Program details: Insurance companies were becoming more and more
reluctant, especially in the inner cities, to write the kind of policies
they had traditionally written, against fire, theft, and the like. And
yet the public disturbances and general increase in crime made insurance
all the more necessary. This show is less rambunctious than some recent
ones, but it is a productive exploration of how private enterprise and
the state might collaborate without the state's actually taking over the
insurance function. CS: "The citizen himself has the obligation to use
his ingenuity to protect that typewriter [the hypothetical stolen object
Mr. Buckley had introduced into the conversation]; and there are ways in
which that typewriter can be protected, whether it's a burglar-alarm
system or whether it's some other system. No, it would be wrong for the
state or for the nation to take over every man's responsibility."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.237
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6171
item Program Number 237
"The John Birch Society and the American Right"
Guests:
Schomp, Gerald. : Koltypin, Peter.
2 March 1971
Scope and Contents note
Transcript: Box/Folder 168 : 25
Program details: The question before the house is whether the John Birch
Society does more harm than good to the anti-Communist cause. Although
no consensus is, or could be, reached, Mr. Schomp provides solid
analysis, and the fencing match is worth the price of admission. PK:
"Dr. Christian Rokovsky ... testified to the same fact: there is a
conspiracy-" WFB: "Well, everybody knows there's a conspiracy." PK:
"-who is financing and supporting the Communist cause. Now, these facts
you cannot get-" WFB: "Let me ask you this: Do you know any
American-that I know of; I mean, don't say the guy next door-who does
not believe there's a conspiracy?" PK: "Oh yes." WFB: "Who?" PK: "I
think there are people who are saying that the Communists are making
only-" WFB: "Who? Who? I mean, let's take the most liberal guy we can
think of--ohhh, Harold Taylor. Now Harold Taylor would believe there is
a conspiracy, in the sense that people actually concert together in
order to achieve a common purpose. I don't think Harold Taylor or even,
say, Ramsey Clark ... would say it's inconceivable that Soviet money was
spent for the election of Allende."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.238
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6172
item Program Number 238
"The Responsibilities of the Scientists"
Guests: Teller,
Edward, 1908-2003.
2 March 1971
Scope and Contents note
Transcript: Box/Folder 168 : 26
Program details: A luminous discussion of the ethics and practicalities
of nuclear deterrence with a man who is as much a philosopher as a
physicist. ET: "I think that the appropriateness of your response is a
moral question, and there are some stable values in morality, and that
is why I would object, under all circumstances, to a first strike. I
would also say that if we are attacked, I would much rather have a
defense, and we can have a defense, but I also think that we must be
prepared to retaliate... If it so happens that many millions have to be
killed, after many millions of us have died, I would say that the
continuation of freedom means to me more than practically any other
consideration." ...WFB: "Number one, are you permitted to speak on this
subject, and if not, can we infer from your silence that the United
States Government has a technological ace up its sleeve?" ET: "Let me
start with the second question while I remember it. I am trying to work
on that ace ... but I cannot yet tell you whether it will be an ace or a
deuce."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.239
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6173
item Program Number 239
"AFTRA: Compulsory Unionism and Civil Liberties"
Guests:
Neier, Aryeh, 1937- : Harrington, Michael, 1928-
3 March 1971
Scope and Contents note
Transcript: Box/Folder 168 : 27
Program details: The American Federation of Television and Radio Artists
had informed Mr. Buckley that unless he joined it, he would be
prohibited from appearing on television. He had filed suit, inviting the
ACLU to join him. This show offers a fine three-cornered conversation
among a libertarian-leaning conservative, a liberal who puts civil
liberties first, and a socialist who is fully committed to organized
labor. AN: "Clearly, Mr. Buckley['s]... point of view would have less
access to radio and television if he were limited to an occasional guest
appearance and could not have a regular program." MH: "What I'm saying
is, I would be delighted to support a law that would provide free
television time for William F. Buckley's points of view and all other
points of view on a democratic basis. The issue we are facing here is in
the area of employment-hiring where workers in an industry have freely
decided to follow this policy."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.240
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6174
item Program Number 240
"Some Reflections on Television Programming"
Guests: Oliver,
Daniel. : Greenfield, Jeff. : Williams, Lynne.
3 March 1971
Scope and Contents note
Transcript: Box/Folder 168 : 28
Program details: This show--the last
Firing
Line
made for commercial
television--is less an interrogation of anybody by anybody than simply a
conversation about the medium in general, the differences between
commercial and "educational" television, and
Firing
Line
itself. JG:
"It's much more exciting to see Lester Maddox walk out of the Dick
Cavett Show or-" WFB: "How often can that be arranged?" JG: "Ah! If you
invite the right guests.... In other words, if I wanted to book a show
in which I know the sparks would fly and if one of the participants was
willing, I would definitely have Gore Vidal and Bill Buckley on my
television show. I'm not sure that it would contribute to the general
knowledge of mankind, but I would guess that the rematch of the great
conflict [at the 1968 Democratic Convention] would attract people
precisely because it held out the possibility of something-" WFB:
"Violence." JG: "Let's say existential."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.241
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6175
item Program Number 0000a
"American Conservatives Confront 1972"
Guests: Luce, Clare
Boothe, 1903-1987. : Buckley, James Lane, 1923- : Mahoney, J. Daniel,
1931- : Ashbrook, John M. : Friedman, Milton, 1912- : Reagan, Ronald.
5 January 1972
Scope and Contents note
Transcript: Box/Folder 159 : 2
Program details: This is a transcript of the SECA special taped at KCET
in Los Angeles on January 5, 1972, and originally telecast on PBS on
January 7, 1972. At head of title: SECA Presents: SECA (Southern
Educational Communications Association) special. WFB: "The idea is to
take some of the problems that confront American conservatives try to
feel out how they will crystallize in the year ahead and how American
conservatives will respond to them; and of course the big event this
year is the election of the new President. Inevitably Richard Nixon and
his policies will occupy much of the discussion ... " NOTE: This is not
a
Firing
Line
program. Only the transcript is available.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.275
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6209
item Program Number 0000b
"John Kenneth Galbraith vs. William F. Buckley, Jr.: A Debate"
Guests: Buckley, William F. (William Frank), Jr., 1925-2008. :
Galbraith, John Kenneth, 1908-2006.
23 October 1970
Scope and Contents note
Transcript: Box/Folder 159 : 3
Program details: National Educational Television's Realities [series].
Broadcast on Monday, November 23, 1970, 9:00-10:00 pm (in New York City
on WNET/Channel 13, at 9:00pm. "John Kenneth Galbraith vs. William F.
Buckley Jr.: A Debate" features a debate between liberal economist John
Kenneth Galbraith and conservative theoretician William F. Buckley Jr.
on the virtues and faults of the free-enterprise system. The debate ...
is on Mr. Galbraith's motion "This House Holds the Market Is a Snare and
a Delusion." Members of the Union also join in the debate. NOTE: This is
not a
Firing
Line
program. Only the transcript is available.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.225
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6159
item Program Number FLS001, 1645,
1646
"Harvest of Despair"
Guests: Conquest, Robert. : Salisbury,
Harrison Evans, 1908- : Hitchens, Christopher.
4 September 1986
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 147 : 14
Transcript: Box/Folder 191 : 1
Program details: In 1932-33, somewhere between 7 and 14 million
Ukrainians died in a famine engineered by Josef Stalin. To mark the 50th
anniversary, a Canadian film company had produced a documentary, Harvest
of Despair. It won prize after prize at international festivals, but not
a single American television network had seen fit to broadcast it. And
so
Firing
Line
undertook a special, with the first 15 minutes devoted to
recapping the historical events, the next 55 minutes to viewing the
film, and the final 50 minutes to commenting on it. A harrowing but
riveting two hours. Mr. Conquest: "There are famines everywhere. But you
look at this as the only famine where you don't see relief workers. No
food, soup kitchens, nothing. Even in Ethiopia you see relief work." Mr.
Kitchens: "I think that probably by 1933 one still hadn't entered the
period of the 20th century when people were more inclined to believe the
worst-I mean, would naturally believe that an atrocity was most likely
to be true. I have a feeling that it was still relatively innocent."
NOTE: Copies of the film "Harvest of Despair" are available from
International Historic Films: http://www.ihffilm.com/22377.html
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.947
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6881
item Program Number FLS002
"A
Firing
Line
Special: The Democratic Presidential Candidates"
Guests: Babbitt, Bruce E. : Biden, Joseph R. : Dukakis, Michael S.
(Michael Stanley), 1933- : Gephardt, Richard A. (Richard Andrew), 1941-
: Gore, Albert, 1948- : Jackson, Jesse, 1941- : Simon, Paul, 1928-2003.
: Strauss, Robert S.
1 July 1987
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 100 : 12
Publicity File: Box/Folder 148 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 191 : 2
Program details: Broadcast live. Here they all are, the seven candidates
for the 1988 Democratic nomination. This two-hour special is not a
formal debate; instead, the candidates are asked questions in turn by
Messrs. Buckley and Strauss; each had earlier provided a taped
biographical segment; and each has a brief closing statement. As
samples, three of the candidates' answers to the one question they had
been given in advance. As Mr. Buckley states it, "In the Oval Office,
there are portraits of five Presidents. Each President on moving in
plays a little historical musical chairs, exiling one or two Presidents
and repatriating substitutes. President Reagan has hanging the portraits
of Jefferson, Lincoln, Taft, Coolidge, and Eisenhower.... Whom will you
remove? Whom will you resurrect?" Mr. Jackson would put up Lyndon Baines
Johnson: "As long as we have the public-accommodations bill and we have
the voting rights act, we will have a Lyndon Baines Johnson." Senator
Gore would hang Woodrow Wilson, FDR, and JFK, plus two Tennesseans:
Andrew Jackson and James K. Polk (although he calls him James K. Knox).
And Senator Simon would "like to see a steelworker from Pennsylvania and
a coal miner. I would like to see a farm family there, a working
mother..." And we're off and running on this superb capsule view of the
Democratic field.
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.987
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00G709FNA
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6921
item Program Number FLS101
"A
Firing
Line
Special: The Republican Presidential Candidates"
Guests: Strauss, Robert S. : Bush, George, 1924- : Dole, Robert J.,
1923- : Du Pont, Pierre S. [Du Pont, Pete; DuPont, Pete] : Haig,
Alexander Meigs, 1924- : Kemp, Jack. : Robertson, Pat.
28 October 1987
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 101 : 2
Publicity File: Box/Folder 148 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 191 : 3
Program details: Broadcast live. The first public meeting of all the
candidates for the 1988 Republican nomination. As in the meeting of the
Democrats four months earlier (FLS002), this show includes taped
biographical segments, prepared closing statements, and lots of
questions tossed at the candidates by Messrs. Strauss and Buckley, plus
a segment of clips from past
Firing
Line
appearances of each of the
candidates. Of course, unlike the Democrats, these Republicans have to
deal with the fact that they are striving to succeed a President of
their own party, and one with whom they have all worked more or less
closely. AH: "Well, I admire everything that George just said. But I
would also suggest that when one is parceling out loyalty, that to me
loyalty has always been having the courage to tell the man you work for
what your conscience tells you he must hear, not what you think he wants
to hear, and that's been my approach to every President I've served."
... RS: "On that first section, the film you had, I was interested that
those candidates of yours, Bill, who were born poor sure stressed how
poor they were, but none of your rich ones stressed how rich they were.
Now if we Democrats could find a rich candidate we would be bragging
about him all over the country." WFB: "May I have a show of hands among
the candidates, which of you is wealthier than FDR, Jack Kennedy, or
LBJ?"
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1002
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00G709N0A
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6936
item Program Number FLS102,
101
"A
Firing
Line
Debate: Resolved: That the Right Is Better Able to
Deal with the Soviets than the Left"
Guests: Buckley, William F.
(William Frank), Jr., 1925-2008. : Kemp, Jack. : Kirkpatrick, Jeane J. :
Kissinger, Henry, 1923- : McGovern, George S. (George Stanley), 1922- :
Hart, Gary, 1936- : Schroeder, Pat. : Warnke, Paul C., 1920-2001.
7 September 1988
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 149 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 191 : 4
Program details: Broadcast live. A crackling debate with plenty of
substance from start to finish. Mr. Buckley leads off for the
affirmative by quoting Morton Kondracke to the effect that "Michael
Dukakis's 'foreign policy is pure McGovern.' ... If [Jack Kennedy or
Harry Truman] were sitting here tonight, there is simply no doubt on
which side of the aisle they would stand: either with us, or else they
would need to repudiate the whole of their public record." Mr. McGovern
leads off for the negative: "Let's look at the record, a seventy-year
record.... The Democrats under FDR opened up relations with the Soviet
Union in 1933. The Republicans, under Harding, Coolidge, and Hoover, had
no dealings with the Soviet Union. They didn't even recognize its
existence. The Democrats under Roosevelt and Truman organized victory
over Hitler, including the coalition with the Soviet Union, and I think
all here can agree that without the huge Soviet army and the loss of 20
million Russian lives, it is doubtful that the West could have
prevailed...." HK: "I must comment about the observation ... that the
Democrats added the force of the Soviets to the anti-Hitler alliance.
What added the force of the Soviets to the anti-Hitler alliance was
Hitler, and the Soviets made the most strenuous efforts to avoid having
to join."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1035
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00G709W0G
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6969
item Program Number FLS103,
102
"A
Firing
Line
Debate: Resolved: That George Bush and the
Republican Party Are Better Able to Run the Country for the Next Four
Years than Michael Dukakis and the Democratic Party"
Guests:
Buckley, William F. (William Frank), Jr., 1925-2008. : Bork, Robert H. :
Kemp, Jack. : Kirkpatrick, Jeane J. : Hart, Gary, 1936- : McGovern,
George S. (George Stanley), 1922- : Jackson, Jesse, 1941- : Schroeder,
Pat.
5 October 1988
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 101 : 6
Publicity File: Box/Folder 149 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 191 : 5
Program details: The last
Firing
Line
debate (FLS 102) was on foreign
policy, moderator Michael Kinsley reminds us, and this one will
concentrate on domestic policy-from poverty to the Equal Rights
Amendment, from judicial activism to the creation of jobs, from Social
Security to Medicare. One sample: Jesse Jackson: "Since you call upon
the Judaeo-Christian tradition, part of its challenge is to do justice
and love mercy." Jack Kemp: "Absolutely." JJ: "Why do you oppose ERA for
women and even vote against studying pay discrimination against women?
Half the nation's poor children live in a house headed by a woman where
there is no man...." JK: "What we want is a country in which any man,
any woman, of any color, any background, has the opportunity to start a
business, get a job, or to get an opportunity to get an education.
That's equal opportunity, and I don't think the amendment has anything
to do with it." JJ: "Even if a woman became President, it would not
disprove the need for every woman to be free of discrimination based on
sex." JK: "I couldn't disagree. And I'll tell you what, the first woman
President is more likely to be a Republican than in your party, Mr.
Jackson."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1041
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6975
item Program Number FLS104
"A
Firing
Line
Special: Sanctions and Apartheid"
Guests:
Suzman, Helen. : Durr, Kent. : Merwe, Koos van der. : Dhlomo, Oscar. :
Ngcoya, James.
20 April 1989
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 149 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 191 : 6
Program details: Broadcast live. The guests on this high-voltage
Firing
Line
Special all oppose sanctions ("We regret," Mr. Buckley notes, "that
invitations to prominent advocates of sanctions to appear on this
program, including Bishop Tutu and Allan Boesak and Cyril Ramaphosa,
were not accepted"). On apartheid, however, they cover the waterfront
from Mr. van der Merwe, whose party's principal plank was the
maintenance of apartheid, to Mr. Dhlomo, Mr. Ngcoya, and Mrs. Suzman
("perhaps," as Mr. Buckley introduces her, "the most prominent white
opponent of apartheid in South African politics, Alan Paton having
died"), with, in the middle, Mr. Durr, as a member of the government
that was gradually abolishing apartheid. OD: "We even say the
destruction of apartheid for us is not an end in itself. It is a means
to an end. The end is the system that must replace apartheid." HS:"A
non-racial democracy." OD: "... Now, if you want that, then of course
you are my comrade." KvdM: "I am not your comrade." HS: "I am your
comrade." OD: "You don't want that?" KvdM: "I am not a Russian. I don't
have comrades. I have friends."HS: "Oh, nonsense." OD: "Well,
...comrade... in my language is friend." KvdM: "There is no word
'comrade' in Zulu, my friend." ... WFB: "What percentage of the South
African GNP is black-produced?" HS: "Very little." KD: "Only my friend
Koos here makes those divisions. We say there is one economy to which
everybody contributes, and everybody's contribution is valuable."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1063
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6997
item Program Number FLS105,
103
"A
Firing
Line
Debate: Resolved: That the Cold War Is Not Coming
to an End"
Guests: Buckley, William F. (William Frank), Jr.,
1925-2008. : Gingrich, Newt. : Haig, Alexander Meigs, 1924- : Perle,
Richard Norman, 1941- : Solarz, Stephen J. : McGovern, George S. (George
Stanley), 1922- : Hart, Gary, 1936- : Schroeder, Pat.
19 June 1989
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 149 : 4
Transcript: Box/Folder 191 : 6
Program details: Broadcast live. Much had happened behind the Iron and
Bamboo Curtains: perestroika and glasnost, the Soviet pullout from
Afghanistan, a loosening of controls in China followed by Tiananmen
Square. Does it all add up to an end to the Cold War? Mr. Buckley leads
off for the skeptics: "Make no mistake about it: I and my colleagues
greatly welcome the extent to which economic reality and spiritual
yuppiness and Stinger missiles have put pressure on the Soviet
government.... But can we persuade ourselves to believe that if Winston
Churchill were here tonight-it was he, you will remember, who declared
the Cold War-that he would say that this is, on existing evidence,
coming to an end?" Mr. Solarz conies right back: "There may be some who
find Mr. Buckley's prognostications of gloom and doom persuasive. But I
suspect that there are others-such as Mr. Buckley's political heroes
like Margaret Thatcher, who has said that the Cold War is already over,
and Ronald Reagan, who was last seen kissing babies in Red Square-who
would find them somewhat strange." This sizzling exchange takes us back
to the early days of Lenin's rule and forward to the evolving
Sino-Soviet rapprochement; we go from perestroika and glasnost to
(courtesy of Mr. Perle) the number of SS-20s that have been dismantled
under the INF treaty, but which are counterbalanced by new production of
the "longer-range and more capable Soviet missile known as the
SS-25."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1072
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7006
item Program Number FLS106,
104
"A
Firing
Line
Debate: Resolved: That Free-Market Competitiveness
Is Best for America"
Guests: Buckley, William F. (William Frank),
Jr., 1925-2008. : Kemp, Jack. : Kirkpatrick, Jeane J. : Gingrich, Newt.
: McGovern, George S. (George Stanley), 1922- : Hart, Gary, 1936- :
Schroeder, Pat. : Galbraith, John Kenneth, 1908-2006.
13 September 1989
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 150 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 191 : 7
Program details: Broadcast live. As Mr. Kinsley sets the stage, "At a
time when even the Communist world is turning to free markets, I don't
think you can expect tonight's negative team to come out for socialism.
But you can expect them to give the affirmatives a hard time about
whether unfettered free markets are always the best solution in areas
like corporate mergers, health care, the environment, and so on." Mr.
McGovern duly steps up to the plate: "All of us believe in freedom. All
of us believe in competition. No one of us advocated the centralized,
state-run systems of the Communist or fascist worlds. So the question
is, What is the debate all about? It is about whether there is a proper
role for the government in protecting us against the excesses and the
weaknesses of a big-business, free-enterprise economy." The argument
sometimes bogs down in (often funny) ad hominem remarks, and in Mr.
Kemp's tendency to bound along on his standard entrepreneurship speech;
but Mrs. Kirkpatrick in particular has the gift of making the proper
distinctions: "My question, Pat, is why are you so eager to mix
something that doesn't work-that's an admitted evil in itself, like
controls and taxes and regulations-with something that works reasonably
well, namely a self-regulating market?" PS: "Well, I'm not sure what you
mean that I am trying to mix." JJK: "You keep talking about the
desirability of a mixed economy as though it were good in itself.... It
may be a necessity in itself in our times, I'll buy that, but it isn't a
good in itself."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1079
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TZ8GU0C
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7013
item Program Number FLS107,
105
"A
Firing
Line
Debate: Resolved: That Drugs Should Be Legalized"
Guests: Buckley, William F. (William Frank), Jr., 1925-2008. :
Dennis, Richard. : Glasser, Ira. : Sweet, Robert W. : Schroeder, Pat. :
Rangel, Charles B. : Gingrich, Newt. : Raab, William von.
26 March 1990
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 101 : 7
Publicity File: Box/Folder 150 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 191 : 7
Program details: Broadcast live. Another skirmish in the Drug Wars. Mr.
Buckley sets the stage: "Our team is not united on all aspects of the
resolution, and you should know that it embarrasses us not at all if you
single out differences in emphasis. For instance, I believe in capital
punishment for anyone who conveys drugs to minors, while Mr. Ira
Glasser, a card-carrying member of the American Civil Liberties Union,
doesn't believe in capital punishment for Satan himself..." Mr. Buckley
focuses on "$15 billion per year, jail cells for every third college
student, a national obsession with a lost cause." Mrs. Schroeder comes
out swinging: "I think indeed Bill Buckley has finally hit his midlife
crisis.... I suppose I'm looking at this as a parent, but... I think too
many people think the trouble with drugs is the crime that comes from
that.... The trouble with drugs is also the use of drugs.... To say it's
a victimless crime is really incorrect. It tears at the fabric of
families, it tears at the whole society's fabric ..." Often heated but
illuminating as well, as both sides have come well prepared.
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1103
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00G709Q0M
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7037
item Program Number FLS108,
106
"A
Firing
Line
Special: A United Germany: Anything to Worry
About?"
Guests: Kissinger, Henry, 1923- : Walters, Vernon A. :
Simon, William E., 1927- : Vinocur, John. : Pfluger, Friedbert.
25 June 1990
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 101 : 6
Publicity File: Box/Folder 150 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 191 : 8
Program details: Broadcast live. Seven months after The Wall had come
down, all Central Europe seemed to be jostling towards freedom, and
German reunification was being talked about seriously--not, as Mr.
Buckley points out, to the universal joy of Germany's neighbors: "Is
there something there [in the German character] that is distinctively
susceptible to the demagogy of people like Adolf Hitler, and if that is
the case, are sufficient precautions being taken when we talk about
German reunification?" He first addresses the man who is "probably
better known in America than any German since Hitler, whose demons Mr.
Kissinger's parents protested by leaving Germany with their two young
sons early in the Thirties." (Actually, Mr. Kissinger points out, it
wasn't so much protest as sheer self-preservation.) Is there, WFB asks,
"such thing as a German national character, or is that just a recent
invention?" Mr. Kissinger replies that "every people is a product of its
history, of its culture. ... I think the worry I have about Germany is
not Auschwitz, but a certain kind of romantic, short-sighted national
policy that brings about what they're seeking to avoid." To Mr. Pfluger,
"The nightmare, the Holocaust, is, in my point of view, present in
German thinking and in German feeling. We--and also the young
generation--we know that we still have a responsibility, not for the
past, but [so] that something like that will never happen in the
future." And we're off on an extremely rich discussion that goes from
Hitler to the Marshall Plan, from the composition of NATO to Gorbachev's
growing problems.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1110
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7044
item Program Number FLS109,
107
"A
Firing
Line
Debate: Resolved: That Government Is Not the
Solution; It Is the Problem"
Guests: Buckley, William F. (William
Frank), Jr., 1925-2008. : Armey, Richard K., 1940- : Kirkpatrick, Jeane
J. : Heston, Charlton. : McGovern, George S. (George Stanley), 1922- :
Hart, Gary, 1936- : Schroeder, Pat. : Weaver, Dennis.
10 September 1990
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 150 : 4
Transcript: Box/Folder 191 : 8
Program details: Broadcast live. Mr. Buckley frames the question by
reminding us that government's derelictions range from the murderous to
the risible: "If Hitler hadn't had four hundred divisions, he would have
been a routine anti-Semite like Gerald L. K. Smith; as much of a menace
as a Ku Klux Klan, which we can cope with without the use of the atom
bomb.... Do you know why everyone in New York who can do so communicates
via messenger or Federal Express or fax? Because messengers and Federal
Express and fax machines are not government enterprises like the Post
Office." Mr. Weaver replies: "I think it was James Madison that said,
'If men were angels, no government would be necessary.' And since I fail
to see any sets of wings in the audience or on the panelists, I really
feel that government in some form is absolutely essential." A
high-energy exchange that includes solid nuggets of information: e.g.,
from Rep. Schroeder: "I looked at what they did in Japan [in
social-welfare agencies]... They give money to an agency at the
beginning of the year to run the agency. At the end of the year, if
there is money left over, then half the money is returned to the
treasury, half the money is kept within the agency to pay out
incentives, get more efficient equipment, or whatever. So for the first
time you have taken government incentives and flipped them, so the
incentive is to be efficient, not to be inefficient."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1120
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7054
item Program Number FLS110,
108
"A
Firing
Line
Debate: Resolved: That Drug Prohibition Has
Failed"
Guests: Buckley, William F. (William Frank), Jr.,
1925-2008. : Dennis, Richard. : Glasser, Ira. : Clarke, Kildare. :
Rangel, Charles B. : Falwell, Jerry. : Herrington, Lois. : Voth, Harold
M.
15 March 1991
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 151 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 191 : 9
Program details: As Mr. Kinsley introduces the question, "President Bush
doesn't talk much about drugs any more [having made them a year and a
half earlier the centerpiece of a prime-time televised speech] and his
first drug czar, William Bennett, has wandered off, and so has the
attention of most Americans.... But unlike that other war [in the
Persian Gulf] the drug war goes on." From Mr. Rangel's perspective, "If
I thought for one moment that you [the affirmative side] were sincere
about this, I would ask you to take a look at the children that are born
addicted to drugs; to talk about those that find themselves in the
emergency wards, if you will, Doctor, with the illnesses that are
attributed to this." At times the participants are coming from different
universes (HV: "Does illness increase or decrease a person's freedom?"
IG: "... I don't think a person who is sick is more or less free against
the government"), but the various personalities still bring life to this
much-discussed topic.
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1142
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006GX6AG8
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7076
item Program Number FLS111,
109
"A
Firing
Line
Debate: Resolved: That Freedom of Thought Is in
Danger on American Campuses"
Guests: Buckley, William F. (William
Frank), Jr., 1925-2008. : Silber, John, 1926- : Loury, Glenn C. :
D'Souza, Dinesh, 1961- : Stimpson, Catharine R., 1936- : Botstein, Leon.
: Walters, Ronald W. : Fish, Stanley Eugene.
28 August 1991
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 151 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 191 : 9
Program details: A (mostly) new cast of characters for this debate on,
essentially, Political Correctness. Mr. Buckley sets the tone: "Ogden
Nash once wrote that if the German people had had a more highly
developed sense of humor, they'd never have let Hitler pull the wool
over their eyes. The first time they saw someone goose-stepping and
raising a stiff arm and shouting, 'Heil Hitler,' they'd have keeled over
laughing, as most students will do when they think back on some of the
affectations of the current age." Lots of fun as the Affirmatives
recount ridiculous instances of the PC code and the Negatives recall
racial and sexual vulgarisms in times past; but also some solid analysis
from an academic perspective: GL: "I'm certainly not one standing here
to say, 'I want to be free to make racist remarks in my classes.' What I
think is the case, though, is that the cult of sensitivity has evolved
in such a way that particular substantive issues of critical importance
to be discussed cannot be discussed because particular insular
minorities are exercising power, real power, to curtail the discussions
that their feelings not be hurt."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1158
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7092
item Program Number FLS112,
110
"A
Firing
Line
Debate: Resolved: That if You Want More Jobs, the
Government Should Get Out of the Way"
Guests: Buckley, William F.
(William Frank), Jr., 1925-2008. : Armey, Richard K., 1940- : Schlafly,
Phyllis. : Stein, Herbert, 1916- : McGovern, George S. (George Stanley),
1922- : Eisner, Robert. : Kinsley, Michael E. : Minsky, Hyman P.
26 March 1992
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 151 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 191 : 10
Program details: As Mr. Botstein frames the question, "We are in a
recession. Some people consider it a contained depression, perhaps the
worst economic period since the Great Depression. And we don't really
know what to do about it." Mr. Buckley thinks he does: "Bring back full
employment by getting government out of the way." After all, "A lot of
people say they can't build houses; they can't afford the interest. Why
is interest so high? Because of inflation. Who causes inflation? Only
the government can cause inflation. The private sector has never
discovered how to do it." Mr. McGovern is equally sure that, say, the
savings-and-loan crisis "is not the result of too much government
intervention ... Rather it is the opposite: the result of too little
regulation and monitoring that permitted irresponsible Sand L managers
to rob that industry and the American public." Mrs. Schlafly takes up
the cudgels against overreaching legislation such as the Americans with
Disabilities Act and the latest Clean Air Act, and we're off on a
vigorous exploration of what government can and can't reasonably do.
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1184
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006GX6AN6
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7118
item Program Number FLS113,
111
"A
Firing
Line
Debate: Resolved: That U.S. Industry Does Not Need
Protection"
Guests: Buckley, William F. (William Frank), Jr.,
1925-2008. : Kemp, Jack. : Armey, Richard K., 1940- : Kissinger, Henry,
1923- : Gephardt, Richard A. (Richard Andrew), 1941- : Brown, Jerry,
1938- : Thurow, Lester C. : Walters, Ronald W. : Fallows, James M.
3 September 1992
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 151 : 4
Transcript: Box/Folder 191 : 10
Program details: Tonight's debate takes place against the background of a
national debate over the North American Free Trade Agreement-=which
President Bush was attempting to shepherd through Congress and candidate
Clinton was deciding whether to back--and also over our trade relations
with Japan, which both Pat Buchanan and one of tonight's debaters, Jerry
Brown, had made an issue in the primaries. Mr. Buckley starts out by
citing the fabulous amount of merchandise that came into our country
last year, and then says, "Was it to crush us or to conquer us or to
starve us? Or was it to nourish and enrich our country? It's a sober
fact that every single item, however inconsiderable, in all that vast
catalogue of commodities that came to our shores came because some
citizen desired it, paid for it, and meant to turn it to his comfort or
his profit." He then confesses that "that three-sentence description of
free trade was done by Winston Churchill in 1908, and not a syllable of
it would I for one wish to alter." Mr. Brown turns the tables on the
conservative side by making the argument for subsidiarity and states'
rights: "What is happening now is a proposal in the GATT treaty and in
the Mexican-Canadian-North American treaty to set up tribunals that meet
in secret that will be given the right to overrule state laws and
congressional enactments."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1197
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ANCX0TI
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7131
item Program Number FLS114,
112
"A
Firing
Line
Debate: Resolved: That Reducing the National
Deficit in the Next Four Years Is a Top Priority"
Guests: Buckley,
William F. (William Frank), Jr., 1925-2008. : Davidson, James Dale. :
Rudman, Warren B. : Crook, Clive. : Thurow, Lester C. : Kuttner, Robert.
: Eisner, Robert. : Levy, David A.
8 December 1992
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 101 : 8-9
Publicity File: Box/Folder 151 : 5
Transcript: Box/Folder 191 : 11
Program details: Mr. Kinsley begins by recalling that "Ronald Reagan, in
his 1980 campaign and his first inaugural address, had spoken of
deficits as mortgaging our country's future and our children's future"
and had warned of "social, cultural, political, and economic upheaval"
if the national debt were not brought under control. "Was Ronald Reagan
wrong," asks Mr. Kinsley, "in what he said about the deficit 12 years
ago, or was he wrong in what he did about it?" The usual fun and games
among the debaters, but also plenty of substance on the history and
theory of taxing, spending, and electing. To Mr. Thurow, "This motion is
basically about an irrelevancy. There is only one task in the United
States. The task is, How do you get America back on the track of raising
the standard of living of everybody who is an American?" To Mr. Kuttner,
"If that's the case [that 2 1/2 per cent growth is all we can normally
expect], how did the OECD countries, during a period of less
laissez-faire and more interventionism, how did we all manage 4 per cent
growth for the quarter-century after World War II?" CC: "Well, surely
the war had something to do with it. I mean, you may not have noticed
but there was some reconstruction going on in Europe."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1210
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TZ8H19G
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7144
item Program Number FLS115,
113
"A
Firing
Line
Debate: Resolved: That Women in the Military
Should Be Excluded from Combat"
Guests: Buckley, William F.
(William Frank), Jr., 1925-2008. : Ripley, John. : Donnelly, Elaine. :
Horowitz, David, 1939- : Schroeder, Pat. : Vaught, Wilma. : Wilson,
Heather A. : Glasser, Ira.
18 March 1993
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 152 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 191 : 12
Program details: The debate over maintaining the ban on women in combat
had been sharpened by (a) the increasing recruitment of women for the
Armed Forces and (b) the Gulf War, widely seen as showing, as Michael
Kinsley puts it, "that high-tech warfare has blurred the distinction
between combat and noncombat." This session is given extra authority by
the presence of military people, as in this opening exchange: Colonel
Ripley: "I would like to define combat as combat veterans see combat.
First of all, combat is seen by the great majority so far, those in
debates, those who have not experienced it, as a state of being, as
essentially an act-a noun, if you will. On the contrary, those of us who
have been in combat, particularly sustained combat... see combat as a
verb, as something that must be done.... The word itself, to combat,
suggests that you must take the fight to the enemy. You must in fact
destroy the enemy. That's the whole purpose. You don't neutralize the
enemy, you don't persuade the enemy; you kill the enemy." General
Vaught: "I don't know how in the world we would exclude women from
combat. We haven't been able to heretofore in the history of the world.
So the question is not really whether women will be in combat-they have
been, they will be. With each year the battlefield becomes more
ill-defined, given the ever-changing kind of weapon technology that we
have."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1219
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00G7088A6
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7153
item Program Number FLS116,
114
"A
Firing
Line
Debate: Resolved: That We Need Not Fear the
Religious Right"
Guests: Buckley, William F. (William Frank), Jr.,
1925-2008. : Robertson, Pat. : Neusner, Jacob, 1932- : Hyde, Henry J. :
Glasser, Ira. : West, Cornel. : Lynn, Barry W. : Woods, Harriett.
9 September 1993
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 152 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 191 : 13
Program details: A high-voltage debate that goes beyond the narrow
question of the "Religious Right" to examine the whole place of religion
in American life. We start with Mr. Buckley's relaxed view: "If the
Religious Right were to prevail, would their success impede you in your
endeavors? Well, if you make your living by making blue movies or
producing pornography, you might find life a little harder than it used
to be.... Does anybody in this audience fear that SAT scores would
diminish if the Religious Right were successful? ... Will anyone here
wake up sweating with fear because a rabbi has been asked to recite a
prayer at the commencement of your son or daughter?"... HW: "You
attended public schools yourself? JN: "Yes. West Hartford, Connecticut."
HW: "Good. And did they have prayers in those schools?" JN: "All the
time. My sister was the Virgin Mary year after year." PR: "She was
Jewish, after all." HW: "... Senator Arlen Specter, when he would not
support prayer in school, was talking about his personal discomfort as a
young Jewish boy having to sit and listen to prayers and feel
isolated-and I'm not just talking about Jews. There are Moslems, there
are many other people."... JN: "You want to talk about rather trivial
issues, and I am trying to get across a main point, which is that
religion is not something that can be private, as Mr. Glasser said.
Religion is something that forms your personality and tells you why
you're alive. On that basis I favor separation of church and state, but
I can't contemplate the separation of religion and politics."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1242
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7176
item Program Number FLS117,
115
"A
Firing
Line
Debate: Resolved: That Political Correctness Is a
Menace and a Bore"
Guests: Buckley, William F. (William Frank),
Jr., 1925-2008. : Glasser, Ira. : Bork, Robert H. : Stimpson, Catharine
R., 1936- : Green, Mark J. : Greene, Linda. : Botstein, Leon. : West,
Cornel.
3 December 1993
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 102 : 1
Publicity File: Box/Folder 152 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 191 : 14
Program details: "Anyone who has followed the political-correctness
debate knows," as Michael Kinsley puts it, "that, by reputation at
least, we are at the heart of the beast. It was here at the University
of Pennsylvania last year that a white freshman was charged with racial
harassment for calling a group of black women 'water buffalo.' " It was
also here, Mr. Buckley reminds us, that a group of students stole and
destroyed copies of a student newspaper that carried an op-ed piece they
disagreed with. But these cases make Penn far from atypical in the
modern academic world, and Senator Carol Moseley-Braun had recently
declared that "a fundamental right is the freedom from insult." Mr.
Green starts by welcoming "any debate which forces conservative
Republicans to become ACLUers in defense of the First Amendment."
Today's debaters are occasionally a bit foggy over hypotheticals, but
there are some fine exchanges. Professor Greene: "I think what we need
to do is not to focus on calling each other racist or sexist, but
instead to try to understand how historical racism has affected our
lives and consciousness ..." Judge Bork: "Is it your understanding,
Professor Greene, that you are actually defending political correctness
with that statement?"
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1252
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ANCWZ1C
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7186
item Program Number FLS118,
116
"A
Firing
Line
Debate: Resolved: That Welfare Has Done More Harm
than Good"
Guests: Buckley, William F. (William Frank), Jr.,
1925-2008. : Murray, Charles A. : Norton, Eleanor Holmes. : Greenstein,
Robert, 1946- : Rangel, Charles B. : Woodson, Robert L. : Bryant, Wayne
R. : Piven, Frances Fox.
15 March 1994
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 102 : 3
Publicity File: Box/Folder 152 : 4
Transcript: Box/Folder 191 : 15
Program details: President Clinton, Mr. Kinsley reminds us, "campaigned
on a vow to 'end welfare as we know it.' " Would he be on the
Affirmative side in this debate? Mr. Buckley is quick to make a
distinction: "We are gathered, my colleagues and I, to contend that
welfare has done more harm than good. This is not to say that welfare
has done only harm. A useful distinction here is between welfare, which
can be an ongoing lifestyle, and relief, which is on the order of the
kind of treatment one receives in an emergency room in a hospital." Ms.
Norton comes out swinging: "I ask you, is the abused woman who has
finally got the gumption to leave the house of abuse more harmed by
welfare than if it were not there? Is the divorced woman in transition
whose husband will not give her child support more harmed by welfare
than not?" The spirited exchange gives some idea of the gulf between the
two sides on this issue. Ms. Piven: "Why do you think a poor woman who
is raising children surrenders her respect when she gets some support
from the government, but that a much better-off woman, also raising
children by herself-but with perhaps assets that she got from a divorce
settlement-does not surrender her self-respect...." Mr. Woodson: "The
difference is, the poor one has to then turn to taxpayers for support,
and that's when you get other people involved in your business.... I
think it's wrong to absolve people of personal responsibility. That's
the kind of patronizing attitude that you get from people who believe
that poor people don't have the ability to make decisions for
themselves."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1263
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7197
item Program Number FLS119,
117
"A
Firing
Line
Debate: Resolved: That the Death Penalty Is a Good
Thing"
Guests: Buckley, William F. (William Frank), Jr., 1925-2008.
: Koch, Ed, 1924- : Berns, Walter, 1919- : Boleyn, Susan. : Glasser,
Ira. : Botstein, Leon. : Bright, Stephen B., 1948- : Stevenson, Bryan.
24 May 1994
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 101 : 10
Publicity File: Box/Folder 153 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 191 : 16
Program details: Many of the arguments are familiar, if only from past
Firing
Lines
, on this subject-the disproportion between the number of
murders and the number of murderers executed; the danger of executing an
innocent person. But on tonight's panel we have three people--Ms.
Boleyn, Mr. Bright, and Mr. Stevenson--who have faced each other
recently in court, and who bring the immediacy of those cases with them.
Mr. Stevenson: "You are 11 times more likely to get the death penalty in
the state of Georgia if the victim is white than if the victim is black.
If the defendant is black and the victim is white, you are 22 times more
likely to get the death penalty in Georgia...." Ms. Boleyn: "First of
all, as I am sure you know, Mr. Stevenson, we have more white persons
incarcerated on Death Row for murders than we do black people." BS: "How
does that disprove that race is a factor? The bottom line is that only
27 per cent of the population of Georgia is black; yet 75 per cent of
the people that have been executed in that state are African-American."
SB: "... The honest answer to your question is that, first of all, as
you well know, your statistics are wrong. The Baldus study was found to
be nonsense ..." NOTE: The transcript for this episode is currently
unavailable.
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1276
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TZ8GQVU
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7210
item Program Number FLS120,
118
"A
Firing
Line
Debate: Resolved: That the Wall of Separation
between Church and State Should Be Lowered"
Guests: Buckley,
William F. (William Frank), Jr., 1925-2008. : Graglia, Lino A. :
Neuhaus, Richard John. : Paulsen, Michael. : Dershowitz, Alan M. : Lynn,
Barry W. : Dorsen, Norman. : Teitel, Ruti G.
8 September 1994
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 153 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 191 : 17
Program details: "I permit myself to wonder," Mr. Buckley leads off,
"whether ... the day will come when the separationists win their
ultimate victory, denying the right to mention the Pearly Gates on a
public channel. Perhaps we would be permitted to do so if we referred to
them as the 'allegedly' Pearly Gates. You laugh, but you'd have laughed
a generation ago if told the Supreme Court would rule that a rabbi
pronouncing a general benediction at a graduating ceremony in Rhode
Island was judged by the Supreme Court-to be sure, by a vote of 5 to
4-as having violated the First Amendment's guarantee ..." We've been
around this track many times before, but the range of reference, from
Branch Davidians to Hasidim, is impressive, and the level of showmanship
is top-notch-we even get Alan Dershowitz quoting Jesus to explain why
prayer should be private.
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1283
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ANCX0HA
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7217
item Program Number FLS121,
119
"A
Firing
Line
Debate: Resolved: That the Women's Movement Has
Been Disastrous"
Guests: Buckley, William F. (William Frank), Jr.,
1925-2008. : Fox-Genovese, Elizabeth, 1941- : Huffington, Arianna
Stassinopoulos, 1950- : Alvare, Helen. : Friedan, Betty. : Burstein,
Karen S. : Paglia, Camille, 1947- : Kolbert, Kathryn.
7 December 1994
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 153 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 191 : 18
Program details: "Anyone who thinks the women's movement" is monolithic
should watch this show. Come to think of it, anyone who enjoys good
theater should watch this show. Samples: CP: "Essentially feminism
remains one of the great progressive reform movements of the last two
hundred years. It is analogous to the abolition of slavery, to the
abolition of child labor, and so on. Just as Mr. Buckley would not want
to abolish Catholicism because of the excesses of certain fanatics, so
must we not attribute to feminism the excesses of various neurotics and
incompetents." ... BF: "I mean, I am a feminist, but I am not
politically correct, and I hate that kind of rigidity. I hate the
attempt to make a single doctrine, a single party line, whether it's
feminism or anything else." ... HA: "How can a movement that says that
some have no right to be born, based on dependency, size, stage of
development, disability-and I might remind you some of your sisters say
it's okay to have sex-selection abortion-how can such a movement call
itself life-affirming?"
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1296
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TZ8GZRU
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7230
item Program Number FLS122,
120
"A
Firing
Line
Debate: Resolved: That We're Suing Ourselves to
Death"
Guests: Buckley, William F. (William Frank), Jr., 1925-2008.
: Huber, Peter W. (Peter William), 1952- : Horowitz, Michael J., 1938- :
Weisl, Edwin, Jr. : Dershowitz, Alan M. : Pegalis, Steven E. : Moore,
Thomas A. : Gilbert, Pamela.
2 March 1995
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 102 : 3
Publicity File: Box/Folder 154 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 191 : 19
Program details: If all this high-priced legal talent couldn't debate,
who could? A splendid session on a topic of deep concern. WFB: "In 1989
over 17 million civil suits were filed in American courts; that's one
lawsuit for every 10 adults. Less than 50 cents on the liability dollar,
by the way, goes to anybody who is injured. But the most significant
figure, surely, is this: Since 1960 jury awards have risen in constant
dollars over 9,000 per cent." ... AD: "A jury is like democracy.
Sometimes it votes for the wrong people. I can't defend an American
public that voted for Newt Gingrich, and yet I am stuck with that
system." ... TM: "The United States of America brings a lawsuit and
nobody raises an eyebrow.... General Motors sues, Ford sues, small
businesses sue, and business litigation is certainly growing and
growing. It doesn't bother too many people. But Jane Doe wants to bring
a lawsuit, and I'll tell you the powerful in the country are
worried."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1306
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7240
item Program Number FLS123,
121
"A
Firing
Line
Debate: Resolved: That All Immigration Should Be
Drastically Reduced"
Guests: Buckley, William F. (William Frank),
Jr., 1925-2008. : Brimelow, Peter, 1947- : Stein, Daniel. : Huffington,
Arianna Stassinopoulos, 1950- : Botstein, Leon. : Koch, Ed, 1924- :
Sharry, Frank. : Glasser, Ira.
6 June 1995
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 154 : 2
Publicity File: Box/Folder 154 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 192 : 1
Program details: Mr. Kinsley starts out by drawing attention to the text
of the resolution: "Note that word 'all.' This debate is not just about
securing America's borders against illegal aliens. It's about cutting
the total number of immigrants, both illegal and legal." Mr. Buckley
points out the Scylla and Charybdis on immigration: "The great shadow
that looms menacingly over one side is rank nativism, to stumble into
saying, 'That man who wants to get into the United States is black,
brown, or yellow, and we have enough of them' On the other side,...
there are the libertarians who say, 'Anybody who wants to do anything
should be permitted to do so, and if one of the things people want to do
is to come live in the United States, why not?' That is one of the great
disabling rhetorical limbs that get in the way of clear thought." Mr.
Botstein, rebutting, says, "Today's debate is an experience in deja vu.
We've heard the same refrains before: too many bad, different, new
immigrants, as opposed to few good, old-style immigrants." But Mr.
Brimelow does add something new: the information-publicly available but
not widely noticed until he started writing about it-that our current
patterns of immigration are not a natural occurrence: they are the
result of "the peculiar workings of the 1965 Act. We must never forget
that this is a policy, a government policy... There has never been a
transformation like this in the history of the world. We're not saying
that it won't necessarily work, but we're saying that it's a risk and
the American people should be asked whether they want to take that risk.
We should have a pause in immigration precisely to allow that great
debate to take place."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1320
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TZ8GRSC
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7254
item Program Number FLS124,
122
"A
Firing
Line
Debate: Resolved: That the New Anti-Terror Bill Is
Good for Americans"
Guests: Buckley, William F. (William Frank),
Jr., 1925-2008. : Toensing, Victoria. : Specter, Arlen. : Emerson,
Steven. : Glasser, Ira. : Cole, David, 1958- : Zogby, James J. : Lewis,
Anthony, 1927-
10 August 1995
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 102 : 4
Publicity File: Box/Folder 154 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 192 : 2
Program details: In June the Senate had passed a sweeping anti-terrorism
bill in reaction to the bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City
by disaffected Americans, which had followed by two years the bombing of
the World Trade Center by Muslim terrorists. But a similar bill was
stalled in the House through the efforts, Mr. Kinsley tells us, "of an
unusual coalition of conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats ...
concerned about the effect on civil liberties and constitutional
rights." The bill would, among other things, expand penalties for
terrorist crimes, including the death penalty; would create a special
court to deport aliens suspected of terrorism; would broaden the
permissible use of wiretaps; and would limit appeals of death sentences
not just for terrorism but for all crimes. This sizzling debate covers
some old territory (like the right to privacy and the right to bear
arms) but also some new, like Mr. Zogby's statistics on the number of
terrorist crimes committed by non-Arab, non-Muslim groups, such as
Puerto Rican activists, anti-Castro Cubans, environmental and
animal-rights groups, and Jewish extremists.
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.1329
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7263
item Program Number FLS125,
123
"A
Firing
Line
Debate: Resolved: That the Flat Tax Is Better than
the Income Tax"
Guests: Buckley, William F. (William Frank), Jr.,
1925-2008. : Goodman, John C. : Du Pont, Pierre S. [Du Pont, Pete;
DuPont, Pete] : Brown, Jerry, 1938- : Thurow, Lester C. : Kuttner,
Robert. : McGovern, George S. (George Stanley), 1922- : Mann, Steven.
6 June 1995
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 102 : 5
Publicity File: Box/Folder 154 : 4
Transcript: Box/Folder 192 : 3
Program details: Among the many tax-reform proposals floating about, one
of the most interesting was the flat tax (which, contrary to the
formulation of the above Resolution, is indeed an income tax, as opposed
to a consumption tax). The version being propounded by Texas Congressman
Dick Armey (and developed with the help of the National Center for
Policy Analysis) would exempt from taxation the first $36,000 of annual
income (for a couple with two children), and then tax all income over
the threshold at 20 per cent. Period. No loopholes, no deductions. Mr.
Buckley explains why the plan doesn't violate his criterion of equal
treatment under the law: "Equal treatment under the law does not forbid
amnesties, forbidding only class distinctions negative in character. It
is one thing to say that an American who does not earn a living wage
should be spared taxation, another to say that those who earn twice or
more than twice a living wage should be penalized progressively." Mr.
Thurow comes out swinging for the Negative side: "If you had a flat tax,
it wouldn't be simpler [than the 1040 short form] because the problem is
not deductions, but calculating your income. You are still going to have
to calculate professional income,... you are still going to have to
calculate your stock gains and losses. And if you look at deductions, a
lot of them simply cannot be eliminated completely. Take the medical
deduction. My first wife had a very serious illness and died, and I had
a couple years when my medical bills were bigger than my total income.
You're going to tell me I can't deduct them? ..." The participants have
all come bristling with ammunition, and we swing bracingly from
statistics to ethics and justice.
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1322
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0064EGP9G
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7256
item Program Number FLS126,
124
"A
Firing
Line
Debate: Resolved: That the Government Has the
Right to Regulate the Internet"
Guests: Buckley, William F.
(William Frank), Jr., 1925-2008. : Huffington, Arianna Stassinopoulos,
1950- : Cleaver, Cathleen. : Hoffman, Reid. : Glasser, Ira. : Estrich,
Susan. : Barlow, John P. (John Perry) : Dyson, Esther, 1951-
23 February 1996
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 102 : 6
Publicity File: Box/Folder 154 : 5
Transcript: Box/Folder 192 : 4
Program details: Congress had just passed the Communications Decency Act,
making it a felony to send "indecent" or "patently offensive" material
over the Internet if that material might be seen by children. Today's
debate addresses not only the usual question of free speech versus
overriding public interest, but also the question whether it is
physically possible to regulate the Internet. First-time
Firing
Line
debater John Perry Barlow brings a perspective we aren't used to
hearing: "I come to you from cyberspace, and that sounds to you like a
ridiculous thing to say.... But I am telling you that there is a social
space that includes the entire geographical area of the planet Earth and
a fairly large and rapidly growing percentage of the earth's
population.... Arid those folks are not vulnerable to the excesses of
the United States Congress. We are free and sovereign from whatever the
United States Congress may wish to impose on the rest of the human
race.... You've got people who have never been to this place trying to
pass laws which have means of enforcement that they can't use. And this
is not the sort of thing that is good for the law."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1348
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00G709LFM
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7282
item Program Number FLS127,
125
"A
Firing
Line
Debate: Resolved: That the Marketplace Is Not a
Social Enemy"
Guests: Buckley, William F. (William Frank), Jr.,
1925-2008. : Jasinowski, Jerry J. : Levy, David A. : Hormats, Robert D.
: Kuttner, Robert. : Stern, Andrew. : Green, Mark J. : Luttwak, Edward.
29 May 1996
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 155 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 192 : 5
Program details: "It is so obvious that the marketplace is not a social
enemy that I pause to wonder," Mr. Buckley begins, "whether we are going
to hear from these illustrious gentlemen that we should tonight sit here
and, after two spirited hours, repeal the law of supply and demand, the
law of diminishing returns, the doctrine of comparative advantage. If
the marketplace is responsible, as it is, for 114 million Americans
working, which is to say approximately 95 per cent of the working
population, what system is it proposed that we introduce in its place?
The Soviet Union tried to replace the marketplace and produced abject
poverty and scarcity in a country the size of our own, with average
earnings per person one-sixth of our own." Mr. Kuttner argues for
something other than "an absolute, pure market.... We need capitalism,
but we need in a good society a reasonable balance between market realms
and extra-market realms, if only to help the market do what it does
best." In this lively session, our debaters--including several new
faces--go through job creation and downsizing, wealthy executives versus
just-making-it working couples, the upward mobility of many American
workers versus the case of Melinda Bagby, a skilled nurse, Mr. Stern
tells us,who has received a total pay raise in the last seven years of
60 cents an hour.
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1360
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ANCWZR6
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7294
item Program Number FLS128,
126
"A
Firing
Line
Debate: Resolved: That Affirmative Action Should
Be Terminated"
Guests: Buckley, William F. (William Frank), Jr.,
1925-2008. : Graglia, Lino A. : Connerly, Ward, 1939- : Abram, Morris B.
: Edley, Christopher F., 1953- : Guinier, Lani. : Botstein, Leon. :
Lichtman, Judith L.
23 July 1996
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 102 : 7-8
Publicity File: Box/Folder 155 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 192 : 6
Program details: Mr. Buckley begins this often passionate debate by
reminding us that "the much reviled California Civil Rights Initiative
exactly replicate[s]" the language of the Civil Rights Act of 1964-the
act about which Senator Hubert Humphrey said on the Senate floor: "If
ever this act is used to discriminate against anyone because he is male
or white, I will eat the bill page by page." Mr. Edley counters with a
wealth of statistics, including those gleaned by "scientifically
designed" studies showing "that 30 to 50 per cent of minorities [people
of color and women] encounter some form of discrimination" in renting
apartments or seeking jobs "when compared with otherwise identical
white, male counterparts." Ms. Guinier details police departments'
experience in hiring blacks, Puerto Ricans, and, and concludes: "The
point is that no single rule predicts success, and no single criterion
defines the job. If we understand this, we can learn to use affirmative
action as a window, not a wedge." Mr. Connerly asks Mr. Edley,
"Professor, how can you reconcile the view that you are opposed to
preferences and then file-" CE: "What do you mean by preferences? I
don't- I know that all of the Republican talking points that are faxed
around say, 'Use the word "preference" as often as possible,' and they
say 'Never talk about women, only talk about race.' But I don't really
know what you mean by the word 'preferences.' " WC: "Grant me the
opportunity of asking the question without the other stuff."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.1368
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7302
item Program Number FLS129,
127
"A
Firing
Line
Debate: Resolved: That the Republican Party Is
Better Able to Run the Country for the Next Four Years than the
Democratic Party"
Guests: Buckley, William F. (William Frank), Jr.,
1925-2008. : Gingrich, Newt. : Hutchison, Kay Bailey, 1943- : Kissinger,
Henry, 1923- : McGovern, George S. (George Stanley), 1922- : Shrum,
Robert. : Schlesinger, Arthur M. (Arthur Meier), 1917-2007. : Andrews,
Rob.
19 October 1996
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 102 : 9
Publicity File: Box/Folder 155 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 192 : 7
Program details: The motion, Mr. Buckley suggests, should really have
been more succinct: "Vote Republican." Why? Because "The Democrats live
on illusions fortified by laws. The government will determine-you name
it-whom you hire, whom you fire, whom you house, whom you reject, what
you bill, what you pay, when you retire, what school your children will
go to and what they can't be taught, what you grow and when you grow it,
how much of what you earn you get to keep." Senator McGovern counters by
taking us through the Republicans' deficit spending. In
cross-examination, Speaker Gingrich gives a hilarious account of the
House ice bucket; Rep. Andrews talks about "our grandparents and our
mothers and fathers and the Medicare issue"; Mr. Kissinger reminds us
that Republicans won the Cold War and that there are still dangers in
the world. And then there's this exchange: Senator Hutchison: "Do you
think President Clinton should seek approval from the United Nations to
invade a foreign country, but not the United States Congress?" Mr.
Shrum: "Well, of course not. That's a ridiculous question. Of course
not. No one here thinks that." KBH: "Well, are you aware that he did
that in Haiti? That he went to the United Nations to get permission, but
never consulted with the United States Congress? Are you aware that
there was mission creep-" RS: "We didn't invade a foreign- As Dr.
Kissinger would probably tell you, because he conducted several of them,
we weren't invading Haiti." KBH: "We were sending planes in and we hit
the ground before there was any kind of agreement. We most certainly did
go in." RS: "We were invited in." KBH: "We were propping up-" RS: "We
were invited in by the government as part of a peacekeeping
mission."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.1376
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7310
item Program Number FLS130,
128
"A
Firing
Line
Debate: Resolved: That Social Security Should Be
Privatized"
Guests: Buckley, William F. (William Frank), Jr.,
1925-2008. : Du Pont, Pierre S. [Du Pont, Pete; DuPont, Pete] : Goodman,
John C. : Peterson, Peter G. : Aaron, Henry J. : Eisner, Robert. :
Kuttner, Robert. : Marmor, Theodore R.
4 December 1996
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 102 : 7
Publicity File: Box/Folder 155 : 4
Transcript: Box/Folder 192 : 8
Program details: Is the Social Security system a Ponzi scheme that can't
long survive the retirement of the last baby-boomers, as Messrs. Buckley
and Goodman suggest? Or is it, as Mr. Eisner puts it, "the system which
has lifted the elderly out of poverty to at least the same extent as
people of working age"? If we agree (which even the most optimistic of
the participants do) that something will have to be done by about 2029,
what should that "something" be? Waiting for the crisis to hit and
raising taxes on that generation of workers? Or changing gears right now
and following the Chilean example of privatization? Today's debaters
sometimes talk past each other-e.g., to Mr. Goodman's complaint that
encouraging a larger population, via higher birth rate or more
immigration, doesn't solve the problem, Mr. Eisner answers: "The key to
the best treatment of the elderly is to have the most prosperous
economy." But they also came prepared with facts and figures, which they
often impart in an arresting way. Mr. du Pont: "I do know that ... [for]
any ten-year period in the history of the United States for the last 120
years, if you had invested your money on the first day of that ten years
in the stock market, you would be better off on the last day than you
would be under Social Security, and that is true even if you invested
your money on the day before the crash of '29."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1383
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TZ8GPYS
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7317
item Program Number FLS131,
129
"A
Firing
Line
Debate: Resolved: That the Environmentalists Are
Going Too Far, Too Fast"
Guests: Buckley, William F. (William
Frank), Jr., 1925-2008. : Craig, Larry E. : Schmalensee, Richard. :
Jasinowski, Jerry J. : Linden, Eugene. : Woodwell, G. M. : Pope, Carl. :
Brown, Jerry, 1938-
14 March 1997
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 155 : 5
Transcript: Box/Folder 192 : 9
Program details: "If you know anybody," Mr. Buckley begins, "who prefers
unclean air or dirty water or barren forest lands, pray keep him away
from here and, pray, pray for him. The affirmative side happily concedes
the historic advances in environmentalist goals ... But we all recognize
that pretty good movements sometimes end up in fanatical hands." Mr.
Linden fires back that so far from going too far, environmental
protection has encountered serious setbacks ever since the end of the
Carter Administration. "The U.S. has had some successes: Delaware Bay
has been cleaned up. In World War II, pilots could smell it at 5,000
feet, and it now supports a multi-billion-dollar recreational industry.
I guess you could call that a giving rather than a taking." However,
"The U.S. is one of 76 countries that have less than 1 per cent of their
frontier forests remaining," and the destruction of species "is not just
an amenity issue. [Species diversity] is vital for the functioning of
ecosystems." And off we go on a fast-paced exchange over how much the
incremental improvement in air quality is worth, how much we can do in
this country given that pollution and greenhouse gases don't recognize
borders, and whether environmentalism has been turned into a
religion--with, from Mr. Brown, an argument based actually on religion:
"Philosophers, theologians, for millennia have warned against pride,
envy, greed, and gluttony.... When there were 250 million people in the
world with spears and primitive tools, the impact was minimal. When
there are six billion ... with powerful technologies and a philosophy of
nonsatiety--never enough--we get the very problem that is the subject of
this debate."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1392
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0064EGPE6
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7326
item Program Number FLS132,
130
"A
Firing
Line
Debate: Resolved: That Government Should Not
Discriminate against Private Schools"
Guests: Buckley, William F.
(William Frank), Jr., 1925-2008. : Du Pont, Pierre S. [Du Pont, Pete;
DuPont, Pete] : Mansour, Jimmy. : Smith, Bob. : Curry, William E. :
Glasser, Ira. : Edley, Christopher F., 1953- : Chase, Bob.
9 June 1997
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 156 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 192 : 10
Program details: The topic before the house tonight is vouchers. Should
parents be able to choose which school their child attends? And if so,
should they be assisted with taxpayers' money? A rousing exchange
ranging from the bureaucratic inefficiencies of the public schools (WFB:
"In Chicago,... 40 per cent of all students attend Catholic schools. How
many non-teaching administrative jobs are required to do this?
Thirty-six. You would then expect that the public schools would have ...
54. You would be wrong. The public schools in Chicago have 3,300
administrators") to, in Mr. Curry's phrase, the "root causes" of poor
schools: "stratification of class and race in this country" ("Show me a
school system where all the parents are in the top percentile of income
and I'll show you a bunch of kids who, by and large, are on their way to
Harvard. Show me a school system whose parents are in the bottom
percentile of income, and I'll show you a bunch of kids on their way to
jail"). And on through separation of church and state (Mr. Glasser:
"Aha! And over 80 per cent of those kids are going to religious schools
whose avowed purpose is not to educate those kids, but to propagate
their faiths and convert those children"), to whether the private
schools are guilty of cream-skimming (Brother Bob: "We've got students
that have been expelled from other schools; I've got a student right now
with brain damage. I've got students that are ED, LD--we've got
everybody, and I'm not sure who else we should be looking for"), to how
large a voucher has to be in order to do a poor family any good.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1407
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7341
item Program Number FLS201,
201
"A
Firing
Line
Debate: Resolved: That Labor Unions Are Too
Powerful"
Guests: Buckley, William F. (William Frank), Jr.,
1925-2008. : Williams, Walter E. : Jasinowski, Jerry J. : Green, Max. :
Shrum, Robert. : Kuttner, Robert. : Becker, George. : Green, Mark J.
17 July 1997
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 156 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 192 : 11
Program details: The captains of the two teams lead off with clear
statements of the opposing positions. For Mr. Buckley--who had had a
widely publicized run-in with the American Federation of Television and
Radio Artists (
Firing
Line
239)--the fact that John J. Sweeney,
President of the AFL-CIO, had in 1996 imposed a surcharge on members'
dues, an extra $35 million to be directed, in his own words, "against
Republican incumbents," and got away with it, means that "most union
members either (a) don't know their rights [under the Supreme Court
decision Beck v. Communication Workers of America] are being ignored or
(b) are frightened to assert those rights." For Mr. Shrum, the fact that
"since 1973, real income for American workers has been largely
stagnant," even as corporate profits rose 15 per cent and "average CEO
compensation in major companies soared by over 30 per cent," means that
unions' "spending money in the campaign of 1996 [is] one of the most
important things the AFL-CIO has done in years. They are fighting back."
A rousing battle, with some of the shots coming from unusual angles,
like this one from Mr. Williams: "Unions typically refer to the strike
as their ultimate weapon. But the strike is not. Their real power is a
result of their ability to use government or violence to prevent other
workers from competing with union workers for jobs.... If unions could
not prevent employers from hiring others in their places, all that a
strike would be, would be a mass resignation."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.1411
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7345
item Program Number FLS202,
202
"A
Firing
Line
Debate: Resolved: That Trade with China Should Not
Be Interrupted"
Guests: Buckley, William F. (William Frank), Jr.,
1925-2008. : Kissinger, Henry, 1923- : Lott, Trent, 1941- : Barksdale,
Jim. : Bauer, Gary Lee, 1946- : Brown, Jerry, 1938- : Huffington,
Arianna Stassinopoulos, 1950- : Hutchinson, Tim.
14 October 1997
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 156 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 192 : 12
Program details: The dispute over trade with China, as Mr. Kinsley points
out, "has made strange bedfellows, with opinions about what is the best
way to effect improvements in China's human-rights behavior breaking
down not at all according to party lines-as today's lineup indicates.
Mr. Buckley leads off-after citing his own credentials as one who did
not toast Chou En-lai in Peking in 1972-by welcom[ing] the evolution of
China from the totalitarian state confronted by Richard Nixon and Henry
Kissinger in 1972 to the authoritarian state of today in which the Asian
colossus dips its feet in the waters of economic freedom." To Mr. Bauer,
"The truth is that tonight's debate is not really about trade, and, in
fact, I do not believe ... [it has] that much to do with China. This
debate tonight is about America, about who we are, and whether American
values can still prevail..." Mr. Kissinger has a lifetime of cards to
play: "As someone who spent his childhood in a totalitarian state and
left from it as a refugee, I have a deep appreciation of the fundamental
importance of American values ... But as somebody who had to conduct the
foreign policy of the United States on behalf of two Presidents, I also
have an appreciation of what is required to preserve the peace and to
bring about the possibilities of progress in other countries". And we're
off and running on a high-energy exchange that ranges from Tiananmen
Square to China's trade surplus-and that occasionally skirts the
borderline of civility, as in Mrs. Huffington's suggestion that Mr.
Kissinger is motivated by personal financial interests (HK: "I regret
that we have reached this sort of a point. Since you have done a lot of
research, it would be easy for you to find out that my position on these
issues has been the same before there were any commercial interests in
China").
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1421
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ANCWYOA
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7355
item Program Number FLS203,
203
"A
Firing
Line
Debate: Resolved: That the Evolutionists Should
Acknowledge Creation"
Guests: Buckley, William F. (William Frank),
Jr., 1925-2008. : Johnson, Phillip E., 1940- : Behe, Michael J., 1952- :
Berlinski, David, 1942- : Lynn, Barry W. : Scott, Eugenie Carol, 1945- :
Ruse, Michael. : Miller, Kenneth R. (Kenneth Raymond), 1948-
4 December 1997
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 156 : 4
Publicity File: Box/Folder 157 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 192 : 13
Program details: "I retreat from any formulation of tonight's exchange,"
Mr. Buckley begins, "that suggests that everyone on the other side
should embrace creation. Not everyone on the affirmative side embraces
creation. What we contend is that everyone should acknowledge creation
as an alternative explanation for cosmic and biological happenings now
thought by so many as naturalist in provenance and momentum." Mr. Lynn
replies that "none of us on this team have any doubt that we have all
been created somehow. Where we disagree with Mr. Buckley and his
colleagues is on the relationships between evolution and our current
situation." And we're off on a profound debate that ranges from the
molecule to the cosmos, with distinctions that may be surprising to the
layman (e.g., from Ms. Scott, between evolution and Darwinism:
"Darwinism is evolution through natural selection")-and quite a lot of
fun along the way: Mr. Berlinski: "The gravamen of your argument is the
chordate." Mr. Kinsley: "Are people familiar with chordates?" DB:
"Vertebrates. That's us." Ms. Scott: "No, chordates are the group in
which vertebrates belong." Mr. Miller: "We're all chordates here,
Mike."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1428
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004SQFRUU
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7362
item Program Number FLS204
"A
Firing
Line
Debate: Resolved: That Black Americans Are Best
Served by the Republican Party"
Guests: Buckley, William F.
(William Frank), Jr., 1925-2008. : Connerly, Ward, 1939- : Franks, Gary,
1953- : Canady, Charles. : Shrum, Robert. : Ealy, Christopher. :
Estrich, Susan. : Scruggs-Leftwich, Yvonne.
23 March 1998
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 157 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 192 : 14
Program details: Mr. Buckley begins cautiously: "I engage this subject
thus formulated with some reluctance, because it is too easily
misunderstood to be saying that political affiliations are the key to
progress." However, he and his colleagues will "contend that the
Republican Party is better oriented than the Democratic Party to do two
things. The first and most important is to stay out of the way of
upward-bound black Americans by minimizing the great burdens of
regulations and taxation and military service. The second is to pull
back from the catastrophic effects of the welfare state." Mr. Shrum
takes off the gloves in his opening statement: "So now comes William F.
Buckley Jr.-the fierce opponent of Brown v. Board of Education, the
writer who penned jeremiads against the 1964 Civil Rights Act-to offer
African Americans the tender mercies of the Republican Party. My
reaction is, 'Beware of a reactionary bearing such gifts.'" The debaters
sometimes talk past each other (CE: "Mr. Franks, are you saying that the
War on Poverty was just a big mistake?" GF: "I am saying that the record
is pretty clear as far as the separation of the family." CE: "So your
position is;-" GF: "Trillions of dollars have been spent. I'm not
saying-" CE: "The position of your party-" GF: "Can I answer your
question?" CE: "No, I don't want you to filibuster"), but we cover a lot
of ground, from law-school admissions in the University of California,
to Aid to Families with Dependent Children, to the minimum wage, to Head
Start.
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.1440
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7374
item Program Number FLS205,
205
"A
Firing
Line
Debate: Resolved: That the ACLU Is Full of
Baloney"
Guests: Buckley, William F. (William Frank), Jr.,
1925-2008. : Graglia, Lino A. : Donohue, William A., 1947- : Knight,
Robert H., 1951- : Glasser, Ira. : Strossen, Nadine. : Botstein, Leon. :
Lynn, Barry W.
4 May 1998
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 157 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 192 : 15
Program details: Mr. Buckley begins by citing an article that said, "The
ACLU is most generally identified with free speech, religion, and
criminal law. That's true. Free speech defined as the right of Deep
Throat--and, who knows?, maybe even snuff films--to the airwaves;
freedom of religion defined as forbidding the Ten Commandments to be
viewed in a courthouse or crosses or menorahs to be exhibited on public
property; and criminal law defined as the right of criminals to escape
imprisonment because the arresting officer didn't brush his teeth that
morning." Ms. Strossen starts out taking the high road: "The ACLU's
mission is unique and critically important: to defend all fundamental
freedoms for all people in this country. We pursue this broad mission
because we have learned through experience that all rights are
indivisible, that if the government is ever ceded the power to violate
one right of one person or group, then no right is safe for any person
or group." And that is why the ACLU takes up some of the cases that
Messrs. Buckley and Graglia zestfully cite--in favor of the 14-year-old
girl who wished to decorate her school clothes with condom packages,
against the Detroit school board's installing metal detectors at the
entrances of its weapon-infested schools. And on--often at the shouting
level--to AIDS and vouchers and homosexual Boy Scout leaders.
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1446
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TZ8GVJW
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7380
item Program Number FLS301,
301
"A
Firing
Line
Debate: Resolved: That the U.S. Senate Should Lift
the Cuban Trade Embargo"
Guests: Buckley, William F. (William
Frank), Jr., 1925-2008. : Duran, Alfredo. : Jones, Kirby, 1941- :
Symington, James W. (James Wadsworth), 1927- : Reich, Otto. :
Torricelli, Robert G. : Perez Castellon, Ninoska. : Menendez, Robert.
20 July 1998
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 158 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 192 : 16
Program details: There presumably are Americans who want to lift the
embargo on Cuba because they like Fidel Castro, but they are not
represented in this debate. Instead, all the participants agree that
Castro is a tyrant whom the world would be better off without; the point
at issue-often heatedly-is (a) whether the embargo has any chance of
bringing him down, (b) whether in hurting Castro it is hurting the Cuban
people more-and, derivatively, (c) whether it hurts the United States.
Mr. Duran: "You keep insisting on the embargo to punish the Castro
regime. The embargo is punishing the people of Cuba. ... You are
condemning to malnutrition and to sickness a whole generation of Cubans.
That is an immoral policy for this country; that is an inhuman policy
for this country." ... RT: "I believe that the embargo makes a very
important point to the Cuban people of the lack of legitimacy of their
government. The United States Government is not just some other
enterprise in the world. It carries enormous moral weight."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1458
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7392
item Program Number FLS302,
302
"A
Firing
Line
Debate: Resolved: That It's Time to Abolish the
Welfare State"
Guests: Buckley, William F. (William Frank), Jr.,
1925-2008. : Goodman, John C. : Du Pont, Pierre S. : Keyes, Alan L.
(Alan Lee), 1950- : Galbraith, James K. : Kuttner, Robert. : Tyson,
Laura D'Andrea, 1947- : Curry, William E.
3 December 1998
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 158 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 192 : 17
Program details: As WFB frames the question in his opening statement, "We
tend to date the modern welfare state to 1965, with the Great Society
policies of President Lyndon Johnson. In constant dollars we have spent
$5 trillion on welfare, yet the percentage of the American people
technically below the poverty line is about the same. In identical
constant dollars we fought the Second World War at a cost of $3
trillion. The haunting indictment of our experiences with the welfare
state is that (a) more human welfare could be achieved without it, and
(b) it has, in fact, helped to corrode the great aspirations of our
country." Mr. Galbraith, taking up the baton of his father, John
Kenneth, responds: "My friend Bill Buckley, who was once a conservative,
tonight plays the role of the radical, the abolitionist, the William
Lloyd Garrison of the welfare state. What would he abolish? Not poverty,
not insecurity, not the fear effacing illness without the means to pay
for doctors, not the penury of a penniless old age. No. He would abolish
precisely those institutions that protect Americans from those evils
..." A splendid battle over our mixed economy and where it should be
heading.
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.1471
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7405
item Program Number FLS401,
401
"A
Firing
Line
Debate: Resolved: The Federal Government Should
Not Impose a Tax on Electronic Commerce"
Guests: Buckley, William
F. (William Frank), 1925-2008. : Kemp, Jack. : Blackwell, Ken. : Wyden,
Ron. : Kuttner, Robert. : Kirk, Ron. : Hitchens, Christopher. : Fox,
William.
3 December 1999
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 158 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 192 : 18
Program details: From Michael Kinsley's introduction of the final
Firing
Line
debate: "From the University of Mississippi, welcome to a special
Firing
Line
debate. This one is very special, because it's the last one.
Yes, William F. Buckley is hanging up his tongue, or so he claims.
Purveyors of false logic need no longer live in terror. Liberals can
rest easy again. Dictionaries can rest easy, for that matter. No longer
will the cry be heard across the land, "What the heck does
'sesquipedalian' mean?" Our topic tonight ends this series on a nicely
forward-looking note. It's about the Internet, specifically, Resolved:
the government should not impose a tax on electronic commerce. Alternate
title: "A
Firing
Line
Debate: Resolved: The Government Should Not Impose
a Tax on Electronic Commerce."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1507
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0064EGPIC
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7441
item Program Number S0001, 1
"Dump Nixon?"
Guests: McCloskey, Paul N., 1927- :
Lowenstein, Allard K.
26 May 1971
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 85 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 168 : 29
Program details: For this first installment of
Firing
Line
broadcast on
public television, we have as our guests two men actively seeking to
dump President Nixon. Mr. Lowenstein's organization had voted in favor
of impeaching him for high crimes and misdemeanors-no, not Watergate,
which was still more than a year away, but rather his conduct of the war
in Vietnam. For the same reason, Mr. McCloskey had announced that he
would challenge the President for the 1972 Republican nomination. (As it
happens, by the time of the New Hampshire primary Mr. Buckley was
backing John Ashbrook for the Republican nomination-not because of
Vietnam but because of President Nixon's trip to China.) A certain
amount of fun and games, but then serious and deeply informed analysis
of the Vietnam War itself and the history of American intervention
abroad.
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.244
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003GXE9RS
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6178
item Program Number S0002, 2
"Free Medicine"
Guests: Richardson, Elliot L., 1920- : Beer,
Richard. : Breckinridge, Madeline. : Polman, Dick.
26 May 1971
Scope and Contents note
Transcript: Box/Folder 169 : 1
Program details: "It is widely accepted," Mr. Buckley begins, "that the
formal opposition to a role for the Federal Government in medicine has
pretty well ended-that it is as remote from the public memory as the
Tenth Amendment-so that the argument becomes, 'What shall be the Federal
Government's role?' " In fact, as Mr. Richardson recounts, the Nixon
Administration was pressing for four health-care bills in Congress, at
least partly in response to bills proposing something more like the
British or Canadian system. WFB: "Inasmuch as you are very anxious to
pass your bill, do you feel a certain constraint not to criticize
authors of different bills because they might get sore at you?" ER: "...
No; we figure-" WFB: "You can't refer to Senator Kennedy's 'damn fool
bill' or things like that, can you?" ER: "I wouldn't, of course, use
language like that in any case. I am at all times circumspect and
tactful." WFB: "Hmm. I see ..." ER: "But I have characterized the bill
rather sharply." WFB: "How sharply?" ER: "Well, I pointed out that it
would create a monolithic bureaucracy, having the consequence of
centralizing total control of the health-care system of the United
States in the Federal Government."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.245
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6179
item Program Number S0003, 3
"Separation of Church and State"
Guests: O'Hair, Madalyn
Murray. : Blain, Margaret. : Durant, Clark. : Wafer, Ralph.
22 April 1971
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 85 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 169 : 2
Program details: Mrs. O'Hair was the country's most conspicuous atheist,
not only proselytizing for atheism but also filing suit against anything
that smacked of government encouragement of religion. (She had even, as
WFB recounts, expressed public displeasure at our astronauts' reading
the Bible on their way to and from the Moon.) A spirited duel. WFB: "In
the first place it doesn't say that. I hope you can quote accurately the
First Amendment...." MMO: "Congress shall make no law in respect to
religion." WFB: "That was inaccurate. Can you quote it accurately?" MMO:
"I don't care." WFB: "Maybe you'll change your mind if we quote it
accurately." MMO: "No, no, no. I'm very pleased that you memorized it
for your performance today, knowing that you would ask the question."
WFB: "I was taught it in school." MMO: "I don't have to go back and
review those things because I know the principle, and if you know the
principle, it's not necessary to know the exact words."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.242
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6176
item Program Number S0004, 4
"Strikes in Defiance of the Law"
Guests: Gotbaum, Victor. :
Wilson, Malcolm, 1914-
15 June 1971
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 85 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 169 : 2
Program details: Mr. Gotbaum had just led a strike that closed bridges
into Manhattan, sent raw sewage spilling into local waters, and stopped
school lunches from being delivered. The point at issue was the refusal
of the Republicans in Albany to sign off on the pension plan agreed to
between the City of New York and Mr. Gotbaum's union. Under the
circumstances, this show proves to be a surprisingly civil, though
sharp, discussion of how far civil disobedience can be taken and what
responsibility the government has to the whole body of taxpayers. MW: "I
stand foursquare for the proposition that there is no right to strike
against the public at any time for any reason ..." WFB: "The proposition
on which Coolidge and FDR agreed." VG: "Oh, no. Also Nikita Khrushchev.
They don't allow it in the Soviet Union, sir." WFB: "... If I say that
Coolidge and Roosevelt believe in two and two equals four, why does it
contribute to ... [add] that Khrushchev also believed two and two equals
four?" VG: "Because I regard it as an authoritarian principle from where
I sit."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.246
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6180
item Program Number S0005, 5
"The Black Caucus"
Guests: Dellums, Ronald V., 1935-
15 June 1971
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 85 : 4
Transcript: Box/Folder 169 : 3
Program details: The Black Caucus in Congress had boycotted President
Nixon's 1971 State of the Union address, after a confrontation the year
before in which the President had declined to implement the Caucus's
list of sixty proposals. Mr. Dellums was not in Congress when the
initial list was presented, but he had since become a leading member of
the Caucus. Where this show fails as conversation it nonetheless
succeeds as an encapsulation of a moment in our political history. RD:
"We don't see ourselves as being party loyalists. The problems that
confront blacks and browns and reds and yellows and poor people and
women and young people in this country go far beyond partisan politics.
I don't see myself in the United States Congress as being loyal to the
Democratic Party. I'd like to hope that I have enough integrity and
enough courage to be loyal to people in this country who desperately
need to have their problems solved."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.247
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6181
item Program Number S0006, 6
"The Lawyer's Role"
Guests: Kunstler, William Moses, 1919-
24 June 1971
Scope and Contents note
Transcript: Box/Folder 169 : 3
Program details: In this sizzling exchange, WFB tries to get his guest to
admit that he is advocating illegal activities, and Mr. Kunstler tries
to get Mr. Buckley to admit that our activities in Vietnam are at least
as illegal. WFB: "Can I proceed on the assumption that you can
distinguish between a declaration of war passed by both Houses of
Congress pursuant to an attempt to save the world from the Axis powers;
to defend the Jewish population of Germany, to the extent that it could
be done; to save people from the Axis aggressions against China-can you
distinguish between that and somebody burning down a building in protest
against social policies that call for building a gymnasium in that
university? Is that a distinction?" WK: "You usually don't help me so
much. You've given me my answer. Because what you've really said is that
under certain circumstances any form of arson, mayhem, bombing is
justifiable, and you've given an example of World War II. I'm telling
you, there are many people in the United States who believe that it's
just as justifiable to try to stop the war in Vietnam as it is to
prosecute World War II to stop the Germans from doing the same thing
we're doing."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.248
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00G707SSY
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6182
item Program Number S0007, 7
"War Crimes: Part I"
Guests: Van den Haag, Ernest. : Hersh,
Seymour M. : Winston, Mark. : Bruce, Collot. : Winship, Mike.
7 July 1971
Scope and Contents note
Transcript: Box/Folder 169 : 4
Program details: This high-energy exchange sometimes has everyone
talking, or shouting, at once--and the guests in "War Crimes, Part II"
(
Firing
Line
0S9) take serious issue with some of what Mr. Hersh
says--but this show does give us a window on the opposing positions on
war in general and Vietnam in particular. SH: "The fact is, they're
dying. And I can't make up my mind. You know, the more you know about
some of these officers and some of the, certainly about the enlisted
men, it's really hard to say whether something- You know, Calley was
guilty of murder, certainly. But I think the premeditation, perhaps, was
in the White House or in the Pentagon. And, you know, I'll leave it
there...." EvdH: "You said before that it doesn't make much difference
to a man who is killed whether he is killed by accident or by design.
You're perfectly right: he's dead in both cases. But the law for the
last five thousand years has made a difference whether you kill a man by
some accident that you couldn't avoid, whether you kill him by
negligence, or whether you kill him by intent."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.252
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6186
item Program Number S0008, 8
"Revenue Sharing"
Guests: Mills, Wilbur D. (Wilbur Daigh),
1909- : Polman, Dick. : Miljavic, Margaret. : Beer, Dick.
7 July 1971
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 85 : 5
Transcript: Box/Folder 169 : 4
Program details: In his 1971 State of the Union message, President Nixon
had proposed his revenue-sharing plan--federal grants to the individual
states, as opposed to the Federal Government's continuing to run local
programs. Rep. Mills had reportedly referred to the plan as "a gratuity
in a will signed by a pauper." Mr. Buckley's first question is, "Why is
the government a pauper, and ... who pauperized it?" The ensuing
discussion, full of detail, ranges from deficit spending to forms of
taxation to the congressional committee system. WM: "I feel very
strongly that you don't get better government at any level if you split
these two responsibilities, because there is this joint responsibility,
I think, to raise that which you spend and to spend that which you
raise."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.253
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6187
item Program Number S0009, 9
"War Crimes: Part II"
Guests: Bender, John. : Carpenter,
Donald. : North, Oliver. : Bruce, Collot. : Winston, Mark. : Winship,
Mike.
7 July 1971
Scope and Contents note
Transcript: Box/Folder 169 : 5
Program details: Mr. Buckley begins by telling us that he had "recently
received a letter from three Marine officers stationed at Quantico,
Virginia, all Vietnam veterans, all concerned about media coverage of
atrocities and war crimes allegedly committed in the Republic of
Vietnam." The three officers, our guests on this show, state that they
never witnessed or were told at close hand of any such incidents. Their
purpose in going public was, as Captain Bender puts it, "primarily ... a
concern that the families of our own men-and myself, thinking of the 216
enlisted men that served in my rifle platoon over the nine and a half
months that I commanded it, and the 17 officers who were rotated through
my company while I was in Vietnam,... I felt personally that I didn't
want the families of any of those people to feel that their sons or
their husbands were coming home as, quote, 'war criminals.' " A moving
account of what the war looked like on the ground--and, yes, Lieutenant
North is that Oliver North.
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.254
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6188
item Program Number S0010, 10
"Is It Possible to Be a Good Governor? [1971]"
Guests:
Reagan, Ronald.
15 July 1971
Scope and Contents note
Transcript: Box/Folder 169 : 5
Program details: The opening question would have resonance far beyond the
California governor's mansion: "What [do you] consider the most clearly
impractical demand regularly made by conservative theorists on men of
affairs?" RR: "Oh, I think probably instant change.... I think, Bill,
the thing that happens is the belief that simply by electing a President
or electing a governor, that suddenly all the things that the group that
supported that individual wants changed in government will be changed.
And it overlooks the fact that... the great bulk of that government is
unchanged--meaning the permanent structure, the permanent employees of
government ... and they tend to think of an elected official as a
temporary aberration, and they're going to go on doing things the way
they had always intended to do them ..." Specifics include the welfare
system, the withholding of income tax, relations between the states and
the Federal Government--and why Ronald Reagan doesn't want to be Vice
President.
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.255
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6189
item Program Number S0011, 11
"Is St. Augustine Relevant?"
Guests: Sheen, Fulton J.
(Fulton John), 1895-1979. : Wirt, Sherwood Eliot. : Niemeyer, Gerhart.
24 June 1971
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 85 : 6
Transcript: Box/Folder 169 : 6
Program details: A luminous show answering the title question with a
resounding "Yes." SW: "I think that Augustine is one of the most
relevant of the ancients for our day simply because he was probably one
of the most honest men of the ancient world. The ... way he describes
his inner life in his search for God, to me, is one of the most
captivating and revealing sequences in the history of literature." ...
GN: "[He] realize[d] that man, ultimately, is not at home-not wholly at
home-in any political society. That any political society that we might
invent-even the best one-has flaws and falls far short, both of absolute
justice and of absolute freedom and goodness." ... WFB: "What is it that
made him a saint ... ? I mean, having a fine mind and being a great
teacher doesn't make you a saint necessarily, does it?" FJS: "No. As a
matter of fact, sometimes a great mind stands in the way. One of the
great marvels of Thomas Aquinas is that being so very learned, he was so
very saintly. But you ask what is it that makes a saint?" WFB: "Or that
made him a saint." FJS: "Made him a saint. It's making Christ lovable. I
think that's it."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.249
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6183
item Program Number S0012, 12
"Is America a Terrible Letdown?"
Guests: McCarthy, Mary,
1912-
30 June 1971
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 85 : 7
Transcript: Box/Folder 169 : 6
Program details: "I should like to begin," says WFB, "by asking Miss
McCarthy wherein America especially let her down." MM: "Oh, I didn't
know this was the question we were going to discuss." WFB: "Are you
prepared?" MM: "Well, I dislike self-pity. So that I would never speak
in terms of 'America let me down.' Let itself down." WFB: "Well,
then--let other people down." MM: "Yes, well,... it seems to me that
there's been a great change in America, oh, starting sometime after the
Second World War. That the quality of people in politics ...
deteriorated; that when you see, nowadays, some leftover from, let's
say, the Roosevelt Administration, it's, you know, it's like seeing some
old cathedral pine standing there... I think that capitalism is the most
successful deteriorator of society that's been known yet. I've never
been in Russia but I have been in Poland ... and what strikes you about
those countries, is, you know, how refreshing they are because they're
so backward and reminds me very much ... of my childhood.... I think any
logical conservative like you, Mr. Buckley would have to be
anti-capitalist. If you're not anti-capitalist, I don't believe you're a
conservative."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.251
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6185
item Program Number S0013, 13
"The Problems of a Conservative Legislator"
Guests: Buckley,
James Lane, 1923-
15 July 1971
Scope and Contents note
Transcript: Box/Folder 169 : 7
Program details: The Conservative Party of New York had been founded in
1962, as a counter less to the Liberal Party than to the liberalization
of the Republican Party. It was not expected to go far--but in 1970 it
sent James Lane Buckley to the United States Senate. Actually, in
response to the title question, the Senator says it isn't particularly
difficult being a conservative in the Senate: "I think I'm regarded,
still, a little bit as a curiosity, but I'm sort of feeling my way
around and finding my place--not being put in my place, I might add.
And, no, I think I'm just accepted as a member of the team.... The
Senate has a very interesting air of total civility, so that, I think,
if you aren't more or less apt to be naturally civil, there's something
about the atmosphere that causes you to abide by the ground rules." A
genial, instructive conversation about the workings of a third party,
the demands on a large-state senator, and Mr. Nixon's "full-employment
budget."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.256
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00G707MTE
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6190
item Program Number S0014, 14
"What Has Happened to the American Spirit?"
Guests: Dickey,
James. : Blain, Margaret. : DuRant, Clark. : Wafer, Ralph.
22 April 1971
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 86 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 169 : 7
Program details: Mr. Dickey throws the title question back at his host
for a definition of the American spirit, and Mr. Buckley replies: "Well,
it is easier to say what it isn't... It certainly isn't boredom. It
isn't a sense of impotence. It isn't a sense of futility. It isn't a
sense of misanthropy. And it isn't a sense of self-hate, either...." JD:
"I was in Australia three years ago, and it seemed to me ... Australia
is like America was when we had a great feeling of hope and promise and
possibility. They still have their frontier down there. I think the
thing that's eaten us up in America is excessive introspection and the
questioning of every motive so that you can't do the simplest thing
without being made aware that there's a certain amount of guilt that
attaches to it." He tells about a commencement address he's writing, to
be titled "How Can You Possibly?" subtitled "Reflections on Guilt, Joy,
and the Quality of Life," "And the opening sentence of the address is,
'How can you possibly stand there eating that ice-cream cone when
children are being firebombed in Vietnam?' " WFB: "What is an
appropriate response?" JD: "I don't know. I haven't gotten to the second
sentence yet." And on through Susan Sontag and Albert Camus and hats
made of fox skins and much else.
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.243
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6177
item Program Number S0015, 15
"In Defense of Policy"
Guests: Rostow, W. W. (Walt Whitman),
1916-2003.
1 September 1971
Scope and Contents note
Transcript: Box/Folder 169 : 8
Program details: As WFB relates in his introduction, MIT had decided in
1969 that no one who had defended Lyndon Johnson's policies in Vietnam
could continue to claim the privileges of academic freedom there, and so
Mr. Rostow had gone off to Texas, where he was working on a book about
President Johnson. The conversation begins there (WWR: "I think I can
say that my views about Asia, from which derived my views about
Vietnam,were formed long before I had the privilege of working with
President Johnson"), but ranges across the foreign-policy scene at this
critical juncture, just a few months before Nixon's visit to China and
the beginning of detente with the Soviet Union, and in the midst, as we
would later learn, of the secret talks in Paris to end the Vietnam
War."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.259
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6193
item Program Number S0016, 16
"Law and Order in England"
Guests: Rawlinson, Peter.
30 July 1971
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 86 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 169 : 8
Program details: The American Bar Association had just met in London to
discuss the differences between American and English jurisprudence, and
that is our starting point with Sir Peter. The conversation turns at
times to technical points of judicial behavior and self-policing by
British barristers; but there are also fascinating reflections on
British history. For example, when Mr. Buckley raises the matter of the
turmoil on American campuses, Sir Peter agrees that Britain hasn't seen
its like recently--but he adds: "You always remember, though, the great
sort of riots in London. They were usually by the apprentices. They were
great mobs in the 18th century, and Wellington's hat being knocked off
and Lord North's coat jacket cut into bits, and the windows being
broken. And that was, after all, not so very long ago.... I don't know.
Perhaps in my generation, having been very early confronted with
violence in war, one has the greatest contempt for those people who are
driven to violence, unless the circumstances are such that they are
utterly intolerable."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.258
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6192
item Program Number S0017
"Presidential Hopeful: Fred Harris"
Guests: Harris, Fred R.,
1930-
14 September 1971
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 86 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 169 : 9
Program details: In the run-up to the 1968 election it had been the
Republicans' turn to go on the
firing
line
; this time, with an incumbent
Republican, it's the Democrats' turn. We have already met George
McGovern (
Firing
Line
201), and now we meet Fred Harris. A sharp duel
between a self-described populist who believes, for example, that "the
very portions of Lyndon Johnson's program that President Nixon is trying
to wind down--like Legal Services--are the parts that have worked best.
WFB: And what is the interest that Mr. Nixon has in the maldistribution
of power?" FH: "I think he likes it the way it is."WFB: "Why?" FH:
"Well, it serves him very well. He's President of the United States,
among other things." WFB: "Yeah. But he became that under a Constitution
that was put together by, you know, Madison and a lot of other people
who didn't have Nixon in mind." FH: "I don't know. Madison might
have."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.261
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6195
item Program Number S0018
"The Politics of William Proxmire"
Guests: Proxmire,
William.
14 September 1971
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 86 : 4
Transcript: Box/Folder 169 : 9
Program details: Yet another Democratic presidential candidate, described
by his host as "a maverick liberal with eccentric tastes for economy."
Senator Proxmire goes on, in this lively conversation, to demonstrate
that his tastes for economy, whether or not one agrees with every
particular, are well informed: "Well, I think it's very, very hard to
justify-from an economic standpoint, from a military standpoint-building
a supersonic B-l whose only unique function, really, would be to
gravity-drop a bomb over Russia, when you can retrofit with new engines
and a SCAD missile the B-52s, and they'd be far more economically
effective, and they could do the job. They could stand off and provide a
platform for launching missiles at the Soviet Union much, much cheaper,
and do the job." WFB: "I see. So your objection isn't to our capability
to get the job done, but to an unnecessary vehicle for getting the job
done." WP: "Exactly. You know, I feel very strongly we have to have a
strong military force." And on to NASA, Japanese car exports, and
President's Nixon's economic plan.
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.262
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6196
item Program Number S0019
"Is America Hospitable to the Negro?"
Guests: Jackson,
Jesse, 1941- : Hart, Thomas J. : Tracy, Daniel. : Wilson, Brenda.
2 October 1971
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 105 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 169 : 10
Program details: Jesse Jackson was commonly described as one of the more
"moderate" civil-rights leaders--although, as WFB says in his
introduction, "moderate" hardly does justice to his "special mixture of
evangelism, toughness, eloquence, and bombast." Mr. Jackson-dressed not
in jacket and tie but in a boldly patterned T-shirt-proceeds to
demonstrate what his host means, with his rapid-fire disquisitions on
the civil-rights movement, on the current state of the cities, and much
more. One sample: "One cannot see the Public Accommodations Bill-which
moves toward some universal respect for one's person in America-apart
from the jailings and the bombings in Birmingham, Alabama, and the
assassination [of Martin Luther King].... So indeed there is progress,
but it is in proportion to the agitation."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.263
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004SQFR7I
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6197
item Program Number S0020
"Pornography, English Style"
Guests: Short, Renee. : Gummer,
John Selwyn.
30 July 1971
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 86 : 5
Publicity File: Box/Folder 105 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 169 : 10
Program details: Mr. Buckley sets the stage by telling of "three young
men who thought it would be amusing or instructive or profitable, or all
three, to put out a magazine designed especially for schoolchildren,
edited by schoolchildren, on the subject of sex, etc. A so-called Oz No.
28 resulted in prosecution. Six weeks after the magazine hit the
streets, the defendants had been tried, convicted, and jailed, which
suits Mr. John Selwyn Gummer just fine." Mrs. Short, while "not
pro-pornography, [is] anti-anti-pornography legislation." RS: "I think
that one can really leave society to look after this problem reasonably
successfully. I think that what consenting adults do in the privacy of
their own places is their business...." JSG: "I find it very odd. Mrs.
Short's the first one to say you can't leave it to individuals to decide
whether to put up ugly buildings or not. They have, evidently, to be
stopped from doing that, and they have to be stopped from polluting the
environment... But for some reason or other, you find it impossible to
say that people shouldn't have advertisements which are generally
unacceptable on free sale on public stands." A crackling debate-we
sometimes feel as if we were on the floor of the House of Commons, with
side-trips to Denmark's porn shops, the American Supreme Court, and
Times Square.
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.257
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6191
item Program Number S0021
"The Case against Freedom"
Guests: Skinner, B. F. (Burrhus
Frederic), 1904-1990. : MacKay, Donald MacCrimmon, 1922- : Hart, Thomas
J. : Tracy, Daniel. : Wilson, Brenda.
2 October 1971
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 105 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 169 : 11
Program details: A serious but never inaccessible exchange between two
scientists, with WFB acting as catalyst, on the question: "Does man have
free will?" One sample: DM: "I personally wouldn't like to take the
optimistic view that anyone who goes in for cruelty as a way of ensuring
survival... is bound to-" WFB: "Self-destruct?" DM: "I think it would be
nice if that were true, [but] I doubt it." WFB: "When you use the word
'God' you are using a metaphor-or not?" DM: "No, I would take this in
the specific Christian religious sense-God as one to be reckoned with."
WFB: "Does that make you uncomfortable, Mr. Skinner?" BFS: "No, because
when I listen to that sort of thing I'm running a translation inside, of
course. I think that the good, personified in a god, does represent
those things which we find, to use a technical term, reinforcing.
They're the things which induce us to behave in certain ways. And evil?
Well, the ordinary Christian picture of hell is a collection of all the
aversive stimuli available at the time."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.264
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003O86PFY
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6198
item Program Number S0022
"Marijuana Reconsidered"
Guests: Grinspoon, Lester, 1928- :
McKinney, Lawrence.
30 June 1971
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 105 : 4
Transcript: Box/Folder 169 : 11
Program details: No fireworks, host and guests being in basic agreement,
but a productive discussion of how psychoactive drugs work, and how
social pressures work. LG: "It seems clear to me now that marijuana is a
harmful drug, in the sense that any psychoactive drug is a harmful drug,
but if one puts it-" WFB: "How do you define psychoactive? Is alcohol
psychoactive?" LG: "Yes." WFB: "How about cigarettes?" LG: "Yes." WFB:
"Okay, is Coca-Cola?" LG: "Oh, Coca-Cola has enough caffeine that it
might be considered a psychoactive drug." WFB: "How about lemon squash?"
LG: "I don't believe so; but I would have to-" WFB: "Well, then
everything is psychoactive-everything good." LG: "Well, no, but lots of
things are, more things than most people suspect. But the point is, it's
not that I am saying marijuana is a harmless drug, but that in fact its
harmfulness ... is far less than the harm which we are imposing on young
people through the present approach to its social use." ... LM: "I was
really concerned about why some kinds of people really did seem to get
dependent on drugs.... And it seemed to me that scapegoating the drug by
saying that this marijuana would come into your life and make your son
into a hippie was begging the question."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.250
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6184
item Program Number S0023
"The Meaning of the China Vote"
Guests: Bush, George, 1924-
: Loh, I-Cheng. : Cooper, Gene. : Jervis, Nancy. : Frank, Christine.
29 October 1971
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 105 : 5
Transcript: Box/Folder 169 : 12
Program details: "A few days ago at the United Nations," Mr. Buckley
begins, "the General Assembly made a decision which has been widely
acknowledged as the most important in its history": to admit Communist
China and expel Taiwan. This was, as Mr. Bush tells us, the first time
the UN had ever expelled a country-"something that our opponents said
wasn't happening,... because they were maintaining that we were talking
about restoration of the legal rights" of Peking-and it was seen, as WFB
puts it, "as the crystallization within the United Nations of a working
anti-American majority." An informative discussion of how Mr. Bush
sought to prevent this outcome ("I wish I could say on the air ... a
beautiful Texas expression" that General Romulo [Foreign Secretary of
the Philippines) had used), and how Mr. Loh's government reconciles its
one-China policy with its friends' attempts to have both it and Peking
represented in the General Assembly.
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.265
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6199
item Program Number S0024
"Why Aren't Good Buildings Being Built?"
Guests: Huxtable,
Ada Louise. : Rossant, James S., 1928- : Feingold, Jeff. : Blum, Leslie.
: Ferri, Roger.
2 November 1971
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 105 : 6
Transcript: Box/Folder 169 : 12
Program details: An absorbing discussion of what makes a building good or
bad-which, both guests are adamant in arguing, is different from asking
whether it is beautiful or ugly-ranging from Mrs. Huxtable's account of
the Finnish architect Alvar Aalto designing a hospital ("he started this
way: when he woke up in the morning and he was lying in bed, he would
think, 'I am a patient, and I'm here. I'm flat on my back, and I'm
looking at the ceiling, and that is all I can see' ") to Mr. Rossant's
explanation of the importance of context ("Much as a theater is the
framework of plays, the city is the framework of buildings. We have been
conditioned in this country, throughout our history,... to hate cities
... We had escaped the evils of Europe, and the evils of Europe were
personified in the cities...." WFB: "But so many of the cities were so
beautiful." JR: "Not to the intellectuals and the Founding Fathers of
the time").
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.267
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6201
item Program Number S0025
"The Place of the Treaty in International Affairs"
Guests:
Kerry, John, 1943-
2 November 1971
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 86 : 6
Publicity File: Box/Folder 105 : 7
Transcript: Box/Folder 169 : 13
Program details: Five months before this show, WFB had taken as his text,
for a commencement address at West Point, Mr. Kerry's sensational
testimony before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee about the
barbarism of our activities in Vietnam. Neither host nor guest has
changed his views since, but there is light as well as heat generated on
Vietnam in particular and morality and foreign policy generally. JK: "I
want very much to create a world order in which we can somehow live-"
WFB: "Well, do you think Lyndon Johnson doesn't want to?" JK: "No, I
don't think he didn't want to. I don't think Richard Nixon doesn't want
to, frankly.... I don't subscribe to the theory that so many of my
contemporaries do, that he is necessarily an evil man." WFB: "You just
say that your moral vision is more acute." JK: "I think he is highly
misguided."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.268
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6202
item Program Number S0026
"The News Twisters"
Guests: Efron, Edith, 1922- : Rooney,
Andrew A.
1 September 1971
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 105 : 8
Transcript: Box/Folder 169 : 13
Program details: Even before Vice President Agnew gave his "nattering
nabobs of negativism" speech--blasting the networks for their pervasive
bias against, e.g., Republicans, and in favor of, e.g., rioting
students-the veteran journalist Edith Efron had begun a clinical study
of the 7 PM network news shows. The resulting book had just now been
published. Her findings: that the networks are indeed biased in a
left-liberal way, and that the network executives know it even though
they deny it. How much does it matter? "The situation is enormously
dangerous because so long as you have actual bias on the air of a
publicly owned medium, which is supposedly regulated by a fairness
doctrine, and then huge numbers of citizens are aware of this bias and
are intensely angered by it, it is a set-up for an assault on the First
Amendment from which we might not recover." Mr. Rooney launches a
spirited defense, and we're off to the races.
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.260
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6194
item Program Number S0027
"Nixon in the White House: The Frustration of Power"
Guests:
Evans, Rowland, 1921- : Novak, Robert D. : Warren, Jeff. : Lewis, Betty.
: Brennan, Gerry.
22 November 1971
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 105 : 9
Transcript: Box/Folder 169 : 14
Program details: A high-energy conversation that keeps coming back to
Nixon but continually reaches out for helpful comparisons--to JFK, LBJ,
the Roosevelts, Winston Churchill. One sample, on Nixon's speech on the
Cambodian incursion: RDN: "I think he is a man of many heroes, some of
them conflicting in nature. I think he wants to be Winston Churchill, at
times. I think he wants to be the resolute leader of a
nation-confronting great military odds, mobilizing a heterogeneous
people into one, to combat the enemy. Unfortunately, or fortunately,
those times are not here, and it becomes a little ridiculous when you
make a rather small military operation seem like the Normandy invasion."
RE: "You read that speech today, out of context, and it really is
melodramatic. And you realize, at the same time, that the President was
seeing the movie about Patton over and over again, and that this was
part of this same-" WFB: "You said 'over and over again.' You used it
repeatedly in your book. You don't really mean that, do you?" RDN:
"Yes." WFB: "You mean more than twice?" RDN: "Yes." RE: "Oh, five or six
times, minimum ... we have documentation on that, Bill, which I can't go
into here; but no question about it, he saw the movie many times."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.272
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6206
item Program Number S0028, 28
"The American Conservatives and Mr. Nixon"
Guests: Lukas, J.
Anthony, 1933- : Thimmesch, Nick. : McWilliams, Wilson C.
29 October 1971
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 86 : 7
Publicity File: Box/Folder 105 : 10
Transcript: Box/Folder 169 : 14
Program details: The semi-annual occasion on which the guests question
their host. Our guests this time stick to the question posed in the
title, which nonetheless gives them free rein to talk about everything
from Taiwan's expulsion from the UN, to Mr. Nixon's Supreme Court
appointments, to the latest round of GATT, to wage and price controls.
JAL: "[President Nixon] is reliably-I think reliably-reported to have
used a four-letter word which I presume we can no more use here than the
newspapers could use it..." WFB: "... The fact that he should utter an
expletive seems to be an odd point to record, since his predecessor
couldn't get by a normal sentence without the use of one.... Now, if he
had said, 'I'm going to propose a law abolishing the American Bar
Association,' then I think I would understand your point better."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.266
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6200
item Program Number S0029
"The Edgar Smith Story: Part I"
Guests: Smith, Edgar, 1934-
6 December 1971
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 105 : 11
Transcript: Box/Folder 169 : 15
Program details: And it seemed a story with a happy ending indeed. Edgar
Smith had been convicted 14 years earlier of the murder of a 15-year-old
girl and sentenced to death; twice he came within hours of being
executed but was rescued by resourceful lawyers. He was, WFB tells us,
"in the death house longer than anyone in the history of the United
States," and during that time he taught himself law and wrote a book,
Brief against Death, which convinced many people, including Mr. Buckley
and the Washington lawyer Steve Umin, that he was in fact innocent. An
hour and a half before this taping, Mr. Smith was discharged from the
death house at Trenton, N.J., after pleading guilty to a lesser charge
(only because, he claims, of the extraordinary difficulties a new jury
trial at this remove of time would pose). He speaks movingly about his
time in prison, how he was convicted in the first place, and where he
goes from here ("At the present time, I'm trying to believe the fact
that I'm not still in the death house. It's very difficult").
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.273
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6207
item Program Number S0030
"The Edgar Smith Story: Part II"
Guests: Smith, Edgar, 1934-
: Sullivan, Ronald. : Norman, Geoffrey. : Knight, Hans.
6 December 1971
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 105 : 12
Transcript: Box/Folder 169 : 15
Program details: RS: "In court today, the judge asked you, 'Did you kill
Victoria Zielinski?' You answered, 'Yes.' And tonight in this studio,
you said you had to do what you felt you' had to do to gain your
freedom.... Mr. Buckley, why are you so convinced that he is innocent,
after what you heard today in court?" WFB: "Well, what I heard today in
court was a protracted yawn. The judge simply condensed what I first
read in 1961...." RS: "You're convinced that he's innocent?" WFB: "I
told you that." RS: "Then he committed perjury today." WFB: "Well, do
you want to send him to jail for that?" RS: "No. No, but you see the
point I'm trying to make." That point keeps recurring, although there is
also illuminating discussion of the way prisons are run, the
advisability of having press coverage of trials, and the Anglo-American
adversary system of jurisprudence". Footnote: The unhappy second ending
to this story occurred in 1976, when Edgar Smith attempted to kill a
young woman in California.
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.274
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6208
item Program Number S0031
"The Assault on Privacy"
Guests: Miller, Arthur Raphael,
1934-
22 November 1971
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 105: 13
Transcript: Box/Folder 169 : 16
Program details: We eventually get to the principal subject of Mr.
Miller's book, which is that, as WFB summarizes it, "the technology of
data collecting is now so advanced ... that we are threatened with the
disappearance of the truly private transaction," but we do so by way of
a fast-moving exchange on "the right to know, which is, in a sense, the
obvious enemy of the right to privacy." How does it all fit in with free
speech? How much is mere voyeurism? Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon
Papers come into the discussion, as do the New York Times rule, the Fair
Credit Reporting Act, and lie-detector tests. WFB: "It seems to me that
this makes everybody's property everybody else's property, because we
are involved in mankind ... Since the ripples from a communication
between A and B can very easily affect C, either you do assert the right
of A to privacy or you've had it, I think." ARM: "My reaction, which,
admittedly, is highly platitudinous, is that there are no absolutes in
this business."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.271
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6205
item Program Number S0032
"Who Owns America?"
Guests: Hickel, Walter J., 1919-
16 November 1971
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 86 : 8
Publicity File: Box/Folder 105 : 14
Transcript: Box/Folder 169 : 16
Program details: A productive discussion of a whole range of
environmental issues with a man who, until he went to Washington, D.C.,
had spent all his adult life in our last frontier, Alaska. WH: "I think
that resources have to be wisely used, without abuse.... And so in our
country, which is quite a bit different from the standpoint of
geological formations and geographical locations, we've seen literally
millions upon millions of board feet of timber that are just rotting,
for example. We've seen, on the other side, the exploitation of salmon.
We've seen exploitation since the turn of the century. So, I say,
conservation is really appreciation... You're saying that you think that
there's an extreme side on preservation versus exploitation?" WFB:
"Yeah." WH: "I think the pendulum had to swing that way. It's a natural
thing in things that happen in America."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.269
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6203
item Program Number S0033
"The 18-to-21-Year-Old Vote"
Guests: Martin, Marsha. :
Seidman, Larry. : Cortright, S. A. (Steven A.), 1953- : Westbrook,
Yvonne. : Morgan, Steve. : Diamond, Larry Jay. : Gerbe, Dave. : Mendel,
Meta.
16 November 1971
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 86 : 9
Publicity File: Box/Folder 105 : 15
Transcript: Box/Folder 169 : 17
Program details: In the course of the anti-Vietnam agitation, the 26th
Amendment, lowering the voting age to 18, had been drafted, sent to the
states, and ratified in a matter of weeks. "There is much speculation
about all of this," Mr. Buckley begins. "How will they vote? How will
they affect national and state elections? Ought they to vote while at
college?" Our eight students today are more articulate than many student
panelists, and while Vietnam keeps coming up, so do questions of
domestic policy and more general questions of political philosophy. Miss
Westbrook: "... that, I think, relates back to my first statement, that
young people have given up. I think that it has to go further than the
vote." WFB: "But how can you give up when you're 18?" YW: "Very easily!"
WFB: "You just stopped eating popsicles yesterday." YW: "At 18, you're
going to war, and you're killing people, and you're being killed." Miss
Mendel: "You probably got popsicles. Not everyone did."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.270
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6204
item Program Number S0034
"Vietnamization"
Guests: Bunker, Ellsworth, 1894-
17 January 1972
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 86 : 10
Publicity File: Box/Folder 105 : 16
Transcript: Box/Folder 169 : 17
Program details: "Ambassador Bunker," WFB begins, "is the diplomat who
presided over the great metamorphosis we call Vietnamization. There are
those who believe that however sensible the concept is, in fact, what it
comes down to is that the United States needed to concoct a grand
chimera, under the cover of which to pull away from what we used to
refer to as our obligations under the SEATO treaty." As a veteran
diplomat (starting with his posting to Argentina by President Truman,
and continuing under Republican and Democratic Presidents ever since),
Mr. Bunker is well able to turn aside a question so smoothly that you
hardly realize he has sidestepped; but once he gets into the subject of
the training of the ARVN [Army of the Republic of Viet-Nam], and the
intransigence of the North Vietnamese and their Soviet and Chinese
backers, he is eloquent. "This war was new to the American
experience.... Korea wasn't like this; World War II was not like
this.... Therefore, we had to learn to fight this war as we went along,
in the hard way. It took some time to come to the realization that there
wasn't the military war and the other [political and psychological] war.
It was all one war. The thing, I think, that brought this home to us,
dramatically, was Tet '68, which was a major military defeat for the
enemy here, but a major psychological victory for him in the United
States."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.276
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6210
item Program Number S0035
"Israel: War or Peace?"
Guests: Peres, Shimon, 1923-
24 January 1972
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 105 : 17
Transcript: Box/Folder 169 : 18
Program details: Mr. Buckley begins by asking his guest why his cause,
the cause of Israel, "should be championed by the United States." Mr.
Peres replies somewhat predictably, but fluently and often
movingly--"Israel is obviously a free country, as the United States is
itself; and ... there are many similarities in the way the United States
was created and Israel was born--the same spirit, the same convictions,
the same outlook, and the same desire to do a positive service to other
people." When the conversation ranges further afield, he comes up with
some unexpected delights: "They say, still, that the constitution of the
Fifth Republic is the shortest in the French history. It consists just
of two items: Item No. 1: The General is always right; and Item No. 2:
In case he is wrong, see Item No. 1."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.279
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6213
item Program Number S0036
"Vietnam: Looking Back"
Guests: Osnos, Peter. : Cloud,
Stanley. : McArthur, George.
17 January 1972
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 86 : 11
Publicity File: Box/Folder 105 : 18
Transcript: Box/Folder 169 : 18
Program details: Mr. McArthur had been in Vietnam since 1965; Messrs.
Osnos and Cloud for about a year. They all agree that despite their own
best efforts, people back home have a skewed view of Vietnam and the
war. They give vivid accounts of what they found there, starting with
Mr. Osnos's surprise when he first arrived ("When you get off the plane,
somehow, you expect to have to duck, mortars flying, and it's not like
that at all"), and Mr. McArthur's account of how he went about assigning
stories: "Everything had a tendency to get covered if you simply left it
alone with ten more or less energetic newsmen doing the job. And you
wouldn't say, 'Go do me atrocity stories,' or 'Go do me a pacification
story' ... Occasionally you'd make some specific assignments, but it
wasn't in some limited field or some limited range of what you might
call emotional appeal."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.277
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6211
item Program Number S0037
"Inside Israel"
Guests: Rubinstein, Amnon. : Ben-Dor, Leah.
: Abbasi, Mahmud, 1935-
24 January 1972
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 86 : 12
Publicity File: Box/Folder 105 : 19
Transcript: Box/Folder 169 : 19
Program details: A no-holds-barred discussion of everything from the
petition Mr. Rubinstein had signed urging Prime Minister Meir to modify
her position on negotiating with Egypt, to the status of African and
Asian Jews in Israel, to the Holocaust, to the U.S. effort in Vietnam.
One sample, from Mrs. Ben-Dor: "And I must say I've become more
discouraged about the whole situation since I've seen what happened and
didn't happen in Biafra [cf.
Firing
Line
#167] and what happened and
didn't happen in East Bengal. Here again, in Biafra, people were
massacred without anybody interfering, and the Pakistanis were able to
massacre people in East Bengal without anybody interfering, and what
earthly reason is there to suppose that if we ever allowed anybody to be
in a position to massacre us, that anybody would interfere? There are
not so many people [in Israel]; it could be over pretty quickly, and
everybody would wring their hands."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.278
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6212
item Program Number S0038
"The New Hampshire Primary"
Guests: Ashbrook, John M. :
McCloskey, Paul N., 1927-
29 February 1972
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 105 : 20
Transcript: Box/Folder 169 : 19
Program details: Reps. Ashbrook and McCloskey were both challenging
President Nixon in the primary to be held the following week, the latter
because of the Vietnam War, the former because, as WFB puts it, "his
support for Richard Nixon in 1968 was based on a number of positions
concerning social and international issues which Mr. Nixon no longer
holds, but John Ashbrook does." (For the record, Mr. Buckley and his
magazine, National Review, were supporting Mr. Ashbrook's effort.) A
sparkling exchange, with substance--re Vietnam, and Nixon's
just-concluded visit to China, and fiscal responsibility--as well as fun
and games. PM: "Well, I don't consider joining the Democratic Party, and
I think the significant differences used to be that we were the party of
the individual, small business, small farmers..." WFB: " 'We' being
Republicans?" PM: "We used to be the party of fiscal responsibility. And
I feel more comfortable as a Republican than I do with men like Mayor
Daley or John Stennis or Jim Eastland, who..." WFB: "Or John Lindsay?"
PM: "Well, I like John Lindsay, but I..." WFB: "We weren't talking about
the romantic aspects." PM: "If that's romance, then I'm in trouble."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.282
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6216
item Program Number S0039
"The Meaning of China"
Guests: Terrill, Ross.
29 February 1972
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 87 : 1
Publicity File: Box/Folder 105 : 21
Transcript: Box/Folder 169 : 20
Program details: Mr. Terrill, whose articles--based on first-hand
reporting--had had an electrifying effect, comes from the
social-democratic side of things, and there are times when this show
turns into a matter-versus-anti-matter clash. WFB: "Now, I understand
you to ask the questions: Is it really wrong that a central authority
should tell this professor what to study, and this guy what books to
write? And the very fact that you consider this an open question is
remarkable and says a great deal about your appreciation of China,
suggesting that we are a way station to Orwell." RT: "Let me tell you
why I ask the questions: because I think we don't approach China from a
fixed point, as if our world is settled and beyond criticism.... And I
want people to think about their own society at the same time as they
think about China. In the past, we've looked at China as a kind of
exotic area--as if, indeed, it were another planet--without thinking
that there were points, problems with points, about our own country as
well."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.283
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6217
item Program Number S0040, 43
"Genocide"
Guests: Conquest, Robert.
8 February 1972
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 106 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 169 : 20
Program details: A rich discussion of genocide and the world's reaction
to it, with the world's foremost student of Stalin's reign of terror. To
Mr. Buckley, "contemplating the recently discovered genocide in
Bangladesh, the eyes and ears of the world are strangely, perversely
dull, since no one, that I know of, suspected that the killing was on
such a scale." To Mr. Conquest, "I don't think one does know exactly the
scale of these things till years later." The operative question, for
him, is whether we're attempting to find out what is happening, or
whether we judge according to "which side has the best publicity
machinery." One sample: WFB: "If I were to arrive at, say, the Daily
Telegraph office here with a first-hand account of 100,000 people
slaughtered in, say, Brazil, what kind of treatment would my account get
in the next morning's papers?" RC: "... The first question is: Who did
the killing? . . . Even leaving aside the question of taking ideological
stances on the matter, I'd have thought that a million killed in Bengal
would be about the same news as, say, a couple of hundred thousand
killed in Brazil, which again would be about the same news as four
killed in Kent State." WFB: "Or thirteen in Londonderry."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.281
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6215
item Program Number S0041, 44
"The Irish Problem"
Guests: McAliskey, Bernadette Devlin,
1947-
25 March 1972
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 106 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 169 : 21
Program details: Miss Devlin had earned the reputation of a young
firebrand (still only 24, she had already served in Parliament for three
years; recently she had physically attacked the Home Secretary on the
floor of the House of Commons; visiting New York a year or so earlier,
she handed over to the Black Panthers the key to the city that Mayor
Lindsay had given her). She demonstrates here that her discontents are
not precisely those of most of her Irish Catholic constituents: WFB:
"You've had more experience than any country in the history of the world
with democratic government, and the fact that you still..." BD:"You'd
think by now we'd know it doesn't work." WFB: "...have an imperfect
system suggests one of two things: one is that..." BD: "I do suggest one
thing: that we scrap the whole system and try another one. This one
evidently doesn't work." WFB: "Yeah, that's your suggestion. There are,
I suppose, about 50 million people who disagree with you, and unless you
want to suspend the democratic process, we are going to have to wait for
them..." BD: "We've never had a plebiscite on it."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.285
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6219
item Program Number S0042, 46
"Fascism, Past and Present"
Guests: Mosley, Oswald, Sir,
1896-
25 March 1972
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 87 : 2
Publicity File: Box/Folder 106 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 169 : 21
Program details: A great career in politics had been predicted for Sir
Oswald Mosley, until he shocked Britain by founding his fascist party
just as Hitler was consolidating power in Germany. This proves to be a
surprisingly rich hour, though with a certain surrealism. OM: "I've
admitted that the other fascist states--I don't think it would have been
so true, if I had won here--did ignore liberty and they did great
damage. Mussolini had his Lipari Islands and people interned. They did
then, in time of peace, what was done to me... in time of war." ... "Do
you really think that flowery speeches like that [Churchill's at Yalta
saying that Stalin was "a friend whom we can trust"]... had any effect
on a man who had gone the long and dusty road from Siberia to the
Kremlin, or that he could be won over by Mr. Churchill drinking his
toast? The whole concept was ridiculous, and no wonder clever and able
and shrewd American conservatives like Mr. Buckley are alarmed when Mr.
Nixon goes to China and has feasts and all the rest of it."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.284
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6218
item Program Number S0043, 47
"An English Inquiry into American Conservatism"
Guests:
Evans, Roger. : Riddell, Peter. : Middleweek, Helene.
8 February 1972
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 106 : 4
Transcript: Box/Folder 169 : 22
Program details: Another installment of the half-yearly feature in which
Mr. Buckley changes places with his guests--in this case, three young
people who had served as
Firing
Line
panelists many times, starting when
they were still at Cambridge. A freewheeling, at times boisterous
discussion of everything from the supersonic transport to Vietnam to
unemployment--sometimes all in one paragraph. PR: "When you're, for
instance, an aerospace worker who's kicked out of a job, who's used to
earning $10,000 plus at least..." WFB: "Which is a good argument for
escalation in Vietnam..." PR: "No, it's not a good argument for
escalation in Vietnam. It's perhaps a good argument for building
supersonic jets so that the Rockefellers can fly between Paris and New
York all the time." WFB: "Well, that was your decision, not ours...."
HM: "And you mentioned Vietnam ..." PR: "The aerospace worker who's out
of work--you can't say that he should go along and answer any
help-wanted ad to become a cook." WFB: "Oh, but I most emphatically
do.... I don't say that there is any obligation in any country to
provide the kind of work that people equip themselves for, if the public
ceased to demand that kind of specialty..." HM: "Then aren't you cutting
off, you know, with your Procrustean stroke?"
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.280
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6214
item Program Number S0044, 48
"Government Secrecy"
Guests: Anderson, Jack, 1922-
20 April 1972
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 106 : 5
Transcript: Box/Folder 169 : 22
Program details: Mr. Anderson, as WFB puts it, "is in the news these days
as the principal transmission belt of government secrets to the public."
This often-heated clash turns on questions of what secrets the
government and public figures should be able to keep secret. JA: "I
think that Lyndon Johnson is neither more divinely appointed nor more
sublime than I am." WFB: "Well, he was elected President of the United
States, which you haven't yet been." JA: "Well, that is correct. But he
has also grossly, flagrantly abused the truth. He has misrepresented
what happened." WFB: "Of course. I've been saying that for years." JA:
"Well, I thought you might agree with me. But what divine right does he
have to do this?...Don't I have as much right to dig out those untruths
as he has to issue them?" WFB: "You don't have to dig out anything. I
haven't needed--" JA: "Of course you do." WFB: "--to filch his files in
order to demonstrate the difference between his public rhetoric--" JA:
"Somebody had to." WFB: "--and much of his public behavior."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.286
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6220
item Program Number S0045, 49
"The Greek Dilemma"
Guests: Papandreou, Andreas George.
20 April 1972
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 87 : 3
Publicity File: Box/Folder 106 : 6
Transcript: Box/Folder 169 : 23
Program details: It was the government of Mr. Papandreou's father,
George, that had been ousted by the Colonels in 1967, and Papandreou
fils--who had been jailed, released, and expelled from the country--was
lobbying the United States Government to apply the considerable leverage
that our military bases there gave us to pressure the Colonels into
restoring democratic government to Greece. One sample, on the question
of how useful Greece would be as an ally. AP: "Hitler had to come
down--in fact, delay his whole schedule for attacking the east--in order
to confront these literally, practically, unarmed soldiers. It's not
very different from Vietnam, by the way. When there is soul in a
struggle--" WFB: "Are you suggesting there wouldn't be soul in a
struggle against the Soviet Union?" AP: "I am not suggesting that. I
think there would be soul in Greece in the struggle against any
occupation force, whether it was red, blue, green, or white colors. And
this is why we are fighting today against what we consider to be a
military occupation of Greece, not an internal dictatorship but a
military occupation of Greece by NATO and under the guidance of the
Pentagon."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.287
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6221
item Program Number S0046, 50
"Election Reform"
Guests: Finch, Robert H., 1925-
5 May 1972
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 87 : 4
Publicity File: Box/Folder 106 : 7
Transcript: Box/Folder 169 : 23
Program details: Campaign reform was in the air. The Democrats had
substantially altered their nomination procedures following the battle
in 1968, and there were bills proposed in Congress for a mandatory
nationwide primary. Mr. Finch explains his opposition cogently and with
helpful detail. "The question is," he asks, "who would pay for it?"Also,
if there were only one primary on a single date, "it would be impossible
to have a development of dialogue on whatever the issues, whatever time
frame we go through now, which starts with New Hampshire and ends with
California." Mr. Finch has his own proposal, which involves clustering
primaries on a few dates, but spreading them out over, say, eight weeks,
and letting the state parties continue to write their own rules--e.g.,
as to winner-take-all or proportional voting.
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.289
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6223
item Program Number S0047, 51
"The Implications of the China Trip"
Guests: Walker, Richard
Louis, 1922- : Mozingo, David P.
5 May 1972
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 106 : 8
Transcript: Box/Folder 169 : 24
Program details: Two months after President Nixon's trip to China (on
which Mr. Buckley was one of the accompanying journalists), we have here
two old China hands to help us sort it out. We begin with the February
28 Shanghai Communique (which in Mr. Mozingo's view "seeks to get rid of
two fallacies...that Taiwan speaks for the government of Mainland China,
and second, that the United States, by an overt and forward policy of
identification with Taiwan, engages itself in the still existent
question of the civil war") and go on to, among other things, the
Communique's effect on japan. RLW: "We have, so to speak, cut Japan
adrift. Now, Japan is, as Brzezinski describes it, a 'fragile flower.'
One of the big questions is the matter of style, the way in which it was
done...They thought they had a firm agreement in writing from Secretary
of State Rusk that we would not make any dramatic moves in our China
policy...without intimate and detailed consultation." The discussion is
sometimes a bit technical for a non-China hand, but there are some
delicious anecdotes.
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.288
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6222
item Program Number S0048, 52
"Alcoholism"
Guests: Sweisgood, Peter. : Hirsh, Joseph.
15 May 1972
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 87 : 5
Publicity File: Box/Folder 106 : 9
Transcript: Box/Folder 169 : 24
Program details: The Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, as Mr.
Buckley begins by telling us, "had issued a report the burden of which
is that the public attention given to narcotics is all very well and
good, but that the principal drug addiction in the United States is
alcohol." WFB: "Would [you] consider it unprofessional to raise your
hand and say, 'For Heaven's sake, everybody stop drinking'?" JH: "No, I
don't think it would be unprofessional of me to say so, but I think it
would be unrealistic of me to say so, and I couldn't in good conscience
say so." For Father Sweisgood (who had been personally affected by his
father's and his own alcoholism, and who says, "If I could drink, I
would drink"), "I've stopped looking at the many, many people who can
use it well and I'm very concerned about the people who are dying from
it.... You've got a much better chance of stopping him [a young man just
starting to have a drinking problem] if you tell him the truth in a
credible way, either before he crosses the line of loss of control or,
once having crossed it, knowing, 'Look, this is a disease. There's
something I can do about it before I wind up with this sclerotic liver
and a wet brain.'"
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.291
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6225
item Program Number S0049, 53
"A Populist Manifesto"
Guests: Greenfield, Jeff. : Newfield,
Jack.
15 May 1972
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 87 : 6
Publicity File: Box/Folder 106 : 10
Transcript: Box/Folder 169 : 25
Program details: "The candidacy of George McGovern," WFB begins, "is off
to a ripping start largely because of the appeal of what they are
nowadays calling 'the new populism.' By happy coincidence for [today's
guests], they brought out during the same season a book on the new
populism called A Populist Manifesto: The Making of a New Majority." And
we're off on a rousing battle over taxes and fairness. WFB: "An oil
company is you and me and a lawyer to whom we pay $25 and we constitute
ourselves an oil company. You are aware that there are thousands?" JG:
"They may be you, babes, but they ain't me." WFB: "There are people much
poorer than you, my friend, who have gone out and struck oil. H. L. Hunt
was one of them. And if there is any?" JG: "You mean J. Paul Getty,
don't you?" WFB: "Some people write books and some people..." JG: "Bill,
you do mean J. Paul Getty, not H. L. Hunt." WFB: "I mean H. L. Hunt. H.
L. Hunt was much poorer than you when he struck oil. I know; my father
lent him money." JN: "At what rate?"
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.290
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6224
item Program Number S0050, 54
"The Arab Side"
Guests: Sharaf, Abd al-Hamid, d. 1980. :
Hurewitz, J.C. : Issawi, Charles. : Horelick, Arnold.
1 June 1972
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 88 : 1
Publicity File: Box/Folder 106 : 11
Transcript: Box/Folder 169 : 25
Program details: King Hussein had recently unveiled his plan for a
"Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, which included turning the West
Bank--which had been occupied by the Israelis since the 1967 war--into a
semi-autonomous state with its capital in Jerusalem ..." The Israelis,
obviously, had not been thrilled, but neither had the militant
Pan-Arabs. Mr. Sharaf, as befits a diplomat, discusses this and other
questions calmly but with some eloquence: "... in the United States, as
well as in Europe and in the West generally, there is a basic
misconception with regard to the Arab-Israeli conflict which stems from
some emotional associations--a sense of guilt with regard to what
happened to the Jews in the West and a wrong identification of that
question with the Israeli question in the Middle East, where the
situation is actually reversed. There, Israel has actually occupied
territory not belonging to it and has set up the origin of the
problem--a state that has been expanding, basically at the expense of
the owners of that land, the Palestinian people."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.293
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6227
item Program Number S0051, 55
"Does Subversion Work?"
Guests: Beilenson, Laurence W.,
1899- : Barth, Alan.
1 June 1972
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 106 : 12
Transcript: Box/Folder 170 : 1
Program details: Laurence Beilenson had just stirred up the dovecotes
with a book arguing that the United States should openly support and
finance subversive movements within the Communist world. WFB begins by
asking whether he is "in favor of doing anything to the Soviet Union in
any way different from what the Soviet Union routinely does to us." LB:
"No." WFB: "Have you no imagination?" LB: "I should like to be more
successful. But the Soviet Union plays in our back yards; I merely
propose that we play in theirs." Mr. Barth won't go so far as to
characterize this idea as "offensive," but he does believe that "it
would present, to be blunt about it, sir, a graver danger of subverting
the character of the United States than of subverting the character of
the Soviet Union or China, or any other country to which it were
directed." And we're off on a heady discussion with historical
illustrations stretching back to Hitler, Lenin, and Queen Elizabeth
I.
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.292
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6226
item Program Number S0052, 56
"Richard Nixon and Young Conservatives"
Guests: Smith, J.
Brian. : Harroff, Mark. : Rohrabacher, Dana, 1947- : Hukari, Harvey H.
16 June 1972
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 106 : 13
Transcript: Box/Folder 170 : 1
Program details: The McGovern youth were ubiquitous in this election
season, but, as WFB points out, "it is obvious that there are other
young people around, some of whom are even for Nixon ... It is less
obvious that there are still others to the right of Nixon (if that is
the word for it), who are a strange, quiet, but fascinating complement
to the McGovern people." We have met Mr. Hukari before (
Firing
Line
181); on that occasion he was the lone right-winger in a sea of
left-wing radicals. Mr. Rohrabacher would a decade later become a
speechwriter for President Reagan; in 1988 he would win a congressional
seat from his native California. The two RNC chaps start out judiciously
with polling data on young people; the fun starts when the libertarians
jump in: HH: "One notices that the only kind of literature that the
campaign committee ... distributes says, 'Re-elect the President'; they
never remind you that the President's name is Richard M. Nixon. And
there's a very good reason for that: because they've taken a poll that
shows more people are in favor of re-electing the President than are in
favor of re-electing Richard M. Nixon." WFB: "When you say, 'Long live
the Queen,' you don't say, 'Long live Queen Elizabeth.' Isn't that just
sort of a way of doing things?" HH: "I don't know. I think there's
something more conspiratorial behind it."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.294
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6228
item Program Number S0053, 57
"No-Fault Insurance"
Guests: Lewis, Marvin E. : Lansman,
Harry A.
16 June 1972
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 88 : 2
Publicity File: Box/Folder 106 : 14
Transcript: Box/Folder 170 : 2
Program details: A half-dozen states had adopted "no-fault" insurance
laws; other states and the Federal Government were considering doing so.
"There are few hotter subjects facing the local legislatures," as WFB
puts it, "and for once there isn't a clear-cut liberal-conservative
division." Although our two guests are decidedly on opposite sides of
the fence, this is less a debate than a thoughtful exploration of the
concepts of "specific" and "general" damages, how the different sorts of
no-fault laws might work, and whom they benefit and whom they harm. Mr.
Lewis, for example, outlines the hypothetical of a woman who suffers a
severe sprain of her upper neck and back, but no fracture. It may take
her months to be able to pick up her child or do housework without pain,
but "under even the Massachusetts bill, what she would receive is $380,
which are her bills; but no matter how negligent was the person who
injured her, she could not recover those damages for her inconvenience,
her pain, her suffering, and her disability."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.295
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6229
item Program Number S0054, 58
"Music and Modernism"
Guests: Valenti, Fernando.
16 June 1972
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 106 : 15
Transcript: Box/Folder 170 : 2
Program details: Mr. Valenti, a Yale classmate of Mr. Buckley's, was
regarded as one of the premier keyboard artists in the world; he proves
to be as delightful verbally as in his chosen medium as he and his host
explore the Baroque and its relation to the modern. WFB (after Mr.
Valenti has played the gigue from Bach's B-flat Partita): "Wow! Was the
hand crossing supposed to be in any sense exhibitionistic, or does the
music just make it impossible to accomplish in any other way?" FV:
"Well, it's a little bit of both. It certainly is supposed to have a
visual impact on the audience, and it's sheer ham.... Some pieces can
actually be played, some of the most famous hand-crossing incidents in
the Baroque era, without crossing your hands." WFB: "You mean by
refingering and so on?" FV: "Yes, you can play your notes and be
faithful to the score without this pretzel-shaped operation ... However,
it doesn't sound the same, which leads one to believe that... the
kinesthetic thrill, the danger of missing the note--which one very, very
often does--does something to the performer and does something to the
piece.... The reason I know is because we have tried this experiment
with some hand-crossing pieces on tape, where you can't actually see the
performer ... and you can hear the difference."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.296
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6230
item Program Number S0055, 59
"Three McGovern Delegates"
Guests: Galbraith, John Kenneth,
1908-2006. : Galbraith, Peter (Peter W.) : Galbraith, James K.
9 July 1972
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 106 : 16
Transcript: Box/Folder 170 : 3
Program details: Here come the Galbraiths, in town for the Democratic
National Convention starting the following day. "I regret to report,"
WFB begins, "that there is no generation gap between father and sons." A
wild and woolly hour, with the junior Galbraiths proving frighteningly
articulate and sharing their father's style of humor. WFB: "I should
like to begin by asking Jamie: If the convention declines to nominate
Mr. McGovern and McGovern strikes out on his own, will you also bolt the
party?" JG: "I don't think that's a very likely possibility." WFB: "I
didn't ask you that." JG: "If the convention were to deny George
McGovern the nomination on the basis of the steal of the delegates from
California, I would not support the nominee and I would probably work
for George McGovern should he choose to run on another ticket. But
again, I think that's an entirely hypothetical question." WFB: "I don't
mind asking you hypothetical questions." JKG: "You wouldn't want to
comment on this larceny, would you, Bill? You're a rather honest man."
WFB: "Are you prompting your son?" JKG: "No, I'm just asking you a
question." WFB: "Does this happen all the time?"
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.299
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6233
item Program Number S0056, 60
"Should the SALT Pact Be Approved?"
Guests: Jackson, Henry
M. (Henry Martin), 1912-1983. : Church, Frank.
9 July 1972
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 106 : 17
Transcript: Box/Folder 170 : 3
Program details: President Nixon had signed the Strategic Arms Limitation
Treaty during his controversial trip to Moscow and had now sent it to
the Senate for ratification; Senator Jackson, the leading Democratic
hawk, strongly opposed the treaty; Senator Church, a leading dove,
strongly favored it. The discussion on this show is technical, but host
and guests use specifics well to keep the audience in the picture. WFB:
"When we use the word 'de-stabilizing,' it seems to me that we fall
quite commonly into the error of [forgetting] ... that we do not
ourselves plot an offensive war and, under the circumstances, that which
de-stabilizes us is of no particular strategic consequences--only that
which de-stabilizes them." FC: "Well, that is one of your statements
that sounds very profound but which doesn't make any sense. It doesn't
make any sense at all..." WFB: "We're not going to attack Moscow, are
we?" FC: "...because, look, given the arsenals that had been built up on
both sides, given the capacity that each side has to utterly destroy the
other, this kind of war between the United States and the Soviet Union
is an insanity." ... HJ: "I'm not saying the Soviets are out for a
first-strike force, but I have to take a look at what they've got over
there. They already have under this agreement, and will have, 1,618
missiles, with a throw weight 4 to 1 over us ..."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.300
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6234
item Program Number S0057
"Afternoon on the Potomac?"
Guests: Jenkins, Roy, 1920-
3 July 1972
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 106 : 18
Transcript: Box/Folder 170 : 4
Program details: Mr. Jenkins--who had just resigned as Deputy Party
Leader over the issue of the Common Market, which he supported and
Labour Party Leader Harold Wilson opposed--had been in younger days a
working journalist and historian; he had just written a book titled
Afternoon on the Potomac-- the thesis of which, as he states it here, is
that "we've all of us lived through the plenitude of American power,
which I think, on the whole--there have been blemishes, certainly--has
been rather beneficial for the world for the past generation, and that
power is getting rather strained at the present time." An illuminating
discussion, primarily of how treaties work, from Bretton Woods to SEATO
and NATO. RJ: "We never did march side by side with you in Vietnam."WFB:
"In a sense you did." RJ: "What we did was to refrain from criticizing
you."WFB: "Yes, but we'll settle for that as a rule."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.298
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6232
item Program Number S0058, 62
"The Pentagon Papers"
Guests: Ellsberg, Daniel.
25 July 1972
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 106 : 19
Transcript: Box/Folder 170 : 4
Program details: The term "Pentagon Papers" has entered the language, but
we may have forgotten that the papers in question were a study
commissioned by Secretary of Defense Robert Strange McNamara on the
background to the United States' involvement in Vietnam. It was Mr.
Ellsberg who in 1971 had turned the secret papers over to the Washington
Post and the New York Times; the Supreme Court had ruled that the
newspapers had the right to publish them, but, as Mr. Buckley phrases
it, "that decision ... did not derivatively exonerate those who gave the
classified material" to them, and at the time of this show, Mr. Ellsberg
was on trial. To Mr. Buckley's first question--whether his guest had
immunity for anything he might say in the next hour--Mr. Ellsberg
replies: "Well, you haven't come to an expert. I'm a beginner at being a
defendant, and all I know is what I've heard in court, really." The
discussion begins calmly enough with consideration of the Espionage Act,
but once we get to Vietnam, we're off to the races.
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.301
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6235
item Program Number S0059, 69
"On the Concorde"
Guests: Benn, Tony, 1925-
3 July 1972
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 106 : 20
Transcript: Box/Folder 170 : 5
Program details: Among the biographical data that Mr. Buckley gives in
his introduction are the facts that Mr. Benn had briefly been Viscount
Stansgate--a title he renounced to avoid being bunged up to the House of
Lords, which would have ruined his political career--and that host and
guest had first met when the latter was the captain of an Oxford
debating team that toured the United States in the late Forties and
debated WFB's team at Yale; "I ...note sadly that he did not there upon
renounce his socialist faith." (Still in the future: the official
shortening of our guest's name to Tony Benn in a populist-tinged pursuit
of the prime ministership.) The subject today is the supersonic
transport, which Mr. Benn had fostered while Secretary for Technology;
the conversation ranges from the Concorde itself, to the American SST
that might have been, to China, to moonshots, to whether Edmund Burke
was right in his speech to the electors of Bristol.
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.297
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6231
item Program Number S0060, 70
"The McGovern Phenomenon"
Guests: Mankiewicz, Frank, 1924-
22 September 1972
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 106 : 21
Transcript: Box/Folder 170 : 5
Program details: It had been Mr. Mankiewicz who, from the hospital in Los
Angeles, told the world that Robert Kennedy was dead; it was Mr.
Mankiewicz now who was generally credited with getting George McGovern
the Democratic nomination. This free-swinging exchange goes from polls
to primaries to economics to defense. WFB: "I agree with you, and I
think as Mr. McGovern turns away from the surrealism of his position
over the last year and a half, he will increase his vote. It's true that
there are certain people who are going to be disillusioned with him. The
Platonists, who were attracted to him because they thought of him as
sort of a convulsive redistributionist, may feel that he is now playing
with practical politicians." FM: "We never saw any of those placards-
'Convulsive Redistributionists for McGovern.' We never set up that
committee."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.303
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6237
item Program Number S0061,
201
"James R. Hoffa"
Guests: Hoffa, James R. (James Riddle),
1913-
22 September 1972
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 88 : 3
Publicity File: Box/Folder 107 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 170 : 6
Program details: Jimmy Hoffa had spent seven years in federal prison
after having been prosecuted by Attorney General Robert Kennedy for
malfeasance in office. Whatever one may think of Mr. Hoffa in general,
on this show he is eloquent in his plea for more humane treatment of
prisoners. JH: "The criticism I have of the prison system in the United
States ... is very simple: that, even though a man is incarcerated and
convicted of a crime, you have no right to take away the dignity of a
man, nor have you any right to attempt to destroy any initiative that he
may have and regulate him as though he were some oddment."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.304
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6238
item Program Number S0062,
202
"The Jewish Vote"
Guests: Wexler, William A. : Glazer,
Nathan. : Perlmutter, Nate. : Lebow, Ned. : Manheim, Jarol. : Schneier,
Edward.
3 October 1972
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 88 : 4
Publicity File: Box/Folder 107 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 170 : 6
Program details: American Jews had traditionally voted very heavily
Democratic--80 per cent in the 1968 presidential election. This time
around the percentage was expected to be much lower, perhaps as low as
50 per cent. Is it purely because of Israel? "No: there are also the
quotas being ushered in by affirmative action, and the Cold War apart
from Israel; also, as Mr. Perlmutter (who has witnessed the phenomenon
close up in his new role at Brandeis) puts it, the very look--yes, the
very look-of people who are shouters. The demagoguery that I used to
associate with the far Right, the simplistic sloganeering, I'm more apt
to recognize today in the extreme reaches of the Left." Host and guests
take a vivid side trip to Italy in 1948 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 in
exploration of what Jews mean by worrying, re Israel, as Mr. Perlmutter
puts it, "whether or not this nation will continue to live."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.305
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6239
item Program Number S0063,
203
"Sex Education"
Guests: Fort, Joel, 1929- : Calderone, Mary
Steichen, 1904- : Van den Haag, Ernest.
3 October 1972
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 88 : 5
Publicity File: Box/Folder 107 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 170 : 7
Program details: Dr. Calderone was widely regarded as the principal
pioneer of sex education in the schools, although she insists that her
interest is in sex education "for everybody; all of us." The two sides
in this debate can agree that, as Professor van den Haag puts it, "even
if you present five different value systems and present them, so to
speak, neutrally, the major effect on the student would be, 'It doesn't
matter,' which is another value system." But as to the place of sex
education in the schools, never the twain shall meet. EvdH: "I agree
with Dr. Fort that there is a great deal of learning, if not formal
education, about sex going on from all kinds of sources. Under the
circumstances, why is it necessary also to teach it in schools?" MC: "As
a corrective." JF: "Because most of that is not good information." EvdH:
"Well, why do you assume that teachers have good information to give?"
JF: "I don't assume that either." MC: "I don't assume the parents have
good information either."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.306
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001W6R8ZQ
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6240
item Program Number S0064,
204
"Hate America"
Guests: Rader, Dotson. : Beichman, Arnold.
3 October 1972
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 107 : 4
Transcript: Box/Folder 170 : 7
Program details: "We are discreetly removed from the madness of yesterday
on the campuses," WFB begins, "though an apostolate survives and is
perhaps regrouping to strike again. At what? 'At America' is the easiest
way to put it." Mr. Rader is emphatically of that disposition; Mr.
Beichman emphatically is not. The conversation sometimes spins into
outer space but never slows down. AB: " 'All power to the people' is
your signature line. What people were you talking about?" DR: "It's
basically a populist position." AB: "What people-not the hardhats,
obviously. You wouldn't want them to have power." DR: "No, I think the
basic thrust of the New Left... We always make a mistake because we
assume the New Left is Marxist, which it's not." AB: "Is it Leninist?"
DR: "... No, I think in spirit it is basically 18th century. That's how
it began-18th-century constitutionalism.... This, coupled with
disillusionment with American institutions, coming largely out of the
response of those institutions to what were rather good-natured,
traditional protests of grievances, the war-" AB: "Wait a minute.
'Good-natured'--you lost me there." DR: "I think they were
good-natured."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.307
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00267S566
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6241
item Program Number S0065,
205
"The U.S. Election Viewed from Abroad"
Guests: Fontaine,
Andre, 1921- : Aron, Raymond, 1905- : Gordey, Michel.
27 October 1972
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 107 : 5
Transcript: Box/Folder 170 : 8
Program details: A week before the Nixon-McGovern election, how do things
look from the other side of the Atlantic? Our guests, though disagreeing
as to whether they personally hope President Nixon will win, believe
that the French people on the whole feel more comfortable with him than
with his opponent. A lively discussion, going back to Mr. Nixon's role
in the internal-security investigations of the late Forties and early
Fifties. RA: "They are used to him and they have the feeling, rightly or
wrongly, that he has done better than expected. The journeys to Peking
and Moscow were, perhaps, slightly less popular in France than in the
United States, but were rather popular." WFB: "Why?" RA: "Oh, for a very
simple reason-because we got the impression that the destiny of Europe
was decided by Mr. Nixon and Mr. Brezhnev in Moscow, which is perhaps
good for peace, but not good for our amour propre."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.308
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6242
item Program Number S0066,
206
"Abortion Laws: Pro and Con"
Guests: Noonan, John Thomas,
1926- : Lucas, Roy.
25 July 1972
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 107 : 6
Transcript: Box/Folder 170 : 8
Program details: The most visible abortion battleground was New York
State, where the legislature had voted to repeal the extremely
permissive law it had passed two years before, and Governor Rockefeller
had vetoed the repeal. But the case challenging that veto would probably
never make it to the Supreme Court, Mr. Lucas explains, for there were
others ahead of it in line; in retrospect, we know that one of those,
Roe v. Wade, was decided in January of 1973. This show covers familiar
ground, but often from angles that are still fresh thirty years later.
RL: "Would you favor legislation requiring a woman to submit to strong
medical treatment to stop spontaneous abortion and penalizing her
accordingly if she didn't? ..." JTN: "No, I think you're again
committing what I would say was a fault in moral reasoning. Because
you're bound to avoid doing some injury to a person does not mean that
you're bound to do everything possible in the world to help him."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.302
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E52U8A
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6236
item Program Number S0067,
207
"Harold Macmillan"
Guests: Macmillan, Harold, 1894- :
Riddell, Peter. : Middleweek, Helene. : Weil, Stephen.
1 November 1972
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 88 : 6
Publicity File: Box/Folder 107 : 7
Transcript: Box/Folder 170 : 9
Program details: A radiant show with the last of the Edwardians; even the
left-wing members of the panel are visibly entranced. One sample: In the
wake of President Nixon's trip to Moscow, WFB asks his guest about his
own abortive trip to Moscow in 1959, for a meeting with Khrushchev that
the latter called off because of the U-2 flight. HM: "Well, I think that
all our experts here very much overestimated Khrushchev's power. Because
Stalin had been a ruthless dictator for twenty years, they assumed that
his successor was a successor to a dynasty as strong. But he wasn't for
two reasons. First of all, he wasn't as strong as Stalin--hadn't the
extraordinary, almost maniac grip that that man had. And secondly, the
one thing Russia was never going to have again was the terror. If you're
a dictator and you won't have the terror, you are getting very near
almost to a free system." And on to civil disobedience among the trade
unions, the Special Relationship, and what had changed between 1942,
when Churchill said that he had not become the King's First Minister in
order to preside over the liquidation of the British Empire, and what
Mr. Macmillan calls "the India decision" in 1947.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.311
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6245
item Program Number S0068,
208
"Christianity and Capitalism"
Guests: Soper, Donald, 1903- :
Riddell, Peter. : Middleweek, Helene. : Weil, Stephen.
1 November 1972
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 89 : 1
Publicity File: Box/Folder 107 : 8
Transcript: Box/Folder 170 : 9
Program details: Lord Soper is more than experienced at public
controversy; as Mr. Buckley tells us, "He is widely known for his
unbroken schedule of appearances at 12:30 sharp every Wednesday at Tower
Gate, by the Tower of London. There he speaks and takes questions from
hecklers week after week, year after year, decade after decade.
Unfortunately," Mr. Buckley continues, he is "a socialist and a pacifist
and, unfortunately, he confuses Christian doctrine with these secular
heresies." Nonetheless, this proves to be a good-natured exchange,
whether on Christian doctrine or on the position of blacks in the
American South or on Karl Marx's dialectics or on the Inquisition. DS:
"What I would say is this. I would prefer to try to resist Communism,
even were we invaded by Communist hordes, by non-violent methods, than
to precipitate a war in order to resist that Communist threat. I
honestly believe that there is nothing worse than war." WFB: "You
believe that there's nothing worse than war." DS: "Nothing worse than
war."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.310
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6244
item Program Number S0069,
209
"The Free Market and America"
Guests: Giscard d'Estaing,
Valeiry, 1926- : Galbraith, Evan G.
27 October 1972
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 107 : 9
Transcript: Box/Folder 170 : 10
Program details: There had recently been a meeting of the International
Monetary Fund in Washington, at which M. d'Estaing had taken a more
conciliatory line vis-à-vis America than his country had followed in the
recent past. Today's discussion is often technical, on matters such as
excess dollars held by foreign governments, floating versus fixed
exchange rates, and Common Market farming policies, but it is good to
meet the future President of the republic, in company with the future
U.S. Ambassador to France. VGdE: "Flotation is probably a means to be
used before an adjustment of parities. If you want to know how the
market would judge your own currency, it could be useful to let it
float, for instance, several weeks or a few months, but not as an
institution."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.309
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6243
item Program Number S0070,
210
"Political Financing"
Guests: Strauss, Robert S.
28 November 1972
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 107 : 10
Transcript: Box/Folder 170 : 10
Program details: The election had come and gone, and no one was blaming
Mr. Strauss for George McGovern's decisive loss to Richard Nixon. But
already the question was, "How would the next presidential campaign be
financed? A new law was passed a year ago ...," WFB begins, "but the law
is itself the subject of criticism as a bureaucratic nightmare and as a
measure of quite dubious constitutionality." A lively discussion of both
the theory and the recent history of campaign finance, with Mr. Strauss
floating an idea that nearly thirty years later began to find favor with
people on both sides of the fence: "One of the great weaknesses we've
had, one of the great faults we've had, one of the things that's made
people think it's sinister or evil, has been secrecy. And I think
bringing it out in the open and opening the doors and windows and
letting people see who's giving and to whom they are giving begins to
get at the heart of the problem."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.312
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6246
item Program Number S0071,
211
"The Old and the New Foreign Policy"
Guests: Rostow, W. W.
(Walt Whitman), 1916-2003. : Rostow, Eugene V. (Eugene Victor), 1913-
28 November 1972
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 107 : 11
Transcript: Box/Folder 170 : 11
Program details: A rich hour with these two brothers who are both
scholars and men of action. The discussion starts with Vietnam and the
alienation of the intellectuals, but roves widely in time and space.
EVR: "What's happened, I think, psychologically is that the policies and
ideas which dominated the postwar period ... have suddenly lost their
power to command." WFB: "Why?" EVR: "... Well, I think men have reached
the conclusion that if that policy requires results as terrible as Korea
and Vietnam, there must be something wrong with it. There must be an
easier way to achieve security." ... EVR: "The line I always took when I
did talk about [Vietnam]... was when you use force, you'd better win.
..." WWR: "My own view, from 1961 down to the time I left Washington,
was that there's only one military way to shorten the war .. . you had
to put forces on the ground across the Ho Chi Minh Trail or into the
southern part of North Vietnam ... The President did not accept that
position, and I believe for good reasons, ... [but] that led to its
being an extremely protracted war.... Pham Van Dong said, 'Americans
don't like long, inconclusive wars. This will be a long, inconclusive
war, and, therefore, we shall win.' "
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.313
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6247
item Program Number S0072,
212
"Looking Back on the Civil-Rights Laws"
Guests: Carter,
Hodding, 1907-1972. : Reed, Clarke. : Adams, John Quincy. : Banks,
Taunya Esq. : DeLaughter, Jerry.
12 December 1972
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 89 : 2
Publicity File: Box/Folder 107 : 12
Transcript: Box/Folder 170 : 11
Program details: These two natives of Greenville, Miss., have wound up on
opposite sides of the political fence. Mr. Carter was the leader of the
challenger (i.e., anti-Wallace) Mississippi delegation at the 1968
Democratic Convention in Chicago. Mr. Reed, one of the first Republican
activists in the Deep South, was a conservative leader at the 1972
Republican Convention in Miami. But today's subject is not partisan
politics but rather the civil-rights laws. Would desegregation have come
about anyway, owing to as WFB puts it, "a developed conscience," or did
it require, in Mr. Carter's phrase, the "extremely heroic effort" of
Martin Luther King and others? To Mr. Reed, "I was concerned at the time
that the overriding concern of protecting the Constitution and the
three-part government transcended the immediate gains of civil rights in
the South.... I disagree with Hodding. I think this would have come
about, but this saved a great many years. Now whether it saved enough
years to tamper with the fabric of constitutional law-that's an open
question."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.314
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6248
item Program Number S0073,
213
"The Southern Imagination"
Guests: Welty, Eudora, 1909- :
Percy, Walker, 1916- : Weaver, Gordon. : Ward, Jerry. : Hise, Dan.
12 December 1972
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 107 : 13
Transcript: Box/Folder 170 : 12
Program details: What made Southern literature distinctive? Is it
distinctive still? This show starts a little slowly--Miss Welty in
particular is thoughtful rather than quick--but we soon get to the heart
of the matter. WP: "I think that for a hundred years Southern
literature, before and after the Civil War, was not particularly
distinguished. It was ingrown; it was either romantic or it was
defensive.... Then along about 1920, I think the cultures began to merge
and you had a kind of spark jumping, so that you had people like
Faulkner coming on who began to write about their region but in such
universal terms, neither romantically nor defensively, that it made
itself understood to people from other parts of the country." ... EW: "I
was here all that time and I felt the unreality of late-night telephone
calls from strangers asking me, 'How can you stay in that place? Why
don't you use all of your novelistic powers and so on and write some
things against this?' And really, I assumed that my whole life I had
been writing about injustice ... I was always against it, but what I was
writing about was human beings."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.315
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0064EGKVE
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6249
item Program Number S0074,
214
"The Young"
Guests: Burgess, Anthony, 1917- : Tilton,
Richard. : Armenakis, Diana. : Bulbulia, Ahmed.
21 December 1972
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 107 : 14
Transcript: Box/Folder 170 : 12
Program details: A splendid conversation with the author of A Clockwork
Orange, who had just infuriated what Mr. Buckley calls "the militant
student community" by publishing an open letter urging them to "think
harder and learn who Helen of Troy and Nausicaa were and, for God's
sake, stop talking about relevance." One sample from Mr. Burgess: "What
have I, a person of a very ancient generation, a person who's already
55, to say to young men and women in their late teens and twenties? I
think I have something to say, but this is contested, and not only by
the young. It's contested also by people who should know better-the
professors, the lecturers who put themselves beside the young
deliberately, hoping thereby when the revolution comes, if it does come,
that they'll get some sort of special preference, discounting the fact
that they'll probably be the first to be put up against the wall and
have to face the firing squad."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.316
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001W6R900
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6250
item Program Number S0075,
215
"A Conservative Look at Marijuana"
Guests: Bryant, Thomas E.
: Greenway, John.
21 December 1972
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 107 : 15
Transcript: Box/Folder 170 : 13
Program details: "Once again," WFB begins, "marijuana is in the news."
California voters had just rejected a ballot initiative to ease the
marijuana laws; but many organizations had come to favor changes ranging
from outright legalization to decriminalization of possession. Are
changes in public attitudes prompted by new research? Not really,
according to Dr. Bryant: "We have a number of ongoing research projects,
trying to get at the physiological, biochemical, psychological changes,"
but "I'm not sure that there have been any major breakthroughs."
Nonetheless, he has come to favor decriminalization. Mr. Greenway, whose
specialty is being a curmudgeon, spends several minutes fencing ("I
don't care for sincerity, either"), but then settles down to recounting
experiences both as a professor and as a member of the Boulder Police
Department: "What makes marijuana, to me, particularly dangerous is that
it's represented as not being dangerous."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.317
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0026ZQE9S
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6251
item Program Number S0076,
216
"The Catholic Crisis"
Guests: Wills, Garry, 1934- : Marotta,
Gary. : Neckelis, Ruth. : Gabel, Jack.
10 January 1973
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 107 : 16
Transcript: Box/Folder 170 : 13
Program details: "Mr. Wills was once," as Mr. Buckley puts it, "a
political conservative. He is most often referred to nowadays as a
radical." He once studied for the priesthood at a Jesuit seminary; his
latest book raked his church over the coals. The sharp exchanges here
between two old friends and former comrades in arms are clearly
illustrative of two different worldviews. GW: "Up until recently ...
there were certain ... loyalty tests-if you didn't eat meat on Friday,
if you didn't practice birth control... These were the matters of
authority; this is what made you a Catholic.... Obviously [the Pope]
feels ... that if people can disobey him on [birth control], they are
going to say then, 'The Pope doesn't matter' ..." WFB: "No, but only if
they defy him explicitly. It's one thing for a bishop to say, 'I will
not enjoin on my flock conformity to Humanae vitae'; it's something else
for women to use birth-control devices surreptitiously...." GW: "Well,
the way that they do defy him explicitly is a very interesting one and
very important to the Catholic psychology; that is, the ones who
practice birth control now still go to the Sacraments. There could not
be in the Catholic mentality a more total denial of the Pope's power to
refuse the Sacraments to them."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.318
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6252
item Program Number S0077,
217
"The CIA and Foreign Policy"
Guests: Hunt, E. Howard
(Everette Howard), 1918-2007. : Lazo Perez, Mario, 1931-
18 January 1973
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 107 : 17
Transcript: Box/Folder 170 : 14
Program details: In the course of the Watergate investigation, Mr.
Buckley reminds us, "Mr. Hunt had been outed as a CIA man, indeed as the
principal CIA official directly involved in" the Bay of Pigs. Mr. Lazo
was not directly involved in that operation, but, as he tells us, "a
year after Castro came to power, in January 1960, when the American
embassy went down, I became a self-appointed spy for the U.S.... And
what I did was to arrange with a friendly European government to send
reports once a week to the FBI." ... EHH: "The fiasco of the Bay of Pigs
was not a failure of intelligence.... The failure of the Bay of Pigs
came about because at a critical time commitments that had been made by
high officials of the United States government to the Cubans who were
fighting,... those officials backed away from those commitments and, in
effect, abandoned the brigade at the beachhead." Discursive at times but
fascinating, not least Mr. Lazo's reminiscences of events in Cuba ten
and twenty years earlier that are linked to Watergate.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.320
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6254
item Program Number S0078,
218
"The Future of Conservative Values"
Guests: Moynihan, Daniel
P. (Daniel Patrick), 1927-2003.
18 January 1973
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 107 : 18
Transcript: Box/Folder 170 : 14
Program details: In his former post Mr. Moynihan had been the architect
of the Family Assistance Plan (FAP), discussed on
Firing
Line
170 and
the subject of his latest book, The Politics of a Guaranteed Income: The
Nixon Administration and the Family Assistance Plan. A rich discussion
of private charity and government efforts to help the poor, the politics
of trust, and much else. One sample: DPM: "This is a book which will,
I'm afraid, be reviewed as a book of politics. It's a book about
politics. I've had the experience of being in government and out, and
trying to make that distinction is not always easy, but it's certainly a
distinguishable condition. And this is written as a professor of
government about processes of government, processes in which I was
involved. So I have to declare my interest in the beginning, but I would
hope to be objective about it."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.321
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6255
item Program Number S0079,
219
"What Are the Challenges for Conservatives in 1973?"
Guests:
Pressman, Gabe. : Reeves, Richard, 1936- : Nichols, Mary Perot.
10 January 1973
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 107 : 19
Transcript: Box/Folder 170 : 15
Program details: The semi-annual occasion on which the guests grill their
host. As Mr. Buckley frames today's discussion, "A year ago in a
television special, a half-dozen American conservatives met to speculate
about the future. The re-election of President Nixon, his forthcoming
trips to China and Russia were the centers of the conversation....
Inevitably the question of interest not only to American conservatives
but to others is: What now?" An often brilliant series of exchanges on
everything from whether there are any conservatives of distinction, to
whether there was once a reign of terror against liberal journalists, to
how one goes about getting marijuana onto one's boat in order to smoke
it outside the three-mile limit.
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.319
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001WAKUM0
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6253
item Program Number S0080,
220
"How Does It Go with the Black Movement?"
Guests: Newton,
Huey P. : Sinkin, Lanny. : Holland, Patricia. : Mounce, Gary.
23 January 1973
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 89 : 3
Publicity File: Box/Folder 107 : 20
Transcript: Box/Folder 170 : 15
Program details: Mr. Newton, WFB reminds us, was "tried and convicted of
killing a policeman ... The slogan 'Free Huey Newton' was to the late
Sixties what the slogan 'Who promoted Peress?" was to the early
Fifties." In due course an appeals court reversed the verdict, and the
juries thereafter were hung, so that Mr. Newton eventually was freed.
This show has many surprises, starting with the first exchange. WFB:
"... imminently he will publish his autobiography, which is called
Revolutionary Suicide, a concept I shall now ask Mr. Newton, please, to
explain." HN: "I'll explain it, but if I may impose upon you, I have a
friend who's almost dying for me to ask this question, if you will. The
question is: During the Revolution of 1776, when the United States of
America broke away from England, my friend would like to know which side
would you have been on during that time?" WFB: "I think probably I would
have been on the side of George Washington. I'm not absolutely sure,
because it remains to be established historically whether what we sought
to prove at that point might not have been proved by more peaceful
means. On the whole, I'm against revolutions, though I think, as
revolutions go, that was a pretty humane one." HN: "Yes, you're not such
a bad guy after all. My friend will be surprised to hear that. I hope
he's listening."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.323
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003JMFB9G
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6257
item Program Number S0081,
221
"The White House and the Media"
Guests: Whitehead, Clay
Thomas. : Mansbach, Richard W. : Baker, Ross K. : Mendelowitz, Allen.
1 February 1973
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 89 : 4
Publicity File: Box/Folder 107 : 21
Transcript: Box/Folder 170 : 16
Program details: Mr. Whitehead had just given a widely noticed speech in
which he had accused television stations of "ideological plugola" and
"elitist gossip," and the question before the house is, as Mr. Buckley
phrases it, "how does one, in fact, draw up a standard by which to
ensure the fairness of individual stations in presenting points of
view?" It turns out that there really isn't a standard--not one, at any
rate, that Mr. Whitehead or Mr. Buckley can come up with--that doesn't
have an element of subjectivity. But along the way we learn a lot about
how the FCC actually interprets the Fairness Doctrine, how the new
technologies make it easier to infringe on copyrights, and whether
reruns are in the public interest. WFB: "Just what does 'elitist gossip'
mean?" CTW: "It, in my book, means just what it says. It's the trading
of more or less unsubstantiated tales among people who think that
they're a little better than other people.... For instance, the network
reporter who comes on the air and says, without doing much checking of
his own, that, 'It is being said in Washington that,' or 'It is widely
believed that.'"
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.325
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6259
item Program Number S0082,
222
"Texas Politics"
Guests: Dugger, Ronnie. : Farenthold,
Frances. : Milburn, Beryl.
23 January 1973
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 89 : 5
Publicity File: Box/Folder 107 : 22
Transcript: Box/Folder 170 : 16
Program details: "More attention," WFB begins, "is given to the politics
of Texas than to those of practically any other state of the Union.
There is, of course, the matter of the hugeness of Texas; but there is
also the tradition of Texas-rich, powerful, self-assured, demanding,
cocky, impenitent." Mrs. Farenthold is a Democrat who has fought the
Democratic establishment on the grounds of its corruption ("We don't
have clean-cut bribery any more. It's all with stock manipulation or
sale of ranch lands at inflated prices or disposition of oil
leases")-although she is evidently shocked when Mr. Buckley asks whether
"the Federal Government ought to intervene in Texan affairs in order to
set things right." To Mrs. Milburn, the problem is that Texas has "a
one-party monopoly and it breeds corruption ... You may change some of
the players but the plays remain the same." Mr. Dugger admits that "I
would prefer an honest Republican to a dishonest Democrat"-but instantly
carries the fight back into the enemy's camp over the way Texas
primaries are run. A hard-fought, entertaining hour in this
larger-than-life state.
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.322
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00267S56G
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6256
item Program Number S0083,
223
"The USIA"
Guests: Shakespeare, Frank.
1 February 1973
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 107 : 23
Transcript: Box/Folder 170 : 17
Program details: Mr. Shakespeare had just stepped down as USIA Director,
having said he would serve only one term, and he had been denounced by
the New York Times for "having irritated foreigners [and] demoralized
old agency hands... with his stridently propagandist hard-line
approach." This rich discussion-which ranges from present-day Bulgaria
to early Christianity to Confucianism to Daniel Ellsberg-begins with Mr.
Buckley asking Mr. Shakespeare "why he irritated foreigners. What have
you got against foreigners?" FS: "... I would say to the extent that we
irritated foreigners you'd have to divide the world into groups of
people. I think we were an irritant to the Soviet Union, certainly." On
to an explanation of how the Voice of America operates, and how to deal
with dictatorships: "I think as dictatorships get terribly insecure they
frequently try to resolve their internal insecurities by creating,
artificially, an external peril. But if you follow that line of thinking
too far you'll say, 'Well we should do everything in the world to make
that dictatorship secure.' "
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.324
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6258
item Program Number S0084,
224
"The Irish Problem, 1973"
Guests: O'Neill, Terence.
25 February 1973
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 89 : 6
Publicity File: Box/Folder 107 : 24
Transcript: Box/Folder 170 : 17
Program details: A return visit by Lord O'Neill, whom we last met on
Firing
Line
(159) just after he resigned as PM ("What defeated me was
something so typically Irish. That was that in 1966 it happened to be
the 50th anniversary of what the British call the Dublin Rebellion and
what the Irish call the Rising ... This gave [extreme Protestant Ian]
Paisley his platform of protest... and from that moment on, things
became very, very difficult"). The discussion ranges back to Cromwell
and forward to the likely outcome of the current situation, in which
Britain had suspended Stormont (Northern Ireland's parliament) and
imposed direct rule from London. There is a fascinating and moving
detour on World War II-the part that Northern Ireland played in the
Allies' effort, and the difference it might have made had the Irish
Republic done the same.
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.326
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6260
item Program Number S0085,
225
"The Welfare State"
Guests: Williams, Shirley, 1930-
25 February 1973
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 89 : 7
Publicity File: Box/Folder 107 : 25
Transcript: Box/Folder 170 : 18
Program details: As Shadow Home Secretary, Mrs. Williams occupies, as Mr.
Buckley puts it, "the second most important post in the party. Indeed,
she has been spoken about quite even-handedly, not to say resignedly, as
not unlikely the first woman prime minister of England." Aha! A spirited
give-and-take ranging from nationalized health care to taxation to
old-age pensions. WFB: "Your commitment to socialism is a very
considerable commitment; so is your commitment to democracy. What I'm
asking you is this: As a Christian, if you have to forsake one or the
other, which of the two do you forsake?" SW: "What politicians tend to
say is, 'I don't answer hypothetical questions.' I will answer it....
Well, I would forsake socialism for democracy ... because-" WFB: "Now,
why?" SW: "... What is central to my philosophy, I suppose, is a
dispersal, a sharing of power.... I don't want a government which is so
powerful, like that of the Soviet Union, that in effect it can order the
way in which people live ... So I may want something that you would
argue is impossible of achievement, that is to say, the maximum
individual liberty but in a situation in which power is distributed as
widely as can be." WFB: "I think this is probably fair to say about
everybody in this room."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.327
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6261
item Program Number S0086,
226
"Corporal Punishment"
Guests: Kuper, C. C. : Newell, Peter.
: Sparks, Kenton. : Hands, Timothy. : O'Dwyer, Victor. : Edwards,
Robert.
27 February 1973
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 89 : 8
Publicity File: Box/Folder 107 : 26
Transcript: Box/Folder 170 : 18
Program details: England virtually alone in the civilized world still
maintained the practice of corporal punishment, specifically caning, in
its public (i.e., private) schools. On the one hand, critics such as Mr.
Newell, himself a "public school old boy," were campaigning to end the
practice in England. On the other hand, some Americans, as Mr. Buckley
relates, wonder if reinstituting corporal punishment in our country
mightn't help solve some of our schools' worst disciplinary problems.
Mr. Kuper, who vigorously defends the practice in England but thinks it
would be "catastrophic" to export it to the States, is wonderfully
old-school. A delicious cultural clash--with the student panelists (all
very grown-up sounding, but wearing the Beatle haircuts of the period)
speaking not of world events but of what they know first hand.
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.328
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6262
item Program Number S0087,
227
"Women's Lib"
Guests: Greer, Germaine, 1939- : Riddell,
Peter. : Middleweek, Helene. : Evans, Roger.
27 February 1973
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 107 : 27-28
Transcript: Box/Folder 170 : 19
Program details: A few weeks earlier Mr. Buckley and Miss Greer had taken
part in a formal debate at Cambridge on the women's liberation movement.
In this rematch, we start out at the level of movement politics ("So I
have to do this mental juggling act of reconciling the professional
women's association with the radical lesbians ..."), and go from there
through the betrayal of the Russian Revolution "when Lenin decided to
ridicule Aleksandra Kollontai and to absolutely outlaw the workers'
opposition" (WFB: "Now, are we in 1919 in the women's liberation
movement?"), to the generation gap created by the mobile nuclear family,
to this imperishable exchange: GG: "Well, I mean somebody is exploiting
the hell out of sex. I mean, everybody exploits what they have.... I
might as well say that if you weren't such a good-looking fellow, you
wouldn't be in the position that you're in today. You exploit it too.
You may not do it consciously." WFB:"Well, now, wait a minute." GG (to
the audience): "Don't you agree that he is a pretty man?" WFB: "Well,
I... Let's accept that as a hypothesis." GG: "I think interpersonal
subjectivity proves it to be true. Just as this studio is pale blue,
you're a pretty man."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.329
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6263
item Program Number S0088,
228
"The Federal Government and Education"
Guests: Weinberger,
Caspar W.
30 March 1973
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 107 : 29
Transcript: Box/Folder 170 : 19
Program details: Mr. Weinberger had recently been raked by members of
Congress for the proposed alterations in his department's budget. He had
defended himself ably there; here, in more congenial company, he engages
in a deeper discussion of education specifically and government
expenditure generally. CW: "It applies to every group that has some
stake in the budget or in federal programs.... Usually the litany goes
something like this: 'We're doing this program. We've been doing it for
many years. We agree with you that economies are necessary ... 'but take
it out of defense.' And if you add up all of those reductions from the
defense budget, we would be not a second-class power but a fifth-class
power."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.330
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6264
item Program Number S0089,
229
"The Equal Rights Amendment"
Guests: Schlafly, Phyllis. :
Scott, Ann. : Areen, Judith. : Ryan, Fr. Edmund G. : Eddy, Brenda.
30 March 1973
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 107 : 30
Transcript: Box/Folder 170 : 20
Program details: The Equal Rights Amendment was on its way to
ratification, when a funny thing happened: one of the states (to be
followed by others) that had ratified it rescinded its ratification. The
rescission had been mobilized, as WFB puts it, "not by sexist males but
by women, many of whom on second blush are discovering in the amendment
implications they regard as inimical to the best interests of American
women." Like what? Like, replies Mrs. Schlafly, the draft. Wait a
minute, says Ms. Scott: "if women are to be citizens and citizens are to
be subject to the draft, then women should take the responsibilities as
well as the rights of citizenship." Swords flash as we move from the
draft to employment opportunities to child support. Whether or not our
two guests will ever agree on anything, we do learn where the battle
lines are drawn.
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.331
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00267S56Q
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6265
item Program Number S0090,
231
"Proposals for Welfare"
Guests: Carter, Jimmy, 1924- :
Skinner, Richard. : Young, Margaret. : Stafford, Jeffrey.
23 April 1973
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 107 : 31
Transcript: Box/Folder 170 : 20
Program details: This show was the first nationally televised appearance
of the future President, and a former associate of Governor Carter's
later told Mr. Buckley that it was the first time he had heard the new,
less Georgian accent. The Governor, who was the immediate successor to
the segregationist Lester Maddox, had struck out on a dramatically new
course by saying, in his inaugural address, "I say to you quite frankly
that the time for racial discrimination is over." Since then he had
argued, as WFB puts it, "that Southern governors nowadays face other
problems, much the same as those faced by governors of states outside
the South." In this encounter, Governor Carter sounds quite conservative
in talking about welfare and incentives, and specifically the advantages
in having job-training programs and attendant industry dispersed
throughout the state so that "instead of moving to Atlanta and living in
a 20-story-high apartment complex," poor farmers can commute to a local
job that pays a living wage; hence "we haven't had the massive move off
the farm areas into the cities that other states have."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.332
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ANCWMRE
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6266
item Program Number S0091,
232
"What to Do about the Post Office"
Guests: Hollings, Ernest
F., 1922-
23 April 1973
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 89 : 9
Publicity File: Box/Folder 107 : 32
Transcript: Box/Folder 170 : 21
Program details: An historical curiosity: this program begins with Mr.
Buckley's explaining that the Corporation for Public Broadcasting has
declined to renew
Firing
Line's
funding, and that therefore, if
alternative funding is not found, this will be the last installment.
Twelve hundred
Firing
Lines
later ... But back to Senator Hollings, who
is scathing on the way the quasi-privatization of the Post Office had
been done. The spirited conversation ranges from permitting real
competition in postal services, to the effect of poor postal service on
the magazine industry, to Senator Hollings's other preoccupation,
welfare reform. EFH: "Now here in America, if you try to feed little
children like that, there are many in my own crowd who say, 'Oh, no, if
you feed them, they'll never work'; whereas one of the great planks of
America's national defense, in international relations or foreign
policy, is to feed. Get out there. The foreign soul will respond to the
hand that feeds it. We want to get there before Communism."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.333
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TZ8GPDY
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6267
item Program Number S0092,
236
"The Implications of Watergate"
Guests: Powell, James O. :
Murphy, Reg, 1934- : Clark, Robert P.
16 May 1973
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 107 : 33
Transcript: Box/Folder 170 : 21
Program details: The semi-annual occasion on which the guests put their
host on the
firing
line
-in this case, mostly on the subject of
Watergate, which had been simmering since just a few days after the
break-in the previous June but had only become the daily staple of our
front pages when Gordon Liddy, Howard Hunt, and five others were put on
trial in January. WFB and his guests mostly remand the details of what
happened at the Watergate and who ordered it to a time when more
evidence is in; instead, the crackling discussion ranges from the
possibility of changing the presidential tenure to a single, six-year
term, to how Congresses have historically dealt with a President who has
been repudiated but is still in office (e.g., Herbert Hoover in 1931),
to the continuing war in Vietnam. WFB: "If you live in a society in
which lawlessness becomes intellectually fashionable, as it was in this
country during the last ten years, you beget, I think, a
counter-countercultural lawlessness of which Watergate is an
example."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.336
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00267S570
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6270
item Program Number S0093,
237
"Limitations of Presidential Power"
Guests: Humphrey, Hubert
H. (Hubert Horatio), 1911-1978.
24 May 1973
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 90 : 1
Publicity File: Box/Folder 107 : 34
Transcript: Box/Folder 170 : 22
Program details: "There is no one in Washington," Mr. Buckley begins,
"with the exception of Richard Nixon, who has had Senator Humphrey's
experience within the Executive and the legislature." The Nixon
Administration and Congress had been clashing regularly for four years
by now--whether over Mr. Nixon's authority to order the Cambodian
incursion, or, now, over executive privilege and the growing shadow of
Watergate. The Senator is honest enough to admit that the growth of
presidential power by no means began with the man who defeated him for
the Presidency. Mr. Humphrey starts with FDR and goes on from there,
with some of the more flavorous descriptions being of the man he served
as Vice President: "Your lapels were never safe with Lyndon Johnson, you
know.... Johnson was a total political man. I don't think that Mr. Nixon
is at all. Nixon is, in many ways, a loner. That's his style."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.338
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6272
item Program Number S0094,
238
"Meat Prices and Agricultural Policy"
Guests: Butz, Earl L.
(Earl Lauer), 1909-
24 May 1973
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 90 : 2
Publicity File: Box/Folder 107 : 35
Transcript: Box/Folder 170 : 22
Program details: A surprisingly engaging show on what could be a very dry
topic. We remember Mr. Butz today, if we remember him at all, mostly for
his having been put in Coventry for making a silly joke. In fact, he
proves a knowledgeable and lucid guide through the intricacies of farm
pricing and foreign trade-e.g., is the sale of wheat to the Russians
responsible for higher prices of bread in our supermarkets, or are they
a result of other policies, and of general inflation? EB: "... farmers,
like TV personalities, are ingenious. They can use their pencil, you
know. And I guess what happens is you simply transfer part of your
operation to Mrs. Buckley or Mrs. Butz ... or to the nephew or
son-in-law, as you say."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.339
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6273
item Program Number S0095,
239
"Conservatives View Watergate"
Guests: Van den Haag, Ernest.
: Rusher, William A., 1923-
20 June 1973
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 107 : 36
Transcript: Box/Folder 170 : 23
Program details: If Mr. Nixon goes down, how much will the conservative
movement be affected? In Mr. Rusher's view, not much: "I don't think
that either liberal Republicans or conservative Republicans, as such,
have been touched in any important particular by Watergate. It is the
group in the White House which is neither liberal nor conservative but
administrative, non-political, the Haldeman-Ehrlichman group, that has
been totally destroyed by Watergate." To Mr. van den Haag, Nixon "is
seen, not necessarily by the conservatives themselves but by the
non-conservatives, including those sympathetic to conservatism and those
not so sympathetic, as the symbol of how conservative the Republican
Party can get and win. No doubt Mr. Goldwater is seen as more
conservative, but not as winning." And on to civil disobedience, the
ethics of bugging, and whether the break-in at Daniel Ellsberg's
psychiatrist's office was really motivated by concern for national
security.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.340
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6274
item Program Number S0096,
240
"How Much Protection for the Press?"
Guests: Rembar,
Charles. : Williams, C. Dickerman.
20 June 1973
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 90 : 3
Publicity File: Box/Folder 107 : 37
Transcript: Box/Folder 170 : 23
Program details: As Mr. Buckley frames the question, "When last heard
from, Congress had before it59 separate bills designed to provide 59
varieties of protection for newsmen." These"shield laws" were
politically explosive; the Pentagon Papers and the leaks that prompted
President Nixon to authorize the Plumbers had been front-page news for
much of his Administration. Mr. Rembar takes the view that newsmen
should have essentially the same protections as lawyers, doctors, and
priests; Mr. Williams has the perspective of having been, once upon a
time, an assistant U.S. attorney, and knowing how difficult it is in our
legal system to get the information you may need in order to
prosecute.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.341
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6275
item Program Number S0097,
241
"Legal Aspects of Abortion"
Guests: Noonan, John Thomas,
1926- : Pilpel, Harriet F.
1 May 1973
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 107 : 38
Transcript: Box/Folder 170 : 24
Program details:
Firing
Line
last took up the subject of abortion in July
of 1972 (s0066). Since then, the Supreme Court had dropped its Roe v.
Wade bombshell, to the surprise, as WFB points out, of pro-lifers and
pro-choicers alike. In this well-argued and often heated discussion,
Mrs. Pilpel, who considers Roe a "superb decision," takes seriously that
decision's language concerning the different trimesters of pregnancy.
Mr. Noonan proves the more prescient in saying, "In fact, throughout the
entire nine months, there is [in Roe] no recognition of the baby's
interest and life, and we do in fact have, for the first time in our
history, for the first time in the history of Anglo-American
civilization, abortion on demand as the law of the land."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.335
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6269
item Program Number S0098,
242
"Drugs and Freedom"
Guests: Szasz, Thomas Stephen, 1920- :
Simmons, Paul D. : Grayson, Deborah. : Lobenstine, Clark.
16 May 1973
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 107 : 39
Transcript: Box/Folder 170 : 24
Program details: Another round in the drug fight, this time with a man
who has made his name arguing that there is no such thing as mental
illness. The audience may feel at times that we're behind the looking
glass, but the conversation does help us clarify our own thoughts about
human motivation. TS: "Drug addiction, Mr. Buckley, is a metaphor....
The phenomenon we are talking about, in my opinion, is best described by
the good old English word 'habit.'..." WFB: "Okay. How can we
conveniently distinguish between, for instance, my habit, firmly
consolidated, of requiring peanut butter for breakfast and somebody
else's habit of requiring a heroin shot at breakfast time?" TS: "Why
should we?" WFB: "I want you to help me terminologically because I think
that unless your prisms are acute enough to distinguish between peanut
butter for breakfast and heroin for breakfast, you may very well be
being frivolous in a dangerous sense." TS: "... Excuse me, no, there's
nothing frivolous about this, Mr. Buckley. The question is ... why you
want to make the distinction, because in my view the only reason to make
the distinction is to persecute somebody."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.337
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6271
item Program Number S0099,
243
"Is There an Ecological Crisis?"
Guests: Commoner, Barry,
1917- : Resnikoff, Arthur. : Wedemeyer, Susan. : Cormick, Gerald.
1 May 1973
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 107 : 40
Transcript: Box/Folder 170 : 25
Program details: Mr. Commoner was perhaps the leading scholarly exponent
of the view that we needed to change course right now if we weren't to
damage our environment irretrievably. He and Mr. Buckley strike sparks
off each other in addressing such questions as, how can government best
encourage citizens not to pollute? Is government itself encouraging
pollution and waste of depletable resources by, e.g., favoring highways
over railroads? Do Cadillac buyers not know, or do they not care, that
their vehicles use more gasoline than Volkswagens? WFB: "I hope you, if
President of the United States, would not appoint as Secretary of
Defense somebody who would superordinate the problems of ecology over
those of national sovereignty." BC: "Well, that is your hope; mine is
the reverse." WFB: "Why would you call him Secretary of Defense? Call
him Secretary of Undefense, or Secretary of Surrender." BC: "Why don't
we call him Secretary of Survival?"
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.334
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004SQFR9Q
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6268
item Program Number S0100,
244
"Was It Worth It?"
Guests: Shepard, Alan B. (Alan Bartlett),
1923-1998.
24 July 1973
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 90 : 4
Publicity File: Box/Folder 108 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 170 : 25
Program details: Admiral Shepard's unequivocal answer to the title
question is: Yes, it was worth the effort to send men to the Moon. Does
that mean we should go back to the Moon again, or try to go on to Mars?
Not yet, he says, given what else we might do with finite resources, and
given how much of the data brought back we still have not assimilated.
This is not the most exciting show, but Admiral Shepard has thought
deeply and speaks engagingly on matters such as what, apart from the
human spirit, space exploration is good for. AS: "I think that the
recent Skylab mission, which was supposed to be 28 days of blissful
experiments and turned out to be 28 days of a cliffhanger, probably
demonstrated as graphically as any of us could how well man can function
in space--not only the crew but those men on the Earth who are
responding to the various emergencies that come up."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.342
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6276
item Program Number S0101,
245
"What Now for the Ghetto?"
Guests: Bradley, Thomas.
24 July 1973
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 90 : 5
Publicity File: Box/Folder 108 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 1
Program details: Mr. Bradley was the first black mayor of a predominantly
white major city; as a young man he had become an L.A. policeman,
eventually serving for twenty years, and more recently he had sat on the
City Council. This discussion begins, inevitably, with the question of
race (WFB: "So you don't think that it would be dismaying, say, to your
supporters in Watts if you were to criticize irresponsibility when
committed in Watts?" TB: "I didn't say that. It may be dismaying. I'm
sure there are going to come moments like that.... But that's the
responsibility that you face"), but quickly moves to topics such as
education, crime, and the impending traffic crisis if Angelinos can't be
persuaded to carpool or ride public transportation.
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.343
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TZ8GIR2
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6277
item Program Number S0102,
246
"World Federalism Today"
Guests: Cousins, Norman.
30 July 1973
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 90 : 6
Publicity File: Box/Folder 108 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 1
Program details: World federalism, then as now, is a red flag to American
conservatives: Abrogate our sovereignty? In favor of whom? Mr. Cousins
is the most benign exponent possible, and even his opponents will find
his formulations intellectually provocative, e.g., "I had in mind the
fact that the world is a geographic unit. The dominant condition of life
in that unit is anarchy. Anarchy has never lasted very long in any
unit.... The big question is: first, will a responsible world government
come into being, one which is a federation where the individual nations
maintain their own cultures and institutions, or will it be a monolithic
government which will come about by force, or one that could come about
by picking up the radioactive pieces... after war?"
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.344
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6278
item Program Number S0103,
247
"Russian Jewry and American Foreign Policy"
Guests: Simes,
Natasha. : Simes, Dimitri K.
30 July 1973
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 108 : 4
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 2
Program details: The U.S. Congress had overwhelmingly passed the Jackson
Amendment, Senator Henry Jackson's effort to prevent the United States
from granting the Soviets Most Favored Nation trading status until they
stopped blocking the emigration of Jews. The Simeses were among the few
who had been allowed to leave the Soviet Union, and they had been living
here for nearly a year. Their English is not perfect, but that ceases to
matter as they describe life in Stalin's day, compared to the Khrushchev
reform period, compared to the current middle-Brezhnev period. DS:
"Well, in 1953, you could be an average man. You had nothing against the
government. You could enjoy Soviet life and the Soviet regime, and,
nevertheless, one day your neighbor in your apartment could decide that
he needs your room. He could write a letter to KGB and the next night
you could be arrested and your neighbor could get your room. Today ...
if you are an average man and don't participate in the opposition
against the regime, you will not be arrested, and I think it's a great
progress." Alternate title: "Soviet Jewry and American Foreign
Policy."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.345
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0064EGKZU
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6279
item Program Number S0104,
248
"Questions about America"
Guests: Howard, Anthony. : Heren,
Louis. : Wells, Dee.
20 August 1973
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 108 : 5
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 2
Program details: A delicious exemplar of the semi-annual occasion on
which the floor is turned over to, as WFB puts it, "several
interrogators who may wish to catalyze my wisdom or tax me with my
sins." We begin here with Watergate and go back and forth over the whole
relation of government to the people. One sample: LH: "Mr. Buckley, you
know,you surprise me because you are espousing sort of 19th-century
ideals." DW: "I think he surprises even himself." WFB: "I'm not
embarrassed by the 19th century. I think some of the most brilliant
political insights were born then, unfortunately buried."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.346
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6280
item Program Number S0105,
249
"Democracy and Political Scandal"
Guests: Foot, Michael,
1913-
22 August 1973
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 108 : 6
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 3
Program details: In Mr. Foot's previous appearance on
Firing
Line
(075),
the themes were economic, and what principally emerged was Mr. Foot's
absolute commitment to socialism. Here, discussing comparative British
and American scandals (while Watergate was still less than half over, a
British sex scandal had been dispatched in weeks), he is less
predictable, and all the more interesting. E.g., on why a Watergate-type
scandal would have played out very differently in Britain: "Well, I
believe that a prime minister who was under the kind of attack that
Nixon has been under certainly wouldn't have been able to avoid coming
and facing his accusers. He would have had to come there at least every
Tuesday and every Thursday whilst the British House of Commons was
sitting and, indeed, of course, he would have faced serious risk of a
vote of censure."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.348
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6282
item Program Number S0106,
250
"Are Unions the Enemy of the Working Class?"
Guests:
Scanlon, Hugh.
22 August 1973
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 90 : 7
Publicity File: Box/Folder 108 : 7
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 3
Program details: The crisis that would the following year lead to the
downfall of Edward Heath's Conservative government had arguably been
exacerbated by the Industrial Relations Bill, formulated by the Labour
government of Harold Wilson but eventually passed under Heath. Mr.
Scanlon, a hard-line union man, gives no quarter. HS: "If it were a
matter of basic human rights, I would have to agree with you. But I
submit to you that the question of the relationships that exist between
management and workers is not a question of basic human rights." WFB:
"Yes. Well,... Suppose I worked in your union and you called a strike.
Would I have the basic human right to defy that strike and proceed to my
station at work if I chose to do so?" HS: "I don't think that that is a
basic human right." WFB: "Why not?" HS: "Because I believe the
principles of democracy are that the minority will obey the will of the
majority." WFB: "But suppose that the Parliament, representing the
larger majority, says it is one of my human rights. Then am I not right
in observing the democratic franchise so formulated?" HS: "You are right
in obeying it, but you equally can't deny our right to disobey it."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.349
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6283
item Program Number S0107,
251
"Has America Had It?"
Guests: Muggeridge, Malcolm,
1903-1990.
20 August 1973
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 108 : 8
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 4
Program details: Mr. Muggeridge is disinclined to be apocalyptic about
America's future, although he has to concede that the current
situation--with Watergate roiling away and the bitterness over Vietnam
by no means assuaged--gives America-bashers grounds for Schadenfreude.
WFB: "It is widely assumed that there was a terrible collapse of English
statecraft before the First World War and before the Second World War.
Was there the equivalent gloating in America that you know of?" MM: "I
wouldn't have said in America so much, but certainly on the Continent,
and in my lifetime I've seen this attitude. When I was young, the Empire
was at its maximum strength and I felt this incredible hatred that
everybody had for the British. I think the only difference ... is that
the British rather liked that-it rather pleased them to be regarded as
absolutely unspeakable wherever they went-whereas the Americans have no
taste for it."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.347
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001MBTSLI
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6281
item Program Number S0108,
252
"The Energy Crisis and Energy Policy"
Guests: Adelman,
Morris Albert. : Ritchie, Jock.
13 September 1973
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 108 : 9
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 4
Program details: Is there or is there not an oil crisis? If King Faisal
carries through on his threat to deny us oil (as he would in a few
months' time), can we make up the difference from other sources? Mr.
Adelman believes we can and argues that the worst thing we could do
would be to panic in the face of Faisal's threat. Mr. Ritchie argues
that at least at present--"owing partly to economic factors, partly to
environmentalist pressure, and partly to a lack of confidence that there
will be crude oil to produce"--we are dangerously short on production
and refinement facilities. A lucid discussion that helps clarify the
issues for the layman--although we may find disquieting the degree to
which the experts disagree--on, e.g., the amount of gas or oil or
uranium left in the earth: MA: "Jock, I really cannot remain silent.
That's a figure that none of my colleagues in the Department of Nuclear
Engineering can take seriously and really nobody else should."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.350
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00G707U1E
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6284
item Program Number S0109,
253
"Amnesty"
Guests: Schwarzschild, Henry. : Chigi, George F.
III. : Musil, Robert K. : Goldstein, Arthur.
13 September 1973
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 90 : 8
Publicity File: Box/Folder 108 : 10
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 5
Program details: Although the Vietnam War still dragged on, American
troops had come home, and Mr. Schwarzschild was a leader in the effort
to close that chapter in our history by granting unconditional amnesty
to draft dodgers and deserters. Although the discussion remains civil,
host and guest are about as far apart as two people can be, on
everything from the constitutionality of the draft, to the applicability
of precedents such as President Truman's amnesty for draft resisters in
1947 or the post-Civil War amnesty for Confederate soldiers. HS: "Is it
not time for this government and this society, which has now begun to
make peace with Hanoi, with Peking, with Moscow, to make peace with the
children of our country?"
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.351
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0064EGL3G
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6285
item Program Number S0110,
302
"The Security of Europe"
Guests: Douglas-Home, Alec, Sir*
28 September 1973
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 108 : 11
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 5
Program details: Sir Alec had been Britain's--the West's, really--point
man at the Helsinki Conference (formally, the Conference on Security and
Cooperation in Europe), and he had spoken strongly on the need for the
Soviet Union to offer more than "pious declarations" on behalf of
freedom and to take positive steps towards "freedom of movement of
people and ideas." However, many observers felt that he had not demanded
enough in the way of concrete actions. Was Sir Alec being overly
cautious, or was he being realistic? "You've got to be practical here.
The Russians just won't take it [the Iron Curtain] down, and, therefore,
you have got to find ways and means of contact with Russia which are
modest,... but never the less are a plus in terms of international
relations and detente." WFB: "Got to vault the wall." ADH: "Well, walls
have ends which you can go around.""
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.352
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6286
item Program Number S0111,
303
"The Nixon Presidency"
Guests: Lubell, Samuel.
28 September 1973
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 91 : 1
Publicity File: Box/Folder 108 : 12
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 6
Program details: Mr. Lubell's latest book had focused on the changes he
claims President Nixon had wrought in American life: not through
Watergate, but through the way he conducted the 1972 campaign--in WFB's
paraphrase, "persuad[ing] the electorate that they should renew his
mandate for more powerful government in the name of less powerful
government." Our guest quickly turns the tables on his host, saying: "I
think we'll get a clearer picture if we just push aside Mr. Nixon and
concentrate on yourself, because you are the spokesman for
conservatism--" ("A spokesman," WFB corrects), and Mr. Lubell wonders if
"there's any basis for conservatism left in the light of [Nixon's]
performance." A spirited and serious discussion of the whole question of
government intervention versus the activity of the free market.
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.353
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0064EGL54
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6287
item Program Number S0112,
305
"The Mechanism of Moral Development"
Guests: Skinner, B. F.
(Burrhus Frederic), 1904-1990. : Festinger, Leon, 1919- : Glass, Andrea.
: Grill, Harvey. : Clark, Elisabeth.
16 October 1973
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 108 : 13
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 6
Program details: The first in what WFB describes as "rather spectacular
and, I hope, thoughtful series of four exchanges between men
distinguished in the social sciences ..." The series lives up to its
billing, starting with this session featuring the leader of the
behaviorist school of psychology and a leader in cognitive theory. Do
people develop the attitudes they do because, as Mr. Skinner puts it,
"when we behave in selfish ways, we get slapped down"? Or do you also,
in Mr. Festinger's phrase, "start getting the internalization in the
sense that the person really likes that, values it, and will go on doing
it in the absence of sanctioning supervision"? An extremely rich
discussion, full of graspable details ranging from monkeys solving
puzzles to the differences and similarities between a child's rattle and
Beethoven's Ninth.
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.354
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004SQFRBO
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6288
item Program Number S0113,
306
"Heredity, IQ, and Social Issues"
Guests: Bever, Thomas G. :
Herrnstein, Richard J. : Glass, Andrea. : Grill, Harvey. : Clark,
Elisabeth.
16 October 1973
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 91 : 2
Publicity File: Box/Folder 108 : 14
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 7
Program details: The second show in the series on human behavior, this
one on the explosive subject of heritability of IQ. "Explosive," because
of its implications for social policy. Mr. Herrnstein had stirred up a
ruckus with his book IQ in the Meritocracy (though nothing like the
ruckus he and Charles Murray would stir up twenty years later with The
Bell Curve--see
Firing
Lines
s1029 and s1030), and he and Mr. Bever are
old antagonists. But they remain civil enough to give us a clear idea of
the points at issue between those who believe there is an element of
heritability and those who believe IQ is purely a matter of social
conditioning. RH: "It's not unclear at all. When you give a group of
children--or adults, for that matter--an IQ test, you get a group of
numbers. The numbers don't know where they came from, and these numbers
can be subjected to a statistical procedure known as estimative
heritability ... The answer comes out that the variation in IQ scores
from individual to individual is something between 60 and 90 percent
heritable. You don't need a theory of intelligence to say that."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.355
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004SQFRDC
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6289
item Program Number S0114,
307
"Can We Have an Independent Prosecutor?"
Guests:
Ruckelshaus, William Doyle, 1932-
12 November 1973
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 108 : 15
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 7
Program details: As Mr. Buckley recounts in his introduction, the
Watergate hostilities, which had already been in the headlines for more
than a year, had just escalated with the Saturday Night Massacre. Our
guest had been fired for refusing to fire Independent Prosecutor
Archibald Cox, and he here speaks knowledgeably about the legal and
moral ramifications and the probable next steps. WFB: "I should like to
begin by asking Mr. Ruckelshaus whether he believes there is any
question about Mr. Nixon's right to fire Mr. Cox." WR: "I think there's
some question about his right to fire him. There is no question about
his power to do so." WFB: "Would you elaborate on the distinction?" WR:
"Yes. I think 'right' implies some correctness of action, which I
thought was questionable, and that was why I refused to execute the
order. I think that acting through a presidential appointee [such as
the] attorney general, he would unquestionably ultimately have the power
to do so."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.358
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6292
item Program Number S0115,
308
"The Middle East Explosion and American Detente"
Guests:
Morgenthau, Hans Joachim, 1904-
12 November 1973
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 91 : 3
Publicity File: Box/Folder 108 : 16
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 8
Program details: One month after the Yom Kippur War had exploded Henry
Kissinger's Shuttle Diplomacy, how does the Cold War look? Mr.
Morgenthau had been observing the Soviet Union since long before there
was a Cold War, and his depth of knowledge is matched by his pungency of
expression. HJM: "We have a very unfortunate tendency to go from one
extreme to the other. Before 1970 or so, the Russians were the
incarnation of evil, not only to be contained but to be rolled back and,
if possible, wiped off the face of the earth. Now all of a sudden they
have become friends, nice people, and we did exactly the same kind of
thing with Stalin. You will remember we called Stalin 'Uncle Joe,' a
very nice uncle with lots of blood on his hands ..."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.359
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0064EGL90
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6293
item Program Number S0116,
309
"Limits of Behavioral Control"
Guests: Premack, David. :
Azrin, Nathan H., 1930-
18 October 1973
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 91 : 4
Publicity File: Box/Folder 108 : 17
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 8
Program details: Back to our series on human behavior. Mr. Buckley leads
off with a quotation from Aldous Huxley, comparing past religious,
political, and economic revolutions with "the impending psychological
revolution": " 'That will really be a revolution. When it is over the
human race will give no further trouble.' " His guests spend the rest of
this fascinating hour explaining that even if professional ethics did
not forbid this Brave New World kind of thing, human beings aren't so
malleable as all that. DP: "It behooves the experimentalist to say: 'You
shall not employ me as your technician. Instead we need to know who is
man, what is his nature, what are his operating principles, what should
his objectives be in the most enlightened way.' "
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.356
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6290
item Program Number S0117,
310
"Psychosurgery and Brain Control"
Guests: Valenstein, Elliot
S. : Blumer, Dietrich.
18 October 1973
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 91 : 5
Publicity File: Box/Folder 108 : 18
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 9
Program details: An exhilarating finale to the series on human behavior,
this one concentrating on the ethical and scientific limitations on
psychiatry and psychology. Drs. Valenstein and Blumer specialize in an
area the public finds particularly frightening: surgically killing a
portion of the brain that is causing intractable difficulties. EV:
"Well, I think there has been a tremendous amount of concern because of
the popularization of an idea that these techniques may have much
greater application than to a few patients who are at the end of their
rope, patients whom all psychiatric treatment, all physical therapies,
all drugs have failed." ... WFB: "Suppose Willie Sutton said, 'I just
don't want to rob banks. Can you do something to my brain that makes me
not want to rob banks?'" DB: "Without making the patient into a
vegetable?" WFB: "Yes." DB: "I don't think I could guarantee it."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.357
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6291
item Program Number S0118,
311
"Have We Learned Anything from Watergate?"
Guests:
Lowenstein, Allard K.
7 December 1973
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 108 : 19
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 9
Program details: In his third appearance on
Firing
Line
, Mr. Lowenstein
is, as always, genial and interesting, but in this case his hatred of
Richard Nixon runs so deep that we don't learn a great deal about
Watergate (the ADA, under Mr. Lowenstein's direction, had called for Mr.
Nixon's impeachment before Watergate, principally on account of the
bombing in Laos--see
Firing
Line
s0001). AL: "The rabbis used to tell me
you should not engage in Schadenfreude, which is the process of enjoying
the suffering of others. I must say that every time I think of the
latest involvement of the White House, when I think of--" WFB: "You're
tempted." AL: "I'm tempted."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.360
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6294
item Program Number S0119,
312
"The Jesus Movement"
Guests: Martin, Malachi.
7 December 1973
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 108 : 20
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 10
Program details: A rather rambling and diffuse show. Mr. Martin has the
gift of the blarney, but he contradicts himself regularly and has
trouble addressing the central question Mr. Buckley raises--concerning
the assertion in Mr. Martin's book that, as Mr. Buckley paraphrases it,
"the disrepute of Christianity is significantly related to the tendency
of diverse cultures and civilizations to take Jesus and adapt him to
their own uses and paradigms." One sample from Mr. Martin: "I think we
have millions of much better people than ever today and there is born a
new thing in the hearts of people. There is, I think, under the pressure
of life today and the intercommunication and the action of Jesus, who
works with compassion--I do sound like a Bible preacher but really I
believe this--there is born a new interest in the self, in what I
am."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.361
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00G707JBA
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6295
item Program Number S0120,
314
"The Future of the GOP"
Guests: Richardson, Elliot L., 1920-
20 December 1973
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 108 : 21
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 10
Program details: The last time the title "The Future of the GOP" was used
for a
Firing
Line
show, it was 1967 and the guest was former Vice
President Richard M. Nixon. This time around,the guest is the man who
resigned from President Nixon's Administration rather than fire Special
Prosecutor Archibald Cox (
Firing
Line
s0114). We begin cautiously: WFB:
"Are you free to discuss those of Mr. Nixon's characteristics that
affect his Administration, either adversely or favorably?" ER: "Yes."
WFB: "Beginning with the latter, let's say." ER; "Well, suppose we get a
little more specific; we'd find out just how free I was. I think that
insofar as I can shed any light on how we've come to where we are and
what this may mean for the future, I'd like to try to do that." And so
he does, citing, for example, an unrelated case in which the special
prosecutor had asked for certain documents. "We had obviously read the
documents; they were in our hands. And there was nothing in them that
was incriminating, and yet I was instructed by the White House not to
make them available to the special prosecutor as well as to stand on
executive privilege in the civil action."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.362
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6296
item Program Number S0121,
315
"The Views of a Nixonite"
Guests: Buchanan, Patrick J.
(Patrick Joseph), 1938-
20 December 1973
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 108 : 22
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 10
Program details: As WFB recounts it, "A couple of months ago the Ervin
Committee investigating Watergate called a witness who, in the course of
a few hours, left the senators and their staffs reeling.... The
committee has yet to write its report, but it is generally agreed that
it will not succeed again in comparing itself and its purposes to the
rising sun or the Milky Way. Patrick Buchanan put an end to that." On
this show he is a combative and energetic defender of his Chief,
occasionally straying away from John Dean, Judge Sirica, and the tapes
to talk about, e.g., the Vietnam War, the Cold War, and Harry Truman's
drop in popularity during the Korean War. PJB: "In my judgment the
President was fully justified if, in fact, it is true that during 1969
and 1970 he secretly bombed the occupied sectors of Cambodia because
American troops were on the other side of the frontier. I think he was
justified even--which I don't know to be true--if there was a necessary
falsification of certain papers at the Pentagon ... in order that Prince
Sihanouk could make certain statements with regard to what Americans
were doing in Cambodia. To me that would be as justified as the fact
that Dwight Eisenhower and others obviously put out lies and false
stories about what American troops were going to do prior to
Normandy."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.363
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6297
item Program Number S0122,
316
"Penal Reform"
Guests: Mitford, Jessica, 1917-
14 January 1974
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 91 : 6
Publicity File: Box/Folder 108 : 23
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 11
Program details: Miss Mitford makes the unassailable point that, to the
extent that prisons are intended to rehabilitate their inmates, they are
miserable failures, and other means of dealing with criminals should be
found. From the perspective of many viewers, however, she muddies her
point by her overarching critique of Western institutions of power: "All
right, we've got the Rice Krispie man [a hypothetical fraudulent
advertiser], who is really a rather minor criminal compared, in my view
at least, to the manufacturer of napalm and other genocidal weapons or
to the policemen who routinely commit crimes on the beat." Frequent
digressions make this show delightful and frustrating by turns.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.364
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6298
item Program Number S0123,
317
"The Revisionist Historians"
Guests: Rusk, Dean, 1909-
23 January 1974
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 91 : 7
Publicity File: Box/Folder 108 : 24
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 11
Program details: "Dean Rusk is, I suppose," Mr. Buckley begins, "by
everyone's reckoning the principal historical victim of the Vietnam
War"--reviled by the elite press and the revisionist historians and
exiled, as his Ivy League friends see it, to the wilds of Georgia. He
is, however, unbowed: "Well, legitimate historians are always in the
process of revising history, whether it's based upon new archaeological
finds or some documents of the 19th century that crop up. But I don't
believe that we should roll over and play dead just because someone
writes a political tract and calls it history." A rich discussion
starting with the beginnings of the Cold War, moving to the early days
of the Kennedy Administration--when Cuba and Berlin and, soon, Vietnam
were all clamoring for attention--and on to the American campus of
today.
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.369
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TZ8GBM4
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6303
item Program Number S0124,
318
"Mr. Buckley Defends His Four Reforms"
Guests: Russin,
Joseph. : Coleman, Kate. : Brown, Michael.
14 January 1974
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 108 : 25
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 12
Program details: The semi-annual occasion on which the tables are turned,
and the guests become the interrogators--asked to focus, this time, on
Mr. Buckley's new book, Four Reforms (the reforms being in the areas of
welfare, taxation, education, and crime). One sample: WFB: "If you deny
the philanthropic impulses of the American people, you are being
anti-historical." KC: "I'd deny them." WFB: "Well, how do you account
for $150 billion [a year in private philanthropy]?" KC: "Tax breaks."
WFB: "I don't know where you went to school, but there were only three
million people who paid income taxes in the Thirties, and yet
practically every private institution, every church, every hospital was
built. It was built by Americans. You all of a sudden think that charity
was invented by FDR or something?" KC: "No, I just think that during the
Thirties their guilt was a little bit larger."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.365
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6299
item Program Number S0125,
319
"Government and Public Confidence"
Guests: Muskie, Edmund
S., 1914-
21 January 1974
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 91 : 8
Publicity File: Box/Folder 108 : 26
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 12
Program details: Senator Muskie's Subcommittee on Intergovernmental
Relations had just commissioned the Lou Harris organization to conduct a
poll on Americans' knowledge of and confidence in their country's
institutions. The results on both counts were, as WFB relates them,
pretty depressing. The bulk of the hour is spent--sometimes
heatedly--analyzing the poll and debating how close it comes to reality.
WFB: "But I am asking about the causes of alienation, and both you and I
agree that there is alienation, isn't there?" EM: "Well, it seems to me
that since you and I are accepting the poll's measure of whether or not
there is alienation, we ought to be interested in how the poll arrived
at that conclusion." WFB: "That's a technical question." EM: "That is
not technical. It's very substantive." WFB: "The fact of the matter
is--" EM: "Independent of this poll I have no personal antennae that
tell me--" WFB: "Don't you?""
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.366
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6300
item Program Number S0126,
320
"The British Crisis"
Guests: Lejeune, Anthony. : Levin,
Bernard.
12 February 1974
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 108 : 27
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 13
Program details: The "crisis" of the title refers to the Heath
Government's confrontation with the coal miners' union, which was
demanding a 33 per cent pay increase. Mr. Heath had called an
election--an election that he would lose, setting the stage for Margaret
Thatcher's ascendancy. This show offers a spirited and wide-ranging
discussion, exploring the differences between American and British law
on strikes in essential industries, the differences in the two
countries' electoral systems, and the causes of inflation. WFB: "[What
about] the rather unexpected move of Enoch Powell. How do you interpret
his decision not to run again?" (See
Firing
Line
s0127.) BL: "I think
Tony ought to speak first on that one because he's an old--" WFB:
"Powell watcher?" BL: "...Powellite from top to bottom, and I'm not."
AL: "I'm not a Powellite from top to bottom." BL: "From side to side,
then." AL: "I'm a Powellite from side to side, yes. Two things only I'd
say about it. One, I think that Powell could not have run on a Heath
election platform. It would have been totally inconsistent with
everything he's said, and since intellectual honesty is his main
banner--Bernard may not believe it, but it is his main banner--it would
have been quite illogical for him to run on this platform."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.371
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00G7085EK
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6305
item Program Number S0127,
321
"Enoch Powell and the British Crisis"
Guests: Powell, J.
Enoch (John Enoch), 1912-1998.
13 February 1974
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 108 : 28
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 13
Program details: Mr. Powell had announced that he would not run for
re-election-not because he feared the Conservatives would lose, but
because (as Mr. Lejeune suggests above) "the impossibility which I saw
in front of myself was that in 1974 I should present myself to the same
constituency advocating on most of the important issues the opposite to
the policies for which I had invited them to vote four years before."
(In the event, Labour's margin of victory was so narrow that a new
election was called in October of that year; Mr. Powell run for election
from Northern Ireland on the Unionist Party ticket and won.) The
conversation focuses specifically on wage and price controls, more
generally on inflation and the march of socialism; and on subjects such
as these the eccentric Mr. Powell seems not at all eccentric: "The
politician should never say that a trend is inevitable. It's his
business to see to it that a trend, if he doesn't agree with it, is not
inevitable. But I would be prepared to admit that if you wanted to make
a case for the inevitability of a trend towards socialism, a very strong
point that you could take up would be the fact that a Conservative
government which came in in 1970 with a radical market philosophy ...
within two years was introducing legislation which not merely re-echoed
the legislation of the socialist party but exceeded their delighted
dreams."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.373
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6307
item Program Number S0128,
322
"Tax Reform"
Guests: Surrey, Stanley S.
21 January 1974
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 108 : 29
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 14
Program details: A thoughtful discussion of the federal tax system
between two men who have spent much of their professional lives studying
it and who are able to explain it to people who have not done so. WFB:
"It seems to me plain from your philosophy that you more or less start
off on the assumption that what you're dealing with is the government's
money, whereas I start off on the assumption that what you're dealing
with is the individual's money or the corporation's money. So what you
insist on calling tax subsidies, tax expenditures, I would simply view
as a form of remission...." SS: "I don't agree ...with the way you
characterized my general position ... I would put it this way. We have
decided to have an income tax in this country.... The base of the tax,
the thing we're going to tax, is an individual's income." WFB: "Yes."
SS: "Now, having decided that, then any exclusion from our concept of
income becomes a particular preference for that individual as compared
with other individuals who are differently treated."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.367
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TZ8GX7C
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6301
item Program Number S0129,
323
"Politics and Black Progress"
Guests: Bond, Julian, 1940- :
Lewis, John, 1940 Feb. 21-
23 January 1974
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 108 : 30
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 14
Program details: A detail-filled exploration of changes in voting
practices, principally in the two guests' native South, since the
passage of the civil-rights acts. JL: "In Dallas County, Alabama, in
1965, for example, only 2.1 per cent of the black people of voting age
were registered to vote. Today more than 67 per cent... are registered
to vote. They have paved streets, they have a sewer system.... In Greene
County, Alabama, in 1965,...less than 300 black people were registered
to vote. Today black people control the county. They are working with
white people and they're working together. You have a housing authority
there. For the first time in the history of that county black people
have decent housing." And Mr. Bond tells how he learned something about
the tendency among politicians, black or white, to "overpromise": "My
notion of the $2 minimum wage, for example, vanished rather quickly when
I found myself in the legislature and saw what the temperament of the
body was."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.368
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ANCWNG4
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6302
item Program Number S0130,
324
"Ulster: 1974"
Guests: Hume, John, 1937-
12 February 1974
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 108 : 31
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 15
Program details: An unusually lucid discussion of a tangled situation. In
reply to Mr. Buckley's question--"Now, if something can last between
1921 and 1968, why can't it last out the balance of the century?"--Mr.
Hume gives a masterly account of the threads that came together in the
late Sixties to produce the violence that led, in 1972, to Britain's
suspending Stormont and assuming direct rule of Northern Ireland.
Britain had recently restored a measure of home rule; one of the
conditions was that the Catholic minority had to be represented in the
executive branch, which was why the Catholic Mr. Hume had been named
Minister of Commerce. JH: "Well, the fear is consistently expressed by
the Protestant majority in the North, which is a Protestant minority in
Ireland, that... by coming into a united country they would be subjected
to what they call 'Rome rule.' That fear is consistently expressed. I
don't personally believe that if all of the changes they ask for took
place tomorrow that would advance their wish for Irish unity one
iota."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.370
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6304
item Program Number S0131,
325
"Catholicism and Socialism in Ireland"
Guests: Browne, Noel
C.
12 February 1974
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 108 : 32
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 15
Program details: A crackling exchange between a committed Catholic
conservative and a committed socialist who holds the Catholic Church
responsible for most of Ireland's ills--ranging from differing rates of
infant mortality between rich and poor to the violence of the
Provisional IRA. WFB: "If your criticism was intended to be understood
as being leveled exclusively at the Irish Catholic Church, how would you
explain the following sentence from one of your articles?-- The only
possible response by those oppressed by the Church has been and is
social revolution, half a bloody century of it, of which the most recent
is seen in once-Catholic Cuba.-- How did the Irish Church get into Cuba?
..." NB: "I think you're playing games, if I may say so, Mr. Buckley....
There are many forms of the Catholic Church, and I disagree with the
obscurantist Catholic Church. If there is such a thing as a radical
Catholic Church or a Catholic Church that accepts the socialist idea, I
have no objection to that kind of Catholic Church."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.372
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6306
item Program Number S0132,
329
"The Question of South Africa"
Guests: Vorster, B. J.
(Balthazar Johannes), 1915-
13 March 1974
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 91 : 9
Publicity File: Box/Folder 108 : 33
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 16
Program details: This was the first appearance ever of Mr. Vorster on
television, and Mr. Buckley doesn't start him off easy: "I should like
to begin by asking the Prime Minister whether, as almost every account
of his background in America and elsewhere notes, he was in fact during
the war pro-Nazi." JV: "No. I can definitely say that it wasn't a
question of being pro-Nazi. I was anti-British...." WFB: "So that in
fact to deduce from that that you were pro-Nazi would be as incorrect as
to deduce that we were pro-Communist because we were on the side of
Stalin." JV: "Quite.... I was pro-Afrikaans." Then onto the present,
with the Prime Minister impressively discussing his country's policies
on press freedom, comparative standards of living in different parts of
Africa, and whether you can have a successful multi-racial society. JV:
"I take it what you do mean in fact--maybe you were too polite to say
it--is that it is said we are in fact a police state." WFB:"It's
certainly said. Certainly, yes." JV: "If that is the case, then it's the
only police state that I know of where you must do your level best to
keep people out; because as it happens at the moment, we have thousands
and thousands of illegal black immigrants in this country and we can't
get them out."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.374
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ANCWNS2
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6308
item Program Number S0133,
330
"The Question of Rhodesia"
Guests: Smith, Ian Douglas, 1919-
15 March 1974
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 92 : 1
Publicity File: Box/Folder 109 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 16
Program details: This was only the second appearance of Mr. Smith on
television. Mr. Buckley begins by reminding us that "in 1965 Rhodesia
had requested independence of Great Britain, and Britain had said no, on
the grounds that Mr. Smith's government represented only 5 per cent of
the population. Whereupon at 11:15 A.M. on November 11, 1965, the
government issued a Unilateral Declaration of Independence, the UDI, the
second such declaration by a former colony in Britain's history--the
first being our very own, which was signed before the word 'unilateral'
was invented." As of this taping, Rhodesia remained a pariah nation,
beleaguered by external sanctions and internal terrorism. An informative
discussion of the history of colonialism in Africa, the current state of
Rhodesia's economy, and the scene in nearby countries such as Mozambique
and Zambia. One sample, on the subject of introducing democracy: IS:
"The American people basically have always lived under this system. Now,
we're dealing with people who say, 'But we don't understand this thing
that the white man has brought here. We live under the tribal system.
We're quite happy, we're peaceful. Why don't you leave us alone?' What
do you say to them? 'You can't be left alone and peaceful. Whether you
like it or not, you must come in and play a part with us'? It's not an
easy question." Technical note: This program is black and white.
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.375
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0064EGLE0
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6309
item Program Number S0134,
331
"The Republican Party and Mr. Nixon"
Guests: Bush, George,
1924-
3 May 1974
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 109 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 17
Program details: Mr. Bush was developing a reputation as the holder of
thankless jobs in the Nixon Administration--first, Ambassador to the
United Nations at the time of the vote to eject Taiwan; now Chairman of
the RNC during Watergate. His current task was to help as many
Republicans as possible get elected to Congress six months thence
(though, to be sure, no one was likely to hold him responsible for the
eventual failure). It was an ominous sign that Republican candidates had
just lost four of five by-elections. WFB: "There has, of course, been a
lot of talk about Mr. Nixon as an albatross. Is it your judgment that if
Mr. Nixon were to decide tonight that he wanted to become a poet or
whatever, and eliminate himself without any sort of residual stigma,
under such circumstances as those would you project that the party would
have an easier time in November?" GB: "You are not going to like this
answer because I know of your intellectual alacrity, but I am not going
to get into these hypotheses because this is not going to happen. I know
and respect the views of the very distinguished Senator from New York
named Buckley ... My view is it is wrong for the President to resign, it
is wrong for him to be forced out of office; the system has got to work,
the system will work in fairness...." WFB: "You say it's like saying,
'What if the Pope became a Seventh-Day Adventist?'" GB: "Well, something
like that. I wish I had thought of that, but, yes, I don't think it's in
the makeup of the man."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.376
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ANCWN50
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6310
item Program Number S0135,
332
"The Blackmailing of the President"
Guests: Hunt, E. Howard
(Everette Howard), 1918-2007. : Fine, Ralph Adam. : Bernstein, Nina. :
Owen, John W.
10 May 1974
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 109 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 17
Program details: WFB begins by quoting John Dean's testimony to the
Watergate committee: "'I told the President that Hunt wanted $72,000 for
living expenses and $50,000 for attorneys' fees, and, if he did not get
the money and get it quickly, he would have a lot of seamy things to say
about what he had done for John Ehrlichman ...' " In Mr. Hunt's previous
Firing
Line
appearance (s0077) the subject was the CIA and the Bay of
Pigs; here he and his host explore the similarities and differences
between official acts of clandestine agents and unofficial operations
like the Plumbers'. Specifically, Mr. Hunt explains that the financial
arrangement he had demanded was simply the clandestine services'
traditional way of taking care of the families of captured agents. WFB:
"I'm wondering what it is that caused [Nixon and his men] to use that
term [blackmail], considering that you were saying this was really a
traditional arrangement." EHH: "Well, I certainly understood it
traditionally; obviously others did not, who should have."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.378
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6312
item Program Number S0136,
333
"Where Do We Go from Here in the Middle East?"
Guests:
Sayegh, Fayez A. (Fayez Abdullah), 1922-1980. : Orbach, William. :
Greenberg, Lynn. : Almazani, Salah.
15 May 1974
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 91 : 10
Publicity File: Box/Folder 109 : 4
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 18
Program details: Henry Kissinger's Shuttle Diplomacy was back in full
swing, with, as WFB puts it, "apparently endless trips to Damascus, to
Tel Aviv, to Cairo, to Cyprus." And there was "a vague sensation of
movement: the Suez Canal is being reopened, the cease fire on the
Egyptian front is months old." However, some observers believe that
"nothing will happen until disposition is made of the demands of the
Palestinian refugees," and Mr. Sayegh is of that camp. He might not
convince any Israelis, but he makes his case in masterly fashion,
working from UN Resolution 242, which sought to guarantee Israel's
independence, back through the UN action of 1947 in establishing a "
'Jewish state'[which] made provisions for the protection of the Arabs
who were to continue to live [there]," further back to the Balfour
declaration, which "did not speak of a 'Jewish state'; it spoke of a
'national home,' " and back further still, to the centuries when, "Until
Zionism came, it was perfectly normal for Jews and Arabs to live
together in our part of the world. So I'm not presenting a vision that
is against the nature of things. I am presenting a vision that would be
a return to the nature of things once the aberrations of the last few
decades are removed from the way."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.382
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00G707TCY
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6316
item Program Number S0137,
334
"Should the United States Disarm?"
Guests: Aspin, Les.
10 May 1974
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 109 : 5
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 18
Program details: Rep. Aspin had been, as WFB reminds us, "one of
Secretary McNamara's whiz kids in the Pentagon" (he would later himself
briefly serve as Secretary of Defense under President Clinton), and he
was now one of the Pentagon's sharpest critics. Host and guest agree
that, as Rep Aspin puts it, "we should be buying the kind of weapons to
counter the Soviet capabilities, not... just go ahead blindly and buy
ships." Where the disagreement comes in--with lots of supporting detail
on both sides--is over just how you tell what those needed weapons are.
WFB: "Theoretically, if there were 200 million Russians and we had 200
million bullets, that would be all we would need if we could aim each
bullet at each Russian." In the course of the hour we look at ships and
planes and subs and cruise missiles and ICBMs, and Mr. Aspin's
assertion, concerning the Soviet army, "Well, that's a very big army,
but really half of it ... is on the Chinese border to prevent them
waking up one morning and finding that the Chinese have chomped off a
bit of territory."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.379
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TZ8H1SW
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6313
item Program Number S0138,
335
"How Strong Should the Presidency Be?"
Guests: McCarthy,
Eugene J., 1916-
10 May 1974
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 109 : 6
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 19
Program details: "They are all giving thought nowadays," WFB begins, "to
how the post-Watergate Presidency should look, how the office might be
revised so as to bring it back within republican discipline." A rich
discussion of how the Presidency reached its present state--which is,
host and guest agree, too strong in some respects and too weak in
others--enlivened by the off beat perspective that makes Mr. McCarthy
arguably a better poet than he would have been a President: e.g., his
proposal that instead of picking the President first and letting him
pick his running mate, the "big fights at conventions ought to be over
who's going to be the Vice President.... You pick the Vice President and
you let him pick the presidential candidate. And you see all the good
that would come out of that. You'd be picking a man who would say, 'I
have no ambition at this point to be President. I'm going to take the
least of all political jobs ... I will demonstrate my humility. And then
I will be responsible for the man I pick to be President.' "
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.380
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6314
item Program Number S0139,
336
"Justice and the Fifth Amendment"
Guests: Williams, Edward
Bennett.
3 May 1974
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 109 : 7
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 19
Program details: Political violence had died down with the
"Vietnamization" of the war, but ordinary crime had risen, and the
courts increasingly seemed unable to cope. "One suggested remedy," as
Mr. Buckley frames the question, "is a drastic new look at the Fifth
Amendment and its interpretation by the Supreme Court, and here to say,
'Leave it alone,' is Edward Bennett Williams," whose clients had
included Jimmy Hoffa and Frank Costello. A brilliant duel that takes the
question far beyond the Warren Court--back to the beginnings of
Anglo-American jurisprudence, and before that to the medieval Church and
to the Talmud. "I think that in a free society it is essentially unfair
and essentially unfree to confront one suspected of a crime with
conviction if he confesses his guilt, perjury if he denies it, or
contempt if he refuses to answer it. It seems to me it is essentially
like saying to a small child who is suspected of taking your loose
change ... 'If you admit it, you will be thrashed for stealing; if you
deny it, you will be thrashed for lying; and if you refuse to answer,
you will be punished for disobedience.'"
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.377
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6311
item Program Number S0140,
337
"Amnesty"
Guests: Clark, Ramsey, 1927-
3 June 1974
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 109 : 8
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 20
Program details: Another go at the debate over whether to offer
unconditional amnesty to draft dodgers and deserters, last discussed
with Henry Schwarzschild (
Firing
Line
s0109). A high-energy exchange
between our guest, who feels that this is a decent, important thing for
this country so we can get on with living together and solving problems
and not unnecessarily creating suffering for ourselves," and our host,
who argues that "the majority of Americans would not be united by the
granting of amnesty, but would be disunited on the ground that they feel
that this was a treacherous act towards those members of American
society who followed the law."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.383
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TZ8H60K
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6317
item Program Number S0141,
338
"Government and the Arts"
Guests: Berman, Ronald.
3 June 1974
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 109 : 9
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 20
Program details: How did we get from the point where, as Mr. Berman puts
it, "an Elihu Yale could begin a university, a Morgan could begin a
Morgan Library, a John Harvard could begin his university," to the point
where government subsidies are deemed essential? A genial and
illuminating discussion of government funding of the arts and
humanities--its justification, its history, and its probable future. RB:
"In the 18th century, you had Dr. Johnson suffering, becoming a literary
hack; you had Mozart putting up with his very great difficulties. But in
the 20th century, in the United States, it is almost unheard of that
anyone with the least pretension towards some cultural merit should have
his beak unfilled." WFB: "Now, are you saying that with any trepidation?
Could it be that fifty years from now you or your children will
recognize somebody who was your contemporary who very nearly starved to
death? Or do you say this with a very considerable sense of certainty?"
RB: "I say it with the normal amount of certainty that any human being
has who is probably about to make a mistake."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.384
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00G70871G
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6318
item Program Number S0142,
339
"The Future of the GOP"
Guests: Ford, Gerald R., 1913- :
Kuttner, Robert. : Angle, Martha. : Donatelli, Frank.
28 June 1974
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 109 : 10
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 21
Program details: The third
Firing
Line
on "The Future of the GOP," the
first having been with Richard Nixon in 1967, the second with Elliot
Richardson midway through the protracted Watergate agony. On this
occasion, Mr. Buckley attempts to engage the Vice President on the
question whether President Nixon shouldn't take into account the
position of Republican congressmen facing re-election in deciding how to
respond if a bill of impeachment should be brought. Unfortunately for
the quality of the discussion, Mr. Ford's loyalty, or prudence, prevents
him from even considering such a hypothetical involving his Chief. The
closest he will come to answering is to say: "I don't think there is
sufficient evidence to contend as an impeachable offense that the
President was involved in the alleged cover-up, or in the cover-up."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.387
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TZ8H3F8
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6321
item Program Number S0143,
401
"The Kidnapper, the Victim, the Society"
Guests: Murphy,
Reg, 1934-
15 May 1974
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 92 : 2
Publicity File: Box/Folder 109 : 11
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 21
Program details: There had been an upsurge in kidnappings in the United
States, some connected with radical political ferment, others apparently
connected only with money. The most famous was probably that of Patty
Hearst; but Reg Murphy's, as WFB puts it, "gives us the rare opportunity
to have the insights of someone who was himself kidnapped who is trained
to observe as a journalist observes." A fascinating exploration,
starting with the issue of whether acceding to a ransom demand is
"anti-social" or "absolutely essential." RM: "The kidnapper operates in
an area of paranoia, of extreme tension ... under more tension even than
the victim is, because he has to make everything work right, in the
first place. In the second place, it's absolutely essential that he be
able to communicate in some way with the family ... But he knows that as
soon as he does that, he is walking into the police ..."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.381
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6315
item Program Number S0144,
402
"The Limits of Journalistic Investigation"
Guests:
Bernstein, Carl, 1944- : Woodward, Bob.
9 July 1974
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 109 : 12
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 22
Program details: It may come as a shock to be reminded that Watergate
dragged on so long that Woodward and Bernstein's book was actually
published while Richard Nixon was still President. (In fact, the
"smoking gun" tape wasn't released until four weeks after today's
discussion.) Messrs. Woodward and Bernstein are candid -- as they were
in their book--in admitting that they pressed the ethical limits of
journalistic investigation. WFB then raises a question of presidential
ethics, in Richard Nixon's having (a) taped his conversations and then
(b) not immediately destroyed the tapes once the investigation began: "I
think that private conversations are awesomely private and ought to be;
besides, unless it's a soliloquy, you're involving somebody else, and to
exercise dominion over somebody else's conversation and disclose it I
simply find heinous."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.390
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ANCWXW8
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6324
item Program Number S0145,
403
"Shockley's Thesis"
Guests: Shockley, William, 1910- :
Loesch, Juli. : Atkinson, Paul. : Atkinson, Johnie
10 June 1974
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 92 : 3
Publicity File: Box/Folder 109 : 13
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 22
Program details: Mr. Shockley's current fame, or notoriety, came not in
his official field, but rather in a field of more recent interest to
him, eugenics. Like, say, Arthur Jensen and Richard Herrnstein, Mr.
Shockley was widely reviled for talking about the heritability of
certain traits. Unlike them, he was promoting something that,
post-Hitler, had become, as WFB puts it, "unspeakable." Mr. Shockley was
suggesting a "voluntary sterilization bonus plan": "the amount of the
bonus would be dependent on various factors. For example, income-tax
payers would be offered no bonus. For all others, regardless of sex,
race, or welfare status, ... the bonus would depend upon best scientific
estimates - and that's a very important qualifying phrase ... -of any
genetically carried disabilities, such as arthritis, hemophilia,
Huntington's chorea. And if there is a genetic predisposal to heroin
addiction, this should get a big bonus. Then I go on to say,
furthermore, add $1,000 for every point you score below 100 on an IQ
test." An often heated but illuminating discussion with a man who was
seldom allowed to be heard.
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.386
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0064EGLZO
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6320
item Program Number S0146,
404
"What Do We Want from SALT II?"
Guests: Zumwalt, Elmo R.,
1920- : Nitze, Paul H.
22 July 1974
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 109 : 14
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 23
Program details: President Nixon, as WFB reminds us, had "just returned
from Moscow without SALT II in his pocket; that is to say,... a document
that carries forward from the agreements of 1972 a plan for the
continuing reduction in the strategic arms of the United States and the
Soviet Union." Was this because of Watergate, "or because the Russians
are Communists, or a combination of the two?" A combination, Mr. Nitze
explains ("...one of the things they take into account is what they call
the correlation of forces. And I think they do, in looking at the
correlation of forces, estimate what the internal political strength of
the United States is, and I think it is without doubt that the Watergate
affair has weakened the Presidency and therefore has made it more
difficult for us to achieve the kind of agreements which we really
should have"), and we are launched on a thorough discussion of strategic
arms and general military preparedness.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.391
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6325
item Program Number S0147,
405
"Public Medicine?"
Guests: Fine, Max. : Roth, Russell.
10 June 1974
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 92 : 4
Publicity File: Box/Folder 109 : 15
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 23
Program details: Nearly twenty years before Bill and Hillary Clinton
entered the fray, there was a major debate over national health
insurance. Three proposals were on the table, and "the bones of
contention," as WFB phrases it, "seem to be (1) how much, if anything,
should be deductible, (2) is there a role for the private insurance
companies, and (3) how best to disguise from the people the fact that
they are paying the bills." To Mr. Fine, "We need... the principle of
health care as a right." To Dr. Roth, "actually more people are
receiving more and better medical care in more and better-equipped
facilities from more and better-trained physicians than ever before in
history, and that really doesn't sound like crisis. The only crisis is
in the cost area ..." A sometimes heated, always informative
discussion.
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.385
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00G707VL8
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6319
item Program Number S0148,
406
"Leadership in America"
Guests: McGinniss, Joe. : Kempton,
Murray, 1917-
9 July 1974
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 109 : 16
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 24
Program details: "The Leadership" in this show's title refers to
perceived heroism; "the loss of the American hero" was the subject Mr.
McGinniss was currently writing about. Why, e.g.,did Charles Lindbergh
keep his hold on the American imagination, whereas Neil Armstrong, as
Mr. McGinniss puts it, just five years after he became the first man to
walk on the Moon, "has really disappeared back into obscurity and no one
has seemingly missed him"? Mr. Kempton, in his dry way, adds perspective
to this leisurely and rich conversation: "I don't think, since both
Mencken and Ring Lardner flourished in the Twenties, that hero worship
was absolutely something that existed then and does not exist now."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.389
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6323
item Program Number S0149,
407
"Looking Back on George Jackson"
Guests: Armstrong, Gregory,
1931- : Harris, Albert. : Kuttner, Robert. : Marks, John. : Stupp,
Herbert.
22 July 1974
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 92 : 5
Publicity File: Box/Folder 109 : 17
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 24
Program details: In 1970, a black inmate at Soledad Prison was shot to
death while attempting to escape. The next day a white guard was found
dead, and George Jackson and two other inmates--who became known as the
Soledad Brothers--were indicted for his murder. Angela Davis, a young,
black, Communist professor of philosophy at UCLA, became the spearhead
of the Soledad Brothers Defense Committee. She did not, however, confine
her efforts to speechmaking and fundraising: she also bought several
guns which were later used by George Jackson's brother, Jonathan, in a
hostage-taking attempt at the Marin County Courthouse that left the
younger Jackson and three others dead. The following year George Jackson
himself--who by that time had been transferred to the maximum-security
San Quentin--was killed while attempting a jailbreak. Today's often
heated exchange--with a champion of George Jackson (GA: "George ... was
a man who had a tremendous ability to care about people. He took upon
himself to be, in a sense, the conscience of the black race") and the
prosecutor of another of Mr. Jackson's champions--gives us a window on
that time when "revolutionary" was a prized designation.
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.392
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6326
item Program Number S0150,
408
"The Political Responsibility of Artists"
Guests: Kenner,
Hugh. : Kuttner, Robert. : Donatelli, Frank. : Angle, Martha
28 June 1974
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 109 : 18
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 25
Program details: We begin with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (who had just been
expelled from the Soviet Union) and Ezra Pound (who two years earlier
had been granted, and then denied, the Emerson-Thoreau Award by the
American Academy of Arts and Sciences), and go on from there in the
company of one of America's leading men of letters. One sample: HK: "It
seems not to be remembered Paradise Lost was written by a man who might
well have been under a death sentence if Andrew Marvell had not
intervened and asked him to just be quiet, partly because he was blind.
And Paradise Lost is very largely apolitical tract in which Satan coming
back to disrupt the harmony of the new creation is marvelously plausible
and attractive because he is modeled on Charles II, who had just done
the same thing and whose point of entrance to the British psyche was
notoriously by way of woman."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.388
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ANCWQH0
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6322
item Program Number S0151,
410
"Buckley as UN Delegate"
Guests: Frederick, Pauline. :
Scali, John.
4 September 1974
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 109 : 19
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 25
Program details: The semi-annual occasion on which host becomes
interrogatee--this time specifically on his service as "public delegate"
to the 28th General Assembly and on the book that came out of it, United
Nations Journal: A Delegate's Odyssey. The questioners are longtime
UN-watchers and, in Mr. Scali's case, a participant since 1973 (and the
man who had recommended Mr. Buckley's appointment). This winds up being
a spirited three-cornered debate among Ms. Frederick, who believes the
UN's "primary purpose ... is to save succeeding generations from the
scourge of war," Mr. Scali, who believes "that if we had to reinvent the
United Nations right now ... we probably couldn't do as good a job as we
did in 1945," and Mr. Buckley, who agrees with "the position the
American people [according to recent polls] have towards the United
Nations... : I think it is worth while and I think it is doing a bad
job."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.393
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6327
item Program Number S0152,
411
"The Nixon Experience and American Conservatism"
Guests:
Buckley, James Lane, 1923-
4 September 1974
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 109 : 20
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 26
Program details: Richard Nixon had finally flown off to San Clemente,
something that freshman Senator James Buckley had bucked much of
conservative and Republican sentiment by urging him to do back in March
(JLB: "There were many others who knew exactly what I was trying to say
and who agreed with me--unfortunately, more of them privately than
publicly"). A substantive and often wryly moving discussion (JLB: "We
had a little pool in our office in the mail room as to whether I'd be
compared with Judas Iscariot or Benedict Arnold or Brutus most often.
And I think Benedict Arnold won") of Watergate details, and of how those
fit into broader questions of congressional versus presidential power,
of the President's ability to conduct foreign policy, and of our
tendency, as WFB puts it, "to associate an idea with a person, and if
that person lets [us] down, [to] become disillusioned with the
idea."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.394
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00G708C6Q
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6328
item Program Number S0153,
412
"The President's Pardon"
Guests: Railsback, Thomas F. :
Waldie, Jerome R.
12 September 1974
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 92 : 6
Publicity File: Box/Folder 109 : 21
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 26
Program details: President Ford had acted quickly in issuing a general
pardon to his predecessor, and some, like Rep. Waldie, were incensed,
believing that "this has obscured ... the extent of his guilt." For Rep.
Railsback--who had served with Rep. Waldie on the House Judiciary
Committee, which had drawn up the articles of impeachment against Mr.
Nixon--"I don't know what good the country derives from some kind of an
inquisition of a former President who has been toppled from the highest
to the lowest." In the course of this heated discussion, we get
Watergate specifics, comparisons to past, unpunished Presidents (not
least, Thomas Jefferson and Franklin Delano Roosevelt), questions about
the FBI and CIA, and much else.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.396
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6330
item Program Number S0154,
413
"Chile and the CIA"
Guests: Korry, Edward M.
20 September 1974
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 109 : 22
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 27
Program details: Salvador Allende--who had been democratically elected
President of Chile in 1970, but who was a Marxist with ties to Castro's
Cuba--had died (very possibly by his own hand) during the coup against
his government. Questions had been raised in the American press and in
Congress as to whether the CIA had had a hand in "destabilizing" the
Allende regime. In the highly charged post-Watergate atmosphere, there
was talk of bringing action against various officials, including
Ambassador Korry. On this show, Mr. Korry is not at liberty to say
everything he knows, but we still get some fascinating stories and
serious analysis. WFB: "So therefore you tilted in the direction of
helping them [the Allende government]." EK: "I didn't tilt. I walked in
to their foreign minister, who described himself in that period as an
all-out Maoist--and this was in the period of the Red Guards-- ... and I
said, 'You know my view of what I think Dr. Allende and you represent in
the way of political forces ... You know that I was opposed to you; but
you are now the representative of a sovereign power, and I am a
representative of a sovereign power, and we are both mature
individuals.'..."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.397
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00G7087O8
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6331
item Program Number S0155,
414
"England at the Brink"
Guests: Heath, Edward. : Marks, John
: Angle, Martha : Donatelli, Frank
10 September 1974
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 109 : 23
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 27
Program details: Moments before entering the studio, Mr. Heath informed
WFB that, as he was in a foreign country, he could make no criticism of
any British politician. We'll probably never know whom he didn't want to
discuss (Enoch Powell? Harold Wilson? Margaret Thatcher?), but there is
plenty else to talk about, especially the Heath government's relations
with the unions and whether, as Mr. Buckley quotes an unnamed British
politician as charging, "Britain has become a syndicalist despotism."
No, says Mr. Heath emphatically, it has not: "We had our position, the
trade unions had theirs, the employers had theirs, and we said, 'There
have got to be compromises.' We made ours and over a large field the
employers and the trade unions made theirs." There's a fascinating
discursion on why Conservatives can't attempt to denationalize industry
until "a time when a moderate majority in the Labour Party" will agree
that if something is denationalized and people invest their savings in
it, Labour won't come along next time around and renationalize it.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.395
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6329
item Program Number S0156,
415
"The Economy"
Guests: Rinfret, Pierre.
20 September 1974
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 92 : 7
Publicity File: Box/Folder 109 : 24
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 28
Program details: "It is agreed," Mr. Buckley begins, "that inflation is
the acutest problem and that, unlike the other problem that obsessed us
for so long, this one cannot be done away with by impeaching it....
There is, of course, vague talk about who is to blame for exactly what.
Mr. Pierre Rinfret, an economist, isn't vague about anything." Mr.
Rinfret bears out this introduction in a slash-and-burn session that
leaves neither politicians nor economists nor businessmen intact. "You
didn't mention it... but I worked very extensively for Lyndon Johnson,
and he threw me out of the Oval Room in January 1966 with the admonition
I was never to come back." WFB: "What had you done to precipitate that?"
PR: "Well, I had told him that he was lying to the American people about
the war,... and that he was going to devastate the American economy by
an increase in federal spending while he tried to run a Great Society,
and there just wasn't enough room in the American economy to do both....
Now, you say, Why didn't business see it? Business did, but you've got
to remember one thing about American industry. They're not going to
stand and fight. They never do and they never will."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.398
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00G707P8W
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6332
item Program Number S0157,
417
"Recognize Cuba?"
Guests: Mas Canosa, Jorge. : Szulc, Tad.
21 October 1974
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 109 : 25
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 28
Program details: There was serious talk that Cuba would be swept up in
the general good will of detente and the embargo instituted in 1964 by
the Organization of American States would be lifted. Mr. Szulc
vigorously supports such a move; Mr. Mas vigorously opposes it in any
form that it would be likely to take in the current climate ("as it
appears now, they go to Cuba on bended knee; I'm just about sure that
Castro is going to be the winner in the long run"). This debate
sometimes bogs down in accusations (of narrowness; of fellow traveling),
but we still learn a lot about the way Cuba fits into the world scene,
A.D. 1974.
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.399
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6333
item Program Number S0158,
418
"Can You Strike against the State?"
Guests: Wurf, Jerry,
1919-
21 October 1975
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 92 : 8
Publicity File: Box/Folder 109 : 26
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 29
Program details: Mr. Wurf, the leader of the fastest-growing union in the
United States, answers the title question with an emphatic "Yes." Mr.
Buckley, citing public figures ranging from "Calvin Coolidge to Franklin
Roosevelt," answers with an equally emphatic "No." A heated but
frequently illuminating debate that keeps returning to a recent strike
by some of Baltimore's policemen after the mayor had refused any form of
arbitration. JW: "Mr. Buckley, perhaps by your standards we're not
conservatives, but public employees are conservative, and they don't
want to strike for the privilege of going without wages or walking
around the city hall. They strike because there's nothing else available
to them in the course of solving their difficulties."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.448
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6382
item Program Number S0159,
419
"Election Rhetoric, 1974"
Guests: Wattenberg, Ben J. :
Davis, Lanny J.
8 November 1974
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 92 : 9
Publicity File: Box/Folder 109 : 27
Transcript: Box/Folder 171 : 29
Program details: A rich discussion of the implications of the mid-term
elections--in which the Democrats picked up 43 seats in the House, 3
seats in the Senate, and 4 governorships--among two liberal Democrats
and their conservative Republican host. Mr. Davis maintains that "One of
the dangers for the Republican Party is to misjudge the results of the
'74 elections as a consequence of Watergate rather than as the natural
flow of events that really began some time ago ..." Mr. Buckley
suggests--six years before Ronald Reagan's election to the
Presidency--that "it is not inconceivable that what we will see in the
next few years is an effort by theoretical conservatives to devise a
means of building a bridge to blue-collar populists and that that, if it
is successful, would constitute a numerical majority in most
elections."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.400
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6334
item Program Number S0160,
420
"Russia and the Food Crisis"
Guests: Sosland, Morton I.
8 November 1974
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 92 : 10
Publicity File: Box/Folder 109 : 28
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 1
Program details: In 1972 the Nixon Administration had made an agreement
to sell grain to the Soviet Union that, as WFB puts it, "Mr. Earl Butz,
our Secretary of Agriculture, proudly announced [as] the largest grain
deal in four thousand years." The immediate result was to help our
farmers, our trade balance--and of course the Russians, in that Year of
Detente. The result over the next two years had been sharp rises in our
own food prices, over and above the general inflation we were suffering.
Mr. Sosland is deeply knowledgeable, and the conversation ranges from
the peculiar suitability of the Great Plains for growing wheat and corn,
to the geopolitical aspects of selling anything into the world market.
MIS: "I've kind of had the thesis all along that what the Soviet Union
did... is to send out a signal to the rest of the world saying, 'Here is
a Communist country that controls its people, is a police state, and we
have to buy a billion dollars' worth of grain to keep our people
satisfied and happy.' ... I mean, just eight years before, Russia,in a
year of short crop, had had bread lines, had had rationing of
bread."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.401
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6335
item Program Number S0161,
421
"The Post-Election South"
Guests: Jenrette, John W. :
Levitas, Elliott. : Lott, Trent, 1941-
15 November 1974
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 92 : 11
Publicity File: Box/Folder 109 : 29
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 1
Program details: Another view (
Firing
Line
s0159) of the 1974 elections,
this time a discussion with successful practitioners. Their predictions
are, well, predictable (TL: "Well, I think it's just a temporary
slowdown. I think that we'll continue to have a growth in the Republican
Party in the South"; JJ: "If the Republicans feel that this is just a
fluke or a happening, they've got another thing coming, because the
South I see as being in the forefront of the political situation"). But
their analyses of changes in racial attitudes, of reactions to the
economic turndown, and much else are well worth listening to.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.402
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6336
item Program Number S0162,
422
"Democratic Culture"
Guests: Fiedler, Leslie A.
15 November 1974
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 109 : 30
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 2
Program details: A rich discussion with this much-admired and
much-criticized American critic. Democracy per se doesn't get into it
much, but the American character does, as we go from Mark Twain to soap
operas to Gone with the Wind. One sample: WFB: "Well, I can't imagine,
say, Mark Twain spending as much time thinking about himself as, say,
Faulkner was forced to do given the dominance of the critics, which is a
20th-century phenomenon, isn't it?" LF: "No, not really.... Mark Twain
worried a lot about the critics, and he worried a lot about himself, and
he worried about who he was in typical American fashion, and he was
always assuring people that he was not a funny fellow, and, you know,
everybody laughed when he said it. And then he went home and he worried
about it."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.403
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TZ8GGO2
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6337
item Program Number S0163,
423
"Jews and American Politics"
Guests: Isaacs, Stephen D.,
1937- : Cuddihy, John Murray.
2 December 1974
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 92 : 12
Publicity File: Box/Folder 109 : 31
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 2
Program details: General George Brown, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of
Staff, had set off an avalanche of criticism by referring publicly--in
the context of emergency aid to Israel following the Yom Kippur War--to
the extraordinary influence of Jews on our foreign policy. He had been
quickly defended, not in every particular but on the main point, by the
Jewish journalist Stephen Isaacs. This lively discussion, full of
detail, ranges from the Holocaust, to voting patterns of Jewish
intellectuals, to the emotional effect of the 1967 Mideast War: SI:
"Well, the Jew, up until that time, was this impression of a desk-bound,
cowering sort of individual, who was led off, unprotesting, to a cattle
car to be taken to his death. Well, '67 changed all that. Suddenly the
Jew became a very strong person...When I was a kid growing up in
Louisville, Kentucky, and I was a 230-pound tackle, the people there who
had never met a Jew couldn't believe I was really a Jew...It just didn't
fit with the image."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.405
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0026ZQEA2
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6339
item Program Number S0164,
424
"The Energy Crisis and the Economy"
Guests: Simon, William
E., 1927-
9 December 1974
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 109 : 32
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 3
Program details: "Soon after the Arab states clapped on their embargo and
then boosted the price of oil by 400 per cent," WFB reminds us,
President Nixon appointed William E. Simon energy czar, "and the
American people were introduced to ... [this] cyclone from Wall Street
who bedazzled the Congress, the bureaucracy, and the press, and got us
through the winter." But oil was still $10 a barrel, and where do we go
from here? The non-expert will have to pay close attention, but the
issue of cartels and how to crack them is still very much with us. WFB:
"In your conversations, for instance, with these leaders in the Persian
Gulf, do you go so far as to say to them, 'Look, insofar as the United
States suffers from this huge outlay for imported oil, it necessarily
worsens its inflationary situation and it sets up domestic pressures ...
to reduce the defense establishment; and to the extent that we proceed
to dismantle our defense establishment, we are dismantling precisely the
only thing that you can ultimately rely on to keep that oil yours rather
than somebody else's'? Now, does their thinking extend that far... ?"
WES: "These are extremely intelligent men, all with degrees-- I almost
said that they're all American-educated. That doesn't make them
extremely intelligent men, but they are experts in their particular
fields and you don't have really to draw them pictures about this."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.406
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6340
item Program Number S0165,
425
"The Prospects for Democratic Moderation"
Guests: Udall,
Morris K.
12 December 1974
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 93 : 1
Publicity File: Box/Folder 109 : 33
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 3
Program details: Mr. Udall, WFB begins by telling us, "is running for
President, and a number of Democrats ... see in him someone who could
bridge the gap between, say, the McGovern wing of the party and the
Muskie-Humphrey wing." (Historical piquancy: the others whom WFB
mentions as serious candidates for 1976 are Henry Jackson, George
Wallace, and Lloyd Bentsen.) But the substance of the conversation is on
Mr. Udall's principal preoccupations: energy and the environment.
Serious discussion ("If you're a businessman and you've got a paper
mill, there are two ways you can do it. One is to foul up the
Connecticut River. Another way is by increasing your costs 10 per cent
and cutting your profit margin maybe by a third [and] and you can leave
a clean river") mixed with fun and games: WFB: "But you use these
value-loaded words, like 'binge.' Now--" MU: "That's unlike you. I've
never read your columns or listened to you where value-oriented words
were utilized. So I plead guilty to an aberration." WFB: "Well, no, I
use them all the time, but I use them intending an effect." MU: "I do
too."WFB: "But I don't mind if people examine the effect I intend." MU:
"Indeed."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.409
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6343
item Program Number S0166,
426
"Government by Consensus"
Guests: Rhodes, John J. (John
Jay), 1943-
9 December 1974
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 93 : 2
Publicity File: Box/Folder 109 : 34
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 5
Program details: When Gerald Ford was tapped for the Vice Presidency,
Rep. Rhodes had become the House Republican leader, which is, says WFB,
"a little like being made commander-in-chief of the German army after
the Allies had crossed the Rhine." Mr. Rhodes's reaction to the carnage
of November 5, which had left him in command of a force of 144, as
against the Democrats' 291, had been to propose what WFB describes as
"something called a consensus politics, a government by happy coalition
of a Republican President and a Democratic Congress." Is this consistent
with our two-party system? JJR: "Well, actually, Mr. Buckley, I think
it's absolutely necessary ... I don't know any way you can avoid
stalemate other than to have some sort of ground rules for working
together." A fairly low-key conversation, but with some interesting
insights on how the horse-trading gets done in areas where, as WFB puts
it, "the end is not necessarily one that is unanimously backed."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.407
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6341
item Program Number S0167,
427
"Food and the Christian Conscience"
Guests: Hesburgh,
Theodore Martin, 1917-
12 December 1974
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 109 : 35
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 5
Program details: "The great World Food Conference in Rome has come and
gone," WFB begins,and we had learned that, while we in the West were
eating better than ever before, some two million people were expected to
starve to death over the next nine months. " An awesome philosophical
question arises: whether the juxtaposition of that plenty and that want
are spiritually tolerable. An altogether different question arises:
whether, given all the good will in the world it would be possible to
help the needy by taking from the sated." Father Hesburgh had been
prominent among those urging the United States to make a serious
commitment to sending food abroad. On this show the duty of the
Christian conscience is taken care of in the first couple of paragraphs
("In fact in the very words of judgment that our Lord uses he puts it in
terms of feeding and he says 'I was hungry and you gave me to eat...'
"); from then on Father Hesburgh sounds like an agricultural economist
speaking extremely knowledgeably about where the wheat is why we had
been undersupplied the previous year and how quickly wheat would have to
be loaded onto boats to do the starving countries any good.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.408
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6342
item Program Number S0168,
428
"The Problem of the PLO"
Guests: Mehdi, Mohammad Taki. :
Cowan, Paul. : Lazarre, Jane. : Stupp, Herbert.
8 January 1975
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 93 : 3
Publicity File: Box/Folder 109 : 36
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 6
Program details: We start out with a genial discussion of the meaning and
evolution of political freedom (MTM: "In the West, when we have freedom
of speech, press, assembly, habeas corpus, trial by jury, et cetera,
these are the result of some four, five, six hundred years of evolution
and revolution ... Now, in the Arab world, in Asia, in Africa, their
modern life begins by the First World War.... And in sixty years the
Arabs cannot attain the democratic institutions we have evolved in the
West over four or five hundred years"). The gloves come off when we turn
to the question whether Yasir Arafat is or is not a terrorist. MTM:
"Well, let us give the Palestinians, who are now engaged in this
horrible thing of terrorism, let us give them a thousand tanks. Let us
give them five hundred Phantom jets." WFB: "Well, you can afford it. Why
don't you?" MTM: "Let the U.S. give them." WFB: "Well, why?" MTM: "The
United States has been giving these things to Israel, and I'm suggesting
if the United States gave a thousand tanks to the Palestinians, five
hundred airplanes to the Palestinians, then those Palestinians would
never engage in such silly stupid terroristic acts and they will send
their Phantom jets to destroy Tel Aviv, and good."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.410
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6344
item Program Number S0169,
429
"Where Do We Go Now for Equality?"
Guests: Jordan, Vernon E.
(Vernon Eulion), 1935-
8 January 1975
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 109 : 37
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 6
Program details: The first and second waves of civil-rights
activity--from Brown v. Board and Little Rock, through Montgomery and
Selma, to the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts--had originated in,
roughly speaking, the South, and Southerners of all stripes had been
complaining that the North didn't practice what it preached. Enter Judge
Arthur Garrity,with his angrily protested Boston busing decision. In
defending the extension of civil-rights remedies to Northern de-facto
segregation, Mr. Jordan speaks, often movingly, of his own upbringing
under Jim Crow, and puts the busing question into context: "You know,...
busing pursuant to court orders is only about 3 per cent of the kids
bused ...[whereas] something like 40 per cent of the kids traditionally
have been bused in this country. I mean, busing is as American as apple
pie or Yale or Harvard or Howard. And it never became a great issue
until such time that somebody who had this kind of skin sat on that
bus...." WFB: "Yes. If you took, let's say, a busload of Bostonians and
insisted that they be driven 45 miles a day to Groton and back ... they
probably wouldn't complain that much."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.411
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6345
item Program Number S0170,
430
"Oil: The Issue of American Intervention"
Guests: Tucker,
Robert W.
13 January 1975
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 110 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 7
Program details: "Although Mr. Kissinger said it ever so carefully in his
famous interview," Mr. Buckley begins, "his words were, 'I am not saying
that there's no circumstance where we would not use force, but it is one
thing to use it in the case of a dispute over price; it's another where
there's some actual strangulation of the industrialized world.' There
was an international uproar, as if the Marines had already been
dispatched to the Persian Gulf." Mr. Tucker had then published a piece
in Commentary exploring how the OPEC cartel had developed, how it might
be broken, and how oil affected America's position in the Cold War
world. RWT: "You gave a certain degree of urgency and immediacy and
clarity to this operation that I didn't quite give in my piece. What I
said in the piece was--" WFB: "That tends to happen when I mingle with
academic folk." RWT: "Understandably. What I said in the piece was that
we should have thought from the very beginning ... that one possible
outcome of this crisis ... could very well be a military outcome ... I'm
very much against... this conspiracy of silence."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.412
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6346
item Program Number S0171,
431
"How to Speak the Lord's Language"
Guests: Malania, Leo. :
Weatherby, Harold L., 1934- : Shattuck, Gardiner. : Lassard, Suzannah. :
Morales, Frank.
13 January 1975
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 93 : 4
Publicity File: Box/Folder 110 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 7
Program details: The Episcopal Church had been controversially working on
a major revision of the Book of Common Prayer for a decade. The issue,
as Mr. Buckley phrases it, "affects Episcopalians and their fellow
travelers theologically, but also the whole English-speaking world
culturally," because of the beauty of the Prayer Book's language and its
influence on four centuries of English literature. Not surprisingly to
anyone who has followed liturgical disputes, today's discussion is
matched in heatedness only by shows on the Middle East. HW: "Instead of
saying that our Lord was 'conceived by the Holy Ghost,' the new version
of the Creed says that he was 'conceived by the power of the Holy
Spirit.' There's nothing in the Greek to justify the insertion of the
word 'power' so far as I can tell...." LM: "Now, the power of the Holy
Spirit... is from the Gospels: 'The power of the Spirit shall overshadow
you.' " HW: "Yes, sir, it is, but it's not in the Nicene
Constantinopolitan Creed." LM: "It is, after all, a translation of that
creed, and the 'power of the Holy Spirit' is a translation." HW: "It's
an adaptation, sir, not a translation."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.413
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6347
item Program Number S0172,
432
"Legal Rights of Teenagers"
Guests: Pilpel, Harriet F. :
Williams, C. Dickerman.
2 December 1974
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 110 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 8
Program details: "One residue of the Sixties was pressure to grant
children various rights"-- most controversially on sexual matters
(purchasing contraceptives, obtaining an abortion), but also freedom of
expression. A spirited discussion, though not one that is likely to
change anyone's mind. WFB: "Are you taking the position that, for
instance, when the Supreme Court says that the rights of a free press
are not confined to people who have reached their majority, does it
follow that if the junior-high-school yearbook wanted to print a sex
book, let's say, or give a list of the local whorehouses, there would be
no authority to prevent that from happening?" HP "Well, I'd have to see
the book. In any case, that precise question is pending for a decision
before the ... United States Supreme Court now, as you probably know,
because a high-school paper, or it may have been a junior-high-school
paper, was suppressed and--" WFB: "Whose side are you on there?" HP:
"I'm on the side of the kids." WFB : "Well, how do you know that it's to
be on the side of the kids to give them the authority to publish
material that even majors weren't permitted to publish as recently as
ten years ago?"
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.404
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6338
item Program Number S0173,
433
"Three British MPs against William F. Buckley Jr."
Guests:
Kinnock, Neil Gordon, 1942- : Hayman, Helene Middleweek. : Lamont,
Norman.
4 February 1975
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 110 : 4
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 8
Program details: A lively tug-of-war on the comparative virtues of
socialism and capitalism with three of the leading younger intellectuals
in British political life (Mrs. Hayman having been a
Firing
Line
panelist since her Cambridge days). NK: "You're afraid of being
dominated, Mr. Buckley, but what you don't concede is that your
philosophy of conservative capitalism contradicts all the tenets of
freedom that any libertarian would hold to be self-evident--in that
there is a subtle and unlegislated control that every employer can have
over his employee, and indeed an even more subtle and even less
legislated control that the great corporations exercise even among
democratic governments ..." WFB: "In what kind of society does the
individual have the maximum mobility? It seems to me, plainly, in a
society in which one is able to choose among as many alternatives as
possible--therefore in a society in which the private sector dominates:
because within the private sector there is a plurality of agencies, and
in the public sector there is only one." ... WFB: "Frankly, I find more
intellectual freedom in Madrid than I do in Harvard. There is much less
conformity in Madrid."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.414
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6348
item Program Number S0174,
434
"The Communist Party and British Policy"
Guests: Reid,
Jimmy, 1932-
4 February 1975
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 110 : 5
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 9
Program details: Mr. Reid (the first
Firing
Line
guest who was an active
member of a Communist Party) had been the leader of the "Upper Clyde
Shipbuilders' work-in" in defiance of the closing of their shipyard. As
with Michael Foot a few years earlier (
Firing
Line
075), Mr. Reid has a
view of capitalism that is nothing short of breathtaking: "I had three
sisters who died in infancy. On the death certificates they've no doubt
written such things as 'diphtheria,' 'chronic bronchitis.' They should
have written 'capitalism.' "... JR: "The naked-claw-and-tooth capitalism
exercised in the United States has done a lot of things, for example,
the genocidal treatment of the Red Indians; you talk of the kulaks,
that's one of the great crimes in the history of humanity. Not so long
ago in the Southern states the sport was to hang Negroes from trees ..."
WFB: "You're not suggesting this was capitalism hanging the Negroes, are
you?" JR: "Indeed.""
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.415
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6349
item Program Number S0175,
435
"The Intellectual's Responsibilities in an Age of Totalitarian"
Guests: Spender, Stephen, 1909-
5 February 1975
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 110 : 6
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 9
Program details: Like his friend W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender had spent
the Thirties, as WFB puts it, "dancing along the precipice, attempting
at once literary integrity and Communist fellow traveling." And like
Auden, he recovered from that infatuation with totalitarianism--in Mr.
Spender's case, in time to be the first editor of the urbanely
anti-Communist Encounter (whose funding by the CIA had later been
disclosed). No fireworks on this show, but illuminating discussion of
the connections between art and politics. SS: "Henry Moore was a very
strong anti-fascist during the Thirties. At the time, he was doing
nothing but abstract sculpture, and it worried him quite a lot that he
wasn't doing sort of heroic anti-fascist sculpture. But then he decided
that this would be completely false to his own sort of vision ... One
might, from a left-wing point of view, find it very difficult to see
this. However, the totalitarians see it very well, because they discover
nothing more dangerous than abstract sculpture."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.416
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TZ8GOG2
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6350
item Program Number S0176,
436
"William F. Buckley Jr., Malcolm Muggeridge, and the World"
Guests: Muggeridge, Malcolm, 1903-1990. : Riddell, Peter. : Hewitt,
Patricia. : Galbraith, James.
5 February 1975
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 110 : 7
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 10
Program details: A return visit by the man who was already known as
"Saint Mugg," but whose journey towards holiness has done nothing to
curb his tongue. Samples: "You find the Anglican clergy insisting that
everything that the New Testament is about can be fulfilled through the
Labour Party; that if Jesus was not a paid-up member of the Labour Party
it was merely because there was no Labour Party, unfortunately, in
Galilee at that time." ... WFB: "Colonel Blimp, then, has really
disappeared--" MM: "He's disappeared, except he only lives on in the
shafts of wit of the Left. That's his only existence." WFB: "They have
to force-feed the Establishment so as to--" MM: "Right. Right. And keep
it alive in their little plays and things--" WFB: "So they can look back
in anger." MM: "Right. How can they look back in anger if Colonel Blimp
isn't there?"
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.417
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004VGGY9K
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6351
item Program Number S0177,
437
"Integrity and Journalism"
Guests: Wicker, Tom. : Safire,
William, 1929- : Cook, Blanche. : Cohen, Paul. : Temple, Iris.
10 March 1975
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 110 : 8
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 10
Program details: This conversation among a card-carrying liberal, a
card-carrying conservative, and a Republican moderate winds up centering
on the revolt at Attica Prison three years earlier--the subject of Mr.
Wicker's book A Time to Die. Serious penology alternates with (pointed)
flights of fancy. WS: "What if [Governor Nelson] Rockefeller had gone to
Attica? There he is outside the gates. The prisoners say, 'Let's see
Rockefeller. We'll talk to him direct.' At that point he can't show that
he's a coward; he has to go in and talk to them. And at that point, the
possibility of taking him hostage arises. Then what do you do?" WFB:
"That presents the opportune time to remold the Republican Party." ...
TW: "In the prisons of the State of New York, just a year or so before
the Attica revolt, everything was changed over semantically. Guards
became 'corrections officers.' Prisons became 'correctional facilities.'
Wardens became 'superintendents.' You had to rewrite all those old James
Cagney movies. But they didn't change anything else. They just changed
the terminology."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.418
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TZ8GJRG
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6352
item Program Number S0178,
438
"Do We Have Continuing Responsibilities in Indochina?"
Guests: Lewis, Anthony, 1927-
10 March 1975
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 110 : 9
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 11
Program details: A give-no-quarter battle over the motivations and
practicality of our involvement in Indochina. WFB starts right in: "I
should like to begin by asking Mr. Lewis whether, as a historical
matter, he opposed General Kutuzov's scorched-earth policy after
Napoleon marched into Moscow." AL: "A scorched-earth policy may be very
admirable. If people decide, say, that they want their country to be
Russia and they don't want France to run it, and they decide to fight to
the last man, that's like the Alamo, and it arouses one's emotions. But
it's very different when the United States decides to fight to the last
Cambodian; it's just not our affair." WFB: "But it's not American
soldiers who are fighting; it's Cambodians." AL: "Yes. Cambodians. Not
Russians. Not North Vietnamese. Cambodians."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.419
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6353
item Program Number S0179,
439
"Feminism"
Guests: Luce, Clare Boothe, 1903-1987.
31 March 1975
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 93 : 5
Publicity File: Box/Folder 110 : 10
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 11
Program details: The peg for this show was the Equal Rights Amendment, at
that time stalled in the state legislatures. But the discussion between
these two old friends soon deepens in surprising ways. CBL: "Do you
think it's possible for a man to be a Christian and not a feminist? ...
Jesus Christ was the first feminist.... If you read the Gospels, you'll
be astounded at the number of miracles he performs at the request of
women.... The whole evidence is that he had some extraordinary mission
to women; otherwise you cannot account for their love and loyalty and
devotion." ... WFB: "But there's an elision in your argument. You talk
about Christ being a feminist, you talk about our tradition leading us
in this direction, and all of a sudden this direction turns out to be
ERA. And you leave us almost necessarily committed to the proposition
that it is the fruit of Christian activity."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.420
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E52U8K
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6354
item Program Number S0180,
440
"The First Republican Governor of South Carolina in 100 Years"
Guests: Edwards, James B., 1927-
11 April 1975
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 93 : 6
Publicity File: Box/Folder 110 : 11
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 12
Program details: "In November of last year," Mr. Buckley begins, "when
the smoke of election day had cleared, a datum emerged of extraordinary
historical meaning. A state in the Deep South, South Carolina no less,
had elected a Republican governor, for the first time since
Reconstruction. All the psephologists and futurists stuck that into
their computers, and concluded that if such a thing could happen here, a
great deal in America has changed." A lively discussion bouncing back
and forth between practical politics and ideological divisions. JBE:
"Bill, I think that we've gone through this before. After ...
Goldwater's defeat, there were all of these terrible predictions that
the Republican Party was through ... And I have a strong feeling that
if... we have a candidate who has a track record that proves that he in
fact does believe in the great principles ... I think that we'll make
the most tremendous comeback that has ever been made ..." WFB: "Well,
you've described the ideal candidate." JBE: "Well, I guess I did." WFB:
"Yes. Were you describing President Ford?" JBE: "Well-- Bill, you
know,... President Ford, I think, is a great fellow, an awfully nice
fellow, and he's trying to do what's right and best, but I think he's
surrounded himself by people who may not be interested in the same
things that Jerry Ford's interested in."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.422
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6356
item Program Number S0181,
441
"Who Killed Bobby Kennedy?"
Guests: Lowenstein, Allard K.
11 April 1975
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 110 : 12
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 12
Program details: The Warren Commission report was still being hotly
debated, and Jesse Jackson had just announced that it was the FBI and
the CIA that had killed Martin Luther King Jr. Mr. Lowenstein, in his
fourth appearance on
Firing
Line
, passes along his wife's worry that
instead of being known as "former congressman" he will become known as
"current kook," but he has come to believe that Sirhan Sirhan may not
have fired the bullet that killed Bobby Kennedy. The problem arises, as
Mr. Lowenstein explains, because "the trial... didn't deal with these
[ballistics] issues because Sirhan's attorney announced that he had
murdered Kennedy and that the issue was his sanity.... So none of this
evidence was entered in the trial at all." Why does it matter? As Mr.
Buckley works through it, "It strikes me as unlikely, given the fact
that everybody agrees, including yourself, that Sirhan Sirhan was trying
to kill Kennedy, that merely identifying somebody else who was also
trying to kill him is going to excite the sort of inquisitive appetites
of our people. But if that other person is himself just the tip of an
iceberg ..."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.423
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E50RVW
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6357
item Program Number S0182,
442
"Abortion"
Guests: St. John-Stevas, Norman. : Hentoff,
Margot. : O'Rourke, Joseph. : Cook, Blanche. : Cowan, Paul.
31 March 1975
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 110 : 13
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 13
Program details: WFB essentially acts as moderator on this passionate,
provocative show as his guests explore abortion just two years after Roe
v. Wade. Mr. Stevas tells of the brutalizing effects of the new abortion
law in Britain: "Since it has been legalized, it has become surrounded
by rackets, and the only post-operative action that anyone takes is to
sell the fetuses to soap factories." Mrs. Hentoff is "a little bit
irritated that all those who think of themselves as humanists, as always
pro-life, see this killing of fetuses as something that fits in with a
liberal, humanist, nonviolent philosophy, when in fact it is killing."
Mr. O'Rourke agrees that abortion is killing, but argues that "The real
way to stop this brutal business of killing is to out love it, not to
outlaw it, because having prohibitory legislation at this point would
really reinstitutionalize the killing of mothers."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.421
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6355
item Program Number S0183,
443
"American Prestige in Europe"
Guests: Jay, Peter, 1937- :
Levin, Bernard. : Jenkins, Peter, 1934-1992.
28 April 1975
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 93 : 7
Publicity File: Box/Folder 110 : 14
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 13
Program details: In the wake of Vietnam and Watergate, what had become of
America's prestige? What would become of, as WFB puts it, "the umbrella
under the protection of which sovereign European nations have felt free
to act wisely or foolishly without, at any rate, risking the conclusive
retaliation against foolishness which only super powers are in a
position to inflict"? A fascinating discussion that takes as its theme
the parallels between the American pullout from Vietnam and the West's
ceding Eastern Europe to the Soviet Union at the end of World War II.
One sample: BL: "After all,... the Allied statesmen... knew very well
what an abominable fraud the Yalta agreement was. They felt, at the same
time, there was nothing they could do about it, so that they might as
well make the best deal they could ..." WFB: "Why was there a greater
sense of futility when they were triumphant than there was when they
were utterly impoverished and shouted back at the Nazi gale with really
quite galvanizing effect in 1939?" BL: "Because, I think, in 1939,
Britain in general, people and politicians alike, realized rightly that
our existence was at stake. Now, at the end of the war, when Europe was
being carved up,... the threat was not immediate. Bombs were not falling
out of the sky in 1945."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.424
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6358
item Program Number S0184,
444
"The Economic Quandary"
Guests: Knight, Andrew, 1939-
28 April 1975
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 110 : 15
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 14
Program details: No fireworks, but a solid discussion of inflation, which
was rampant in Britain, America, and elsewhere. Messrs. Buckley and
Knight examine strictly economic factors but also, and importantly, the
political aspect. WFB: "Sometimes you are talking as though people are
educable, and sometimes you are talking as though people are invincibly
ignorant. Now my notion is that people who are swept away with
enthusiasm for socialist generalities tend to be, certainly not
uneducated, but most probably invincibly ignorant." ... AK: "The fact is
that a politician's got to get in, he's got to win votes, and winning
votes is not always consonant with sage economic theory." WFB: "There
again it depends on the position. Having said you don't want any
absolute pure economic laws, you're now making absolute political laws."
AK: "Oh, yes, there is an absolute political law, and that is, 'I want
to be re-elected.' "
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.425
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6359
item Program Number S0185,
445
"Was Israel Responsible for Kissinger's Failure?"
Guests:
Rabin, Yitzhak, 1922-
9 May 1975
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 110 : 16
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 14
Program details: The latest effort in the "peace process" had broken
down, and Mr. Rabin (who had succeeded Golda Meir just the previous
year) was being blamed for intransigence. He is deeply informative about
the historical background, and surprisingly candid--though not
reckless--about the present and future: WFB: "Well, would you say
something that will make the front page of the New York Times tomorrow?"
YR: "I doubt it." WFB: "You don't have any little piece of land you're
unsentimental about?" (As it happened, Mr. Rabin found that little piece
of land, in the Sinai Peninsula, three months later; the "breakthrough"
agreement was signed on September 1.)
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.426
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6360
item Program Number S0186,
446
"Hawk and Dove within Israel"
Guests: Rosenfeld, Shalom. :
Avineri, Shlomo. : Weisgal, Meyer Wolfe, 1894-
9 May 1975
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 110 : 17
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 15
Program details: A wide-ranging and deeply engaging discussion of
Israel's past and present, how she fits into the Cold War picture, and,
especially, her relations with the United States. WFB: "To what do you
trace America's commitment to Israeli survival?" SR: "I don't like this
phrase 'survival.' It has so many associations since World War II." WFB:
"I quoted Henry Kissinger's words exactly." SR: "That's why I don't like
it; because the usual phrasing, at least in the past, was 'America's
commitment to Israel's security and survival,' which makes a lot of
difference. You also made commitments to the survival of the orphans of
Vietnam." ... SA: "The major involvements of American foreign policy
were not made in terms of American global strategic interests." WFB:
"Wilsonian?" SA: "Either Wilsonian, or a feeling by a majority--white,
Anglo-Saxon, Protestant--that America had to stand by Britain . .. And I
think what's happening now is that many Americans, not only Jews, feel
that their affinity to Israel is one way of expressing their
Americanism, in the same way that WASPs did in 1914 and 1941."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.427
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6361
item Program Number S0187,
447
"Greek Anti-Americanism"
Guests: Vlachos, Helen, 1911- :
Lamprias, Takes, 1926- : Mangakis, Giorgios.
10 May 1975
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 93 : 8
Publicity File: Box/Folder 110 : 18
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 15
Program details: Our guests had all been vigorous opponents of the
Colonels, who ruled Greece from 1967 to 1974: Mrs. Vlachos and Mr.
Lambrias had fled to England, where they were leaders in the resistance
movement; Mr. Mangakis was sentenced to 18 years' hard labor for
conspiring against the Colonels. In a spirited session they talk mostly
about what America might have done differently during those seven years.
HV: "After the coup, I advised foreigners not to boycott Greece. And do
you know why? Because I had seen a cartoon in The New Yorker of a nice
old couple who had gone to a travel bureau and asked, 'How many
democracies do you have with a warm climate?' " WFB: "I think that's a
very amusing answer, and in a way a wise one."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.428
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6362
item Program Number S0188,
448
"Is Detente Working?"
Guests: Jackson, Henry M. (Henry
Martin), 1912-1983.
28 May 1975
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 93 : 9
Publicity File: Box/Folder 110 : 19
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 16
Program details: Few sparks are struck, WFB and his guest--the leading
Democratic hawk in the Senate (and the early frontrunner for the
Democrats' 1976 presidential nomination)--being in substantial agreement
on the dangers of detente. However, the Senator brings specific
knowledge of the current state of play: "Well, I've not found any
evidence of whatever the [Ford] Administration means by detente
involving a two-way operation. Trade is the one that's talked about
most. But the Soviets are talking about credit, not ...trade in the
traditional sense. They haven't anything to sell us." WFB: "Peace." HJ:
"They want us to provide the capital to build their giant energy complex
in Asia. The Administration must know this.... I don't understand it,
and I don't think the Chinese understand it either, because they've been
paying cash on the barrel head. The Chinese come with a checkbook; the
Russians come with a chisel."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.429
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6363
item Program Number S0189,
501
"Oil and the Arab Cause"
Guests: Akhdar, Farok.
28 May 1975
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 93 : 10
Publicity File: Box/Folder 110 : 20
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 16
Program details: The American-educated Mr. Akhdar was regarded as a
principal theorist for the Organization of Petroleum-Exporting
Countries, and he proves a formidable apologist for OPEC's cutting
production of oil and raising prices--known in our country as the "Arab
oil crisis." The discussion is often technical with regard to elasticity
of demand and substitutability of other resources, but the exchanges are
spirited: WFB "How can you call it oppression? In the first place,
Americans discovered the oil. You tax them. It costs you 20 cents to
take a barrel of oil out of the ground. You sell it for $1.75. I don't
call that exploitation." FA: "That's not true; that's not true. Western
intellectuals have this tendency--" WFB: "Don't confuse me with Western
intellectuals."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.430
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6364
item Program Number S0190,
502
"The Ozone Controversy"
Guests: McElroy, Michael B. :
Scorer, R. S. (Richard Segar), 1919- : Peterson, Russell W. (Russell
Wilbur), 1916-
9 July 1975
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 110 : 21
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 17
Program details: In 1975 we are just at the beginning of the controversy
over (a) whether the ozone layer is in fact being depleted, and if so
(b) to what extent man-made chemicals are causing this to happen. Then
as now the experts disagree, and the rest of us can only absorb
information and hope for a resolution. RSS: "I come from socialist
Britain, where I understand it's looked at from this side as though
we're trying to control everybody, and I feel very free over there, and
I come over here and find [Mr. Peterson] trying to get some buffoons to
advise some bureaucrats and perhaps some politicians what they're going
to tell everybody to do." WFB: "Well, it's ... the 200th anniversary of
The Wealth of Nations, and Adam Smith would have considered it perfectly
legitimate to tell people what to do insofar as it was necessary to
conserve natural resources ..." RWP: "Adam Smith talked, as you well
remember, about the invisible hand ... The one thing that Adam Smith
didn't appreciate ... was that there's also an invisible foot, and if
you don't pay attention to what you're doing, that foot can come around
and kick you."... MBE: "I think the issue here is to try to get the
truth and to do so in a way which is responsible, and I think it is not
responsible simply to draw a conclusion that because there is some
preliminary indication of a problem one should immediately respond by
banning all uses of that particular gas."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.431
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6365
item Program Number S0191,
503
"Tom Wolfe and The Painted Word"
Guests: Wolfe, Tom.
9 July 1975
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 411 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 17
Program details: The Painted Word had angered whichever portions of the
intelligentsia had not previously been hostile to Mr. Wolfe. As Mr.
Buckley points out, "the book mercilessly dissects a social phenomenon,
the hold of a few art critics on art, fashion, and the grotesqueries to
which a middle class is willing to submit in order to distinguish itself
from the philistia whence it came." One sample from Mr. Wolfe: "The game
of Jeopardy is played by giving someone the answer to a question and
then they have to give you the question. And this is what art became
after 1945. The paintings became the answer-it's a puzzle picture-to the
question. Start with Abstract Expressionism; Pop Art was the same thing;
Minimal Art, Op Art, Conceptual Art, and so on. Now, this is something,
despite the demurs of many, many people within the field of art- It's
absolutely a new situation. There's never been a situation before in
which you have to say, 'Yes, but what's the theory?' when you look at a
painting or piece of sculpture."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.432
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TZ8GA6G
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6366
item Program Number S0192,
504
"The Breach of Faith"
Guests: White, Theodore Harold, 1915-
22 July 1975
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 93 : 11
Publicity File: Box/Folder 411 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 18
Program details: An absorbing discussion of Richard Nixon and his
predecessors specifically, and politics and morality generally. WFB:
"The columnist Garry Wills has written that Mr. White has his own
'enemies list' and that he specifies with whom he will and will not
appear to discuss his book. ..." THW: "I do solemnly affirm that I have
no enemies list. There are people I dislike and people I disagree with.
I have no enemies list. I am not out to get anybody. There is and was a
Nixon's enemies list. The most frightening thing--if you asked me what
brought about the impeachment of the President--was that cold chill that
ran down the spine of the Judiciary Committee on those critical words in
the September 15 transcript. Mind you, this is before the election; it's
1972. He's talking to John Dean, Richard Nixon is, and he says he wanted
Dean to tell the fellows at CREEP [the Committee to Re-Elect the
President] that this is war and to behave themselves like war. And then
he says, 'Make a list.' He said, 'We haven't used the power this first
four years.' He said, 'We haven't used the Bureau, we haven't used the
Department of Justice; but now we're going to use them all.' That's
frightening language to come from a President about to win the greatest
landslide in American history." (But Henry Kissinger,
Firing
Line
s1202.)
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.433
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6367
item Program Number S0193,
505
"Should the Government Have Secrets?"
Guests: Halperin,
Morton H.
22 July 1975
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 411 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 18
Program details: Mr. Halperin was, as WFB put it, best known as "the man
who is suing Henry Kissinger," his former boss: Mr. Halperin's phone had
been one of a dozen tapped in 1969 in an effort to find out who was
leaking information about the secret bombing of Cambodia. A lively show,
beginning with the specifics of Mr. Halperin's case and moving to
general questions of secrecy, privacy, and national security. WFB: "The
Congress of the United States, when it set up the Central Intelligence
Agency, proceeded on an assumption that was not then challenged, and has
only fairly recently been challenged, which is that you can't have a
Central Intelligence Agency that goes on the Today show every morning to
announce what it's up to."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.434
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6368
item Program Number S0194,
506
"Did Jack Anderson Con the President?"
Guests: Anderson,
Jack, 1922-2005.
6 August 1975
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 411 : 4
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 19
Program details: Jack Anderson had, as Mr. Buckley puts it, "persuaded
President Ford to sit down for a half hour to discuss, in connection
with the forthcoming bicentennial, the strengths of America." President
Ford agreed; a pleasant though not earth-shattering conversation ensued;
but when Mr. Anderson took his film to first one network and then
another, each refused it. Whereupon Mr. Buckley offered
Firing
Line
as a
venue for viewing the film and discussing "the implications of [the]
experience. The President of the United States talks for one half hour
about his feelings about America and his hopes for it, and the poor man
can't get on TV. Permit me to express the doubt (a) that it would have
happened to President Kennedy, or (b) that President Kennedy would have
tolerated its happening to him." (This show's title refers to Press
Secretary Ron Nessen's charge that Mr. Anderson had "conned" the
President by implying that he had a firm deal with a network, which Mr.
Anderson categorically denies. WFB: "So therefore he had no reason to be
surprised?" JA: "He couldn't have been surprised.")
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.435
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6369
item Program Number S0195,
507
"The Third Party"
Guests: Rusher, William A., 1923- : Evans,
M. Stanton. : Buchanan, Patrick J. (Patrick Joseph), 1938-
15 August 1975
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 411 : 5
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 19
Program details: Republican voting registration was at an all-time low,
and yet 59 per cent of Americans described themselves as favoring
conservative policies--whence Mr. Rusher's new book, making the argument
for a nationwide third party. WFB: "Your point of view is more that of
the mortician here, isn't it, as regards the Republican Party?" WAR:
"Well. I don't know. I'm a bereaved member of the party, let's put it
that way. There's no doubt that the party is for any practical purposes
dead. If we conservatives don't bury the Republican Party, I'm afraid
the Republican Party is going to bury us." ... PJB: "It seems to me that
Governor Reagan, if he's going to run, has committed himself to the
Republican Party--" WAR: "No, he hasn't." PJB: "--that Senator Goldwater
and Senator Tower and Senator Brock and Senator Dole and Bill Simon and
James Schlesinger and the economic conservatives who are half of this
grand coalition are going to be within the Republican Party--" WAR: "Not
all of them." PJB: "--in the summer of 1976, and that the only way for
the conservative coalition to win in '76 in my judgement is to bring the
social conservatives of the Democratic Party within the Republican
ranks." A sparkling four-cornered exchange rich in ironies, given the
failure of Mr. Rusher's third party in 1976, the success of Ronald
Reagan in 1980, and Mr. Buchanan's jumping to a third party in 2000.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.437
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6371
item Program Number S0196,
508
"The Concerns of Young Conservatives"
Guests: Docksai, Ron.
: Pearson, Ronald. : Donatelli, Frank. : Moffit, Robert. : Burslem,
Jeffrey. : Rohrbach, Eric. : Kane, Jeff. : Buckley, John. : Connally,
Michael. : Cannon, Terrell. : Manion, Dan. : Norton, Jerry. : Hechman,
Robert.
15 August 1975
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 411 : 6
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 20
Program details: Young Americans for Freedom--which had been founded at
Mr. Buckley's family home in Sharon, Conn., with its charter document,
"The Sharon Statement," written by M. Stanton Evans--was celebrating its
15th anniversary in Chicago this weekend, although, as WFB puts it,
about all they had to celebrate was "their own survival and their
remarkably good spirits." Certainly there wasn't much to celebrate on
the national or international political scene; and while the campuses
had calmed down, they were still, as Mr. Docksai reports, "liberal
finishing schools." (Not that that's all bad: as Mr. Donatelli reports,
"When they wanted the conservative viewpoint, they'd come to me. You
know, I'm a 20-year-old kid at the time. And so it makes one, I think,
become mature much faster.") This conversation among comrades-in-arms
bounces back and forth from the campuses to grown-up politics in a
pleasant 15-handed ping-pong match.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.438
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6372
item Program Number S0197,
509
"Where Are We Headed with Disarmament?"
Guests: Ikle, Fred.
6 August 1975
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 411 : 7
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 20
Program details: Not the most dramatic of shows, but solidly informative
on a variety of disarmament issues, ranging from proliferation to the
SALT talks to the danger of some bright reporter uncovering the
publicizing our means of monitoring Soviet compliance. One sample: FI:
"Potentially, a country of an industrial capability and technological
capability such as Japan could probably develop an invulnerable
deterrent force. All I meant to say is not that it's not possible but
that it's a rather major step requiring major investments over many
years." WFB: "But don't you think that modern countries as vulnerable as
Japan can reasonably be expected to take major steps to guarantee their
own security, given the fragility of American alliances? I'm trying to
think of an alliance of ours which I would bet my swimming pool, let
alone my son's life. I can't think of one."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.436
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6370
item Program Number S0198,
510
"The Politics of Henry Kissinger"
Guests: Kissinger, Henry,
1923-
10 September 1975
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 111 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 21
Program details: This rich hour begins with whether Oswald Spengler
indulged in Weltschmerz, and ends with whether Ronald Reagan will still
not care what the New York Times thinks of him if he makes it to the
White House. In between, reflections, often profound, on the Cold War,
the nature of the United States' antagonists, and the conduct of the war
in Indochina. WFB: "American[s]... who have traveled to China--people
like Ken Galbraith, Scotty Reston, Barbara Tuchman--come back and, sure
enough, we hear those old voices from the Thirties, 'The trains are
running on time.' Now, how can a free society husband the moral flywheel
necessary to distinguish between desirable and undesirable societies in
the wake of such relativism as is stimulated by the philosophy of
detente?" HK: "First, let me say that if one pushed your argument to a
conclusion, one would have to say that the United States must maintain
international tensions in order to make sure that its people have the
correct perception of the nature of the societies with which they are
dealing. It is one of the tasks before us to enable the United States to
conduct a vital foreign policy without moral relativism and also without
the black-and- white categories with which we tended to sustain
ourselves in the past."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.440
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0064EGM30
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6374
item Program Number S0199,
511
"The British Mess, with the First Lady of British Politics"
Guests: Thatcher, Margaret. : Greenfield, Jeff. : Roberts, Sam. :
Kramer, Mike.
14 September 1975
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 111 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 21
Program details: For most Americans, this show offers a first look at the
woman who would do so much to shape the last two decades of the 20th
century. At this time, she had been Party Leader for seven months,
having defeated former Prime Minister Edward Heath. Today's discussion
focuses on domestic issues, particularly the need to generate revenues
not through higher tax rates but through economic growth. This, Mrs.
Thatcher explains, "is not only a matter of equity: it is also that the
privileged few have already been reduced to such a very few by thirty
years' punitive taxation that even total confiscation would not yield
enough to do much for the poor. MT: We've had a very interesting Royal
Commission sitting on the distribution of incomes and wealth, and what
they've shown-- contrary to what those who set up the Commission thought
it would show--... is that your top 1 per cent have about four times the
average income; the top 10 per cent have about twice the average income;
down at the bottom, the lowest 10 per cent have about half the average
income. Now from half the average to four times the average income is
not really a very big variation."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.442
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004SQFREG
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6376
item Program Number S0200,
512
"Unemployment, Inflation, and the Economy"
Guests: Heller,
Walter W. : Greenfield, Jeff : Reynolds, Alan : Kramer, Mike
9 September 1975
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 93 : 12
Publicity File: Box/Folder 111 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 22
Program details: For anyone not fatally allergic to economics, Mr. Heller
proves to be a delightful guide, explaining the differences between the
early Sixties and the early Seventies not in economist's jargon but in
lively English: "I love to talk about my half of the Sixties
[1961-1964]. We had 1.2 per cent inflation per year; we have more than
that per month these days. Profits doubled in the four years I was
Chairman of the Council. And as you quite correctly point out, we had a
rather moderate overall expansionary program in the early part of that
period. ... Inflation didn't start, really, until Lyndon Johnson failed
to finance Vietnam with tax increases." WFB: "Yes." WWH: "What was
different is that we had no oil-price explosion; we had no food-price
explosion; we had no devaluation; we had no sudden release from economic
controls; we had no worldwide commodity boom. All five of those things
belabored and beleaguered us and touched off the ferocious inflation of
1973-1974. And in that respect one could say besides good management, we
had good luck."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.439
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6373
item Program Number S0201,
513
"How the Vietnam War Was Lost"
Guests: Ky, Nguyen Cao.
14 September 1975
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 111 : 4
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 22
Program details: The discussion is slow starting, and one may find rather
tiresome Marshal Ky's relentlessly blaming the loss of the war on his
former colleague Marshal Thieu. But there is solid and at times moving
analysis: "I said there was no way to talk or negotiate with the
Communists, because with our past experience we know them: if they are
in a strong position, they will never accept negotiations; if they are
in a weak position, of course they are not honest in accepting
negotiations with you. So when they accept negotiations, it means
they're going to win. You know, in the mind of European people, when you
talk about negotiations, you think of mutual concessions on both sides.
But that is not the Communist, and particularly the Asian and North
Vietnamese Communist, view of them." Alternate Title: "How We Lost the
War in Vietnam"
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.441
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0064EGM7G
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6375
item Program Number S0202,
514
"The Practical Limits of Liberalism"
Guests: Brown, Jerry,
1938- : Valencia, Manuel. : Keppel, Bruce. : Sparrow, Glen
3 October 1975
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 111 : 5
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 23
Program details: Jerry Brown was Ronald Reagan's successor as governor;
his father, Pat Brown, had been RR's predecessor. Governor Brown the
younger would later become known as a flake, "Governor Moonbeam"; in
this discussion, primarily of desegregation, he comes across as
straightforward and well spoken. JB: "I would leave this [busing] to the
sound discretion of the judiciary, and see what happens." WFB: "You
wouldn't leave it to the unsound discretion of the judiciary?" JB:
"Well, that's a phrase that lawyers use. Whenever the word 'discretion'
is used, you usually preface it with the word 'sound'--and maybe that's
more a hope than a description."
Availability: On archive.org. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.443
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6377
item Program Number S0203,
515
"Is Our Military Defense Adequate?"
Guests: Schlesinger,
James R. : Kuttner, Robert. : Angle, Martha. : Donatelli, Frank.
9 October 1975
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 111 : 6
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 23
Program details: Mr. Schlesinger had served in a variety of positions in
the Nixon Administration, remaining in the last of those after Mr. Nixon
succumbed to Watergate. The discussion here begins with South Vietnam,
which had just fallen to the Communists, and moves through the Persian
Gulf and Soviet power generally, to broader questions such as the
difficulties of foreign policy in a democracy. JS: "I believe that if
all of us speak out on these issues, the American public will respond,
and politicians are quite sensitive to the attitudes of the public."
WFB: "Well, I think they'd be awfully sensitive if we lost Israel or
something. But are they sensitive in advance of the situation that is
militarily intolerable? ..." JS: "No." WFB: "In the Persian Gulf area,
do you think that we are as strong as we ought to be?" JS: "I think that
we have the capacity to match the Soviet buildup in that area and to
balance the power that they introduce into that area ... What I'm
concerned about are the trends ..., not the situation at the present
time." WFB: "And I guess your point is that however spooky those trends
appear to be, we have not reached irreversibility and won't?" JS: "Quite
right. And you raised the question about the way democracies perform in
this regard. If I recall the remarks of Stanley Baldwin back there in
the 1930s, democracies will never face the truth until they are right up
against it. It may be too late then."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.445
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6379
item Program Number S0204,
516
"The FCC and Public Policy"
Guests: Wiley, Richard.
9 October 1975
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 93 : 13
Publicity File: Box/Folder 111 : 8
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 24
Program details: Sharp fire is traded between Mr. Wiley, who was one of
the country's most powerful regulators, and Mr. Buckley, who, as
chairman of the board of a broadcasting company, was one of his
regulatees. RW: "It's a process of evolution, and I think we're making
changes as the public interest dictates. And the public interest evolves
and changes; it's not a static term." WFB: "There you go with 'the
public interest.' You know, what baffles me, as a casual student of the
term, is that 'the public interest,' like the word 'democracy,' is used,
depending on the intentions of the user, for entirely paradoxical
purposes, sometimes in the same paragraph. The public interest all of a
sudden becomes that which the majority want; but if that which the
majority want is a particular kind of program, then the public interest
becomes what the minority want."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.446
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6380
item Program Number S0205,
517
"Running the White House"
Guests: Rumsfeld, Donald, 1932-
9 October 1975
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 111 : 9
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 24
Program details: Mr. Rumsfeld, stepping into a position that had been
renamed to escape the Haldeman taint, was widely regarded as having got
the White House back on track. Here he engagingly addresses the question
of presidential isolation in the wake of Watergate. WFB: "In England,
the Prime Minister is protected against that inclination [to isolate
himself] by two things: the institution of the monarchy, and the
necessity of appearing two or three times a week in person, to answer
questions very directly put to him by the opposition. Would you
encourage the President to wander around Congress as frequently as he
wanders around the United States, shake the hand of his old colleagues
there, answer their questions, and listen to debate?" DR: "He does--in
every sense except being physically present in Congress every day....
The breakfasts, or lunches, or dinners, or meetings in the Cabinet Room
or in the Oval Office are really very much the kind of thing you are
talking about."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.447
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6381
item Program Number S0206,
518
"The Implication of the Manson Phenomenon"
Guests: Bugliosi,
Vincent.
3 October 1975
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 93 : 14
Publicity File: Box/Folder 111: 10
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 25
Program details: In a show taped just a few weeks after Squeaky Fromme's
attempt on Gerald Ford's life, WFB engages his guest--who had prosecuted
Charles Manson and his "family" for the murders of Sharon Tate et al.
six years earlier--in an absorbing exploration of the Manson phenomenon:
to what extent it grew out of the Sixties culture; whether executing
Manson might have put an end to his cult; how Manson resembles and
differs from Hitler. VB: "You could look at a photograph of Hitler in
high school in a group of fifty people, and right away you'd focus on
his eyes. That was not Manson's typical look: he was a visual
schizophrenic. He could sit down and talk with you the way I am right
now, about football, tennis, anything, and then you might look away from
him and then back--and in that momentary interlude, his face would
become [transformed] and he'd have that maniacal stare."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.444
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6378
item Program Number S0207,
519
"The Right to Die (or Live)"
Guests: Heifetz, Milton. :
Porzio, Ralph. : Grafe, William R.
14 November 1975
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 93 : 15
Publicity File: Box/Folder 111 : 11
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 25
Program details: The Karen Anne Quinlan case had been vociferously
debated all summer. On April 15, the 21-year-old woman had taken a
combination of tranquilizers and alcohol that had left her comatose,
with severe brain damage. Her parents, after consulting with their
parish priest, had asked the doctor to turn off the respirator; he
refused; the parents sued; the judge had just ruled in favor of the
doctor. (The following spring the New Jersey Supreme Court reversed that
decision. The respirator was turned off; Miss Quinlan lived for another
nine years, never regaining consciousness.) Mr. Porzio had defended Miss
Quinlan's doctor; Dr. Heifetz had testified for the petitioners. A
profound discussion of this agonizing issue, starting off with an
earlier case involving a court-ordered blood transfusion for a young
Jehovah's Witness. Dr. Heifetz: "The court had a right to say, 'Well,
there's an element of doubt in this case. Would she waver? We think
maybe she would.' ... What the court did was order the blood, which was
correct, but instead of using that as their argument-which would
therefore put it into the basis of the right of self-determination-they
said there is no constitutional right to die. This is as inane as saying
there's no constitutional right to eat apple pie."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.450
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6384
item Program Number S0208,
520
"Crime and Criminals"
Guests: Wilson, James Q. : Van den
Haag, Ernest.
14 November 1975
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 111 : 12
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 26
Program details: In 1974 the crime rate had risen, as Mr. Buckley tells
us, "by the largest margin in recorded history: 17 per cent." Our
guests--each the author of a recent book on crime and criminals--explore
causes and potential methods of deterrence, trenchantly and
imaginatively. (Among other things, Mr. van den Haag floats his idea of
exiling repeat criminals to a remote town set aside for them, until they
have reached an age at which statistics suggest they are not likely to
return to crime.) JQW: "There is no clinical evidence I know of that the
population of prisons, of criminals generally, is any less rational, or
indeed on the average any less intelligent, than the average person. ...
They tend to be younger, and have a higher taste for risk than stodgy
middle-aged conservative people like ourselves, but they are no
different in their ability to calculate the likely consequences of their
acts."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.449
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6383
item Program Number S0209,
521
"The Zionist Vote"
Guests: Riebenfeld, Paul. : Lilienthal,
Alfred M. : Roberts, Sam. : Kramer, Mike. : Duff, Daniel.
26 November 1975
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 94 : 1
Publicity File: Box/Folder 111 : 13
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 26
Program details: "Unquestionably the single most widely discussed vote
ever taken by the General Assembly of the United Nations," Mr. Buckley
begins, "was that in which it defined Zionism as a form of racism and
racial discrimination." Most Jewish leaders had "interpreted [this] as a
vote encouraging anti-Semitism throughout the world," but not Mr.
Lilienthal, who believes that "Zionism in its treatment both of Jews and
non-Jews is racist. If you're surprised when I say, 'both of Jews,' it's
because ... under the Law of Return it does not consider [Jews] as full
citizens in the countries in which they live, but merely as potential
citizens." Mr. Riebenfeld takes the bull by the horns--"I'd like to say
that it is rather unusual to refer to Dr. Lilienthals ... as a Jewish
leader. ... As a matter of fact he prefers not to call himself a Jew but
a Judaist"--and we're off and running.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.451
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6385
item Program Number S0210,
522
"What Can the Intellectuals Do for the City?"
Guests:
Breslin, Jimmy. : Roberts, Sam. : Kramer, Mike. : Duff, Daniel.
26 November 1975
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 111 : 14
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 27
Program details: Host and guest don't always connect, but when they do
it's a lot of fun. WFB: "Well, you say it's been obvious for a long
time, but if so, how come all these bankers bought these bonds, and how
come they sold them to all these people? It obviously wasn't obvious to
them, right?" JB: "One of the shocks everyone's been getting here is
just how dumb bankers can be." WFB: "How about journalists?" JB:
"Journalists can be very-- That we know. I think we've assumed that for
some time." WFB: "But I mean, there wasn't a front-page story in any
journal you or I write for, was there, saying, a year ago, 'Don't buy
New York municipal bonds, because they're bum?'" JB: "No." WFB: "Why
not? What about our great sources of investigative journalism? Are we
brighter than the bankers? As a matter of fact I am, but how about
you?"
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.452
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6386
item Program Number S0211,
523
"The Presidential Assassination"
Guests: Belin, David W.
4 December 1975
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 111 : 15
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 27
Program details: David Belin had started his work for the Warren
Commission believing that President Kennedy's killing was probably the
work of a conspiracy. The commission's investigations changed his mind,
and he makes his case persuasively--adding, under prodding from WFB,
that "I in no way want to say that Castro was involved with the
assassination of President Kennedy, but it is curious to me that with
all the current furor about possible conspiracies, the most obvious one
is cast aside on grounds that Castro was sincere when he said he wasn't
involved."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.454
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6388
item Program Number S0212,
524
"Intelligence and Security"
Guests: Pike, Otis.
4 December 1975
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 94 : 2
Publicity File: Box/Folder 111 : 16
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 28
Program details: Mr. Pike was chairman of the House committee
investigating the CIA, post Watergate, and there is spirited give and
take on questions such as under what circumstances the U.S. might
intervene in a foreign country and whether Mr. Pike could, in demanding
sensitive documents from the Administration, guarantee that his
committee colleagues would not leak them. WFB: "Now isn't it a formalism
for you to say that your committee can in fact receive intimate
Executive documents and assure that they will not emerge as part of the
public record?" OP: "No, I really don't think it is a formalism. You've
made your point twice and I've denied it twice." WFB: "No, you've made a
theoretical rejection of my point. I'm asking you now for an empirical
rejection." OP: "It is not a formalism."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.453
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6387
item Program Number S0213,
525
"Is the Stock Market Honest?"
Guests: Ney, Richard. :
Welles, Chris.
10 December 1975
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 94 : 3
Publicity File: Box/Folder 111 : 17
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 28
Program details: In the third year of stock-market decline, two radically
different critics of the market (Mr. Ney believes that the big players
are in a sort of informal conspiracy; Mr. Welles simply believes that,
with the growth of large institutional investors, decision-making is
concentrated in too few hands) go at it hammer and tongs. RN: "The
market is already in chaos." CW: "I thought you said it was
controlled...." RN: "It is a chaos caused by them [the specialists],
which they are in perfect control of." CW: "Controlled chaos?"
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.455
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6389
item Program Number S0214,
526
"Should We Choose Our Presidents Differently?"
Guests:
Reeves, Richard, 1936-
10 December 1975
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 111 : 18
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 29
Program details: The author of A Ford, Not a Lincoln is in a state of
cheerful despair about the future of democracy in America. A
wide-ranging discussion of the way our candidates are chosen nowadays
and of the press's failure to hold them accountable. RR: "When I was
covering John Lindsay, he had over five hundred people whose single
function was to pump out information to make him look good--I mean that
was literally the number he had, including the six who sat in the office
next to him." WFB: "That couldn't have kept them very busy."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.456
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6390
item Program Number S0215,
527
"The Russians"
Guests: Smith, Hedrick. : Kaiser, Robert.
8 January 1976
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 111 : 19
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 29
Program details: Messrs. Smith and Kaiser, WFB begins, as it were
"competed for the best book on Russia, and both of them won." They and
their host (who had just returned from his third trip to Russia) range
back and forth across this rich tapestry, from the scientist's
laboratory to the Kirov Ballet School, from Solzhenitsyn to the Russian
Navy, from Czar Nicholas II to Nikita Khrushchev. Mr. Kaiser, re an
Intourist guide's resisting Mr. Buckley's wish to visit Nicholas and
Alexandra's country palace: "This is part of a gaping inferiority
complex felt by the czar's successors, a terrible insecurity about their
own legitimacy ... The commissars understood that the czars were members
of this great family, were respected and revered in all the courts of
Europe, were recognized universally as the legitimate rulers of Russia.
And they were the usurpers." ... Mr. Smith on why the Soviets buy
Japanese, German, and American technology instead of developing it
themselves: HS: "It seems to me that there's more than legitimacy that
they're afraid to test.... You're afraid of the dynamism and the
spin-off of that dynamism if you let your own inventive and talented
people free."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.457
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6391
item Program Number S0216,
528
"Are the Major Parties Stalemated?"
Guests: Connally, John.
8 January 1976
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 111 : 20
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 30
Program details: Mr. Connally, a Democrat-turned-Republican, was being
rumored as a possible presidential candidate for his current party, his
former party, or some third party. He and his host examine the public
perceptions that had led to the poor Republican performances since World
War II at every level except the presidential. JC: "If the Republican
Party doesn't soon revitalize itself and rebuild its strength, if it
doesn't articulate its aims and hopes and ambitions to the point where
it can attract new adherents ... then the Republican Party, at least on
the national level, is limited to a contest for the Presidency every
four years."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.458
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6392
item Program Number S0217,
529
"The Concorde Conspiracy"
Guests: Hellegers, John F. :
Costello, John.
23 January 1976
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 94 : 4
Publicity File: Box/Folder 111 : 21
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 30
Program details: The immediate question was: Would British Airways and
Air France be allowed to schedule a few flights of the Concorde each
week into Kennedy and Dulles airports? Secretary of Transportation
William Coleman would be ruling on this a few days after this taping; in
the event, he gave a careful and reasoned ruling in favor of a 16-month
experiment, but that would not stop the complaints---from people living
near the airports and concerned about noise; from people like Mr.
Hellegers, concerned about the effect on the ozone layer ("the whole
business about doing anything about the environment is that as soon as
you go to one person and say, 'You're creating a problem,' he says,
'Well, look at all these other people. Go and take care of them. Give me
liberty and give them death'"); and from U.S. airlines claiming that
government subsidies for the Concorde constituted unfair competition
(JC: "In America ... the indirect subsidy, particularly in terms of
commercial airliners, has come ... via huge defense contracts. And the
first subsonic jet airliner, the 707, was funded and the research and
the development was done in fact on the back of a jet tanker").
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.459
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6393
item Program Number S0218,
530
"What Did the Military Learn from Vietnam?"
Guests:
Westmoreland, William C. (William Childs), 1914-2005. : Kuttner, Robert.
: Angle, Martha. : Donatelli, Frank.
23 January 1976
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 111 : 22
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 31
Program details: A moving examination of the Vietnam War from the
perspective of the man who commanded our troops there from 1964 to 1968.
WFB: "Suppose you had resigned in 1968 and said, 'Get yourself somebody
else to run a war--but I'm telling you from my knowledge as a
professional that the kind of war, Mr. President, that you're trying to
win, you're going to lose, and a lot of people are going to be
unnecessarily killed.' Wouldn't you have done more for yourself, for
your soul, for your troops, and for the prestige of the United States
military?" WW: "I kept, apropos of your question, on my desk a quotation
from Napoleon which said in essence that if a field commander has
policies imposed upon him which he feels will eventually bring about the
defeat of his army, he should resign rather than obey those orders. I
was very cognizant of that, but at no time was my army ... in such
jeopardy. We never even closely approached the point where we would be
defeated." WFB: "But you were defeated." WW: "The United States was
defeated, but the military was not defeated. We didn't have any troops
on the battlefield at the time of the collapse of the South
Vietnamese."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.460
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6394
item Program Number S0219,
531
"The Uses of the United Nations"
Guests: Moynihan, Daniel P.
(Daniel Patrick), 1927-2003.
26 January 1976
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 111 : 23
Transcript: Box/Folder 172 : 31
Program details: Mr. Moynihan had been chosen (by Secretary of State
Kissinger) as our UN Ambassador not in spite of his outspokenness but
precisely because he did not accept the detente-related dictum, "Do not
offend." He had been busily offending all the right people ever since. A
high-octane discussion of whether any good can come out of the talk shop
on the East River. DPM: "You said in your book--and that was a good
book, A Delegate's Odyssey--that debate is what that place can in fact
do. What it can't do is legislate; what it can't do is act; it has no
such powers, and its pretension to those powers is what gets it in most
trouble."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.461
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0064EGMBM
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6395
item Program Number S0220,
532
"The Educator's Dilemma"
Guests: Riles, Wilson. : Roberts,
Sam. : Kramer, Mike. : Friedman, John.
26 January 1976
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 94 : 5
Publicity File: Box/Folder 111 : 24
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 1
Program details: "A lot of people," Mr. Buckley begins, "are doing a lot
of despairing these days about education, and there is a great deal to
despair about." Steadily declining test scores, remedial reading being
needed at the most selective colleges, disciplinary problems at all
levels. Mr. Riles, Mr. Buckley tells us, "in his quiet, non-dogmatic way
... has reassured many people that some sort of progress is being made."
This proves to a nicely detailed examination of education issues,
ranging from the reliability of test scores, to the question of who
should receive higher education, to Nelson Rockefeller's dyslexia. WR:
"We've found that older students really stimulate youngsters. I taught
first in a one-room school, and I did not have the sophisticated
terminology about cross-age tutoring--that's what they call it today. I
just had to have the older youngsters help the younger ones, and they
responded."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.462
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6396
item Program Number S0221,
533
"The Future of Spain"
Guests: Iribarne, Manuel Fraga. :
Mathews, Roger. : Wheeler, John. : Sieve, Harold. : Salas, Juan Tomas
de.
23 February 1976
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 94 : 6
Publicity File: Box/Folder 111 : 25
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 1
Program details: Generalissimo Francisco Franco had died in November,
having arranged for Juan Carlos to resume the throne from which his
grandfather, King Alfonso XIII, had been toppled in 1931. A key member
of King Juan Carlos's cabinet was Mr. Fraga, widely acknowledged, Mr.
Buckley reminds us, as "the architect of the great transition from the
government of General Franco-which was essentially government by one
man-to government by a body of men, to an extent as yet undetermined
responsible to the Spanish people." A rich discussion that ranges from
international terrorism, to the isolating effect of Spain's geography,
to the acceptance of Vatican II by the Spanish Church, to the different
forms democracy can, and must, take. MFI: "Societies have, well, social
realities, and on the other hand they have psychological trends. It
shows you that the same system which is convenient, even if you accept
the same general principles of law and justice, is not necessarily
convenient for America and, say, Congo-Kinshasa. It's not necessarily
the same thing, the way democracy is practiced in England or the way it
is practiced in Italy."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.463
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6397
item Program Number S0222,
534
"Foreign Policy and the Role of Spain"
Guests: Areilza, Jose
Maria de.
24 February 1976
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 94 : 7
Publicity File: Box/Folder 111 : 26
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 2
Program details: Even as Spain was regrouping on the domestic front, so
she had been working to regain her place in the commonwealth of nations,
and Mr. Areilza was the spearhead of that effort. This lively
conversation ranges from Spain's renascent domestic politics, to the
state of Europe, to the war in Angola and America's role in it. WFB: "So
you don't belong to that school of European thought that believes that
nuclear weapons ought to be excluded from consideration in the defense
of Europe?" JMA: "I think that is part of the great strategic risk the
West takes vis-a-vis the tremendous amount of nuclear weapons on the
other side, and as long as the SALT negotiations don't settle all that
in a definite way-and I don't see that they are settling it yet-the risk
is there, and we must commit ourselves honestly."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.464
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6398
item Program Number S0223,
535
"Buckley on an English
Firing
Line
"
Guests: Knight, Andrew,
1939- : Howard, Anthony. : Clements, Richard.
9 March 1976
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 111 : 27
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 2
Program details: The semi-annual occasion when Mr. Buckley becomes the
object of three interrogators whose function it is to explore "his
attitudes, assumptions, affectations, and crotchets." This rumbustious
hour zings from Chou En-lai to Alexander and Napoleon, from virtue to
freedom, from Ronald Reagan's presidential chances to Norman Mailer's
New York mayoral campaign. One sample: AK: "Why was it that we didn't
recognize that Ho Chi Minh was (a) probably a rather great man; and (b)
likely to be an extremely effective Tito-type buffer if only we got in
on the right side with him against Russia and China?" WFB: "Well, why
didn't we recognize that with Hitler? Hitler made many more people
tingle than Ho Chi Minh did, and he would have been an extremely
effective buffer between us and the Soviet Union." AK: "No, because-
Well, you see, we're talking- WFB: "I think it's very hard to establish
that Hitler killed more people per capita ... than Ho Chi Minh did. Ho
Chi Minh had the grace to write poetry about it and occasionally weep.
But all these tingly people in history like Alexander and Napoleon and
Lenin and so on and so forth give me the creeps...." AK: "You mustn't
compare Hitler with these people, because we're talking about the battle
for the hearts and minds of the Third World, not for the developed
democracies."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.465
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6399
item Program Number S0224,
536
"What Is Their CIA Up To?"
Guests: Copeland, Mike. : Walker,
Martin.
9 March 1976
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 111 : 28
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 3
Program details: The CIA had taken a beating at home during the whole
Watergate mess, but how was it viewed abroad? For that matter, how was
its counterpart, roughly speaking, the KGB? Mr. Walker was known as one
of the sharpest critics of the CIA, Mr. Copeland as one of its most able
advocates. The conversation starts out genially enough, with Mr. Walker
giving a detailed and funny description of a couple of British
intelligence operations in Northern Ireland, but the gloves come off
when Mr. Copeland brings up Mr. Walker's spending time "with Philip Agee
[whose activities were blamed for the deaths of several agents], chasing
around identifying CIA agents, as you call them--" MW: "Look. I'm a
journalist. I'm a journalist. ... Who are CIA agents in London is a
matter of proper concern to me as a reporter. ... It's a matter of
proper concern to my readers, particularly when America calls Britain
her closest and most natural ally. In fact, you're treating us like a
client state. You're treating us like a tributary. You can't have it
both ways."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.466
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6400
item Program Number S0225,
537
"The Vision of Solzhenitsyn"
Guests: Muggeridge, Malcolm,
1903-1990. : Levin, Bernard. : Charlton, Michael.
10 March 1976
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 111 : 29
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 3
Program details: In a departure from the usual format, this show begins
by re-broadcasting Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's first television interview
in the West (with the BBC's Michael Charlton), which was, as Mr. Buckley
describes it, "a blow at the solar plexus of the kind that first numbs
and then revives and then conceivably transfigures." (To quote briefly
from Mr. Solzhenitsyn himself, "I am not a critic of the West. I repeat
that for nearly all our lives we worshipped the West.... I am not a
critic of the West. I am a critic of the weakness of the West. I am a
critic of a fact which we can't comprehend: how one can lose one's
spiritual strength, one's will power, and, possessing freedom, not to
value it, not to be willing to make sacrifices for it.") After the
interview, WFB and his guests have a few minutes left to comment. Mr.
Muggeridge: "Its impact is due to the fact that it is absolutely true.
You see, what Solzhenitsyn has said is at an entirely different level
from the comments that go on about our world on television, by
politicians. It's in terms of truth. It's in terms of good and evil.
It's in terms ultimately of the Christian faith." Mr. Levin: "I would
like to say this: that although undoubtedly Solzhenitsyn is a man lit
from within by grace, there are others-Sakharov is the obvious
example-who are not; who take it simply from what you might call moral
pragmatism. As far as I know Sakharov has no religious faith, and yet
here is the man who demonstrates, just as Solzhenitsyn, that you
cannot-whatever you do and however long you do it-extinguish the spark
of freedom in human beings."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.469
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6403
item Program Number S0226,
538
"The Responsibilities of an Ambassador"
Guests: Armstrong,
Anne Legendre.
10 March 1976
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 111 : 30
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 4
Program details: Three years before Mrs. Thatcher became prime minister,
Anne Armstrong had had to face raised British eyebrows about the
appointment of a woman to the post of ambassador. If this show is any
indication, she was able to handle those criticisms as skillfully as she
handled the challenge of representing her country in the wake of Vietnam
and Watergate. AA: "I think the most fortunate thing that happened to me
as counselor to two Presidents was that for both of them one of my main
jobs was to travel extensively. And my heart would leap in direct
relationship as I got farther away from the Potomac, and as I got into
the real country. And it's interesting: the Prime Minister [Harold
Wilson] told me here the same thing just recently. He said, 'Get out of
that hothouse of London. Find out what the real country's like.' "
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.468
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6402
item Program Number S0227,
539
"The Uses of Royalty"
Guests: Hamilton, Willie.
10 March 1976
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 94 : 8
Publicity File: Box/Folder 111 : 31
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 4
Program details: The feisty and funny Mr. Hamilton was the leading
advocate of abolishing the British monarchy, which he describes as an
"antiquated, irrelevant institution," a symbol and a cause of Britain's
decline. Mr. Buckley takes him up on it, and we're off to the races.
WFB: "The fact that fifty million Americans got up at seven in the
morning to watch Princess Anne get married suggests a considerable
fascination that reasonably translates into commerce." WH: "Oh, yes,
you're attracted by it, but you damned well got rid of it, and you show
no signs of wanting it back." WFB: "We got rid of yours; we've got a
dynasty in Massachusetts."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.467
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6401
item Program Number S0228,
540
"Has Jerry Rubin Grown Up?"
Guests: Rubin, Jerry. : Rader,
Dotson.
12 April 1976
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 94 : 9
Publicity File: Box/Folder 112 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 5
Program details: Mr. Rubin had just published Growing (Up) at 37, and WFB
seeks to explore whether Mr. Rubin has in fact done so, but more
generally "whether the disease of the late Sixties [is] something
against which most Americans are safely inoculated." In this often
uproarious hour, Messrs. Rubin and Rader regret some of the causes they
supported then (like the Khmer Rouge) but are unshakably proud that, as
Mr. Rubin puts it, "I was part of a generation that risked jail, that
risked physical injury ... to oppose a war that was destructive to
America." ... WFB: "It does seem to me terribly odd that you should use
this forum to say that the Attorney General was wrong to prosecute our
guest of honor, Mr. Rubin here, for a crime which he just finished
writing a book admitting he committed." DR: "You put your foot in it
then, Jerry." Title on transcript: Growing (Up) At 37."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.470
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6404
item Program Number S0229,
541
"The Implications of the Hearst Trial"
Guests: Fort, Joel,
1929- : Dershowitz, Alan M.
12 April 1976
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 112 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 5
Program details: Patty Hearst had been kidnapped by the Symbionese
Liberation Army-a radical group led by one Donald Defreeze, an escaped
Soledad prisoner, in February of 1974; in September of 1975 she was
arrested after taking part in several bank robberies with her captors.
During her trial, WFB explains, "the legal community was especially
alerted to the historical point that never before ... had a jury been
asked to accept brainwashing as a legal defense." The jury didn't buy
it, and Miss Hearst was sentenced to seven years in prison (the sentence
would be commuted by President Carter in 1979). Dr. Fort's "dramatic
exchanges with Lee Bailey [the head of the defense team] in the
courtroom were," says WFB, "the subject of considerable attention," and
his exchanges with Mr. Dershowitz here give us a window on one of the
more bizarre incidents in that bizarre period. AD: "That may very well
be the central issue pressed on the appeal: whether or not Patricia
Hearst was actually tried for what she did on the day of the bank
robbery, or whether she was tried for what she became after the bank
robbery and indeed perhaps in part as a result of the bank robbery." ...
JF: "Well, brainwashing on the model of Chinese thought reform done to
American soldiers in Korea 25 years ago has very little relationship to
the American youth behavior and to American society in the 1970s."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.471
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6405
item Program Number S0230,
542
"Unemployment"
Guests: Feldstein, Martin.
6 May 1976
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 112 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 6
Program details: The persistent high level of unemployment had led
Senator Hubert Humphrey and Representative Augustus Hawkins to sponsor
the Equal Opportunity and Full Employment Bill. Mr. Feldstein concisely
explains the difference between his recommendations and their bill: "As
far as I can tell, they mean [to achieve] 3 per cent [unemployment] by
pushing on demand, cutting taxes, spending more, making money more
readily available, and, if that fails, simply hiring people into the
public sector; while I had in mind not simply increasing demand but
rather changes in the incentives and the structure for labor markets
that would cause unemployment to fall without any abnormal increases in
demand." Mr. Buckley asks Professor Feldstein to help us out with some
definitions (of, e.g., frictional unemployment), opening the way for a
rich discussion that includes the effects of welfare and the minimum
wage, the situation in England and Sweden, and the effects of increased
productivity on quality of life.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.473
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6407
item Program Number S0231,
543
"Is There Any Soviet Justice?"
Guests: Taylor, Telford.
6 May 1976
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 112 : 4
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 6
Program details: "A couple of years ago," as Mr. Buckley sets the stage,
"a small group of American lawyers headed by Telford Taylor hit on the
idea of attempting to help 20 imprisoned Russians--18 Jews, 2
gentiles--strictly within the framework of Soviet law." On paper, their
chances looked good: after all, "the much-heralded constitution of 1936
probably lists more human rights than any constitution in the world,"
and the Procurator General of the Soviet Union, Roman Rudenko, had been
a colleague of Mr. Taylor's at Nuremberg. Even so, the lawyers'
initiative failed, and Mr. Taylor explains why in this serious
discussion, rich in detail. TT: "In order to achieve heavier penalties
and strike more fear into others who would want to emigrate the law is
simply distorted and set aside .... A person who wants to emigrate knows
that if he gets in trouble with the law it's all up-conviction is
certain; guarantees are going to be set aside. This is very much more of
a threat to other [potential emigrants] than the possibility of a fair
trial."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.472
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6406
item Program Number S0232,
544
"The New Spiro T. Agnew"
Guests: Agnew, Spiro T., 1918-1996.
14 May 1976
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 112 : 5
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 7
Program details: Mr. Agnew had been in Coventry for the three years since
his resignation and disbarment, following his conviction on charges of
tax evasion, but he had just emerged as the author of a suspense novel,
The Canfield Decision, in which a Vice President defies his President
and comes out for sending intermediate-range ballistic missiles to
Israel. STA: "You notice, in this case, the President does not directly
order. He can. The sanctions available to him are simply to call the
Vice President in and say, 'Look,Mr. Vice President, this is enough of
this. I don't want any more.' At that point--" WFB: "Well, what is the
sanction then? You can isolate him?" STA: "Isolate him or cut off his
budget; send him up to the Senate--" WFB: "Can he cut off his budget?"
STA: "Oh, yes." WFB: "What does one do then?" STA: "Well, you have to go
up to the Senate and stay there, I suppose." WFB: "God! That's a
terrible sanction, isn't it?" STA: "But really the economic sanctions,
the aircraft-- Everything the Vice President has is the President's to
give or take away, with the exception of his salary, of course; that's
prescribed."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.474
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6408
item Program Number S0233,
545
"U.S. Defense and the Political Campaign"
Guests: Zumwalt,
Elmo R., 1920-
14 May 1976
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 112 : 6
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 7
Program details: We eventually get to defense per se--including arms
control, the end game in Vietnam, the ABM treaty--but most of the hour
is spent on the character of Henry Kissinger. Admiral Zumwalt had told
Ronald Reagan--who had used the information in a speech--that Mr.
Kissinger had frequently said, as WFB paraphrases it, that "the United
States was fated to be the second-ranking power in the world and that it
was the responsibility of the Secretary of State to see to it that in
our negotiations the U.S. came out as strong as possible under the
circumstances." Mr. Kissinger had heatedly denied this; Mr. Buckley
wonders whether even if Admiral Zumwalt was quoting accurately it was
proper to repeat a private conversation. EZ: "With regard to the
scruples, the problem is a tough one... In my view the higher
requirement is to get the debate out on the terms we need to debate it
on; namely, this tragic view of the future which is leading us on a
policy course ... which is very hard to understand in the light of the
public explanation of it being given by Kissinger. Rather than to
dissemble in the public view as he does, I think it's important to raise
openly the question of his tragic view of the future and to have it
debated."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.475
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6409
item Program Number S0234,
546
"The Intimate Lyndon Johnson"
Guests: Kearns, Doris.
14 May 1976
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 112 : 7
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 8
Program details: "Just about everybody knows the story by now," WFB
begins: "the pretty little girl, selected as a White House Fellow, goes
to the party in the East Room and finds herself dancing with the
President of the United States only a few days before her article
appears in The New Republic calling for the removal of that President.
Thus the meeting between Doris Kearns and Lyndon Johnson" and the
beginning of a "long and curious and, by the way, platonic relationship
[during which] ... he would talk nonstop about his hopes, dream, fears,
and superstitions." One sample from this somewhat surreal but
fascinating conversation. WFB: "You had a sense that when he talked to
you sometimes those soliloquies were dangerous to interrupt, right?" DK:
"Oh yes. I mean, it wasn't that. I mean, if I could recreate his
physical presence as it was. He wouldn't be sitting back in a chair like
you now, which is not very threatening to me. He would be leaning over,
breathing down my neck as he was giving me that soliloquy, which makes
you much more terrified to say, 'But sir!' And so you listen and you
hope at the end of it you can interrupt or you can give a comment, which
you can. And I suspect I was like many others; a captive of that kind of
formidable presence."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.476
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6410
item Program Number S0235,
601
"The People's Bicentennial as Spoilsports"
Guests: Rifkin,
Jeremy. : Potter, Ned. : Ulanov, Nicholas. : Kaufman, Jonathan.
28 June 1976
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 95 : 1
Publicity File: Box/Folder 112 : 8
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 8
Program details: Mr. Rifkin's organization was pressing for the
continuation of the American Revolution via the complete socialization
of the United States; as WFB puts it, "Probably the most publicized
maneuver of the People's Bicentennial Commission is the offering of huge
cash awards--$25,000 is the posted figure--to any wife of a major
corporation executive, or any employee, who can produce evidence
sufficient to put major corporation executives in jail for violating
something or other." This hard-hitting exchange concentrates mostly on
the economic side of things. JR: "My reading of history is that in any
society, whoever controls the basic wealth, the basic resources of that
society, is also going to make the political decisions that affect
everyone else's life."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.477
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6411
item Program Number S0236,
602
"Would Anarchy Work?"
Guests: MacBride, Roger. : Potter,
Ned. : Ulanov, Nicholas. : Kaufman, Jonathan.
28 June 1976
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 95 : 2
Publicity File: Box/Folder 112 : 8
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 9
Program details: Mr. MacBride is of the thorough going school of
libertarianism that would have no laws against anything other than
direct violence against another person or his property, of which
position he maintains that "We're no more anarchists than Thomas
Jefferson, or Patrick Henry, or Tom Paine." He makes his absolutist
points in the most reasonable way: "We look forward to a foreign policy
of neutrality. We believe in disengagement from the world. We believe in
a political neutrality akin to that set forth for this country by
Presidents Washington and Jefferson. We look for a sufficient nuclear
deterrent to prevent any nation from ever attacking this country; and,
combining that with our policy of non-intervention anywhere else in the
world, it would seem to be quite unlikely that this country would again
be at war."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.478
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6412
item Program Number S0237,
603
"Who's More Electable-Ford or Reagan?"
Guests: Sears, John
P.
15 July 1976
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 112 : 9
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 9
Program details: As the Kansas City convention approached, Gerald Ford
and Ronald Reagan were neck and neck; it was the closest nomination
contest in many years and the closest a sitting President had come for a
hundred years to being unseated by a challenger of his own party. This
show was not intended to be purely a pitch for Ronald Reagan: Mr. Ford's
campaign, Mr. Buckley tells us, "has had two weeks to designate a
representative but has not succeeded in doing so." Mr. Sears, a moderate
Republican, would wind up managing Mr. Reagan's next campaign for the
Presidency, too, until his spectacular dismissal in the snows of New
Hampshire. Here, he does well at focusing on the details: e.g., on how
difficult it will be for Gerald Ford, if he wins the nomination, to put
together a general election campaign: "Mr. Ford has no personal
constituency in the South ... the only way he could have won there would
have been if the Democrats had nominated a liberal Democrat who was not
from the South. They did not do that ... that forces [Ford] up into the
Northeast and Middle West ... And yet the positions he's taken in order
to try to fend off Mr. Reagan's candidacy are not ones that he could
drop that quickly to go run the other way. So I really don't know what
he would do."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.481
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6415
item Program Number S0238,
604
"Looking at the Democratic Convention"
Guests: Galbraith,
John Kenneth, 1908-2006. : Ulanov, Nicholas. : Kaufman, Jonathan. :
Potter, Ned.
15 July 1976
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 112 : 10
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 10
Program details: The two old friends and adversaries had been doing
television commentary on the conventions--or, as WFB puts it, exchanging
"disjointed grunts of satisfaction and dissatisfaction on the Today
show"--but wanted a chance to talk in greater depth than the eight
minutes a day they were allotted. Here they look at Jimmy Carter, the
newly nominated Democratic candidate, and at the economy and our tax
policies. Mr. Galbraith on liberals' nervousness about Governor Carter:
"Well, liberals have their own establishment, which isn't quite as
tightly knit and exclusive a circle as those of you who surround Ronald
Reagan perhaps, but of the same sort. And Governor Carter was from
outside, an unfamiliar figure--not the sort of man of whom my friends
could automatically feel that if he were elected, they would be in." ...
On the purpose of graduated tax rates: "One of the things that best
helps the poor and the deprived to bear life is to hear the occasional
screams of the rich."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.482
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6416
item Program Number S0239,
605
"Hentoff, Smith, and Norton vs. William F. Buckley Jr."
Guests: Hentoff, Nat. : Smith, Liz. : Norton, Harold.
8 July 1976
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 112 : 11
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 10
Program details: Another of the semi-annual occasions on which WFB
himself "goes on the
firing
line
"; in this case, three distinguished
left-of-center journalists genially but firmly question him on topics
such as James Buckley's record as senator (WFB: "... the people who
signed the Declaration of Independence would vote almost unanimously for
my brother's re-election") and the depth or thinness of Ronald Reagan's
thinking (WFB: "Well, it's thin only to the extent that the essential
propositions of liberty are thin. I have a low threshold of boredom, and
I don't like to hear the Gettysburg Address more often than, say, once a
year, but I still think it's a magnificent piece of thought").
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.479
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6413
item Program Number S0240,
606
"Free Speech vs. Fairness in Broadcasting"
Guests: Friendly,
Fred W.
8 July 1976
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 112 : 12
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 11
Program details: WFB and his guest, the co-inventor (with Edward R.
Murrow) of the television documentary, are both close students of the
Fairness Doctrine and its metastasis, from modest beginnings in 1949 to
the engine of pervasive regulation it had become. But let Mr. Friendly
set the stage: "There's a great contradiction in the whole broadcast
system. 'Congress shall make no law,' the First Amendment says. I.e.,
you shall not license printing presses. And yet when broadcasting came
along, it was necessary to license some people. Therefore you were
giving a license, and you were saying broadcasters must operate in the
public interest, convenience, necessity, and you were saying that they
had to let other points of view be seen and heard on the air. I think
that's a pretty good idea. I think you are a fiduciary. But I think
where you get into trouble is when the government tries to be the
super-referee."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.480
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6414
item Program Number S0241,
607
"Church Schools and the First Amendment"
Guests: Pfeffer,
Leo. : Lowenstein, Allard K.
2 August 1976
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 112 : 13
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 11
Program details: The Supreme Court had just ruled that Maryland's law
permitting some subsidies to church-related schools was constitutional.
WFB engages Mr. Pfeffer, a leading litigator on the separationist side
of church-state cases, on the fairness of tax exemptions for religious
institutions, and Mr. Lowenstein makes the case in favor of parents'
freedom to choose where to school their children. AL: "It's a strange
policy doctrine that says it's healthy to have a multiplicity of options
for students in college, but that we should enforce conformity at the
primary and secondary levels." ... LP: "Any effort on the part of
government to interfere with the full freedom of religious institutions
in pursuit of their sacred mission would be just as much a violation of
the Constitution as any effort of the government to promote, through
financial grant, that same mission."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.483
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6417
item Program Number S0242,
608
"Federal Health?"
Guests: Smith, Michael, Jr. : Seidman,
Bert.
2 August 1976
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 95 : 3
Publicity File: Box/Folder 112 : 14
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 12
Program details: There was talk everywhere of the need for some form of
national health insurance; several Democrats had sponsored bills in
Congress and President Ford had agreed in principle, although he was
raising fiscal objections. A real discussion never quite develops,
though we do get clear statements, from Mr. Seidman of the case in
favor, from Dr. Smith the case against. BS: "I would like to have a
medical-care system where the doctor can give the patient care on the
basis of need, and not on the basis of the patient's financial
resources." WFB: "Well, Dr. Smith, do you acknowledge that that is a
fair description of the existing situation?" MS: "Not at all, Mr.
Buckley. Unfortunately, nowhere does emotion cloud judgment to a greater
degree than in the consideration of the mechanics of how health care
would be provided."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.484
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6418
item Program Number S0243,
609
"The Economic Planks of Both Parties"
Guests: Rinfret,
Pierre.
26 August 1976
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 95 : 4
Publicity File: Box/Folder 112 : 15
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 12
Program details: Mr. Rinfret energetically takes up where he left off on
his previous
Firing
Line
appearance (s0156), tracing our economic
problems over the last ten years. "We have a very interesting paradox
going on right now. It's something nobody wants to talk about. We may
not have in this country right now enough capital to put every American
to work. I can give you the analogy in a very simple way: ten machines,
eleven people looking for work, and only one man can work at one machine
at a time. So you can put people to work and the eleventh guy is going
to stand there ... We may be in that problem of having underinvested,
overconsumed under an ancient antique concept of the 1930s. Consumption
is not our problem. And yet every President that comes along,Congress
comes along and says, 'Stimulate consumption; we need more
consumption.'... So they keep wondering why they're not getting economic
growth."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.485
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6419
item Program Number S0244,
610
"Should Books like Little Black Sambo Be on Library Shelves?"
Guests: Pilpel, Harriet F. : Jordan, June. : Kaufman, Jonathan. :
Potter, Ned. : Lipinsky, Lino.
26 August 1976
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 112 : 16
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 13
Program details: Mrs. Pilpel declares herself as "strongly prejudiced in
favor of the First Amendment... not to the exclusion of all others, but
ahead of all others, because as long as you have freedom of speech and
of the press there is an avenue of protest." Miss Jordan replies, "I'd
like to backtrack, if I may, to focus upon your avowed commitment,
whole-hearted commitment, somewhat prejudicial commitment to the First
Amendment as against other rights.... When we're talking about a free
society and we're talking about freedom of expression, we're not talking
about freedom of expression that is equally available to all people in
this country, as you know. And when we're especially talking about
groups such as women in this country and the minority people in this
country, we're talking about people who have never had the kind of
freedom of expression that has been available to the white male ..." HP:
"I am completely in agreement with you that women and minorities--" WFB:
"God, the women I know aren't oppressed as regards their freedom of
expression."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.486
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00G707UVE
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6420
item Program Number S0245,
611
"Diplomacy for a Crowded World"
Guests: Ball, George W.
9 September 1976
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 112 : 17
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 13
Program details: We begin with a little bellicosity (GWB: "The Democratic
Party has tended in my judgment to draw much more from an intellectual
milieu, and to that extent perhaps it's attracted people who have an
interest in foreign affairs." WFB: "But those are the people who usually
make the wars, aren't they?" GWB: "Well, that's one of your myths, I
know, Mr. Buckley"), but as we roam the Cold War world from Rhodesia to
Vietnam to the Soviet Union we get fascinating recollections from
someone who has been on the scene since the Nuremberg trials and was now
being rumored as possible Secretary of State in a Carter Administration.
GWB: "You asked me whether it's ever desirable for the Administration to
lie. I can only-- The reason that I hesitated related to a very personal
experience." Mr. Ball had been a member of the group within the Kennedy
Administration trying to figure out what to do during the Cuban missile
crisis, "Well, we had a rational, coherent policy which we did finally
evolve and which worked. We couldn't have done it-- I mean we would have
been in terrible shape if there had been a premature disclosure. Now ...
I found myself in a position where I had to go off and make a speech and
I didn't dare cancel..." WFB: "What did you talk about?" GWB: "Well, I
talked about economics, but then they got up and asked me about missiles
in Cuba. And I gave them as equivocal answers as I could, doing my best
to try not to mislead them.... I then went back and spent the entire
night as I had been doing every night, in the so-called think tank we
had, trying to sort these things out."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.487
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6421
item Program Number S0246,
612
"America in a Hostile World"
Guests: Brzezinski, Zbigniew,
1928-
9 September 1976
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 112 : 18
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 14
Program details: Another candidate for Secretary of State in a Carter
Administration (in the event, he became National Security Advisor and
Cyrus Vance became Secretary of State) gives for the third time on
Firing
Line
his pungent, deeply informed view of the world, on subjects
this time ranging from the death of Mao Tse-tung to the trade-union
movement in the United States, from the relations between the First and
Third Worlds to the upward mobility of different ethnic groups in the
United States. ZB: "If you go beyond simple events, simple facts, the
process of defining what reality is becomes enormously complex. Now, we
can state as a proposition, assuming we know the facts, that very
recently Mao Tse-tung died. And if we have access to information we can
say exactly when he died. That's presumably an uncontestable fact,
although even sometimes that can be contested. But beyond that, when you
begin to assess what this means for the Chinese regime, what its
implications are, even before you move into prescriptions, your
assessment of that reality becomes inherently more difficult and
invariably more subjective."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.488
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6422
item Program Number S0247,
613
"Subversion and the Law"
Guests: Felt, W. Mark. : Cohn, Roy
M.
20 September 1976
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 95 : 5
Publicity File: Box/Folder 112 : 19
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 14
Program details: "John Ehrlichman," Mr. Buckley begins, "has been
convicted for ordering the burglary of the office of the psychiatrist
who treated Daniel Ellsberg, and the courts flatly rejected his argument
that there was an inherent right vested in the Executive to secure the
nation's interest by illegal activities," whereupon, Mr. Buckley
continues, Mr. Felt "stepped forward and announced that he had
personally ordered two burglaries without court approval and that he
would do it again." Both guests immediately challenge the term
"burglary": MF: "The dictionary defines a burglary as a break-in with
the intent to steal something, and what I authorized were two
surreptitious entries to try and get information." (Mr. Felt's break-ins
were to offices of the Palestine Liberation Organization and the
Weathermen)"And I think by authorizing it I saved a lot of lives.") Mr.
Cohn concurs: "Oh, these are not burglaries. The term is just completely
misused here. Nothing was stolen; nothing was taken." WFB: "Well,
nothing was stolen from Dr. Fielding's office, but that was a burglary,
wasn't it?" RC: "No, I don't think that was a burglary. I think the
correct term here would probably be surreptitious entry... . And I've
been on both sides. I worked with the government, and I practice law and
defend people where the FBI is on the other side, so I've seen it from
both vantage points." And we're off on a fascinating exploration of this
murky subject.
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.489
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00G707R3U
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6423
item Program Number S0248,
614
"The Claims of Jimmy Carter"
Guests: Shannon, William. :
Carter, Hodding, III.
20 September 1976
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 112 : 20
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 15
Program details: Jimmy Carter claims, as Mr. Buckley puts it, to "have
brought us a series of positions on important issues which speak
realistically to the nation's needs. There has been, I think we would
all agree, some difficulty in transcribing these positions, which is why
we have such expert help here in the studio." They do eventually get to
candidate Carter's positions and how they may have changed--on the
economy, especially, and abortion--but only after a rich discussion of
how his Christianity strikes the opinion-making elite. WS: "We've just
had two Presidents back to back, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon, both
of whom in different ways seemed to suffer from a certain megalomania,
and it's thought that all we'd need now would be to have a third one who
had megalomania touched with religious afflatus, to borrow one of your
words...."WFB: "Is it the provenance of the authority that disturbs your
set?" WS: "I think so,yes. Not my set. You're as much of this set as I
am. You and I happen to be exceptions in that-- You are still a
Christian, Bill?" WFB: "Yes." WS: "Yes.... But I think that most people
who edit the news on television or radio--" WFB: "Are atheistic
Communists?" WS: "No, just mildly bemused agnostics, I would say." ...
HC: "I think Jimmy Carter's religion, to a number of the people who live
in the set you may travel in, again more than I, is an affront to a
number of hard-earned--as they see it--values that they have, their
escape from whatever heritages of their own past, religious
particularly, and cultural."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.490
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6424
item Program Number S0249,
615
"The Problems of the Panama Canal"
Guests: McGrath, Marcos
G. : Cheveille, Richard. : Chapman, Guillermo O.
30 September 1976
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 112 : 21
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 15
Program details: The Panamanian government had demanded a thorough
revision of the treaty of 1903, which had given the United States
dominion in perpetuity over the Canal and the strips of land adjoining
it. Secretary of State Kissinger and the Panamanian negotiators had in
1974 reached an agreement in principle, but any actual treaty would
require ratification by the Senate, and the proposal had stirred up a
hornet's nest back home, becoming a hot issue in the Republican
presidential primaries (as it would again in 1980 even though the treaty
was eventually ratified in 1978--see
Firing
Line
s0306). Dr. Cheveille
and Mr. Chapman point out that the Panamanians' demands did not come out
of the blue: Mr. Cheveille reminds us that "The earliest treaty, the
1903 treaty, has been renegotiated several times," and that Lyndon
Johnson had agreed in 1964 to something very like the current proposal,
but the war in Indochina and the war on America's campuses had put it on
hold. Today's discussion ranges from the negotiation of the original
treaty, to current issues of U.S. national security, to, with Archbishop
McGrath, issues of peace and justice.
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.493
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6427
item Program Number S0250,
616
"Panama and the U.S."
Guests: Lakas, Demetrio.
30 September 1976
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 112 : 21
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 16
Program details: A second installment on Panama and the Canal, this one
with the man whom General Omar Torrijos had appointed as head of state.
In terms of intellectual substance, we get the idea right from the
outset that we should not expect too much ("I first of all want to thank
the American people for being nice and letting me go into their living
rooms through this television set"). But it is fun watching WFB try to
drag a straight answer out of his guest: WFB: "Well, let me try to put
it differently. Archbishop McGrath, your archbishop, wrote an article in
which he said that an example of American exploitation of the treaty is
that it created military installations for which it paid money at a far
lesser rate than, for instance, it pays money to Spain for its
installations. So my question is whether you endorse that analysis of
Archbishop McGrath's." DL: "Please, he's our spiritual leader, thank the
Lord." WFB: "He's not only your spiritual leader." DL: "He's my very
good friend." WFB: "He's my friend too, I hope. But he's also somebody
who's perfectly prepared to concern himself with secular matters, isn't
he?" DL: "There you go getting deep on me again. What's wrong with
you?"
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.494
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6428
item Program Number S0251,
617
"Ten Years of
Firing
Line
: 1966-1976: Part I"
Guests:
Crossman, R. H. S. (Richard Howard Stafford), 1907-1974. : Greer,
Germaine, 1939- : Macmillan, Harold, 1894- : Luce, Clare Boothe,
1903-1987. : McCarthy, Mary, 1912- : West, Rebecca, Dame, 1892- :
Mailer, Norman. : Spender, Stephen, 1909- : Kenner, Hugh. : McGovern,
George S. (George Stanley), 1922- : Udall, Morris K. : Powell, J. Enoch
(John Enoch), 1912-1998. : Smith, Ian Douglas, 1919- : Mosley, Oswald,
Sir, 1896- : Welty, Eudora, 1909- : Muggeridge, Malcolm, 1903-1990. :
Sheen, Fulton J. (Fulton John), 1895-1979. : Valenti, Fernando.
20 September 1976
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 112 : 22
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 16
Program details: Ten years is a long time in television, and a tenth
anniversary is worthy of a celebration. This show is an anthology of
memorable clips-some lasting several minutes, others just a couple of
paragraphs-from this first decade's shows. But first, a few words from
WFB about
Firing
Line
itself: "Our aim is to get people who have
something to say. They can say it on
Firing
Line
without having to jump
over roadblocks every few minutes. They can indulge their own styles of
thought and speech. They can be frenetic or leisurely. They need only to
watch their logic, and be prepared to examine previously unexamined
deposits of prejudice, if they are burdened by them.
Firing
Line
is
devoted to the proposition that interesting people can be interesting
through the course of an entire hour. Failures at this level have been
very few. But then, to quote the buoyant observation of Harold Nicolson,
'Ninety-nine people out of a hundred are interesting; and the hundredth
is interesting because he is the exception.'"
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.491
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TZ8GG2O
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6425
item Program Number S0252,
618
"Ten Years of
Firing
Line
: 1966-1976: Part II"
Guests:
Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr Isaevich, 1918-2008. : Teller, Edward,
1908-2003. : Kissinger, Henry, 1923- : Leary, Timothy Francis, 1920- :
Cleaver, Eldridge, 1935- : Kunstler, William Moses, 1919- : Thomas,
Norman, 1884-1968. : Rusk, Dean, 1909- : Ali, Muhammad, 1942- :
Ginsberg, Allen, 1926- : Bond, Julian, 1940- : Lewis, John Llewellyn,
1880-1969. : Jackson, Jesse, 1941- : Dellums, Ronald V., 1935- : Nixon,
Richard M. (Richard Milhous), 1913-1994. : Humphrey, Hubert H. (Hubert
Horatio), 1911-1978. : McCarthy, Eugene J., 1916- : Carter, Jimmy, 1924-
: Richardson, Elliot L., 1920- : Hunt, E. Howard (Everette Howard),
1918-2007. : Ford, Gerald R., 1913- : Tureck, Rosalyn.
20 September 1976
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 112 : 22
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 17
Program details: The anniversary anthology, Part II. WFB: "
Firing
Line
was never conceived as an 'interview.' It was conceived, and indeed the
original contract specifically called for an 'exchange of opinion.' The
idea was that a conservative position on many matters of public policy
tends to be ignored, or trivialized, in a mighty communications industry
wired to the pressure points of contemporary and even trendy American
liberalism. Accordingly, the producers thought, why not experiment and
see if a conservative view of current affairs could survive the
battering, week after week, of expert proponents of the Left?"
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.492
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6426
item Program Number S0253,
619
"The Electoral Verdict"
Guests: Kraft, Joseph. : Reeves,
Richard, 1936-
4 November 1976
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 95 : 6
Publicity File: Box/Folder 112 : 23
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 17
Program details: The day before this taping, Jimmy Carter had defeated
Gerald Ford for the Presidency; furthermore, in Congress, most of the
Democratic freshmen originally elected in the Watergate year of 1974 had
been re-elected. These three old pros give us a tour, rich in detail, of
the policies and personalities. WFB: "Do the returns ... suggest that
the Republican Party carries a stigma which it appears incapable of a
cleansing, so that people who want a crack at public life are extremely
reluctant to proceed under the sponsorship of the Republican Party? ..."
RR: "I think, yes, there is a stigma ... On the other hand,... the
election laws are designed to perpetuate the two-party system, so that
once you get the Republican nomination you can do anything you want with
it--run as an attractive young alternative, or, as Hayakawa did in
California, as an attractive old alternative running against the
majority party." ... JK: "The first thing I think I'll say is that... it
seems to me to be very very much an un-landmark election ... But in
answer specifically to your question, it would seem to me that there are
several good indices for the Republicans. First of all, they elected
some young, fresh faces--Lugar, Wallop, for example. Secondly,... when a
state like New Jersey, which I think has unemployment of over 11 per
cent, goes Republican, it seems to me that the Democrats ought to be
scratching their heads a little bit and worrying a lot."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.498
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6432
item Program Number S0254,
620
"Caracas and U.S. Policy"
Guests: Arria, Diego.
4 October 1976
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 95 : 7
Publicity File: Box/Folder 112 : 24
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 18
Program details: "Providence," WFB begins, "assigned to Venezuela a
supply of oil so bountiful as to provide every Venezuelan with a kind of
dowry amounting to something on the order of $1,000 per person per year.
Moreover, after a shaky start--Venezuela had 155 governments over a
period of 125 years--Venezuela has emerged along with Colombia as one of
two self-governing republics in South America.... The unspoken sentiment
is that Venezuela may soon emerge as the principal spokesman for South
America." A good-natured though some what slow-moving hour beginning
with Venezuela's new redistributionist policies (WFB: "Why should a
country like yours, that is so abundantly endowed by nature, require (a)
foreign investments, and (b) higher domestic taxes?" DA: "Well, we have
to cope with a problem that has been accumulating for many years, which
has been the social underdevelopment of the country ... An increase of
tax is not only are venue-producing decision, but is rather also a way
of teaching the Venezuelans how to live in a society in which both sides
have to cooperate.") and going on to OPEC and whether the
grain-producing countries should try to emulate it.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.495
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6429
item Program Number S0255,
621
"What's Going On in China?"
Guests: Chang, Parris. :
Zagoria, Donald.
4 November 1976
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 112 : 25
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 18
Program details: Mao Tse-tung had died in September, and his widow,
Chiang Ching, had been denounced as one of the Gang of Four and
imprisoned. "As we sit here," WFB begins,"it is not absolutely known
even whether the widow of Mao Tse-tung is alive or dead. Every manner of
crime is imputed to her, and it is even whispered that she permitted the
music of Beethoven into the death chamber of her husband." What will the
incoming Carter Administration do about it all? What should it do? A
rich discussion with two men who know as much about this closed society
as one can know from the outside; we go from the ouster of Teng
Hsiao-ping to what should be our policy on selling technology, and
especially weapons technology, to Peking. DZ: "Simon Leys ... reports...
[that] a young man in a Chinese department store walked up to a man who
was obviously a foreigner and tried to offer him some assistance in the
English language. And this young man, who subsequently defected to Hong
Kong, told Simon Leys that about twenty minutes after that conversation
took place he was brought into the public security station and
questioned at great length as to why he was in contact with this Western
diplomat, how long he had known him, and so on and so forth. And it took
him five hours to convince the man that they had had no previous
contact."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.497
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6431
item Program Number S0256,
622
"Venezuela and the U.S."
Guests: Mann, Joseph, Jr. : Faud,
Kim. : Mayobre, Jose Antonio.
4 October 1976
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 95 : 8
Publicity File: Box/Folder 112 : 26
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 19
Program details: More on Venezuela, with the panelists from the show with
Governor Arria returning as guests. A lively discussion of the road to
democracy, Latin America's relations with the United States, and
experiments by other Latin countries, especially the Friedmanites in
Chile. JAM: "Let me ask you a question. Where is the borderline
...between being a demagogue and being a democrat? If there is one, and
I think there is one, what we are trying to do here is not simply give a
so-called voice to the people. Did they really have a voice in Argentina
[under Peron]?" WFB: "Well, they certainly understood themselves as
having a voice.... That's why I think that when you talk about
strengthening democratic institutions by making the government
responsive to the voice of the people you need to make a qualification,
don't you?" JAM: "I don't think I said 'responsive to the voice of the
people.' I think letting the people express themselves through their
institutions--that means congress; that means the executive branch; that
means the courts of the judiciary system, even the vote itself." ... KF:
"A lot of countries ... do feel it [foreign investment] is
imperialism.... They feel that they've really got an anchor around their
neck. This anchor may have an ITT label on it, or an Exxon label, or
what have you. But they definitely feel that their progress politically
shouldn't have a handbrake on it with a 'Made in U.S.A.' mark on
it."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.496
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6430
item Program Number S0257,
623
"The Problems of Massachusetts"
Guests: Dukakis, Michael S.
(Michael Stanley), 1933-
23 November 1976
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 112 : 27
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 19
Program details: We are not quite two years into Mr. Dukakis's
governorship--before the Massachusetts Miracle, also before Willie
Horton. A lively exchange on the financial relationships between the
Federal Government and the states, on protectionism, on welfare, and
more. WFB: "Now I'm not suggesting that Massachusetts should have been
punished for voting for George McGovern, but I'm suggesting that there
might be some relationship?" MD: "We had lived through four years of
Nixon as it was, so it really didn't make an awful lot of difference."
WFB: "That's right, but those four years of Nixon's showed your GNP
going up rather dramatically, didn't it?" MD: "But it showed our prices
going up rather dramatically as well, and our unemployment rate
beginning to climb too." WFB: "Well, it's true. It's quite true that the
inflation which was the principal patrimony of Lyndon Johnson had to be
paid somewhere along the line. However, let's not make this a partisan
program." MD: "But Nixon continued the war that caused it in the first
place." WFB: "You're talking about Kennedy's war?"
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.500
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6434
item Program Number S0258,
624
"The Future of Private Colleges"
Guests: Ward, John William.
: Conway, Jill Ker.
23 November 1976
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 95 : 9
Publicity File: Box/Folder 112 : 28
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 20
Program details: What is the point of private colleges in the last
quarter of the 20th century? As Mr. Buckley states the problem,
paraphrasing Professor Jeffrey Hart of Dartmouth, "Once they were
enclaves of distinctiveness, with their traditions, their peculiarities
...That is no longer the case. Once they were fortresses of academic
excellence. That is no longer the case." Our guests genially but firmly
reject the premise; some things have changed, but don't, Mr. Ward
admonishes his host, confuse "Columbia University or perhaps your
university at Yale, a very large recipient of federal moneys," with the
small private colleges..." "See, about the only money that comes into a
place like Amherst College would be through the National Science
Foundation for research projects." And Mrs. Conway thinks "there is a
growing awareness on the part of women students, and men actually, that
there is much to be gained from the small-college environment that is
currently not so easily available in a large university setting."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.499
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6433
item Program Number S0259,
625
"Deep Throat and the First Amendment"
Guests: Reems, Harry.
: Dershowitz, Alan M.
13 December 1976
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 95 : 10
Publicity File: Box/Folder 112 : 29
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 20
Program details: Harry Reems, one of the participants in Deep Throat, had
been arrested on charges of commerce in obscenity; Mr. Dershowitz,
rising to the First Amendment challenge, was leading his defense. (When
Firing
Line
invited Mr. Dershowitz to discuss the case, he insisted on
bringing Mr. Reems with him; Mr. Buckley intended to pretend Mr. Reems
was not there, though good manners eventually got the better of him.) To
Mr. Buckley's questions about the effect of pornography on society (does
it foster illegitimacy, rape, abortion?), our guests, the one rather
more eloquently than the other, offer a slab of First Amendment
absolutism. AD: "I think that there have been major changes in the last
ten years, brought about by a complex of factors.... For example,
Playboy magazine has probably had more of an influence on the sexual
revolution than any hard-core porno films.... You would have to ban
Playboy magazine. You would probably have to ban Cosmopolitan magazine
... The point is, if you want to achieve the result, then you have to
have much more censorship. If you want to have free speech, then you
have to include Deep Throat..." WFB: "I think you are right. You have to
sort of revitalize a whole central view of man, which is not easily done
by the suppression of anything. But the suppression of certain things is
an aspect of one's concern. Just as we suppressed the circulation of
racist literature in Germany after the war."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.501
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0026ZQEAC
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6435
item Program Number S0260,
626
"The Death Penalty"
Guests: Van den Haag, Ernest. : Shapiro,
E. Donald.
13 December 1976
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 112 : 30
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 21
Program details: "The Supreme Court," Mr. Buckley begins, "has been
playing Hamlet in the matter of capital punishment. At this moment it
seems to be saying that capital punishment is permissible but executions
are not." Two old antagonists go around one more time, each unable to
change the other's mind, but each clearly laying out the arguments for
his side. One sample: EvdH: "It is clear that this penalty is the only
one that could restrain people who are already in prison for life and
attack their prison mates or officers...." DS: "You know, Ernest, I must
violently disagree with you ... There are other ways in prison. Solitary
confinement is a very effective deterrent to many, many criminals. And I
think--" EvdH: "At the present time, Don, the federal prisons contain a
man sentenced to life imprisonment who, since he is in prison, has
managed to commit three more murders on three separate occasions. Not
unless we chain such a man in a way that was done a hundred years ago,
and that you would not approve of, nor would I, I do not think that
there is... Because you are giving them immunity in effect by saying,
'Nothing further can happen to you except solitary confinement,' which I
don't think is that much of a punishment." DS: "Oh, it really is,
Ernest, I mean--" EvdH: "I have suffered it for two years. I didn't find
it that." DS: "Well, you had your own company, Ernest. I mean, very few
people are that fortunate in solitary confinement."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.502
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00G709QX4
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6436
item Program Number S0261,
627
"Freedom under the Bill of Rights"
Guests: Harris, Richard.
3 January 1977
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 113 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 21
Program details: Mr. Harris is rather gloomy about the practice of rights
in America. In his book he had examined three cases where protections
(of free speech; against unreasonable search and seizure) that
supposedly had been won were not granted. In the first and mildest
case--which was also the one where there was the least clear and present
danger--a schoolteacher who showed up wearing a black armband in
mourning for those who had died in the Cambodian incursion was fired.
WFB: "In other words, as far as you're concerned, there is no authority
over the subject of decorum in a public school." RH: "Right. The courts
have said that you can wear your hair any length; you can wear what
clothes you want. Now I don't know what you'd do if somebody arrived in
public school without any clothes." WFB: "I know what I'd do." RH:
"You'd wrap something around them, as we all would."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.503
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6437
item Program Number S0262,
628
"The Moon Movement"
Guests: Salonen, Neil Albert. : Kaufman,
Ben.
3 January 1977
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 113 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 22
Program details: Questions had been asked about the Reverend Sun Myung
Moon for a while (starting with his sexual practices, and the nature of
the charge on which he was arrested in Korea in the Fifties), but it was
only recently that his movement hit the front pages. Parents of some of
the young people who had joined the Unification Church had made
accusations of brainwashing" and had kidnapped their children to bring
them back home. Mr. Salonen is a true believer ("I found that [Moon] was
not only a man who lived according to his teachings, but by following
those teachings I myself experienced a kind of spiritual rebirth which I
had only before read about"). Mr. Kaufman maintains that the Unification
Church's official writings contain "redundant expressions of anti-Jewish
feeling and anti-Christian feeling," and he is appalled by the church's
doctrine against separation of church and state: "If the Reverend Mr.
Moon and the Unification Church achieve their goal, this separation,
possibly Satanic, will end in this country." A lively, though sometimes
acrimonious, exchange."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.504
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6438
item Program Number S0263,
629
"The Education of Eldridge Cleaver"
Guests: Cleaver,
Eldridge, 1935-
14 January 1977
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 113 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 22
Program details: Mr. Buckley starts by reminding us of the background:
"convicted in 1958 of assault with intent to rape and kill, Mr. Cleaver
was sentenced to 14 years in jail. Released on parole, he joined the
nascent Black Panther Party and became its Minister of Information. He
was involved in a gunfight in which one of his brethren was killed and
two policemen were wounded; while out on bail, he ran for President on
the Peace and Freedom ticket, appeared on
Firing
Line
(124), and fled
the country to avoid being returned to jail. In 1975 he returned home.
In his previous appearance on
Firing
Line
(of which we see a short clip
here) everyone was a pig, a lackey, or an imperialist. A few years in
Cuba, Algeria, and North Korea have taught Mr. Cleaver a lot: They
[rulers of countries like Algeria] use their foreign policy as a weapon
against their own people. They tell the students and the other people
who disagree with the Boumedienne government that 'You can't change
things now; you can't rock the boat now or it will jeopardize the rights
of the Vietnamese people'; because during the time that the war was
going on the Vietnamese had one of their major operations in the Western
world [there]... And again, they will tell the Algerian people that 'You
can't rock the boat or you will jeopardize the rights of the Palestinian
people'; and so they had an open-arms policy for revolutionaries ... and
dissidents from other countries."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.508
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6442
item Program Number S0264,
630
"Gun Control"
Guests: Kukla, Robert. : Mikva, Abner J.
10 January 1977
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 113 : 4
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 23
Program details: Is personal liberty a valid consideration in formulating
gun laws? Are different sorts of guns essentially different in their
capacity to be misused? Is there a correlation between a state's or
locality's gun-control laws and the crime rate in that place? Such
questions still vex our country more than twenty years later, but some
light is shed on them by WFB and his guests, Mr. Kukla an advocate for
legal handguns, Mr. Mikva the author of legislation to curtail them.
AJM: "Does [Mr. Kukla] really mean that you should be able to carry a
gun down the streets of New York, just in case somebody wants to rip you
off?" WFB: "We'll have no reductio ad absurdum on this program."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.505
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6439
item Program Number S0265,
631
"The Latin Liturgy"
Guests: Hitchcock, James. : McManus,
Charles J. : Hay, Robert. : McCarthy, Kenneth. : McConnell, John.
10 January 1977
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 113 : 5
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 23
Program details: Eight years after the introduction of the new liturgy in
the Catholic Church, the argument continued (as it still does, though at
a lower level of intensity, more than twenty years later) over whether
(a) it was necessary and (b) it was properly implemented. JH:"I like to
describe myself as a 'pre-Conciliar liberal,' because I don't think that
liturgists before the Second Vatican Council or the fathers of the
Second Vatican Council themselves envisioned the virtual elimination of
the Latin liturgy." ... CJM: "I think the main problem we have with the
liturgy at this particular point in history is [that]... we don't have
priests who really know how to use the English yet as a way of welcoming
participation--to say, 'The Lord be with you,' and to say it in such a
way that it dynamically and spiritually attracts people into responding
well, is not an ability that is common among us."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.506
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6440
item Program Number S0266,
632
"Intelligence Operations in the 20th Century"
Guests:
FitzGibbon, Constantine, 1919- : Hersh, Seymour M.
14 January 1977
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 113 : 6
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 24
Program details: Is there a need for the CIA? Does the CIA fulfill such a
need? An absorbing three-way debate among a left-wing journalist who
answers "No" to both questions, and two right-wingers who answer "Yes"
to the first, "Not entirely" to the second. CF: "I hold very little
brief for the activities of the CIA in recent years. . . . But
Khrushchev's secret speech denouncing Stalin's crimes was uncovered and
got out of Russia by the CIA. And if the CIA had not had an agent
working on this, it would have remained just another dirty little
Russian secret in the Kremlin. As it was, it caused--and is still
causing--severe trouble to our potential enemies. That is a positive
triumph of American intelligence." SH: "Nothing's as clear-cut as all
that, because it turns out that we paid an awful lot of money. We were
offering money all over, through every agent we had. Admittedly, we had
people we could go to. But I think Yankee dollars brought that as much
as CIA ingenuity." WFB: "Ingenuity and Yankee dollars go hand in
hand."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.507
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6441
item Program Number S0267,
633
"Borges: South America's Titan"
Guests: Borges, Jorge Luis,
1899-
1 February 1977
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 95 : 11
Publicity File: Box/Folder 113 : 7
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 24
Program details: A radiant hour with one of the 20th century's finest
writers, who tells us, among much else, why he doesn't mind having gone
blind ("Of course, when you are blind, time flows in a different way. It
flows, let's say, on an easy slope"), and why his second language is his
favorite ("Firstly, English is both a Germanic and a Latin language,
those two registers. For any idea you take, you have two words. Those
words do not mean exactly the same. For example, if I say 'regal,' it's
not exactly the same thing as saying 'kingly.' Or if I say 'fraternal,'
it's not saying the same as 'brotherly.' ... It would make all the
difference in the world in a poem if I wrote about 'the Holy Spirit' or
I wrote 'the Holy Ghost,' since 'ghost' is a fine, dark Saxon word,
while 'spirit' is a light Latin word"). Technical note: This program is
black and white.
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.511
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004OEION8
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6445
item Program Number S0268,
634
"Terror in Latin America"
Guests: Cox, Robert. : de Onis,
Juan. : Benham, Joseph.
1 February 1977
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 113 : 8
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 25
Program details: Argentina was at this time an unstable continent's
principal venue for terrorist and counter-terrorist violence. Our guests
speak calmly, which makes their tale all the more chilling--from the
thousands of people who have "disappeared," to the religious persecution
that takes place under President Videla (even though he himself appears
to be a committed Christian), to Mr. Cox's account of how a journalist
deals with terrorism: "He knows he can't possibly afford to have
bodyguards; he can't possibly afford to assume that his life is in
danger all the time, so he just assumes his life is not in danger. He
takes the ordinary precautions that anybody could do. He looks twice or
three times before he goes out in the morning; he does things like that.
If you get with journalists ..., they say to you, 'You have to realize
before you leave in the morning you might not get home at night.' The
funny thing is, having realized that, things are all right. It's when
you haven't realized that that people get jumpy and get nervous and get
worried." Note: This program is in black and white.
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.512
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0064EGMFS
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6446
item Program Number S0269,
635
"Argentina after Peron"
Guests: Martinez de Hoz, Jose
Alfredo.
31 January 1977
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 113 : 9
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 25
Program details: "Juan Domingo Peron," WFB begins, "was exiled from
Argentina in 1955 after ten years of disastrous rule, but... as the
years went by there was a romanticization of Peron, and you would have
thought it was Pericles who had been exiled to Spain." In 1973 he was
called back as president; he died the next year and was succeeded by his
second wife, Isabel, who ruled for two more disastrous years before she
was ousted by the junta led by General Jorge Rafael Videla. This second
show from Argentina concentrates on the country's other great problem:
inflation. Dr. Martinez de Hoz--whose policies so far were
working--fills in the background: during the interregnum inflation had
mostly been 20 to 30 per cent--in the danger zone, but not
hyperinflation. By the time of last year's coup it had reached 800 per
cent. "What we did was to tell the workers straightforwardly the
following--and this has been one of my policies all the time: tell
everybody the truth all the time, and don't hold anything back. So we
explained to the workers, 'Look, if things go on like this, we are
heading into massive unemployment with the whole production of the
country grinding to a standstill. Now if you want to avoid this, you
must accept a policy, a wage policy... and if you'll come along with us,
and don't cause trouble, I commit myself to avoid massive
unemployment'--which is not easy to do, because generally countries come
out of high inflation and recession with massive unemployment."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.510
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6444
item Program Number S0270,
636
"Should the U.S. Pressure Argentina?"
Guests: Hill, Robert
Charles, 1917-1978. : Roca, Eduardo.
31 January 1977
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 113 : 10
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 26
Program details: Should the United States, in other words, impose some
form of sanctions to persuade Argentina not to ignore human rights in
the course of fighting terrorism? To Mr. Hill, "We have grave moral
problems in the United States. You know, I'd like to see our people pay
attention to making us a better society rather than trying to tell
someone else in the Far East, or in Europe, or in the Middle East, or in
Africa how to run their affairs." Mr. Roca points out a special
difficulty in fighting this kind of terrorist war: "We really make
friendship a basic element of our daily life, and these people are using
this friendship to introduce into the families of the members of the
government- All of the bombs are not put by people disguised as-how do
you say mandaderos?" WFB: "Messengers." ER: "Messengers. No, they are
disguised as friends of the family, friends of the institution, no? It's
difficult to handle all of these questions in the normal manner."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.509
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6443
item Program Number S0271,
637
"Human Rights"
Guests: Lowenstein, Allard K.
9 March 1977
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 113 : 11
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 26
Program details: "In Geneva every year for about a month," WFB begins, "a
body called the Commission on Human Rights meets for the purpose--one
would suppose on surveying its record--of reiterating its disapproval of
South Africa, Israel, and Chile. To the astonishment of the nations
assembled, our representative this year brought up the subject of human
rights violated elsewhere, for instance, in the Soviet Union and Uganda.
For several tumultuous weeks, the Commission on Human Rights was
convulsed ..." But the State Department forgave Allard Lowenstein, who
here zestfully recounts his adventures. "I said to Zorin, 'You know, in
the Congress of the United States, Ambassador Zorin, we have a saying
that we can disagree without being disagreeable,' and his interpreter
said, 'I can't translate that into Russian.' I offered to try to say it
in French or German. I'm not sure that would have improved things."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.516
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6450
item Program Number S0272,
638
"How Much Liberty?"
Guests: Moss, Robert. : Janitschek,
Hans.
8 March 1977
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 113 : 12
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 27
Program details: Mr. Moss had been warning that, as Mr. Buckley
paraphrases him, "There are indications that social democracy [in Great
Britain], in its passion for equality is not only engaged in creating
relative poverty, but losing significantly its commitment to democratic
method." Mr. Janitschek, meanwhile-whose organization's members include
Olof Palme of Sweden, Willy Brandt of West Germany, and Bruno Kreisky of
Austria-is committed passionately to the cause of socialism, but equally
passionately to the cause of democracy. A civil but hard-hitting
three-cornered battle. WFB: "Jack Jones,... who is the most prominent
labor-union leader, I guess, in Great Britain, finds himself 'at home'
in East Germany. Do you know why he finds himself at home there?" HJ:
"... Maybe he's got personal friends there. As a democratic socialist I
don't think that Jack could possibly wish to live in East Germany under
a repressive system."... RM: "I think that we should take people at
their word. After all, an obscure agitator in Germany, called Hitler,
wrote a silly book called Mein Kampf, which the bourgeoisie shrugged off
as a silly book which could never be taken seriously, and he proceeded
to carry out coldly most of the things that he put down in writing in
that book. I think it's likely to prove the same with our left-wing
extremists in Britain today."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.513
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6447
item Program Number S0273,
639
"Is There a Solution for Rhodesia?"
Guests: Amery, Julian,
1919- : Lestor, Joan.
9 March 1977
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 96 : 1
Publicity File: Box/Folder 113 : 13
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 27
Program details: Since Ian Smith's appearance on
Firing
Line
three years
earlier (s0133), an attempt had been made by Henry Kissinger to broker
an agreement leading to majority (black) rule; Mr. Smith had walked out
of the resulting Geneva Conference, saying that the terms had been
changed from what he had agreed to. "Meanwhile, terrorism was escalating
in Rhodesia, with recent reports of blacks killing nuns," as Mr. Buckley
puts it, "in the name of 'Majority rule now.' " Mrs. Lestor comes out
swinging ("I'd like to comment on your introduction, which I thought was
a very biased introduction"), and the pace never lets up. JL: "I wish we
had Mr. Kissinger here now, because it may well be, and my belief is,
that one thing may well have been said to Mr. Smith by Mr. Kissinger,
which was certainly not agreed by Whitehall ..." JA: "Well, there was a
British official with Kissinger all the time." JL: "... The Foreign
Office would know full well that the British Parliament and the British
Labour Party and the British Labour government would never accept a
situation ... where two of the key positions would be left in the hands
of the whites in Southern Rhodesia ..." JA: "But my dear Joan, the
moment Kissinger had made his speech, the Foreign Office came out, with
the full authority of the Foreign Secretary, with a very strong
statement fully endorsing what had been-" WFB: "That's exactly what I
said." JL: "No, they did not endorse. They did not endorse."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.515
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6449
item Program Number S0274,
640
"Disarmament and Jimmy Carter"
Guests: Chalfont, Arthur
Gwynne Jones, Baron, 1919- : Crozier, Brian.
8 March 1977
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 113 : 14
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 28
Program details: Our two guests approach things from different political
angles, but both are serious students of the Soviet Union and of
disarmament, and both are informatively apprehensive about America's new
President. Mr. Crozier: "I think he may be tempted to follow a path ...
of considering the strategic relations between the two superpowers in
terms of military hardware and of nuclear technology, and of ignoring
the other factors at work, including Soviet subversion ... and the
Soviet involvement by proxy, the most striking example of which is
undoubtedly the Angola affair, in which some 15,000 or perhaps more
Cuban troops were there simply to carry out Soviet foreign policy." ...
Lord Chalfont: "I think perhaps the greatest reason for concern was the
remark which you quoted,... that he proposed to eliminate nuclear
weapons from the earth.... Arms control and disarmament is a highly
complex business, highly technical, requiring a great deal of
intellectual application, a great deal of experience, and quite frankly,
anybody who thinks that he's going to eliminate nuclear weapons from the
earth in four years or eight years is, I think, living in some kind of
fool's paradise."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.514
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6448
item Program Number S0275,
641
"Divestiture of Oil Companies"
Guests: Hart, Gary, 1936-
28 March 1977
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 113 : 15
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 28
Program details: How do the oil companies organize their business? What
sorts of changes would best serve free-market competition in the
abstract, and the actual consumer at the gas pump? Is a solution to the
energy crisis to be found in "divestiture" (i.e., ending the practice in
which, as Senator Hart puts it, "Whether through the exchange of crude
petroleum, whether through joint pipelining arrangements, whether
through joint-venturing of refining, whether through a conglomerate of
financial arrangements, these firms which control the product from the
ground to the gas pump, having these horizontal arrangements among
themselves, dominate for all practical purposes anywhere from 75 to 90
per cent of the product at one time or another")? A serious and mostly
accessible discussion of these and related questions.
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.518
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6452
item Program Number S0276,
642
"The Republicans"
Guests: Dole, Robert J., 1923-
28 March 1977
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 113 : 16
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 29
Program details: "Senator Robert Dole," Mr. Buckley begins, "but for a
few thousand votes cast differently in Ohio and in Hawaii, would now be
the Vice President of the United States in a Ford Administration, and
Jimmy Carter would be back in Georgia ... We intend to discuss ... why a
party that can score almost 50 per cent for a Republican President is
reduced nationwide to 12 governorships, 5 state legislatures, 38 and 143
votes, respectively, in the Senate and the House." Those who remember
Bob Dole bumbling through the 1996 campaign may be surprised by this
lively and productive exchange. One sample: WFB: "Is there a symbolic
case to be made for a party that has attempted to assimilate a great
scandal and great reverses deciding that the only way it can sort of
publicly expiate is by going out of formal existence, even if it
reorganizes the same day with the same people under a different banner?
..." RB: "If I had some evidence that by keeping our principles but
changing the name we could be a greater force in American politics ... I
would accept that. But I look at the South last November, and in my
view, voters voted their accent, not their philosophy ... I think this
is behind us now."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.517
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6451
item Program Number S0277,
643
"The End of Education?"
Guests: Wagner, Geoffrey Atheling. :
Quinn, Edward, 1932- : Rondinone, Peter. : Nelson, Jill. : Lauria,
Joseph.
25 April 1977
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 113 : 17
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 29
Program details: In 1969, the Lindsay administration caved in to protests
and disruptions by minority students and accelerated its plans for "open
enrollment," under which anyone who graduated from high school in the
City was automatically entitled to matriculate at one of the CUNY
colleges. The results had been hailed in some quarters, deplored in
others; Mr. Wagner's book deploring had been described by Mr. Quinn, his
department chairman, as "quite the worst he ever wrote." WFB draws out
Mr. Quinn on what could be done to rescue the situation: "Well, suppose
they didn't give you the authority to govern educational policy in the
high schools. Would you then say, 'Well, I'm sorry I didn't have it;
under the circumstances I decline to acquiesce in the policy of open
enrollment?' Or would you say, I'll do it anyway'?" EQ: "I'll do it
anyway." ... GW: "Actually, I never said that I'm against open
admission.... I am against what was called open admission." WFB: "Which
was what?" GW: "Which was the result of Pied Pipering vast groups of, as
he says, underprepared students at the City's expense, including large
numbers of foreign students, into a situation in which somewhat anarchic
educational results happen."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.519
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6453
item Program Number S0278,
644
"Looking Back on Allende"
Guests: Ossa, Nena. : Geyer,
Georgie Anne, 1935- : Birns, Larry.
25 April 1977
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 113 : 18
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 30
Program details:
Firing
Line
had looked closely at Chile just after
Salvador Allende was elected President (
Firing
Line
220, in 1970), and
just after the coup in which he died (s0154, in 1974). Mr. Birns is
convinced that we have since seen, to quote the title of his book, The
End of Chilean Democracy; indeed, he maintains that in terms of the
brutality and level of repression that now exists in both countries, "I
would say that Chile ... is more repressive than Cuba"--prompting Mr.
Buckley to catechize Mrs. Ossa on what you can and can't do in
Pinochet's Chile. The plus column includes moving freely about the
country, leaving the country "with no red tape," criticizing the
government, attending church, and "invit[ing] Milton Friedman to go down
and lecture and say what he wants to and deplore tyrannical systems ...
Can you do that in Cuba? No. Well, how are we doing?" Miss Geyer adds
this fascinating bit of background on Salvador Allende, the hero of
democracy: "I remember I interviewed [Allende] in '64 .. . And my last
question to him was, 'Senator Allende, if you are elected
president'--and he wasn't of course, then--but, if you were elected
president, how soon would you initiate a one-party state?' And he said,
in these exact words, 'Not immediately.' He said, 'That would take a few
years.' "
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.520
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6454
item Program Number S0279,
645
"The Impact of the Space Program"
Guests: Mitchell, Edgar D.
18 May 1977
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 96 : 2
Publicity File: Box/Folder 113 : 19
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 30
Program details: A buoyant hour with a man who has spent more hours than
practically anyone else viewing his home planet from above. The
conversation ranges from the tangible benefits spun off from the space
program, to the spirit of adventure, to the theological implications.
EM: "It has been my experience that in the European and Asiatic
countries the awesomeness of the space program and the closeness that
those people feel to us as a result of that effort is significant. ...
They feel it was a world program, and they want to identify with that
effort." WFB: "You're talking about scientists now, or the public?" EM:
"No, I'm talking about the public. And they tend to feel that it has
drawn them closer to us in many ways." WFB: "There's a sense of ... a
planetary Gemutlichkeit that derives from those spectacular shots of
little old earth just suspended there?"
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.523
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6457
item Program Number S0280,
646
"Nixon Revisited"
Guests: Reeves, Richard, 1936- : Buchanan,
Patrick J. (Patrick Joseph), 1938- : Kaufman, Jonathan. : Ulanov,
Nicholas. : Ciaramella, Donald.
18 May 1977
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 113 : 20
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 31
Program details: Richard Nixon had just emerged from purdah with a series
of interviews with David Frost, prompting this revisiting of 1973-74.
The show has an often startling "You are there" quality, especially in
Mr. Buchanan's recollection of the discussion of how to handle the
smoking-gun tape and Mr. Nixon's resignation: "We argued for a two-step
thing.... It was our argument that the tape should be released first, so
that Nixon's own people would realize the reason why he was doing what
he was doing." WFB: "So they wouldn't think he just quit?" PJB: "They
would come to the conclusion, right, that he had to go. They wouldn't
say that ... Nixon's people all broke and they caved in under pressure
of the House Judiciary Committee." RR: "... How much of that is post
facto, though? How much of that discussion revolved around the fact of,
'Let's drop this and see what the impact is. Can we survive this?' "
PJB: "No, that was very much in the- We discussed it on the helicopter
to Camp David; we discussed it at Camp David. Views shifted. Some argued
that Nixon should step up on Monday and say, 'I knew this information
... and I'm going to step down.' And we argued against that. We argued
we should drop the tape first and let that hit. And one of the reasons,
quite frankly, was there were some in the White House and the
President's immediate family who felt it was not fatal. So we said,
'Let's drop the tape first. This will demonstrate- We believe it is
fatal, and the country-'" RR: "But you didn't say at that time, 'We
believe it is fatal.'" PJB: "Oh, yes we did. We told the President that
we thought it was fatal."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.522
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6456
item Program Number S0281,
701
"What's Happening in South Africa?"
Guests: Paton, Alan.
12 May 1977
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 113 : 21
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 31
Program details: In an absorbing discussion, the man who is arguably the
leading white South African critic of apartheid analyzes the current
situation in his wonderful but tormented country and looks towards its
future: "I have no wish whatever to see the destruction of
Afrikanerdom--partly for a selfish reason (it could mean my own
destruction as well), and partly because I have an admiration--sometimes
reluctant, I might tell you--for the Afrikaner and his achievements, and
I don't want to see him destroying himself, which he is in great danger
of doing now." ... WFB: "Are you a socialist?" AP: "Well, I'm certainly
more inclined towards socialism than towards capitalism. But I must
confess that after having lived through the age of Stalin and others,
one's enthusiasm for extreme socialism rather abates."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.521
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6455
item Program Number S0282,
702
"The Council on Foreign Relations and Foreign Policy"
Guests: Bundy, William P. : Manning, Bayless A.
15 June 1977
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 113 : 22
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 32
Program details: No fireworks, but an instructive hour on an institution
reviled by the far Left as a tool of American economic imperialism, and
by the far Right as a tool of international socialism.
(Full-disclosure-wise, WFB had been a member of the Council since 1974.)
WFB: "Would it be fair to say that one could, with some confidence, make
certain inferences about the political prejudices of the majority of the
membership? For instance, you don't concentrate on isolationists, do
you?" BAM: "I suppose if you put the question sufficiently broadly it is
obvious that most people who are in the Council--indeed I suppose one
could say all people who are in the Council--are people who have been
elected there because in some way or other they have some professional
involvement that in some way engages international affairs ... That can
go very far afield, as for example an oceanographer might be a member of
the Council."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.524
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6458
item Program Number S0283,
703
"Decriminalize Marijuana?"
Guests: Gottfried, Richard N. :
Mahoney, J. Daniel, 1931-
15 June 1977
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 113 : 23
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 32
Program details: Eight states at this point had decriminalized the
possession of small amounts of marijuana, and Mr. Gottfried had been the
principal sponsor of a bill to do the same in New York; Mr. Mahoney had
spearheaded the successful effort to defeat the bill. Mr. Buckley, who
agrees with his friend Mr. Mahoney on most things, takes Mr. Gottfried's
side in this thoughtful discussion of the medical and legal issues. WFB:
"Since more people die from smoking cigarettes than from taking heroin,
why would it not follow from your reasoning that the smoking of
cigarettes ought to be proscribed?" JDM: "Well, among other easy
distinctions, I think that there's a marked propensity among heroin
users to become addicted, to go out and rob--" WFB: "But only because
heroin is expensive, which it wouldn't be if it were legal." JDM:
"...You might find statistically that more people die from jogging than
from taking heroin, but you wouldn't make jogging criminal because of
the percentages."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.525
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6459
item Program Number S0284,
704
"What's Up with Eurocommunism?"
Guests: Loebl, Eugen, 1907-
27 June 1977
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 96 : 3
Publicity File: Box/Folder 113 : 24
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 33
Program details: Eugen Loebl had been a committed Communist, and was
briefly deputy foreign minister of Czechoslovakia after the Communist
coup of 1948. He was soon arrested in a power struggle, and eventually
lost his Communist faith and testified in the famous Slansky trial. A
rich discussion of the way Communism has played out in Central Europe
and the lessons this might hold for the "Eurocommunism" being talked
about in France and Italy. EL: "There are two philosophies which could
be the basis of the foreign policy. One is a policy of spheres of
interest. That is a game the rules of which are far more convenient for
a dictatorship. No parliament, no congress, no senate, no press, no
Firing
Line
... In this respect, America will be always the weaker
partner,... will be always on the losing side." ... WFB: "If you want to
say, 'Let's play with the notion of Euro communism and let's focus our
attentions on Czechoslovakia,' I say I'm all for it. But if you say,
'Let's give them Italy and see what happens,' I think that this is
gambling beyond the point that you want to do outside of some chessboard
in the Pentagon."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.527
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6461
item Program Number S0285,
705
"Rhodesia Blackout"
Guests: Towsey, Kenneth. : Solarz,
Stephen J.
27 June 1977
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 96 : 4
Publicity File: Box/Folder 113 : 25
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 33
Program details: The UN General Assembly, fervently applauded by Rep.
Solarz, had just voted to block Rhodesia from maintaining any offices
abroad--including the one Mr. Towsey heads. The conversation begins with
the Rhodesian specifics, but broadens into a debate on a fundamental
question of political philosophy. SS: "It would seem to me that there's
a better chance for democratic rule, democratic government in Zimbabwe
if they--" WFB: "Do you mean democratic government? Or do you mean
freedom?" SS: "I mean a government in which there are free elections--"
WFB: "Regular free elections? I mean, Hitler was elected freely." SS:
"... But you don't have free elections, in the sense I think we
understand it, in Rhodesia right now. Is that an arrangement that you
support?" WFB: "No, I don't support it. I simply say that democracy is
ultimately uninteresting to me. What's interesting to me is human
freedom."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.526
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6460
item Program Number S0286, 706,
706R
"The Foreign-Policy Problems of Great Britain"
Guests: Owen,
David, 1938-
25 June 1977, 6 January 1978
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 113 : 26-27
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 34
Program details: Much of Dr. Owen's time in Parliament owing to his
medical training had been spent on the National Health Service. But upon
the death of Anthony Crosland the new Prime Minister James Callaghan had
thrust him into his current post the youngest man to hold it since
Anthony Eden in 1935. The most obvious foreign-policy problems for
Britain at the moment were Rhodesia (how to speed up the handover of
political power to the black majority while recognizing as Dr. Owen
phrases is "the kith-and-kin argument ... Many white Rhodesians fought
in the war on the side of the Allies inside the British forces." WFB:
"Including the Prime Minister." DO: "Yes. And these things go deep and
understandably") and detente (where President Carter's animadversions on
human rights in the Soviet Union had led President Giscard d'Estaing to
say that he had "violated the code of conduct of detente"; (Dr. Owen: "I
would challenge anyone to write a 'code of conduct' in how you handle
human rights") plus a fascinating little discursion on Pierre-Joseph
Proudhon: "he was a decentralized socialist who didn't believe in
statism. He believed in public ownership but he believed in sort of what
we would now call local government or freedom of choice.... That's why
I'm a Proudhonist."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.529
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6463
item Program Number S0287, 707,
707R
"Human Rights in the USSR"
Guests: Bukovskii, Vladimir
Konstantinovich, 1942-
25 July 1977, 30 December 1978
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 113 : 28-29
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 34
Program details: Vladimir Bukovsky had first come to Western attention in
1972, when at great personal risk he collected and smuggled to the West
documents on Soviet abuse of psychiatric institutions for the torture of
dissidents (including himself). He was released and sent into exile in
December of 1976. Besides hearing his thoughtful and shrewd analysis on
this show, we get to meet a genuine hero of our times. VB: "Well, I
remember in the Cold War, I was a member of the Young Pioneer
organization, the Communist organization for children, and they forced
us to denounce each other for bad behavior, publicly. And it was
disgusting. And that was my first, maybe, impulse to reject- I refused
to be a member of this organization. It was long ago, really." ... "It's
very convenient for them: when they declare somebody as insane, it
denigrates not only him personally, but the views he expressed."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.528
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6462
item Program Number S0288, 708,
708R
"What Have We Learned from the Failure of British Socialism?"
Guests: Thatcher, Margaret.
25 July 1977, 23 December 1978
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 113 : 30-31
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 35
Program details: In Mrs. Thatcher's second appearance on
Firing
Line
, two
years before she would take up the reins of government, the conversation
turns to the state of democracy in present-day Britain. We get even more
of a feel than in her first appearance (
Firing
Line
s0199) of why she
would become so admired, and so reviled: "For years now in British
politics you have needed to use the word 'consensus.' ... It's a word
you didn't use when I first came into politics. We had convictions, and
we tried to persuade people that our convictions were the right ones,
and it's no earthly good having convictions unless you have the will to
translate those convictions into action. I understand that one time you
interviewed Mr. Bukovsky. I was very impressed with one of his speeches.
He put it marvelously. Back when he lived in Russia, where they had no
freedom at all and one or two like him were determined to fight for it
whatever it cost, the view he took was not 'Does my voice count?' The
view he took was 'If not me, who? If not now, when?' Now that's the view
that I want each democrat--and I use it in the ordinary sense, a
believer in democracy--to take in Britain.' "
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.530
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0064EGMVC
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6464
item Program Number S0289,
709
"The Soviet Intelligence Apparatus"
Guests: Ulanovskaia,
Nadia.
26 July 1977
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 113 : 32
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 35
Program details: Mrs. Ulanovskaya speaks slowly and with a very heavy
accent, but it's worth the effort to hear the story she has to tell--of
her husband's connection with Stalin, of her work as a spy in the United
States (one of her agents was Whittaker Chambers), of her disenchantment
and banishment to Gulag. NU: "When we were in the States [in the
Thirties], it was the first time--not that I began to doubt, but that I
felt, with some reason, we couldn't do what the capitalists had achieved
... In the States, in spite of that terrible time of the Depression ...
to us it didn't look terrible at all." WFB: "You mean by contrast with
what you had experienced?" NU: "We saw those jobless people who still
ate better. .. . You know, some Communist sympathizers once showed us
some slums, but those slums didn't impress me at all." WFB: "Made you
feel at home?" NU: "Well, the way we personally lived in Moscow at that
time was worse."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.531
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6465
item Program Number S0290,
710
"Young Americans for Freedom"
Guests: Donatelli, Frank. :
Buckley, John. : Robinson, Ron. : Heckman, Robert. : Bechtel, Dennis. :
Lacy, James. : Easton, Michelle.
29 August 1977
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 113 : 33
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 36
Program details: YAF had just completed its biennial convention, at which
the group--"founded in 1960 and probably," as WFB puts it, "the only
political youth organization that survived that mad decade"--had voted
to oppose the Panama Canal treaty, call on UN Ambassador Andrew Young to
resign, and propose abolishing the minimum wage and most of the
regulatory agencies. A lively hour with these spirited young people. One
sample, from Frank Donatelli: "[Andrew Young] has been unable in our
judgment to make the transition from Baptist Southern
minister/civil-rights leader to world diplomat. There are two very
separate and distinct roles. It is fine to hail various excesses in the
world from a pulpit, but when you have to deal with political leaders
from around the world in very touchy situations, a change of rhetoric is
necessary. It seems to us that Mr. Young, far from attempting to
ameliorate world problems, is himself becoming a problem and an issue
..."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.532
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6466
item Program Number S0291,
711
"The Abuse of Power"
Guests: Newfield, Jack. : Du Brul,
Paul. : Starr, Roger.
29 August 1977
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 113 : 34
Transcript: Box/Folder 173 : 36
Program details: Two years earlier New York City had declared bankruptcy
(remember the New York Daily News headline: "Ford to City: Drop Dead"),
and WFB and his guests engage in an instructive discussion of who was at
fault, when action should have been taken, and why it wasn't. JN: "When
this crisis began, I didn't know the difference between a debenture and
a debutante-and that was true of a lot of writers covering New York's
crisis." ... RS: "The last thing we wanted to be told was that we
couldn't spend this money because we didn't have it.... The press of
this city were not only blind, but willfully blind."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.533
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6467
item Program Number S0292,
712
"The Race against Jerry Brown"
Guests: Wilson, Pete. :
Maddy, Kenneth L.
14 September 1977
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 113 : 35
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 1
Program details: Governor Brown, who had succeeded Governor Reagan in
1974, would be up for re-election in 1978, and our guests are two of
those aiming to unseat him. Both are more or less conservative; each is
popular in his region. In the event, it was Evelle J. Younger who got
the nod and was decisively defeated; but for now both would-be
challengers concentrate on the problems of the state under "Governor
Moonbeam." KM: "I think ...you're going to find that Jerry Brown is
extremely vulnerable with the public whether it be the issue of the
economy and jobs and the direction the state is going to go
economically, whether it be the appointments that he makes to boards and
commissions and regulatory bodies ... or just the idea that the people
are tired of governing by a mystique rather than by an efficient
administration." ... WFB: "If Governor Brown were to rejoin a seminary
tomorrow, what would history mark as his primary contribution. . . ?"
PW: "Bill, you must be reading my mind. As a matter of fact, I have been
telling people that really I am moved by a charitable impulse and that
is to restore Jerry Brown to that private contemplative life that he so
prizes."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.534
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6468
item Program Number S0293,
713
"The Problem of the Illegals"
Guests: Madrid Romandia,
Roberto de la. : Kaye, Peter.
14 September 1977
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 113 : 36
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 1
Program details: "The problem of the illegals," as Governor de la Madrid
expounds it, is a problem of insufficient industry in Mexico,
insufficient agricultural tools, and too high a birth rate. In a
discussion filled with helpful detail, he calls for a comprehensive
agreement between Mexico and the United States: "Then we can keep our
people in Mexico.... Then the United States can say, 'Fine. If I help
you in commerce and in trade, I in turn need energy.' Then we could talk
about energy. We could talk about Mexico needing, say,reforms or changes
in certain laws like, for instance, Section 602 of your Tax Reform Act
of 1976 that limits the amount that can be spent by U.S. persons that go
to Mexico on conventions ... I think we should live as neighbors.... And
as neighbors do, if you need a cup of salt, go around the back fence and
ask for a cup of salt, and in turn maybe next week you get a cup of
sugar back."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.535
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ANCWS32
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6469
item Program Number S0294,
714
"Normalization"
Guests: Elegant, Robert S. : Barnett, Doak.
26 September 1977
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 113 : 37
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 2
Program details: A rich three-cornered discussion, ranging widely in time
and space. As Mr. Buckley frames the question, "The shibboleth requires
that we normalize [relations with the People's Republic of China], and
in order to normalize we're supposed to do something abnormal,
specifically to rend our diplomatic and military ties with a faithful
ally." Mr. Barnett accepts the challenge: "I would say what is abnormal
is that for 28 years we have still not fully accepted that the
government in Peking is the government of China.... In effect we are
compelled by both sides in the ... Chinese civil war, which is not
formally ended, to decide which one we regard as the most important."
Mr. Elegant poses a ground-clearing question: "I mean, what is the
purpose of normalization?" WFB: "Normality." RE: "Normality.... It seems
to me that in foreign policy you're looking for a positive result from
an action.... It seems to me rather pointless to take an action unless
you have some idea as to what consequences are likely to grow from
it."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.539
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6473
item Program Number S0295,
715
"The New Panama Treaty"
Guests: Schlafly, Phyllis. :
Alexander, Shana.
26 September 1977
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 114 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 2
Program details: In Mrs. Schlafly's previous appearance on
Firing
Line
the topic (the Equal Rights Amendment) was one on which host and guest
were in substantial agreement. Not so here, and the discussion, always
lively, occasionally erupts. PS: "Now listen, Bill, you keep setting up
a straw man, and misrepresenting what I said. There are lots of
wonderful, fine, patriotic bankers all over this country. This involved
only ten of the most powerful banks--" WFB: "And they're unpatriotic."
PS: "They are the ones who have loaned the money." WFB: "But they're
unpatriotic, you say, right?" PS: "I didn't say they were unpatriotic."
WFB: "But surely it's unpatriotic to redesign American foreign policy
for your personal benefit." PS: "If you want to unload your bad loans
onto the American taxpayer--" WFB: "That's unpatriotic, isn't it?" PS:
"Well, sure."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.538
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6472
item Program Number S0296,
716
"Federalized Welfare (Debate): Part I"
Guests: Moynihan,
Daniel P. (Daniel Patrick), 1927-2003.
24 September 1977
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 114 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 3
Program details: These shows are titled as indicated in
Firing
Line's
records. In fact, this is a formal debate sponsored by Columbia
College's Debate Council, on the topic "Resolved: That the Welfare
System in the United States Should Be Federalized." Unlike the debates
organized by
Firing
Line
itself, starting with the famous Panama Canal
debate (s0306), most of the participants this evening are
undergraduates, with Messrs. Buckley and Moynihan serving as "guest
speakers." DPM: "You had the graciousness, sir,... to announce that we
would conduct ourselves by the rules of the House of Commons;... [I]
recall that it is the practice of the House to address members by their
constituencies rather than by their names ... I would like to introduce
you to those designations. The first speaker was the member from
Reasonableness. The second speaker was the honorable member from
Retrogression. The third speaker with great distinction represents the
constituency from Common Sense, and then finally you heard from the
honorable member from Inequity. I have not the least doubt that he
represents his constituents well, and yet I wonder how often he visits
them." ...WFB: "Now [Senator Moynihan] addresses you tonight as though
he had not written those words [about the "absurdities" in the welfare
system] and speaks again using the old rhetoric about the need of the
poor to be maintained, of the thirsty to have drink, of the hungry to be
fed, and if I may say so, I would like to take whatever credit is due to
Ms. Shahmanesh and Mr. Halpem for avoiding that rhetoric inasmuch as we
assumed that there was a general consensus on this floor on the need to
look after those who are less fortunate than ourselves."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.536
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6470
item Program Number S0297,
717
"Federalized Welfare (Debate): Part II"
Guests: Moynihan,
Daniel P. (Daniel Patrick), 1927-2003.
24 September 1977
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 114 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 3
Program details: These shows are titled as indicated in
Firing
Line's
records. In fact, this is a formal debate sponsored by Columbia
College's Debate Council, on the topic "Resolved: That the Welfare
System in the United States Should Be Federalized." Unlike the debates
organized by
Firing
Line
itself, starting with the famous Panama Canal
debate (s0306), most of the participants this evening are
undergraduates, with Messrs. Buckley and Moynihan serving as "guest
speakers." DPM: "You had the graciousness, sir,... to announce that we
would conduct ourselves by the rules of the House of Commons;... [I]
recall that it is the practice of the House to address members by their
constituencies rather than by their names ... I would like to introduce
you to those designations. The first speaker was the member from
Reasonableness. The second speaker was the honorable member from
Retrogression. The third speaker with great distinction represents the
constituency from Common Sense, and then finally you heard from the
honorable member from Inequity. I have not the least doubt that he
represents his constituents well, and yet I wonder how often he visits
them." ...WFB: "Now [Senator Moynihan] addresses you tonight as though
he had not written those words [about the "absurdities" in the welfare
system] and speaks again using the old rhetoric about the need of the
poor to be maintained, of the thirsty to have drink, of the hungry to be
fed, and if I may say so, I would like to take whatever credit is due to
Ms. Shahmanesh and Mr. Halpem for avoiding that rhetoric inasmuch as we
assumed that there was a general consensus on this floor on the need to
look after those who are less fortunate than ourselves."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.537
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6471
item Program Number S0298, 718,
718R
"Government by Judiciary"
Guests: Berger, Raoul, 1901-
5 October 1977, 23 June 1978
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 114 : 4-5
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 4
Program details: Professor Berger's new book, Government by Judiciary:
The Transformation of the Fourteenth Amendment, was a bombshell, coming
as it did from a lifelong liberal. In today's discussion Professor
Berger guides us through the history of judicial usurpation and speaks
movingly of his own conflict: "I'm a liberal by the crudest test of all:
I'm willing to pay to make things better.... My commitment to the
Constitution rises paramount to every other consideration. It's not that
I love segregation; in fact one of the very painful things that I have
to confront is that I find myself in bed with people I detest. They're
going to applaud me; whereas people I respect and esteem are going to
criticize me."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.541
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6475
item Program Number S0299, 719,
719R
"Abortion: The Hyde Amendment"
Guests: Hyde, Henry J. :
Pilpel, Harriet F.
5 October 1977, 17 February 1978
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 114 : 6-7
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 4
Program details: A hotly contested though civil exchange. The starting
point is the Hyde Amendment, which sought to ban federal funding of
abortion, but the general question can't help being raised. HJH: "George
Will … said that if you think people as meat, meat you'll become. And I
think human life has become so cheap that human life has become just
like animal life--not even as good as animal life, since we have quotas
for dolphins, and we don't have quotas for human beings." HP: "I think
human life becomes much more cheap when you say to a poor, sick woman,
who has even children and can't support them, 'I'm sorry, you'll have to
go ahead and have the eighth.'"
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.540
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6474
item Program Number S0300,
720
"Is There a Case for Private Property?"
Guests: Hayek,
Friedrich A. von (Friedrich August), 1899-1992. : Roche, George. :
Greenfield, Jeff.
7 November 1977
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 114 : 8
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 5
Program details: A splendid hour, spent more on political philosophy than
on technical economics, with the author of The Road to Serfdom and The
Constitution of Liberty. FAH: "Few are ready to recognize that the rise
of Fascism and Nazism was not a reaction to the socialist trends of the
preceding period but a necessary outcome of those tendencies." ... "It
is important not to confuse opposition against [centralized] planning
with a dogmatic laissez-faire attitude.... In no system that could be
rationally defended would the state just do nothing." ... "If there were
omniscient men, if we could know not only all that affects the
attainment of our present wishes but also our future wants and desires,
there would be little case for liberty. And, in turn, liberty of the
individual would, of course, make complete foresight impossible. Liberty
is essential in order to leave room for the unforeseeable and
unpredictable.... Humiliating to human pride as it may be, we must
recognize that the advance and even the preservation of civilization are
dependent upon a maximum of opportunity for accidents to happen."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.544
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B006GGHWDU
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6478
item Program Number S0301,
721
"Has President Carter Let Blacks Down?"
Guests: Jordan,
Vernon E. (Vernon Eulion), 1935-
7 November 1977
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 114 : 9
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 5
Program details: Mr. Jordan, an old friend of President Carter's, had
sharply criticized him for failing to look after the needs of the black
community. This discussion begins with specifics like the poverty
program, but then moves to the purpose of the civil-rights movement: was
it to foster a color-blind society, or a society in which blacks qua
blacks would advance? WFB: "Racial discrimination apart, why should
there be a black lobby?" VJ: "Apart from discrimination? Discrimination
is so much apart of us and of our lives that it cannot be separated so
as to make up, Bill, a different aspect of American life. We are so
interwoven with our history of neglect and inequity that you cannot
separate us out."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.545
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6479
item Program Number S0302, 722,
722R
"Ferdinand Marcos: A Discussion"
Guests: Marcos, Ferdinand
E. (Ferdinand Edralin), 1917-1989.
17 November 1977, 23 February 1978
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 97 : 2
Publicity File: Box/Folder 114 : 10-11
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 6
Program details: The Philippines were five years into President Marcos's
martial law and looking forward--although with some skepticism--to
elections for a new National Assembly within the next year or so. (As it
turned out, the elections were held, but in the context of martial law,
and Mr. Marcos's party won handily.) Meanwhile, Mr. Marcos tells us,
Filipinos were rethinking their place in the world, in the light both of
their own history and of recent developments such as the death of
Chairman Mao and the Carter Administration's rumblings about our defense
commitments. A perhaps surprisingly rich discussion--embattled heads of
state are not always very forthcoming--ranging from the need for the
Filipino--especially the Filipino who was educated in Western ways--"to
retrace his roots, and retracing his roots, of course, he discovered
that he was Asian," to the achievement of Mao Tse-tung ("the unification
of the Chinese people, a people divided, isolated, degraded, colonized,
a people that was marked as a sleeping giant even by Napoleon"), to the
reasons democracy has not thriven in the Philippines ("We tried to get
used to it and we--my predecessors--somehow convinced you that we were
democratic, but we all knew that this was some kind of a mask which we
had put over our face. We were trying to ape you and yet we didn't have
the basic requirements--education, distribution of wealth, economic
equality, equal opportunity, and the most important, believing in it").
Technical Note: The edited broadcast version of this episode is black
and white. The unedited raw interview footage is in color.
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.548
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004OEIONI
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6482
item Program Number S0303,
723
"Martial Law in the Philippines"
Guests: Valencia, Fedora. :
Lopez, Salvador P.
17 November 1977
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 114 : 12
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 6
Program details: The conversation sometimes bogs down in apparent
language difficulties, but on the whole a helpful counterpoint to
President Marcos's exposition. SPL: "I don't agree with that assessment
at all of our democracy ... It's not mandatory that we should be judged
by American standards. Philippine democracy should be judged according
to the condition and the circumstances of our society, not by the
demands that we should be like the American society ... The Philippines
was one of the only two or three functioning democratic countries in
Asia before 1972. We had sixty to seventy years of experience in
democracy. All right. There were problems. What country doesn't have
problems? ... The job that remained to be done was to correct the evils.
You don't cure a patient by killing him, do you?"
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.549
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6483
item Program Number S0304,
724
"Does the Republican Party Have a Future?"
Guests: Luce,
Clare Boothe, 1903-1987.
21 November 1977
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 96 : 5
Publicity File: Box/Folder 114 : 13
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 7
Program details: Mrs. Luce's first appearance on
Firing
Line
(013, in
1966) had been titled "The Future of the Republican Party," and on that
occasion, as the Republicans were busily repudiating Barry Goldwater,
she had been tough on their stagnation. By 1977-after Vietnam, after
Watergate-the Republican Party had less than half as many registered
voters as the Democratic Party had and a comparable disparity in elected
officials, but Mrs. Luce, although no less scathing about the current
scene, draws a distinction that, in retrospect, seems predictive of
Ronald Reagan's success: "Each time the Republicans come in simply as
critics and tinkerers and repairmen ... they go out a little weaker.
Because what is needed is not only carpenters to repair the holes in the
Democratic roof. What is needed is a new architect that gives the people
a vision of a better future."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.550
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6484
item Program Number S0305,
725
"Asia Policy: A Hawaiian Perspective"
Guests: Vasey, Lloyd
R. : Doi, Nelson. : Weyand, Frederick.
21 November 1977
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 96 : 6
Publicity File: Box/Folder 114 : 14
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 7
Program details: "Hawaii is," Mr. Buckley begins, "as the Japanese
emphasized at Pearl Harbor, a tiny American salient, thrust two thousand
miles into the Pacific Ocean. But it is irrevocably ours, as much so as
Kansas or Nebraska. U.S. Asian policy, on the other hand, is made at the
other end of the American world, in Washington. What does that shift in
perspective do?" Actually, not much, according to our three guests: in a
nuclear world proximity matters much less than it did in 1941. But
Admiral Vasey is disturbed by the Carter Administration's "isolationist
strategy," and General Weyand takes on the question of canceling our
treaty with Taiwan: "Now if you're talking about totally withdrawing our
commitment [so] that we'll stand by and watch them seize Taiwan by force
and thereby deny or abrogate all of the ideals and values that we have
about force being used to conquer or dominate or dictate men's way of
life--" WFB: "Wait a minute. We consider this an internal affair. We
made that plain at Shanghai." FW: "Well, I don't consider it an internal
affair." WFB: "Yes, but you're not President." FW: "No. That's true."
WFB: "You keep forgetting." FW: "I keep forgetting, unfortunately."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.551
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6485
item Program Number S0306,
726
"A
Firing
Line
Debate: Resolved: That the Senate Should Ratify
the Proposed Panama Canal Treaties"
Guests: Buckley, William F.
(William Frank), Jr., 1925-2008. : Burnham, James, 1905-1987. : Will,
George F. : Zumwalt, Elmo R., 1920- : Reagan, Ronald. : Buchanan,
Patrick J. (Patrick Joseph), 1938- : Fontaine, Roger W. : McCain, John
S. (John Sidney), 1911-1981. : Bunker, Ellsworth, 1894-
13 January 1978
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 114 : 15-16
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 8
Program details: This two-hour debate, the first one done specially for
Firing
Line
, is said to have influenced the subsequent Senate debate on
the treaties--and also Mr. Reagan's electability as President two years
thence. Each principal was to bring two seconds and a military expert;
Mr. Bunker was present to answer any technical questions about the
treaties. The result was at once a brilliant duel and a model of
civilized discourse on an emotional topic. Two samples: WFB: "Well, let
me ask you to give me the answer to a question which you cannot
document, but in which I permit you to consult only your insight. Would
you guess that the Panamanian people would prefer, or not prefer, to
exercise sovereignty over their own territory? Take as long as you want
to answer that." RR: "I was just sitting here wishing that I had with me
the transcript of the impassioned plea that was made to United States
senators at a meeting of the Civil Council a week or so ago in
Panama.... The speaker was a black-a Panamanian, not an American. His
father, a West Indian, worked on the Canal, in building the Canal. The
speaker had worked all his life on the Canal, and his impassioned plea
was, even though he was a Panamanian, 'Don't! Don't do this! Don't
ratify those treaties!' "... WFB: "Do you mean, Would President Carter,
as Commander in Chief-" PJB: "And would the Senate support him?" WFB:
"-would he assert American rights in the Panama Canal? In my judgment he
would. Yes, sir." PJB: "... With regard to South African and Chilean
vessels, or vessels going to and from those two pariah countries?" WFB:
"We have a guarantee that antedates this treaty to see to it that
nondiscriminatory passage is guaranteed. It's the Hay-Pauncefote
Treaty." PJB: "Right, but do you think American Marines would go in to
guarantee passage to vessels headed for South Africa?"
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.554
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004SQFRFA
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6488
item Program Number S0307,
727
"G. Gordon Liddy: An Enigma"
Guests: Liddy, G. Gordon.
11 January 1978
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 114 : 17
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 8
Program details: G. Gordon Liddy had spent 52 months in prison for his
role in Watergate, and had applied his tough-minded view of the world to
life behind bars. In prison, he tells us, informers are regarded as the
lowest of the low. WFB: "If, for instance, you were a member of a
terrorist gang, the business of which was, let's say, to kidnap and
mutilate systematically, and one day you woke up the beneficiary of a
changed view of life, I understand you to be saying that you would not
inform on the continuing activities of your former confederates,... and
the rape and the murder would continue rather than cause you to act out
the role of an informant." GGL: "No. The way you have just stated it
would lead someone to believe that... the only alternative to the
continued killing and mutilation and so on and so forth would be my
turning informer, and that's not so. I could turn and make war upon my
former associates by honorably attempting to meet them in battle and
kill them."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.552
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TZ8GMX2
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6486
item Program Number S0308,
728
"William F. Buckley Jr. Faces the
Firing
Line
"
Guests:
Geyelin, Philip L. : Yoder, Edwin M. (Edwin Milton), 1934- : Corddry,
Charles.
11 January 1978
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 114 : 18
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 9
Program details: The semi-annual occasion on which the guests become the
interrogators, seeking, as WFB puts it, "to extract from me whatever
prejudices, superstitions, or sunbursts are curdling, brewing, or
germinating here." More genial than some of these sessions, this one
ranges from the Middle East to SALT, from the MX missile to
import-export controls, from the Humphrey-Hawkins employment bill
(
Firing
Line
s0230) to the legalization of heroin for treating
intractable pain. EY: "By what particular measure would you apply your
instrumental test to foreign policy ... ?" WFB: "I answer that with an
ease that you might find both disarming and simplistic. Every day when I
wake up I look and see whether the sun has risen on a day in which the
Soviet Union is stronger or weaker than us, relatively speaking...." PG:
"What are the calipers that you use at sunrise to determine each day
whether the Soviet Union is a little bit up or a little bit behind?"
WFB: "Well, it usually begins by reading an editorial in the Washington
Post. If I find they are in a good mood, then I start counting my silver
and worrying."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.553
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6487
item Program Number S0309,
729
"Exclusive Conversation with Chiang Ching-kuo"
Guests:
Chiang, Ching-kuo, 1910-1988.
12 November 1977
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 114 : 19-20
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 9
Program details: The first of only two
Firing
Lines
(the other being
s0940, with a successor of Mr. Chiang's, Hau Pei-tsun) where the guest
used an interpreter (the Chinese replies were then edited out, leaving
only the interpreter's English). Six years after the Republic of China
was expelled from the United Nations, President Chiang (son of Chiang
Kai-shek) speaks movingly (though not always presciently) about the
future of Taiwan and Mainland China: "Everyone talks about this question
as 'the Taiwan question.' As a matter of fact, it is the China question.
We are the government of the Republic of China.... After Mao's death,
the Chinese Communist regime cannot [gain] firm control in all parts of
China. Not Hua Guofeng. Not Deng Xiaoping. ... In the future the Chinese
mainland will disintegrate."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.546
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6480
item Program Number S0310,
730
"What Is the Future of Taiwan?"
Guests: Shaw, Shullen. :
Moosa, Spencer. : Yinn, Diane.
12 November 1977
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 114 : 21
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 10
Program details: "Against the background of an almost unparalleled
parade," as WFB describes it,"of U.S. Government officials" through
Taipei and Peking, it appeared that "the crisis point in U.S.-Taiwan
relations" had been reached. But before getting to the crisis per se,
Mr. Buckley questions his guests--on how the Republic of China is doing
on civil liberties; how the indigenous Taiwanese would react if Mainland
forces attacked; and on whether the United Nations should be invited in
to conduct a plebiscite--and finds them passionately, indeed
ferociously, protective of their adopted country. WFB: "You sound as
though you were arguing with me about something." SS: "Yes, sir." WFB:
"Whoever said that I believe that you should trust the Chinese
Communists on anything? I mean, they don't trust themselves. I'm not
sure you should trust the United States, so why should you trust the
Chinese Communists?"
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.547
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6481
item Program Number S0311,
731
"Conscience and the Vietnam War"
Guests: Snepp, Frank.
30 January 1978
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 114 : 22
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 10
Program details: Mr. Snepp, the CIA's top analyst of North Vietnamese
political affairs during the Vietnam War, had been in Saigon right up to
the end. The "disdainful title" of his book, as WFB reminds us, refers
to "a famous observation by Henry Kissinger, then Secretary of State,
that he hoped the Paris Accords would provide a decent interval of
self-determination for South Vietnam before what would surely be the
final chapter in their struggle with the Communists." This absorbing
discussion ranges from why Mr. Snepp felt free to release CIA secrets
("Perhaps I was wrong and this is an expression of hubris, but I believe
that secrets must be maintained by everybody, and not merely by the
lower-ranking officials of the State Department and the CIA"), to the
terms of the Paris Accords themselves (FS: "Viewed as a whole they were
a sellout--of South Vietnam to the North." WFB: "So Thieu was exactly
correct to oppose them?" FS: "Oh, I think so").
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.556
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6490
item Program Number S0312,
732
"Is Soviet Policy an Extension of Russian Policy?"
Guests:
Salisbury, Harrison Evans, 1908-
30 January 1978
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 114 : 23
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 11
Program details: Mr. Salisbury, the retired chief foreign correspondent
for the New York Times, had been a student of Russia all his adult life.
In this conversation rich in detail, he sets out his view that "Soviet
imperialism is mainly an extension of Russian imperialism all the way
back to the Ivans," and only secondarily an expression of ideology:
"Lenin himself was really a great improviser, who used a lot of Marxist
language to do what he thought he had to do to maintain his power and
get his country moving again. [Marxism-Leninism] is a ragbag. I think
one of the great delusions of our generation is to assume that there is
such a thing as Marxism-Leninism just because they label it that. I just
don't think it exists."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.555
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6489
item Program Number S0313,
733
"The Role of Liberals in the Republican Party"
Guests:
Mathias, Charles McC. (Charles McCurdy), 1922-
16 March 1978
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 114 : 24
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 11
Program details: Senator Mathias had led a group of liberal Republicans
protesting that some conservatives were encouraging primary challenges
against them. The question before the house is: "How sectarian should a
political party be?" To what extent does its success depend on refining
its ideological differences with the other party, to what extent on
broadening its base? In a conversation ranging from Lincoln to Lenin to
Goldwater, Senator Mathias makes the case for inclusiveness. CM: "Going
back a little beyond Lenin to Lincoln, Lincoln recruited the Republican
Party from a very disparate kind of political scene in which you had
abolitionists and you had conservatives. You had all sorts of different
American groups that he brought together on the concept of freedom...."
WFB: "Now, Lincoln may be a bad guy to start out with because Lincoln
was so terribly eclectic and at the same time so terribly
expediential...." CM: "Lincoln may be a hard man to start with, but in
fact he is the man we started with." WFB: "He was the first Republican
President, but he didn't found the Republican Party." CM: "No, but he
brought it to power. He showed how it could come to power and how it
could perform."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.557
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0064EGMZS
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6491
item Program Number S0314,
734
"How the U.S. Press Handled Tet"
Guests: Braestrup, Peter.
16 March 1978
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 114 : 25
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 12
Program details: The Tet Offensive of 1968 was widely described as the
turning point of the war: taking the American command by surprise, the
Vietcong surrounded the Marine base at Khesanh and actually got as far
as the U.S. Embassy compound in Saigon. The Allies quickly rallied and
drove them back--but not before America had been convinced that we had
suffered a serious defeat. Now Peter Braestrup had written a 1,500-page
book analyzing the American press's reporting and its effects. An
illuminating discussion, from which one sample. Mr. Braestrup: "Adding
to the pressures was the terrible fear among the civilians in the White
House. You remember that none of these men--including the President--had
ever fought in a war on the ground. None of the whiz kids in the
Pentagon had ever fought in a war on the ground. They were all defense
intellectuals. They saw the big picture, but when the little picture got
bloody and smoky, this made them nervous, and it made the President
nervous."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.558
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6492
item Program Number S0315,
735
"The Energy Crisis"
Guests: Schlesinger, James R.
21 March 1978
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 114 : 26
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 12
Program details: "When James Schlesinger was Secretary of Defense," Mr.
Buckley begins, "the good news is that there was no war. Now that he is
Secretary of Energy, the bad news is that there is no energy, or at
least not enough of it, or more exactly a looming world scarcity of it."
This is not another discussion of OPEC, but rather one of what we can do
given continued OPEC intransigence. Mr. Schlesinger places more reliance
on government manipulation, Mr. Buckley more reliance on the free
market, in this informative discussion ranging from why there is so much
bad blood between coal miners and mine owners, to how Americans can be
persuaded of the virtues of nuclear energy (Mr. Schlesinger was once
head of the Atomic Energy Commission), to how we can become less
profligate in our use of energy: JS: "Prices have always been low in the
United States. Energy has been cheap. The American character is
expansive. It has not recognized these limits, the question of
finiteness. The only experience that America has had with finiteness was
the closing of the frontier."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.559
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6493
item Program Number S0316,
736
"The Guilt of Alger Hiss"
Guests: Weinstein, Allen. :
Theoharis, Athan G. : Corddry, Charles.
21 March 1978
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 114 : 27
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 13
Program details: An absorbing exploration of the Hiss-Chambers case with
two scholars, one of whom, before he started work on his monumental
book, thought that Alger Hiss had been framed and that Whittaker
Chambers had perjured himself; the other of whom still believes Hiss
innocent. WFB: "I should like to begin by asking Mr. Weinstein is there
a survivor who was involved with both Hiss and Chambers who, having
remained silent, might now under the prodding of your book speak out
with the truth?" AW: "I think there are several who could, Mr. Buckley.
I would be very surprised if any did.... Although it should be said that
it surprised me when some of the people who spoke to me for the book
did. For example, in his own memoir, Witness, Whittaker Chambers calls
upon a man he mentions only by the name Paul and ... says he's hoping
this man will come defend him... -an old, old, friend. Well, Paul did
not at the time. He was a Communist. Paul later broke with the Party and
was- I prefer not to mention his name now; he enjoys a certain measure
of privacy now. But he confirmed every aspect of Chambers's story
insofar as it concerned him."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.560
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E52U8U
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6494
item Program Number S0317,
737
"[A
Firing
Line
Debate]: Resolved: That the Price of Oil and
Natural Gas Should Be Regulated by the Federal Government"
Guests:
Galbraith, John Kenneth, 1908-2006. : Buckley, William F. (William
Frank), Jr., 1925-2008.
30 March 1978
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 114 : 28
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 13
Program details: This show might be called a mini-debate: it follows the
formal procedures-opening statements, cross-examination, rebuttals-but
with a single combatant on either side. The two old adversaries go at
it, as always, with good-humored ferocity. Mr. Galbraith begins by
contending that a free market in oil and gas has not existed for some
time: "The market has been extensively superseded by planning, and this
planning...has been planning not by the Federal Government, not by other
units of government, but essentially by the large and powerful
enterprises which bring these products to us." Mr. Buckley counters: "It
is of course his thesis, now as always, that the market has been
superseded-superseded by natural events rather than by synthetic events.
He refers to his kinship with reality and reason by contrast with my own
with romance and nostalgia. I do remember nostalgically when an agent of
the Federal Government reported in 1885 that under no circumstances
would any oil ever be discovered in California."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.561
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E50RW6
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6495
item Program Number S0318,
738
"The Experiences of Sam Ervin"
Guests: Ervin, Sam J. (Sam
James), 1896-1985. : Corddry, Charles.
17 April 1978
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 96 : 7
Publicity File: Box/Folder 114 : 29
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 14
Program details: The man who throughout the Watergate hearings, which he
chaired, described himself as just an "old country lawyer" has a
tendency to go a-speechifying, which frequently draws us away from a
discussion of how Watergate-inspired laws have changed our public
discourse; still, it's fun to listen to Mr. Ervin's brand of carefully
homespun political wisdom. SJE: "Frankly, I think the big trouble in
public life is there are too many people in public life with the anatomy
of the jellyfish. They haven't got much backbone, and I think they need
more backbone in government ..." WFB: "You think they should hang
tough?" SJE: "Well, I think they ought to get a backbone some way
instead of being so much like jellyfish." WFB: "Like Gordon Liddy?" SJE:
"Well, Gordon Liddy has a little too much backbone. I'll have to admit
that I have a sort of sneaking admiration for a fellow like Gordon Liddy
that does have an excess of backbone. His backbone exceeds his
intelligence, really."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.564
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6498
item Program Number S0319,
739
"Algeria Revisited"
Guests: Horne, Alistair.
17 April 1978
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 114 : 30
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 14
Program details: An illuminating discussion of this turning point in
mid-century history. Mr. Horne gives the background going back to 1848,
when the Second French Republic--in its infinite wisdom or lack
thereof--declared Algeria to be a departement, and "[it] acted like a
sort of albatross around the neck of every successive French
government." We move on to parallels in Rhodesia today and Indochina
yesterday and to a description of the two sides in the civil war itself:
"The Algerians among Muslims are very, very fierce people. You ask any
German soldier who took part in either the First or Second World
War....And on the other hand ... the pieds noirs weren't really French
in the way that you and I understand French. They were very meridional,
passionate, many of them Spanish, Italian, and were being baked hard by
the sun ..."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.562
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6496
item Program Number S0320,
740
"The Neutron Bomb"
Guests: Cohen, S. T. : Scoville, Herbert.
24 April 1978
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 114 : 31
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 15
Program details: This debate over the moral and strategic implications of
the Enhanced Radiation Weapon, as it is formally called, is hampered by
the fact that Dr. Cohen is less clear viva voce than in his laboratory
or in front of a typewriter. But the discussion sometimes clicks,
especially under Mr. Buckley's cross-examination. WFB: "Was it you or
one of your colleagues who said that in fact the knowledge of their
imminent death might cause [tank personnel] to act as a kamikaze might
have?" HS: "That's true.... For example, a tank crew that has been
irradiated and knows that it's going to die two weeks later may just
decide, The hell with it--I'm going to just shoot the place up.'"...
STC: "It is not a blast weapon; it's strictly a weapon to incapacitate
tank personnel...." WFB: "Be concrete about it. What does it do?" STC:
"It induces severe physiological trauma." WFB: "In three minutes? Five
minutes? Ten?" STC: "In less than an hour [they would die]. But the
incapacitating effects would occur within several minutes."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.565
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6499
item Program Number S0321,
741
"Cutting Your Taxes"
Guests: Kemp, Jack. : Greenfield, Jeff.
24 April 1978
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 114 : 32
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 15
Program details: It's hard to remember now that the Kemp-Roth bill
pre-dated the Reagan Administration, but so it did. An engaging hour
with the young Jack Kemp, who, as WFB puts it in his introduction, had
"helped to develop the most welcome political proposal conceivable: eat
a greater portion of the cake, so as to increase the size of it." One
sample: JK: "If you shrank a year's behavior into one week, and if you
taxed Monday's income at 10 per cent, Tuesday's at 20 per cent,
Wednesday's at 30 per cent, and so on, then you have to ask the question
at what point during the week would leisure become more attractive ...
than work? At what point would a tax shelter look far more attractive
than an investment in a factory or an entrepreneurial activity?" WFB:
"You'd start getting pretty long weekends, wouldn't you?" JK: "You'd get
very long weekends."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.566
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6500
item Program Number S0322,
742
"The Holocaust Controversy"
Guests: O'Connor, John J. :
Neusner, Jacob, 1932-
12 May 1978
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 114 : 33
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 16
Program details: A docudrama called "Holocaust" had just aired on NBC to
wide acclaim--but not the acclaim of WFB and his guests, who proceed to
discuss it with depth and authority. JN: "I think we are dealing with an
event that has been exploited so that what happened along time ago--"
WFB: "Exploited in what sense? You don't mean commercially exploited, do
you? Or do you?" JN: "Well, I think that's not the principal kind of
exploitation. There's been a political and an emotional exploitation of
tragic events that are rich in human meaning. This is something that
some of us have been calling Holocaust Inc., because we are confronted
now with the turning of a human tragedy of almost infinite dimensions
into a club with which to beat the world." WFB: "Or to beat God." ...
JJO: "The defenders of Holocaust keep coming back to the same old theme:
it was better to have it on than not have it on. Why? ... For some
reason they feel that if you put this on there's going to be a massive
change in the thinking of the population."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.567
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6501
item Program Number S0323,
743
"Public Policy and the Economy"
Guests: Simon, William E.,
1927- : Shilling, A. Gary.
12 May 1978
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 114 : 34
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 16
Program details: We were in the midst of the "stagflation" (stagnation
combined with inflation) that would two years thence be part of the
reason for President Carter's defeat; but at this point our guests are
voices crying in the wilderness, "attempting to explain to the American
people," as Mr. Simon puts it, "whom I consider, at risk of offending
them, economically illiterate," that "economic freedoms and personal and
political freedoms are indivisible, that when the government takes over
your substance it takes power over your liberty." An electric discussion
of, to quote again from Mr. Simon, "the pattern [of] spend and spend,
elect and elect, tax, regulate, and dominate our lives and our
livelihoods."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.568
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6502
item Program Number S0324,
744
"The Psychological Society"
Guests: Gross, Martin L. (Martin
Louis), 1925- : Tamarkin, Norman R.
31 May 1978
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 114 : 35
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 17
Program details: As the title of Mr. Gross's book suggests, he doesn't
think much of modern psychiatry, which in his view is "neglecting the
comparatively few people who really need its services, in favor of
taking care of the well people on Park Avenue or Miami Beach." Dr.
Tamarkin maintains that on the whole the profession is honest about
differentiating between clinical conditions and normal grief or anxiety.
Mr. Buckley serves as referee. NRT (alleging that Mr. Gross has
misquoted certain people in his book): "Dr. Greenson is not aloof,
according to him. He talks to his patients regularly--" MG: "Excuse
me--" NRT: "--and if you have some strange idea of--" MG: "If Dr.
Greenson were to admit this in public he'd be discharged from the
American Psychoanalytic--" NRT:"That's--" MG: "--because classical
analysis is based on incognito, as you know. Aloofness and--" NRT:
"That's hard and extreme [and] rarely practiced, Martin, and he wouldn't
be kicked out of the American Psychoanalytic-- That's foolishness you're
saying." MG: "No, that's not true. Dr. Greenson has written a text which
says specifically, and please read the text again, that psychoanalysis
is a cool, detached, objective analysis. It is not normal psychotherapy,
which Dr. Freud says was dross, and psychoanalysis was golden." WFB:
"Let me try to get concrete."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.569
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6503
item Program Number S0325,
745
"The Crisis of Intelligence"
Guests: Walters, Vernon A. :
Meyer, Sylvan
31 May 1978
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 114 : 36
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 17
Program details: General Walters had, roughly speaking, been everywhere
and seen everything for three decades--confidential translator for
Presidents Truman, Eisenhower, and Kennedy; CIA man and ambassador to
the United Nations; witness to the Smoking Gun conversation that brought
Watergate to a close. On this show--which ranges from Pearl Harbor back
to the American Revolution and forward again to Watergate and to a world
scene that includes, as General Walters puts it, "42,000 Cubans spread
around Africa today"--he proves incisive and impressive: "My own
position on assassination is that I am against it for three reasons: (1)
It's against the law of God. (2) It's against the law of man. (3) It
doesn't work." WFB: "Which shows that God was prudent?" VW: "Very. We
know that." Note: Alternate title on transcript is "Secret
Diplomacy."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.570
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ANCWR4W
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6504
item Program Number S0326
"Numbering error -- repeat of
Firing
Line
#S298"
Guests:
0000-00-00
Scope and Contents note
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 18
Program details:
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.542
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6476
item Program Number S0327,
801
"[A
Firing
Line
Debate]: Resolved: That We Welcome the Growth of
the Public Sector"
Guests: Harrington, Michael, 1928- : Buckley,
William F. (William Frank), 1925-2008.
13 October 1977
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 115 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 18
Program details: Like
Firing
Line
s0317, this is a formal debate but with
a single combatant on either side. Mr. Harrington contends that "certain
hard facts--an aging population; the growth of technology and of
pollution-force an increase in the public sector whether anyone likes it
or not: Okay. Mr. Buckley and I agree: inexorably, under a Nixon, under
a Ford, the government moves in. Why? Why is that historical trend
there? Is it there because of a plot? Is it there because Nixon or Ford
or whatever conservative gets in sells out? I don't think so. I think
there are profound economic, social, technological, and political trends
which force conservatives as well as liberals to advocate more
government intervention." ... WFB: "Government got into medicine about
12 years ago. What has happened? Do we have more doctors? No. Do we have
more nurses? No. What we have is double the cost of a medical bill."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.543
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6477
item Program Number S0328,
802
"The Sinking Dollar"
Guests: Healey, Denis.
26 June 1978
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 115 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 19
Program details: A crackling exchange that doesn't have a lot to do with
the sinking dollar mentioned in the title (DH: "My dear fellow, I have
enough trouble running our own economy not to make judgments about
yours") but that ranges over government deficits and North Sea oil,
comparative standards of living ("I think that we in Britain have always
valued material things less than social stability, comfort, ease, grace.
I would say the change in Britain since the war is exactly the opposite
one: that having declined relative to other countries for a century,...
[since] 1960 I think Britain has given more, not less, attention to
material things"), and the relation between taxation and wage increases
(with Mr. Healey defending a 98 per cent top tax rate on the grounds
that "if you're to get the consent of people with very low living
standards not to ... bargain for excessive wages and to settle for
moderate increases, then you have to prove to them that other people are
subject to similar limitations").
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.571
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6505
item Program Number S0329
"Numbering error -- repeat of
Firing
Line
#S318"
Guests:
0000-00-00
Scope and Contents note
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 19
Program details:
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.563
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6497
item Program Number S0330,
803
"The 1950s Communist Purge"
Guests: Caute, David.
26 June 1978
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 115 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 20
Program details: This show offers a clash of world views between WFB and
a man whose book had been criticized even by so dedicated an
anti-McCarthyite as Arthur Schlesinger Jr., on the grounds that it
somehow suggests "that... it was a wicked thing to call a Stalinist a
Stalinist or a fellow traveler a fellow traveler." DC: "It all depends
on what our premises about a national consensus are. To many people the
victory of the Red Army or Mao Tse-tung's Communist regime in China in
1949 was not the collapse of China, nor, to use the phrase you used
rather significantly a moment ago, was it a question of 'we,' the United
States, 'lost China.'..." WFB: "But you see, Mr. Caute, in America we
have a system in which there are branches of government, and it is the
explicit constitutional responsibility of the Congress of the United
States to monitor the activities of the Executive. Now, one of the
activities of the Executive was to engage in a series of maneuvers in
the Far East which, assuming a causal relationship of any sort, resulted
in the enslavement by the Communists of the Mainland and in a war in
Korea in which a great many Americans were killed."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.572
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6506
item Program Number S0331,
804
"The Rhodesian Dilemma"
Guests: Muzorewa, Abel Tendekayi,
1925-
21 July 1978
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 115 : 4
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 20
Program details: "Bishop Muzorewa," as WFB introduces him, "has been ...
the outstanding leader in Rhodesia, demanding political rights for the
black majority. He eschewed violence, insisting on other forms of
pressure. He pursued Christian principles." But in Western establishment
opinion he had fallen from grace by joining (with two other black
leaders) in a Provisional Council with Prime Minister Ian Smith, to
shepherd Rhodesia through what they hoped would be a peaceful
transition. Revolutionaries led by Joshua Nkomo and Robert Mugabe were
waging guerrilla warfare, "with the explicit goal," as WFB puts it, "of
frustrating the national plebiscite and creating an all-black
Marxist-oriented state." So why aren't Americans rallying behind the
moderates? Bishop Muzorewa gives us a richly detailed account of postwar
African political history, including the terms on which, say, Tanganyika
and Zambia got their independence, and how that affects their attitudes
towards present-day Rhodesia: "Your State Department... I believe is
acting ... to appease certain powers in Africa ... [who] have one person
they have decided should be the king of Zimbabwe and they are trying to
be kingmakers themselves. This started with Dr. Kaunda [President of
Zambia], who is personally committed to Mr. Nkomo, and he has mobilized
every front-line state, so called, to support him."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.578
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003GXE9SC
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6512
item Program Number S0332,
805
"Muggeridge Revisited"
Guests: Muggeridge, Malcolm,
1903-1990. : Knight, Andrew.
27 June 1978
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 115 : 5
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 21
Program details: The last time Mr. Muggeridge was on
Firing
Line
, Mr.
Buckley reminds us, it was to comment on Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn's first
television interview (#S225); a few weeks before today's show was taped,
Solzhenitsyn had again made waves, this time with his Harvard
commencement address. Solzhenitsyn, with those great burning eyes,
speaks like a prophet. Muggeridge, with his twinkling eyes, speaks like
a benevolent grandfather-but the two men wind up saying much the same
thing, whether speaking of the City of God or the City of Man. MM: Every
courageous man in the West who believes in freedom and equality will
have a go at them [the South Africans], because that's very easy. But-"
WFB: "Or Chile." MM: "Chile, not quite so easily, because there aren't
many black people there, and it's not within the orbit much of the West;
but South Africa is the absolutely favorite thing. In order not to have
to do or say anything about the Gulag, it's perfect.... I've been
reading Spengler in these dark days. Do you ever read it?" WFB: "I've
managed to avoid it." MM: "You won't avoid it for long.""
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.574
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6508
item Program Number S0333,
806
"
Firing
Line's
British Correspondents"
Guests: Hayman,
Helene Middleweek. : Evans, Roger. : Riddell, Peter.
27 June 1978
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 115 : 6
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 21
Program details: It had been ten years since these three Britons had
first appeared on
Firing
Line
--in that case, as panelists when they were
all three still at Cambridge. They have jointly and severally appeared
many times since as panelists or guest interrogators; it was thought
this time to invite them as guests in their own right. They come through
splendidly, in a spirited examination of the differences between British
and American public-affairs television and political debate (with an
account of, among much else, how Enoch Powell had finally broken the
barrier of silence against him on British TV), the adversary tradition
in debating, and the merits of public speakers from Edmund Burke to
Richard Nixon. One sample: WFB: "Are you supposed to memorize your
speech [in the House of Commons]?" HMH: "You're supposed to speak
impromptu." WFB: "Well, the great orations of Churchill--as a matter of
fact, he did memorize them; but a number... For instance, the speeches
of Burke were certainly not impromptu, were they?" RE: "He always
emptied the House of Commons. He was known as the dinner bell. He was
not a successful parliamentary orator. Lord North was the parliamentary
genius of his age, which is why he preserved his majority so long in the
face of the rebellion in the Americas; and so was Walpole before him.
That was a knockabout House of Commons, impromptu style."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.573
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6507
item Program Number S0334,
807
"Cambodia and the Refugee Problem"
Guests: Vin, Im. :
Cherne, Leo, 1912-
20 July 1978
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 115 : 7
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 22
Program details: The holocaust in Cambodia had been going on for three
years; somewhere between 15 and 25 per cent of the population had been
killed. Mr. Vin had escaped to tell the tale, and although his English
is weak, he is a moving witness ("I don't think that what is reported to
the world is exaggerated. What is said about the holocaust, the
executions, the crimes, starvation, hardship, and sickness, is true,
absolutely true"). To the question why are so many people denying the
magnitude of the killing, Mr. Cherne points out that some of those who
were initially the most skeptical (partly because of "their previous
knowledge of the Cambodians as a gentle people; and it seemed
inconceivable to them"), once they saw the evidence, "are today the most
impressive among those who have assembled the data which make Mr. Vin's
story a modest one."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.576
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6510
item Program Number S0335,
808
"What Rights Do Nazis Have?"
Guests: Dershowitz, Alan M. :
Neier, Aryeh, 1937- : Van den Haag, Ernest.
20 July 1978
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 115 : 8
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 22
Program details: The American Nazi Party had sought to march in the
predominantly Jewish town of Skokie, Illinois, and finally had been
permitted instead to march in a park in Chicago; many people had been
surprised--or indeed infuriated--when the ACLU weighed in on behalf of
the Nazis. Host and guests, approaching free speech from four quite
different directions, shed considerable light on the bases for
maintaining free speech and the theories on when it can be justifiably
curtailed. One sample: WFB: "Would you defend the right of the American
people by constitutional amendment to repeal the Bill of Rights?" AN:
"No, because I don't derive my civil-liberties values from the Bill of
Rights. I consider it fortunate that the Bill of Rights embodies the
civil-liberties values that I hold, but the values come first; the
particular instrument come second."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.575
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6509
item Program Number S0336,
809
"Three vs. William F. Buckley Jr."
Guests: Pilpel, Harriet
F. : Burden, Carter. : Lowenstein, Allard K.
21 July 1978
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 115 : 9-10
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 23
Program details: In this installment of the semi-annual turning of the
tables, the guests question their host on everything from government
spending, to the Equal Rights Amendment and abortion, to aid to
authoritarian regimes. Two samples: HP: "I think what we can agree on in
disputes of this kind is that the role of the government, in a
culturally diverse, pluralistic society, is to be neutral." WFB: "My
God! You want to pass a law [ERA] forbidding me to hire a female nurse
for my mother, and you're telling me the law has to be neutral in
matters of such gravity as abortion!" ... CB: "But if life is sacred, if
that is a basic moral premise, then how can you in any case justify
taking life [via the death penalty]?" WFB: "By reading the Bible." CB:
"An eye for an eye? You subscribe to that?" WFB: "No, I don't subscribe
to that. But there are many instances in the Bible where, given due
process, and given the gravity of the crime, the taking of life is
authorized."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.577
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E52U9O
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6511
item Program Number S0337,
810
"Federal Regulation and the Travel Explosion"
Guests: Kahn,
Alfred E. (Alfred Edward)
22 August 1978
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 115 : 11
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 23
Program details: Mr. Kahn is that rare bird, a regulator who wants his
regulatory agency to go out of business (which it eventually did, though
not on his watch--
Firing
Line
s0631). He is another breed of rare bird
as well: a public servant who speaks plain, and pungent, English. A
spirited conversation exploring what is the minimal sort of regulation
that is needed in the air lanes, why the government shouldn't be
granting monopoly routes, and how competition really can work in the
airline industry. HK: "In any case, American Airlines, which was one of
the leading objectors to deregulation, has now gone all the way over to
the other extreme." WFB: "With cut fares and cut rates." HK: "Oh yes.
They just say, 'Get out of our way.' I wish I could say that I had been
farsighted enough to have planned it so, but there is a general view now
among many airline executives that if the CAB is going to be of so
little use to us by way of protecting us, then let's get them out of the
way. That is a simply delightful development."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.579
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6513
item Program Number S0338,
811
"Newsmen and the Law"
Guests: Worthington, Peter, 1927- :
Rusher, William A., 1923-
22 August 1978
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 115 : 12
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 24
Program details: Mr. Worthington had been arraigned under the Official
Secrets Act--ostensibly because he had published confidential Royal
Canadian Mounted Police documents detailing KGB activity; or possibly,
WFB posits, because he was such a trenchant critic of the Trudeau
government. A bracing discussion of the rights and responsibilities of
journalists. WFB: T"he Pentagon Papers case, for instance-where would
you have voted on that?" PW: "Oh, but you see, I don't have much use for
the Daniel Ellsbergs of this world. It seems to me they're violating the
spirit of their oath (if there was an oath). However, as a journalist,
if I had the opportunity to receive the papers, I would publish them.
Police don't have to admire the informer while using his
information."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.580
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6514
item Program Number S0339,
812
"The Mission of the Pope"
Guests: Martin, Malachi.
6 September 1978
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 97 ; 3
Publicity File: Box/Folder 115 : 13
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 24
Program details: There's a frisson, in retrospect, in learning that the
new pope being discussed on this show is not John Paul II but his
predecessor, John Paul I, who would die just a month after his election.
But for now, Mr. Martin gives us a breathless and detail-filled account
of why Pope Paul VI had sought to appease the Communists ("because he
was persuaded that he couldn't stop the advent of Communist parties ...
[either in Europe or in Latin America] and hence his idea was, 'Let's
survive by making friends'"), what the election of Albino Luciani as
John Paul I portended, and how the conclave that elected him actually
proceeded ("And Wyszynski, this Pole whom the Romans have always
referred to contemptuously as 'Our Holy Father of Central Europe,' he
sort of steamrolls over everybody. Having dealt with Gomulka and Gierek
in the Stalinist period in Poland, he's a strong man. He and Wojtyla of
Krakow and a man called Josef Hoffner, a strong arrogant German
cardinal--I'm sure his arrogance stems from his desire for the Kingdom
of God, but that's his reputation--and Ratzinger and then the four
Spanish cardinals ...came in and said, 'No way. We won't accept your
candidate or the policy'").
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.581
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TZ8H3WG
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6515
item Program Number S0340, 813,
813R
"A
Firing
Line
Debate: Resolved: That the Strategic Arms
Limitation Talks Are in the Interests of U.S. National Security--Part I"
Guests: McGovern, George S. (George Stanley), 1922- : La Rocque,
Gene R. (Gene Robert), 1918- : Russett, Bruce M. : Buckley, William F.
(William Frank), Jr., 1925-2008. : Nitze, Paul H. : Bishop, Joseph
Warren.
19 September 1978, 5 August 1979
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 115 : 14
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 25
Program details: Would a new SALT agreement strengthen or weaken the
United States? Would failure to reach such an agreement make a nuclear
holocaust more or less likely? Two samples from this high-octane debate:
PN: "Let me now get to the substantive part. You agree with [chief SALT
negotiator] Paul Warnke's statement in which he says that neither the
U.S. nor the USSR can attain superiority over the other except by
default, and that we will not be guilty of default in this sphere?" GL:
"I'd have to answer that I support the statement of Henry Kissinger when
he said, 'Nuclear superiority-what in the hell good is it?' "... WFB: "I
perceive that there is great confusion, Senator, because you spent the
early part of the evening telling us that we had redundant power, and
now in the beginning of the second hour you're telling us that the
Soviet Union intends to deploy 700 more missiles. Why do they want 700
more missiles when you have just told us how frequently they could kill
us with the missiles they have? ..." GM: "Mr. Buckley, what I am saying
is that in the absence of an agreement, both sides will continue the
pattern they've followed for years-" WFB: "Why? Why?" GM: "-of
increasing. Because of the madness that exists-" WFB: "Who's mad? I'm
not mad." GM: "I would suggest that if not mad, you're at least lacking
in vision and common sense."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.583
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6517
item Program Number S0341,
814
"A
Firing
Line
Debate: Resolved: That the Strategic Arms
Limitation Talks Are in the Interests of U.S. National Security-Part II"
Guests: McGovern, George S. (George Stanley), 1922- : La Rocque,
Gene R. (Gene Robert), 1918- : Russett, Bruce M. : Buckley, William F.
(William Frank), Jr., 1925-2008. : Nitze, Paul H. : Bishop, Joseph
Warren.
19 September 1978
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 115 : 15-16
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 25
Program details: Would a new SALT agreement strengthen or weaken the
United States? Would failure to reach such an agreement make a nuclear
holocaust more or less likely? Two samples from this high-octane debate:
PN: "Let me now get to the substantive part. You agree with [chief SALT
negotiator] Paul Warnke's statement in which he says that neither the
U.S. nor the USSR can attain superiority over the other except by
default, and that we will not be guilty of default in this sphere?" GL:
"I'd have to answer that I support the statement of Henry Kissinger when
he said, 'Nuclear superiority-what in the hell good is it?' "... WFB: "I
perceive that there is great confusion, Senator, because you spent the
early part of the evening telling us that we had redundant power, and
now in the beginning of the second hour you're telling us that the
Soviet Union intends to deploy 700 more missiles. Why do they want 700
more missiles when you have just told us how frequently they could kill
us with the missiles they have? ..." GM: "Mr. Buckley, what I am saying
is that in the absence of an agreement, both sides will continue the
pattern they've followed for years-" WFB: "Why? Why?" GM: "-of
increasing. Because of the madness that exists-" WFB: "Who's mad? I'm
not mad." GM: "I would suggest that if not mad, you're at least lacking
in vision and common sense."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.584
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6518
item Program Number S0342,
815
"The U.S. Military and the Crisis of Morale"
Guests:
Goodpaster, Andrew Jackson, 1915-
6 September 1978
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 115 : 17
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 26
Program details: In the wake of a cheating scandal that had called West
Point's honor system into question, General Goodpaster (who had served
in posts ranging from combat duty as a junior officer in World War II to
Commander in Chief of U.S. and NATO forces in Europe in the early
Seventies) had been recalled from retirement to put the Military Academy
back in order. The discussion, slow-moving but productive, ranges from
technical aspects of West Point's operations to the general question,
Has the West lost its courage? AG: "It developed that West Point was
suffering from a very considerable rot. That rot finally came to light,
and the facts became known, and a good deal has been done to remedy
that. And I think that we--and here I associate myself with the cadets,
and with the whole staff and faculty--we're prepared to rest on how well
we're doing, not on a prestige that derived from an image that related
to a former time."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.582
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6516
item Program Number S0343,
816
"Australia with the Prime Minister"
Guests: Fraser, John
Malcom, 1930-
26 October 1978
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 115 : 18
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 26
Program details: In 1975 the Governor-General of Australia--who, as Mr.
Buckley puts it, is "generally expected to do nothing more adventurous
than escort visiting presidents and kings to the Tomb of the Unknown
Soldier"--dismissed the Prime Minister, Mr. Gough Whitlam, and appointed
Mr. Fraser. One month later, the voters confirmed Governor Kerr's
judgments by giving Mr. Fraser's party a landslide victory. Three years
later he was in trouble in the polls, at least partly because, although
his government had brought down the inflation it had inherited, it had
not brought down unemployment. Today's conversation starts slowly, with
Mr. Fraser a little inclined to evasion ("I think it's impertinent for
me to make a judgment about the kinds of policies the United States
ought to pursue." WFB: "We'd be very grateful, because ours aren't
working"), but it improves as we go along, covering matters from
economics, to Australia's participation in the World Wars and the
Vietnam War, to the proper relations with authoritarian regimes such as
Argentina's and Chile's. MF: "We're all affected by the world around
us--what the United States can do, the physical power of the United
States compared to the Soviet Union. Where does the weight of the
hundreds of millions of Chinese fit into that particular equation? And
Australia is a nation of 14 million people only, and small nations, I
think, have to tread their paths with skill."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.588
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6522
item Program Number S0344,
817
"Labor Down Under"
Guests: Hawke, Robert J. L. (Robert James
Lee), 1929- : Lipski, Sam
26 October 1978
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 115 : 19
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 27
Program details: The future Prime Minister (he would defeat Mr. Fraser in
1983) was at this time not even a member of Parliament, although he was,
Mr. Buckley tells us, "frequently designated as the most influential
figure in Australian public life." This rousing session on the place of
trade unions and the power of the press never slows down. One sample, on
whether generous union settlements and rises in the minimum wage hurt
the workers at the lowest end of the scale: RH: "No, I don't think it's
true in America, and it's certainly not true in this country. It's a
nonsense theory as far as Australia is concerned.... Because under the
way in which our arbitration system operates, when the trade-union
movement goes in and conducts cases to improve wages or working
conditions, the results don't flow simply to members of trade unions.
They go to all people who are employed ..." WFB: "You have a remarkable
facility for simply co-opting all idealistic objectives and saying that
they are served by your policies. Now, is this simply a polemical habit,
or are you willing to give an objective basis for it? In point of fact,
every time in America there has been a raise in the minimum wage there
has been a huge increase in black unemployment. Now what's nonsensical
about that?" RH: "Well, I wish you'd really listen to what I was saying
..."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.589
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6523
item Program Number S0345,
818
"U.S.-Puerto Rican Relations"
Guests: Romero-Barcelo,
Carlos.
25 September 1978
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 115 : 20
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 27
Program details: Amid demands for independence by bomb-wielding
militants, and charges Stateside that Puerto Ricans just wanted to get
on the welfare gravy train, public discussion of Puerto Rican statehood
had gone into abeyance. It had been revived by Gerald Ford in one of his
last statements as President. Governor Romero rebuts the charges and
defends statehood on theoretical grounds: WFB: "You don't think it is
possible to improvise on the Commonwealth, so as, for instance, to give
you a negative veto on federal legislation as it applies to Puerto Rico
... ?" CRB: "Bill, if you don't understand really what it means to be a
U.S. citizen ... then you might be happy with that. But once
understanding what it means to be a citizen in a democracy, you want to
have political participation to the same extent with the same rights and
the same privileges and obligations as everyone else. You cannot accept
something that is different."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.585
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6519
item Program Number S0346,
819
"Independence for Puerto Rico?"
Guests: Camacho, Luis. :
Agrait, Luis E. : Ramos, Oreste.
25 September 1978
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 115 : 21
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 28
Program details: "Our guests today are representatives," as Mr. Buckley
puts it, "of the three positions" on Puerto Rico's future--"nonviolent
representatives of the three positions, I might add." Each ably defends
his position and informatively discusses matters such as the economy,
taxation, and the minimum wage--with Mr. Camacho to add spice: WFB: "If
in fact 39 per cent of [Puerto Rico's] per-capita income is being
contributed by Stateside taxpayers, how do we transform this into an act
of oppression against Puerto Rico?" LC: "Well, even in terms of social
dependency, that's an aggression."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.586
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6520
item Program Number S0347,
820
"Three Australian Journalists and William F. Buckley Jr."
Guests: Hewitt, Tim. : MacCallum, Mungo. : Lipski, Sam.
26 October 1978
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 115 : 22
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 28
Program details: An uninhibited whirl through the effects of modernity on
Australia, from uranium mining and the Aborigines to computers and the
typing pool. TH: "Now Mungo will go berserk and he'll say, 'No, it's
nothing like that, it's nothing as mundane as that.' Of course it's as
mundane as that. I do not blame the Aborigine. He sees the chance to
make a lot of money [out of the uranium-mining companies], and I believe
in making a lot of money. Mungo will now say that I'm a pterodactyl and
something frightful has happened. Go ahead." MM: "No, I'll simply say
that you are dead set bloody ignorant." TH: "No, I know rather more than
you do about most matters." MM: "You probably know a little more about
making money than I do." TH: "Libel! Libel!"... SL: "The fact is that
most Australians simply don't live anywhere where Aborigines are seen,
and this is unlike the situation of the [American] blacks. It may be
analogous to the Red Indians, because in most American big cities you
don't see Red Indians ... But there is a backlash ... against a certain
thrusting down the throats of Australians sitting out there in
television land, the kind of notion that they did have some guilt, some
sense of overwhelming responsibility to the Aborigines."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.587
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6521
item Program Number S0348,
822
"What Should Our China Policy Be?"
Guests: White, Theodore
Harold, 1915-
12 December 1978
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 96 : 9
Publicity File: Box/Folder 115 : 23
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 29
Program details: The winds of change were blowing in China. "Every day,"
Mr. Buckley begins," a fresh victim of one of Mao's purges is
exonerated; tomorrow they may disentomb Mozart at the rate they are
going . . ." To help us sort it all out, we have one of the
English-speaking world's leading journalists, whose China-watching goes
back to the decade he spent in China as a young man just out of Harvard.
To take just one sample: THW: "They keep coming back to me, these
memories of the Saturday-night dances at Communist headquarters in
Yenan.... They would go waltzing around and sashaying, and the
commander-in-chief, Chu Teh, would sit there with his wife like a
grandmother and grandfather seeing a Jewish wedding, and there would be
Yeh Chien-ying, who is now the Defense Minister, and Lin Piao, who has
been purged and his throat cut, and P'eng Te-huai, who has been purged
and is now being resurrected, I am told... To see these men in that
lyrical period when they were the underdogs, when they were fighting the
Japanese, when they were behind the Japanese lines and risking their
lives everyday--to see their comradeship and their brilliance and their
camaraderie was to be carried away by it." WFB: "You sound like John
Reed." THW: "But John Reed died too soon to see what happened later, to
see Stalin knock off Trotsky, and knock off Bukharin and knock off
Zinoviev. I have lived to see these comrades in arms ... poisoned with
power,shoot each other down, exile each other. It's a terrible thing.
... I think ours is the only revolution in all history where the
revolutionaries did not kill each other off." Alternate title: "What
Should Be Our Chinese Policy?"
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.592
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ANCWSCS
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6526
item Program Number S0349,
821
"Singapore with the Prime Minister"
Guests: Lee, Kuan Yew,
1923-
30 October 1978
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 115 : 24
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 29
Program details: Thirteen years after the city-state of Singapore
achieved its independence, it had the second highest standard of living
in Asia, after Japan. However, it was not highly regarded in terms of
civil liberties and democracy, and Mr. Lee was less often described in
the Western press as "prime minister" than as "strongman." A low-key but
absorbing hour with this dominant figure. WFB: "Somebody living in your
country, judging the situation today over against the situation ten
years ago, would he say, 'Prime Minister Lee gives me grounds for
believing that human rights are increasing in Singapore'?" LKY: "I would
hope that's the answer you'd get from most of the people in Singapore."
WFB: "And what would they point to concretely?" LKY: "Well, what is it
they are prevented from exercising?" WFB: "Freedom of the press." LKY:
"I think human rights in a Third World situation have more important
facets than freedom of the press. There's freedom from hunger, from
want, from ignorance, from disease, the right to education of the young,
the right to a job, the right to a life free from fear."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.590
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6524
item Program Number S0350,
823
"Why Federal Aid to the Humanities?"
Guests: Duffey, Joseph.
12 December 1978
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 115 : 25
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 30
Program details: Mr. Duffey's appointment had caused some controversy,
not least because President Carter had said that he wanted to get rid of
"elitist attitudes" in the Endowment. We begin with a discussion of
elitism vs. snobbism, and go on to an account, full of detail, of how
someone goes about getting a Humanities grant. Mr. Duffey: "The
Humanities Endowment has been so confused with the Arts Endowment. ... I
remember being asked right after my appointment by one reporter that it
was rumored that this Administration wanted to take money away from the
Metropolitan Opera and give it for hog calling in the Midwest. I
couldn't think of what to respond, so I said, 'Well, hog calling is an
art. The study of hog calling and the history of hog calling would be
the humanities.'"
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.591
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6525
item Program Number S0351,
824
"1979: A Conservative View: Part I"
Guests: Hatch, Orrin,
1934- : Kemp, Jack. : Bell, Jeffrey, 1943- : Buckley, James Lane, 1923-
: Mahoney, J. Daniel, 1931- : Viguerie, Richard A.
2 January 1979
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 115 : 26
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 30
Program details: A rich discussion among seven men who are all in one way
or another "conservative activists," but who have also contributed to
the conservative intellectual movement. The first hour concentrates on
matters domestic and electoral, the second on human rights and foreign
policy; the talk ranges from how to reform the tax system to how
political conservatism has changed since the days of Thomas Dewey and
Robert A. Taft, to how difficult it is to float a new idea in the course
of a political campaign (JLB: "The best you can do really is to identify
yourself with positions that have become sufficiently well understood in
the body politic so that they say, 'Yes, I know what you mean'"), to
what we can and should do about human rights around the world (JDM:
"Certainly we can't dispatch the Marines to every quarter of the globe
that doesn't live up to our standards of internal rights...but certainly
you can at least--there are thousands of ways to do this--reflect the
fact that you disapprove ...").
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.593
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6527
item Program Number S0352,
825
"1979: A Conservative View: Part II"
Guests: Hatch, Orrin,
1934- : Kemp, Jack. : Bell, Jeffrey, 1943- : Mahoney, J. Daniel, 1931- :
Viguerie, Richard A. : Buckley, James Lane, 1923-
2 January 1979
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 115 : 26
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 30
Program details: A rich discussion among seven men who are all in one way
or another "conservative activists," but who have also contributed to
the conservative intellectual movement. The first hour concentrates on
matters domestic and electoral, the second on human rights and foreign
policy; the talk ranges from how to reform the tax system to how
political conservatism has changed since the days of Thomas Dewey and
Robert A. Taft, to how difficult it is to float a new idea in the course
of a political campaign (JLB: "The best you can do really is to identify
yourself with positions that have become sufficiently well understood in
the body politic so that they say, 'Yes, I know what you mean'"), to
what we can and should do about human rights around the world (JDM:
"Certainly we can't dispatch the Marines to every quarter of the globe
that doesn't live up to our standards of internal rights...but certainly
you can at least--there are thousands of ways to do this--reflect the
fact that you disapprove ...").
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.594
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6528
item Program Number S0353,
826
"The Problem of Illegal Aliens"
Guests: Castillo, Leonel
(Leonel J.)
15 January 1979
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 115 : 27
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 31
Program details: The question of how much immigration we should allow and
what criteria should be used for admission was the subject of sporadic
debate, but suddenly it had hit the public consciousness that we had
some large number of immigrants--3 million? 8 million? 12 million?--who
had by-passed the admission process altogether. This proves to be a calm
and extremely informative discussion of a topic that often reaches the
shouting stage, ranging over the history of our immigration policies (as
WFB puts it, "In 1797 the Congress argued that since the United States
was already fully populated and mature, we should not allow any more
immigrants") and the effects of the 1965 law. WFB: "Well, as a cultural
question, would there be an ugly resentment in Mexico of any artifact
that might be created along the border that would sound like sort of a
reversed Berlin Wall, not to keep Americans in but to keep foreigners
out?" LJC: "Well, we just went through that, where after the Department
of Justice and OMB and Congress and everybody had approved, without a
dissenting voice or vote, the construction of 12 miles of replacement
fence and a little bit of new fence at El Paso and San Diego, the
Mexican newspapers reacted as if we had declared war on Mexico."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.595
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6529
item Program Number S0354,
827
"The Recognition of China"
Guests: Cline, Ray S. : Cohen,
Jerome Alan.
18 January 1979
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 115 : 28
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 31
Program details: "Not long ago with Theodore White," Mr. Buckley begins,
"we touched ... on prospective changes in U.S. China policy. Days later
President Carter did it--renounced our treaty with Taiwan, kicked out
Taiwan's diplomats, pulled down the U.S. flag from our embassy in
Taipei." Was President Carter right? What comes next? The non-China Hand
may sometimes be left behind as our guests wrangle, but we get enough
details to keep us going. WFB: "Now what happens [given that there is no
longer a defense treaty] with the next Democratic President or with Mr.
Carter when he's reborn on the subject of China?" JAC: "But look, this
was true even under the defense treaty. What was the defense treaty
after all? It was a commitment of mush. All it said was the United
States would respond according to its constitutional processes in some
undefined way if a threat arose to Taiwan's security. According to its
constitutional processes--what does that mean?" WFB: "It was a strategic
reality and interpreted as such, wasn't it?" RC: "Yes. And it's the same
kind of mushy arrangement which we have with the NATO nations, with
Korea, with Japan, with the Philippines, with Australia and New Zealand.
If they're all mush, then in fact we have no foreign policy."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.598
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6532
item Program Number S0355,
828
"Boundaries of the Press"
Guests: Abrams, Floyd. : Rusher,
William A., 1923-
15 January 1979
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 115 : 29
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 32
Program details: Does (or should) the newsman/source relationship have
the same legal privileges as the attorney/client or priest/penitent
relationship? Mr. Abrams says "yes," and we're off on a high-energy
exchange on legal history, theory, and practice. WFB: "That's sort of a
revolutionary accretion, and yet, in asserting that point, you tend to
do so as an exegete of the Constitution rather than as somebody who
wants to amend it." FA: "Well, I do, and for this reason. It seems to me
that most of the privileges we have--attorney/client at least,
doctor/patient for sure--do not have constitutional roots at all.... I
can't go back to the Framers of the Constitution and say--" WFB: "Or
rooted in the common law?" FA: "To the common law, certainly not. The
common law is almost the antithesis of the First Amendment... The common
law, as [Justice Hugo] Black said, is what we had a revolution to get
away from. ..." WAR: "Since they [the journalists] do the reporting in
this country, I can forgive anybody who thinks that they had had these
rights for two hundred years, and that the Supreme Court and other
courts fell upon them with berserk fury in the early 1970s and began
taking them away."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.596
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6530
item Program Number S0356,
829
"Ecumenism and Schism"
Guests: Vree, Dale. : Morse, Robert
S.
18 January 1979
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 115 : 30
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 32
Program details: In 1977 a group of American Episcopalians, acting in
resistance to the ordination of women and to the revision of the Book of
Common Prayer (see
Firing
Line
s0171), broke away and formed a new
entity, called the Anglican Church in North America. The ACNA soon
split, and the following year one of the offshoots, the Anglican
Catholic Church, consecrated four bishops, among them Robert Morse. Mr.
Vree outlines the reasons for the schism (Sometimes we say to them
[conservatives who have remained in the Episcopal Church], 'We go to
prepare a place for you.' " Is the break away church a nostalgic
splinter group? Not at all, says Bishop Morse: "I would say we are part
of an avant-garde movement--I mean, we hope we are in the tradition of
the excitement of someone like Pope John Paul II or Solzhenitsyn. There
is a great shake out of orthodox Christians taking place, and if you can
reach the Episcopalian, who is a very interesting minority in American
life, of a certain decision-making class-- . . . if we can excite your
Episcopalian with orthodox Christianity, we hope that with this we will
begin a renewal of the reunion of Eastern and Western
Christendom--Orthodox, Roman Catholics, and Anglicans."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.597
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6531
item Program Number S0357,
830
"NATO and European Security"
Guests: Haig, Alexander Meigs,
1924-
12 February 1979
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 115 : 31
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 33
Program details: General Haig had just announced his resignation as
Supreme Allied Commander, and speculation was rife as to the reason. But
today's show is not about any political ambitions General Haig might
have, but rather about what we can do to enhance our and our allies'
security. We start with the fact that the Shah of Iran had just been
overthrown--costing us an observation post from which to monitor events
in the Soviet Union, and also a stabilizing influence in the Gulf
region-and go on through President Carter's decision to put the neutron
bomb on hold, to Europe's perceptions of American reliability: "I would
start out with the broad observation that the tragic outcome of
America's involvement in Southeast Asia left deep scars in the European
perception of American reliability.... I think subsequent events-and it
would not be difficult to tick them off, ranging from the change of a
hundred years' at least crypto-neutrality for Afghanistan; the coup
d'etat in Southern Yemen; untended, unchallenged, and illegal Soviet
interventionism in Africa ... -all have tended to aggravate the concerns
that have been long-standing and which were intensified by the outcome
in Vietnam."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.600
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6534
item Program Number S0358,
831
"Reason and Politics"
Guests: Joseph, Keith, Sir, 1918-
12 February 1979
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 115 : 32
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 33
Program details: Sir Keith had served as Secretary of State for Social
Services in the Heath government and had been regarded as a "Tory wet,"
but since then he had blossomed as a conservative theorist, particularly
on social issues. He and his host range over questions of taxation,
illegitimacy, class warfare, nationalized health care, and more, at a
level of concreteness that always brings us along with them. KJ: "I was
in charge of the health service for four years, and I think this is
still the best country in the world in which to have a serious accident
or a serious illness. If you want to have a serious accident--" WFB:
"Schedule it here." KJ: "Schedule it here. But if you want to have a
relatively minor one or a long one or a handicap or a disadvantage like
arthritis or rheumatism or deafness--not in Britain."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.601
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6535
item Program Number S0359,
832
"The Crisis of British Trade Unions"
Guests: Reid, Jimmy,
1932-
12 February 1979
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 115 : 33
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 34
Program details: In his previous appearance on
Firing
Line
(s0174), Mr.
Reid had stoutly defended his membership in the Communist Party. Two and
a half years later he had left the Party, and Mr. Buckley begins by
asking "Whether he was moved finally to leave the Communist Party after
reflecting on the cogency of the arguments I posed on this program." JR:
"No, not quite, not quite.... I think basically what drove me to the
conclusion that the Communist Party ... wasn't relevant was this: that
the structures of the Communist Parties are based on pre-revolutionary
Russian experience." Speaking of Euro communism, he adds: "They can
change programmatically all they want, but if they have plans for a
democratic socialist society, they will have to become democratic
socialist parties. And once they do that, they cease to be Communist
Parties." Before we get back to the crisis of British trade unions, we
have dealt with Hitler and Frederick the Great, Albert Schweitzer and
Martin Luther King Jr., and what Jesus meant when he chased the money
changers from the Temple.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.599
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6533
item Program Number S0360,
833
"Three British MPs and William F. Buckley Jr."
Guests:
Kinnock, Neil Gordon, 1942- : Pardoe, John. : Boyson, Rhodes.
13 February 1979
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 115 : 34
Transcript: Box/Folder 174 : 34
Program details: As Mr. Buckley sets the stage, "There is clamor for an
election, but Mr. James Callaghan, the prime minister, is reluctant to
proceed, inasmuch as the polls show him trailing Mrs. Thatcher's
Conservative Party by 19 points." The election was duly held in May,
with the Conservatives taking 339 seats, Labour 268, and the Liberals
11, but meanwhile our guests have much to say about trade unions, the
true meaning of freedom, and one another. RB: "Every time something is
put in practice, it doesn't work and then you say, 'That's not it.' At
one time you could say socialism would work because it hadn't been tried
anywhere. But everywhere it has been tried it has been chaos. And as a
suspicious man, it strikes me it might be chaos everywhere when it is
tried." ... NK (of Mr. Pardoe): "Let's hope that he makes the choice at
some time in the future to comeback to the bosom of socialism." WFB:
"You make way for late vocations?" NK: "Oh indeed. There are all kinds
of conversions."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.602
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6536
item Program Number S0361,
834
"The Meaning of the Egyptian-Israeli Accord"
Guests: Rabin,
Yitzhak, 1922- : Tamir, Shmuel, 1923-1987.
15 March 1979
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 96 : 10
Publicity File: Box/Folder 115 : 35
Transcript: Box/Folder 175 : 1
Program details: The details had not yet been made public, but President
Carter had just flown home after a trip to Cairo and Jerusalem during
which he had obtained the signatures of Prime Minister Begin and
President Sadat on the follow-up to the Camp David Accords. Although
Messrs. Rabin and Tamir are on opposite sides of the political fence,
this proves to be a good-tempered discussion of the military situation,
the relations among the different Arab states, the Palestinian refugees,
and the importance of Anwar al-Sadat. ST: "You have noticed that the
last decision made by Egypt was uttered from one mouth without the
knowledge of anybody else in Egypt. It was a decision of one man, just
as his courageous arrival in Jerusalem was the decision of one man. It
was a great step, but of course there is permanent with it apprehension
about what happens if he is removed politically or otherwise--as does
happen in the Middle East so very often, especially in dictatorial
countries, the Arab countries." (For the record, Mr. Sadat was
assassinated in 1981, Mr. Rabin in 1995.)
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.604
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6538
item Program Number S0362,
835
"Peace in the Middle East?"
Guests: Avineri, Shlomo. : Katz,
Samuel.
16 March 1979
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 97 : 1
Publicity File: Box/Folder 115 : 36
Transcript: Box/Folder 175 : 1
Program details: Against the background of the historic visit of
President Sadat to Jerusalem a year and a half earlier, and the treaty
just negotiated under the aegis of President Carter, this discussion
goes back and forth over the history, the current players, and the
likely future. Mr. Katz is a hardliner who had just broken with his old
associate (going back to Irgun days) Menachem Begin. Mr. Avineri has
hopes for the treaty, partly because of Sadat's formal statement to the
Knesset: "'I am here to tell you that for thirty years we have not
accepted you ... And here I am to tell you that we are now ready to live
in peace with you and to accept you.' " In the course of their often
sharp disagreements, Messrs. Katz and Avineri fill out our understanding
of this explosive region.
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.606
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6540
item Program Number S0363,
836
"Three Foreign Correspondents in the Middle East"
Guests:
Bierman, John. : Gross, Richard C. : Bushinsky, Jay.
15 March 1979
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 97 : 5
Publicity File: Box/Folder 115 : 37
Transcript: Box/Folder 175 : 2
Program details: These veteran observers (Mr. Bushinsky had been in
Israel since 1966; Mr. Bierman was expelled from Iran by the Shah in
1973) take us through the Soviets' involvement in the Middle East and
why anyone still trusts them, President Sadat's flair for the dramatic,
and how the Carter mission affects Middle Eastern views of the United
States. They also shed some fascinating sidelights on, e.g., Middle
Eastern corruption. Mr. Bushinsky: "You have kind of a disguised
unemployment in a country like Egypt, where many people are kept working
and salaried by dint of their presumed jobs, and you as an individual,
foreign or domestic, must go through these people--and they are very
jealous of their prerogatives; otherwise their jobs might be rendered
redundant. You can call that a form of corruption if you will, but... it
wasn't necessary to bribe the air-freight personnel to get your shipment
out... Maybe there were a few too many rubber stamps along the way, but
not corruption on a scale that John had known in Tehran."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.603
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6537
item Program Number S0364,
837
"The Rising Tide of Islam"
Guests: Vatikiotis, P. J. :
Warburg, Gabriel. : Ben-Dor, Gabriel.
16 March 1979
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 115 : 38
Transcript: Box/Folder 175 : 2
Program details: Mr. Buckley begins by saying, "The general ignorance in
the Western world concerning Islam ... is widely deplored and generally
cultivated." This is demonstrated over and over again in this productive
discussion, in which our guests-none of them Muslim, all of them deeply
knowledgeable about Islam-lead us into this very different worldview.
One sample: WFB: "The fundamentalist-" PJV: "Excuse me, I refuse to use
the term fundamentalist for Islam. That is a very Christian, canonical,
theological proposition. There's no such thing as fundamentalism in
Islam. There is orthodox in Islam." WFB: "There is such a thing as a
metaphor everywhere." PJV: "All right. Thank you. The problem is that
this is the only native idiom they have." WFB: "Cutting off hands is
fundamentalist, isn't it?" PJV: "Well, even the cutting off of hands-"
GB: "You could call it puritan." PJV: "Puritan, yes." WFB:
"Puritanical."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.605
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E50RWQ
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6539
item Program Number S0365,
838
"The Move for a Constitutional Convention"
Guests: Tribe,
Laurence H. : Davidson, James Dale.
11 April 1979
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 115 : 39
Transcript: Box/Folder 175 : 3
Program details: Mr. Davidson's organization was spearheading the
effort--which at that time needed to sign on only six more states--to
call a convention under the provisions of Article V of the Constitution,
for the purpose of considering a balanced-budget amendment. Today's
discussion explores in depth the case for such an amendment--as Mr.
Davidson puts it, to"rescue congressmen from the prisoner's dilemma" of
having the benefits of deficit spending obvious while the costs are
hidden--and the cases against (a) the amendment itself (first, according
to Professor Tribe, that it is unnecessary: "It's clear that there are
political payoffs, and important ones, from contributing to the ideal of
fiscal austerity") and (b) the convention method (that it should be used
only when "there is a clear showing that representative democracy has
broken down").
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.607
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6541
item Program Number S0366,
839
"Breaking Up OPEC"
Guests: Adelman, Morris Albert. :
Spriggs, Dillard.
11 April 1979
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 115 : 40
Transcript: Box/Folder 175 : 3
Program details: Six years after the Arab oil embargo, OPEC was still
calling the shots: it had recently increased the basic price of oil yet
again and had announced that individual members could impose surcharges;
and the United States was still importing 43 percent of the oil we used.
Mr. Buckley begins by reminding Mr. Adelman that back in 1973 he had
said--on
Firing
Line
, among other places (s0108)--that we had "nothing
to fear from the cartelization of oil by the OPEC powers." Mr. Adelman
had come up with an ingenious-sounding plan to entice more oil out of
the world market; Mr. Spriggs seriously doubts whether it would work. As
we know in retrospect, there was an answer, but it wasn't Mr. Adelman's
(see s0377).
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.608
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6542
item Program Number S0367,
840
"The Crisis of Nuclear Energy"
Guests: Cohen, Bernard. :
Beyea, Jan.
4 May 1979
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 115 : 41
Transcript: Box/Folder 175 : 4
Program details: In the wake of Three Mile Island, a lively discussion,
frightening in its implications: if two bona-fide nuclear physicists
disagree so fundamentally, how can the layman come to an informed
opinion? Professor Beyea explains "the difference between a
technological pessimist and a technological optimist.... When it comes
down to it, I run scared about a technological device. I cannot
guarantee a technological device until I've tested it many times in full
scale. Nuclear power we can never test in full scale, and that disturbs
me." As Professor Cohen sees it, "You are ignoring the consequences of
not having nuclear power. Every time you don't build a nuclear plant and
build a coal plant instead, you are condemning hundreds of people to
death." Alternate title: "Understanding Nuclear Energy"
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.609
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0064EGN48
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6543
item Program Number S0368,
841
"Watergate: The Innocent and the Guilty"
Guests: Stans,
Maurice H., 1908-
4 May 1979
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 115 : 42
Transcript: Box/Folder 175 : 4
Program details: Everyone remembered that Mr. Stans had been indicted for
obstruction of justice in connection with Richard Nixon's re-election
campaign. Few people remembered that he had been acquitted in court and
had been pronounced blameless by the Society of Certified Public
Accountants. WFB leads his guest to talk--as he does often movingly and
with an amazing lack of bitterness--about his "own efforts to work your
way back into the high esteem of the community," about campaign finance
in general, and about Watergate in particular. WFB: "The seeds of the
hurricane were planted by Nixon." MS: "The seeds of the hurricane go
right back to the one incident in the Watergate, a petty burglary, which
then was allowed by Nixon and his people to become a cause celebre."
WFB: "But it was a justifiable cause celebre, wasn't it?" MS:
"Unquestionably, and believe me, I'm not an apologist for Richard Nixon.
I don't defend what he did. . . . What I say is that in the search for
the guilty there were hundreds of innocent people who were swept into
that dragnet and had to prove their innocence, that it was a witch-hunt
type of operation that should never again happen in this country."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.610
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6544
item Program Number S0369,
842
"A Merit System for Judges?"
Guests: Berkson, Larry. :
Alter, Chester M. : Rush, Fletcher G.
21 May 1979
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 115 : 43
Transcript: Box/Folder 175 : 5
Program details: At a time when, as WFB puts it, federal courts sometimes
appear to be deciding just about everything--"whether you can pray at
school, execute criminals, abort a fetus, have a basketball team without
women on it," Congress had just authorized a 25 per cent increase in the
number of federal judges. How should they be chosen? This productive
conversation ranges over the differences between trial judges and
appellate judges, the ways judges have been chosen in the past, and
efforts being made in some states to improve judges' performance.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.611
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6545
item Program Number S0370,
843
"Modern Attitudes towards Life and Death"
Guests:
Muggeridge, Malcolm, 1903-1990.
21 May 1979
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 116 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 175 : 5
Program details: Mr. Muggeridge presciently predicts, in WFB's
paraphrase, that "the same attitude of mind that permits abortion cannot
know when to curb its millenarianist passion for the perfect society.
What must come, what surely will come ... is euthanasia." The
conversation with this favorite
Firing
Line
guest ranges from abortion
to St. Augustine's City of God. One sample from Mr. Muggeridge: "The
earthly city of St. Augustine is a grubby place, but once you see the
City of God, its grubbiness somehow seems much less, much more bearable,
because you know that every single thing in it, even the grubbiness, is
related to this other City of God."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.612
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6546
item Program Number S0371,
844
"Politics of Intrigue in the Vatican"
Guests: Greeley,
Andrew.
8 June 1979
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 116 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 175 : 6
Program details: The last time
Firing
Line
had looked at the Papacy
(s0339) was during the brief tenure of Pope John Paul I. As today's show
was being taped, Pope John Paul II was in the midst of his historic
visit to his native Poland. A detail-filled conversation ranging from
the election of Karol Wojtyla to, as WFB puts it, "the ritual
excommunication of Daniel Patrick Moynihan" by the New York Times (for
coming out in favor of aid to private schools), from the tangible
effects of prayer on the psyche to the fact that, as Father Greeley puts
it, "anti-Catholicism is as American as blueberry pie." Father Greeley
on the papal election: "I think the first thing [the cardinals] thought
about was a reward to Poland for its strong faith in the face of
Communist persecution. The second thing that occurred to them is here
was a man who knew how to deal with Communism. He knew how to deal with
it intellectually, because he was a philosopher and he understood
Marxist philosophy. He sometimes amused himself by arguing with Party
members about Marx, whom they hadn't read and he had. But also because
he understood it politically."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.613
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6547
item Program Number S0372,
845
"Real Music"
Guests: Tureck, Rosalyn.
8 June 1979
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 116 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 175 : 6
Program details: Although Miss Tureck has a wide repertoire, she is best
known--as keyboard artist, conductor, and text editor--for her work on
Bach; indeed, Mr. Buckley tells us, "Arthur Rubinstein has credited her
with the largest single responsibility for the revival of Bach
throughout the world." On this radiant show she has with her both a
harpsichord and a piano to illustrate her points about how ornamentation
was annotated up until the 18th century, how Bach was mistreated in the
19th century, and how different the same piece of music sounds in
different tempi. WFB: "Does what you say add up to an excuse not to do
the repetitions in the 20th century, which would have fitted the mood of
the 18th century?" RT: "Yes, that's an interesting point, because we
think of the so-called 'repeats' as repetitions.... A repeat is
something quite different from what we think of as repetition. I regard
the repeat as a fresh view of the same material."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.614
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004OEIONS
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6548
item Program Number S0373,
846
"Lifting the Trade Ban on Rhodesia"
Guests: Lowenstein,
Allard K. : Solarz, Stephen J.
15 June 1979
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 116 : 4
Transcript: Box/Folder 175 : 7
Program details: In 1966, following Rhodesia's Unilateral Declaration of
Independence, the United Nations had imposed trade sanctions in an
attempt to bring down Ian Smith's all-white government. There had now
been elections--of which Mr. Lowenstein had been an observer, and Mr.
Solarz had declined to be an observer--in which blacks were allowed full
participation (see the
Firing
Line
with Bishop Muzorewa, s0331), but
President Carter had announced that the sanctions would continue against
the country that its white rulers still called Rhodesia but the black
majority called Zimbabwe. Although both guests want, as Mr. Lowenstein
puts it, "a democratic government which would not be racist in its
composition and which would be achieved with the least bloodshed
possible," they disagree, often heatedly, on the best means to that end.
(in the event, "Zimbabwe Rhodesia" reverted to transitional British rule
at the end of the year and the UN Security Council lifted the
sanctions.)
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.615
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E53T2Q
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6549
item Program Number S0374,
901
"Bob Dole: Presidential Hopeful"
Guests: Dole, Robert J.,
1923-
15 June 1979
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 116 : 5
Transcript: Box/Folder 175 : 7
Program details: As WFB sets the stage, "Mr. George Gallup has passed
along the word that the American public is in a mood to consider
alternatives to the present leadership, and seldom in American political
history has there been such a stampede of patriots willing to come to
the aid of their country." In this first in a series of conversations
with potential candidates, Senator Dole is impressive, as he had been in
his first
Firing
Line
appearance (s0276)--this time on subjects ranging
from Food Stamps to SALT II to inflation. RD: "I must say that we're in
a much different position now than we would have been if Ford had been
elected, because we probably would have gone ahead with the B-l bomber;
we wouldn't have held back on the MX for two and a half years, then
suddenly said, 'Well, we think we're going to do it but we don't know
about the basing system yet,' so it's still a non-decision as far as
Carter's concerned; we wouldn't have had the hanky-panky with the
neutron bomb; we wouldn't have let Iran go down the tube ... There's no
question about it: President Carter is perceived to be very weak in
foreign policy."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.616
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6550
item Program Number S0375,
902
"Three Young Republicans and 1980's Election"
Guests: Abell,
Richard. : Ward, Lynn. : Barron, David. : Burns, Gene.
23 June 1979
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 116 : 6
Transcript: Box/Folder 175 : 8
Program details: Three newly elected officers of the Young Republican
organization explore matters of substance, such as why conservatives'
stress on upward mobility should appeal to black and Hispanic voters,
and matters of political strategy, such as the unlikelihood that Ted
Kennedy would finally challenge President Carter for the Democratic
nomination. Examiner Gene Burns: "What Young Republican principle is
co-terminous with the desires of blacks and Hispanics? ..." RA: "I think
we have to get into the entire taxing structure--" WFB: "I should think
upward mobility would be--"? RA: "Yes, upward mobility and the fact that
there's an attempt to make a permanent disenfranchised lower class ...
We strongly disagree with that. We want the upward mobility, and I feel
that the entire welfare system is predicated upon setting up these
strata of society that we believe should be broken."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.617
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6551
item Program Number S0376,
903
"Capital Punishment"
Guests: Shevin, Robert. : Simon,
Tobias.
23 June 1979
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 116 : 7
Transcript: Box/Folder 175 : 8
Program details: The State of Florida had just executed John Spenkelink,
in the first exercise of capital punishment in the United States in two
years. An absorbing and frequently heated discussion with the principal
legal antagonists in Spenkelink's case. TS: "If Mr. Shevin says it's a
deterrent and he wants to execute people ... then I think they should be
called upon to prove in a court of law that there is a real deterrent,
and that this man's death is necessary in order to save another person's
life. Of course they can't do it and they've never done it." WFB: "Well,
of course you can't do that under any circumstances." RS: "Except for
one fact, Mr. Buckley: that the number of murders in America never rose
above 9,000 ... from 1935 to 1965. In '65, when we stopped using the
death penalty effectively in this country, until '75 the number of
murders rose to 22,500."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.618
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6552
item Program Number S0377,
904
"The Energy Crisis"
Guests: Metzenbaum, Howard.
29 June 1979
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 116 : 8
Transcript: Box/Folder 175 : 9
Program details: Another look (see
Firing
Line
s0366) at the Arab oil
crisis, six years old and going strong. Mr. Metzenbaum, a member of the
Senate's Energy and Natural Resources Committee, dispenses blame among
OPEC, the oil companies, and, especially, the U.S. Department of Energy,
but refuses, for all WFB's prodding, to consider President Carter's
decontrol measure as a solution. (Note: When decontrol went into effect,
the oil crisis quickly dissipated.) HM: "I'm sure you saw the story the
other day where Mr. Schlesinger fears to prod the oil firms. Now isn't
that unbelievable that the head of the Department of Energy is afraid of
the oil companies?" WFB: "No, not at all. The White House is afraid of
the New York Times." HM: "What about Bill Buckley. Are they afraid of
him, too?" WFB: "No. However, I have certain rights that the government
can't take away from me. I have the right to speak my mind, to practice
my religion. The oil companies have the right to go out of business or
not go out of business. We can't tell the oil companies, can we?, that
they have to buy oil at $10 and sell it for $9." HM: "Nobody's asking
them to do that." WFB: "Ah, sometimes you sound as though you were."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.619
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6553
item Program Number S0378,
905
"Crisis for the Democrats"
Guests: Wurf, Jerry, 1919-
19 July 1979
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 97 : 6
Publicity File: Box/Folder 116 : 9
Transcript: Box/Folder 175 : 9
Program details: This show is more about policy and less about politics
than the title would imply--although the feisty Mr. Wurf's anger at
President Carter for his anti-inflation program comes through loud and
clear. Solid, substantive discussion of inflation and the size of
government. JW: "The President of the United States inaugurates an
anti-inflation program. He puts no inhibition on profits, he puts no
inhibition on interest, there's no inhibition on anything that makes the
rich and wealthy richer and wealthier. And he says, 'You working people
will take 7 per cent and no more, otherwise we'll use all of the
apparent and unapparent power of this government.' So the president of
General Motors comes to Washington and he says the program is excellent,
goes back to Detroit, raises the price of automobiles, and nothing
happens to him. When our membership here in New York State want to get
more than a 7 or 7 1/2 per cent pay increase, the whole federal
establishment falls down on their heads."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.622
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6556
item Program Number S0379,
906
"SALT II: What We Stand to Lose"
Guests: Seignious, George.
16 August 1979
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 116 : 10
Transcript: Box/Folder 175 : 10
Program details: When President Carter named General Seignious director
of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Mr. Buckley begins, "the
ready inference was that [he] had pulled a fast one, that he had
persuaded a hawkish general to take on the job of selling SALT II."
Whether it was a fast one or not, General Seignious was indeed selling
SALT II, not as an end in itself but as a step along the way: "I would
like to see us get into very deep reductions and particularly in
warheads, because those are the things that kill people and kill cities
and kill cultures and kill our way of life." The discussion is highly
technical, but both host and guest give us plenty of detail to bring us
along, whether on the different sorts of missiles, on the parallels or
lack of them between Hitler at Munich and the current treaty, or on the
advantages and disadvantages to an anti-ballistic-missile system.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.623
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6557
item Program Number S0380,
907
"The Television Machine"
Guests: Fuldheim, Dorothy. : Stein,
Ben.
29 June 1979
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 116 : 11
Transcript: Box/Folder 175 : 10
Program details: Is the most remarkable thing about present-day
television, as Mr. Stein maintains in this vivid exchange, its pervasive
left-wing, anti-business bias-- ("People watch TV so much that it's like
a second life for them, and in this second life conditions are very
different from what they are in real life. That is, in real life one
occasionally finds a businessman who's not plotting to murder his go-go
dancer girlfriend.") Or is it, as Mrs. Fuldheim argues, the fact that
through television "the whole standard of knowledge has been raised"?
("I think that television is one of the greatest influences that has
ever occurred in civilized society, for it is going to create a
homogeneous quality among people. ... And I think that the average
person who would not read the National Geographic or the Saturday Review
or any of these magazines can see things on television.")
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.620
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TZ8GDJK
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6554
item Program Number S0381,
908
"The Trouble with Nowadays: A Curmudgeon Strikes Back"
Guests: Amory, Cleveland.
19 July 1979
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 116 : 12
Transcript: Box/Folder 175 : 11
Program details: Great fun on how everything has gone to hell in a hand
basket. CA: "I don't want to act as if I'm intolerant in any way,
because I'm not, but you take women, for instance. Women cannot be
curmudgeons.... My aunt once tried to be a curmudgeon and all she
succeeded in doing was making my uncle one." ... "Do you know what you
had to have in Rome to have a vote? You had to have a hundred thousand
asses, that's what you had to have. Asses, that's what it was based on.
It was .6 to the dollar today, so you had to be worth $60,000 to vote.
And you voted in classes, the ones with the most asses voted, and so
forth, down to the bottom. But now you let everybody vote, and what do
you get? You get asses for President, that's what you get."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.621
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6555
item Program Number S0382,
909
"Presidential Hopeful: John Anderson"
Guests: Anderson, John
Bayard, 1922-
16 August 1979
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 116 : 13
Transcript: Box/Folder 175 : 11
Program details: The second in a series of conversations with potential
candidates (see the
Firing
Line
show with Bob Dole, s0374). As WFB
introduces today's guest, "To the surprise of many Americans, there is a
candidate for the Republican nomination for President who is not, so to
speak, a Goldwater conservative." Rep. Anderson proceeds to live up to
this billing--e.g., on the "segment of the Republican right wing that is
so hung up on things like abortion, things like busing, things like the
Panama Canal... the so-called 'hot button' issues.... I don't believe,
despite their outcry, that they are really large enough to be the swing
factor in determining either the nomination or the election. Thereby, of
course, hangs the tale. If I'm wrong in that, then I could become one
more in a long line of former candidates." And the rest is history.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.624
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6558
item Program Number S0383,
910
"Is SALT II a Disaster?"
Guests: Teller, Edward, 1908-2003.
6 September 1979
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 116 : 14
Transcript: Box/Folder 175 : 12
Program details: An illuminating hour with a widely learned guest; the
conversation ranges from the dangers of arms-control negotiations to the
peaceful uses of nuclear energy. WFB: "It's one thing to account for the
fears of people who are governed by superstition, because there's very
little that can be done about that, but how do you account for the fear
of intelligent people in your own profession who feel that one has to
turn one's back categorically on nuclear energy?" ET: "There is a very
simple answer to that. All of us are governed by superstition.
Intelligence is a rare, singular, perhaps pathological phenomenon.
Intelligence is an abnormality. Now people can be intelligent in their
own narrow field--and you mentioned that. People who really know about
nuclear reactors are almost to a man people who have full confidence. We
have an association--Scientists and Engineers for Secure Energy. We have
a big membership. Of course, Linus Pauling does not belong. Linus
Pauling is an excellent chemist who knows nothing about nuclear
reactors. You don't go to the butcher to buy your bread."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.625
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6559
item Program Number S0384,
911
"Human Rights in Vietnam"
Guests: Baez, Joan. : Sagan,
Ginetta.
6 September 1979
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 116 : 15
Transcript: Box/Folder 175 : 12
Program details: Miss Baez had just taken out a full-page ad calling on
Hanoi to stop its imperialism and its torture of political prisoners; 88
of her old antiwar comrades had co-signed the ad, but another
dozen--including Jane Fonda, William Kunstler, and Philip Berrigan--had
denounced her. A high point of the show: Mrs. Sagan's account of how, as
a young woman in Italy during World War II, she reconciled her pacifism
with her desire to take part in the Resistance: "I chose to fight but in
a different way than using a gun. ... I chose to join ... a larger group
of people who ... smuggle[d] people to Switzerland. If you are caught--
Oh, I did something else. I poured sand in engines, so that when the
Gestapo was going to get people, the cars wouldn't run. Or, on trains.
Those were very dangerous activities for the person who undertook these
endeavors, but it was my life which was at stake, it was not the other
person's life."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.626
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0064EGN8O
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6560
item Program Number S0385,
912
"SALT II and the U.S. Senate"
Guests: Hollings, Ernest F.,
1922-
20 September 1979
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 116 : 16
Transcript: Box/Folder 175 : 13
Program details: Senator Hollings is of the strong-defense wing of the
Democratic Party, which sets him at odds with his President--and he's
not afraid to say so. Today's conversation ranges from SALT II to the
current status of NATO to the buildup of Soviet troops in Cuba and Aden.
EFH: "Can we say why those troops are in Cuba, and how they're there and
what's going on?" WFB: "I wish you would." EFH: "Well, I know you've got
to give Secretary Kissinger credit for this one. During his time in the
Administration there were suggestions from the National Security Council
that we cut out the intelligence overflights--they were too expensive,
all we needed to do was send satellites. Henry Kissinger said no, that
would be a wrong signal, absolutely wrong. He said if you stop the
overflights they'll start taking advantage. And surely enough, President
Carter stopped the overflights and they took it as a wrong signal....
Our friend [CIA Director William] Colby says the three thousand [Soviet
troops] would get lost in the traffic in Miami--I mean they're no real
threat. I thought that was cute, but it misleads. The fact is, they're
there to handle nuclear."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.627
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0064EGNBQ
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6561
item Program Number S0386,
913
"The Crisis in the U.S. Military"
Guests: Westmoreland,
William C. (William Childs), 1914-2005.
20 September 1979
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 116 : 17
Transcript: Box/Folder 175 : 13
Program details: This conversation with the former commander of our
troops in Vietnam touches on that war, and on current matters such as
SALT II, but it concentrates on the current ill health of the American
military, which General Westmoreland links with the ill health of
American democracy: "Now a principle of democracy is that for every
right of citizenship there is a duty of citizenship. We inherited this
principle from the British, who inherited it, I believe, from Roman law.
Now it seems to me that in the last decade we have put inordinate
attention on rights of citizenship. Rights, rights, rights. And in the
process we have neglected duties of citizenship."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.628
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ANCWPU8
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6562
item Program Number S0387,
914
"Thirty Years of Communist Rule"
Guests: Shaplen, Robert.
1 October 1979
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 116 : 18
Transcript: Box/Folder 175 : 14
Program details: A few days before this show was taped, the excesses of
the Cultural Revolution had been formally deplored in China--although,
unlike in Khrushchev's denunciation of Stalin, the author of those
crimes was not denounced with them. Mr. Shaplen had been based in Hong
Kong for 17 years, and today's conversation ranges from the wars in
Indochina--from the time of our involvement to the present--to how China
and Japan are coping with the Soviet Union. RS: "Japanese-Soviet
relations today are tense enough--or in a deep enough vacuum, if you
want to put it that way--to cause the Japanese considerable worry and to
stir their military souls." WFB: "Yes. One can hear the drumbeat now."
RS: "One can hear some drumbeats, and of course the Japanese are an
emotional people anyway, although a lot of people at first think they're
not. But all you have to do is watch one of the right-wing
demonstrations in Tokyo--left-wing too, but there are more
right-wing--and you see the zest and zeal that comes out of these."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.629
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6563
item Program Number S0388,
915
"Is Socialism Dead?"
Guests: Lekachman, Robert.
1 October 1979
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 116 : 19
Transcript: Box/Folder 175 : 14
Program details: "It is, in America, one of the few hopeful signs in an
otherwise melancholy world," WFB starts out, "that it isn't all that
easy to find the out-and-out socialist, but we have come up today with
an outstanding relic of the breed, the distinguished educator Robert
Lekachman." The author of Economists at Bay and The Age of Keynes
proceeds in the most genial way to demonstrate the truth of that
description: "I would concentrate on the acquisition of wealth even more
than the taxation of income. And here I would be inclined to pursue a
suggestion of my friend Lester Thurow, which is to substitute for the
inheritance tax a wealth-acquisition tax, and to impose steeply
progressive taxes not one states but on the amount which an individual
can inherit in his lifetime."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.630
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6564
item Program Number S0389,
916
"The Impact of the Pope's Visit"
Guests: Steinfels, Peter. :
O'Hare, Joseph.
11 October 1979
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 116 : 20
Transcript: Box/Folder 175 : 15
Program details: Pope John Paul II, in his tumultuous visit to the United
States, had spoken of economic matters in a way that prompts WFB to ask
"whether the Pope, as a student, did any work in economics, and if so,
who on earth were his teachers?" Mr. Steinfels and Father O'Hare both
hold that, as Father O'Hare expresses it, "[The Pope] did not speak
primarily as an economic expert. He spoke primarily as a moral
teacher,... insisting again and again that we should not lose sight of
the primacy of the human person in any social, economic, or political
system." But to Mr. Steinfels's assertion that "it is a mistake to
separate the human-rights concerns of the Pope from the material or
economic rights," because the different sorts of rights are
"interlaced," Mr. Buckley maintains that "if you don't have economic
freedom you don't have many other freedoms." And we're off on a
high-energy discussion of the intersection of political and
economics.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.631
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6565
item Program Number S0390,
917
"Crime and Punishment: Gary Gilmore"
Guests: Mailer, Norman.
11 October 1979
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 116 : 21
Transcript: Box/Folder 175 : 15
Program details: A low-key and thoughtful appearance by the usually
boisterous author of The Executioner's Song. This new novel-on the life
and death of Gary Gilmore, the murderer who demanded to be executed by
the State of Utah-was widely heralded as a masterpiece, and the writing
of it had led Mr. Mailer to contemplate life, death, and literature. "I
began to feel that I had to change some of my ideas about what
literature should consist of. I've always leaned on the side that
literature finally is a guide, that it explains complex matters to us,
it gives us a deeper understanding of our existence. And I felt that
maybe the time had come, at least for me in my own work, to do a book
where I don't explain it to the reader." ... "I wanted the reader to
live with this incredible complexity that's involved in not just the
process of execution, but with that most mysterious fact that we live
and then we die."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.632
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TZ8GF6Q
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6566
item Program Number S0391,
918
"Can New York City Govern Itself?"
Guests: Koch, Ed, 1924-
30 October 1979
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 116 : 22
Transcript: Box/Folder 175 : 16
Program details: Year by year, under Mayors Wagner, Lindsay, and Beame,
New York City had been going downhill, landing in 1975 in the ignominy
of bankruptcy. As WFB puts it in his introduction: "New York City is
both unique--there is only one New York; we could hardly afford
more--and representative: representative of the problems of many large
American cities. . .. But, even as it surpasses them all in medical
research, in opera and ballet, in public libraries and museums, New York
City is the largest headache of the mall." Mayor Koch had been in the
saddle for almost two years by this point, and "he is controversial--and
ubiquitous--and has restored great liveliness to his office." Which
liveliness he brings to this show, whether defending the Federal
Government's loan guarantees to New York or explaining how he gets to
know his people: "I go around the City three days a week. I go on the
weekends without reporters, without television cameras, because if you
have a reporter or television camera the person you are talking to is no
longer a person. He or she is an actor."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.633
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ANCWO3G
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6567
item Program Number S0392,
919
"Is There a Role for the Private College?"
Guests: Giamatti,
A. Bartlett.
30 October 1979
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 116 : 23
Transcript: Box/Folder 175 : 16
Program details: The discussion focuses more on government funding--and
whether an institution that accepts it can remain "private" in any
meaningful sense--than on what the distinctive qualities of a private
college might be. Not as rich in detail as one would hope from a
literary scholar, but still a good exploration of the modern university
scene. WFB: "I am asking you to what extent do you feel encumbered at
this moment as the result of the government's playing a role which one
of your predecessors, Charles Seymour, conceived of as intolerable. Now
you say, 'Well, hell, they're paying for medical research and they're
helping with student loans, so what?' " ABG: "No, I don't remember
saying, 'So what?' " WFB: "Not quite 'So what?'; but it sounded a little
bit so-what-ish. Question: Are they nipping at your heels?" ABG:
"Constantly. And so are a lot of other people, but that's all right."
WFB: "They have greater sanctions, I suppose." ABG: "To the extent that
one is properly accountable for the public's money, one therefore has to
account for it."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.634
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6568
item Program Number S0393,
920
"Whither Television?"
Guests: Breitenfeld, Frederick, Jr. :
Kobin, William. : Pfister, Edward J.
15 November 1979
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 116 : 24
Transcript: Box/Folder 175 : 17
Program details: This is one of those twice-a-year occasions on which the
guests put their host on the
firing
line
--in this case, mostly on topics
suggested by this show's title. Today's guests are better at making
statements than at asking questions of their host; still, there is some
good discussion of public television--why it should receive public
funding, to what extent the material shown should be geared to ratings,
and who the real elitists are. Mr. Breitenfeld: I find those who call us
elite implying directly that there is somebody out there due to race,
heritage, wealth, social standing, education, and intelligence who is
unable or unwilling to enjoy what we have to offer. To my thinking the
person making the charge, therefore, is a gross elitist."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.635
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6569
item Program Number S0394,
921
"Liberals, Radicals, Conservatives: Who Are They?"
Guests:
Podhoretz, Norman. : Solarz, Stephen.
29 November 1979
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 116 : 25
Transcript: Box/Folder 175 : 17
Program details: An absorbing hour with a guest who had been a radical
well into the Sixties, when, as he tells it, he "faced a choice between
loyalty to radicalism and loyalty to intellectual values"--much like his
mentors at Partisan Review thirty years earlier, who had "found it
increasingly intolerable to be told [by the Communist Party] that they
were not permitted, for example, to admire T. S. Eliot, whom all of them
considered a great poet, because Eliot was a reactionary in his
political views, and also because he was a modernist in his technique,
and modernism was regarded as a form of bourgeois degeneracy by the
Party. "In Mr. Podhoretz's case, he was first struck by the fact that
the "Free Speech" Movement at Berkeley "began shouting down speakers who
were in disagreement with its views." He and WFB begin with Lionel
Trilling and the Sixties wars at Columbia, and go on to the Vietnam War,
the Cold War, and the battle against affirmative-action quotas.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.639
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6573
item Program Number S0395,
922
"A
Firing
Line
Debate: Resolved: That the United States Should
Refuse Recognition to the PLO-Part I"
Guests: Buckley, William F.
(William Frank), 1925-2008. : Solarz, Stephen J. : Weinstein, Allen. :
Jackson, Jesse, 1941- : Findley, Paul. : Jabara, Abdeen. : Cooley, John.
: Johnson, Thomas. : Kirk, Russell. : Ledeen, Michael.
28 November 1979
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 116 : 26
Transcript: Box/Folder 175 : 18
Program details: Light as well as heat on a topic of passionate interest
to many Americans. WFB: "U.S. Air Force intelligence, in testimony
before Congress, links terrorists from 14 countries with the Popular
Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Representatives of these
organizations specialize in achieving their velleities by blowing people
up, or kidnapping them, torturing them, shooting them in the knee-that
sort of thing.... But what some people call terrorists other people call
soldiers or freedom fighters. Isn't that correct? It certainly is, even
as it is correct that East Germany calls itself the Democratic Republic
of Germany." ... JJ: "The Apostle Paul emerged as a terrorist killing
Christians, but God kept a 'let's talk' policy, confronted him on the
Damascus Road, and changed his mind, his heart, and his life." ... AJ:
"The Palestinians who were displaced and dispossessed in 1948,... Israel
was called upon to allow their return to their homes and lands. Have
they been allowed to return?" AW: "In a period, sir-" AJ: "Answer the
question, yes or no?" AW: "No, you're not a trial lawyer here, sir,
you're a debater. I will answer the question in whatever fashion I
choose."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.637
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E52UA8
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6571
item Program Number S0396,
923
"A
Firing
Line
Debate: Resolved: That the United States Should
Refuse Recognition to the PLO-Part II"
Guests: Buckley, William F.
(William Frank), 1925-2008. : Solarz, Stephen J. : Weinstein, Allen. :
Jackson, Jesse, 1941- : Findley, Paul. : Jabara, Abdeen. : Cooley, John.
: Johnson, Thomas. : Kirk, Russell. : Ledeen, Michael.
28 November 1979
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 116 : 26
Transcript: Box/Folder 175 : 18
Program details: Light as well as heat on a topic of passionate interest
to many Americans. WFB: "U.S. Air Force intelligence, in testimony
before Congress, links terrorists from 14 countries with the Popular
Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Representatives of these
organizations specialize in achieving their velleities by blowing people
up, or kidnapping them, torturing them, shooting them in the knee-that
sort of thing.... But what some people call terrorists other people call
soldiers or freedom fighters. Isn't that correct? It certainly is, even
as it is correct that East Germany calls itself the Democratic Republic
of Germany." ... JJ: "The Apostle Paul emerged as a terrorist killing
Christians, but God kept a 'let's talk' policy, confronted him on the
Damascus Road, and changed his mind, his heart, and his life." ... AJ:
"The Palestinians who were displaced and dispossessed in 1948,... Israel
was called upon to allow their return to their homes and lands. Have
they been allowed to return?" AW: "In a period, sir-" AJ: "Answer the
question, yes or no?" AW: "No, you're not a trial lawyer here, sir,
you're a debater. I will answer the question in whatever fashion I
choose."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.638
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E52UAS
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6572
item Program Number S0397,
924
"Does HEW Want to Control Colleges?"
Guests: Roche, George
Charles. : Jacobs, Jo.
28 November 1979
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 116 : 27
Transcript: Box/Folder 175 : 18
Program details: A never-the-twain-shall-meet confrontation between an
educator who believes that the Department of Health, Education, and
Welfare's enforcement of Title IX of the Higher Education Act of 1972
constitutes a power grab against private colleges, and a government
official who sees it as a minor imposition necessary to achieve equity
between the sexes. JJ: "I think that what we're talking about is
exercising your freedoms in such a way that assures somebody else's
freedoms.... And if you're talking about the whole capability of an
institution to provide equity, and in this instance sex equity, and...
at this point HEW is defining your scholarships as federal money, this
is certainly the only way that Congress can influence education." GCR:
"But you see, the question here isn't really influencing education in
the sense of correcting an inequity. As I say, in four years of constant
correspondence and all sorts of litigation there has never been a moment
when HEW even alleged that there was an inequity. The issue here, and
their insistence, is entirely a matter of control of our campus."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.636
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6570
item Program Number S0398,
925
"The Year That Was"
Guests: Greenfield, Jeff. : Pilpel,
Harriet F. : Lowenstein, Allard K.
13 December 1979
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 116 : 28
Transcript: Box/Folder 175 : 19
Program details: This discussion with three extremely articulate liberals
ranges from the crisis in Iran (it was just a month earlier that radical
students had seized our embassy in Teheran, demanding that the United
States hand the Shah over to them) to the foreign-policy obtuseness of
Ted Kennedy to selective indignation about foreign dictators. JG: "There
has been a kind of laziness ... on the part of liberals that what one
assails when it comes to human rights is Chile, which certainly deserves
it in my judgment, or Paraguay, which deserves it-" WFB: "Don't forget
Argentina." JG: "Argentina. Yes, these are wretched governments. But the
Soviet Union, with 250-plus million people, is a government that is
unbelievable." AL: "Well, what is 'the Left'?" I'm not sure what that
means. I think that there's a laziness on the part of some people, left
or right, whatever those labels mean, in selective denunciations." JG:
"I was coming to that. I find the same laziness in the Reagans and
Connallys of this world, that one must endorse the Somozas of this world
as a way of preserving American allies."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.640
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E50RXA
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6574
item Program Number S0399,
926
"The Changing Media"
Guests: Ferris, Charles D.
13 December 1979
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 116 : 29
Transcript: Box/Folder 175 : 19
Program details: "The onslaught of communications technology," WFB
begins, "has caught us unprepared. We know now how to give the
individual consumer the widest choice of programming; we can reach an
individual television set via satellite in Santa Barbara, California,
and see what the resident of Atlanta, Georgia, is seeing, assuming that
this is something you want to see." Mr. Ferris's dual background makes
him well qualified to discuss the legal and social implications of all
of this, which he does with verve: "We're making decisions today at the
FCC that I think are determining to a great extent the basic
infrastructure of the information of the society of the 21st century,
and it bothers me that more people are not paying attention to what we
are doing.... We are determining to a great extent what it is we are
going to carry from the 20th century into the 21st about the Bill of
Rights, about the sense of privacy, about what are the things about our
society that we really cherish, that could be infringed by the [new
cable and satellite] technology unless some thought is given to it."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.641
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6575
item Program Number S0400,
927
"Presidential Hopeful: Philip Crane"
Guests: Crane, Philip
M., 1930-
3 January 1980
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 116 : 30
Transcript: Box/Folder 175 : 20
Program details: Mr. Crane was a popular young congressman of the
Goldwater wing of the party, and he had already been running for the
Republican presidential nomination for a year and a half. As Mr. Buckley
introduces him, "If he achieves the nomination, he will have done so
against the heaviest odds since Jimmy Carter won the nomination, and
George McGovern. Which is another way of saying that nobody, but nobody,
is counted out in these volatile days, including Philip Miller Crane."
Rep. Crane is the third Republican hopeful we have met in this election
cycle (after Bob Dole and John Anderson), and WFB puts him smartly
through his paces on topics ranging from the labor vote at home to the
hostage crisis in Iran to the ongoing oil crisis. PC: "There are
literally thousands and thousands of capped wells in the United States,
and the reason why is because we've told Americans they can only get
$5.90 a barrel for their oil when we're saying that if you're an Arab
and a member of the oligopoly or if you're Nigerian or Venezuelan, we're
willing to pay $26 a barrel or $35 a barrel or $50 a barrel."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.642
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6576
item Program Number S0401, 928,
928R
"Presidential Hopeful: Ronald Reagan"
Guests: Reagan,
Ronald. : Plate, Thomas.
14 January 1980, 11 January 1981
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 116 : 31-32
Transcript: Box/Folder 175 : 20
Program details: The wish was father to the thought: instead of asking
Mr. Reagan conventionally worded questions about his candidacy, as he
had done Messrs. Dole and Anderson and Crane, WFB addressed his guest
(without advance warning) as if the inauguration had already taken
place: I should like to begin by asking President Reagan: "What would
you do if, say, one afternoon you were advised that a race riot had
broken out in Detroit?" RR: "Well, I would be inclined to say that that
was a problem for the local authorities in Detroit, unless those local
authorities were unable to control the situation...." A discussion full
of substance-on topics ranging from Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia, to
the way government bonds should be issued, to the still-ongoing energy
crisis, to the still-high unemployment-but also a delicious dress
rehearsal: WFB: "Mr. President, the CIA has complained to you that it
cannot discharge some of the recent directives that the National
Security Council has given it as a result of its having been hamstrung
by a number of provisions insisted on by Senator Church three or four
years ago. How would you handle that dilemma?" RR: "Why, I'm surprised
that they're complaining, because one of the first things I did when I
took office was ask Congress to repeal those restrictions that were put
on by Senator Church."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.644
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E53T30
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6578
item Program Number S0402,
929
"The United States in the 1980s--Foreign Affairs"
Guests:
Teller, Edward, 1908-2003. : Duignan, Peter. : Staar, Richard Felix,
1923-
17 January 1980
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 116 : 33
Transcript: Box/Folder 175 : 21
Program details: Today's guests are 3 of the 16 contributors to Hoover's
landmark volume The United States in the 1980s, and from their different
perspectives they all tell the same tale: despite its material and
spiritual poverty, the Soviet Union is scoring success after success in
its foreign policy, and is ahead of us in nuclear weaponry, for one
simple reason: in Dr. Teller's words, "They have clear-cut goals and
they are consistent in pursuing them." Despite the gloominess of the
message, this proves to be a lively exchange. PD: ".. . I'm worried
about oil. Let 'em have Grenada. You have to have a strategic sense of
balance here. The whole of the Caribbean isn't worth much to us. It can
be easily neutralized in any time of crisis." RS: "Except that Grenada's
90 miles from Venezuela." PD: "But oil from the Middle East is
immediately and crucially important to the whole of Western Europe and
Japan." WFB: "Is Mr. Staar's point--and your point too--that if we
control the skies over the Caribbean and the water in the Caribbean,
whoever has the atolls doesn't matter all that much? ..." PD: "Yes, we
need oil; we don't need bananas and coconuts." ET: "We still need the
Panama Canal." RS:"We also need the oil in Mexico. We have to think in
terms of the future."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.645
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ANCWOE0
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6579
item Program Number S0403,
930
"The United States in the 1980s--Domestic Affairs"
Guests:
Ricardo-Campbell, Rita. : Anderson, Martin, 1936- : Rabushka, Alvin.
17 January 1980
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 116 : 34
Transcript: Box/Folder 175 : 21
Program details: A second show based on the Hoover volume, this one solid
and instructive on topics including the three different approaches to
welfare, the problems with the Social Security system (MA: "One of the
most extraordinary things about the Social Security program is that the
people who passed the program and the people who are administering the
program have seen fit to exempt themselves from it.... Maybe they know
something the rest of us don't"), taxation and Proposition 13, and wage
and price controls. All important issues--but, as Mr. Anderson points
out, "the most severe problem we face right now is the problems you
talked about in the first program--foreign affairs and defense--and
unless we solve those we may not have any economic problem to
solve."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.646
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ANCX1MO
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6580
item Program Number S0404,
931
"How Active a Supreme Court?"
Guests: Bork, Robert H. :
Ennis, Bruce J., Jr.
3 January 1980
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 116 : 35
Transcript: Box/Folder 175 : 22
Program details: In the wake of Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong's The
Brethren, a clarifying discussion of the Supreme Court, what it should
be doing, and what it has been doing. Mr. Ennis takes the activist view;
"Mr. Bork holds that this Court and the Warren Court, and indeed prior
Courts, have made up the Constitution in large part." ... BE: "The
abortion cases are certainly examples of judicial activism. The question
is whether it is impermissible judicial activism ... In the abortion
cases ... it is harder to see that than in some other area, for two
reasons. One reason is that it involves women, who are not a discrete
and insular minority totally excluded from the political process... and
the other is that the constitutional principle the Supreme Court was
relying on ... was the principle of privacy,. . . [which] is not
expressly stated in the Constitution ... I happen to agree with those
decisions, but I do think they are activist decisions and are more
difficult to justify than, for example, Brown v. the Board of
Education."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.643
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6577
item Program Number S0405,
932
"America According to Three Top Journalists and William F.
Buckley Jr."
Guests: Von Hoffman, Nicholas. : Kraft, Joseph. :
Novak, Robert D.
15 February 1980
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 116 : 36
Transcript: Box/Folder 175 : 22
Program details: More or less the semi-annual role reversal in which the
guests question their host--except that this time, halfway through, they
change back to the normal order; and, indeed, all the way along it is
more a four-cornered conversation than a Q and A. Topics range from a
potential Nuremberg-style trial of the Shah of Iran, to whether it would
be a disaster for conservatives if George Bush rather than Ronald Reagan
received the GOP nomination, to women and the draft, to Ted Kennedy's
challenging President Carter in the primaries. One sample: JK: "If you
make a distinction between empirical differences on the one hand and
principled differences on the other, isn't it true that the principled
differences are far more divisive in the Democratic Party than in the
Republican Party?" WFB: "Yes. Yes." NvH: "Right. But not betwixt a
Carter and a Kennedy." WFB: "I disagree." RN: "I disagree with that
also. Just following up what Joe said, I do believe that Kennedy is very
comfortable with the idea of an all-controlling Federal Government...
Someone asked him just this week, in a private conversation, how are
you, in the Kennedy tradition, calling for sacrifice--asking what you
can do for your country--when you're even against registration for the
draft? And he said, 'I am for sacrifice. I want the American businessman
to sacrifice his profits and to reduce his profits.' "
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.649
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6583
item Program Number S0406,
933
"Government Bailout"
Guests: Lugar, Richard.
14 February 1980
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 116 : 37
Transcript: Box/Folder 175 : 23
Program details: We need, WFB begins, "a philosophy of the role of the
government in coming to the aid of divers failing organizations and
municipalities ... Why help Lockheed and Chrysler and not Abercrombie
and Fitch? Why help New York City and not Indianapolis?" Senator Lugar
had initially opposed the New York City bailout and then wound up
supporting it; he persuasively tells why, explaining, among other
things, that there was no great danger of opening a floodgate: "Finally,
no city really has wanted to follow New York .. . simply because the
[power of] government literally passes somewhere else.... That's not an
appetizing prospect."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.647
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ANCWQSO
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6581
item Program Number S0407,
934
"What Is Happening in Ethiopia?"
Guests: Deressa, Dereje.
15 February 1980
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 116 : 38
Transcript: Box/Folder 175 : 23
Program details: An exile speaks, quietly but eloquently, of his unhappy
country, ruled over for six years by what WFB describes as a spectacular
sadist, Colonel Mengistu, who set out to make Ethiopia a client state of
the Soviet Union." Somalia was torn by war on two fronts and hegemonized
by the Soviets, via their Cuban vassals. WFB: "How prominent are the
Cubans? Are they behind the scenes or are they highly active and visible
in all of the affairs?" DD: "They are highly active and they are
visible, quite visible, and some of the atrocities they have
committed--they're the kind of thing I don't want to mention on public
television. They have violated our traditions, they have violated our
homes, and it's the kind of thing that no part of society can
accept."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.648
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6582
item Program Number S0408,
935
"A Guide for the 20th-century Pagan"
Guests: Adler, Mortimer
Jerome, 1902-2001.
15 February 1980
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 117 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 175 : 24
Program details: A great book man, in his second appearance on
Firing
Line
, talks about what one can say to pagans "without any appeal to
faith": that is, he tells them about "the God of the philosophers," who
"converges" with but is not identical to the God of Abraham, Isaac, and
Jacob. This conversation is sometimes difficult for the non-philosopher,
but Mr. Adler has the gift of choosing illustrations to bring us along.
MJA: "Kant made a simple mistake.... He said that a hundred dollars in
my pocket is not greater than a hundred dollars in my mind. I think
that's just nonsense. A hundred dollars in my pocket will do things that
a hundred dollars in my mind will not do. I understand the error that he
made. Existence is not an ordinary predicate, not an ordinary absolute.
It's not like red or green or large or heavy or here or there. And he
therefore thought that existence is not a characterizing term. But to
say that that which exists in reality does not have more existence and
more power than that which exists only in the mind is nonsense."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.650
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6584
item Program Number S0409,
936
"The CIA and the Mission of Intelligence"
Guests: Powers,
Thomas M.
26 March 1980
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 117 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 175 : 24
Program details: The United States had emerged, as Mr. Buckley puts it,
"from the hang-it-all-out delirium of the mid Seventies, when it became
chic to reveal national secrets and criminal to conceal them," and the
CIA was attempting to put itself back together. This rich discussion
ranges from the state of British democracy to the attempted
assassination of Fidel Castro, from Salvador Allende to Adolf Hitler.
Here is Mr. Powers, on Richard Helms's testimony in Senate Foreign
Relations Committee hearings on his appointment as Ambassador to Iran:
"Mr. Helms ... was asked if the CIA had been involved in attempting to
prevent Salvador Allende from coming to power. He said, 'No.' The answer
is 'Yes.' Having said that, you've only just begun to open up the
question, really." WFB: ".. . As a matter of fact, I wrote a novel in
which I face the same kind of situation in the last chapter, in which my
particular guy cops out, so to speak, by simply declining to answer. I
assume you'd have preferred if he had done that." TMP: "Well, there were
a number of ways that he could have declined to answer or avoided an
answer or given not quite such an absolute and clear and wrong answer;
and I think he chose not to do any of those things because the net
effect... would have let the cat out of the bag, and his whole purpose
was not to let the cat out of the bag."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.651
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6585
item Program Number S0410,
937
"What Are We Going to Do about Cuba?"
Guests: Reyes, Manolo.
: Jorge, Antonio. : Whelan, James.
26 March 1980
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 117 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 175 : 26
Program details: At a time when the foreign news was dominated by
Afghanistan and Iran and our boycott of the Moscow Olympics, this
discussion with two Cuban exiles and an American who is a longtime
student of Latin America suggests chillingly that we should be looking
rather closer to home. It was Mr. Reyes who had first reported the
arrival of a new Soviet brigade in Cuba, which Mr. Buckley and Senator
Ernest Hollings discussed on
Firing
Line
a few months before this show
(s0385). JW: "If we do not confront the enemy in Guatemala, for
example,... if we do not construct the barrier that Solzhenitsyn spoke
of recently, if we fail to do that in Guatemala, then the battle will be
fought not in Guatemala, but in a matter of time on our own shores. And
that does not seem at all improbable or implausible."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.652
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6586
item Program Number S0411,
938
"Approaches to Inflation"
Guests: Roberts, Paul Craig. :
Malkiel, Burton.
31 March 1980
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 117 : 4
Transcript: Box/Folder 175 : 26
Program details: Mr. Roberts, who as a member of Jack Kemp's staff had
played had a large part in drafting the Kemp-Roth bill, and Mr. Malkiel,
the author of A Random Walk down Wall Street, discuss what might be done
to halt the Carter inflation. Their ideas hold up well in post-Reagan
Revolution hindsight. BM: "I think as the recession deepens, which I
expect it will, there will then be ample opportunity for tax cuts, which
I think will have to be done not in the old way of stimulating
consumption, but in a newer way of stimulating research and development,
investment, and the things we've been talking about--and that may be the
way that we start putting some of these things together and move in the
direction of these supply incentives."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.653
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6587
item Program Number S0412,
939
"Should We Be Ruled by Plebiscite?"
Guests: Davidson, James
Dale. : Van den Haag, Ernest.
31 March 1980
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 117 : 5
Transcript: Box/Folder 175 : 27
Program details: In the wake of California's Proposition 13, mandating a
cap on tax rises, the whole idea of referendums had gained a new cachet.
Mr. Davidson, whose organization was pressing for a constitutional
convention to pass a balanced-budget amendment, engages Messrs. Buckley
and van den Haag in a lively discussion of specific initiatives and of
the more general question of representative versus plebiscitary
democracy. Here is Mr. Davidson's metaphor for why the Federal
Government overspends: Assume that everybody in this room, including
those in the audience, all shared the same Master Charge card... . And,
say, if there were 100 people,... at the end of each billing period we'd
all have to pay l/100th of the amount that we ran up on the card. And so
we might all say to one another, 'Well, wow, the bill could be
fantastic. We might all go bankrupt.'... But the question is, Is it
rational for anybody not to spend? And the answer is no, because you get
100 per cent of the benefit that you spend, and you pay 1/100th of the
bill that you rack up. So the person who acts responsibly and says, 'No,
I won't spend,' is the guy who's going to end up paying for other
people's expenditures alone and not get anything himself."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.654
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6588
item Program Number S0413,
940
"Is Big Business Out of Hand?"
Guests: Green, Mark J. :
Bleiberg, Robert.
22 April 1980
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 117 : 6
Transcript: Box/Folder 175 : 27
Program details: Ralph Nader, with Mr. Green at his right hand, had
launched a drive against, as WFB puts it, "what they designate as the
abuses and excesses of big business." Their "Corporate Democracy Act"
would regulate the activity of the 800 largest corporations in the
country. Mr. Green downplays the left wingishness of the effort ("As for
the socialist point, Mr. Buckley, the predicate of every book that I've
worked on ... is market economy. It's more competition; it's more small
business"); the discussion sometimes reaches the shouting stage as
Messrs. Buckley and Bleiberg engage Mr. Green on the subject of
regulation of all sorts, from the SEC to the FDA to the EPA.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.655
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6589
item Program Number S0414,
941
"The Fight over Catholic Orthodoxy"
Guests: Davies, Michael.
: Champlin, Joseph. : Martin, Malachi.
22 April 1980
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 117 : 7
Transcript: Box/Folder 176 : 1
Program details: Although Mr. Buckley's introduction focuses on Pope John
Paul's repudiation of the teachings of Hans Kung and Edward
Schillebeeckx, the discussion that follows centers not on doctrinal
theology but on what the ordinary worshipper encounters at every Mass:
the shape of the liturgy. Specifically, on the conflict between
traditionalists (like Messrs. Buckley and Davies) who loved the
Tridentine Mass, and reformers (like Monsignor Champlin) who support the
Novus Ordo mandated by Vatican II. JC: "You liked the old worship
because the 'I' was able to pray, and you weren't kind of impinged by
the priest or other people? That kind of notion? ..." WFB: "It gave me a
sense that the priest was there as a mediator between me and God,
whereas it seems to me that the existing approach tends to be sort of
crowd-oriented." JC: "I think that's the key thing right there....
Before Vatican II, when I was ordained in '56, the Mass was very much a
mystery. I was a priest with my back to the people, in Latin, there was
silence in the congregation.... The Council, then, going back to the
best traditions of the early Church, said it's both 'I' and 'we'
together. It's a vertical worship, yes, but it's also a horizontal
worship."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.656
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0064EGNO8
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6590
item Program Number S0415,
942
"Allard Lowenstein on
Firing
Line
: A Retrospective"
Guests:
22 April 1980
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 117 : 8
Transcript: Box/Folder 176 : 1
Program details: A memorial to, as WFB describes him, "in our time, the
original activist," shot dead at age 51 by a former associate. The
program--the first such retrospective on
Firing
Line
(others would be
done for Clare Boothe Luce, Michael Harrington, Malcolm Muggeridge, and
Barry Goldwater)--is composed of excerpts from Mr. Lowenstein's nine
Firing
Line
appearances, framed by the eulogies given at his memorial
service by Mr. Buckley and Senator Edward Kennedy. EMK: "He was a person
of impassioned political conviction, but personally he loved so many who
so often disagreed with his politics. Who but Al Lowenstein could claim
among his best friends both Bill Buckley and Robert Kennedy?" WFB: "Of
all the partisans I have known, from the furthest steppes of the
spectrum, his was the most undistracted concern, not for
humanity--though he was conversant with big-think idiom--but for human
beings."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.657
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E55X9I
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6591
item Program Number S0416,
943
"The World of Soviet Disinformation"
Guests: de Borchgrave,
Arnaud. : Moss, Robert.
9 May 1980
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 117 : 9
Transcript: Box/Folder 176 : 2
Program details: The guests are the co-authors of The Spike, an acclaimed
novel about Soviet manipulation of Western public opinion (the title
refers to the means by which, in pre-computer days, newspaper stories
were killed). This riveting discussion focuses on the way the Soviet
Bloc conducts disinformation campaigns, with the witting or unwitting
assistance of the Western media. Mr. de Borchgrave: "According to what
we've heard from defectors--and we've had access to most defectors from
the KGB, the GRU (which is Soviet military intelligence), the Cuban DGI,
and other Eastern secret services--to a man (because there isn't a woman
among them), they all say the same thing: they have successfully over
the years anaesthetized Western opinion-makers and Western governments
as to their real intentions." Mr. Moss: "The KGB is ... the largest,
most ruthless secret service in the world, with over a million
employees, and it's bent on our destruction. Yet we can read very little
about it, so when we discuss intelligence in our open society, I often
have the feeling that we are watching, let us say, a football match in
which only one of the teams is showing. The other team has been
magically removed from the screen, so we see the remaining team jumping
about, striking absurd postures, kicking, pursuing a ball, all
inexplicably."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.660
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6594
item Program Number S0417,
944
"Is There a U.S. Transportation Policy?"
Guests:
Goldschmidt, Neil.
15 May 1980
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 117 : 10
Transcript: Box/Folder 176 : 2
Program details: A surprisingly engaging show on a topic whose interest
does not always match its importance. Mr. Goldschmidt gives the
impression of seeing transportation steadily and seeing it whole, from
private automobiles to airlines to long-distance railways to urban mass
transit. Mr. Buckley draws the discussion usefully to questions about
the price mechanism and the way oil prices affect our relations with our
allies. NG: "But there is a flip side to this ... and that is, we have a
responsibility not to surprise our allies. We are asking, for example,
from the Japanese a pretty severe price for their partnership with us in
terms of the Middle East. Their dependence on oil is much greater than
ours. We get half of ours here. They get all of theirs someplace else
than at home."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.661
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6595
item Program Number S0418,
945
"The Cabinet: What Are Its Responsibilities?"
Guests:
Watson, Jack H., Jr.
15 May 1980
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 117 : 11
Transcript: Box/Folder 176 : 3
Program details: Candidate Jimmy Carter in 1976 had praised "Cabinet
government." President Carter in 1979 had fired three of his Cabinet
officers. This hour offers an often surprising look at how the modern
Executive Branch works. WFB: "Now, Roosevelt and Eisenhower used their
Cabinets extensively. Kennedy did not; it bored him to tears. Lyndon
Johnson hardly knew the names of his Cabinet members.... And historians
seem to be saying that the growth of the Executive is such as to incline
a President to deal with his associates--with the people who are right
around him--rather than with the people who are, however ostentatious
their responsibilities, one step removed." ...JHW: "Many years ago ... I
read a book by Robert Ardrey called The Territorial Imperative, in which
he set out why this instinct for turf was so strong among primates. I
can report to you, based on my three and a half years of experience in
government, that the instinct for turf... among government bureaucrats
is about one hundred times what it is among gorillas."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.662
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6596
item Program Number S0419,
946
"Who Should Reagan Pick for Vice President?"
Guests:
Mahoney, J. Daniel, 1931- : Weyrich, Paul. : Buchanan, Patrick J.
(Patrick Joseph), 1938-
22 May 1980
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 117 : 12
Transcript: Box/Folder 176 : 3
Program details: Although these four veteran conservative activists range
over the whole political landscape--from the imperative for Reagan to
run a national campaign rather than one focused on electoral votes, to
the wiliness of Jimmy Carter as a political campaigner--it is
particularly illuminating to hear them on the title question. PJB: "I
see your argument very clearly. It's an argument that's been made
against the Ford idea, which is that it is sort of going back to the
past, and Reagan represents a clear break, something new....Whom would
you list if you had to list the four or five that Paul mentioned?"
WFB:"... It seems to me that Bush is, in virtue of a kind of earned
seniority, the obvious candidate, even as Kefauver was the obvious
candidate in 1956 to go with Stevenson." PJB: "The Stover of Yale, huh?"
WFB: "Well, there is that, yes." PJB: "He has done well, he has a
certain claim, and he's got a certain support that Reagan doesn't
have."WFB: "That's right.... One of the things that offended people most
in San Francisco in 1964 was when Goldwater turned to Bill Miller.... It
was felt to be a kind of a defi hurled in the face of everybody else,
saying, 'We can do it all by ourselves.' "
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.663
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6597
item Program Number S0420,
1001
"The American Book Awards"
Guests: Chancellor, John.
1 May 1980
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 117 : 13
Transcript: Box/Folder 176 : 4
Program details: A departure from
Firing
Line's
usual format, justified
by the fact that, as WFB puts it, "it is through books that people tend
to promulgate their views." Messrs. Buckley and Chancellor are the
co-hosts of the first annual American Book Awards, the successor (not
uncontroversially--see the following show, s0421) to the National Book
Awards. This show reproduces excerpts from the awards ceremony, with
just a short foreword and afterword from Mr. Buckley. One sample, from
Theodore White: "I come to present the award for the most unforgiving of
all literary arts, the art of autobiography. A young novelist, a young
poet, a young raconteur, can hope to do better in his second, third, or
fourth time around as he improves his style, but the autobiographer must
get it right the first time. He has only one tango with his facts, or
she has only one waltz where memory and truth dance to different music.
Autobiography permits of no rearranging ... You get it right the first
time, or you're a fake forever after."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.658
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6592
item Program Number S0421,
1002
"The Controversy over Book Awards"
Guests: Leonard, John,
1939- : FitzGerald, Frances. : Dystel, Oscar.
22 May 1980
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 117 : 14
Transcript: Box/Folder 176 : 4
Program details: A good-natured though adversarial discussion of the
awards featured on the previous program: "Were the books chosen
intelligently, and by the right people? Where does an avoidance of
elitism edge over into commercial exploitation?" FF: "The present system
is very likely to bring up only the best-sellers, because that's what
people have read. Now the real function, to me, of a literary award--as
opposed to something that has to do with the publishing industry--is to
discover merit, and to discover merit in books that have not had a
commercial success." ... OD: "I think we are trying to compare the TABA
awards with the National Book Awards. They are two different events. The
National Book Awards is a concept supported by the authors and
critics...perfectly valid; I hope it continues in some way. The TABA
book awards is a new concept supported by the book community."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.664
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6598
item Program Number S0422,
1003
"The Republican Vice Presidency"
Guests: Vander Jagt, Guy. :
Lewis, Drew. : Garment, Leonard.
17 July 1980
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 117 : 15
Transcript: Box/Folder 176 : 5
Program details: A spirited and substantive four-cornered conversation
that ranges from the prospects of the Reagan-Bush ticket and the
question why it wasn't a Reagan-Ford ticket to the problems facing
America--stagflation, racial tensions, the Iran hostage crisis, the
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. DL: "Well, first I can say that those
that were watching television knew much more than those who were in the
meetings [choosing a running-mate]. ... It was rather interesting
sitting in Governor Reagan's suite and watching various people on the
floor of the convention telling us what was happening." ... LG: "Quite
apart from the human tragedy of these lost and stunted lives [in the
inner cities] is a very significant social dilemma because the working
of the complex American society depends upon harmony among all the
parts, and the explosions in Miami and the past explosions in other
cities are the worst possible grit in the gears of the American system.
So I think that impulse in the Republican Party which is very fresh,
very energetic, very confident ... augurs very well certainly for the
long-term future and probably very much so in the short term in this
next election."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.665
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6599
item Program Number S0423,
1004
"The Republican Platform and the ERA"
Guests: Schlafly,
Phyllis. : Heckler, Margaret.
17 July 1980
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 117 : 16
Transcript: Box/Folder 176 : 5
Program details: "The most spirited disagreement during the sessions that
brought forth the Republican platform in Detroit," Mr. Buckley begins,
"had to do with ... women's rights and abortion." The GOP had as
recently as the 1976 platform backed the Equal Rights Amendment; this
year the platform committee withdrew that plank, over the opposition of
Rep. Heckler. This sizzling exchange sometimes reaches the boiling
point, but there is also serious discussion of current laws, of working
conditions for women, and of the amendment itself. WFB: "I should like
to begin by asking Mrs. Heckler whether the statement I have just quoted
[from her] doesn't suggest that Mrs. Schlafly, who opposes ERA, also
opposes women's rights." MH: "I would have to ask Mrs. Schlafly to speak
for herself on the position on women's rights, but I think that those of
us who see the amendment as the only vehicle are aware of the fact--as I
am, as a member of Congress for 14 years-- that the case-by-case method
of dealing with changing the law will simply take another two hundred
years...." PS: "I brought along with me a Republican platform that I
support and Ronald Reagan supports and which Mrs. Heckler does not
support, and I think there's one sentence that... explains the
difference between her position and mine. The platform says, 'We support
equal rights and equal opportunities for women without taking away
traditional rights of women such as exemption from the military draft.'
Now I think that one sentence shows who's really for women's
rights."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.666
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6600
item Program Number S0424,
1005
"Is Camp David Falling Apart?"
Guests: Perlmutter, Nate. :
Fein, Leonard.
21 July 1980
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 117 : 17
Transcript: Box/Folder 176 : 6
Program details: The Camp David Accords--negotiated under President
Carter's aegis in 1978 and given flesh the following year, again through
President Carter's efforts (see
Firing
Lines
s0361 and s0362)--were
widely said to be unraveling. This show offers a thoughtful discussion
of a highly emotional problem with, as WFB puts it, "two men who are
devoted friends of Israel but who can talk about the subject without
shouting." The specific point at issue was Menachem Begin's
intransigence over West Bank settlements, but, as Mr. Perlmutter points
out, Begin's behavior, and indeed the whole Middle Eastern scene, has to
be viewed in the world context: "In the last analysis--God forgive me
for this--I really think the Jews are irrelevant, I think the Arabs are
irrelevant, I think the settlements are irrelevant, I think the homeland
is irrelevant.... It's the United States and the Soviet Union, as
primitive as a High Noon movie, walking down that street."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.667
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0064EGNRA
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6601
item Program Number S0425,
1006
"Marijuana Update: What's New?"
Guests: Novak, William. :
Rosenthal, Mitchell.
9 May 1980
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 117 : 18
Transcript: Box/Folder 176 : 6
Program details: The two guests' perspectives differ so radically that it
is sometimes hard for them to engage each other's arguments--even before
WFB adds philosophical libertarianism to the mix ("after all, no one is
forcing anyone to take marijuana or forcing anyone to take alcohol or
forcing anyone to take heroin"). Dr. Rosenthal: "Studies that Phoenix
did in New York were showing that... anywhere from 30 to 70 per cent of
high-school students were getting stoned three to five times a week. If
that kind of regular drunkenness or regular self-medication goes on, I
think that it interferes with the kind of maturing process that needs to
go on, and we see many youngsters--by no means all, but we can't argue
this issue by looking at best outcomes ... --fall apart and regress
toward infantilism." Mr. Novak: "I believe that marijuana, like alcohol,
should be legal for adults; I believe it should be illegal for kids. I
don't think that will stop the problem. I'm not naive. Kids drink. Kids
are going to smoke whether it's legal or illegal....Marijuana [is] a
weed. It grows easily and in some parts of the country it grows very
successfully. It is said to be the largest cash crop in California."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.659
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6593
item Program Number S0426,
1007
"What Happened at Madison Square Garden?"
Guests: Kramer,
Michael. : Kaiser, Robert. : Kondracke, Morton.
15 August 1980
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 117 : 19
Transcript: Box/Folder 176 : 7
Program details: This show was taped the day after the Democratic
National Convention wound up, and the questions, as Mr. Buckley frames
them, are: "Did Walter Mondale overdo it? Is Jimmy Carter far gone in
narcissism? Are Democratic delegates suffering from creeping economic
illiteracy?" This spirited conversation, which treats of both the
substance and the strategy, holds up well in retrospect. Mr. Kondracke:
"I think that Carter got himself positioned in the political middle in
this convention by being booed over the draft registration, by having
Teddy Kennedy force down his throat an economic plank that he didn't
agree with, and by having militance on the issue of ERA and abortion
force things into the platform that he didn't want. He makes himself
seem to be the responsible middle beset by the liberals on the left and
the right wing represented by Reagan. So, I think he comes out of this
convention in much better shape than he went in." ... Mr. Kaiser: "I
think that Reagan has this disarming ability to make people feel that he
is a regular guy and a plausible guy, which is going to make it hard for
the strategy that Michael well describes to take hold. My sense of it is
that the election is going to be won by whichever of these characters
succeeds in making the other one the issue, and at the moment I think
Reagan's got the advantage. But it's his to lose."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.669
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003JMFB9Q
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6603
item Program Number S0427,
1008
"Defense and the Democrats"
Guests: Moynihan, Daniel P.
(Daniel Patrick), 1927-2003.
15 August 1980
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 117 : 20
Transcript: Box/Folder 176 : 7
Program details: A high-energy duel between well-matched
antagonists--though ones who agree, probably, on as much as they
disagree on. Senator Moynihan had just, at the Democratic Convention,
spoken approvingly of President Carter's defense policies--to, as WFB
puts it, "my stupefaction and that of others." Today's discussion ranges
from the bloodbath in Cambodia at the hands of Pol Pot and the Khmer
Rouge, to the Soviets' use of Cuban troops as proxies in Africa, to the
theory of Mutual Assured Destruction. DPM: "We thought the Russians
would build up to our level [in nuclear weapons] 'parity' and then stop,
because we thought they had the same view we had. It turned out they
didn't. They have different tastes, they have different history, they
have different attitudes."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.670
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003GXE9SM
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6604
item Program Number S0428,
1009
"Have We Learned Anything about Gun Control?"
Guests:
Carter, Harlon B. : Buckley, John J.
21 July 1980
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 117 : 21
Transcript: Box/Folder 176 : 8
Program details: The short answer to the title question seems to be:
"No." That is, many statistics have been amassed, but our two guests,
both serious students of the subject and men who have testified on it in
many forums, cannot agree on what the numbers are, let alone what they
mean. A ding-dong battle from start to finish: JJB: "In 1977
[Washington, D.C.]put across in the city council the toughest
gun-control laws in the country.... The result has been a 26 per cent
reduction in homicides by handguns and 22 1/2 per cent in assaults by
handguns ... despite the fact that that is just the city, an island
surrounded by gun-toting Virginia and Maryland ..." HBC: "... The
evaluations of people who in no sense can ever be accused of being
friends of ours, the Washington Post and the Washington Star, and
another who are friends of ours, the Washington Police Department, do
not agree with what Sheriff Buckley just said. They have all said lately
that the crime rate has increased and not decreased."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.668
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0064EGNX4
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6602
item Program Number S0429,
1010
"How to Unscramble an Egg"
Guests: Joseph, Keith, Sir, 1918-
4 September 1980
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 117 : 22
Transcript: Box/Folder 176 : 8
Program details: The "egg" of this show's title is the public sector that
the current government inherited from its predecessors, Labour and
Conservative alike--for as Mr. Buckley points out, "Socialism did not
cease to grow substantially under Mr. Churchill, Mr. Eden, Mr.
Macmillan, or Mr. Heath." Mrs. Thatcher intended to break that chain,
and part of Sir Keith's mandate was to denationalize as many industries
as he could. This fast-moving and detail-filled conversation touches on
the difficulties of getting from here to there, on the economics of the
Concorde, on the effect of Britain's having craft unions (as opposed,
say, to the industry-wide unions of West Germany). One sample: KJ: "Our
biggest problems come in the public sector, and there are big problems.
You are lucky in America. You don't have-- Would you like to have our
nationalized sector? Would you like to copy that? I do recommend you not
hasten to nationalize." WFB: "No, somewhere along the line the
seductiveness of nationalization passed America by. The last time a
significant historical figure called for broad scale nationalization was
in 1948, and Henry Wallace got about three million votes." KJ: "Yes."
WFB: "We go in for a thing called regulation, and regulation is a way of
nationalizing without having to preoccupy yourself with a balance
sheet."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.671
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6605
item Program Number S0430,
1011
"The Crisis in Labour"
Guests: Benn, Tony, 1925-
4 September 1980
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 97 : 7
Publicity File: Box/Folder 117 : 23
Transcript: Box/Folder 176 : 9
Program details: Tony Benn, as he was by now known--having dropped
syllables from his name along with his inherited title, Viscount
Stansgate--had first debated WFB in 1948, and had appeared on
Firing
Line
once before, on the subject of the Concorde (see
Firing
Line
s0059). During the decades since their undergraduate encounter, Mr. Benn
has remained as committed to socialism as Mr. Buckley has to a
libertarian brand of conservatism. TB: "Why are people poor in the first
place? Why do the people who create the wealth end up poor and the
people who own the land end up rich? Now that is the basic socialist
position...." WFB: "Why, by current standards, were 90 per cent of the
American people poor in 1900, whereas only 9 per cent of them are poor
today? Because there has been a universal increase [in the] gross
national product which has been made possible by the economic exertions
of free men--not men dictated to by the government."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.673
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ANCWY7M
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6607
item Program Number S0431, 1012,
1012R
"Inside OPEC"
Guests: Kelly, J. B.
4 September 1980, 4 January 1981
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 117 : 24-25
Transcript: Box/Folder 176 : 9
Program details: An illuminating hour with one of the West's leading
experts on the Middle East, beginning with oil and OPEC, but ranging to
British colonialism (the pros as much as the cons), to the current
situation in South Yemen, and to why we can't take much comfort from the
fact that Islam and Marxism are fundamentally incompatible. JBK: "The
important thing here is that the emotions, aspirations, that are excited
in Muslim breasts, either by the preaching of Islam or by the doctrines
of Marxism which are fed to them through different agencies and perhaps
in very changed versions--it is not necessary that these two should mix.
Both are directed towards the same end: that is, the release from
oppression, the enjoyment when you enter in upon your estate. Now who
are the oppressors? The oppressors in both cases are deemed to be,
whether by Marxists or Muslims, the West."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.672
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6606
item Program Number S0432, 1013,
1013E
"How Does One Find Faith?"
Guests: Muggeridge, Malcolm,
1903-1990.
6 September 1980, 21 December 1980, 23
December 1988, 22 December 1991, 20 December 1992
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 117 : 26-31
Transcript: Box/Folder 176 : 10
Program details: A radiant session with the former left-wing atheist, who
became one of the century's leading Christian apologists. Mr. Muggeridge
on how he was drawn to faith: "Now why did this longing for faith assail
me? Insofar as I can point to anything, it is to do with this profession
which both you and I followed of observing what's going on in the world
and attempting to report and comment thereon, because that particular
occupation gives one a very heightened sense of the sheer fantasy of
human affairs--the sheer fantasy of power and of the structures that men
construct out of power--and therefore gives one an intense, overwhelming
longing to be in contact with reality. And so you look for reality, and
you try this and try that, and ultimately you arrive at the
conclusion--great oversimplification--that reality is a mystery. The
heart of reality is a mystery." WFB: "Even if that were so, why should
that mystery lead you to Christian belief?" MM: "Because it leads you to
God." NOTE: S0432 is the original 60-minute broadcast. S0432R is the
edited 30-minute version, with an added introduction by William F.
Buckley, that was rebroadcast annually at Christmas for the rest of the
life of
Firing
Line
. The transcript and link that are available for
download correspond to the 60-minute version. For the 30-minute version
go to http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E52UB2/
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.674
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ANCWTVS
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6608
item Program Number S0433, 1014,
1014E
"Do We Need Religion or Religious Institutions?"
Guests:
Muggeridge, Malcolm, 1903-1990.
6 September 1980, 30 December 1988, 29
December 1991
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 117 : 32 -33
Transcript: Box/Folder 176 : 10
Program details: This show suffers from comparison with the one previous
(s0432), but by any other standard it is a wonderful exploration of
modern man and his discontents-starting with the fact that Mr.
Muggeridge, although a leading Christian apologist, was unchurched. MM:
"I've, believe it or not, longed to be a Catholic.... I've longed for it
as though it were the most marvelous thing ... The truth is, I think,
that I take a very pessimistic view of the Catholic Church, despite the
very brilliant Pope you've now got. It seems to me that it's dropping to
pieces; and of course it had a severe blow after the Vatican Council.
Therefore, I would be joining something of which I was enormously
critical, and this isn't really an honorable thing to do." WFB: "That's
never bothered you before." MM: "I've never contemplated anything so
serious as joining a church. I mean, even if you were to turn to mundane
things-joining a club-if you were to join it quite confident that you
were going to challenge all its rules and have rows with all its
members, it would be rather a foolish step to take...." WFB: "Well, I'm,
to put it lightly, stupefied that you would make a decision whether or
not to extend your loyalty to an institution based on the behavior of
some of its communicants. I can't imagine any time in history when
anybody would have become a Catholic if he had been so easily put off."
(Malcolm Muggeridge and his wife, Kitty, eventually submitted to Rome,
in 1984.)
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.675
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E52UBC
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6609
item Program Number S0434,
1015
"Prices and Pricing"
Guests: Kahn, Alfred E. (Alfred Edward)
13 October 1980
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 117 : 34
Transcript: Box/Folder 176 : 12
Program details: When Mr. Kahn was first on
Firing
Line
two years earlier
(s0337), he was the Chairman of the Civil Aeronautics Board, with the
mandate of abolishing it. He is now in charge of abolishing inflation.
It would take several years and a change of Administration for the CAB
to go out of business and inflation to come under control, but not
through any deficiency in Mr. Kahn's understanding, e.g., of the causes
of inflation: "The demands that we place on a society, increasing each
year, outrun the productive ability to satisfy those demands, and when
society cannot discipline itself to hold the monetary demands--for wage
increases that outrun productivity increases; for credit-financed
consumer spending, which is a major problem in our society; for
government expenditure programs--when society is unable to discipline
those monetary demands ...then inflation is the inevitable
consequence."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.680
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6614
item Program Number S0435,
1016
"Is This a Time for Action?"
Guests: Simon, William E.,
1927-
13 October 1980
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 117 : 35
Transcript: Box/Folder 176 : 12
Program details: On the eve of Ronald Reagan's election, we have here one
of his advisors to discuss--as he does with his usual incisiveness--the
economic picture, domestic and international, and the way government
policies affect it. WES: "Balancing the budget is a buzz word. Everybody
wants to balance the budget, and even some politicians would love to
balance the budget, but they'd like to balance the budget perhaps at a
trillion dollars or two trillion dollars in spending. I don't. I want to
see spending limited, and the increase in spending limited to the real
growth of the economy." ... "What is the tax burden? The tax burden is
the total spending by government, because it's either going to come out
as direct taxes on all of us, or it's going to come out through
inflation, which is the most insidious tax of all."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.681
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6615
item Program Number S0436,
1017
"The Crisis in American Education: Part I"
Guests: Crosby,
Emerald. : Barr, Robert. : Down, A. Graham. : Anrig, Gregory R.
18 September 1980
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 118 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 176 : 13
Program details: Why are the public schools doing such a poor job? Are
the public schools doing a poor job? Four educators with a variety of
perspectives--plus their host, who first came to nationwide attention
writing on modern college education--go back and forth over these and
related questions. Mr. Anrig: "The major push in American education in
the post-World War II world seems to me to have been to reach out to
hold onto more children, to keep them off the unemployment lines, to
keep them off welfare, to keep them off street corners and the drug
traffic.... Now in doing that, our performance is not as good as when we
didn't deal with these populations.... If you hold onto the youngsters
with problems, your scores are going to reflect it." Mr. Crosby: "Every
kid that comes out of the Detroit public schools is immunized, because
by law we must do that. But there's no law that says he must read." Mr.
Down: "Are we really suggesting here that we should have different
curriculums for different sorts of people? Everybody needs to know how
to read, to write, to think independently, to appraise critically and
analytically."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.676
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6610
item Program Number S0437,
1018
"The Crisis in American Education: Part II"
Guests: Crosby,
Emerald. : Barr, Robert. : Down, A. Graham. : Anrig, Gregory R.
18 September 1980
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 118 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 176 : 13
Program details: Why are the public schools doing such a poor job? Are
the public schools doing a poor job? Four educators with a variety of
perspectives--plus their host, who first came to nationwide attention
writing on modern college education--go back and forth over these and
related questions. Mr. Anrig: "The major push in American education in
the post-World War II world seems to me to have been to reach out to
hold onto more children, to keep them off the unemployment lines, to
keep them off welfare, to keep them off street corners and the drug
traffic.... Now in doing that, our performance is not as good as when we
didn't deal with these populations.... If you hold onto the youngsters
with problems, your scores are going to reflect it." Mr. Crosby: "Every
kid that comes out of the Detroit public schools is immunized, because
by law we must do that. But there's no law that says he must read." Mr.
Down: "Are we really suggesting here that we should have different
curriculums for different sorts of people? Everybody needs to know how
to read, to write, to think independently, to appraise critically and
analytically."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.677
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6611
item Program Number S0438,
1019
"The Conflict: Christianity vs. Capitalism"
Guests: Arns,
Paul Evaristo Cardinal.
5 October 1980
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 118 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 176 : 14
Program details: A difficult hour with a guest who radiates benevolence
but whose mode of expression gives no hint that he is a student of
literature and a former professor of patrology and didactics. One
sample, on liberation theology: WFB: "Now, a theology of liberation
would seek to liberate man from those fetters that are unnecessary to
the fulfillment of his dignity and the exercise of his freedom. Is that
correct?" PEA: "You see, that's a complicated thing you are saying and
we are more simple than this. We see the people suffering in their
material necessities and their cultural and their social and also their
religious needs, and when they are suffering they must go out of this
suffering by their means and also by the aid of the government and help
people prepare to help the people, but not against the people. You
cannot help them and not also being abstract, but you must go with the
people and see what are their strengths."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.678
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6612
item Program Number S0439,
1020
"What's Happening in Brazil?"
Guests: Cardoso, Fernando
Henrique. : Gaspari, Elio. : Russell, George.
5 October 1980
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 118 : 4
Transcript: Box/Folder 176 : 14
Program details: A lucid and instructive program on a country that had
been through a near-Communist takeover, a military coup, growing
prosperity, and returning inflation, and was now on the brink of return
to full civilian rule. Mr. Russell: "A part of this problem [land
reform] is a land-title problem, and from what I understand this is
really again quite a Brazilian problem.... The survey system of Brazil
is still colonial, and a lot of the problems that look like land reform,
in a more metaphysical sense of some enormous overthrow of the system,
really have a lot to do with getting out there with a theodolite... and
tacking down the land." Mr. Cardoso: "There is no particular reaction
against America. Multinationals are German, are Swedish, Japanese,
American. If you compare Brazil with other countries, there is no
sentiment anti-American--there is sentiment anti-exploitation,
anti-inequalities, but not necessarily anti-America."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.679
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6613
item Program Number S0440,
1021
"The New Political Outlook"
Guests: Kramer, Michael. :
Kondracke, Morton. : Bartley, Robert.
24 November 1980
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 118 : 5
Transcript: Box/Folder 176 : 15
Program details: How did Reagan win? And why were the polls so slow to
indicate that he would? A fast-moving four-cornered conversation between
two conservatives and two liberals on the substance and strategy of the
campaigns. Mr. Kondracke: "Nobody was enthusiastic about anybody...."
Mr. Buckley: "I was enthusiastic." MK: "Well, of course you were." WFB:
"You can say, 'You were the only enthusiastic person.' " MK: "I wasn't
enthusiastic about anybody, and I know very few people who were
enthusiastic about anybody. Of course, I tend to know more Democrats
than you do." ... Mr. Bartley: "Or to look at it another way,... here
was an electorate that was ready to turn Carter out--turn out the
incumbent--and he ran against that with the most logical kind of
campaign, which is to portray your opponent as a menace to civilization,
and made a certain amount of progress with that kind of campaign; but
then it came apart at the time of the debates and people went back to
what they were going to do anyway."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.682
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6616
item Program Number S0441,
1022
"Harold Macmillan Revisited"
Guests: Macmillan, Harold,
1894-
24 November 1980
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 97 : 8
Publicity File: Box/Folder 118 : 6
Transcript: Box/Folder 176 : 15
Program details: Mr. Macmillan, appearing for the second time on
Firing
Line
, wears both his learning and his experience lightly, but his sense
of authority is still unmistakable. HM: "The great thing is to press on
with two things: the creation of wealth in our own Western society...;
and the determination that the loss of empire-which Churchill saw
coming-must be replaced, as regards Britain, by a united Europe: the
realization that although you are very strong in America, we've no right
to depend on you. We ought to be helping you as allies. The total
population of what's left of Europe-Western Europe-is larger than that
of the United States, richer.... We ought not to be hanging onto the
tail, we ought to be marching proudly as allies of the United States."
... WFB: "Is it your opinion that the situation is reversible or that
the Soviet lead at this point is too extensive to make it possible for
us to catch up?" HM: "As a technical proposition, of course, I'm not
informed about it, but I've never known any position that is
irredeemable."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.683
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6617
item Program Number S0442,
1023
"How Should Ex-Communists Cooperate?"
Guests: Navasky,
Victor S.
4 December 1980
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 118 : 7
Transcript: Box/Folder 176 : 16
Program details: Is naming one's former associates in a subversive
enterprise the least one can do to make reparation? Or is it the sort of
thing only a tyrant would ask? Heat, but also light, on the reasons for
congressional investigations of Communist activity, and the reasons many
non-Communists opposed them. WFB: You can't just say, 'Oops, I'm sorry
that I was supporting Stalin during the period that he killed fifteen
million people.' ... I want to prove I'm sorry by cooperating with
efforts to spread the word, and the most concrete way to do that is to
show that you are willing to identify... the other members of the Ku
Klux Klan, the other members of the Nazi Bund, the other members of the
Communist Party." ... VSN: "To my way of thinking, totalitarian
societies are the ones that are supposed to say, 'In order to
demonstrate your loyalty to the state, you are required to demonstrate
your disloyalty to your friends.' During the Soviet purges, the first
two questions they would ask anybody were: 'Who recruited you?' and
'Whom did you recruit?' That's not something we, in a democratic
society, are supposed to do."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.684
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003GXE9T6
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6618
item Program Number S0443,
1024
"Why Is Jazz Neglected?"
Guests: Taylor, Billy. : Wellstood,
Dick.
9 December 1980
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 118 : 8
Transcript: Box/Folder 176 : 16
Program details: Two leading performers, who are also effective verbal
exponents of their art, talk about the origins of jazz, its relations to
rock, and the likelihood of finding good audiences in Europe as compared
to the United States; but they also turn delightfully to the keyboard
from time to time to let their fingers do the talking. BT: "Rock and
roll...was a conscious effort by primarily white artists to perform in a
way that was black." ...DW: "One difference between jazz and rock is
that jazz is not a song-oriented music....Rock is based on songs, and
jazz hasn't been, really, for fifty years. There are lots of people who
sing, but that's not the same thing. Jazz is an instrumental music. You
can't sing an Art Tatum solo and you can't sing a Beethoven
symphony."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.685
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003GXE9TG
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6619
item Program Number S0444,
1025
"Is It Time for Civil Defense?"
Guests: Beilenson, Laurence
W., 1899- : Coffin, William Sloane.
9 December 1980
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 118 : 9
Transcript: Box/Folder 176 : 17
Program details: Are our leaders, as Mr. Beilenson maintains, profoundly
negligent in failing to provide seriously for either civil defense or
anti-ballistic-missile defense? Or does such thinking, as Mr. Coffin
believes, lead away from disarmament and straight to nuclear
destruction? LB: "The best experts say 2 to 6 per cent would die with
good civil defense, and that's all. But suppose they're wrong. Let's
suppose that civil defense would save only five to ten million people.
Aren't they worth saving? What's the duty of a government except to save
its citizens?" ... WSC: "The best minds, I think, have said that in a
nuclear age everything has changed except our way of thinking.... The
risks inherent in disarmament pale in comparison with the risks in
continuing the present arms race." ... WSC: "We have no choice but to
trust, and they have no choice but to trust." WFB: "I have a choice. I
elect not to trust. Put me down for not trusting." LB: "Me, too." WSC:
"I don't trust either of you very far, because you're going to get us
into the worst possible jam."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.686
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6620
item Program Number S0445,
1026
"Are Ideology and the CIA Compatible?"
Guests: Meyer, Cord.
: Snepp, Frank.
5 January 1981
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 118 : 10
Transcript: Box/Folder 176 : 17
Program details: Because of things the participants are not at liberty to
say, this show is less easy to follow than some. But there is good
discussion, particularly of the recent congressional investigations. Mr.
Meyer: "The Church committee investigation did provide an opportunity to
educate the American people in a very serious way. This was a chance to
lay on the record what the KGB is, what the opposition is up to, what
the real world is like out there--and yet so much of the Church
committee went forward as if we were living in a perfectly friendly
world, with no opposition whatsoever." ... Mr. Snepp: "The agency itself
laid the ground for those very destructive investigations. .. --that is
to say, [James] Schlesinger's decision in mid 1973 [during his brief
tenure as CIA Director] to dig up all the agency's wrongdoings and put
them in one particular place. William Colby was assiduous in pursuing
these 'crimes,' if you want to call them that, and therefore the docket
was there--and the only thing the congressional investigators did was to
get hold of it and play it for all it was worth."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.687
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ANCWQ5C
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6621
item Program Number S0446,
1027
"The Abscam Controversy"
Guests: Tigar, Michael.
5 January 1981
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 118 : 11
Transcript: Box/Folder 176 : 18
Program details: It was a year earlier, as Mr. Buckley reminds us, that
Abscam hit the front pages: "The modus operandi, now widely known,
called for an FBI agent, posing as a sheik, or as a sheik's
representative, to offer money, typically forty or fifty thousand
dollars, to a congressman if he would undertake to sponsor legislation
to permit a designated Arab into the country." Half a dozen lawmakers
had succumbed and had been convicted, though sometimes of a lesser
charge than "accepting a bribe." Mr. Tigar is of course parti pris, but
he is persuasive in explicating the distinction between forms of police
action that discover already committed crimes (e.g., asking to purchase
previously distilled moonshine whiskey during Prohibition) and ones that
provoke a crime. MT: "I would have said that the fictitious character of
the government's scripting was enough to carry this beyond the outer
limits of permissible law-enforcement conduct."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.688
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003JMFBA0
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6622
item Program Number S0447,
1028
"Wealth and Poverty"
Guests: Gilder, George. : Lekachman,
Robert.
5 January 1981
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 118 : 12
Transcript: Box/Folder 176 : 18
Program details: Messrs. Gilder and Lekachman mostly talk past each other
(GG: "Avarice is ubiquitous. Capitalism occurs in some places. Avarice
does not suffice to stimulate capitalism ... Avarice leads to a search
for safety and security and comfort..." RL: "There are people who go to
Las Vegas and play blackjack ... there are people who buy stock or, if
they are corporate officers, commit their corporations to investments of
various kinds, and they're gambling too with calculations of odds"), but
WFB steps in with useful clarification, e.g., "If I determine to build a
cheaper mousetrap in order to line my pocket, but in the course of
creating a cheaper mousetrap I make it possible for you to purchase one,
I have committed an objectively altruistic act for selfish motives. Now
why do you assume there is an incompatibility between those two
concepts?"
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.689
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6623
item Program Number S0448,
1029
"Are We Menaced by Moral Majority?"
Guests: Falwell, Jerry.
22 January 1981
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 118 : 13
Transcript: Box/Folder 176 : 19
Program details: Whether or not one agrees with him on specific moral or
theological points, Mr. Falwell ably defends his organization against
accusations--by, among others, the ACLU and the President of Yale--that
it promotes anti-Semitism and other forms of hate. JF: "Religious tests
to prevent one from running for office are not only unconstitutional,
they are unthinkable.... In this pluralistic democratic republic, one
who would deny a Roman Catholic or a fundamentalist or a Jew or a Mormon
the right to hold office--or any other person, black or white--is
denying the very precept upon which the nation was established.... I
think that we must stand against religious tests, but every citizen has
the right to know what his representative believes or doesn't
believe."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.690
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TZ8GHGO
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6624
item Program Number S0449,
1030
"Human Rights and Foreign Policy"
Guests: Derian, Patricia.
22 January 1981
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 118 : 14
Transcript: Box/Folder 176 : 19
Program details: The hour drags a bit, as Jimmy Carter's former
human-rights chief seems unused to having to defend her positions. But
there are some good bits. WFB: "When Khrushchev came to America for the
first time, you will remember, Eisenhower did not permit himself to
smile in public, which was very difficult for somebody whose smile was
as congenital as Jimmy Carter's." ... PD: "I don't think you can find a
people anywhere in the world who are perfectly satisfied or even
reasonably satisfied to continue to live in conditions as they were
fifty years ago.... Those people are going to have a say in their
government. They are going to want to have a say and they are going to
struggle until they get it. What's going to happen then, if we have been
the ones supporting, backing up, helping in every way possible, having
warm relations with the dictator who had the foot on the neck? I just
don't think it's in our interest."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.691
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6625
item Program Number S0450,
1031
"A Scrutiny of the Reagan Economic Policy"
Guests: Thurow,
Lester C. : Davidson, James Dale. : Heilbroner, Robert.
24 February 1981
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 118 : 15
Transcript: Box/Folder 176 : 20
Program details: A bracing discussion of the tax plan that President
Reagan had just unveiled. RH: "I think that there is a picture in the
minds of the Reagan Administration--a picture of the economy as a kind
of great coiled spring. It's held down by two weights: one is the weight
of government spending and one is the weight of taxation. Take away
those weights and the spring will expand, and the forces of growth will
unleash themselves. My feeling is that when you take away the weight of
government spending, you find that some of the tension goes out of the
spring; and when you take away the weight of taxation, you find that the
spring doesn't begin to expand to the extent that you thought.".. . LT:
"I would be willing, in a world where you essentially shift towards
consumption taxes, to bring the capital-gains tax on productive venture
capital, plant, and equipment--I would even bring it to zero. On the
other hand, I think the tax on non-productive investments--antiques, old
silver ... land, gold, second homes--ought to be very high because I
think there's a real litmus test as to whether somebody's serious about
supply-side economics, and that is, 'Which of the many tax incentives
for nonproductive investments would you be willing to get rid of?' If
you give me the answer, 'None,' then I say, 'Look, you don't have any
real serious interest in supply-side economics.' "
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.692
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6626
item Program Number S0451,
1032
"William F. Buckley Jr. Faces the
Firing
Line
"
Guests:
Harrington, Donald. : Davidson, James Dale. : Pilpel, Harriet F.
24 February 1981
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 118 : 16
Transcript: Box/Folder 176 : 20
Program details: The semi-annual occasion when, as WFB explains the
format, "the tables are turned, and the host of
Firing
Line
becomes the
grillee. Three dragons are selected as executioners, and, traditionally,
they have done their job with obscene zest, not withstanding diligent
efforts, alas unavailing, to bribe them." The topics in this lively and
often substantive exchange include abortion, national health insurance,
charity (as opposed to welfare), and the reasons why non-Catholic
children go to Catholic schools. One sample: HP: "In an interdependent
society such as the one in which we live, in which poverty and
unemployment is often not the fault of the individual person, is there
not a basic principle entitling them to at least a minimum security
income without having to beg--which is indecent and inconsistent with
the American way, as far as I'm concerned." WFB: "I don't think so.
Certainly the Bible does not consider mendicancy humiliating.... I think
this: that one should recognize a moral obligation to look after one's
fellow man, but for you to recognize that moral obligation on behalf of
yourself is different from your coercing a similar moral obligation on
the part of somebody else."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.693
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6627
item Program Number S0452,
1033
"A Scrutiny of the Reagan Foreign Policy"
Guests: Bundy,
William P. : Smith, Hedrick. : Solarz, Stephen J.
25 February 1981
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 118 : 17
Transcript: Box/Folder 176 : 21
Program details: At the dawn of the Reagan Administration, a fast-paced
session with three extremely well informed foreign-policy observers and
practitioners. WFB: "Since President Reagan virtually began his conduct
of foreign affairs by saying that Russian leaders cheat and lie, perhaps
we might examine that statement, as history, and as diplomacy. Mr.
Bundy, were you offended by the presidential outburst?" WB: "It was
pretty outspoken, but there's no question that you can find support in
the statements of all the fathers of Communism and of the Soviet
structure ... I thought it was a bit on the outright and blunt side for
openers." ... HS: "It seems to me that the two men [Reagan and Haig]
together see the world a great deal in terms of... the global struggle
with the Soviets--and I think that's the reason why they have picked up
as the first thread the war in El Salvador. Somehow they feel there is a
need very early on to draw the line."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.694
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6628
item Program Number S0453,
1034
"Should Press Rights Be Limited?"
Guests: Rusher, William
A., 1923- : Kramer, Michael.
25 March 1981
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 118 : 18
Transcript: Box/Folder 176 : 21
Program details: A high-voltage session with three old pros, touching on
media bias, the libel laws, and the Supreme Court. MK: "We've sat here
over many years talking about the liberal bias of the press. You've
written about it [to WFB] and you've written about it [to WAR], and yet
we have Ronald Reagan as President. Somehow the liberal press was
notable to stop this travesty, so the system is working, it seems to me,
and I don't think we need any public or private mechanisms to chain or
shackle the press." .. . WAR: "If I might say a word here for the real
little guy, Bill, you are not the best example yourself.... When
somebody attacks you, as Lord knows they do from time to time, you are
not utterly resourceless. The idea of you--" WFB: "No, I'm not saying I
am." WAR: "--cowering in a corner if somebody calls you a Nazi?" WFB:
"No, no, I wrote a best-selling book about the experience." WAR: "Not
only a best-selling book--you have a column in two hundred-plus
newspapers; you have a television program. The guy who calls you a Nazi
may live to regret having called you a Nazi, but what about the average
person--even the average public figure--who doesn't have all those
resources?"
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.696
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6630
item Program Number S0454,
1035
"President Reagan: A Preliminary Evaluation"
Guests: Lewis,
Anthony, 1927-
30 March 1981
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 118 : 19
Transcript: Box/Folder 176 : 22
Program details: "Anthony Lewis," Mr. Buckley begins, "hasn't had so
happy a time of it since Watergate ... Every time Mr. Reagan or one of
his principal colleagues takes a position, Mr. Lewis is there to deplore
the decadence of the spirit, the decline in public morality, and the
disintegration of democracy. President Reagan is fighting a three-front
war: against Communist imperialism, against domestic inflation, and
against Tony Lewis."(As the participants learned after the taping, this
was the very day that he faced yet another antagonist, John Hinckley.)
Though host and guest are poles apart, the exchanges--as in previous
appearances by Mr. Lewis--are civil and often unpredictable. AL: "We are
entitled--indeed, obligated--as the power we are to be concerned about
national aggression or aggressive militarism in our hemisphere or
elsewhere against our interests. That's one subject. The subject of
human rights ... may involve the same countries but it may not. And I
think we have to do our best to maintain our moral concern. It's our own
soul we're saving. If we as Americans say, 'Well, we don't care about
someone being tortured to death because it's being done in a country
that's friendly to us,' we are the losers."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.698
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6632
item Program Number S0455,
1036
"How Much Loyalty Is Owed to the Boss?"
Guests: Westin,
Alan. : Green, Ronald.
30 March 1981
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 118 : 20
Transcript: Box/Folder 176 : 22
Program details: If an employer refuses to correct violations affecting
his workers' safety or the public safety, should an employee go public
with the information? Should the state protect an employee who does so?
Should employers be permitted to fire employees simply because of
mediocre performance? Our guests come from opposite sides of the fence
but are able to engage each other's arguments, in a way that brings us
along even when the discussion turns technical. RG: "What employee being
terminated would not first look to some extraneous, occupationally
irrelevant cause for the termination? It must have been unfair because,
after all, I am its victim ... I think it is counter-productive and
dangerous to put employers in the position of accepting mediocrity
because the price of enhancing the quality of employees becomes
prohibitive." AW: "There are over 3,500 pending anti-reprisal complaints
under OSHA ... I think that's a small figure. I think we could have
10,000 meritorious cases because of the fact that there is such a
significant lack of safety on the job in some industries ..."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.699
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6633
item Program Number S0456,
1037
"Mortimer Adler and His Great Ideas"
Guests: Adler, Mortimer
Jerome, 1902-2001.
25 February 1981
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 118 : 21
Transcript: Box/Folder 176 : 23
Program details: Mr. Adler's latest book is called Six Great Ideas--the
ideas being truth, goodness, beauty, justice, equality, and liberty. One
sample from the man whom Mr. Buckley introduces by saying: "He isn't a
philosopher only while in his study or at his typewriter. He is as
entirely a philosopher as Socrates was." MA: "In our society there are
libertarians who think that liberty is the supreme value, and everyone
should have as much as possible, without limit. There are egalitarians
who [hold] the leveling doctrine of everyone should be equal, without
any differences in degree at all.... The only correction of those two
errors-the libertarian error and the egalitarian error-is to see that
justice is the sovereign idea. You can't have too much justice....
Everyone should have as much freedom or liberty as justice allows, for
more than that involves injury to others, and everyone should have as
much equality as justice requires."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.695
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6629
item Program Number S0457,
1038
"The Question of Gay Rights"
Guests: Ashworth, Richard. :
Van den Haag, Ernest.
25 March 1981
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 118 : 22
Transcript: Box/Folder 176 : 23
Program details: Mr. Ashworth had joined the organization of which he is
now chairman when he learned that two of his three sons were homosexual;
Professor van den Haag has frequently treated homosexuals in his
clinical practice. The discussion--often painful, because of Mr.
Ashworth's very personal concern with the subject--ranges from the views
of homosexuality in different societies throughout history to pertinent
laws in the present-day United States. EvdH: "Attitudes towards
homosexuality have been more or less tolerant, more or less prohibitive
and so on, but I know of no culture where it is regarded as a normal,
accepted form of behavior." ... RA: "How can society say to somebody who
is homosexual, 'Forget that; forget what you are, and get married and
have children'? I think that would be reprehensible." EvdH: "I certainly
would agree to that."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.697
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00G709GNE
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6631
item Program Number S0458,
1039
"Television and the Government: Part I"
Guests: Pressler,
Larry. : Robertson, Pat. : Shakespeare, Frank. : Rockefeller, Sharon
Percy.
27 April 1981
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 118 : 23
Transcript: Box/Folder 176 : 24
Program details: In the first hour Mr. Buckley and his guests discuss a
range of issues, from the appropriateness of government-subsidized
broadcasting, to the role of the Federal Communications Commission, to
the likely impact of new developments in technology. In the second hour,
they are questioned by a dozen representatives of member stations of the
Southern Educational Communications Association. The only member of the
group not professionally engaged in television is Senator Pressler, and
he is the co-author of the Public Telecommunications Act of 1981. FS:
"Is it the proper role for the government... to provide cultural
programming to the people on a mandated basis? 'We think you ought to
have this sort of program and we will take money from the general tax
revenues in order to provide it?' I think that is a fundamental, root
question." ... SPR: "I think $100 million does not adequately represent
the federal support for this very important educational mission. We have
established... federal support for education, for universities,
libraries, museums, but the most cost-efficient way to reach people is
through radio and television."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.701
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6635
item Program Number S0459,
1040
"Television and the Government: Part II"
Guests: Pressler,
Larry. : Robertson, Pat. : Shakespeare, Frank. : Rockefeller, Sharon
Percy.
26 April 1981
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 118 : 24
Transcript: Box/Folder 176 : 24
Program details: In the first hour Mr. Buckley and his guests discuss a
range of issues, from the appropriateness of government-subsidized
broadcasting, to the role of the Federal Communications Commission, to
the likely impact of new developments in technology. In the second hour,
they are questioned by a dozen representatives of member stations of the
Southern Educational Communications Association. The only member of the
group not professionally engaged in television is Senator Pressler, and
he is the co-author of the Public Telecommunications Act of 1981. FS:
"Is it the proper role for the government... to provide cultural
programming to the people on a mandated basis? 'We think you ought to
have this sort of program and we will take money from the general tax
revenues in order to provide it?' I think that is a fundamental, root
question." ... SPR: "I think $100 million does not adequately represent
the federal support for this very important educational mission. We have
established... federal support for education, for universities,
libraries, museums, but the most cost-efficient way to reach people is
through radio and television."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.700
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6634
item Program Number S0460,
1041
"What Can Be Done with the UN?"
Guests: Kirkpatrick, Jeane
J.
11 May 1981
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 118 : 25
Transcript: Box/Folder 176 : 24
Program details: Mrs. Kirkpatrick's effect would not be felt at the UN
until the fall, when the General Assembly would convene, but it was
widely anticipated that she would be as forceful as Daniel Patrick
Moynihan had been in cutting through the cant. We get a foretaste in
this splendid tour of the world, from Chile to Nicaragua, from
present-day Israel to Hitler's Germany. JJK on the Carter
Administration's human-rights policy: "I suggest that in politics it's
terribly important to focus on the consequences of policy for the people
who have to live under the policy. If, for example, we look not at the
intentions of the Carter Administration in Nicaragua or Iran--where what
they intended was democracy and moderation--but at the consequence for
the Iranians or the Nicaraguans, which is not moderation and democracy
but Khomeini and the Ortega brothers--that is, a worse condition of
unfreedom than they had before--then one would think that policy was not
a good policy."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.702
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6636
item Program Number S0461,
1042
"Can Congress Create People?"
Guests: Galebach, Stephen. :
Bork, Robert H.
11 May 1981
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 118 : 26
Transcript: Box/Folder 176 : 25
Program details: Mr. Galebach's Human Life Bill written on behalf of
Senator Jesse Helms and Representative Henry Hyde attempted to vitiate
Roe v. Wade by defining life as beginning at conception thus placing the
unborn child under the protection of the 14th Amendment. SG: "With the
Human Life Bill we have an exceptional case because the Court declared
itself unable to resolve a particular question." WFB: "A factual
question." SG: "Yes of when life begins. Now if that factual question is
central to the definition of who is a person then a congressional
determination would influence the Court." Mr. Bork while no fan of the
incumbent Court holds that "If Mr. Galebach is right ... we really have
a constitutional revolution on our hands. It means that Section 5 of the
14th Amendment gives Congress the power to say what violates the 14th
Amendment and the Court ought to defer.... What you are doing or would
do--out of very good impulses--is ratify some constitutional damage and
make more possible."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.703
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6637
item Program Number S0462,
1043
"Has HEW Hurt the Family?"
Guests: Califano, Joseph A., Jr.
15 May 1981
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 118 : 27
Transcript: Box/Folder 176 : 25
Program details: Actually, by the time of this show, HEW was no more
(President Carter had succeeded in his mission of splitting it up into
the Departments of Education and of Health and Human Services), but the
principle remained the same. Host and guest agree that there are serious
problems in America--including severe inflation and second-generation
welfare mothers--but how to deal with them? Keep the current, admittedly
flawed, system and tinker around the edges? Or change it radically, in
the knowledge that many people would be helped but many, at least in the
short run, hurt? JAC: :What I focused on most in the welfare problem was
... the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program, that piece of
welfare most odious to the population at large--3 million mothers and 8
million children. Most of those mothers are either teenagers or
30-to-40-year-old grandmothers, who are basically on the second
generation, and what do you do about them? It's easy to say, 'Put people
to work,' but putting those people to work is an incredibly difficult
problem."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.704
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6638
item Program Number S0463,
1044
"The Press and the Law"
Guests: Friendly, Fred W. :
Williams, C. Dickerman.
15 May 1981
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 119 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 176 : 26
Program details: A sizzling discussion of censorship, prior restraint,
libel, and the deliquescence of law under the modem Supreme Court. FF:
"How would you have voted on that [the Pentagon Papers] if you had been
one of those nine judges?" WFB: "I would have refused to vote on the
grounds I can't read fast enough.... It took the New York Times six
months to prepare the editorial material. They turned around and they
demanded a verdict from the Supreme Court in six or seven days." ...
CDW: "Now, it's been a part of the law of libel since earliest times,
since Blackstone and the colonial courts, that the state of mind of the
defendant is always relevant. For example, punitive damages were
allowable if the state of mind of the defendant was one of personal
hostility towards the plaintiff or if he knew what he was saying was
false."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.705
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6639
item Program Number S0464,
1045
"What to Do about Terrorism"
Guests: Sterling, Claire. :
Denton, Jeremiah.
5 June 1981
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 119 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 176 : 26
Program details: Senator Denton's subcommittee was investigating the
subject of Mrs. Sterling's highly controversial book: international
terrorism and the Soviets' role in it. Mrs. Sterling's conclusion: that
the Soviet Union is not the mastermind of terrorism ("that's a
comic-book concept to think there is a phantom mastermind in a
subterranean map room who pushes buttons"), but it is the provider of
"the wherewithal for the terrorist groups to become extremely efficient
at their craft and therefore to become an effective destabilizing
influence in democratic society." A chilling and well-informed
discussion that ranges from the camps where the Soviets train
Palestinian terrorists to the reasons we lost in Vietnam (JD: "It was
... a distortion of the perspective of our people toward that situation
which eventually resulted in its forfeiture").
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.706
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6640
item Program Number S0465,
1046
"John Kenneth Galbraith Looks Back"
Guests: Galbraith, John
Kenneth, 1908-2006.
5 June 1981
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 119 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 1
Program details: These two old friends and antagonists have a go at their
central point of disagreement, economics: what leads people to save and
to work, how government affects--positively or negatively--the nation's
prosperity, what is the morality of progressive taxation. One sample:
JKG: "Going back to deficits, how do you respond to an Administration
which is committing itself to continuing and increasing deficit
financing under conditions of high inflation. Are you in favor of that?"
WFB: "I am in favor of a lowered trajectory--" JKG: "I think that's a
yes or no question." WFB: "A yes or no question is something that you
will get from someone less bright than me."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.707
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ANCWU8U/
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6641
item Program Number S0466,
1101
"The Debate on American Security"
Guests: Barnet, Richard. :
Chace, James. : Nitze, Paul H.
12 June 1981
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 119 : 4
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 1
Program details: Is the best protection in the nuclear age a serious
arsenal and the will to regard it seriously? Or is it trust in the
Soviet Union? A crackling exchange, with our guests coming from every
point on the compass. One sample: PN: "The best way to phrase it, it
seems to me, was to look at the question whether it is better to be Red
than dead.... I'm inclined to think it is better to be Red than dead, if
that is the question, but I think that shouldn't be the question....
What we've tried to do over the entire period from 1946 to the present
is to so conduct affairs that that would not be the question...." RB: "I
don't think that one can assume that a Russian planner or an American
planner is going to look at this military balance in the same way." PN:
"I spent five years talking to those fellows and I think I have an
impression as to how they look at it, and I don't believe it's
inconsistent with what I've said."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.708
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6642
item Program Number S0467,
1102
"El Salvador, Christianity, and Marxism"
Guests: Novak,
Michael. : Halbert, John.
12 June 1981
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 119 : 5
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 2
Program details: Liberation theology, si o no? Father Halbert, who had
served for five years as a pastor in El Salvador, interprets Vatican II
as "extending God's salvific work" beyond "the limits of the structural
church." Messrs. Novak and Buckley draw the line at "Christian Marxism,
a juxtaposition," as WFB puts it, "some people have as much difficulty
with as, say, Christian Nazism." Along the way, we get a very well
informed discussion of the background and current conditions in El
Salvador and elsewhere in Latin America.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.709
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6643
item Program Number S0468,
1103
"A Policy for America in Angola and South Africa"
Guests: de
Borchgrave, Arnaud. : Solarz, Stephen J.
17 June 1981
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 119 : 6
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 2
Program details: The winds of change were blowing fiercely, with civil
war in Rhodesia (called Zimbabwe by its revolutionaries), Angola, and
South West Africa (called Namibia by its revolutionaries). In this
installment of
Firing
Line's
coverage of the region (first taken up in
040, with Conor Cruise O'Brien, and visited periodically ever since),
the discussion focuses on the question, Should the U.S. actively assist
guerrillas, like Jonas Savimbi in Angola, whom we judge to be more
democratic and less Soviet-inclined than their opponents? SS: "And when
the Angolans come to the conclusion that they want the Cubans withdrawn,
I think it's not an untenable assumption that they will go." WFB: "I
don't understand your assumption that the Cubans would go or not go
depending on what the Angolan people want."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.710
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6644
item Program Number S0469,
1104
"Can America Compete?"
Guests: Peterson, Peter G.
17 June 1981
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 119 : 7
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 3
Program details: Not only Japan but also West Germany, France, and in
some areas even Britain were leaving us in the dust in terms of trade.
What had gone wrong? Mr. Peterson goes through a number of areas in
which we have shackled ourselves with excessive government intervention.
He also gives a vivid description of the differences--familiar to many
Americans now, but not in 1981--between Japanese and American management
practices: There have been some fascinating studies done on Toyota
versus Ford ... For example, in the Toyota plant they have only seven
classifications; the Ford plant has over two hundred work
classifications." WFB: "Is that an aspect of union jurisdiction?" PGP:
"Yes, this is union jurisdiction. Now as a result, the Toyota employee
can handle several assignments; he doesn't have a narrow definition of
what he can and can't do. As to layers of overhead and so forth, in the
Toyota plant there were about five or six, and in the American plant
there were nearly a dozen.... There is a much less adversarial,
litigious quality to the relationship."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.711
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6645
item Program Number S0470,
1105
"Do We Need a Foreign Policy Doctrine?"
Guests: Ball, George
W.
15 July 1981
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 119 : 8
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 3
Program details: Mr. Ball is a stern critic of the Reagan Administration,
which he sees as viewing the Soviet Union as "the Antichrist threatening
civilization with its pernicious doctrines." But despite his background
as a member of various Democratic Administrations, there is nothing
party-line about his views on the Soviet Union, Israel, the draft,
Southeast Asia. GWB: "As far as armament is concerned, I support
increased defense expenditures ...The problem in the United States as
far as defense is concerned is that it isn't engage. The people are not
involved. The people will only be involved, in my judgment--" WFB: "With
a draft." GWB: "--when you have a draft, and unless you are prepared to
address this problem I think you are talking nonsense.... Today we are
faced with a struggle, which is basically a struggle around the
world--not necessarily just with the Soviet Union, but looking after all
kinds of situations around the world. This has to be a common effort of
the American people. It can't be confined just to the more unfortunate
people from an income point of view."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.715
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003JMFBAA
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6649
item Program Number S0471,
1106
"The Plight of the Democratic Party"
Guests: Cranston, Alan.
13 July 1981
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 119 : 9
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 4
Program details: With the advent of the 97th Congress, Mr. Cranston
became the Senate Minority Whip--the first Democrat to occupy that
position since the Eisenhower Administration. He reacts to the
Democratic debacle of 1980 by taking the high road, discussing issues
seriously (e.g., the inheritance tax and its devastating effect on
family-held businesses) and explaining how he is able to find common
ground with Democratic colleagues way to his right: "If I can work with
Republicans as extreme as Jesse Helms--and I have upon occasion--I can
certainly find common ground with everybody on the Democratic side. I
look for it; I find it; and we collaborate."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.712
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6646
item Program Number S0472,
1107
"Mr. Begin's Pre-Emptive Strike"
Guests: Solarz, Stephen J.
: Findley, Paul.
13 July 1981
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 119 : 10
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 4
Program details: It had been five weeks since Israel carried out its raid
on the nuclear weapons factory in Baghdad, swiftly, successfully,
and--according to the terms on which its aircraft had been acquired from
the United States--illegally. This exchange frequently reaches the
shouting stage, with Mr. Solarz maintaining that "Given a choice between
popularity and survival, it's understandable that Israel chose the
latter," Mr. Findley maintaining that, "Even if one accepts that Israel
had at stake its very survival, it committed an act of aggression, an
act of war, and because it used United States-supplied equipment, it
made us partners in that act," and Mr. Buckley not shouting, but
suggesting that "I find it extremely hard to understand the reasoning
that says you can only use American airplanes against Iraq after the A
bomb has been launched at Tel Aviv rather than the day before." ... PF:
"The New Yorker magazine pointed out that violence can never destroy
nuclear weapons." WFB: "They just did."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.713
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6647
item Program Number S0473,
1108
"The Question of Namibia"
Guests: Kalangula, Peter T. :
Neier, Aryeh, 1937-
17 July 1981
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 119 : 11
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 5
Program details: Father Kalangula's organization in South West Africa
(AKA Namibia) had won an internationally observed democratic election
against the Soviet client group, SWAPO (the South West Africa People's
Organization) but faced now the opposition of the Soviet-leaning forces
in the UN. Father Kalangula makes an impressive and moving case for his
side, as in this reply to the examiner, Aryeh Neier: "You said how it
would be difficult for political parties to be in prison during the
election. I think it is even harder when you have [two] political
organizations, one has a military wing and one has not, and when your
supporters are being subjected to murders and abductions--that is even
worse."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.716
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003GXE9TQ
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6650
item Program Number S0474,
1109
"A Traditionalist Concern for Europe"
Guests: Habsburg,
Otto, 1912-
17 July 1981
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 119 : 12
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 5
Program details: Combining depth of learning with breadth of experience,
Dr. von Habsburg ranges over European integration, decolonialization in
Africa, and the gerontocracy in the Soviet Union. One sample from this
illuminating hour: "OvH: I very much believe in the Anglo-Saxon system
personally, which means that the constitution has to grow slowly. We
have committed in Europe, all too frequently, the error of making an
intellectual constitution--" WFB: "Like Rousseau's for Poland." OvH:
"Exactly, and the result has been catastrophic, while the constitutions
which grow naturally, step by step, are those which are the most
successful, and I hope this will be our [Europe's] case, too."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.717
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6651
item Program Number S0475,
1110
"A Strategy for Cuba"
Guests: Navarro, Antonio.
15 July 1981
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 119 : 13
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 6
Program details: In 1958, Mr. Buckley tells us, "Mr. Navarro was one of a
group of well-to-do young Cubans who welcomed Fidel Castro, reacting as
they did adversely to the galloping corruption of the regime of
Fulgencio Batista, who a decade earlier had himself taken power as a
revolutionary reformer." But as the Castro regime evolved towards
totalitarianism, Mr. Navarro turned from it and joined the resistance
movement, under the code name "Tocayo," eventually taking part in the
planning for the Bay of Pigs. This freewheeling conversation frequently
turns, informatively, to Cuba's place in current geopolitics, but what's
worth the price of admission is Mr. Navarro's own story. WFB: "I should
like to begin by asking Mr. Navarro ...: Was Castro a Communist when he
entered Havana, or did the United States push him into the enemy camp?"
AN: "I do not think Mr. Castro was a Communist when he came to Havana.
In fact, I don't think Mr. Castro is a Communist today.... He is a
Castroite. I don't think he has the discipline, the spirit of sacrifice,
the dedication to be a true Communist."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.714
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003GXE9U0
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6648
item Program Number S0476,
1111
"Does the Warren Report on the Kennedy Assassination Hold Up?"
Guests: Blakey, G. Robert. : Belin, David W.
10 September 1981
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 119 : 14
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 6
Program details: Our guests start out wrangling unprofitably over whether
Mr. Blakey should have called Mr. Belin to testify before the House
Committee on Assassinations; but once we settle down to the substantive
matter, the interest level is high indeed. GRB: "Our disagreement with
the [Warren] Commission ultimately is based on supplementary evidence
... What they did they did well; it's what they didn't have access to."
WFB: "In other words, if you had been running the Warren Commission, you
would probably have come to their findings?" GRB: "I probably would
have, yes, on the evidence available to them. For example, they did not
know about the CIA-Mafia plots ... to kill Castro. That bore on the
possibility of a Castro retaliation.... They didn't have access to the
great wealth of information that we did about organized crime,
principally the conversations of the mob figures themselves discussing
John Kennedy, the hate that they had for him and his brother Robert
actually discussing their deaths.... While they had the tape of the
recording of the police officer [whose microphone was open during the
assassination] they did not subject it to the kind of sophisticated
acoustical and statistical analysis that we did."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.718
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003JMFBAK
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6652
item Program Number S0477, 1112,
1112R
"How to Win Arguments"
Guests: Rusher, William A., 1923- :
Miller, Howard.
10 September 1981, 28 February 1982
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 119 : 15-16
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 7
Program details: All in the family: WFB invites his colleague Bill Rusher
and Mr. Rusher's sometime colleague from their own television show, The
Advocates, to help him explore their common trade. Two samples: WAR: "My
book [titled How to Win Arguments (More Often than Not)] advises you not
to take untenable positions and then risk yourself on television
programs." ... HM: "Felix Frankfurter simply reversed himself in an
opinion several years after writing the first, and just candidly said in
the opinion, 'I've changed my mind, but better that wisdom comes later
than never.' " Note: Title on transcript is "How to Win an
Argument."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.719
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003GXE9UK
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6653
item Program Number S0478,
1113
"The Draft and the American Political Posture"
Guests:
Lehman, John. : Westmoreland, William C. (William Childs), 1914-2005. :
Nunn, Sam.
18 September 1981
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 119 : 17
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 7
Program details: In the imposing setting of the Senate Caucus Room, a
serious discussion with men who have been deeply involved in U.S.
military policy. They take up in greater detail the point raised by
George Ball a few weeks earlier (
Firing
Line
s0470): that the
all-volunteer army may be damaging both to our own morale and to other
countries' view of us. SN: "I don't think we're the kind of country that
for very long will tolerate a system that is, in effect, economic
conscription, and that's what we have now. We are not getting
participation in the military, except in the officer corps, of middle-
and certainly not upper-income America. If we ever have a war--and God
forbid that--we would see very quickly, I think, very severe protests
break out because it would be apparent that the son of the banker is not
out there fighting and dying, the son of the mill worker is. That's not
the kind of country we've been in the past, and I don't think it's the
kind of country we can be in the future if we are going to deter war. I
believe America's will is being questioned, not just by adversaries, but
also by our allies."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.720
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6654
item Program Number S0479,
1114
"What Has Happened to Liberal Republicanism?"
Guests:
Mathias, Charles McC. (Charles McCurdy), 1922-
18 September 1981
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 119 : 18
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 8
Program details: Senator Mathias knows liberal Republicanism from the
inside (his ADA rating in 1980 was 72, his AFL-CIO rating 100); he also
knows his political theory and history (he gives a delicious version of
the story of Edmund Burke and the Sheriffs of Bristol). One sample: WFB:
"One of the axioms of democracy is that you will vote for the
commonweal, not just what affects your own personal interest." CM: "In
theory you have to be informed to know what the commonweal is. You know
instinctively what your own interest is."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.721
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6655
item Program Number S0480,
1115
"Where Do We Go on Immigration?"
Guests: Smith, William
French, 1917-
1 October 1981
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 119 : 19
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 8
Program details: The Reagan Administration had just announced an
ambitious new program for curbing illegal immigration, and Mr. Smith was
point man in this effort. He makes the case calmly and effectively for
employer sanctions and explains the difficulties in attempting to
produce an uncounterfeitable identity card: (a) such a thing probably
can't be made ("We can't even prevent our twenty-dollar bills from being
counterfeited"); (b) even if it did, what would it be based on? Birth
certificate, Social Security card, Selective Service card-all of which,
as Mr. Buckley points out, are readily available on the black market in
Mexico City.
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.723
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6657
item Program Number S0481,
1116
"Is Modern Architecture Disastrous?"
Guests: Wolfe, Tom.
1 October 1981
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 119 : 20
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 9
Program details: A rip-roaring attack on the shibboleths of modern
architecture-and with a
Firing
Line
rarity, visual aids (illustrations
from Mr. Wolfe's book). TW: "The irony of this is all these forms were
created for the workers in the ruins and rubble of Germany after the
First World War under a Socialist government, and somehow, as if they
had bounced off Telstar, landed on Sixth Avenue, Park Avenue-practically
any avenue you want to name in any large American city.... Far from
housing workers these structures ... are housing the corporate giants of
America.... And they are all in worker-housing forms."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.722
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001E55X9S
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6656
item Program Number S0482,
1117
"The Myth of American Homogeneity"
Guests: Garreau, Joel.
15 October 1981
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 119 : 21
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 9
Program details: Mr. Garreau's thesis is that current political and
economic issues and changing demographics demand a changed view of
regional groupings in North America, cutting across present-day borders.
He argues persuasively that Alberta, say, has much more in common with
Colorado than with Ottawa, and that Colorado has more in common with
eastern British Columbia than it has with Atlanta. Like Mr. Wolfe,
above, he has brought a visual aid: a large map of North America divided
not into three major countries (plus the Caribbean) but into nine
regions, which he calls "nations," such as "the Foundry" (the industrial
Northeastern United States), "Ecotopia" (the U.S. Northwest and the
Canadian Far West), and "the Islands" (the Caribbean, including part of
Florida). What implications does he draw? "I'm not a separatist... I'm a
reporter. I'm saying that this is the way things are working now; that
this describes the sources of a lot of conflicts that are going through
our public affairs."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.724
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6658
item Program Number S0483,
1118
"Is There an Answer to Malthus?"
Guests: Simon, Julian.
15 October 1981
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 119 : 22
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 10
Program details: Throughout the Seventies, organizations like the Club of
Rome and Zero Population Growth had been raising the specter of Malthus:
too many people, not enough food, land, or breathable air. And
throughout that decade Mr. Simon had been arguing--as he does here,
pugnaciously but with a wealth of detail--that the answer to Malthus is
the human mind, human resourcefulness. As Mr. Buckley glosses it, "If
you don't have copper for telephone lines, but you do have satellites
that transmit messages, you're as well off as if you had an infinite
supply of copper." JS: "I think that we should confine ourselves to that
horizon over which our planning may make some important difference, and
I think that thinking of what may happen two or three hundred years from
now is far, far beyond that."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.725
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003GXE9UU
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6659
item Program Number S0484,
1119
"The Economic Lot of Minorities"
Guests: Sowell, Thomas,
1930- : Pilpel, Harriet F.
12 November 1981
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 119 : 23
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 10
Program details: Mr. Sowell had taken a great deal of flak from the
establishment for his dissection of cliches about racial discrimination,
but he simply makes his points and defies anyone to misunderstand him:
"People often say that I'm denying that there's racism. On the contrary,
racism exists everywhere around the world, down through history. That's
one of the reasons it's hard to use it as an empirical explanation for
anything. In the United States, for example, Puerto Ricans have lower
incomes than blacks. I don't know of anyone who believes Puerto Ricans
encounter more discrimination than blacks. Obviously there must be
something else involved besides discrimination." ...Examiner* Harriet
Pilpel: "Are you against labor unions?" Mr. Sowell: "You asked what were
some of the factors that stood in the way of black economic progress,
and I said that one of them was the labor union. That is a fact, and I'm
simply reporting facts, not prejudices."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.726
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003GXE9V4
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6660
item Program Number S0485,
1120
"William F. Buckley Jr. on the
Firing
Line
"
Guests: Pilpel,
Harriet F. : Green, Mark J. : Sobran, Joseph.
12 November 1981
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 119 : 24
Transcript: Box/Folder 177: 11
Program details: Abortion, supply-side economics, the Moral Majority, and
the Equal Rights Amendment all get a look in during this installment of
the semi-annual turning of the tables. And this time, our guests
sometimes get sufficiently caught up with one another that not all the
fire is directed at their host: Mrs. Pilpel: "You're attacking the
Constitution... What you're really saying is that the system devised by
the Founding Fathers was not a very good one ..." Mr. Sobran: "Let me
reinterpret my remarks in my own way. Congress has the obligation to
uphold the Constitution too. If the Court acts unconstitutionally, it
should take some sort of action."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.727
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003GXE9VO
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6661
item Program Number S0486,
1121
"How Does It Stand with Busing?"
Guests: Hawley, Willis D. :
Sedler, Robert.
20 November 1981
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 119 : 25
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 11
Program details: A brisk and productive exploration of the theoretical
basis and the practical effects of busing for school desegregation. RS:
"My submission is that the values embodied in the 14th Amendment--values
of racial equality, values of integration--dictate that there should be
a constitutional right to attend a racially integrated school to the
maximum extent feasible; that the only justification that a school board
can advance for not busing for integration ... is that the so-called
neighborhood school is administratively convenient to operate; and I
would submit that when you weigh administrative convenience against the
values embodied in the 14th Amendment, the value choice should be in
favor of the duty to integrate." WFB: "... In the first place, I don't
really think that any scholar who probed the origins of the 14th
Amendment would come to any such bizarre conclusion as your own ... But
you seem to be saying that to the extent that you discover that which
you find very valuable ... you feel perfectly free to bend the
instruments of the law to that purpose...." RS: "I base my argument on
historical constitutional values, not on a notion of empirical
policy."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.728
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6662
item Program Number S0487,
1122
"A View of Washington from the Ohio River Valley"
Guests:
Brown, John Y.
20 November 1981
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 119 : 26
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 12
Program details: Mr. Brown is a Democrat who takes the part of the
small-businessman and doesn't like bureaucracies, be they governmental
or corporate. So far (he had been elected just two years earlier) his
policies had been effective and popular. As he explains it, the reason
had less to do with ideology than with being administratively serious:
"We've got mostly all businessmen and -women in our administration and
that's why we are stimulated. I think when we get through we'll set up a
model operation of how government ought to be challenged and how it
ought to be cost effective."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.729
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6663
item Program Number S0488,
1123
"What Is There to Learn from the Killing of Dr. Tarnower?"
Guests: Trilling, Diana.
3 December 1981
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 119 : 27
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 12
Program details: The elegant Mrs. Trilling writing about a murder case?
Well, this was a particularly rich murder case in terms of its
resonances in our society, and she and Mr. Buckley explore them in
absorbing detail. DT: "How did I come to my judgment, my very
unfavorable feeling about Dr. Tarnower? It started with something that
we're not supposed to say: I didn't like his face." WFB: "His 'slithery
face,' your words." DT: "Yes, I said he looked like a reptile ... We all
judge by looks all the time, but we're not supposed to say so. It's just
one of our minor hypocrisies."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.730
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003GXE9VY
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6664
item Program Number S0489,
1124
"Why Are Our Intellectuals So Dumb?"
Guests: Hollander,
Paul. : Van den Haag, Ernest.
3 December 1981
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 119 : 28
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 13
Program details: "The study by Paul Hollander," Mr. Buckley begins, "is
terribly overdue. It has been the most conspicuous scandal of two
generations that a substantial number of Western intellectuals have been
seduced by monstrous social regimes." The "pilgrims" in the title of his
book, alas, refers not to people who have made the pilgrimage away from
totalitarianism, but simply, as Mr. Hollander's subtitle puts it, to
Travels of Western Intellectuals to the Soviet Union, China, and Cuba,
1928-1978. He passes along the raptures of dozens of these people,
ranging from Anna Louise Strong to Staughton Lynd, from Edmund Wilson to
Susan Sontag, from Tom Hayden to Harrison Salisbury. WFB: "Is it safe to
say that once you've learned political truths you are not again easily
deceived?" PH: "No, I'm afraid that's not quite true, because many
people who learned something from the case of the Soviet Union fell
again on China and on Cuba, and are now falling for Nicaragua right
after Cuba; so I think this quest for a good society outside your own is
endless."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.731
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003GXE9W8
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6665
item Program Number S0490,
1125
"The Question of Gold and the Current Economic Impasse"
Guests: Lehrman, Lewis. : Green, Mark J.
10 December 1981
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 119 : 29
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 13
Program details: Do we need to--and can we--revive the gold standard? Mr.
Lehrman's case is not airtight (as the questioning reveals), but it is
exuberant. Examiner Mark Green: "Do you trust the Reds more than the
Feds?" LL: "That's a rather nice way to put it." WFB: "I'd say it's
close." LL: "My belief is we certainly shouldn't trust the Reds and
there's no need for us to trust the Feds. I think working people
themselves know how to manage their monetary affairs and they don't need
seven members of a guardian elite in Washington to tell them how much
money they should hold."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.732
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6666
item Program Number S0491,
1126
"Who and What Are the Enemy in Central America?"
Guests:
Birns, Laurence. : Singer, Max.
10 December 1981
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 119 : 30
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 14
Program details: In Mr. Birns's first appearance on
Firing
Line
four
years earlier (s0278), he had maintained that Chile was the most
totalitarian country in Latin America. He still maintains that in
1981--and adds that "Nicaragua [under the Sandinistas] today probably
numbers amongst the 25--probably the 25th, 26th, or 27th most democratic
country in the world"--which isn't quite the perspective of his host or
his fellow guest. WFB: "Although we live in an age in which Castro was
possible, in which Pol Pot was possible, and in which Ho Chi Minh was
possible--and in which you admit that you did not anticipate the
direction that the Nicaraguan movement would take--nevertheless, here
you are saying about El Salvador exactly the same kind of thing that was
said in case after case after case, throughout this century, by people
who didn't anticipate what was the ideological fervor of people who are
determined to eliminate human freedom."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.733
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6667
item Program Number S0492,
1127
"A
Firing
Line
Debate: Resolved: That This House Approves the
Economic Initiatives of President Reagan-Part I"
Guests: Buckley,
William F. (William Frank), 1925-2008. : Bleiberg, Robert. : Laffer,
Arthur. : Galbraith, John Kenneth, 1908- : Lekachman, Robert. : Oakes,
John B.
7 January 1982
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 119 : 31
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 14
Program details: At the end of Ronald Reagan's first year in the White
House, an energetic debate before a Harvard audience. Two samples: WFB:
"The moral question to one side, [the notion] that by freeing the more
wealthy you are damaging, pari passu, the less wealthy is economically
illiterate. During President Carter's last year we were running at an
inflation rate of 13 per cent and achieving a negative growth rate.
Inflation does not, noblesse oblige, decline to afflict poor people."
... JKG: "Let us cease to think of economic policy as a matter of
liberalism or conservatism and retreat from hope and fantasy to
arithmetic. It's better, let us realize, to pay taxes than to suppress
investment with high interest rates. A balanced budget is better than a
big deficit that must be financed at high interest rates with further
adverse effects on investment."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.734
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6668
item Program Number S0493,
1128
"A
Firing
Line
Debate: Resolved: That This House Approves the
Economic Initiatives of President Reagan-Part II"
Guests: Buckley,
William F. (William Frank), 1925-2008. : Bleiberg, Robert. : Laffer,
Arthur. : Galbraith, John Kenneth, 1908- : Lekachman, Robert. : Oakes,
John B.
7 January 1982
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 119 : 31
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 15
Program details: At the end of Ronald Reagan's first year in the White
House, an energetic debate before a Harvard audience. Two samples: WFB:
"The moral question to one side, [the notion] that by freeing the more
wealthy you are damaging, pari passu, the less wealthy is economically
illiterate. During President Carter's last year we were running at an
inflation rate of 13 per cent and achieving a negative growth rate.
Inflation does not, noblesse oblige, decline to afflict poor people."
... JKG: "Let us cease to think of economic policy as a matter of
liberalism or conservatism and retreat from hope and fantasy to
arithmetic. It's better, let us realize, to pay taxes than to suppress
investment with high interest rates. A balanced budget is better than a
big deficit that must be financed at high interest rates with further
adverse effects on investment."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.735
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6669
item Program Number S0494,
1129
"The Polish Challenge"
Guests: Lukacs, John.
18 January 1982
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 119 : 32
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 15
Program details: Professor Lukacs has made a career of being a brilliant
contrarian, and whether or not one accepts his conclusions--in this
case, that the U.S. and NATO should do nothing about martial law in
Poland: it is simply part of the working out of the balance of power in
Europe--the intellectual fencing match is exhilarating. WFB: "Why do we
simply accept as axiomatic that the Soviet Union would go to war rather
than lose Poland? ..." JL: "Well, it would be a dangerous thing to
pretend that they won't." WFB: "Well, it would be a very dangerous thing
to go to war, too." ... JL: "This entire Cold War grew out of a mutual
misunderstanding which has very little to do with Communism; it involved
Russia and the United States. The United States, gradually after 1945,
seeing the Russians' brutal imposition of regimes in Eastern Europe,
believed that this had something to do with Communism. And it had
nothing to do with Communism; it had to do with the presence of the
Russian army in those countries."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.738
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6672
item Program Number S0495,
1130
"How Should We Deal with Taiwan?"
Guests: Holbrooke, Richard
C. : Judd, Walter.
18 January 1982
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 119 : 33
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 16
Program details: The Reagan Administration had just, after a bitter
debate, decided to send Taiwan the F5E fighter, instead of the FX that
Taiwan wanted. Many of Taiwan's friends, including Dr. Judd, feared a
slippery slope ("the Chinese mainland is reasonably convinced that if
the United States continues to retreat, we will downgrade our support of
the Republic of China on Taiwan to the point where it has no choice
except to give in"). Real politikers like Mr. Holbrooke think even the
FX is too much; we should accept the fact that there is one China and
its capital is Peking, and "American policy must be dictated by our
sense of our own national interest." For Mr. Buckley, the issue is that
"You can't be friendly with the Chinese people and with the Chinese
government. You can't be friendly to slaves and to slave masters. You've
got to choose."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.739
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6673
item Program Number S0496,
1131
"The Issues Involved in Local Control of Reading Matter"
Guests: Gabler, Mel. : Gabler, Norma. : Bonnell, Pamela.
11 January 1982
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 119 : 34
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 16
Program details: The Gablers are not professional educators; indeed,
neither of them went to college. They are self-described "ordinary
people" who were shocked one day by their 16-year-old's account of what
was in his civics textbook, and wound up launching a campaign to oversee
the content of Texas schoolbooks. It's partly, as Mr. Gabler puts it, "a
matter of indoctrination. For instance, in the government textbooks
you'll over and over have little sentences about the need for government
control, government regulation, government power, etc.--never any
emphasis on individualism." But it's also, as Mrs. Gabler says, "the
lack of teaching the basic skills. That's not what makes the news. The
articles that have been written about us are that we've taken books out
of the library, taken dictionaries out. And the interesting thing is
that we have spent our lives on the lack of the teaching of basic
skills." Miss Bonnell, in turn, is shocked at folks like these presuming
to criticize the professionals ("We all have the right to bad taste"). A
lively, if not always well focused, hour.
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.736
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ANCWUHQ
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6670
item Program Number S0497,
1132
"An Energy Policy for the Reagan Administration"
Guests:
Pitts, Frank.
11 January 1982
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 119 : 35
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 17
Program details: OPEC had been less uncooperative lately, but, as Mr.
Buckley puts it, "Anything the Saudi Arabians can do to be helpful
today, they can do in the other direction tomorrow." A very instructive
session with a man who has been involved in the energy industry since
the Second World War, who believes passionately that "we in this country
should become energy self-sufficient as rapidly as we can," and who
offers clear advice on how that goal could be achieved. FP: "We in this
country should move in the direction of increasing our oil, our natural
gas, and our coal, three large items that [account for] 91 per cent of
our total consumption of energy in the United States ... I also believe
we should help develop, as much as we can within reason, all types of
alternative sources of energy." WFB: "Including nuclear?" FP: "Yes, sir,
including nuclear."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.737
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6671
item Program Number S0498,
1133
"Are Reagan's Policies Opposed to the Workingman?"
Guests:
Winpisinger, William.
2 March 1982
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 119 : 36
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 17
Program details: A sometimes heated debate with a dyed-in the-wool union
man on unemployment and inflation and the press's treatment of President
Carter; but first, deliciously, on Mr. Winpisinger's raising the rents
on a union building in Washington, D.C.: WFB: "I was making a reference
to the current contention over your insisting on a 15 per cent raise for
all people who use your building, which some people have found
contradicts the normal rhetoric by which you blame everybody who raises
prices." WW: "Not at all. That's exactly the kind of thing that
unfamiliarity with facts always breeds. ... We were operating that
building at a loss--pure and simply economic loss--and there had not
been a rent increase in some seven years ... and so our general
secretary/ treasurer ... elected to impose a rent increase that would at
least reach the break-even point. Mr. Nader was ... the major tenant in
the property ... He resented the magnitude of the increase ..., and we
had some words about it, and I finally recommended to Mr. Nader that
since he owns a building himself... if the modest rent we were charging
was that onerous, he ought to move his whole operation down to his
building, where the square footage rent is more than twice as much as
we're charging him . . . And his response to that was, 'Well, my
goodness, we rent to doctors and lawyers and bankers.'"
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.742
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6676
item Program Number S0499, 1134,
1134R
"Is Italy Coming Apart?"
Guests: Gardner, Richard N.
2 March 1982, 13 June 1982
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 119 : 37-38
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 18
Program details: "Scholars and journalists have grown old," Mr. Buckley
begins, "trying to figure out exactly how it is that Italy manages. I
mean, manages to survive. Inflation 19 percent, unemployment 9 per cent,
730 terrorist attacks last year, 16 governments in 41 years..." Mr.
Gardner, who deeply loves the country where he served as his own
country's eyes and ears for four years, explains: "The Italians are a
fantastically gifted people. They export in a very successful way. We
see it around us, whether it's Italian wines, shoes, fashions, apparel,
industrial machinery." WFB: "And they have a very industrious black
economy." RNG: "They have an economy some estimate as 20 percent to 25
per cent of the gross national product which is not even recorded. This
is the classic Italian way of coping. The Italian people, for centuries,
have survived by evading government. Many of the unwise regulations
which weigh heavily on the big companies are avoided by the small
companies, which either are exempt officially or exempt themselves ..."
He adds, with reference to the ports Italy provides for the Sixth
Fleet,that "The Italians have been an ally second to none and they don't
get the recognition."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.743
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6677
item Program Number S0500,
1135
"The Council on Foreign Relations and Its Critics"
Guests:
Lord, Winston.
1 March 1982
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 120 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 18
Program details: The Council on Foreign Relations--along with the
Trilateral Commission, to which Mr. Lord also belongs--comes under
vigorous criticism from both the Right and the Left for being too
Eastern Establishment, too secretive, too internationalist. Mr. Lord
wryly defends his organization ("The Council takes no position as a
corporate body. Any group that includes Andy Young, George Will, Arthur
Schlesinger, and Norman Podhoretz, for example, can't agree on
anything"), and talks about some of the difficulties maneuvering in
international waters post Vietnam.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.740
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6674
item Program Number S0501,
1136
"In What Sense Are Human Beings Angelic?"
Guests: Adler,
Mortimer Jerome, 1902-2001.
1 March 1982
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 120 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 19
Program details: With a favorite
Firing
Line
guest, a serious discussion
of the nature of angels and what Mr. Adler calls "angelistic fallacies."
An angel, he points out, is "a purely spiritual being, a mind without a
body"; he quotes Thomas Aquinas's explanation that angels must assume a
body to appear on earth--"as you would assume a coat or a mask when you
go to a masquerade ball"--"because they must make a sensible appearance
to the human beings that they are carrying God's messages to."
Angelistic fallacies involve assuming that men are like angels:
"Socrates keeps saying that knowledge is virtue. If a man knows what is
right he will do what is right. Well, an angel, if he knows what is
right, will do what is right, but a man won't."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.741
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6675
item Program Number S0502,
1137
"The Future of Our Relations with Mainland China"
Guests:
Fairbank, John King, 1907-
2 April 1982
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 120 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 19
Program details: Today's session with one of the Old China Hands
criticized by Joe McCarthy sets out as clearly as can be the two sides
in the China debate: JKF: "You know, I have to begin by correcting your
remarks about me. This is a good
Firing
Line
opportunity. I wasn't a
supporter of Chairman Mao; I was a reporter of Chairman Mao, and I still
am. They had a revolution in China, and it's the thinking that you
represent which is one of our chief problems--not to accept the facts of
life." WFB: "Well, you say you were not a supporter of Mao's revolution.
I will now quote from you: 'The Maoist revolution is, on the whole, the
best thing that has happened to the Chinese people in many centuries.' "
JKF: "Yes. What was the date?" WFB: "'72. Now, have you changed your--"
JKF:"Can you say the opposite?" WFB: "What's that?" JKF: "Can you say
the opposite?" WFB: "Without any problem at all, in behalf at least of
several million Chinese who were killed by Mao Tse-tung, and hundreds of
thousands of intellectuals who were imprisoned by him." JKF: "The
present view of Mao is very disillusioned, and it comes from the last
decade of his reign, when so many people were damaged and China was
setback.... The point I'm making is that you've got to begin with
history."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.744
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6678
item Program Number S0503,
1138
"The Libertarian Credo"
Guests: Machan, Tibor R. : Van den
Haag, Ernest.
2 April 1982
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 120 : 4
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 20
Program details: According to Mr. Machan, the libertarian credo is
actually quite simple to state: "The government's business is to protect
the rights of the people of the society from foreign aggression and from
criminals. Anything else that needs to be done should be done by the
people of the society." A zestful exploration of some of the
implications-- from, Can we have a CIA? to Would you let orphans starve?
to this exchange, which begins with the examiner*, Ernest van den Haag,
saying, "For instance, we prohibit necrophiliac action; in other words,
you cannot legally try to go to a cemetery and have intercourse with the
dead. We prohibit--" WFB: "Would that be a victimless crime?" EvdH:
"According to Mr. Machan it would be. That's my point." TM: "Why didn't
you ask me before you said that?" EvdH: "I will ask you in just a
moment." TM: "You would have invaded a cemetery, so it would be
trespassing, number one, right?" EvdH: "I suppose it is a--" TM: "That's
not a victimless crime." EvdH: "No. The dead have no juridical
personality, but let that go."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.745
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003JMFBAU
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6679
item Program Number S0504,
1139
"Alternative Responses to Repression in Poland"
Guests:
Rurarz, Zdzislaw.
15 April 1982
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 120 : 5
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 20
Program details: At the time of his defection, Mr. Buckley recalls, Mr.
Rurarz had released a statement saying: "I can no longer represent the
present regime, which denies the fundamental rights of the Polish
people. There is freedom in the United States, and I will carry on in
the struggle against the military regime in Poland." This proves to be
an illuminating exploration, starting with our grain exports to Poland,
but soon widening to include the Soviet Union's reaction to Solidarity,
the disillusion with dogmatic Marxism, and the state of detente. ZR: "I
was seeing in Poland all the time the drive for a change... the very
fact that more than one million of the Communist Party members in Poland
joined the Solidarity movement. I myself was not a member of the
Solidarity movement, but I was not hiding my sympathy for Solidarity.
When the Solidarity delegation was coming with Lech Walesa to Tokyo, I
received them. I made a reception for them. I invited the Japanese,
although the [Polish] government was very unhappy about that....I just
was believing until the last moment that maybe they will come to reason,
that maybe the system will change, but then I lost hope."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.746
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6680
item Program Number S0505,
1140
"Where to Go on Prison Reform"
Guests: Colson, Charles W.
15 April 1982
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 120 : 6
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 21
Program details: During his time in prison for the part he played in
Watergate, Mr. Colson had had a religious conversion and had determined
to spend the rest of his life ministering to prisoners, white-collar and
violent alike. On this show he movingly describes his own experience of
prison and urges an American version of the Thatcher reforms going
forward in Britain, in which "non-violent criminals are sentenced not to
prison but to community service. Time in prison is interminable. There
is no way to describe it....Corporal punishment would, in the eyes of
the inmate, be more humane, but the impact on society would be
disastrous."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.747
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6681
item Program Number S0506,
1141
"What's Left of the Idea of Federalism?"
Guests: Koch, Ed,
1924-
4 May 1982
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 120 : 7
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 21
Program details: Mr. Buckley reminds us that Mayor Koch was re-elected in
1981 with 75 percent of the vote, running on both his native Democratic
ticket and the Republican ticket. He demonstrates here the qualities
that make him so popular in the City--he's feisty and funny, he views
the rest of the country as duty-bound to support New York, and he has a
basic grasp of certain economic realities: "New York is an area that has
a lot of very poor people. Now you can say, 'Why don't you tax the hell
out of the very rich?' Then the very rich will leave. You have to have
reasonable taxation. There was a time when New York City wanted to put a
really socko tax on estates, thinking the people who are dead are not
going to care. But the people who were living, who worried about that
new estate tax, said they were moving out of the City if they imposed
it, and started to move--this was under Beame, not under me--and New
York City had to rescind that tax."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.750
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6684
item Program Number S0507,
1142
"Looking Back on LBJ"
Guests: Dugger, Ronnie. : Valenti,
Jack.
4 May 1982
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 120 : 8
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 22
Program details: Mr. Valenti loves and admires his former boss. Mr.
Dugger loathes him, at least partly on the unusual ground that Johnson
was "actuated by pre-nuclear-terror formulations of conceptions like
patriotism, honor, courage, and these pre-nuclear-terror formulations,
unexamined in a seated President, are dangerous to the human race." Mr.
Valenti comes right back: "I recall in two hundred meetings on Vietnam,
it was Johnson's inescapable fear of starting World War III... that
caused him to do what later critics assaulted him on as a great
omission, and that is to go in and win the war. He held back. He fought
a limited war ... He never even countenanced the use of any kind of
nuclear weapons." Never the twain shall meet--but there is solid
information (e.g., on the 1965 intervention in the Dominican Republic)
mixed with the verbal fisticuffs.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.751
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6685
item Program Number S0508,
1143
"The Future of Philanthropy: Part I"
Guests: Hunter, David
R. : Marting, Leeda P. : Lyman, Richard W.
29 April 1982
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 120 : 9
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 22
Program details: The Council on Foundations was meeting in Detroit,
bringing together, as Mr. Buckley puts it, "the people who give away two
and one half billion dollars per year." The first of these shows is in
the normal
Firing
Line
format; in the second show, the floor is opened
to questions from a dozen other foundation executives there gathered.
The topics of this lively discussion include what sorts of things
foundations have funded and should fund, and whether, given their tax
status, they are in fact spending their benefactors' money or the
taxpayers' money. RWL: "The contributions that foundations make do
change over time.... In the 1920s and '30s, for example, foundations
were critically important in the development of science in this country
and in the world, and played a part they could not possibly play today
when science has become so much more expensive ... The contemporary
revolution in biology has its roots in developments that were sponsored
by foundations, particularly the Rockefeller Foundation, back in the
inter-war period." . . . DRH: "Foundations are not open enough to
supporting, particularly, people on the Left in critical kinds of
activities." WFB: "Isn't that really an abstract position? ... There is
a kind of tropism to dissent that causes some people to think it ought
to be subsidized, even if it is very stupid." RWL: "In order to get the
good dissent, you often have to subsidize some of the stupid dissent,
because you can't always tell the two apart in the beginning." NOTE: The
transcript for this episode is currently unavailable.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.748
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6682
item Program Number S0509,
1144
"The Future of Philanthropy: Part II"
Guests: Hunter, David
R. : Marting, Leeda P. : Lyman, Richard W.
29 April 1982
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 120 : 9
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 23
Program details: The Council on Foundations was meeting in Detroit,
bringing together, as Mr. Buckley puts it, "the people who give away two
and one half billion dollars per year." The first of these shows is in
the normal
Firing
Line
format; in the second show, the floor is opened
to questions from a dozen other foundation executives there gathered.
The topics of this lively discussion include what sorts of things
foundations have funded and should fund, and whether, given their tax
status, they are in fact spending their benefactors' money or the
taxpayers' money. RWL: "The contributions that foundations make do
change over time.... In the 1920s and '30s, for example, foundations
were critically important in the development of science in this country
and in the world, and played a part they could not possibly play today
when science has become so much more expensive ... The contemporary
revolution in biology has its roots in developments that were sponsored
by foundations, particularly the Rockefeller Foundation, back in the
inter-war period." . . . DRH: "Foundations are not open enough to
supporting, particularly, people on the Left in critical kinds of
activities." WFB: "Isn't that really an abstract position? ... There is
a kind of tropism to dissent that causes some people to think it ought
to be subsidized, even if it is very stupid." RWL: "In order to get the
good dissent, you often have to subsidize some of the stupid dissent,
because you can't always tell the two apart in the beginning."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.749
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6683
item Program Number S0510,
1145
"Shall We Go with a Budget-Balancing Constitutional Amendment?"
Guests: Davidson, James Dale. : Heilbroner, Robert.
15 June 1982
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 120 : 10
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 23
Program details: Mr. Davidson's organization--as we have heard before on
Firing
Line
(s0365, s0412)--was pressing for a constitutional convention
for the purpose of producing a Balanced Budget Amendment; so far it had
lined up 31 states, out of the 34 needed. The resistance that would wind
up sinking the attempt stemmed in part from opposition to the amendment
itself, in part from fears of a runaway convention that might, as WFB
quotes one critic, "repeal the Bill of Rights." JDD: "If three-quarters
of the states want to repeal the Bill of Rights, we're in a hopeless
position vis-a-vis the Bill of Rights anyway." Mr. Heilbroner addresses
the substantive matter of the deficit in this good-tempered exchange:
"It's very important to have in mind that there are 'good deficits' and
'bad deficits.' And if one could assure ... that the government only
borrows to finance capital projects like the Panama Canal or the
Manhattan Project or the national road system ..., I can see absolutely
no difference between the government borrowing and incurring a deficit
for that purpose and a corporation. Furthermore, corporations do not pay
back their debts. They roll them over."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.752
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6686
item Program Number S0511,
1146
"How Much Is Secrecy Hurting the U.S.?"
Guests: Teller,
Edward, 1908-2003.
15 June 1982
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 120 : 11
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 24
Program details: An exalting hour with the most humane of warriors, who
says, "I have lived through two world wars. I don't want to live through
a third one." In response to this show's title question, Dr. Teller
contends that "Short-term secrets are both necessary and effective. A
secret that is supposed to be kept for more than a year will not be a
secret from our opponents, may be a secret from our allies, and will
help to confuse the American people.... And since they are the
decision-makers in this country, they have a need to know": to know, for
example, exactly what might be done with anti-missile technology to
really defend the country, as opposed to continuing with "an arms race
of more and more of the same."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.753
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6687
item Program Number S0512,
1201
"What Was Special about 1980?"
Guests: White, Theodore
Harold, 1915-
23 June 1982
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 97 : 9
Publicity File: Box/Folder 120 : 12
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 24
Program details: For twenty years, as Mr. Buckley reminds us, "Mr. White
had given us a superb chronicle of American life through the prism of
our presidential campaigns, exploring how they exemplify, as he puts it
here, our search for equality and ... for opportunity." The thesis he
presents in this rich discussion is that, "every generation, America
remakes itself," and that the era that began with the GI bill in 1945
came to an end in 1980: "I'm speaking of a particular time in American
history when ... we believed that if we could reach the Moon, we could
cure cancer, wipe out poverty, stop crime in the streets, and-- the
phrase you've heard so often--'If we can reach the Moon, why can't we
clean up the air?' " WFB: "Yes, or make Jane Fonda sane." TW: "That I
think is beyond the reach of reality or any reach. What you have is, so
many good things that we tried to do went too far. They went beyond the
limits of the capacity of the nation to do."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.754
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6688
item Program Number S0513,
1202
"The Odyssey of a Southern Liberal"
Guests: Abram, Morris B.
23 June 1982
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 120 : 13
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 25
Program details: Mr. Abram, whose public career began as a prosecutor at
Nuremberg and an administrator of the Marshall Plan, is a life long
civil-rights and civil-liberties activist who is not too active to take
time to think--for example, about the limits of civil disobedience,
about the ideal of academia, about insanity as a criminal defense. MBA:
"Martin Luther King, when he practiced civil disobedience, was always
willing to go to jail.... He knew that the civilized society, with its
constraints of law, protected him and protected his movement, and it was
too valuable to be forsaken by him." WFB: "So you distinguish Martin
Luther King from William Sloane Coffin and Dr. Spock?" MBA:
"Absolutely."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.755
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6689
item Program Number S0514,
1203
"Voting Rights and the Southern Legacy"
Guests: Helms,
Jesse.
7 July 1982
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 120 : 14
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 25
Program details: Senator Helms was one of only eight senators to protest
the new extension of the Voting Rights Act, which put certain states and
parts of states that had "historical patterns of discrimination" under
special rules. He defends himself more than ably against charges that
his motivation for doing so was racism. JH: "It's like Thomas Babington
Macaulay said about the House of Commons back in 1852. He said,
unfortunately too many members of this body are more interested in the
security of their seats than in the security of their country. This was
an illustration of it in the United States Senate and it was a sad
spectacle."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.756
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6690
item Program Number S0515,
1204
"The Political Future as Viewed by a Young Liberal and a Young
Conservative"
Guests: Green, Mark J. : Phillips, Kevin.
7 July 1982
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 120 : 15
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 26
Program details: It's amusing, in retrospect, to hear these two
best-selling pundits (not joined in this error by their host) explain
how badly Ronald Reagan and his team misjudged the basis for his
electoral success. Mr. Phillips: "In essence, Ronald Reagan is in some
trouble because he represents, partially, a misreading of what the
election was about-a confluence in time of a series of what we really
have to think of as radicalisms in historical terms-whether it be the
New Right, the arch supply-siders, the TV-radio fundamentalists, the
one-issue groups. It doesn't knit together in the old conservative
sense." ... Mr. Green: "Reagan got so much of what he wanted [from
Congress]-it's the Chinese curse, getting what you aspire to-that he has
lost what he is so brilliant at, a scapegoat."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.757
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6691
item Program Number S0516,
1205
"Should We Default Poland?"
Guests: Rohatyn, Felix.
21 July 1982
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 120 : 16
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 26
Program details: Poland, in which martial law still had not been lifted
after seven months, was unable to pay the interest on its foreign debt.
But instead of declaring Poland in default, the U.S. Government had lent
it the money to make its interest payments. Mr. Buckley asks Mr.
Rohatyn--the man who had kept New York City from going into default--to
explore the question "why great big grown-up banks lend money to
hostile, insolvent governments." The answer is often technical, but host
and guest give us enough detail to keep up. FR: "One ought to consider
that credits are a strategic material, and ought to be handled on a
government-to-government basis, and it ought to be part of our overall
set of discussions and negotiations with the Soviet Union."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.762
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6696
item Program Number S0517,
1206
"A Prayer Amendment?"
Guests: Kilpatrick, James Jackson,
1920-
21 July 1982
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 120 : 17
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 27
Program details: The Reagan Administration and allies in the Senate were
attempting to undo the Supreme Court decision of Engel v. Vitale, which
had banned corporate prayer in public schools. Messrs. Buckley and
Kilpatrick, usually found on the same side of an argument, disagree on
this one, in an exhilarating exchange. JJK: "I keep coming back to
minority rights, the rights of the one individual, which you have
defended all of your professional life." WFB "I defend the right of the
individual against abridgment, but I don't say the way to assert his
right is to immobilize the majority."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.763
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6697
item Program Number S0518,
1207
"Is There a Defense beyond the ABM?"
Guests: Graham, Daniel
O. : Graham, William R.
26 July 1982
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 120 : 18
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 27
Program details: The two Grahams (no relation) unravel for us the
complexities of what President Reagan would, the following spring, adopt
as his Strategic Defense Initiative (quickly dubbed "Star Wars" by its
opponents). Here is Dr. Graham on the making of our first Minuteman
system back in the Fifties, in reply to those who say a space-based
defense is a chimera: "We didn't know how to make solid propellant
rockets of intercontinental size. We didn't know if you could launch
these things from holes in the ground, which is a very tough technical
problem. In four years we had the force operational."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.764
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6698
item Program Number S0519,
1208
"Looking Back on Senator Joe McCarthy [1982]"
Guests:
Reeves, Thomas C., 1936- : Lee, Robert E.
15 July 1982
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 120 : 19
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 28
Program details: Joe McCarthy had been the subject of Mr. Buckley's
second book, and would be the subject of his forty-fourth book (see
Firing
Line
s1208); Mr. Lee was a friend of McCarthy's; Mr. Reeves had
come, through the course of his research, to like McCarthy, though not
necessarily to admire him. An often-moving discussion of the man and of
the consequences of his actions. Mr. Reeves: "There are two things that
I learned ... in my six years of research ... that I was shocked
about.... One, I discovered he was a very warm human being with a lot of
positive qualities. But secondly, and this was what really stunned me, I
discovered that at least by February 1950 McCarthy became a true
believer. He is not the wholly cynical, amoral creature who appears in
literature. Not at all, and this makes him much more dangerous."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.761
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6695
item Program Number S0520,
1209
"Have We Misread the Fifties?"
Guests: Hart, Jeffrey Peter,
1930- : Leonard, John, 1939-
26 July 1982
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 120 : 20
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 28
Program details: The decade that was the background for the previous show
becomes the subject of this one. Mr. Hart maintains that the Fifties, so
far from being a torpid and conformist time, were full of excitement.
(Mr. Buckley, who had founded his magazine smack in the middle of that
decade, would scarcely disagree.) JH: "When you have a decade in which
the most admired actresses are Grace Kelly and Audrey Hepburn on the one
hand, and Brigitte Bardot and Marilyn Monroe on the other, you have a
decade of creatively contradictory impulses." JL: "What I like about
[Mr. Hart's] book is that it didn't pretend that the Fifties didn't
produce the energy that created whatever happened afterward. There's
always reciprocal relations between the generations, and this is
splendid."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.765
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6699
item Program Number S0521,
1210
"The Economy and the Blacks: Part I"
Guests: Jackson, Jesse,
1941-
13 July 1982
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 120 : 21
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 29
Program details: Operation PUSH was holding its annual convention, on the
theme "Black America: An Economic Common Market." The idea, as Mr.
Buckley explains it, "being to explore means of using black purchasing
power to stimulate economic activity and coordination." Reverend Jackson
is regarded as less radical than when he first appeared on the public
scene--but he still serves it up pretty strong. WFB: "Your figures
always astonish me. I've heard you use that figure before about 60
million blacks have been killed as a result of American slaving boats,
but only 650,000 blacks were imported in the history of American
slavery. So how did you jump from 650,000 to 60 million?" JJ: "It could
mean that the rest of them were left at sea or left on shores. You see,
I--" WFB: "I don't think you mean that. I don't think you mean that
seriously." JJ: "I am as impressed with Lerone Bennett's figures and
projections or with Du Bois's figures and projections or George
Padmore's figures and projections as you would be with some white
historian's analysis. You see? So I have a set of figures and you have a
set of figures."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.759
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TZ8GJ8K
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6693
item Program Number S0522,
1211
"The Economy and the Blacks: Part II"
Guests: Jackson,
Jesse, 1941-
13 July 1982
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 120 : 21
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 29
Program details: Operation PUSH was holding its annual convention, on the
theme "Black America: An Economic Common Market." The idea, as Mr.
Buckley explains it, "being to explore means of using black purchasing
power to stimulate economic activity and coordination." Reverend Jackson
is regarded as less radical than when he first appeared on the public
scene--but he still serves it up pretty strong. WFB: "Your figures
always astonish me. I've heard you use that figure before about 60
million blacks have been killed as a result of American slaving boats,
but only 650,000 blacks were imported in the history of American
slavery. So how did you jump from 650,000 to 60 million?" JJ: "It could
mean that the rest of them were left at sea or left on shores. You see,
I--" WFB: "I don't think you mean that. I don't think you mean that
seriously." JJ: "I am as impressed with Lerone Bennett's figures and
projections or with Du Bois's figures and projections or George
Padmore's figures and projections as you would be with some white
historian's analysis. You see? So I have a set of figures and you have a
set of figures."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.758
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TZ8GV4C
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6692
item Program Number S0523,
1212
"The Problem: A Statesman Writing History"
Guests:
Kissinger, Henry, 1923-
15 July 1982
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 120 : 22
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 30
Program details: The discussion focuses less on Mr. Kissinger's latest
book than on foreign policy past and present. Think what one may about
some of Mr. Kissinger's policies, there is no doubt that one is in here
the hands of a master. HK: "One of the dilemmas of foreign policy is
that when your scope for action is greatest, your knowledge on which to
base such action is at a minimum; if you wait until all the facts are
in, then the scope for creative action may disappear. When the Germans
occupied the Rhineland in 1936, how did we know that they intended an
aggression? Since one didn't know, one didn't do anything. By 1940,
everybody knew that the Germans intended an aggression, and they paid
for that knowledge with 20 million lives."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.760
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6694
item Program Number S0524,
1213
"Is There a New China?"
Guests: Butterfield, Fox.
24 September 1982
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 120 : 23
Transcript: Box/Folder 177 : 30
Program details: Another look at Mao's China (
Firing
Line
s0502, with
John King Fairbank), this time with a former student of Professor
Fairbank's. Mr. Butterfield's book was regarded as a landmark, and
today's discussion, rich in detail, ranges from the price a peasant gets
for his grain, to the changes in the contacts Chinese are permitted to
have with foreigners, to the steps Deng Xiaoping has taken to avoid a
personality cult. FB: "When Deng, in 1978, was fighting for his own
political--I won't say survival, but trying to increase his power and--"
WFB: "His ascendancy, yes." FB: "His ascendancy--and get rid of a number
of people who were still taking the Maoist point of view, Deng allowed
the wall posters [on which citizens could criticize the government] to
go up. They were largely critical of Mao and of the people who were
still siding with Mao, the so-called 'whatever faction'--whatever
Chairman Mao said is correct, was correct then, is still correct now.
Hua Guofeng was obviously a target. But then when the posters began to
go a bit further, when they began to call into question the whole
Communist system and when they attacked Deng in particular and said that
he too was a despot, then Deng moved to clampdown."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.766
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6700
item Program Number S0525,
1214
"Are the Churches Too Political?"
Guests: Armstrong, James.
24 September 1982
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 120 : 24
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 1
Program details: Bishop Armstrong, who had prominently opposed, inter
alia, U.S. involvement in Vietnam and the execution of Gary Gilmore,
maintains that "political activity has not lured the member churches of
the National Council away from the historic faith ... in perfect keeping
with that which has gone before." One sample: JA: "We have to get into a
discussion of who the barbarian is. How can we identify the barbarian?"
WFB: "I can do that with lightning speed. It is the Soviet Union which
fits every specification of the barbarian invented by the imagination of
man."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.767
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6701
item Program Number S0526,
1215
"A
Firing
Line
Debate: Resolved: That the Feds Should Get Out of
Higher Education-Part I"
Guests: Buckley, William F. (William
Frank), Jr., 1925-2008. : Van den Haag, Ernest. : Sobran, Joseph. :
Brookhiser, Richard. : Giamatti, A. Bartlett. : Botstein, Leon. :
Williams, Dennis. : Bernstein, Alison.
5 October 1982
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 120 : 25
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 1
Program details: All the participants care passionately about education,
but even within the respective teams they agree on little else. Mr. van
den Haag goes so far as to entertain the heretical view that "a college
education is not absolutely essential if you want to become a good
citizen and a productive one." (Mr. Botstein counters that "fewer than
20 per cent of high-school graduates learn any geography, fewer than 10
per cent have a foreign language, and fewer than a third do more than
geometry"-which would seem to suggest a remedy other than four years of
college.) Good moments, but not the liveliest of these debates.
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.768
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6702
item Program Number S0527,
1216
"A
Firing
Line
Debate: Resolved: That the Feds Should Get Out of
Higher Education-Part II"
Guests: Buckley, William F. (William
Frank), Jr., 1925-2008. : Van den Haag, Ernest. : Sobran, Joseph. :
Brookhiser, Richard. : Giamatti, A. Bartlett. : Botstein, Leon. :
Williams, Dennis. : Bernstein, Alison.
5 October 1982
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 120 : 25
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 1
Program details: All the participants care passionately about education,
but even within the respective teams they agree on little else. Mr. van
den Haag goes so far as to entertain the heretical view that "a college
education is not absolutely essential if you want to become a good
citizen and a productive one." (Mr. Botstein counters that "fewer than
20 per cent of high-school graduates learn any geography, fewer than 10
per cent have a foreign language, and fewer than a third do more than
geometry"-which would seem to suggest a remedy other than four years of
college.) Good moments, but not the liveliest of these debates.
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.769
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6703
item Program Number S0528,
1217
"Return to Education"
Guests: Adler, Mortimer Jerome,
1902-2001.
27 October 1982
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 120 : 26
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 2
Program details: Americans are spending more time in school than ever
before, but with what result? WFB's touchstone illustration: "In 1858,
60 per cent of the American people were literate. In 1960, 85 per cent
were literate, and during that period we traveled between the debates of
Lincoln-Douglas and Kennedy-Nixon." Mr. Adler's preferred solution: "If
I could say this without being heard by anybody I would abolish all
schools of education." Meanwhile, he advises, cultivate a proper
perspective on academic specialization: "No one can be a specialist any
longer in more than one field. I feel just as comfortable being a
generalist in the 20th century as Aristotle was in the 4th century B.C.
... When I talk about an educated person, I'm talking about a generally
cultivated human being, not a specialist."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.771
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6705
item Program Number S0529,
1218
"The Roosevelt Legacy"
Guests: Prichard, Edward F.
27 October 1982
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 120 : 27
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 2
Program details: Mr. Prichard was a dazzlingly Bright Young Man when he
went to Washington in 1940; he never came to the prominence predicted
for him because in 1949 he was convicted of vote fraud for stuffing a
ballot box. But he proves a delightful and very acute reminiscer about
those heady days beginning when, at age 30, he found himself, as WFB
puts it, "in almost daily contact with President Roosevelt." EFP: "The
NRA [National Recovery Administration], I think, as one of the [Court]
opinions said, was delegation of power run riot. And I think the NRA was
largely a failure." WFB: "Mr. Roosevelt called it 'the most important
and far-reaching legislation ever enacted by any American President.'"
EFP: "Typical puffery.... Presidents can be silly, even the greatest
ones."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.770
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ANCWREW
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6704
item Program Number S0530,
1219
"Is There a Way Out in the Middle East?"
Guests: Perlmutter,
Amos. : Mehdi, Mohammad Taki.
4 November 1982
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 120 : 28
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 3
Program details: Two months after the massacre of Palestinian civilians
in refugee camps in West Beirut, this discussion turns into an
intense--indeed, rancorous--argument about how Palestine should be
governed. MTM: "To call a theocracy a democracy is a
misrepresentation.... Inevitably in history whenever there were Jewish
states, Moslem states, Christian states, they have been causes of war.
If in Palestine we want peace ...we have to eliminate such social
obscenities." AP: "We have to talk about things that are relevant. What
is relevant to the conflicts of the Middle East has got nothing to do
with religion. It has to do with nationalism. It has to do with national
forces."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.772
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6706
item Program Number S0531,
1220
"Looking at the Election"
Guests: Seigenthaler, John. :
Alexander, Lamar. : Heard, Alexander.
11 November 1982
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 120 : 29
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 3
Program details: A zestful examination of the midterm election, with a
reminder that in the South, as Governor Alexander puts it, "voting
patterns, wildly enough, still go back to the Civil War." A good deal of
the hour is spent discussing PACs, which were born of early-Seventies
attempts at election reform and which have had the opposite of the
intended effect, "atomizing the political climate," as Mr. Heard puts
it, and "making] it even more difficult than before for the Congress to
act coherently and with what we aspire to, a large view of the general
interest." Governor Alexander's solution: "The only law we need [on
political contributions] is one which prescribes disclosure of every
contribution, and let the people then make a judgment."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.775
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6709
item Program Number S0532,
1221
"Crisis"
Guests: Jordan, Hamilton.
4 November 1982
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 120 : 30
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 4
Program details: The "crisis" of Mr. Jordan's title was the Iran hostage
crisis, around which the last year of Jimmy Carter's Presidency
revolved. A brilliant postmortem on the Presidency and the re-election
campaign. WFB: "What was the morning-after reaction to the startling
choreography at Madison Square Garden when the President sort of reached
out for Teddy Kennedy's hand and Kennedy took it as though he were being
handed a dead rat?" HJ: "Two dead rats.... The symbol of a unified party
after these fights is usually the winner and the loser with up lifted
hands. Senator Kennedy that night seemed unable to accommodate President
Carter... That became the symbol of a divided party in the fall
campaign."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.773
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6707
item Program Number S0533,
1222
"Is the South Changing?"
Guests: Ferris, William. : Cobb,
James C. : Millner, Steven.
11 November 1982
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 120 : 31
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 4
Program details: Is the South changing? Or has it--as Walker Percy had
contended on
Firing
Line
ten years earlier--already changed out of all
recognition? All three of our guests are professional students of the
South; Messrs. Ferris and Cobb are natives, Mr. Millner an immigrant
from California. They bring a wealth of detail to bear on the South--and
on the America of which it is a part. JCC: "This idea of the South
joining the American mainstream--we always considered that this
consisted of the South trudging painfully towards the mainstream; we
never considered that the mainstream might move towards the South, which
I think there is considerable evidence that it has." ... WF: "One of the
things, if not the most important thing, that distinguishes it from
other parts of the country is this symbiosis of Afro-American and
Euro-American cultures.... It goes back to Twain, to Huck and Jim on the
raft, and the black and white presence is very deep. Whether the
colleges have been integrated or segregated, the closeness of black and
white cultures throughout the South has been a very important part of
every phase of life, from our literature to our history to our folk
lore."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.774
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6708
item Program Number S0534,
1223
"Is Communism Evolving?"
Guests: Pipes, Richard.
9 December 1982
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 120 : 32
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 5
Program details: A stirring session with a guest who has spent most of
his adult life studying the Soviet Union. RP: "... this utterly false
alternative, which is presented to us from Moscow and picked up by the
West, is that you have a choice of either engaging in the sort of
relationship with the Soviet Union where basically you concede what they
want or you stand up to them and you are facing a holocaust.... This is
entirely a false alternative.... We can be free and we can be at peace,
if we arm ourselves ... Western civilization is a very precious thing,
and to surrender it in the hope that somehow you'll be able to manage
seems to me absurd."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.778
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6712
item Program Number S0535,
1224
"Social Security or Economic Insecurity"
Guests: Peterson,
Peter G.
9 December 1982
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 120 : 33
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 5
Program details: Mr. Peterson was not the first to point out that Social
Security as currently structured would not be viable for very much
longer, but he is one of the most lucid exponents of the reasons why,
and of how the Social Security apparatus fits into the rest of our
economy. PP: "I think, at this point, to tell the American people, a
whole generation of Americans who were led to believe that indeed money
had been set aside and that it would be available, that it is now not
available, is to violate a very fundamental principle of a link between
a nation and its people."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.779
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6713
item Program Number S0536,
1225
"A
Firing
Line
Debate: Resolved: That Women Have It at Least as
Good as Men-Part I"
Guests: Buckley, William F. (William Frank),
Jr., 1925-2008. : Sobran, Joseph. : Dickey, James. : Fox, Muriel. :
Freeman, Erika Padan. : Pilpel, Harriet F.
30 November 1982
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 120 : 34
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 6
Program details: This debate-which ranges from the Declaration of
Independence to the Equal Rights Amendment, from abortion to pay
scales-occasionally crosses the line between hard-fought and ferocious,
but put on your flak helmet and come along. Mrs. Pilpel, quoting a
female Member of Congress: "'It is tragic to have male representatives
making decisions about women's minds, women's bodies, women's work, and
women's status as citizens.' "... Ms. Freeman: "Many women are only
allowed to have their pride through their husband's achievements.... A
woman may not be a full person first, a mother second, and a wife
third." ... Mr. Sobran: "Isn't it accurate to say that the feminist
movement, as we currently know it, is really the Ladies' Auxiliary of
Liberalism?" Ms. Fox: "We are not the auxiliary. We are in the forefront
of the energy of liberalism in this country today."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.776
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6710
item Program Number S0537,
1226
"A
Firing
Line
Debate: Resolved: That Women Have It at Least as
Good as Men-Part II"
Guests: Buckley, William F. (William Frank),
Jr., 1925-2008. : Dickey, James. : Sobran, Joseph. : Pilpel, Harriet F.
: Fox, Muriel. : Freeman, Erika Padan.
30 November 1982
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 120 : 34
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 6
Program details: This debate-which ranges from the Declaration of
Independence to the Equal Rights Amendment, from abortion to pay
scales-occasionally crosses the line between hard-fought and ferocious,
but put on your flak helmet and come along. Mrs. Pilpel, quoting a
female Member of Congress: "'It is tragic to have male representatives
making decisions about women's minds, women's bodies, women's work, and
women's status as citizens.' "... Ms. Freeman: "Many women are only
allowed to have their pride through their husband's achievements.... A
woman may not be a full person first, a mother second, and a wife
third." ... Mr. Sobran: "Isn't it accurate to say that the feminist
movement, as we currently know it, is really the Ladies' Auxiliary of
Liberalism?" Ms. Fox: "We are not the auxiliary. We are in the forefront
of the energy of liberalism in this country today."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.777
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6711
item Program Number S0538,
1227
"Nuclear Hysteria?"
Guests: Scheer, Robert. : Kinsley,
Michael E.
5 January 1983
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 121 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 6
Program details: For so adept an interviewer (it was he who had elicited
from Jimmy Carter the news about lust in his heart), Mr. Scheer is a
rather overbearing guest. But WFB is able to carve out some space for
give-and-take. RS: "We know right now that the command-and-control
systems that now exist on either side probably could not last more than
15 or20 minutes in an all-out nuclear war, so really, when you talk
about nuclear war, the evidence is pretty clear that you are talking
about a situation of extreme chaos, madness--" WFB: "I certainly hope
your book is widely circulated in the Soviet Union."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.780
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6714
item Program Number S0539,
1228
"The Humanities and the Federal Government"
Guests: Bennett,
William J.
5 January 1983
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 121 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 7
Program details: There is no one that conservatives would rather have
seen as chairman of this body if it was to exist--and Mr. Bennett,
keeping his claims in proportion, engagingly makes the case for its
existence as a tax-funded entity. WJB: "Are there things more important
than the humanities? Of course there are. But I don't think we decide
the budget for an agency of government based on that.... I think it was
Macaulay who said it was more important to bake bread than to have
pianos.... But that doesn't mean we should all be baking bread and not
have any pianos. A modest amount set aside for the humanities to follow
the purposes set out in the legislation and to do so in a review system
that is fair... seems to me a desirable and defensible function for the
government."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.781
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6715
item Program Number S0540,
1229
"Buckley's Turn to Explain Himself"
Guests: Green, Mark J. :
Kinsley, Michael E. : Kondracke, Morton.
24 January 1983
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 121 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 7
Program details: A bracing installment of the semi-annual show in which
host and guests change places, with Mr. Buckley being asked to, as the
title has it, explain himself mostly with reference to the policies of
the President whose election he had championed. Topics range from
defense to inflation, with a heavy concentration on Mr. Reagan's tax
policies. Two samples: Mr. Buckley: "People paid more [taxes] in 1981
than they paid under Carter." Mr. Kinsley: "Not the people you are most
concerned about, the people in the top brackets." WFB: "What makes you
think I'm most concerned about them?" MK: "They are the ones whose rates
you wanted to reduce down to 25 per cent." WFB: "It's true that they are
the ones who agitate most strongly to avoid tax exposure, but 'they' is
37 million Americans, i.e., the people who pay more than 25 per cent."
... WFB: "Mr. Reagan would unquestionably resist an aggressive nuclear
attack by the Soviet Union with a counterattack. I don't think anybody
in the world doubts it. I happen to think this is the profoundest
protective wall that we have."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.782
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00G708158
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6716
item Program Number S0541,
1230
"Do the Banks Know What They're Doing?"
Guests: Davidson,
James Dale. : Cline, William.
24 January 1983
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 121 : 4
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 8
Program details: The short answer to the title question is: "No." WFB
gives some of the background of this show: "In the 17 years since this
program began, the producer has not had the equivalent difficulty in
getting somebody representing ... an institution to visit with us for
the purpose of explaining that institution's policies and defending
them. We must have issued two dozen invitations, to the people whose
names come obviously to mind when one thinks of international banking.
They were all tied up. Like their banks. I do not mean to suggest that
we settled for second-echelon guests. Merely that an unapologetic
defense of banking policies is not likely to be heard." As indeed it was
not, nor of the International Monetary Fund or World Bank, which had
encouraged the banks in their disastrous lending to Third World and Iron
Curtain countries. An informative and rather frightening show.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.783
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6717
item Program Number S0542,
1231
"Ideas and Action"
Guests: Rostow, W. W. (Walt Whitman),
1916-2003.
22 February 1983
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 121 : 5
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 8
Program details: How does policy get translated into action? How do the
different advisors of a decision-maker (say, the President of the United
States) maneuver to get their ideas accepted? Mr. Rostow was writing a
series of books, each examining a case in point; one of his case studies
is the topic of this absorbing hour--President Eisenhower's dramatic
"Open Skies" proposal for arms-control verification, launched at the
first Geneva summit conference in 1955. WWR: "So at the moment of the
summit your duty was not to say, I'm sure Khrushchev will buy this.' All
the objective argument was that he would not. But you should make it in
total good faith, and I think Eisenhower did make it in good faith....
If you are playing with issues this big, if you could get a
breakthrough, it would mean so much to everyone, your own country and to
the human race. You don't simply say, 'My analysis of those folks is
that they are going to say no.' You keep your powder dry, but you go out
and make a fair offer."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.784
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6718
item Program Number S0543,
1232
"Should the U.S. Withdraw from Europe?"
Guests: Solarz,
Stephen J. : Barnet, Richard.
22 February 1983
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 121 : 6
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 9
Program details: Messrs. Solarz and Buckley start from the assumption
that whatever decisions we take vis-a-vis the Soviet Union--whether in
terms of troop strength in Europe or in terms of arms control (currently
on the table was President Reagan's Zero Option: that the Soviets
dismantle their intermediate-range nuclear forces in Europe, in return
for our not deploying the Pershing II and cruise missiles)--must be
predicated on the need to protect ourselves and our allies. Mr. Barnet
starts from the assumption that we are the problem, not the solution.
And never the twain shall meet. RB: "I think the Soviet Union has
maneuvered itself, largely with the help of this Administration, into a
position where they appear to be readier to take the missiles out and to
reverse the course and to negotiate than we." WFB: "You must be
kidding."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.785
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6719
item Program Number S0544,
1233
"Confidence and Betrayal"
Guests: Cohalan, Florence. :
Pilpel, Harriet F. : Tamarkin, Norman R.
22 February 1983
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 121 : 7
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 9
Program details: A profound discussion among, as WFB puts it, "a very
thoughtful lawyer, a very thoughtful doctor, and a very thoughtful
priest" on the subject of their obligations when told a secret that has
not only past but future implications. Monsignor Cohalan explains that
for priests, "The problem is very simple.... Canon law, which would take
precedence in a matter concerning the sacraments, says with the utmost
possible simplicity and finality that the seal of the confessional is
inviolable, period"--even on pain of jail. In both the legal and the
psychiatric professions the law and the ethics are less clear. As Mrs.
Pilpel points out, "in some states there are no privileges of a certain
type.... If a person is called upon to make a disclosure, he cannot
effectively plead a doctor-patient privilege in a state, for example,
like Texas, where there is no such privilege." For Dr. Tamarkin, "Here's
the problem about this whole issue: it's between two goods, in a way. On
the one hand you want the patient to be able to see you as in their
corner, on their side. On the other hand, you don't want to see somebody
going around murdering other people. So you are caught in between two
allegiances."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.786
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TZ8H5O2
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6720
item Program Number S0545,
1234
"The Carter Years: Power and Principle"
Guests: Brzezinski,
Zbigniew K., 1928-
31 March 1983
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 121 : 8
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 10
Program details: Mr. Brzezinski was, as Mr. Buckley puts it, "identified
in the public mind as the hawk in Mr. Carter's Administration, the role
of dove going to Mr. Cyrus Vance, the Secretary of State." And Mr.
Brzezinski is, as ever, hawk like in another sense as well, pouncing
fiercely upon points of disagreement, in a conversation ranging from the
Carter Administration's "normalization" of relations with China, to Ted
Kennedy's behavior in 1980, but starting with Mr. Carter's speech about
our "inordinate fear of Communism": "Bill, I was consulted and I even
contributed, perhaps in a direct way but at least indirectly, to that
very phrase, and therefore let me say what that phrase means. It doesn't
mean that one should underestimate the threat of Communism, but it means
that in the competition between freedom and Communism, we have nothing
to fear--that our system is more viable, more creative, more appealing,
that Communism is a waning ideology. And I really think that's
historically true."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.787
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6721
item Program Number S0546,
1235
"Reagan and the Question of Legal Services"
Guests: Harvey,
William F.
31 March 1983
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 121 : 9
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 10
Program details: This show does not do as much as one might have hoped to
clarify the dispute over the Legal Services Corporation, but it does
offer some helpful perspective on how we might provide legal services to
the poor without creating a lawless posse of lawyers like the LSC. Mr.
Buckley points out that "there are more lawyers in Los Angeles than
there are in all of Japan," but it is Mr. Harvey--who approves the LSC
in principle--who tells of LSC lawyers going into Mexico to recruit
immigrants "for the purpose of both employment and the direction of law
suits against their prospective employers." This, as Mr. Harvey points
out, is illegal, but "most restrictions are not self-enforcing ... and
they have not been enforced in the past."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.788
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6722
item Program Number S0547,
1236
"How to Read, How to Figure"
Guests: Saxon, John. : Down, A.
Graham.
14 April 1983
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 121 : 10
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 11
Program details: How can a country spend as much time and money on
education as ours does and produce declining literacy and numeracy?
Blame partly the theorists, who replaced phonics with the look-say
method of teaching reading and who tried, as Mr. Saxon puts it, "to
teach a child algebra by teaching him advanced algebraic concepts that
had best be reserved for the junior year in college, when he has
mastered the fundamentals." Blame also the social engineers, who, as;
Mr. Down puts it, have made the schools into "psycho-social devices for
solving the problems of our society." A discussion at once gloomy and
heartening, with two men who are actively doing something to help--Mr.
Saxon, by writing an algebra textbook; Mr. Down, through his own writing
and the work of his Council.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.789
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6723
item Program Number S0548,
1237
"How to Speak, How to Listen"
Guests: Adler, Mortimer
Jerome, 1902-2001.
14 April 1983
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 121 : 11
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 11
Program details: A visit from Professor Adler is always a treat. On this
occasion--sparked by his latest book, How to Speak and How to Listen--he
reminds us that real conversation doesn't come naturally. We have to
work at speaking clearly and listening attentively just as we have to
work at writing clearly and reading attentively. WFB: "What are the
responsibilities of the speaker to attract that kind of attention?
Should you be able, as a finished listener, to listen to dull people?"
MA: "No, any more than you should be able to read well a bad book."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.790
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ANCWYH2
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6724
item Program Number S0549,
1238
"The Mess in Central America"
Guests: Solarz, Stephen J. :
Calero Portocarrero, Adolfo.
3 May 1983
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 121 : 12
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 12
Program details: Mr. Calero's personal history tells much of the story.
Under Nicaraguan strongman Anastasio Somoza, Mr. Calero was active in
political opposition, and was once jailed for his efforts. He had real
hopes for the government of "national reconstruction" that succeeded
Somoza, but in January of 1983, when it had become apparent that the
Sandinistas had consolidated their hold on that coalition government, he
fled the country and joined the armed resistance. While Mr. Solarz
speaks happily of the prospects of a "negotiated settlement" in
neighboring El Salvador, Mr. Calero says: "The Communists don't share
power. That's common knowledge. Any neophyte would know that."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.791
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6725
item Program Number S0550,
1239
"Medical Malpractice"
Guests: Moskowitz, Richard. :
Rosenblatt, Stanley. : Mannix, Arthur, Jr.
3 May 1983
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 121 : 13
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 12
Program details: A lively--though not always good-tempered--discussion of
the many issues involved in medical malpractice: "How should doctors be
punished when they make a damaging mistake?" Do large malpractice awards
punish the culpable doctor or the entire pool of patients whose medical
costs will go up? WFB: "It has struck me for years that one very seldom
reads about disbarred lawyers, and one very seldom reads about unfrocked
doctors, so that to the extent we laymen depend on you all to police
yourselves, you don't do a striking job of it. Either that, or most of
you are angelic." SR: "Which is hardly the case in either profession
..."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.792
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6726
item Program Number S0551,
1240
"European Unity?"
Guests: Barzini, Luigi.
3 May 1983
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 121 : 14
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 13
Program details: Mr. Barzini has the depth of a scholar and the facility
of a journalist. Agree with him or not that "Europe should have one
common foreign policy, one common defense policy, and one financial
policy," he is a joy to listen to. LB: "I quote Helmut Schmidt: 'The
Americans are what they are, but they are the only Americans we have.' "
WFB: "There wasn't quite enough savoir-faire in Europe to prevent two
world wars recently."LB: "I say repeatedly that what the Europeans can
contribute is the wealth of their past errors, of their stupid wars, of
their senseless convulsions and revolutions."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.793
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6727
item Program Number S0552,
1241
"A Traditionalist Looks at Modern Europe"
Guests:
Lowenstein, Hubertus zu. : Livingston, Robert.
13 May 1983
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 121 : 15
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 13
Program details: As a man whose property was seized and who was condemned
in absentia by Hitler for his first book, Prince Hubertus has standing
to speak of Hitler as an aberration in German history. Still, as WFB
reminds him and us, as soon as Germany was united, in 1870, it began
starting wars. Prince Hubertus: "I wouldn't be alive today if it hadn't
been for the Quaker breakfasts which we received after the First World
War. [Then] after the Second World War--" Mr. Livingston: "The present
chancellor, Mr. Kohl, will be the last German chancellor who will have a
living memory of this.... He remembers and refers often in his speeches
to the CARE packages and the Marshall Plan aid that he as a young boy
received, but his successor will not have the same memories, and I think
this is going to be a significant generational change."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.794
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6728
item Program Number S0553,
1242
"The British Elections"
Guests: Wilson, Harold, Sir, 1916-
13 May 1983
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 121 : 16
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 14
Program details: On the eve of Margaret Thatcher's re-election, a
detail-filled and sometimes quite delicious session with the man who at
that point was Britain's longest-serving peacetime prime minister in
this century (a distinction he would eventually lose to Mrs. Thatcher),
and who had just that morning retired as a member of Parliament. HW: "We
are going through an extremely interesting time. I prefer two-party
government, and I always thought that if I couldn't win with a working
majority, I hoped the other side would be there with a working majority
or Britain wouldn't be properly governed. I won four times, and twice
only very narrowly." ... WFB: "Did you train Tony Benn with the others?"
HW: "Yes, I brought him up. He was a very sensible boy in those days. I
think once I used the phrase lightly, right off the cuff--I said, 'He
immatures with age.' I think that has continued to be true."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.795
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6729
item Program Number S0554,
1243
"The Afghan Mess"
Guests: Rahim, Abdul. : Assil, Ayyoub.
26 May 1983
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 121 : 17
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 14
Program details: In the fourth year of the Soviet occupation, there were
four million Afghan exiles, and an estimated one million had been
killed. "Historians," WFB begins, "will perhaps record that the West
rallied to the aid of Afghanistan by depleting our representation at the
Olympic Games in Moscow in 1980." The two guests speak a slightly
unidiomatic English, but they are eloquent in their fervor for their
country and their God, and persuasive in their assertion that it would
be in other countries' interests to assist them. AA: "The Russians are
not coming to Afghanistan as tourists. They are preparing for other
countries. They want to reach, as soon as possible, to the Persian Gulf
to cut the neck of the oil."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.796
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6730
item Program Number S0555,
1244
"A Fresh Look at Economic Problems"
Guests: Thurow, Lester
C.
26 May 1983
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 121 : 18
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 15
Program details: A bracing session with a man who has his own strong
opinions but who is capable of looking even at them with some
perspective: "If you recommend policies that are so sensitive that they
have to be put in place exactly as you recommend them ... for all
practical purposes you are recommending policies that can't work, for
the political process is never going to take one idea and put it in
place precisely as Art Laffer or Les Thurow thinks it ought to be put in
place." And a salutary reminder: "If you take the real-world
scientists--geologists, meteorologists, people who study
earthquakes--their prediction records and their ability to control is no
better than economists'."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.797
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6731
item Program Number S0556, 1245,
1245R
"Is Reaganomics Working?"
Guests: Baldrige, Malcolm.
2 June 1983, 12 August 1983
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 121 : 19-20
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 15
Program details: The economy was looking up, but the budget deficit was
still sky-high, there was 10 per cent unemployment, and the dollar was
overvalued--or was it-- President Reagan's Secretary of Commerce isn't
so sure: "There is still enough pressure to keep the dollar as high as
it is because it is the safest safe in the world for investments, and it
has still comparatively high interest rates; a combination of those two
is what keeps the dollar up." And why is the deficit so high? "Nine out
of ten congressmen and senators that I talk to are for lower budget
deficits. They all say that it is a big problem. But when it comes to
specific actions of where to cut, they've all got a different reason not
to cut here or cut there, so the job doesn't get done."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.799
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6733
item Program Number S0557,
1301
"Is It True That the Well-Qualified Can Find Jobs?"
Guests:
Navin, Hank. : Malarkey, Thomas.
2 June 1983
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 121 : 21
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 16
Program details: The 10 per cent of Americans who are unemployed are not
all at the lower end of the ladder. Messrs. Navin and Malarkey had both
been on successful career tracks and have each now been unemployed--and
very actively seeking employment--for one year. They discuss, with the
pain of personal experience, the difficulty of getting a job if you
don't currently have a job, and the fact that, as Mr. Malarkey puts it,
"You [an unemployed person] are a social pariah." Mr. Navin: "The job is
where we spend most of our waking hours, and it forms the content of our
character. It is what it is that we are.... It is how we contribute.
When you don't have a job, who are you?"
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.798
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6732
item Program Number S0558,
1302
"Andrei Sakharov's Complaints against the Freeze Movement"
Guests: Bundy, McGeorge.
20 July 1983
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 121 : 22
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 16
Program details: Mr. Sakharov, the father of the Soviet hydrogen bomb,
had, from his "internal exile" in Gorki, written a letter to an American
scientist prominent in the nuclear-freeze movement in which he said,
"The main danger is slipping into an all-out nuclear war. If the
probability of such an outcome could be reduced at the cost of another
10 or 15 years of the arms race, then perhaps that price must be paid
..." The reaction in Moscow had been, in Mr. Buckley's
description--which Mr. Bundy endorses--"near hysterical." This rich
discussion, which moves from the arms race to the current state of NATO
to the "exaggeration," as Mr. Bundy has it, in President Reagan's hopes
for SDI, starts with the letter itself. MB: "This letter is a perfectly
extraordinary example of the imaginative and intellectual force of
Sakharov's mind and of his independence. As one man thinking for
himself, it's, I think, one of the truly extraordinary documents of the
nuclear age,... and I think that really it is just that force, the
unconquerable spirit of the man and his independence, that is so deeply
offensive to our friends in Moscow."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.805
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6739
item Program Number S0559,
1303
"Where Do the Democrats Go from Here?"
Guests: Greenfield,
Jeff. : Green, Mark J. : Mahoney, J. Daniel, 1931-
7 July 1983
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 121 : 23
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 17
Program details: A year and a half before the presidential election,
Fritz Mondale and John Glenn and Fritz Hollings and Reubin Askew and
Alan Cranston and Gary Hart were shuttling back and forth between New
Hampshire and Iowa and Wisconsin. Mr. Greenfield puts matters in
perspective: "I think that it was the shift in the American political
continuum in ideas that helped elect Ronald Reagan, not actors, not
Walter Cronkite's raised eyebrows ... I think what people are beginning
to focus on now is, What are the Democrats saying about the nation, the
world, and the economy that validates their claim to return to
power?"
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.804
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6738
item Program Number S0560,
1304
"Was Gandhi for Real?"
Guests: Grenier, Richard. : Rudolph,
Lloyd Irving.
9 June 1983
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 121 : 24
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 17
Program details: The movie Gandhi had met with wildly differing
reactions--stemming largely from the reactors' views of Gandhi himself.
Was he primarily a religious and ethical figure, or was he a political
figure in karma yogi's clothing? Mr. Rudolph takes the more positive
view of the Mahatma, though Mr. Grenier also acknowledges that "for the
Hindus he is a holy man." RG: "The iron law of Satyagraha, which I think
we will try to translate as non-violence--civil disobedience--is the
following: Its success is strictly proportional to the high moral level
of the opponent.... It has to operate in a free society. It had its
greatest triumph, far greater than in India, in the United States of
America under the leadership of Martin Luther King."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.801
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001MBTSM2
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6735
item Program Number S0561,
1305
"Is There a New Economics?"
Guests: Reich, Robert.
7 July 1983
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 121 : 25
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 18
Program details: Mr. Reich is of course on the Democratic side of things
(at this time he was coaching at least two of the Democratic
presidential candidates in matters economic), but his analysis is far
from standard issue: "The choice before us is very stark: that is,
either, on the one hand, trying to preserve an old industrial base
through tariffs, subsidies, or what have you; or, on the other hand,
trying to move the economy forward, acknowledging, number one, that
there are enormous social costs and benefits that have to be addressed
with regard to a restructuring of that magnitude."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.803
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6737
item Program Number S0562,
1306
"Inside the KGB"
Guests: Barron, John. : De Borchgrave,
Arnaud.
9 June 1983
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 121 : 26
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 18
Program details: We learn a lot about chief opponent, although the
conversation doesn't click the way it often does on
Firing
Line
. Guests
and host range over the KGB's historical successes and its use, today,
of the Cuban DGI as a very useful subsidiary--the more useful, Mr. de
Borchgrave suggests, "because people who had trouble idealizing
Brezhnev, Chernenko, or Andropov could see Castro as the great liberator
of the Third World." Mr. Barron: "It is exceedingly difficult to attract
anyone today in any part of the world to the Soviet cause on the basis
of ideological appeal. In the Thirties most of the great agents
recruited served selflessly out of ideological motivation, out of the
belief that they were serving mankind. Most of the cases we know about
today involved greed or ego."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.800
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6734
item Program Number S0563,
1307
"Do Civil Rights Equal Affirmative Action?"
Guests: Bunzel,
John H., 1924- : Abram, Morris B. : Chavez, Linda.
20 June 1983
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 121 : 27
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 19
Program details: What these three guests have in common, apart from a
lengthy track record of laboring in the civil-rights vineyard--going
back in Mr. Bunzel's case to 1946, when he founded the Liberal Union at
Princeton--is that (a) they had just been nominated by President Reagan
to serve on the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, and (b) they had been
hotly opposed by a variety of social activists--largely, one supposes,
because of who nominated them. Although there are no fireworks, guests
and host being substantially in agreement as to the unacceptability both
of old-fashioned racial discrimination and of modern reverse
discrimination, there is plenty to talk about. MBA: "In 1979 President
Carter offered me a seat on the Civil Rights Commission. I said that I
wanted the President to understand that I differed with his views about
preferential treatment by race and quotas. Therefore, three days later I
received a phone call saying I would not be appointed, and I thought it
was President Carter's perfect right to do that. It is in the Executive
Branch." ... LC: "You have a preponderance of blacks and other
minorities who continue to earn a great deal less than whites as a
group.... And I think that what many minorities are grasping for is a
way in which to tie that in some way to race, and to try to seek a
solution where, frankly, I don't think it's going to be found."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.802
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6736
item Program Number S0564,
1308
"The Plight of the Democratic Moderates"
Guests: Koch, Ed,
1924-
31 August 1983
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 121 : 28
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 19
Program details: Mayor Koch--whose appeal, according to WFB, is "based on
an admixture of personality and chutzpah, as we Catholics refer to
it"--is justifiably worried about those of his Democratic brethren who
are striving to become President in 1984: "I want to save the Democratic
Party from those people who are so foolish as to believe that if they
pander to the extremes they will get the designation and then win. They
may get the designation, but they won't win." Specific topics on which
His Honor says Democrats must get serious include crime, taxes, health
care, and constitutional reform.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.806
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6740
item Program Number S0565,
1309
"What Are We Going to Do about the Mess in the Schools?"
Guests: Bennett, William J. : Futrell, Mary.
31 August 1983
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 121 : 29
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 20
Program details: As WFB frames the question, "There is general agreement
only on the proposition that public education is in bad shape. Why this
is so, and what should be done about it, is where there is
disagreement." To Mrs. Futrell, who by background is a classroom
teacher, and whose commitment to the nation's children is clearly
genuine, "If we do not have a voice at the Cabinet level speaking for
education, then it is not considered to be a priority in this country."
To Mr. Bennett, "I am a bureaucrat. I would like to think of myself as a
considerate and thoughtful bureaucrat, but the notion that I am somehow
more attuned and more in touch with and more sympathetic with the needs
of the children of Mississippi than are the parents and the teachers of
Mississippi strikes me as ridiculous."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.807
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6741
item Program Number S0566,
1310
"Should We Put the Screws on South Africa?"
Guests: Solarz,
Stephen J. : Williams, Walter E.
15 September 1983
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 121 : 30
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 20
Program details: Mr. Solarz had just introduced a bill in Congress to
tighten the pressure on South Africa--by, for example, maintaining the
ban on selling Krugerrands in the United States and ordering U.S. firms
with plants in South Africa to apply there the same employment practices
specified in our laws back home--even though the government there was
already on the path to what President Botha described as "evolutionary
change." Mr. Solarz defends his bill eloquently on moral grounds. His
host and his fellow guest point out that it is not moral to urge actions
that will have predictably counterproductive results. WEW: "Apartheid is
dying of its own weight in South Africa. The gains that ethnic groups
make normally come at a time of robust economic activity as opposed to
contracted economic activity."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.808
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6742
item Program Number S0567,
1311
"What Is Radio Free Europe Up To?"
Guests: Buckley, James
Lane, 1923- : Shakespeare, Frank.
15 September 1983
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 121 : 31
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 21
Program details: No fireworks, WFB and his guests being long-standing (in
JLB's case very long-standing) comrades in arms, but a serious and often
moving hour explaining the difference between Voice of America--which,
as Mr. Shakespeare describes it, "is the American news and PR service
abroad--and the two radios broadcasting specifically to the Iron Curtain
countries, acting as surrogate local radio stations ..." WFB: "As though
Leningrad had a free radio station?" FS: "Exactly so." Of RFE and RL,
Jim Buckley says: "We are operating on the basis that human beings are
entitled to the facts. It is up to those individuals how they will react
to those facts, and if we start censoring ourselves then we do a
disservice to our very mandate. WFB: "Suppose that Walesa was seized and
hanged, would you instantly communicate that fact throughout Poland?"
JLB:"Of course."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.809
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6743
item Program Number S0568,
1312
"Should We Get On with Capital Punishment?"
Guests: Van den
Haag, Ernest. : Conrad, John P.
29 September 1983
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 121 : 32
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 21
Program details: Another look at this perennial topic, this one taped in
the capital of a state which had accumulated some two hundred prisoners
on death row. The guests are old antagonists on this question, who in
fact had co-authored The Death Penalty: A Debate. For Mr. van den Haag,
"Since I think that murder is an extraordinary crime, worse than any
other, discontinuous in a sense with any other, I want for murder to
have a unique, a discontinuous penalty." Mr. Conrad cites Immanuel Kant
(whom Mr. van den Haag had early in the hour quoted to make a very
different point) as having "argued that the state must never use a
person as a means to an end. Persons are indeed ends in themselves. If
we use even the murderer ... towards the end of the prevention of crime,
we are violating a very important principle."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.810
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6744
item Program Number S0569,
1313
"A
Firing
Line
Debate: Resolved: That Affirmative Action Goals
for Minorities and Women Should Be Abolished-Part I"
Guests:
Buckley, William F. (William Frank), 1925-2008. : Pendleton, Clarence
M., Jr. : Reynolds, William Bradford. : Berry, Mary Frances. :
Greenberg, Jack. : Lichtman, Judith L.
13 October 1983
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 122 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 22
Program details: Plenty of fireworks on this one, not always tempered by
a shared assumption of good will. CMP: "The remedy for discrimination is
not the practice of more discrimination ... The Civil Rights Act of 1964
was not passed so that we could discriminate against whites." ... MFB:
"We all know the sad history of slavery, which was the last time blacks
had full employment." ... WBR: "It is not only hypocritical, it is sheer
nonsense to maintain that we can end discrimination by utilizing the
race-conscious tools of the discriminator, using race to get beyond
racism." ... JG: "The cancer of racism is the most serious social
problem facing America today.... It has placed blacks in a disadvantaged
position, with 60 per cent [of the] median income of whites and double
the unemployment rate. The only bright spot in the racial picture is
affirmative action."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.813
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6747
item Program Number S0570,
1314
"A
Firing
Line
Debate: Resolved: That Affirmative Action Goals
for Minorities and Women Should Be Abolished-Part II"
Guests:
Buckley, William F. (William Frank), 1925-2008. : Pendleton, Clarence
M., Jr. : Reynolds, William Bradford. : Berry, Mary Frances. :
Greenberg, Jack. : Lichtman, Judith L.
13 October 1983
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 122 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 22
Program details: Plenty of fireworks on this one, not always tempered by
a shared assumption of good will. CMP: "The remedy for discrimination is
not the practice of more discrimination ... The Civil Rights Act of 1964
was not passed so that we could discriminate against whites." ... MFB:
"We all know the sad history of slavery, which was the last time blacks
had full employment." ... WBR: "It is not only hypocritical, it is sheer
nonsense to maintain that we can end discrimination by utilizing the
race-conscious tools of the discriminator, using race to get beyond
racism." ... JG: "The cancer of racism is the most serious social
problem facing America today.... It has placed blacks in a disadvantaged
position, with 60 per cent [of the] median income of whites and double
the unemployment rate. The only bright spot in the racial picture is
affirmative action."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.812
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6746
item Program Number S0571,
1315
"Was It Censorship in Grenada?"
Guests: Lewis, Anthony,
1927- : Clurman, Richard M.
3 November 1983
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 122 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 22
Program details: The invasion of Grenada, or, if you prefer, "the rescue
operation in Grenada," as Mr. Buckley sets the stage, "left the country
with the one great question during the first day or two, namely: "Should
we have done it?" But before we knew it, it appeared that the majority
of America's newsmen and intelligentsia were discussing not so much
should we have gone in as the near criminality of going in without
complete freedom of movement by the press." Although Mr. Lewis had been
one of the complainers, he starts out by saying, "I share your implied
distaste for the notion that the most important thing in the world is
the position of the press in life. I don't think that, and any sort of
special pleading and self-pity I don't like." To Mr. Clurman, "As to the
motive of the military in not wanting the press, that is both completely
understandable and in my view completely intolerable." And we're off on
a crackling three-way exchange on whether the press nowadays can be
trusted as it could, say, during the Normandy landing, and whether the
culture of leaking that began during the Vietnam War had become a
permanent fixture. WFB: "Mr. Lewis, if you have a Cabinet meeting, and
you decide which way you will tilt as between Pakistan and India, and
you read about it in Jack Anderson's column the next day, are you
excessively worried about secrecy?"
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.814
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6748
item Program Number S0572,
1316
"Should America Be Bilingual?"
Guests: Torres, Arnoldo S. :
Etzioni, Amitai.
29 September 1983
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 122 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 23
Program details: This show starts with the narrow question of how
bilingual education is supposed to work and how it in fact works; but it
very quickly broadens and deepens into an exploration of what holds the
American society together--and whether it deserves to be held together.
Mr. Torres: "It's the paranoia that American society suffers from with
the tremendous influx of refugees ... who speak a different language and
have a different culture and who just may be taking their jobs." Mr.
Etzioni: "There are exceptions to be sure, [but] the American society is
extremely open and generous ... Just let's talk about the last five
years--the Cuban immigration, and a large part of the population of El
Salvador has simply moved north, and God knows how many people from
Mexico.... by and large, if you talk about American society, I don't
think it's fair to call it paranoiac these days."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.811
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6745
item Program Number S0573,
1317
"The Economics and Politics of Race"
Guests: Sowell, Thomas,
1930-
3 November 1983
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 122 : 4
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 23
Program details: Mr. Sowell had just produced a blockbuster, called The
Economics and Politics of Race: An International Perspective. Any author
who writes about the topic of group characteristics is taking a
tremendous risk, but Mr. Sowell (a) is not averse to risk and (b) had
approached his topic empirically rather than polemically, presenting
data that show how the peoples of various regions of the world have
fared in different areas of endeavor. As we have learned before on
Firing
Line
, he speaks as lucidly and compellingly as he writes: "One of
the things I wanted to deal with in this book ... is whether a group is
formed by the society around it or whether, in fact, a group has its own
pattern which follows it wherever it goes.... I looked at groups in
other countries--Germans in Brazil and Australia and Russia, the Chinese
in Indonesia and the United States and other countries--to see if they
do in fact have their own pattern or are they simply reflecting what
happened to them in that particular country, and what I found, by and
large, was that they had their own pattern."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.815
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0064EGNZW
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6749
item Program Number S0574,
1318
"Are All Young Europeans Suicidal?"
Guests: Stego, Cecilia.
: Morrison, Stephen A. S. : Nesse, Knut O. : Kriegisch, Franz F.
3 November 1983
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 122 : 5
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 24
Program details: The title question refers to the recurrent news stories
at the time of young Western Europeans lying by the thousands across
railroad tracks to block trains carrying nuclear weapons. The four young
people we meet here--all affiliated with the European Democrat Students,
all far from suicidal--are fresh and appealing, and have a clear-eyed
view of the world that would do credit to their elders. Miss Stego: "The
Soviet shave been able to scare everybody to death in Europe." Mr.
Buckley: "What happens when you are scared to death? Disarm?" Miss
Stego: "Yes. There are some very politically minded groups and
leadership within the peace movement, but the lady in the street, the
kids, any person in those big marches, are basically afraid. ... That's
the main difference between the United States and Europe."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.816
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6750
item Program Number S0575,
1319
"The Eyes of Texas Are Upon Us"
Guests: Mauro, Garry. :
Hutchison, Kay Bailey, 1943- : Richards, Ann.
10 November 1983
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 122 : 6
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 24
Program details: A lively discussion with a future senator (Mrs.
Hutchison), a future governor (Mrs. Richards), and the man who manages
22 million acres of Texas land that WFB describes "as oozingly
petroliferous." Various economic and political topics are brought up,
but the one the discussion keeps coming back to--and the one with the
highest emotional temperature--is immigration. These Texans, differing
politically, nonetheless agree that immigration is not a local or even a
national problem, but an international one. Mrs. Hutchison, for example,
proposes that, instead of looking at ways of keeping people out, we look
at ways of helping them build up their economies at home so that they
can stay there. WFB: "My own experience with bilingualism is that it is
an utter and total phony. What you end up doing is having a society in
which people speak either English or Spanish and understand a few
frijoles words in between."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.817
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6751
item Program Number S0576,
1320
"Poland and Europe, Poland and America"
Guests: Michener,
James A.
10 November 1983
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 122 : 7
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 25
Program details: Mr. Michener is sometimes very prescient, as when, to
quote WFB's introduction, "looking for that part of the world which
would necessarily emerge as the most volatile, ... he selected Poland
two years before Lech Walesa founded Solidarity." At other times he is
less so, as when he accepts the view of his Polish acquaintances that
"they are under Soviet hegemony and probably will be for the rest of
this century." Mr. Michener gives a moving account of the ups and downs
this country, in which he finds so much to admire, had experienced in
the previous twenty years; e.g., the "Gulag formula" of keeping a
population under control: "give people less and less food until they
reach the breaking point, then feed them more so they can work, but be
sure to diminish the food so they go back to the breaking point."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.818
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6752
item Program Number S0577,
1321
"The Day after The Day After"
Guests: Gold, Victor. :
Leonard, John, 1939- : Perle, Richard Norman, 1941-
13 December 1983
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 122 : 8
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 25
Program details: The Day After was the ABC movie, seen by more than 100
million people, set in Lawrence, Kansas, the day after a fictional
nuclear strike. What had been its purpose? VG: "The producers and the
director of the show . . . wanted Americans to think that . .
.deterrence was a failure . . ." WFB: "How can that which has manifestly
succeeded have failed?" VG: "You don't have to debate me on such a
thing." WFB: "I know, but I'm asking you how ... to cope with that." VG:
"Well, in the scenario . . . they created the failure ... by the fact
that the Russians became afraid because we had placed the Pershing
missiles." To Mr. Leonard, the fact that the script writer had said he
wanted to hinder our deployment of the Pershing missiles means nothing:
"Do you know what a writer is like on television?" WFB: "No, I don't."
JL: "A writer can say whatever he likes, but what appears on the TV
screen is so far from what that writer originally intended because it's
been nibbled to death by ducks to make it palatable, ... to make it seem
as though you're being provocative, but without ever really offering a
significant alternative."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.821
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6755
item Program Number S0578,
1322
"The U.S. and Her Alliances"
Guests: Barnet, Richard. :
Perle, Richard Norman, 1941-
13 December 1983
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 122 : 9
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 26
Program details: Over the concerted opposition of thousands of
demonstrators in Western Europe and, on our own shores, the likes of Mr.
Barnet (described by his critics as a Communist sympathizer), the
deployment of Pershing and Cruise II missiles in Europe was finally
going forward -- thanks not least to the efforts of Mr. Perle (described
by his critics as a warmonger, the Reagan Administration's Prince of
Darkness"). A crackling exchange between these two natural antagonists.
RB: "You are not going to persuade the Soviets that they are the evil
empire, particularly by aiming more missiles at them." RP: "You can
persuade them not to get careless with their own weapons, not to get
flamboyant in the use of their conventional weapons."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.822
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6756
item Program Number S0579,
1323
"Is There a Crisis in the Catholic Church?"
Guests:
Hesburgh, Theodore Martin, 1917- : Barrett, David.
6 January 1984
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 122 : 10
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 26
Program details: Although WFB starts by listing several ways in which the
Church is said to be in crisis--declining vocations, declining Mass
attendance, declining use of sacramental confession--today's discussion
winds up concentrating on the American bishops' recent Pastoral Letter
on nuclear arms. To Mr. Buckley, "the bishops were here leaving the
moral arena that is their proper realm and meddling in prudential"
questions outside their competence. To Father Hesburgh, disarmament is
precisely a moral question, because "if we don't get this problem
solved, all the other problems in a sense become moot... If the nuclear
weapon is unleashed, everything else is all over." But Father Hesburgh
does not indulge in secular-style fear mongering: "The world got to a
point where it was rather fatalistic about whether it will happen or
won't happen. There is nothing worse, I think, than a fatalistic world.
We need hope to go on living."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.823
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6757
item Program Number S0580,
1324
"Psychiatry and the Law"
Guests: McGinniss, Joe. : Sadoff,
Robert. : Halleck, Seymour.
1 December 1983
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 122 : 11
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 27
Program details: In 1970 the wife and daughters of Dr. Jeffrey
MacDonald--a Green Beret stationed at Fort Bragg--were killed. The chain
of evidence eventually led to MacDonald himself, and despite testimony
at the pre-trial hearings by Drs. Sadoff and Halleck to the effect that
it was all but inconceivable that he was the murderer, he was tried and
convicted. Mr. McGinniss had begun researching his book on the case with
the expectation of proving the verdict wrong, only to find additional
evidence that it was right. He is rather hard on the psychiatrists; they
reply defensively--but also movingly at times. SH: "There are some
ethical things that are just excruciating and probably unresolvable. You
are often using your empathic skills which were developed originally
totally to help people and then turning around and communicating what
you have learned as a result of using those skills to an agency which
then uses that to harm an individual."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.819
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6753
item Program Number S0581,
1325
"The Rights of Children"
Guests: Pilpel, Harriet F. :
Guggenheim, Martin.
1 December 1983
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 122 : 12
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 27
Program details: At what point does the state have a right (a duty?) to
intervene between child and parents? When parents would deny their child
a possibly life-saving operation because of deeply held religious
beliefs? When the child has acquired a venereal disease and wants
medical treatment without his parents' knowledge? When parents, again
through religious conviction, want to remove their children from school
at age 14? A painful but informative discussion. Mr. Guggenheim: "There
is a sharp difference between allowing a child to be heard--and many
times proponents of children's rights either confuse the issue or don't
clarify it--and giving the child the dispositive power."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.820
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6754
item Program Number S0582,
1326
"A
Firing
Line
Debate: Resolved: That President Reagan Should be
Re-Elected in 1984-Part I"
Guests: Buckley, William F. (William
Frank), Jr., 1925-2008. : Will, George F. : McGovern, George S. (George
Stanley), 1922- : Shrum, Robert.
19 January 1984
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 122 : 13
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 28
Program details: A lively debate before an appreciative audience for such
things, the place where WFB first won his spurs, the Yale Political
Union. Samples: Mr. Shrum: "All of us agree that Mr. Reagan's
re-election is likely to mean more for guns and less for human needs,
that it is likely to mean escalation and not negotiation in Central
America, that it will probably mean a continuing arms race with the
Soviet Union. The difference is that while Mr. Buckley and Mr. Will
welcome that result, Senator McGovern and I and most Democrats resist
it." ... Mr. Will: "It is a sobering thought that if any of the
Democratic candidates now running for President had been President in
the fall of 1983, an extraordinary band of cutthroats would now be
screwing down the lid of a dictatorship on a now free island [Grenada]
in the eastern Caribbean."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.827
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6761
item Program Number S0583,
1327
"A
Firing
Line
Debate: Resolved: That President Reagan Should be
Re-Elected in 1984-Part II"
Guests: Buckley, William F. (William
Frank), Jr., 1925-2008. : Will, George F. : McGovern, George S. (George
Stanley), 1922- : Shrum, Robert.
19 January 1984
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 122 : 13
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 28
Program details: A lively debate before an appreciative audience for such
things, the place where WFB first won his spurs, the Yale Political
Union. Samples: Mr. Shrum: "All of us agree that Mr. Reagan's
re-election is likely to mean more for guns and less for human needs,
that it is likely to mean escalation and not negotiation in Central
America, that it will probably mean a continuing arms race with the
Soviet Union. The difference is that while Mr. Buckley and Mr. Will
welcome that result, Senator McGovern and I and most Democrats resist
it." ... Mr. Will: "It is a sobering thought that if any of the
Democratic candidates now running for President had been President in
the fall of 1983, an extraordinary band of cutthroats would now be
screwing down the lid of a dictatorship on a now free island [Grenada]
in the eastern Caribbean."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.828
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6762
item Program Number S0584,
1328
"A Murder Case"
Guests: Aziz, Muhammad [Butler, Norman] :
Herendeen, Warren.
18 January 1984
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 122 : 14
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 28
Program details: "On the evening of February 21, 1965, Malcolm X was
gunned down in Harlem--not by Ku Klux Klan agents," as WFB reminds us,
"but by agents of Elijah Muhammad, the reigning Black Muslim leader."
The chief assassin implicated two other men, one of them being Norman
Butler, now known as Muhammad Aziz. Although the assassin later admitted
that he had lied about the other two, they were not granted a new trial.
Mr. Aziz speaks about how his religion has sustained him, and even if
Christians, including Mr. Buckley, will have difficulty accepting some
of the distinctions he draws, his testimony is moving indeed:
"Christianity doesn't lend itself to the black man holding his head up,
but Islam does. Islam says you don't have to turn the other cheek if
you're attacked.... Islam gives you an operational basis for your
everyday life, for your every moment of existence."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.825
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6759
item Program Number S0585,
1329
"The Prison Problem"
Guests: Colson, Charles W. : Coughlin,
Thomas.
18 January 1984
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 122 : 15
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 29
Program details: In his previous appearance on
Firing
Line
Mr. Colson had
spoken in large part about his own experience in prison; here he speaks
more as a student of the problems with our prisons--principally the
inhuman overcrowding and, even so, the staggering cost of building new
prison space to keep up with the growing prison population. He has an
alternative idea, which he states very effectively. Mr. Coughlin,
meanwhile, is willing to stick up for his own institution, the legendary
state prison up the river" from New York City: "It's a little-known fact
that of the eight thousand people who left this system in 1976, only 12
per cent have returned to prison within a five-year period for a new
crime as distinguished from breaking parole on the old crime.
Sixty-eight per cent are no problem; you never see them again after they
leave."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.826
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6760
item Program Number S0586,
1330
"Is There a Natural Law?"
Guests: McInerny, Ralph. :
Solomon, David. : Niemeyer, Gerhart.
6 January 1984
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 122 : 16
Transcript: Box/Folder 178 : 29
Program details: This topic, it is safe to say, has not often been
addressed on television talk shows. But guests and host use enough
concrete illustrations to give even the non-philosophically minded a
very rewarding hour. WFB: "Nuremberg really was an appeal to natural law
in a way." GN: "Some say so; I don't. In my mind, Nuremberg was an
unreasonable thing, simply for the reason that the Soviets sat among the
judges." WFB: "What if they had not?" GN: "Even then I think it would
have been very much tainted by the fact that the victors sat over the
vanquished." ... RM: "There are certain actions which in and of
themselves are wrong--they would thwart the purposes of human
nature--such as murder and adultery and lying.... These kinds of actions
are excluded. But when you have the inclusions ... the positive
natural-law precepts--be brave, be temperate, be just--they don't strike
one as constraining prescriptions. They open up all kinds of
possibilities of variety and diversity."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.824
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6758
item Program Number S0587,
1331
"What's on Malcolm Muggeridge's Mind?"
Guests: Muggeridge,
Malcolm, 1903-1990.
19 February 1984
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 122 : 17
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 1
Program details: Another visit with a favorite guest, whose quirky
perspective on the world is, as always, provocatively expressed. One
sample: "The pacifism in the sense of saying that we will get rid of all
our weapons--well, yes, if you are prepared to have no authority in the
world, no importance in the world, no influence in the world, to wind up
your role as a country, as a people--that is one sort of pacifism, and
one that I could bring myself to respect. But the idea that you would
give up your nuclear weapons and then whoever...can function in the
Kremlin would say, 'Well, it's no use us having nuclear weapons if these
people have given them up'--that is pure drivel."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.829
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ANCWSNM
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6763
item Program Number S0588,
1332
"How Are the Socialists in England Regrouping?"
Guests:
Kinnock, Neil Gordon, 1942-
21 February 1984
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 122 : 18
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 1
Program details: In June 1983 the Labour Party had suffered its worst
electoral defeat since the end of World War I, and the party leader, the
radical socialist Michael Foot, predictably was ousted. So far left had
the party gone, however, that it promptly chose another radical
Socialist to succeed him. High on Mr. Kinnock's agenda, as we learn in
this high-energy exchange, were nuclear disarmament, withdrawal from
NATO, and expulsion of U.S. military facilities from Britain. NK: "It
might be possible for a large country, with expanses of desert or
prairies or water, to be able to accommodate [nuclear attack] without
the total annihilation of society ... but it isn't plausible in Europe,
where we live cheek by jowl, one with another, and we know that the use
of any nuclear weapon would lead to the obliteration of our whole
society."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.831
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6765
item Program Number S0589,
1333
"Is Britain a Giant Humbug?"
Guests: Powell, J. Enoch (John
Enoch), 1912-1998.
20 February 1984
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 122 : 19
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 2
Program details: In Mr. Powell's fourth
Firing
Line
appearance-his first
since he left the Conservative Party and was returned to Parliament from
Northern Ireland as a Unionist-the conversation starts with the fuss he
had stirred up by criticizing the Queen's Christmas message and moves on
from there to the monarch's relation to the government in a
constitutional monarchy, the effects of the Falklands War on
British-American relations, and Britain's relation to her former
colonies. EP:" The English wanted to humbug themselves that the British
Empire was not lost and gone. No, no, no, no. It had been transformed
into something greater and more wonderful [the Commonwealth], a
worldwide association of completely free countries with no subordination
one to the other whatsoever; all equal in respect of their external
affairs, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.830
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6764
item Program Number S0590,
1334
"A French Socialist Speaks Out"
Guests: Rocard, Michel.
23 February 1984
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 122 : 20
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 2
Program details: The discussion ranges widely, from the differences
between Socialism and (Soviet) Communism to the way the French conducted
the war in Indochina. But the main topic is M. Rocard's current
portfolio, agriculture, and the way it fits into the global political
economy. MR: "You have a very large country with a small density of
human beings per hectare. When there is too much space you can always
abandon some land and let it go back to desert... We have no flexibility
at all... . Such a long occupation of this land that we cannot gain any
new land, but we cannot either abandon it." ...WFB: "We conservatives do
not want commercial war. We don't want trade wars. We don't want
tariffs. Are you as theoretically committed to free trade as American
conservatives?" MR: "Any intelligent man is committed to free trade.
Even Socialists can be intelligent."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.834
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6768
item Program Number S0591,
1335
"How Is Mrs. Thatcher Doing?"
Guests: Knight, Andrew, 1939-
: Riddell, Peter. : Hayman, Helene Middleweek.
21 February 1984
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 122 : 21
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 3
Program details: A conversation with three longstanding English friends
of
Firing
Line
(all have served many times as guests or panelists, Mr.
Riddell and Mrs. Hayman beginning when they were still at Cambridge).
The brisk and detail-filled discussion treats of Margaret Thatcher and
Thatcherism, alone and in comparison with Ronald Reagan and Reaganism,
on specifics ranging from inflation to defense (conventional versus
nuclear) to the welfare state (and the fact that, while many Britons
would like lower taxation, few would give up, say, the National Health
Service). Mr. Knight: "The difficulty that we are finding with the
United States is not that it's taking ... a particularly trenchant tone
[in world affairs], it is that it's not us any longer that is taking a
trenchant view. This is the aftermath of a declining power."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.832
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6766
item Program Number S0592,
1336
"The World View of Paul Johnson"
Guests: Johnson, Paul,
1928-
22 February 1984
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 122 : 22
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 3
Program details: Mr. Johnson's magnum opus had caused a tremendous
sensation, and he proves here to deal as compellingly in the spoken as
in the written word. Samples: "Of the three great attempts to explain
human behavior which have created the modern world, Nietzsche was the
one who was proved right [as against Marx and Freud].... He thought that
when God died He would leave a huge vacuum in men's minds, and ... that
vacuum would be filled by the lust for power,... and I think on the
whole that Nietzsche has been vindicated by what has occurred in this
terrible century." "I think one of the sources of evil in the modem
world is the devaluation of language ... If you can tamper with the
language you get at people's psyche; you get inside their minds in a way
you cannot do with bayonets."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.833
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6767
item Program Number S0593,
1337
"The Strain in French-American Relations"
Guests: Galbraith,
Evan G. : Vinocur, John. : Chevrillon, Olivier.
24 February 1984
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 122 : 23
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 4
Program details: The French truck drivers, as Mr. Buckley begins by
reminding us, were just ending their week-long blockade of the country's
roads--begun in the first place in retaliation for the damage done them
by a strike by French customs officials--but today's discussion focuses
less on that than on the topic that had been convulsing Western Europe
for months: the decision by NATO to deploy Pershing II and cruise
missiles. Mr. Galbraith: "These weapons prevent the Soviets from their
prime weapon these days, which is to try to terrorize Western Europeans
into surrender." M. Chevrillon: "[There has been] a huge shift in the
French intelligentsia... into some sort of realistic attitude towards
the Soviet threat. Those people have understood probably better than
their German or English counterparts what Gulag means ... and they are
inclined now to accept as a moral value resistance to this kind of
totalitarianism."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.836
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6770
item Program Number S0594,
1338
"The Conservative Dissent in France"
Guests: Chirac,
Jacques, 1932-
23 February 1984
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 122 : 24
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 4
Program details: M. Chirac had failed in his 1981 challenge to his former
ally, then-President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, but, even so, as the
wildly popular mayor of Paris and the head of the Gaullist party, he was
one of the most prominent figures in French political life. On this
show, he apologizes for his imperfect English, but his common sense
comes through with Gallic clarity: "We cannot criticize the Americans'
economic policies, and also ask them to help us in defense; that is a
contradiction." "Our effort is to explain to the French people that the
Socialist and Communist system is politically dangerous to freedom and
economically failed, and that we do have a liberal system which could
improve very much the economic and social situation."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.835
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6769
item Program Number S0595,
1339
"How Does It Look for the Democrats?"
Guests: Zielenziger,
Michael. : Yepsen, David. : Herman, Dick.
18 April 1984
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 122 : 25
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 5
Program details: The Democratic presidential race had pretty much come
down to Walter Mondale, Gary Hart, and Jesse Jackson, and the objective
on this show, as WFB puts it, "is to examine this race from other than
the usual perch along the Eastern Seaboard." The lively discussion
covers the ups and downs of the current race; but it also asks what
actually are the differences between the Heartland and the East Coast.
Mr. Yepsen: "There are rituals and duties and routines that come from
being tillers of the soil.... I'm not saying that it's better or worse,
but it certainly makes it different to know in the springtime the issue
is rain and getting a crop planted, and that's of concern to a
businessman and to the governor at the State Capitol." Mr. Zielenziger:
"What is news in Washington often is not news here. So much of
Washington news is gossip."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.837
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6771
item Program Number S0596,
1340
"Does Middle America Have an Inferiority Complex?"
Guests:
Kerrey, Robert, 1943-
18 April 1984
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 122 : 26
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 5
Program details: Whether it has a complex or not, Governor Kerrey
certainly agrees that Middle America finds it hard to get noticed by the
national media. This attractive newcomer to politics (his first race had
been the one for governor a year and a half before) speaks movingly
about the small family farmer, squeezed as always by fluctuations in the
weather and, now, by the huge agri-business conglomerates ("You don't
have people in agriculture leaving it, taking a job repairing
televisions, then when the economy turns around going back.... Once
they're gone, they are likely gone forever"). He is also perceptive
about the difficulties in governing: "You cannot run a government like a
business. My government is a representative democracy, and my business
is a benevolent dictatorship."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.838
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6772
item Program Number S0597,
1341
"The Budget Deficit and the GOP"
Guests: Kassebaum, Nancy
Landon.
19 April 1984
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 122 : 27
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 6
Program details: A spirited conversation with one of the first women
elected to the U.S. Senate, a moderate Republican who was a leader in
the fight for an across-the-board budget freeze. NLK: "I think most
people in this country today worry far more about the increase in
interest rates and the effect of that on our economic upturn now than
they do anything else. Regarding defense, if we are not strong
economically our defense system isn't going to work anyway." WFB: "Well,
that's only half true. The Soviet Union is not strong economically and
their defense system, unfortunately, works very well." How
forward-looking are our legislators? NLK: "We always worry about the
future, but it is the immediacy of the moment on which we vote."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.839
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6773
item Program Number S0598,
1342
"Crime and Insanity"
Guests: Menninger, W. Walter. : Modlin,
Herbert. : Spring, Raymond L.
19 April 1984
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 122 : 28
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 6
Program details: Our three guests bring lucidity as well as expertise to
a question that has been muddled by generations of editorialists and
defense lawyers. RLS: "The insanity defense really grew out of the
attempt by judges three hundred years ago and more to try to explain to
juries a very simple concept, and that is that all crimes require not
only an act but a certain state of mind... One who is so dispossessed of
reason that he cannot form that intent obviously cannot be guilty of a
crime." ... WWM: "I think it's important to differentiate between
explaining why behavior takes place and excusing it.... People tend to
take explanations to be equated with excusing, and that's why psychiatry
sometimes gets a bad mark."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.840
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6774
item Program Number S0599,
1343
"Should the Democratic Party Move Left?"
Guests: Burns,
James MacGregor.
9 May 1984
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 122 : 29
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 7
Program details: The title question refers to Professor Burns's
conviction that the two parties should be more sharply differentiated,
with Southern conservatives going Republican and Northeastern liberals
going Democratic. An extremely rich hour examining current problems in
the light of our constitutional structure. JMB: "I would like for each
party to control its own team in the way parliamentary parties do, and
then present their two cases--as I think clearly happened in 1980--to
the people." WFB: "Although I would like to conclude that there was
something in the nature of a conservative revolution in 1980, I don't
think it's true. I think people didn't want Carter to be President."
JMB: "I think you are doing an injustice to the Republican Party and its
conservative principles, as I read that election.""
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.841
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6775
item Program Number S0600,
1344
"Looking Back on the Election Law"
Guests: McCarthy, Eugene
J., 1916- : Etzioni, Amitai.
9 May 1984
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 122 : 30
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 7
Program details: Mr. Etzioni's latest book, Capital Corruption, was a
plea for more stringent revisions of the campaign-finance laws, which
had first been passed in 1971 and had been the subject of court cases
(including a landmark one brought by then-Senators McCarthy and James
Buckley, eventually decided as Buckley v. Valeo), and congressional
responses to them. To Mr. Etzioni, sociologist, money is the root of
most political evil. To Mr. McCarthy, sometime political practitioner
(who to be sure is also a poet and philosopher), "There are other
temptations. You see, we're operating as though the greatest temptation
was money. We know the classical temptations were of a higher order.
There was the temptation of power and, beyond that, of pride."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.842
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6776
item Program Number S0601,
1345
"General Haig Looks Back"
Guests: Haig, Alexander Meigs,
1924-
29 May 1984
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 122 : 31
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 8
Program details: General Haig had become such a figure of fun--by saying,
"I'm in charge here" when President Reagan was shot--that one can
forget, until one listens to him, just how deeply experienced he is in
public affairs (going back to his service on the staffs of General
MacArthur and General Almond in Korea, and including both front-line
duty and high-level Pentagon duty in the Vietnam War). His unpacking of
the questions that should be asked before "a single drop of American
blood is shed" is masterly, as is his explication of how lines of
authority should run in an Administration: it doesn't matter who speaks
on foreign-policy matters--it is more usually the Secretary of State or
the National Security Advisor, but in the Kennedy Administration it was
the ubiquitous Bobby--but it matters greatly that somebody "is
designated by the President, and perceived by his colleagues and peers
to be the man designated by the President, to handle and centralize
foreign policy.... Either works, where a hybrid or neither is
chaos."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.843
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6777
item Program Number S0602,
1346
"The High-Frontier Concept"
Guests: Keyworth, George.
29 May 1984
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 122 : 32
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 8
Program details: Could the Strategic Defense Initiative really work?
Wouldn't it destabilize relations with the Soviet Union? Dr. Keyworth's
technical credentials are unassailable, and he proves able to explain
difficult concepts so that non-physicists can grasp them: "The Soviets'
definition or perception of the word 'deterrent' requires that they
maintain a pre-emptive strike, a first-strike capability, whereas for us
it is purely the maintenance of a retaliation. If we can reduce those
perceptions to a common ground--and I would contend that even a
moderately effective ballistic missile defense system does, because it
removes any military validity, any validity at all, to a Soviet
pre-emptive first strike--if it does that, then we are both left with
the threat of retaliation, which is where we started from decades ago,
which is far more stable than the situation today."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.844
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6778
item Program Number S0603,
1401
"What's Ahead for the Democrats? Part I"
Guests: Green, Mark
J. : Kempton, Murray, 1917- : Brookhiser, Richard.
20 June 1984
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 122 : 33
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 9
Program details: With the Democratic National Convention still nearly a
month away, the primaries had ended with the party firmly in the hands
of what WFB calls the "Henry Wallace-George McGovern" wing. Walter
Mondale was the presumptive nominee, although neither Gary Hart nor
Jesse Jackson had formally conceded. The first of these shows is a
Left-Right face-off, with plenty of sparklers; in the second, a
half-dozen student panelists put the guests (and their host) through
their paces on specific topics ranging from abortion to affirmative
action. A sample from Murray Kempton: "One of the things that fascinates
me about the Carter people is that they were such Confederates. We all
went to Gettysburg one day and they were saying, 'We were here and they
were there,' and they're still saying it.... If I were a delegate I
would nominate for Vice President a Southern white male,... some tough
old cracker who goes around saying, 'Boys, remember Appomattox and what
they did to us there. Rally one more time.' "
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.849
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6783
item Program Number S0604,
1402
"What's Ahead for the Democrats? Part II"
Guests: Green,
Mark J. : Kempton, Murray, 1917- : Brookhiser, Richard.
20 June 1984
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 122 : 33
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 9
Program details: With the Democratic National Convention still nearly a
month away, the primaries had ended with the party firmly in the hands
of what WFB calls the "Henry Wallace-George McGovern" wing. Walter
Mondale was the presumptive nominee, although neither Gary Hart nor
Jesse Jackson had formally conceded. The first of these shows is a
Left-Right face-off, with plenty of sparklers; in the second, a
half-dozen student panelists put the guests (and their host) through
their paces on specific topics ranging from abortion to affirmative
action. A sample from Murray Kempton: "One of the things that fascinates
me about the Carter people is that they were such Confederates. We all
went to Gettysburg one day and they were saying, 'We were here and they
were there,' and they're still saying it.... If I were a delegate I
would nominate for Vice President a Southern white male,... some tough
old cracker who goes around saying, 'Boys, remember Appomattox and what
they did to us there. Rally one more time.' "
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.850
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6784
item Program Number S0605,
1403
"The Olympics"
Guests: Edwards, Harry. : Axthelm, Pete.
12 July 1984
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 122 : 34
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 10
Program details: On the eve of the Los Angeles Olympics, a discussion of
a wide range of sports-related issues that frequently splits into two
discussions. For Dr. Edwards--the man who attempted to organize a
boycott of the Mexico City Games in 1968 to protest South Africa's
inclusion, and who did inspire the two black athletes who gave the Black
Power salute when our national anthem was being played--race is the only
issue. Mr. Axthelm focuses on the Olympics themselves, and the way their
current size and the media attention that attract are effectively an
invitation to boycotts and terrorism. Dr. Edwards: "Jackie Robinson
accomplished something. He made it possible for more blacks to be more
consistently exploited, more consistently and at a greater profit, than
ever before in the history of American society." Mr. Axthelm: "The
Soviets proved [in 1980] what I have suspected all along: it is possible
to run a perfect Olympics so long as there is no individual freedom in
the country." NOTE: The transcript lists the title of this episode as:
"Looking Again at the Olympics."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.851
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6785
item Program Number S0606,
1404
"The Russians and Reagan"
Guests: Talbott, Strobe. : Kaiser,
Robert. : Kondracke, Morton.
6 June 1984
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 122 : 35
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 10
Program details: As WFB frames the question, "The general understanding
is that Soviet-American relations are at an all-time low, which appears
to be true, and it is certainly true that this worries some people more
than it does others." Mr. Talbott is one of the "some": "I'm certainly
worried about what Reagan has done to Soviet-American relations.... A
really serious impasse in Soviet-American relations is not a healthy
thing." Mr. Kaiser, while not as unworried as his host, refuses "to hold
Reagan responsible for everything that's happened." Among other things,
he points out, it wasn't Ronald Reagan who invaded Afghanistan. And as
examiner Morton Kondracke describes the arms race, "When we build, they
build. When we stop building, as we did during detente, they build."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.845
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6779
item Program Number S0607,
1405
"The Real Cuba?-- Part I"
Guests: Almendros, Nestor. : Leal,
Orlando Jimenez. : Navarro, Antonio.
13 June 1984
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 122 : 36
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 11
Program details: Messrs. Almendros and Jimenez had collaborated on the
highly acclaimed documentary Improper Conduct, about present-day Cuba,
and particularly the Castro regime's imprisonment and torture of
homosexuals. Mr. Navarro--whom we had met three years earlier (
Firing
Line
s0475)--had initially been quite close to Castro but soon realized
his mistake. This show starts with a few minutes of footage from
Improper Conduct and then moves into an extraordinarily rich discussion
of everything from techniques of cinematography to the reasons people
join a revolution to the obtuseness of French intellectuals. One sample:
WFB: "Why, given the ease with which information travels these days,
does it take ten or twelve years to find out what Fidel Castro is like
if you are a French intellectual?" NA: "Yes, that's amazing, especially
when you think that common people, very ignorant people, know what's
happening. For instance, the Haitians that leave poverty and
dictatorship in Haiti seem to know very well that the country not to go
to is Cuba."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.847
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6781
item Program Number S0608,
1406
"The Real Cuba?-- Part II"
Guests: Reich, Otto. : Luxenburg,
Norman. : Aguilar, Luis.
13 June 1984
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 122 : 37
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 11
Program details: The previous show concentrated on Castro's victims; this
one concentrates on Castro himself and his regime. Are the guests (and
their host) rather one-sidedly anti-Castro? Well, as Mr. Buckley
relates: "The producer of
Firing
Line
, Mr. Warren Steibel,... invited
six guests known for the enthusiasm they have expressed for the
accomplishments of Fidel Castro, but none, mysteriously, was available."
A lively hour even so with three deeply knowledgeable guests. Here, for
example, is Mr. Luxenburg on the widely held belief that the Castro
regime had greatly raised the Cuban literacy rate: "In 1977, in May, a
committee of the House of Representatives went to Cuba on a (private)
fact-finding mission, and published in their report--and we assume that
this information was furnished them by obliging Cuban officials--that
prior to Castro there were 187,000 students in Cuba. But there weren't
187,000 students in Cuba before Castro, there were a million. These
statistics you can find in any old edition of the Encyclopaedia
Britannica."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.848
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6782
item Program Number S0609,
1407
"U.S. Policy and Human Rights"
Guests: Abrams, Elliott,
1948-
6 June 1984
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 123 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 ; 12
Program details: In these balmy pre-Iran/Contra days, Mr. Abrams is able
to keep in view the whole range of his portfolio, which he does with
great zest, from the comparative human-rights possibilities in, say,
Nigeria, a country with "significant democratic institutions built by
the British," and Zaire, "which was ruled very poorly by the Belgians,
who left no institutions behind"; to the uses of the Helsinki agreement:
"I thought the Helsinki treaty would be a travesty ... It has been
better than we thought.... What is completely legitimized now is the
notion that we can comment on their [the Soviets'] internal political
situation, their human-rights situation. You hardly ever hear them any
more saying that this is off limits."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.846
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6780
item Program Number S0610,
1408
"Is the Main Threat from the Third World?"
Guests: Lukacs,
John. : Van den Haag, Ernest.
12 July 1984
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 123 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 12
Program details: Mr. Lukacs is known for taking contrarian positions, and
he had recently floated two such, which he explicates and defends on
this show: that the United States' fear of the Soviet Union is
outdated--what we should be fearing is Third World immigration; and that
"the United States is ceasing to be a democracy and becoming a
bureaucracy." The conversation (particularly between Mr. Lukacs and
fellow contrarian Ernest van den Haag) seldom quite clicks, but there
are some good moments: EvdH: "The one thing we know about history is
that present trends hardly ever continue." JL: "The American people are
very unpredictable, thank God. That bad thing is that so many
institutions want to make them predictable."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.852
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6786
item Program Number S0611,
1409
"Is Bipartisanism Dead?"
Guests: Kissinger, Henry, 1923-
31 August 1984
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 123 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 13
Program details: Mr. Buckley introduces his old friend as someone who"
has always known how to speak with men and women of different views. He
has conducted civil conversations with Mao Tse-tung and Congressman
Michael Barnes. Is there any sacrifice he is unwilling to make for the
national welfare?" This absorbing conversation with the Metternich de
nos jours ranges from the Vietnam War to the present-day Philippines to
the bipartisan lack of congressional interest in the findings of his
bipartisan commission. One sample: "Now Central America has the
additional disadvantage that it looks a little bit like Vietnam. It's in
the tropics, and it looks like the tropics, and it's a guerrilla war...
What people are reluctant to face is that it is very close to our
borders."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.853
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6787
item Program Number S0612,
1410
"The Election: A View from New York"
Guests: Koch, Ed, 1924-
31 August 1984
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 123 : 4
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 13
Program details: His Irrepressible Honor is always good value; here he
surveys the political scene as the dust settles from the national
conventions. On the Democrats: "I wouldn't for a moment say to you that
there aren't people in the Democratic Party who take positions that I
deplore. I thought... that Jackson and Hart in their foreign policy were
quite bad... I am convinced that the positions of Hart and Jackson are
not the positions of Fritz Mondale." On the Republicans: "I thought that
the battle in Dallas ... was a battle between the far right and the
savage right, and I believed that the savage right would ultimately win
and they did." On one particular Republican: "I drive people in my own
party crazy-angry with me, because I will say I disagree with President
Reagan's philosophy; I deplore it; I like him personally. There are some
people who cannot distinguish between the political difference and the
personal liking."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.854
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TZ8GOVM
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6788
item Program Number S0613,
1411
"The Republican Party and Moderates"
Guests: Rusher, William
A., 1923- : Leach, Jim.
6 September 1984
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 123 : 5
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 14
Program details: Rep. Leach, a moderate Republican, concurs with some of
Mayor Koch's strictures on the Republican Convention, although he
expresses them more, well, moderately. Indeed, in his taxonomy
"moderate" really does seem to mean moderate, rather than being a cloak
for liberalism: "Finally, we hearken much like Bill Rusher does to the
Goldwater and Taft traditions of individual rights. What we are
concerned about today is a party that has moved beyond Barry Goldwater's
individual-rights conservatism... towards ideological purity rather than
the themes of America which are very pragmatic." Mr. Rusher, meanwhile,
takes a relaxed view of the fireworks at the Dallas convention: "The
conservative movement today is a pretty big thing and a pretty various
thing.... Most of the differences in the Republican Party for the
immediate future are going to be arguments within the conservative
community ... That is, in a sense, just the sheer exuberance of
growth."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.855
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6789
item Program Number S0614,
1412
"Politics American Style"
Guests: Green, Mark J. : Pilpel,
Harriet F. : Mahoney, J. Daniel, 1931-
18 September 1984
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 123 : 6
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 14
Program details: The semi-annual role reversal in which Mr. Buckley is
the interrogatee--a departure from the norm being that the panel is not
composed entirely of liberals. The conversation is brisk and
entertaining, although there are times when Mr. Green and Mr. Buckley
trade volleys of contradictory statistics without any satisfying
resolution. Better when the focus is on the moral arena: HP: "...
whatever you think about abortion should be your own opinion ..., but
the attempt to foist that opinion on the rest of the population would be
unfair." WFB: "It's the equivalent of my saying that whatever I believe
about civil rights is my business, and if I want to discriminate against
people because they are black or because they are Jewish, that's my
right. But you say no, it's not your right, because they have rights
too.... There is an entire sophisticated culture that says babies have
rights too, and they are babies two days before they are born even as
they are acknowledgedly babies the day after they are born."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.858
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6792
item Program Number S0615,
1413
"How to Reduce the Deficit"
Guests: Grace, J. Peter.
6 September 1984
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 123 : 7
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 15
Program details: A lively and at times hilarious look at a grim topic:
the way the government wastes taxpayers' money, and the way some
citizens take extravagant advantage of that fact. Mr. Grace proves to be
a fine raconteur, who takes us with him through his excavations: "When
we first went down there, we looked into how much the government
owed--about $1.2 trillion. How much is the government owed? That came
out to over $800 billion, including what they had guaranteed. It's not
that bad. When is this money that is owed to the government due, and
when is it going to be paid? We found to our horror that no one had ever
aged any of that debt ... Nobody knew when it was due or whether it was
overdue." The most comical/infuriating example: 46,000 government
employees or former employees, who were receiving a government paycheck
or Civil Service retirement--and who collectively owed over $60 million
in unpaid student loans.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.856
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6790
item Program Number S0616,
1414
"Church and State"
Guests: Neuhaus, Richard John.
18 September 1984
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 123 : 8
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 15
Program details: Not the most dramatic show, but genuinely profound on
the question of "what happens not only to religious practice but to a
nation's culture when the separation of church and state" is taken to
mean the separation of religion and society. Pastor Neuhaus: "People
forget the fact that the great secularizing forces of our time, the
Third Reich in Germany and the Stalinist-Leninist movement in the Soviet
Union, are emphatically anti any kind of transcendent reference guiding
society. In some senses, they are ... living out the ultimate
implications of the naked public square--that the public square has to
be filled with sheer, raw power, which claims for itself an absolute or
ultimate historical significance."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.857
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6791
item Program Number S0617,
1415
"Mortimer Adler's Great Ideas-Part I"
Guests: Adler,
Mortimer Jerome, 1902-2001.
11 October 1984
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 123 : 9
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 16
Program details: One reason Mr. Adler is a perennially favorite guest is
his aura of having been formed-unlike, alas, all too many academics--by
the great works of Western Civilization that he has studied these many
years. Another reason is that he is never more abstract than he needs to
be: many of the concepts he discusses are difficult, but whenever
possible he brings in graspable details. One sample: "Everyone who's not
in an asylum-for his own good or for the public good-a person who's
allowed to raise a family, hold a job, move around the streets at will,
is a person who has enough intelligence to be a citizen and enough
intelligence to be educated ... I think we haven't begun to release the
amount of intellectual energy in the minds of the least of us who are
not pathologically disabled."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.861
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6795
item Program Number S0618,
1416
"Mortimer Adler's Great Ideas-Part II"
Guests: Adler,
Mortimer Jerome, 1902-2001.
11 October 1984
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 123 : 9
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 16
Program details: One reason Mr. Adler is a perennially favorite guest is
his aura of having been formed-unlike, alas, all too many academics--by
the great works of Western Civilization that he has studied these many
years. Another reason is that he is never more abstract than he needs to
be: many of the concepts he discusses are difficult, but whenever
possible he brings in graspable details. One sample: "Everyone who's not
in an asylum-for his own good or for the public good-a person who's
allowed to raise a family, hold a job, move around the streets at will,
is a person who has enough intelligence to be a citizen and enough
intelligence to be educated ... I think we haven't begun to release the
amount of intellectual energy in the minds of the least of us who are
not pathologically disabled."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.862
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6796
item Program Number S0619,
1417
"The Dalai Lama Looks Back"
Guests: Bstan-'dzin-rgya-mtsho,
Dalai Lama XIV, 1935-
27 September 1984
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 123 : 10
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 16
Program details: The present Dalai Lama assumed full power as the supreme
spiritual leader of Tibet in 1950, the same year the Communist Chinese
overran his country. He fled in 1959 after, as Mr. Buckley relates, "an
uprising against the Chinese Communists which would result, in the
ensuing decades, in a holocaust that ranks with Hitler's and Pol Pot's:
1.2 million Tibetans killed... --one-seventh of the population." The
Dalai Lama "attempted, in India, to salvage what he could of the
religious and historical culture of Tibet." Now, 25 years later, he had
been invited to return and was pondering the invitation. He is an
arresting world figure; but his ideas come strangely to Western ears:
"if there is a clear-cut dialogue between Buddhists and Marxists it may
help the Marxists and they may eventually become more human--less
rigidity--for the Buddhists have the message of love and compassion ...
and the Buddhists may learn some social and economic theory from
Marxism. That is my dream."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.859
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004VGGYDG
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6793
item Program Number S0620,
1418
"Christianity alongside Other Faiths"
Guests: Gilkey,
Langdon. : Lopez, Donald, Jr. : Steindl-Rast, David. : Rockefeller,
Steven.
27 September 1984
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 123 : 11
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 17
Program details: This show, like the previous one, grew out of Middlebury
College's week-long symposium on the significance of "the Christ and the
Bodhisattva--which means in the language of Buddhism a person on the way
to Buddhahood--in contemporary life." Do Christianity and Buddhism have
anything to say to each other, or are their claims antithetical? An
energetic and frequently entertaining discussion, from which, two
samples: Brother David: "You seem to think of Truth as many people do
primarily in terms of that Truth on which we have a grasp, but that is
always a very small part of the Truth. The much greater and more
important part of the Truth, in the religious context, is the Truth that
has us." Mr. Lopez: "To say that God and Nothingness are the same thing
is problematical to me. Because the reality that Christians talk about
is mysterious, and the reality that Buddhists talk about is mysterious,
does not by any means suggest that they are the same thing."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.860
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6794
item Program Number S0621,
1419
"Examining Poverty in America"
Guests: Harrington, Michael,
1928-
13 November 1984
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 123 : 12
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 17
Program details: Mr. Harrington, who 18 years earlier had been the very
first
Firing
Line
guest, can always be depended upon to give the
Socialist Party line--but he does it with such verve and good humor! One
sample, from a discussion that ranges from Aid to Families with
Dependent Children to the Catholic bishops' pastoral letter on
capitalism, to the squeals of French bankers under Mitterrand: WFB:
"You've got to increase productivity. But fortunately, under Mr. Reagan,
we've been doing that, haven't we?, for the last couple of years." MH:
"Oh, I think there is a second act to come, Bill." WFB: "I know, and the
trouble with those second acts is that you all look so happy when you
predict it, don't you?" MH: "I'm chuckling at the Greek tragedy that's
about to unfold."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.864
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6798
item Program Number S0622,
1420
"What Should Reagan's Economic Program Be?"
Guests: Kemp,
Jack.
15 November 1984
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 123 : 13
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 18
Program details: Ronald Reagan had just been triumphantly re-elected--but
Jack Kemp's joy is not unconfined: "If the White House drops the ball
and they think their mandate is simply to cut spending and not to get
the type of economic growth that we need for this country, Kasten and
Kemp and Bradley and Gephardt are going to wrest away from the White
House the issue of tax reform." Mr. Kemp sometimes sounds a little too
gee-whiz to be true--but the intervening years have borne out many of
his predictions, even if he and his colleagues did not succeed in
enacting the flat tax that was at the center of their program. An
invigorating discussion of what in Messrs. Kemp and Buckley's hands is a
not at all dismal science.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.865
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6799
item Program Number S0623,
1421
"Bias in the Press"
Guests: Braley, Russ, 1921- : Decter,
Midge.
13 November 1984
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 123 : 14
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 18
Program details: Mr. Braley is a slow and deliberate talker, and so this
show lacks the energy of some. But many of the insights are acute. RB:
"Watergate was a foreign affair. By that I mean the origins of Watergate
and the passion aroused by Watergate was a passion not directed
specifically against the instances of Watergate, but against the
Administration that continued to pursue the Vietnam War against the
advice of the New York Times and its allies." ... MD: "[Establishment
journalists assume] that the critics of the press are people who are
about to snuff out freedom of the First Amendment. You should hear them,
the way they talk about Accuracy in Media, as if the jackboots were
coming."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.863
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6797
item Program Number S0624,
1422
"Can Democratic Governments Contend with Communist Governments?"
Guests: Revel, Jean-Francois.
15 November 1984
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 123 : 15
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 19
Program details: M. Revel answers the title question simply: "No." He
points out that "Just after World War I, Central Europe was democratic
or becoming democratic. Countries like Czechoslovakia and Poland and
Hungary were more or less in between; Rumania too. Yugoslavia was half
democratic. We should have been able confidently to assume that they
would be democracies today. But now there is just a very slim slice of
Europe--Western Europe--which is democratic." And why? "Because we never
learn. We are faithful to an assumed--an alleged--international law
whose definition goes back to Yalta or Helsinki, which the Soviets
simply do not respect." As predictor, M. Revel was fortunately wrong, at
least for the short term. As analyst of what ailed the democratic
West--inordinate self-criticism, toleration of tyranny--he was exactly
right, and his superbly expressed jeremiad is still valid today.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.866
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6800
item Program Number S0625,
1423
"Religion and Politics"
Guests: O'Connor, John J.
29 November 1984
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 123 : 16
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 19
Program details: Although over the next 15 years Archbishop O'Connor
would become known as a controversialist, we see him here, in his first
year in the most prominent Church position in the United States, as
threading his way thoughtfully and respectfully through matters on
which, ex officio, he must now have an opinion. On points where he is
sure, he is not shy about saying so: "The preponderance of teleological
evidence [on the unborn child] is that you are talking about human life,
ab initio.... We would argue categorically, unconditionally, that the
taking of a human life is the taking of a human life, and this is
morally wrong." On matters where he is less sure, like the bishops'
pastoral letters on nuclear weapons and on the economy, he is
diplomatic: "There are a great many of us who do not consider ourselves
experts on tactical nuclear weapons ... but most people consider
themselves pretty close to the business of taxation, of poverty, of
hunger, homelessness ..." A good conversation between two people who
care deeply about the role of the Church in modern society.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.867
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6801
item Program Number S0626,
1424
"Book Burning and the Moral Majority"
Guests: Thomas, Cal. :
Pilpel, Harriet F.
29 November 1984
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 123 : 17
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 20
Program details: Contrary to the impression given of his organization by
the New York Times and the President of Yale University, Mr. Thomas
avers that he wants not to burn books. However, he also wants the New
York Times to stop maintaining its more genteel memory hole: "A book by
[the Christian evangelist] Dr. Francis Schaeffer... outsold Jane Fonda's
Workout Book by two to one, by 300,000 to 150,000, in March of 1982, and
yet Miss Fonda's book was number one in the New York Times best-seller
list, and Schaeffer's book was relegated to ignominious oblivion ... If
you are going to call this thing a best-seller list, then you ought to
have best-sellers on it." He and Mrs. Pilpel--although she also wants
not to burn books--tend to talk past each other, but there are good
moments: WFB: "The Black Plague destroyed a higher percentage of the
population of Europe than both world wars, but there we were dealing
with a natural menace over which we had no control. But when you get a
Hitler, a Stalin, and a Mao Tse-tung, [who] create three societies which
between them managed to slaughter people in the tens of millions, you
can say that a world that permitted this is a world that's lost its
essential sense of gravity."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.868
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6802
item Program Number S0627,
1425
"Where Is the GOP Headed?"
Guests: Gingrich, Newt. : Green,
Bill.
6 December 1984
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 123 : 18
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 20
Program details: Mr. Gingrich was already a leader of the conservative
wing of the GOP, and Mr. Green was prominent among the remnant of
"Rockefeller Republicans." Ronald Reagan having just become, barring the
repeal of the 22nd Amendment, a lame duck, Mr. Buckley asks his guests
to focus on "the future of the Republican Party post Reagan." They do so
more in terms of programs and philosophy than of personalities, in a
crisp exchange. Mr. Green, for example, defends the Federal Government's
public-housing program: when it was begun "fully half of the housing in
this country either lacked indoor plumbing or was so run down it was a
real threat to the life and health of the people... Now, as we've gotten
to the point where the housing in this country is much better, a much
better case can be made for something like the housing voucher ..." Mr.
Gingrich, on the other hand, sees modern liberalism as still "find[ing]
it very hard to believe that average people can do anything for
themselves, and so they have a tendency to provide more and more
professional help, which somehow doesn't help you."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.869
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0064EGO3I
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6803
item Program Number S0628,
1426
"What about Liberation Theology?"
Guests: Rutler, George. :
Smith, William B.
6 December 1984
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 123 : 19
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 21
Program details: Liberation theology--a type of Catholicism with very
much a this-worldly, and often an overtly Marxist, perspective--was
sweeping through Latin America, and there were rumors that Pope John
Paul might ease his earlier condemnation of it. Our two guests explore
the doctrinal and pastoral aspects of the question lucidly and
engagingly. Father Smith: "Nicaragua is not strong on theologians, but
the test case has already been made there and they have failed the
test.... the Church there is not for all the poor; it is just for the
poor who have a correct ideological understanding of the revolution, and
the split comes right into worship. If you are a member of the manager
class, or the teaching class, or the bishops, you won't be given
communion in certain [of the liberationists'] communities."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.870
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6804
item Program Number S0629,
1427
"Is There a Liberal Crack-Up?"
Guests: Tyrrell, R. Emmett,
Jr. : Hitchens, Christopher.
11 December 1984
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 123 : 20
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 21
Program details: The 1984 election suggested, as WFB puts it, "the
collapse of liberalism as we have known it during the past half
century," and he asks his two guests, one on the right, the other on the
far left, where liberalism is likely to go from here. Messrs. Hitchens
and Tyrrell actually talk more about the past than about the future, and
it is illuminating (when they don't indulge in billingsgate) to get such
different takes on the same set of events. CH: "I believe that the
American Left, in starting the civil-rights movement for black
Americans, in combating an unjust war in Indochina, and in beginning the
emancipation of women ... changed the way everyone thinks and the way
everyone lives... the whole world is in debt to the American Left for
these three enterprises." RET: "In the Sixties and Seventies the
liberals achieved most of the things they set out to achieve,
particularly welfare and civil rights, and then were overtaken by a lust
for power. They refused to notice that they had indeed achieved these
things ..."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.871
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0064EGO6U
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6805
item Program Number S0630,
1428
"The Mysterious William Shakespeare"
Guests: Ogburn,
Charlton, 1911- : Charney, Maurice.
11 December 1984
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 123 : 21
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 22
Program details: It was Mr. Ogburn's book that revived for this
generation the theory that William Shakespeare of Stratford was only the
front man for the actual author of the greatest body of plays in the
English language: the Earl of Oxford. He tells his story engagingly and
with much plausible detail; unfortunately for orthodox Stratfordians,
Mr. Charney is too indignant to subject some of the less plausible
details to a systematic dissection--although he does make the telling
point that "Mr. Ogburn [and other Oxfordians]... don't really like the
author that they have, and want to replace him with a romantic image of
what an author should be."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.872
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6806
item Program Number S0631,
1429
"Deregulation: Good or Bad?"
Guests: Kahn, Alfred E. (Alfred
Edward)
7 January 1985
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 123 : 22
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 22
Program details: Mr. Kahn has shuttled over the years between academia
and government, but he has nonetheless retained, as Mr. Buckley puts it,
"a preference to speak in plain English." He knows the American economy
inside out, and he and his host take us on an exhilarating tour of
everything from the Post Office to agriculture to AT&T to the
airlines (the Civil Aeronautics Board--which Mr. Kahn had once chaired,
with the mandate of abolishing it [see
Firing
Line
s0337]--had just
ceased to exist a month earlier). One sample: "There are external
benefits, so I find it difficult to argue against the subsidization of
provision of mail service to isolated communities. But I think one has
to draw that line rather carefully ... I don't think that society owes
every community in the country air service."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.873
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6807
item Program Number S0632,
1430
"The Black-Jewish Coalition"
Guests: Berry, Mary Frances. :
Brickner, Balfour. : Glazer, Nathan.
7 January 1985
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 123 : 23
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 23
Program details: WFB begins by positing that "the alliance between
American Jews and American blacks is at least fraying, if not actually
ruptured." The ensuing conversation is lively, indeed at times
obstreperous, but more enlightening than not. MFB: "Blacks didn't start
voting Democratic in Roosevelt's first election; they waited to see what
was going to happen that was different from what happened with the
Republicans. And as old black people tell me in Tennessee, 'What was
different 'bout the Roosevelts was: when they had programs, we could be
in 'em.' "... NG: "What kind of interest basis is there for the
black-Jewish alliance? The old interest basis has disappeared. It's true
in the '40s and '50s Jews and blacks were fighting together for
anti-discrimination laws--in colleges, in employment, in housing--but
Jews don't have to worry much about discrimination now ... It's not a
big thing. For blacks, of course, it's a big thing."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.874
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6808
item Program Number S0633,
1431
"Can an American Dominate the UN?"
Guests: Kirkpatrick,
Jeane J.
28 January 1985
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 123 : 24
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 23
Program details: In answer to the title question, Mrs. Kirkpatrick had
certainly been doing her best for the past four years. On this show, she
gives a pellucid account of the dynamics of that institution (things one
hadn't thought of: "Using the veto in the Security Council is a mark of
lack of political clout. If you've got political influence then you can
persuade more than six nations in the Security Council not to vote for
the resolution you're against and you don't need to veto it") and a
novel defense of our continued membership ("The reason we should not
withdraw from the UN is that our Declaration of Independence requests us
to have a decent respect for the opinions of mankind. Now there's no
doubt that it would be a terrible, terrible affront to the opinions of
mankind for the U.S. to withdraw from the UN").
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.875
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6809
item Program Number S0634,
1432
"Charles Murray Looks at the Poverty Problem"
Guests:
Murray, Charles A.
28 January 1985
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 123 : 25
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 24
Program details: In the 1960s, the poverty rate was slowly but steadily
declining. Then President Johnson declared War on Poverty, and
poverty--disappeared? Alas, no; it instead began to increase again. The
thesis of Mr. Murray's hotly controversial book was that the program had
indeed caused the increase--and for reasons that were entirely
understandable: "By 1970, without stretching the rules, without
imagining some sort of welfare cheat, you had a situation in which a
young woman who had gotten pregnant... could quite reasonably say that
her best option was not to marry the man, and to obtain an income which
was roughly equal in purchasing power to a minimum-wage job in 1960."
WFB: "Some of your critics say it may make sense in the short term for
the girl not to marry the boy. However, since this almost inevitably
catapults her into a perpetual state of poverty, it's a very poor
strategic decision." CM: "We are talking about 17-, 18-, and
19-year-olds in many instances ... You can think of it as people making
incremental decisions from day to day and suddenly, down the road,
they've locked themselves into a situation they had never
foreseen.""
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.876
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6810
item Program Number S0635,
1433
"Women against Pornography"
Guests: Pilpel, Harriet F. :
Dworkin, Andrea.
25 February 1985
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 123 : 26
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 24
Program details: Miss Dworkin has looked into the face of pornography and
seen "every possible physical abuse and humiliation of women," and she
will tolerate no compromise with it--she was the prime mover behind
ordinances in Minneapolis and Indianapolis that sought to outlaw it
completely. Mrs. Pilpel is clearly no fan of the stuff, but she sees
anything that breaches the First Amendment as removing protections from
far more than pornographers: "You and the people who agree with you
would be among the first people to be suppressed." More heat than light
from Miss Dworkin, but it is interesting to see the more
multi-dimensional Mrs. Pilpel putting her principles up against her
preferences.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.877
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6811
item Program Number S0636,
1434
"What Should We Be Worrying About?"
Guests: Lewis, Anthony,
1927- : Greenfield, Jeff.
25 February 1985
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 124 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 25
Program details: What indeed? Mr. Buckley suggests some broad topics
(including the deficit and the Strategic Defense Initiative and, less
predictably, longevity); he and his guests are off and running,
entertainingly and perceptively. JG: "People whose grandfathers and
fathers were paid at the level of steelworkers may find that they are
[operating] much more in a free-market economy. I have some concern
about what happens when that broad middle of the American pyramid begins
to experience ... a sense of downward mobility." ... AL: "The degree of
agreement here today is rather frightening, but the three of us might
agree on the Treasury Department's reform tax legislation, which I
expect is a step in your direction." WFB: "A step in the right direction
doesn't necessarily ... mean that you are going to correct the problem.
If you need two steps to get out of the way of an oncoming train and you
take one step, it might be a step in the right direction, but it doesn't
help at all."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.878
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6812
item Program Number S0637,
1435
"Are We Coddling the Farmers?"
Guests: Bovard, James. :
Mullins, Robert J.
26 February 1985
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 124 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 25
Program details: The conversation sometimes fails to click, with Messrs.
Bovard and Buckley concentrating on the amount of money that goes to
"the farmers" (actually, most of it to the huge agribusiness producers
of grain and rice and cotton) and Mr. Mullins arguing that "stability"
demands the expenditure. But if we get no meeting of the minds, we do
get the two sides' cases clearly presented. JB: "A lot of people put a
sentimental value on having people on the farm ... but I think we need
to put that in perspective; we need to put a price tag on that. The
question is: Are we willing to pay an extra $20 billion a year in order
to have an extra 50,000 people living on the farm? ..." RJM: "I am
willing to pay a price to maintain stability, not only stability from
the farmers' standpoint, but stability from the consumers' standpoint
and stability in our industrial production. My friends in the United
Auto Workers told me that 85,000 United Auto Workers are out of work
today that used to make farm implements that there is no longer a market
for. So it's not a nostalgia trip."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.879
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6813
item Program Number S0638,
1436
"The Role of Song at School"
Guests: Melcher, Tom. :
Barthold, Steve. : Kliment, Nick. :
26 February 1985
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 124 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 26
Program details: A delightfully offbeat show with the current members of
Yale's premier singing group. (The gentlemen mentioned by name do the
talking on this show; they are joined by their colleagues in a
half-dozen of the group's favorite songs.) Topics include the
appropriateness of song at an academic institution (conclusion: it's at
least as appropriate as sports) and--a perennial sore spot with Mr.
Buckley--the pervasiveness of rock. WFB: "How is it that if you walk up
and down the halls of an undergraduate dormitory, you hear this terrible
music that sells billions of dollars worth per year and yet you, singing
pretty conventional-type music, are extraordinarily popular? How come
the rock-and-roll culture doesn't sort of drown you out?" NK: "Well, you
might find a lot of that kind of music playing in any of our rooms when
we're not singing." ... SB: "I think that a lot of the appeal of rock
music to our generation is found in the dance."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.880
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6814
item Program Number S0639,
1437
"What Should Congress Do about the Deficit?"
Guests:
Pechman, Joseph A. : Walker, Charls E.
1 April 1985
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 124 : 4
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 26
Program details: It had been remarked that if the Reagan Administration
had accomplished nothing else it had made the Democrats conscious of
budget deficits. The Republicans now agreed that it was time to address
the problem. Our two guests today are old combatants, Mr. Pechman
favoring the Treasury Department's plan of, as he puts it, "eliminating
preferences and loopholes and unnecessary deductions, and using those to
reduce the marginal rates," Mr. Walker favoring a national sales tax. A
genial examination of a technical question that has moral overtones.
CEW: "I often say that Joe Pechman's difference with me is that he is
very much concerned with the tax system and its impact on how income is
distributed. Some people would say I am too much concerned with the
impact of the tax system on how income is produced."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.881
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6815
item Program Number S0640,
1438
"What Is the Challenge of South Africa?"
Guests: North,
James. : Chettle, John.
1 April 1985
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 124 : 5
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 27
Program details: Mr. North takes an Ecrasez l'infame attitude towards
South Africa, to the point of having difficulty being civil to Mr.
Chettle, even though the latter also opposes apartheid. One of the most
resonant moments of the show, in the light of developments just a few
years down the road, is the distinction WFB draws between a totalitarian
regime and the South African one: "If I were part of the South African
government and I thought you were correct [Mr. North, in saying that
there would be increased revolutionary violence], why wouldn't I go in
the direction of more repression? Take East Germany. Ninety-eight
percent of East Germans get their news from West German television, so
they know how the other half lives. But years, decades, and generations
go by and nobody expects any improvements in East German liberty, so
there are other ways to go than gradualism."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.882
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6816
item Program Number S0641,
1439
"Should the Fed Be Tamed?"
Guests: Martin, Preston. : Stein,
Herbert, 1916-
11 April 1985
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 124 : 6
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 27
Program details: Our guests have the weight of authority, though not so
great a gift as many of
Firing
Line's
economist guests of bringing a lay
audience along with them, as they discuss the different ways of
calculating the money supply and the effects that different policies are
likely to have. Mr. Stein: "The source of our difficulty, the thing that
got us from a 1 1/2 per cent inflation rate in the early 1960s to 14 per
cent in 1980, was not the looseness in the system. The source of this
difficulty was that we constantly tried to pump the economy to higher
and higher levels of output by more and more monetary expansion, and we
would not have done that if we had stuck with any kind of monetary rule,
whether it was Ml or M2 or M3."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.883
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6817
item Program Number S0642,
1440
"Is There a Conservative Ideology?"
Guests: Minogue, Kenneth
R., 1930-
11 April 1985
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 124 : 7
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 28
Program details: The discussion never quite gets to the title question,
except by implication, but no matter: this is civilized conversation at
its best, as host and guest range from the definition of ideology to the
many forms it takes in the modern world. Mr. Buckley starts out with a
formal definition: "a system of political thought that tends to
comprehend all important social questions, giving the answers to all
important social problems." Mr. Minogue offers a number of applications,
e.g., " 'Redemptive doctrines' ... are beliefs that the world we live in
is the most cunningly disguised form of oppression and domination ...,
that the business of life is to become conscious of it,which [means]
adopting whatever ideological theory is to be recommended, and in that
way to fight for liberation.... The idea of liberation is almost the
opposite of the idea of freedom."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.884
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6818
item Program Number S0643,
1441
"A
Firing
Line
Debate: Resolved: That We Should Go Full Speed on
Star Wars--Part I"
Guests: Buckley, William F. (William Frank),
Jr., 1925-2008. : Graham, Daniel O. : Keyworth, George. : Fossedal,
Gregory. : Shrum, Robert. : Carter, Barry. : Pike, John. : Carnesale,
Albert.
25 April 1985
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 124 : 8
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 28
Program details: This pair of shows doesn't offer the fireworks of some
Firing
Line
debates, but the viewer comes away with a good idea of what
the issues are and why this is such an emotional topic. Some samples:
Mr. Buckley: "What we have in mind is an act of aggression against the
Soviet Union only in the sense that building a roof over our heads is an
act of aggression against the rain." Mr. Carter: "This Administration is
proceeding at 120 miles an hour on a one-lane road with its lights off
at midnight." Mr. Shrum: "This very complex system can never be tested
in advance. It has to work perfectly or nearly perfectly in all its
components, and it has to work automatically the very first time it's
ever used, and it has to do so in a hostile environment and under enemy
attack." Mr. Keyworth: "In my opinion, less than one-tenth of one per
cent per year of our GNP is a small amount of money to remove us
eventually from the scourge of nuclear weapons."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.885
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6819
item Program Number S0644,
1442
"A
Firing
Line
Debate: Resolved: That We Should Go Full Speed on
Star Wars--Part II"
Guests: Buckley, William F. (William Frank),
Jr., 1925-2008. : Graham, Daniel O. : Keyworth, George. : Fossedal,
Gregory. : Shrum, Robert. : Carter, Barry. : Pike, John. : Carnesale,
Albert.
25 April 1985
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 124: 8
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 28
Program details: This pair of shows doesn't offer the fireworks of some
Firing
Line
debates, but the viewer comes away with a good idea of what
the issues are and why this is such an emotional topic. Some samples:
Mr. Buckley: "What we have in mind is an act of aggression against the
Soviet Union only in the sense that building a roof over our heads is an
act of aggression against the rain." Mr. Carter: "This Administration is
proceeding at 120 miles an hour on a one-lane road with its lights off
at midnight." Mr. Shrum: "This very complex system can never be tested
in advance. It has to work perfectly or nearly perfectly in all its
components, and it has to work automatically the very first time it's
ever used, and it has to do so in a hostile environment and under enemy
attack." Mr. Keyworth: "In my opinion, less than one-tenth of one per
cent per year of our GNP is a small amount of money to remove us
eventually from the scourge of nuclear weapons."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.886
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6820
item Program Number S0645,
1443
"Ten Great Philosophical Mistakes: Part I"
Guests: Adler,
Mortimer Jerome, 1902-2001.
8 May 1985
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 124 : 9
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 29
Program details: This absorbing discussion with a favorite
Firing
Line
guest ranges from how Hobbes, Locke, and Descartes differ from their
great predecessors, to whether Socrates was right to drink the hemlock,
to what we know that dogs don't know. Some samples: "Unlike the ancients
and the medievalists, who always took into account the views of their
predecessors so as to sift the wheat from the chaff, each modern
philosopher, from the 17th century on to today, wrote philosophy as if
he were the first to write it-started from scratch, paid no attention to
the tradition of Western thought at all." "Philosophy begins with a kind
of common-sense knowledge of the world, goes beyond that to an
understanding of what all common-sense persons with common experience
know, and then goes beyond understanding to a small measure of wisdom
which we are allowed in this life, not very much, but I think the wise
person is the person who makes a proper estimation of the order of
things in the right proportion to one another."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.887
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6821
item Program Number S0646,
1444
"Ten Great Philosophical Mistakes: Part II"
Guests: Adler,
Mortimer Jerome, 1902-2001.
8 May 1985
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 124 : 9
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 29
Program details: This absorbing discussion with a favorite
Firing
Line
guest ranges from how Hobbes, Locke, and Descartes differ from their
great predecessors, to whether Socrates was right to drink the hemlock,
to what we know that dogs don't know. Some samples: "Unlike the ancients
and the medievalists, who always took into account the views of their
predecessors so as to sift the wheat from the chaff, each modern
philosopher, from the 17th century on to today, wrote philosophy as if
he were the first to write it-started from scratch, paid no attention to
the tradition of Western thought at all." "Philosophy begins with a kind
of common-sense knowledge of the world, goes beyond that to an
understanding of what all common-sense persons with common experience
know, and then goes beyond understanding to a small measure of wisdom
which we are allowed in this life, not very much, but I think the wise
person is the person who makes a proper estimation of the order of
things in the right proportion to one another."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.888
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6822
item Program Number S0647,
1445
"Is There a Case for Legalizing Drugs?"
Guests: Nahas,
Gabriel G. : Trebach, Arnold S.
22 May 1985
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 124 : 10
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 29
Program details: Dr. Nahas believes that marijuana and other illicit
drugs can, "even [at] a single exposure," so affect the relevant center
of the brain as to "provoke this compulsive type of behavior which is so
obvious." Mr. Trebach believes that (a) we can't keep drugs out of the
country, and therefore (b) our choice is to legalize or to "go towards a
prison society where we can lock up large number of our people,
especially our youth." Unfortunately, despite Mr. Buckley's efforts to
keep them on track, the two guests spend much of the hour snarling at
each other and don't afford the viewer much help in sorting out their
contradictory assertions.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.889
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6823
item Program Number S0648,
1446
"Psychiatry: New Explorations"
Guests: Szasz, Thomas
Stephen, 1920- : Vatz, Richard. : Weinberg, Lee S.
22 May 1985
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 124 : 11
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 30
Program details: Whether one finds this show exhilarating or exasperating
is likely to depend on one's view of Dr. Szasz and his principal theory:
that there is no such thing as mental illness. WFB: "There are forms of
mental disease that end up with violent denouements, right?" TS: "You
are entirely right--except they are not mental disease, they are bad
behavior." WFB: "Well, the guy who killed Allard Lowenstein confided to
friends during the preceding period that Allard Lowenstein was
transmitting signals to him through his wisdom teeth. Now what do you
call that?" TS: "I call that a very nasty and powerful metaphor to
justify his doing something to Allard Lowenstein."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.890
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00G7086D0
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6824
item Program Number S0649,
1501
"Has New York Let Us Down?"
Guests: Starr, Roger.
29 May 1985
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 124 : 12
Transcript: Box/Folder 179 : 30
Program details: Mr. Starr takes a bleak view of the condition of his
native city and its hopes for recovery from problems caused by a
combination of natural economic evolution and perverse political
decisions--a view in which Mr. Buckley largely concurs. But the tone is
energetic, the problems have resonance with viewers (urban ones, at
least) throughout the country, and some of the prescriptions offered
(regarding, say, rent decontrol) have since proved out in practice. RS:
"I think the war and the rise of totalitarianism across the world scared
New Yorkers and scared Americans. It really frightened the whole
structure of society. We began to believe that there should be no limits
to our liberty and insisted on testing our liberty to its limits. Now
whatever you test, Bill, you can't identify its limit until you break
it."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.891
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6825
item Program Number S0650,
1502
"The Fall of Saigon--and How It Might Have Been"
Guests:
Butler, David. : Butterfield, Fox. : Greenway, David.
29 May 1985
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 124 : 13
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 1
Program details: A deeply honest exploration of a very painful subject.
All three guests have spent time in Vietnam (Mr. Butterfield was there
on April 29, 1975, the day Saigon fell); all have studied the political
and military history. They and their host all agree that, as Mr.
Butterfield phrases it, "We didn't lose the war on the battlefield, we
just left." And that, as Mr. Greenway phrases it: "Wouldn't the real
moral lesson be: Don't intervene in a situation and take a people under
your protection unless you're prepared to stay with them?" Mr. Butler
gives a devastatingly simple answer to Mr. Buckley's question why
"Vietnamization" didn't hold in the way "Koreanization" held: "There's
no Ho Chi Minh Trail in Korea, and it would have been terribly difficult
to cut the trail altogether. That's a geographic point."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.892
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6826
item Program Number S0651,
1503
"Yale: The Class of 1950"
Guests: Carver, George. :
Galbraith, Evan G. : Massie, Robert K. : Scholes, Robert. : Symington,
James W. (James Wadsworth), 1927-
31 May 1985
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 124 : 14
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 1
Program details: Mr. Buckley and five of his classmates gather at their
35th reunion for a good-natured and wide-ranging discussion of the
current state of the campuses and of the world--of which they have
collectively seen a great deal. Mr. Massie: "There is a utopianism about
the young.... The natural progression of intelligent men and women is to
stand further and further back from utopianism and say increasingly
[that] what we've got is worth keeping; let's not throw it away until
we've got something better."Mr. Carver: "There is a great tendency to
mirror-image yourself and project your own views and ideas on other
people ... [to assume that] because Gorbachev has a nice wife who likes
Gucci shoes and uses an American Express card there is going to be
sweetness and light between us and the Soviet Union. This is not going
to happen."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.893
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6827
item Program Number S0652,
1504
"Yale: The Class of 1985"
Guests: Cope, Karin. : Dow,
Steven. : Froomkin, Daniel. : Garcia, Gilbert. : Irvin, Morenike.
31 May 1985
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 124 : 15
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 2
Program details: These five young people--chosen for this show by the
Dean's office--are not going to be taken in by their genial host, no
sirree. It's touching to watch them bear out Mr. Massie's diagnosis,
above; and heartening to see how Mr. Buckley deals with them. One
sample: GG: "Mr. Buckley, here at Yale a Chicano-Puerto Rican
concentration was developed under American Studies, which I guess in
your opinion qualifies as a meaningless concentration.... I think the
history of a people in this country and the progress that they've made
is very meaningful." WFB: "Well, I think if you study it as history or
if you study it as sociology or even if you study it as anthropology
it's interesting. What is not interesting is to study it ideologically,
and I have a feeling that an awful lot of ideology is creeping into the
study of the progress of Chicanos or blacks or women. That is not only,
I think, mischievous intellectually, but I think also it tends to crank
up an ideological view of the world that gets in the way of clearer
vision after you've graduated."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.894
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6828
item Program Number S0653,
1505
"A Look Back at Watergate"
Guests: Kleindienst, Richard G.,
1923- : Brookhiser, Richard.
10 July 1985
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 124 : 16
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 2
Program details: Mr. Kleindienst had succeeded John Mitchell as Attorney
General, was asked to resign at the same time that Haldeman and
Ehrlichman were dismissed, and had been threatened with a
Watergate-related indictment but was exonerated of substantive
wrongdoing. Mr. Brookhiser was still an undergraduate at the time of
Watergate but was already at that time a keen student of politics. This
fine conversation with a man who suffered from his colleagues'
transgressions but holds no perceptible grudge ranges from Watergate
itself, to the abuses of the press, to the fundamentals of our political
system. RK: "What I really tried to do in my book was to write a love
letter to our Constitution and to our institutions of freedom. I tried
to point out, particularly to young people, that ours is a political
society, that politics is a noble pursuit--" WFB: "It's noble and also
ignoble." RK: "But it is a noble pursuit; sometimes it's ignobly
pursued--that government is a great privilege and also that we have in
our Constitution the means by which, if we are vigilant, we can continue
to preserve our freedoms."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.895
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6829
item Program Number S0654,
1506
"The Trouble with Lawyers"
Guests: Bork, Robert H. : Pilpel,
Harriet F. : Schmidt, Benno, Jr.
10 July 1985
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 124 : 17
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 3
Program details: We have here three lawyers to discuss, most ably, what
is wrong with their profession and what might be done about it. All
agree that, as Judge Bork puts it, "This is a litigious society. It's a
regulated society. It's going to remain that." How then to unclog our
overcrowded courts? Mr. Bork suggests alternative courts, both to "deal
with these simple repetitious claims which now flood the main federal
courts and keep people waiting for years to get their case heard," and
to try "very esoteric matters" currently being handled by "generalist
judges." "Who is against specialized courts?" Mr. Buckley asks, and Mr.
Schmidt replies: "I am against them. One of the distinctive elements of
the American legal tradition is that it has generally entrusted the
important decisions to generalist judges." Mrs. Pilpel, meanwhile,
points out that the middle class "has a tough time getting into court
very often," both for the reasons Judge Bork mentions and because of her
fellow lawyers' sky-high fees.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.896
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6830
item Program Number S0655,
1507
"What Are Our Young Novelists Up To?"
Guests: Eberstadt,
Fernanda, 1960- : Ellis, Bret Easton.
17 July 1985
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 124 : 18
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 3
Program details: A rather low-key hour with two best-selling young
authors whose fictional characters, as WFB puts it, "share a special
kind of aimlessness which is associated only with America, whose
affluence can bring on a certain kind of decadence. Supply-side
decadence." Miss Eberstadt: "It was only in the '60s that there was a
particular break, when people thought it was no longer appropriate to
make value judgments--to teach their children to have some kind of fear
of God, to obey their parents--and when children were taught that...
creative self-expression came before morality." ... Mr. Buckley: "Tell
me, why is MTV so mesmerizing?" Mr. Ellis: "I think it is [because] the
images are moving so quickly. The images are moving faster than they
ever have before in the century in terms of film ... It gets to be like
a narcotic.... I think I was influenced as much by movies as I was by
books."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.897
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004OEIOO2
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6831
item Program Number S0656,
1508
"A Musical Question: To Perform or Not Perform?"
Guests:
Page, Tim. : Chapin, Schuyler. : Tureck, Rosalyn.
17 July 1985
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 124 : 19
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 4
Program details: To perform or not perform before live audiences, that
is. The question was sparked by the career of the crazed genius Glenn
Gould, who at age 31 decided to give up live performance, with all its
tension and hassles, and instead only produce recordings, where, as WFB
paraphrases him, "you can get it: just right." Mr. Page, who edited The
Glenn Gould Reader, is inclined to agree with his late friend that
recordings are now more important than live concerts; Miss Tureck,
performer par excellence, sees the point but adds: "The communication
that takes place between certain artists and the audience is something
that cannot be measured. I feel that at such moments one reaches the
highest level of communication with human beings." A high point of this
spirited conversation is Mr. Chapin's account of sidling into a shop
(only after he had retired from the Met) in search of a pirated
recording of Nilsson and Vickers in Tristan und Isolde, and being
greeted by the shop owner, who said, "Mr. Chapin, we've been waiting for
you."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.898
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6832
item Program Number S0657,
1509
"Diplomats: Polite or Truthful?"
Guests: Galbraith, Evan G.
: Eagleburger, Lawrence S.
31 July 1985
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 124 : 20
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 4
Program details: Mr. Galbraith, who had just resigned after four years as
ambassador, had stirred up a storm a few months earlier when he said
Presidents were better served by ambassadors who were not career
diplomats. Mr. Eagleburger was one of those who had criticized him,
although he himself had earlier lamented "the frequent lack of guts"
among Foreign Service Officers. This show is narrower in its range than
many, but an interesting exchange on its own terms. EGG: "The host
country ... want[s] a man who reflects the views of the President of the
United States and not just somebody who comes in, goes through his
talking points, and gives a list of those issues given to him by the
State Department." LE: "Guts is a quality hard to find in any structured
institution."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.899
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6833
item Program Number S0658,
1510
"Three against One"
Guests: Pilpel, Harriet F. : Green, Mark
J. : Kinsley, Michael E.
31 July 1985
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 124 : 21
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 5
Program details: In this installment of the semi-annual turning of the
tables, the lively conversation ranges from Supreme Court activism, to
the progressive income tax, to U.S. policy on Nicaragua and South
Africa. Samples: WFB: "I believe that all terrorism is
wrong,categorically, but I feel much more sympathy for the terrorists
who try to help humankind, i.e., who try to shoot tyrants, than I do for
people who try to shoot Abraham Lincoln." ... MK: "So ... what it comes
down to ... is that you don't care about South Africa because it's not
exporting--" WFB: "I care. I care . . . much more than I think you ever
did given your record on the subject, but I simply say that the
resources of the United States are limited, and Wilsonianism is
something that didn't last. ..." HP: "I think what you're saying is that
if we had the means,... whenever a Communist dictatorship of any kind
came into existence we should stop it." WFB: "It would be a lovely
universe if somebody materialized every time you tried to bully him or
vice versa. I would love that."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.900
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6834
item Program Number S0659,
1511
"Where Are We Headed in Nicaragua?"
Guests: Alzugaray,
Manuel. : Reich, Otto.
3 September 1985
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 124 : 22
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 5
Program details: The Reagan Administration and Congress had been going
back and forth over funding for the Nicaraguan Contras, who were
fighting the Marxist Sandinistas (and, as we would learn about a year
after this show was taped, some members of the Administration had
decided to take matters into their own hands). This often moving show
takes us through the background and current situation of Nicaragua and
its neighbors--including the fact that, as Dr. Alzugaray relates,
elements of the Catholic Church (especially the Mary knoll Order) were
actively helping the Sandinistas and other Communists. Mr. Reich:
"Americans have this guilt feeling about what we have done in Latin
America, and it exonerates, frankly, the Latin Americans themselves from
any responsibility ... What happened in Nicaragua was a result of the
actions of Nicaraguans. They put Somoza in power, they kept Somoza in
power."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.901
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6835
item Program Number S0660,
1512
"Do We Have a Foreign Policy?"
Guests: Ledeen, Michael. :
Kinsley, Michael E.
3 September 1985
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 124 : 23
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 6
Program details: A lively continuation of a discussion begun in the
previous two shows--specifically, how do we keep our foreign policy in
focus, given the distractions thrown up by the press, Congress, and
various unportfolioed do-gooders? ML: "It's not possible for America,
whose policy, whether domestic or foreign, is always based on moral
principles--and should be, in my opinion--to ignore the moral basis of
South African society." WFB: "That would have ruled out, certainly,
making Stalin an ally in the last war." ML: "No, it means that long term
it is impossible for us ever to have a stable relationship with a
dictatorship.... You can have temporary alliances." ... MK:
"Irresponsible journalism is exactly what the First Amendment protects."
WFB: "Irresponsible journalism is the beneficiary of that which protects
responsible journalism, because it's impossible to distinguish between
the two."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.902
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6836
item Program Number S0661,
1513
"Capitalism and Apartheid"
Guests: Mandy, S. Nigel. :
Solarz, Stephen J. : Neuhaus, Richard John.
26 September 1985
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 124 : 24
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 6
Program details: An enlightening hour on a country discussions of which
often yield too much heat and not enough light. Mr. Mandy believes--on
the basis of evidence, not pious hope--that "apartheid cannot stand up
against economic development: Johannesburg, Durban, Cape Town--the
social adjustments have been made, the economic uplifting is taking
place, and the laws are largely not being enforced." ... Pastor Neuhaus
reports: "Recently at the South African consulate ... a number of
Lutheran bishops, clergy, and so forth were arrested--obligatory
arrests, a little two-hour inconvenience--and then one person said
afterwards, 'I'm not sure at all it did any good or it's going to help
anybody in South Africa, but it made me feel better.' As nice as that
person is ... this is just plain dumb, and not only dumb, but
potentially cruel in its consequences."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.903
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6837
item Program Number S0662,
1514
"Three Approaches to Terrorists"
Guests: Ackerman, E.C.
(Mike) : Jenkins, Brian. : Merari, Ariel.
26 September 1985
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 125 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 7
Program details: Three months earlier Shiite terrorists had hijacked a
TWA jet and taken it to Beirut, where they held 35 Americans hostage;
they eventually executed one of the hostages and released the others
only after receiving assurances that Israel would begin releasing
detained Shiites. The three experts address this emotional subject with
bracing clarity. One sample, from Mr. Jenkins: "Our response to
terrorism can't be to match car bomb for car bomb, assassination for
assassination, embassy for embassy.... I say that for moral
considerations, I say it because of legal considerations, and let me
make the argument for practical considerations. That is not the style of
warfare where we would have the advantage. Our opponents in that kind of
warfare are hard to identify, hard to locate. We have many targets that
they can locate. We will have concerns about killing innocent civilian
bystanders. They will have no such constraints."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.904
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6838
item Program Number S0663,
1515
"A Reflective Look at Star Wars: Part I"
Guests: Jastrow,
Robert. : Worden, Simon Peter. : Kendall, Henry. : Gottfried, Kurt.
3 October 1985
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 125 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 7
Program details: Not the formal debate format, but in effect a debate on
the merits and possibilities of Star Wars--AKA SDI, AKA High
Frontier--against the background of reports from Geneva that Mikhail
Gorbachev had proposed a 50 per cent reduction in Soviet weapons in
return for the United States' stopping work on a defense system. There
are fireworks here--especially between Messrs. Kendall and Jastrow--but
also solid information on this complex but crucial topic. HK: "We have
no way of building a defense which cannot be punched through by a
determined enemy." RJ: "The Soviet Union now has running, full time,
four ICBM production lines--the SS-18, -19, -24, and -25. The -24 and
-25 are mobile. They cannot be verified. Gorbachev's offer for a 50 per
cent reduction for that reason alone is meaningless. We have no ICBM
production lines running."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.905
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6839
item Program Number S0664,
1516
"A Reflective Look at Star Wars: Part II"
Guests: Jastrow,
Robert. : Worden, Simon Peter. : Kendall, Henry. : Gottfried, Kurt.
3 October 1985
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 125 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 7
Program details: Not the formal debate format, but in effect a debate on
the merits and possibilities of Star Wars--AKA SDI, AKA High
Frontier--against the background of reports from Geneva that Mikhail
Gorbachev had proposed a 50 per cent reduction in Soviet weapons in
return for the United States' stopping work on a defense system. There
are fireworks here--especially between Messrs. Kendall and Jastrow--but
also solid information on this complex but crucial topic. HK: "We have
no way of building a defense which cannot be punched through by a
determined enemy." RJ: "The Soviet Union now has running, full time,
four ICBM production lines--the SS-18, -19, -24, and -25. The -24 and
-25 are mobile. They cannot be verified. Gorbachev's offer for a 50 per
cent reduction for that reason alone is meaningless. We have no ICBM
production lines running."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.906
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6840
item Program Number S0665,
1517
"The Problems in the Philippines"
Guests: Solarz, Stephen J.
: Hyde, Henry J.
28 October 1985
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 125 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 8
Program details: Since 1977, when
Firing
Line
had last looked at the
Philippines (s0302 and s0303), the new National Assembly had been
instituted and, amid charges of fraud, President Marcos's party had won
handily, and he has assumed the second position of Premier. Marcos's
party had also won the elections of 1984, but he kept putting off a
presidential election, even after his principal opponent, Senator
Benigno Aquino, was gunned down at Manila airport--on Marcos's
instructions, some people alleged. Meanwhile, the Communist insurgency
in the countryside was growing stronger. Should we, as Rep. Solarz had
urged in Congress, cut off aid to the Philippines unless Marcos
implemented serious reforms? What would happen to our military bases
there? A serious discussion with two members of the House Foreign
Affairs Committee, who offer parallels ranging from Chiang Kai-shek to
the Shah of Iran to election processes in Chicago. One sample: HH:
"There are some similarities [between the Philippines and Iran]. There
are many more disparities. For example, the role of the church in Iran,
the Mullahs, can hardly be equated with the role of the Catholic Church
in the Philippines. The reforms that we want Marcos to make are a
return, a reversion, to the democracy that for a while flourished in the
Philippines, whereas the reforms that were being urged on the Shah went
in the other direction. As a matter of fact, the Shah didn't get deposed
because he didn't reform quickly enough; he reformed too swiftly and too
much."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.907
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6841
item Program Number S0666,
1518
"The Crisis in Congress"
Guests: Dornan, Robert. : Pike,
Otis.
28 October 1985
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 125 : 4
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 8
Program details: Yes, there is a specific crisis, having to do with the
deficit, but there is also, as our guests authoritatively explain, a
protracted inability of Congress to function as it should. Mr. Pike, who
had resigned after nine terms to return to the practice of law, fishing,
and boating, puts a lot of the blame on electioneering: "First of all
there is a lack of courage in Congress, ... based almost exclusively on
this massive need to get re-elected.... It was the alleged reforms of
1975, actually, which required everybody in Congress to cut off all
their outside earnings ... In many cases congressmen have to get
re-elected to feed their families." Apropos of the deficit, Mr. Dornan
points out that President Reagan raised taxes in 1982, "because he made
a deal with Congress that for every dollar of revenue raised we would
cut three. We haven't cut a plugged nickel."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.908
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6842
item Program Number S0667,
1519
"What about Corporate Profits?"
Guests: Green, Mark J. :
Frank, Victor.
12 November 1985
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 125 : 5
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 9
Program details: Mr. Green's latest book had claimed that the corporate
bureaucracy wastes six times as much money each year as the government
bureaucracy. Mr. Buckley begins by asking, "Is it [Mr. Green's] opinion
that the waste to which he points would be eliminated if the government
took over and ran our basic industries?" MG: "No, of course not. The
book points out on the first page that the laws of growth, girth, and
waste that represent the corporate bureaucracy also apply to the federal
bureaucracy. But because so many people have studied the [federal
bureaucracy] ... I thought it ... worth while studying whether that same
law of inefficiency also afflicts the corporate bureaucracy, and we
found out that was so." He sounds entirely reasonable -- but so does Mr.
Frank, who roundly contradicts him: "You mention Xerox as an example of
one company that controls their legal expenses wisely. I don't know why
you don't infer from that that there are very little hidden profits
instead of inferring the opposite." We may be left unsure of the answer,
but by the end of the hour we know what the question is.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.914
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6848
item Program Number S0668,
1520
"Democratic Politics Texas Style"
Guests: White, Mark, 1940-
1 November 1985
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 125 : 6
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 9
Program details: This show has two points of special interest, flagged by
WFB in his introduction: (1) There were indications of a party
realignment in the South. In 1984, Texas Congressman Phil Gramm had
moved from the Democratic to the Republican Party and was elected to the
Senate. Would others follow? (2) Governor White was being spoken of as
presidential material, and this was his first appearance on nationwide
television. Governor White's political hopes were not borne out;
Southern Republicans' were to some extent (see
Firing
Line
s0730). A
genial and informative hour, beginning with the education reforms
Governor White was implementing, and going on to federal deficits,
redistricting, and the 1988 elections. MW: "You can sit around in a
classroom all day and debate the issues of voter turn out, but if it's
not a hot contest... You know, there is nothing better than a good hot
sheriffs race in east Texas to get people to go vote."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.909
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6843
item Program Number S0669,
1521
"The Hispanic Rumble"
Guests: Callejo, Adelfa. : Bonilla,
Ruben. : Rubottom, Richard.
1 November 1985
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 125 : 7
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 10
Program details: As a new immigration bill was being debated in Congress,
we have here a somewhat exasperating hour with two activists who want
the United States to do something to help Mexico, and an experienced
diplomat who brings benevolence but not many practical suggestions. AC:
"What is this country doing about resolving this problem [Mexican
unemployment]? They are our neighbors to the south. And I don't see this
country doing anything about that." WFB: "We've lent them $83 million in
the last 11 years." AC: "That's a loan.... We do more for other
countries than for our neighbors to the south." WFB: "You're surely not
suggesting that America take over political and economic arrangements in
Mexico so as to create a climate that's hospitable to investment and
savings and anti-inflationary policies. Mexico is a sovereign country."
AC: "I am suggesting that if we are interested in curbing the flow of
illegal immigrants to this country, we need to be doing something."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.910
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6844
item Program Number S0670,
1522
"Cry, the Beloved Country"
Guests: Lelyveld, Joseph. :
Hutchinson, John.
7 November 1985
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 125 : 8
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 10
Program details: The subject is another country with intractable
problems, but this show has a concreteness that brings the difficulties
into focus. Mr. Lelyveld, who had done two tours of duty in South
Africa, in 1965 and in 1980, and who had just published Move Your
Shadow: South Africa Black and White, believes the "conflict is bound to
end in cataclysm: I think there is the tragic possibility ... that the
more brutal people will come to the fore on both sides and you'll be
left no ideologies, really, but power." Mr. Hutchinson sees the
possibility of a peaceful transition, as "the African National Congress
is being brought, if only by the business community, into the
discussion.... Buthelezi and the Zulus, the largest single group, are
being totally ignored by the press in the United States, even though
they represent the strongest current force for gradual constitutional
change.... You will find liberal leaders here describing [Buthelezi] as
a traitor, because he is a reasonable man."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.911
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6845
item Program Number S0671,
1523
"A Look at the Hillside Stranglers"
Guests: O'Brien, Darcy.
: Watkins, John G. (John Goodrich), 1913-
12 November 1985
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 125 : 9
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 11
Program details: An absorbing show but painful, both because of the
grisly subject matter (the 1977 rape-murders of ten young women in
Southern California) and because of the controversial role played by Dr.
Watkins in the investigation and trial, and the merciless interrogation
of him here by Mr. O'Brien on the question whether one of the Stranglers
had a multiple personality. Mr. O'Brien: "Later on, [Kenneth] Bianchi
was able to confess in great detail, which could be corroborated by
outside evidence, to all the murders in his personality as Ken without
ever bringing in this 'Steve' business. Nor had 'Steve' ever been seen
before you [Dr. Watkins] talked to him, nor has he ever come out
afterwards."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.913
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6847
item Program Number S0672,
1524
"The Right to Die"
Guests: Mehling, Alice V. : Barry,
Robert.
7 November 1985
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 125 : 10
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 11
Program details: Miss Mehling's organization was pressing for the
widespread adoption of Living Wills, whereby a person can, while compos,
direct his family and his doctors to withhold certain forms of treatment
(including nutrition and water) if he should become comatose and be
deemed unlikely to recover. Father Barry sees this as "the first step
towards euthanasia, active euthanasia by omission." This is an emotional
issue on both sides, and one made both more urgent and more frightening
by the tasks medical science has taken on in recent years. Miss Mehling:
"Twenty-five years ago, when people were dying at home, you would never
have thought about the need to try to shove food down their throats ...
It was accepted that people did die."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.912
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6846
item Program Number S0673,
1525
"What Does PEN Have to Offer?"
Guests: Mailer, Norman. :
Vonnegut, Kurt.
2 December 1985
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 125 : 11
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 12
Program details: Messrs. Mailer and Vonnegut were actively involved in
raising funds for the forthcoming New York conference of PEN--the
international society of poets, essayists, editors, and novelists--and
they spend here a surprisingly (given past antagonisms) good-natured
hour discussing writers, oppressive societies, and the world at large.
NM: "...writers of one country and writers of another country tend to
have more natural communion than governments because we grow up and read
foreign writers. If we have an affection for Russia it's because we read
Russian novelists of the 19th century." ... KV: "[I want to] destroy the
will of the United States Army to fight, and I would certainly like to
do that with every army." WFB: "Oh, it's antecedent to your wanting to
emasculate our army that you would have previously succeeded in
emasculating other people's armies, is that the idea?" KV: "Sure,
anybody's army that I can put out of business." WFB: "That sounds
better." NM: "Mr. Vonnegut is famous for his sense of hyperbole."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.915
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004OEIOOC
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6849
item Program Number S0674,
1526
"AIDS: The Rights of the Patient, the Rights of the Public"
Guests: Dershowitz, Alan M.
2 December 1985
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 125 : 12
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 12
Program details: A serious discussion of a serious problem, and one where
physicians and legislators--not to mention lawyers and
commentators--were hampered by lack of knowledge as to the
communicability of the disease. One sees the full-blown
civil-libertarian at work in Mr. Dershowitz's wrestling with the
question of what happens at the local public school if a child is
diagnosed with AIDS (Mr. Dershowitz winds up saying that parents of
other children could be allowed to keep them out of school to avoid
danger of infection, but that the parents of the infected child could
not be forced to keep him at home). Is it relevant to ask how a
particular AIDS victim acquired the disease? What should be done with
someone who knowingly communicated the disease to another? Much to think
about here--and although some knowledge has been gained, the problem has
scarcely gone away in the intervening years.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.916
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6850
item Program Number S0675,
1527
"Whom Should We Back in Angola?"
Guests: De Borchgrave,
Arnaud. : Lewis, Anthony, 1927-
13 January 1986
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 125 : 13
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 13
Program details: "The question is," as Mr. Buckley phrases it at the
beginning of this rich and absorbing hour: "Should the United States, or
should it not, assist Jonas Savimbi in his struggle to unseat the
government of the MPLA, which survives because of military aid from the
Soviet Union, and because of 30,000 to 45,000 Cuban troops?" Mr. Lewis
says no--mainly because South Africa is backing Savimbi, and we would
undermine our credibility with black South Africans if we did so too.
Mr. de Borchgrave points out that Savimbi's UNITA is part of "this
incredible new phenomenon called anti-Communist national liberation
fronts," and Mr. Buckley amplifies this point: "Savimbi is engaged in
Angola in exactly the same thing as the Contras are engaged in in
Nicaragua. They're trying to decontaminate a revolution failed. They
[the Contras] fought very hard to oust Somoza and bring some measure of
liberty and democracy and justice. The whole movement was aborted by, in
effect, a Marxist coup"--in Nicaragua by the Ortegas' Sandinistas, in
Angola by Agostinho Neto's MPLA.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.919
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6853
item Program Number S0676,
1528
"
Firing
Line
1966-1986: World Leaders"
Guests: Nixon,
Richard M. (Richard Milhous), 1913-1994. : Reagan, Ronald. : Thatcher,
Margaret. : Marcos, Ferdinand E. (Ferdinand Edralin), 1917-1989. :
Macmillan, Harold, 1894- : Ford, Gerald R., 1913- : McCarthy, Eugene J.,
1916- : Humphrey, Hubert H. (Hubert Horatio), 1911-1978. : Hawke, Robert
J. L. (Robert James Lee), 1929-
14 January 1986
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 125 : 14
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 13
Program details:
Firing
Line
is 20 years old, and this is the first of
three celebratory anthologies of clips from past shows--and what a
celebration it is! Harold Macmillan alone would be worth the price of
admission: "I've always thought that the peoples of the old Europe,
having twice in my lifetime destroyed themselves by a kind of
internecine war, like the Greeks did in the Peloponnesian War, must now
get together." And then there's Eugene McCarthy, bringing a poet's eye
and an offbeat sensibility: "The only thing [Nixon] did [on going into
Cambodia] that sort of saved it was to call it an 'incursion.' We'd
never had an incursion in the history of the country. It was our first
incursion." But Mr. Nixon gives as good as he gets: "We have to
recognize that politics is a great drama. And I will give credit to our
Democratic friends. Generally speaking, the Democratic politicians, the
so-called liberal politicians, have been more exciting and more
interesting. Now part of the reason for that is that they can be less
responsible." And so on, delightfully.
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.921
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003GXE9WS
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6855
item Program Number S0677, 1529,
1529R
"
Firing
Line
1966-1986: Personalities"
Guests: Thomas,
Norman, 1884-1968. : Leary, Timothy Francis, 1920- : Cleaver, Eldridge,
1935- : Ali, Muhammad, 1942- : Ginsberg, Allen, 1926- : Mailer, Norman.
: Luce, Clare Boothe, 1903-1987. : Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr Isaevich,
1918-2008. : Sheen, Fulton J. (Fulton John), 1895-1979. : Adler,
Mortimer Jerome, 1902-2001. : Galbraith, John Kenneth, 1908-2006. :
Crossman, R. H. S. (Richard Howard Stafford), 1907-1974. : Greer,
Germaine, 1939- : West, Rebecca, Dame, 1892- : Powell, J. Enoch (John
Enoch), 1912-1998. : Muggeridge, Malcolm, 1903-1990.
14 January 1986, 19 September 1986
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 125 : 15
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 14
Program details: While
Firing
Line
has had its share of world leaders
(featured in the first installment of this celebration, above),
"personalities" have been so thick on the ground that Mr. Buckley and
his producer, Warren Steibel, decided to limit this anthology to people
who had appeared in the show's first five years. Some of the
"Did-people-really-do-those-things-in-the-Sixties?" vignettes defy
simple quotation: Timothy Leary in his flower-child outfit; Allen
Ginsberg playing his harmonium and chanting "Ommm." Then there's the
young Muhammad Ali: "I'm thinking ahead of myself. You see, you're a
wise man, and you make a man think." WFB: "Did that ever happen in the
ring?" MA: "No, boxers don't think as fast as you. They're slow." Or the
youngish Norman Mailer: "You know, for years I've felt that the greatest
trouble with this country is that it's insane.... One of the tiny things
I felt it was certainly insane about was me."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.924
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003GXE9X2
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6858
item Program Number S0678, 1530,
1530R
"
Firing
Line
1966-1986: A Potpourri of Persuaders"
Guests:
Shrum, Robert. : Prichard, Edward F. : Kirkpatrick, Jeane J. :
Brzezinski, Zbigniew, 1928- : McGovern, George S. (George Stanley),
1922- : Heckler, Margaret. : Schlafly, Phyllis. : Lowenstein, Allard K.
: Kissinger, Henry, 1923- : Wolfe, Tom. : Greenfield, Jeff. : Solarz,
Stephen J. : Green, Mark J. : Hayman, Helene Middleweek. : Riddell,
Peter. : Evans, Roger. : Evans, June. : Tureck, Rosalyn.
14 January 1986, 10 April 1987
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 125 : 16
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 14
Program details: The main principle of selection for this third
anniversary anthology seems to be favorite passages that somehow didn't
make it into one of the first two. So we have Margaret Heckler arguing
with Phyllis Schlafly: MH: "In Alabama, if [a man kills his wife] in the
act of adultery, he would then be indicted for the crime of
manslaughter; but she, in the opposite situation, would be indicted for
the crime of murder. It's a double standard." PS: "And for this we
should make our young women subject to the draft?" Or Tom Wolfe: "If you
ever have a preposterous statement to make, and I offer this as a
suggestion to anyone who has something they know to be preposterous they
have to get off, say it in five words or less, because we're always used
to five-word sentences as being the gospel truth." The final "persuader"
in this hour uses a different medium: Rosalyn Tureck, the piano (with
the assistance of Johann Sebastian Bach).
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.922
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TZ8H0N8
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6856
item Program Number S0679,
1531
"Bill Buckley and
Firing
Line
Get Roasted"
Guests:
Galbraith, John Kenneth, 1908-2006. : Pilpel, Harriet F. : Kissinger,
Henry, 1923- : McCarthy, Eugene J., 1916- : Wolfe, Tom.
14 January 1986
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 125 : 17
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 15
Program details: A complete change of pace for this last segment of the
anniversary celebration. The zingers come too fast to count, but here is
the beginning of Jeff Greenfield's introduction: "Hello, and welcome to
a special edition of
Firing
Line
. My name is Jeff Greenfield, and, no,
there has not been a bloodless coup. William F. Buckley is alive, well,
present, and, God knows, soon to be heard from. I have temporarily fled
the sleazy commercialism of ABC News for the purism of non-commercial,
taxpayer-supported television to act as your host or guide or ringmaster
... Most television shows don't last a single season on the air. Five
years is an extraordinary achievement; a decade is often cause for
national celebration. So part of our purpose tonight is to try to figure
out the incredible longevity of a show that disdains every convention of
the medium of television.... For instance, television is said to be a
visual medium. The only element of visual interest on
Firing
Line
I have
ever been able to detect is whether Mr. Buckley would someday part his
hair with his tongue."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.923
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TZ8H6LE
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6857
item Program Number S0680,
1532
"What's Wrong with the Political Parties?"
Guests: Peters,
Charles. : Kinsley, Michael E.
13 January 1986
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 125 : 18
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 15
Program details: The main thing wrong with the parties -- according to
Mr. Peters, the coiner of the term "neo-liberal" -- is that they're,
well, partisan: that they put their gain as a group ahead of an honest
look at the issues. And the "reforms" of the Seventies have only made
things worse. Whatever one thinks of Mr. Peters's own reforms, he does
change the terms of the debate: "Practical reforms are also idealistic
reforms.... If you ask people to give up public benefits that they did
not need, like Social Security for the rich, again you would save
billions and billions of dollars. So there are realistic, practical
means of meeting the deficit that ask people to be their best selves
rather than to be selfish. And I think people are tired of being
selfish." ... Mr. Kinsley: "The ironic effect of the contribution
ceiling in the post-Watergate reform laws is to eliminate all
disinterested large sums of money.... you lose the potential for the
occasional rich people who gave money in the old days. In part they were
serving their class interests, in part they were one go trips, in part
idealistic. Whereas with PAC people there is absolutely no hope."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.920
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6854
item Program Number S0681,
1533
"Is Canada's Mulroney a Disappointment?"
Guests: Coxe,
Donald. : Walker, Michael.
9 January 1986
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 125 : 19
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 16
Program details: Our guests today answer the title question with a "Yes"
in italic capitals. The Progressive Conservative Brian Mulroney, running
for Prime Minister after 16 years of Liberal rule--most of it under the
flamboyantly Mao-and-Castro-loving Pierre Trudeau -- had, as Mr. Coxe
explains, "achieved something that had never been done before: he won in
every single province. Therefore we had, for the first time, a
government ... that could speak for the whole nation rather than playing
off sections of the nation against each other." And yet he had muffed
the chance to pursue a free-trade agreement with the United States, had
refused to back his own Finance Minister's brilliant plan for getting
entitlements under control, and had increased rather than decreased the
Ottawa bureaucracy. A serious exploration of a country that Americans
take much too much for granted.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.917
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6851
item Program Number S0682,
1534
"Monetary Reform"
Guests: Martin, Preston. : Lehrman, Lewis.
9 January 1986
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 125 : 20
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 16
Program details: In attempting to make monetary policy apprehensible to
"homo politicus"-- to explain, among other things, how it affects the
pressing problems of high interest rate sand high inflation -- WFB
begins by asking his guests to take us through the history of monetary
policy, which they do, starting with the Bretton Woods Conference in
1944, working back to the run-up to World War I, and then moving forward
through President Nixon's closing of the gold window. Does it matter how
the world manages its currencies? According to Mr. Lehrman, "the
'elegant float' ... has the consequences of producing embargoes,
autarky, tariffs, bilateral trading agreements. It causes nations to
begin to go to war through economic means ... and thus lead[s] on to
war." A stirring debate, whether or not one comes to believe that a true
gold standard can be restored.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.918
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6852
item Program Number S0683,
1535
"Continuing to Learn"
Guests: Adler, Mortimer Jerome,
1902-2001. : Botstein, Leon.
27 January 1986
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 125 : 21
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 17
Program details: The central thesis of Mr. Adler's latest book, A
Guidebook to Learning: For the Lifelong Pursuit of Wisdom, is that our
serious learning begins only when we finish our formal schooling. In
fact, Mr. Adler stuns the examiner, Leon Botstein, by saying, "To say 'a
wise young person' is equivalent to saying 'a round square.' Wise and
young will never go together." (WFB: "Was Robert Hutchins mature when at
the age of 27 he was made dean of the Yale Law School?" MA: "No. Nor was
he mature when he became president of the University of Chicago at age
30. His immaturity and mine-both immature-caused much of the trouble at
the University of Chicago.") This-dare one say wise?-hour includes this
diagnosis of our current intellectual woes, unlikely, alas, to become
inapplicable as the 20th century gives way to the 21st: "In all
preceding centuries-the ancient world, the medieval world, and the
modern world up to almost the end of the 19th century-men did not
hesitate to arrange knowledge in either an ascending or descending
order, some kind of hierarchical [order], so you ... understood the
relationship of various parts of life. But in the 20th century that
violates neutrality, that violates our detachment. We mustn't evaluate
things in any particular way."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.925
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6859
item Program Number S0684,
1536
"A Preliminary Talk about 1988"
Guests: Rusher, William A.,
1923- : Davidson, James Dale. : White, F. Clifton.
24 March 1986
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 126 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 17
Program details: This "preliminary talk" centers--as befits the curricula
vitae of our guests--on the potential Republican candidates. The
participants would not win all their bets, but they, and we, have a lot
of fun along the way. JDD: "The difficulty that Bush faces is that [qua
Vice President] he is an attendant lord, fit to swell a scene or two,
but he is not going to be the Prince of Denmark." ... WAR: "The problem
with Dole as a presidential candidate is ... that he is a very smart man
and a very clever one and witty." WFB: "And amusing." WAR: "Those are
dangerous capabilities in a President or a presidential candidate." WFB:
"Dangerous to what?" WAR: "Dangerous to the public confidence in him."
WFB: "It did Adlai Stevenson in." ... FCW: "One factor you have to
remember ... is that Ronald Reagan ran for President for twenty years.
The Republican Party is a growing party because of Ronald Reagan."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.927
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6861
item Program Number S0685,
1537
"Let's Legalize Those Drugs"
Guests: Glasser, Ira. : Rangel,
Charles B.
24 March 1986
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 126 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 18
Program details: The title of this show can be assented to by Mr.
Glasser--"because The criminal sanction does do something: it creates
and maintains the criminal structure"--and by Mr. Buckley--because "We
are not winning the war against drugs and, under the circumstances, we
should examine alternative possibilities"--but emphatically not by Mr.
Rangel, who has "often wondered, if we were taking a look at the tobacco
situation de novo, whether or not we would be as liberal today knowing
the danger of tobacco abuses." Strongly put cases here; not much meeting
of minds between men who would both become favorite
Firing
Line
debaters: CR: "If you want to talk about Valium, that's a classic
example of how you find a drug that's being abused by doctors, by
patients, and we should have stronger deterrents than--" IG: "Criminal
ones?" CR: "You bet your life, criminal ones."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.928
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6862
item Program Number S0686,
1538
"Medical Care: The Challenges"
Guests: Califano, Joseph A.,
Jr. : Pifer, Alan.
2 April 1986
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 126 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 18
Program details: "We propose to talk today," WFB begins, "about the
gloomiest subject in the world this side of nuclear devastation. It is
of course the cost of medical care and the aged." (One of the guests,
Mr. Califano, was present at the creation: he did, as WFB puts it, "as
much as anyone alive to give us Medicare and Medicaid.") And yet the
tone of the show is not gloomy at all, partly because of Mr. Pifer's
inherent cheerfulness, even when talking about "the year 2050, with ...
36 per cent of the population past the age of 65 and a median age of
53," and partly because of advances that have been made. JAC: "We've had
a tremendous decline in this country in deaths from heart attacks, 25
per cent in 15 years." WFB: "Traceable to what?" JAC: "Thirty-three and
a third per cent is traceable to change in diet, lowering cholesterol,
one-quarter of the people quitting smoking. Only a tiny percentage is
traceable to heart surgery, coronary by-pass."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.929
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6863
item Program Number S0687,
1539
"How Does It Go with Revising Our Teaching?"
Guests: Adler,
Mortimer Jerome, 1902-2001.
27 January 1986
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 126 : 4
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 19
Program details: Some years earlier Mr. Adler had taken time out from
whichever book he was writing to focus on modern American education. The
resulting Paideia Proposals were received enthusiastically by serious
people, but with justified skepticism about their making it through the
education bureaucracy. In brief, the proposals assert that teaching is
"a cooperative art"; thus seminars should be an integral tool from
kindergarten on. Mr. Buckley quotes the commonest criticism-"that we do
not have a teaching class equipped to administer [this] program"-and
we're off and running: "In every case where there is some degree of the
Paideia Proposals being put into practice,... once that happens, that
one thing [the introduction of seminars], it changes the character of
the school, changes the character of teachers ... their own minds become
refreshed.... In one of the worst black ghettos in Chicago, they've
introduced seminars.... The children were so excited by the fact they
were reading books and discussing them, they brought their parents to
school and it changed the character of that community."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.926
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6860
item Program Number S0688,
1540
"[A
Firing
Line
Debate]: Resolved: That We Should Move towards
Privatization, Including the Schools-Part I"
Guests: Buckley,
William F. (William Frank), 1925-2008. : Friedman, Milton, 1912- :
Sowell, Thomas, 1930- : Shanker, Albert. : Starr, Paul, 1949- : Honig,
Bill.
2 May 1986
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 126 : 5
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 19
Program details: One of the best
Firing
Line
debates. These are
well-matched teams, which given the strength of WFB's team is saying a
lot about Messrs. Shanker, Starr, and Honig. WFB opens the proceedings
by talking about President Reagan's privatization efforts in general,
but the debaters quickly home in on the schools: "What effect would
vouchers have on public schools?" Would private schools be made to keep
troublesome students? Could private schools, if they accepted voucher
students, have any religious content? Two samples: Mr. Sowell: "As long
as public schools are a monopoly, they will act as all monopolies act
towards customers-with contempt." ... Mr. Starr: "I appreciate the
subtle message of Mr. Buckley in staging this debate at a public
institution which he, or at least Mr. Friedman, might wish to privatize,
and which, if it were private, would have set a tuition high enough so
that many of you here today could not have afforded to attend."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.933
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ANCWVRK
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6867
item Program Number S0689,
1541
"[A
Firing
Line
Debate]: Resolved: That We Should Move towards
Privatization, Including the Schools-Part II"
Guests: Buckley,
William F. (William Frank), 1925-2008. : Friedman, Milton, 1912- :
Sowell, Thomas, 1930- : Shanker, Albert. : Starr, Paul, 1949- : Honig,
Bill.
2 May 1986
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 126 : 5
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 19
Program details: One of the best
Firing
Line
debates. These are
well-matched teams, which given the strength of WFB's team is saying a
lot about Messrs. Shanker, Starr, and Honig. WFB opens the proceedings
by talking about President Reagan's privatization efforts in general,
but the debaters quickly home in on the schools: "What effect would
vouchers have on public schools?" Would private schools be made to keep
troublesome students? Could private schools, if they accepted voucher
students, have any religious content? Two samples: Mr. Sowell: "As long
as public schools are a monopoly, they will act as all monopolies act
towards customers-with contempt." ... Mr. Starr: "I appreciate the
subtle message of Mr. Buckley in staging this debate at a public
institution which he, or at least Mr. Friedman, might wish to privatize,
and which, if it were private, would have set a tuition high enough so
that many of you here today could not have afforded to attend."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.934
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ANCWRR4
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6868
item Program Number S0690,
1542
"What's on Yehudi Menuhin's Mind?"
Guests: Menuhin, Yehudi.
2 April 1986
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 126 : 7
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 20
Program details: Mr. Menuhin, as anyone who has heard him play should
have guessed, is not merely a brilliant technician but also a wise and
lovely man. Samples: "I think we have had too much thinking along
simplistic lines about either/or. Either we are idealistic like Wilson
or we are clever like the politician must be to protect the interests of
the country. Unless there is in the idealist some practical wisdom and
unless there is in the politician some distant ideal, his world will
shrink to the immediate survival, which is too narrow an ambition." "I
often thank Destiny and thank my wife and thank everything that's been
given me for allowing me to spend part of the day with thoughts that are
not concerned with immediate survival, with a great mind like Haydn or
Beethoven or Bartok--to be able to cleanse, as it were, to have all of
me belonging to the thought. That allows me then to return to the
preoccupations of the day without being dominated by them."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.930
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6864
item Program Number S0691,
1543
"David Stockman Regrets"
Guests: Stockman, David A.
25 April 1986
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 126 : 8
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 20
Program details: Mr. Stockman had been anathematized as a traitor by many
conservatives, and Mr. Buckley doesn't start him off easy: "The purpose
of the book, one gathers, is in part expiation: so that we can all know
what a fool he was, while celebrating the survival of his intelligence
and his decision to go public with the news of the fools he left behind
him to run the White House and Congress." But Mr. Stockman didn't get
where he was by being a shrinking violet, and he defends himself ably.
WFB: "How is it that this impression is abroad that you have repudiated
supply-side economics when in fact the only tax, as I understand it, you
say right now that you would endorse would be a consumption tax?" DS:
"Because the media is glib and superficial. If you take this whole book,
it's four hundred pages, there's a lot of complicated history in there.
There is a demonstration that the choices we face in running this
country aren't easy. You can boil it all down in one slogan: Stockman
repudiates supply-side. That's not true at all."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.932
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6866
item Program Number S0692,
1544
"What Was Accomplished in Tokyo?"
Guests: Baker, James A.,
III.
2 June 1986
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 126 : 9
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 21
Program details: Tokyo had been the site of the Group of Seven economic
summit, and the focus of discussion--at the summit and on this
show--was, as Mr. Buckley phrases it, "the apparent failure of the float
to regulate the value of foreign currency over against the dollar." Mr.
Baker maintains that it hasn't failed, exactly, although "it's clear
that there is too much volatility ... We're really on an information
standard, if you will. If I should say something about the value of the
dollar on this program, it would have an effect, and that's why I won't
say anything about the value of the dollar on this program. It would
have an effect on the foreign-exchange markets. We have got to find a
way to relate more to the underlying fundamentals." An illuminating
discussion touching on the Japanese economy, the dangers of
protectionism, Latin American debt, and the workings of the Marshall
Plan.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.938
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6872
item Program Number S0693,
1545
"Are We Overdoing Defense?"
Guests: Weinberger, Caspar W.
2 June 1986
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 126 : 10
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 21
Program details: "The call by the Administration for a 12 per cent
increase in Pentagon funds," Mr. Buckley begins, "has met with a cold
shoulder in Congress. And the reason for this, it is generally accepted,
it that the public perception is that the Pentagon is already quite
stuffed." Mr. Weinberger defends defense, cogently and engagingly, on
many grounds: that a nuclear deterrent is much less expensive to
maintain than a purely convention alone; that if defense expenditures
were cut, that would have knock-on effects throughout the economy; but,
bottom line, that "we preserve the peace now by being strong enough to
persuade any possible enemy that an attack on us would be far too costly
for them to make because of our retaliatory capability." Next step:
replacing what Mr. Weinberger quotes President Reagan as calling the
"mutual suicide pact" form of deterrence with a real defense: the
Strategic Defense Initiative.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.937
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6871
item Program Number S0694,
1546
"Terrorism: Viewed from Abroad"
Guests: Netanyahu, Benjamin
(Netanyahu, Binyamin). : Kemoularia, Claude de.
30 May 1986
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 126 : 11
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 22
Program details: Mr. Netanyahu's brother, Jonathan, had been killed in
the Entebbe raid to rescue hostages held by Idi Amin. M. Kemoularia's
government service goes back to a stint as Interior Minister immediately
after the Liberation; as UN Ambassador he had recently joined the
British Ambassador in vetoing a censure motion against the United States
for our raid on Libya, which some people called a terrorist act. What is
terrorism? Can we accept Mr. Netanyahu's definition--"the systematic and
deliberate attack, the murdering, maiming, and menacing of innocents,
civilians, for political goals"--which has the effect of exonerating the
people who fought for Israeli independence of terrorism, since their
targets were British military and administrators? A fascinating look at
a crucial problem, even if the participants are by no means
disinterested.
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.936
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TZ8GNDG
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6870
item Program Number S0695,
1601
"Politics and Word-Play"
Guests: Rotunda, Ronald. : Schorr,
Daniel, 1916-
25 April 1986
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 126 : 11
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 22
Program details: The conversation begins with the word "liberal" but
branches out in all sorts of interesting ways. WFB: "What is it about
the word 'liberal' that diminished it in stature, among young people
especially?" DS: "... Partly the success of liberal programs and partly
the failure of liberal programs.... In having helped to solve or at
least alleviate some of our problems, they have not found solutions for
some of the newer problems ...and have been declared bankrupt." ... RR:
"We find, starting with Roosevelt's second election, much more
class-based politics; that is, Roosevelt got progressively a higher
percentage of the vote in each lower economic class ... [Now] there are
some hints ...that politics is moving away from a class base ... This
may just be a phenomenon that begins and ends with President Reagan's
two terms in office, but it may be broader than that."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.931
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6865
item Program Number S0696,
1602
"Debtors and Creditors"
Guests: Wriston, Walter B.
30 May 1986
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 126 : 13
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 23
Program details: The title of this show refers to, as Mr. Buckley puts
it, "how we are expected to get our money back from all those nice,
deserving countries to which Mr. Wriston lent it," but the discussion
that ensues ranges over the history of banking in the 20th century, from
the establishment of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (Mr.
Wriston would have voted for it, "on the grounds that the small saver,
which it was designed to protect, needed the reassurance after the bank
holiday to get the economy moving again") to present-day transactions
with South Africa. WBW: "There's a finite amount of capital and
unlimited numbers of places to put it.... It goes where it's wanted and
stays where it's well treated."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.935
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6869
item Program Number S0697,
1603
"Gary McGivern, Governor Cuomo, and the Politics of Crime"
Guests: Tigar, Michael. : Kavanaugh, Michael.
25 June 1986
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 126 : 14
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 23
Program details: In 1968 three prisoners were being transported in the
back seat of a police car. An attempt was made to overpower the
policemen in the front seat; when it was all over, one of the policemen
and one of the prisoners was dead. The other two prisoners, Gary McGivem
and Charles Culhane, were eventually convicted of felony murder. A few
months before this show, Governor Cuomo had recommended clemency for
McGivern, setting off a firestorm (George Bush, speaking to the New York
Conservative Party dinner, said that "one difference between Mario Cuomo
and Ronald Reagan is that the latter did not recommend clemency for
cop-killers"). Our guests on this absorbing show are well acquainted
with the case: Mr. Kavanaugh was the prosecutor; Mr. Tigar handled
McGivern and Culhane's appeal. MK: "When I look at this case as a
professional prosecutor, the first thing I'm looking for ... is why
would Joe Singer be lying? To believe [the defendants], Singer would
have to be lying." WFB: "... Why would Singer lie, then?" MT: "Because
his role in this episode ... was one of total incompetence. This is an
inadequately trained, marginally intelligent officer with very little
experience who, according to evidence, has reacted in a situation that
left his partner dead." WFB: "He panicked?" MT: "He panicked."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.939
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6873
item Program Number S0698,
1604
"Clemency, Parole, Sentencing: The Mess"
Guests: Tigar,
Michael. : Frankel, Marvin E.
25 June 1986
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 126 : 15
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 24
Program details: Springboarding off the previous show, this one examines
more general questions relating to sentencing, clemency, and parole. Mr.
Frankel was largely responsible for the 1984 regularization of New York
State sentencing practices, but he and Mr. Tigar are agreed, in this
deep and often passionate discussion, that those reforms did not go
nearly far enough. MF: "Our sentencing practices ... have given
unbridled power to judges to fix a sentence substantially without
rules." ... MT: "Whenever you have great public decisions that affect
vital human concerns being made in a corner, and in a fairly dark one at
that, you ... open the way to all manner of finagling and
corruption."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.940
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6874
item Program Number S0699,
1605
"Pornography and the State"
Guests: Pilpel, Harriet F. :
Sears, Alan.
9 July 1986
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 126 : 16
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 24
Program details: Mr. Sears had been appointed by Attorney General Ed
Meese to head a commission to investigate "the nature, extent, and
impact on society of pornography in the United States." Mr. Sears's is
clearly no fundamentalist crusade: what he is going after is material
that incites to violence and material that affects children. To WFB's
question, "Isn't it preposterous to say that Playboy has never been
obscene? ... Nothing would offend them more than to prove that," Mr.
Sears stoutly maintains that within the definition of the law, no,
Playboy is not obscene. With so un-heavy-handed an opponent, Mrs. Pilpel
is more the stock civil-libertarian than she was against Andrea Dworkin
a year earlier (
Firing
Line
s0635): "I am very much concerned about
other things in this society which the commission was not concerned
with; for example, shouldn't we be just as excited over homelessness,
over poverty?"
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.941
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6875
item Program Number S0700,
1606
"Are We Putting away Enough Murderers?"
Guests: Dershowitz,
Alan M.
9 July 1986
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 126 : 17
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 25
Program details: The crackling discussion goes back and forth between the
particular (Was Claus von Bulow innocent?) and the general (the
exclusionary rule, the death penalty, the whole adversary system of
justice). Mr. Dershowitz, always good value, is at times breathtakingly
candid: "If you start out with the assumption in criminal cases that the
vast majority of people charged with crime are guilty, and I certainly
start out with that assumption ... and then you follow that with the
assumption that the job of the criminal defense lawyer is to do his or
her best to present the case for the accused defendant, then, obviously,
the criminal defense lawyer's job is not to help bring out the truth,
the whole truth, and nothing but the truth; it is by all lawful, proper,
and ethical means to limit the truth from coming out, because the truth
will sink his client."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.942
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6876
item Program Number S0701,
1607
"What's Wrong with America's Military?"
Guests: Hadley,
Arthur T. : Lind, William.
23 July 1986
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 126 : 18
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 25
Program details: Between the Reagan Administration's push for a defense
buildup and Congress's (and especially Rep. Les Aspin's) push for
restructuring, the problems with the military were much in the news. The
civilian viewer may find this hour exasperating, in that we come away
without The Answer (WFB: "Is it your judgment that the level of
competence and intelligence in the volunteer army is insufficient to the
achievement of what it is that we need?" WL: "No." AH: "Yes."), but we
do get a good idea of which questions to ask. WL: "If you're a young
officer who, say, wants to stay as a company commander ..., wants to
stay as a fighter pilot, you can't do that. You have to metamorphose
yourself into a bureaucrat... The kind of young officer you most want to
keep is the kind who gets out in disgust and frustration at that point.
And the kind who stays, too often ... is the sort of person who's
comfortable playing the courtier games ...who's comfortable as a
military yuppie, if you will."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.943
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6877
item Program Number S0702,
1608
"Brzezinski on U.S. Strategy"
Guests: Brzezinski, Zbigniew,
1928-
23 July 1986
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 126 : 19
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 26
Program details: Mr. Brzezinski's latest book was Game Plan: How to
Conduct the U.S.-Soviet Contest, and the conversation--gloomy in theme
though never in temper--revolves around that topic, starting with the
continuity of Moscow's foreign policy from Russian Empire to Soviet
Union, and going on to the present state of the arms race. Mr.
Brzezinski: "The problem with population-wide defense is ... what have
you accomplished? You have accomplished defense against one way of dying
... from nuclear missiles delivered by ICBMs. But why, in real warfare,
should your opponent limit himself to killing you just that way, when he
can kill you by bombs, by cruise missiles, by chemical warfare, by
bacteriological warfare?"
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.944
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6878
item Program Number S0703,
1609
"Mr. Buckley on the
Firing
Line
"
Guests: Kramer, Michael. :
Kondracke, Morton. : Hentoff, Nat.
30 July 1986
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 126 : 20
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 26
Program details: A fresh cast of grillers tries its hand, with results
entertaining and sometimes profound. Topics range from sex, to SDI, to
foreign policy. Two samples: WFB: "I think it's difficult to say we're
heading towards a new Victorianism unless you suggest that any retreat
from excessive libertinage is to head in the direction of Victorianism."
... "Some people laughed it off as a metaphysical romp when ten years
ago I said we ought to make Israel our 51st state. Well, it was in part
that, but it was in part really an attempt to suggest a transcendent
relationship. If we guarantee the security of Israel to the point where
people really believe it, then almost in the nature of things
aggressions against Israel become unthinkable, any more than they would
be against Hawaii."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.945
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6879
item Program Number S0704,
1610
"The Crotchets of a Veteran Journalist"
Guests: Schorr,
Daniel, 1916-
30 July 1986
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 126 : 21
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 27
Program details: Mr. Buckley reveals that on Mr. Schorr's previous visit
to
Firing
Line
, as a fellow guest with the author of a book on language
and politics (
Firing
Line
s0695), he had asked if he might return solo
sometime to talk about his fifty years in journalism. The hour is less
volatile than one might expect given his career (reprimanded by CBS for
saying it had fudged its post-resignation treatment of Richard Nixon;
fired by CBS for leaking a congressional report to The Village Voice;
fired by CNN for reasons not entirely clear). In fact, conservatives are
in danger of finding themselves liking their old nemesis, who gives here
a pretty convincing explanation of the story he did for CBS in 1964
about Barry Goldwater's reception by Bavarian right-wingers. The
conversation ranges from Goldwater and Spiro Agnew to prior restraint
and CIA secrets ("with an account of Bill Colby coming to the press at
one point and saying, 'If you go with the story now it will do immense
damage.' Well, CBS and the New York Times and the Los Angeles Times and
apparently everybody except Jack Anderson sat on that story. We are
Americans").
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.946
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6880
item Program Number S0705,
1611
"The Prospect of Death"
Guests: Muggeridge, Malcolm,
1903-1990.
14 September 1986
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 126 : 22
Transcript: Box/Folder 180 : 27
Program details: The topic of this program was set, according to WFB, "at
our guest's suggestion-and his suggestions are my commands." At age 83,
Mr. Muggeridge found the subject much on his mind-not in a gloomy way,
but from the Christian perspective that he had finally embraced (he and
his wife, Kitty, had joined the Catholic Church in 1984). Indeed, the
talk during this radiant hour is less of death than of life: "People are
inclined more than ever today to speak of the quality of life. They want
to improve the quality of life, and they've gone to very great lengths
sometimes to do it. But they've nearly totally overlooked what is true
necessity, and that's the sanctity of life." ... "Ultimately, we belong
to a proposition of love, and that proposition of love will inevitably
work if you surrender to it. And this is what life's about."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.948
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6882
item Program Number S0706,
1612
"An English Dispute over the South African Mess"
Guests:
Huddleston, Trevor. : Johnson, Paul, 1928-
15 September 1986
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 126 : 23
Transcript: Box/Folder 181 : 1
Program details: The movement to impose sanctions on South Africa was in
high gear. One of its leaders was Archbishop Huddleston; one of its most
fervent opponents was Mr. Johnson. Put on your flak helmet and come
along. PJ: "If you're going to wreck the economy, if you're going to
stop investment, then of course those Africans and their families will
starve." TH: "It's very touching of you to think so much about these
Africans when you know perfectly well that the average wage of the
whites in South Africa is seven or eight times that of every African and
continues to be so." PJ: "What difference does that make if African
black miners are getting three times in real terms what they were ten
year sago? Isn't that progress? Isn't that a good thing? Don't you want
them and their families to be happy?" TH: "You know very well that I do,
and I know them and their families a great deal better than you do."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.949
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6883
item Program Number S0707,
1613
"For Central America: A Radical Prescription"
Guests: Ayau,
Manuel F.
2 October 1986
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 126 : 24
Transcript: Box/Folder 181 : 1
Program details: Mr. Ayau's university had been a tremendous success.
Imagine: a genuine university, teaching everything from literature to
engineering to biology, but teaching also the ideas of a free
society--and all this in a country that has known very little of such a
society. Mr. Ayau's "radical perspective" involves offering these ideas
to his countrymen and their neighbors. Not the fastest-moving show, but
a helpful look at a region that North Americans tend to regard as the
home of bananas, revolution, and corruption. MA: "The State Department's
intro mission throughout Latin America has been very harmful. They
really don't like capitalism. They blame Latin America's backwardness on
capitalism and we haven't really tried it."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.954
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TZ8GHTQ
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6888
item Program Number S0708,
1614
"Southern Republican Statesmen Look Around"
Guests: Baker,
Howard. : Alexander, Lamar.
10 October 1986
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 126 : 25
Transcript: Box/Folder 181 : 2
Program details: Mr. Baker--the first Republican Senate Majority Leader
since the Eisenhower Administration--had retired from the Senate the
year before and was testing the waters for a presidential campaign. Mr.
Alexander, who had gone to Washington as Mr. Baker's chief assistant
twenty years earlier, was just ending a second highly successful term as
his home state's governor. There are no fireworks on this show, but some
pleasant conversation on topics of general interest--mainly, as WFB
phrases it, "Why is the South still preponderantly Democratic,
notwithstanding its inclination to Republican Presidents?" HB: "I think
that Republicans are thought of as grand strategic thinkers and
Democrats are thought of as concerned and compassionate. Both those
things are overstatements and gross simplifications, but it is true."
LA: "You don't get elected mayor of Tupelo worrying about the gold
standard."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.955
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6889
item Program Number S0709,
1615
"The Textbook Controversy in Tennessee"
Guests: Farris,
Michael P. : Dyk, Timothy B. : Frost, Vicki. : Taylor, Faye P.
10 October 1986
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 126 : 27
Transcript: Box/Folder 181 : 2
Program details: The case being referred to as Scopes II had been set in
motion three years earlier, when Vicki Frost protested against some of
the textbooks being used in her daughter's school. The controversy
attracted national constituencies on both sides: Mr. Farris was backed
by the Concerned Women for America, an anti-secularist lobby, and Mr.
Dyk was backed by Norman Lear's People for the American Way. To the
plaintiffs, the "open ended" questions used in the so-called "character
education curriculum" are perniciously relativistic; to the defense, as
Mr. Dyk puts it, "I think the beliefs are sincere, but I also think
they're very, very broad beliefs and they're fundamentally inconsistent
not only with the values of public education but with the skills that
public education is trying to teach." An illuminating look at a deep
division within our society.
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.956
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TZ8GLNI
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6890
item Program Number S0710,
1616
"What Happened in the Philippines and Where Is Cory Going?"
Guests: Pelaez, Manuel.
2 October 1986
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 126 : 28
Transcript: Box/Folder 181 : 3
Program details: When President Marcos declared martial law in 1972, one
of his most vigorous opponents was the rising young politician Benigno
Aquino (see
Firing
Lines
s0302, s0303, and s0665). Aquino was promptly
jailed on charges of murder and subversion, and his sole link with the
outside world became his wife, Corazon (Cory), who up till then had
played a very private role. In 1980 Aquino was permitted to go to the
United States for heart surgery, taking his family with him. In 1983 he
returned to resume his political career, and was gunned down at the
airport. (On Marcos's orders? Mr. Pelaez: "Well, let's say that he
created the environment which led some people to believe that they were
doing him a service by eliminating Mr. Aquino.") In an election held in
February of 1986 Mrs. Aquino defeated President Marcos; when he
attempted to overturn her victory, a military rebellion backed by
massive street demonstrations forced him to flee. At the time of this
show, Mrs. Aquino had just paid her first state visit to the United
States, to wild acclaim. Mr. Pelaez, whom she had called out of
retirement to be her ambassador, here recounts his country's recent
history--often very movingly--and offers his own thoughts, less on
"where is Cory going" than on what the U.S. should do.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.953
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6887
item Program Number S0711,
1617
"The Mayor of New York on the Drug Problem"
Guests: Koch,
Ed, 1924-
16 October 1986
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 126 : 29
Transcript: Box/Folder 181 : 3
Program details: WFB was by this time coming to the position that the war
on drugs was doing more harm than good. Mayor Koch had come to the
position that we had not yet begun to fight, and he had offered, in the
New York Times, his own battle plan, which included full-scale military
interdiction. A serious (but far from low-key) discussion of a serious
problem. EK: "We can't wait! The numbers that are now using drugs are
growing every day. The federal figure is that 5,000 people who never
used cocaine before will use it today, and 5,000 new ones to be added
will use it tomorrow and every single day. Can we permit that to go on?"
"I'm a supporter of the military, I believe the Soviet Union's a threat
to the free world, I don't want us ever to be second best.
Nevertheless,... the Russians are not coming at the moment; I hope they
never come; we have to be prepared in the event they were to come. But
we know the drug pushers have come, are coming, and will continue to
come, and that this society is being destroyed."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.958
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6892
item Program Number S0712,
1618
"What's Wrong with the United States?"
Guests: Worsthorne,
Peregrine. : Knight, Andrew, 1939- : Riddell, Peter.
15 September 1986
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 126 : 30
Transcript: Box/Folder 181 ; 4
Program details: When the Thatcher government--alone among European
governments--supported President Reagan's raid on Libya and indeed
permitted U.S. bombers to take off from British soil there was a
firestorm in British public opinion. "Obviously" as Mr. Buckley puts it
"there was more in the background" to cause this eruption and our guests
all superbly well spoken and well informed explore that background here.
Mr. Knight: "It is ironical the way the roles have reversed. In the 19th
century ... it was the Americans who were constantly belaboring the
imperial powers.... Now the boot is on the other foot because we have
lost power we're a rather ineffectual country ... The United States in a
way is assuming our mantle and we are now the ones who use vitriol
because the United States has the power and is having to take the
responsibility." Mr. Worsthorne: "I think we are superficially
anti-American and not basically anti-American."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.950
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6884
item Program Number S0713,
1619
"A British Socialist Speaks Up"
Guests: Livingstone, Ken,
1945-
16 September 1986
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 126 : 31
Transcript: Box/Folder 181 : 4
Program details: In taxonomizing the left wing of the Labour Party, one
starts with party leader Neil Kinnock (see
Firing
Line
s0588) and keeps
going leftward till one reaches the Trotskyist Militant Tendency.
Somewhere between those two is Mr. Livingstone. His soft-spokenness only
adds to the shock value of some of his assertions; that, plus the fact
that he is not some fringe figure: a 1982 BBC poll, as Mr. Buckley
relates in his introduction, "found him to be the second most admired
man in Great Britain, coming in just after the Pope." Mr. Livingstone:
"I think most probably Nicaragua's a more democratic society than the
United States of America at this point in time." "I have not the
slightest doubt that if you had some sort of an attempted left-wing coup
in Britain, America would just step in immediately and slaughter us
all."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.951
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6885
item Program Number S0714,
1620
"Human Rights, Foreign Policy, and Ronald Reagan"
Guests:
Schlesinger, Arthur M. (Arthur Meier), 1917-2007. : Kinsley, Michael E.
16 October 1986
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 126 : 32
Transcript: Box/Folder 181 : 5
Program details: An amazingly good-tempered show given that there was a
time when Mr. Buckley and his guest, the widely acknowledged dean of
American liberalism, were not on speaking terms. Two samples: AS: "There
... is a faction in this Administration which regards an arms-control
agreement as contrary to the interests of the United States. They
believe an unlimited arms race is to our interest because either the
Russians will try to keep up, which they think will wreck their economy,
or they'll fail to keep up, which will leave us with a decided military
advantage.... You can't deny that there is that faction." WFB: "Not only
do I not deny it, I most fervently associate myself with it." ... AS,
replying to examiner Michael Kinsley: "Well, obviously I reject the
notion of any determinism of cycles. Alternations in mood create
opportunities for individuals.... If you and I in our time and Bill in
his time weren't out there actively proposing things, thinking about
things, organizing, writing--then the opportunity created by the
cyclical change would not be fulfilled."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.957
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TZ8GFNO
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6891
item Program Number S0715,
1621
"A British Conservative Speaks Up"
Guests: Tebbit, Norman.
16 September 1986
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 126 : 33
Transcript: Box/Folder 181 : 5
Program details: Since the Conservatives' landslide victory of 1983 the
story had been mixed indeed: inflation had come down to 3 per cent (from
a high of 22 per cent), and Britain had the highest GNP growth in
Europe; however, unemployment was still at 13 per cent, and the
nuclear-freeze movement (inherently anti-Reagan and anti-Thatcher) was
very strong. Mr. Tebbit's delivery is restrained, but he is extremely
knowledgeable and at the heart of current British politics. Samples: "We
have decisively changed people's thinking over some of these old
shibboleths of 19th-century socialism; the Labour Party ought to be
grateful to us for helping to bring them into the early 20th century."
"I must say the class structure in Britain has never worried me unduly,
coming from my background [straight from high school into journalism,
thence to the RAF and a stint as a civilian pilot] to being Chairman of
the Conservative Party.... I think we're a very much less class-ridden
society than France, for example--very much easier to move through the
classes in Britain."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.952
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6886
item Program Number S0716,
1622
"The Catholic Controversy"
Guests: Curran, Charles E. :
Clark, Eugene V.
20 November 1986
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 126 : 34
Transcript: Box/Folder 181 : 6
Program details: "Our two guests truly embody the Catholic controversy."
Monsignor Clark is a traditionalist who says, "Our opinions don't
matter; we're pursuing the truth here of what the Church teaches in its
formal tradition as Christ's teaching." Father Curran is the professor
who had been told by the Vatican that he could no longer teach theology
at a pontifical university because of the heterodoxy of his views; he
says: "The Church will never change and it will never make the word and
work of Jesus meaningful and appropriate in the contemporary scene
unless theologians are able to raise these questions [e.g., concerning
birth control]." Despite the high stakes, the tone is extraordinarily
genial, and the discussion highly accessible to the layman, Catholic or
not.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.959
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6893
item Program Number S0717,
1623
"How Badly Has the President Been Hurt?"
Guests: Lewis,
Anthony, 1927- : De Borchgrave, Arnaud. : Clurman, Richard M.
11 December 1986
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 126 : 35
Transcript: Box/Folder 181 : 6
Program details: On November 3, a pro-Syrian Beirut magazine had broken
the story that members of the Reagan Administration had been engaging in
secret talks with Iran, in what we would come to know as "Iran-Contra."
In the U.S. elections on November 4, the Republicans lost control of the
Senate, which they had held for the first six years of Ronald Reagan's
Presidency. By December 11, John Poindexter and Oliver North were
household words, and critics were asking of the President, What did he
know and when did he know it? A crackling discussion among four
experienced observers, each with his own perspective--for example, Mr.
Clurman dissecting the title question: "One, if it turns out he knew
about the Contra operation ..., then he's lied about it;... secondly, if
it turns out he just didn't know about it at all, then he's wounded
because he's not in charge of his government... ; thirdly, if he was
inattentive, then, forgive me, he sounds dumb;... or, fourth, if he was
told and he forgot about it, that's rather alarming.""
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.964
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6898
item Program Number S0718,
1624
"The Rise of the Conservative Establishment"
Guests:
Blumenthal, Sidney, 1948-
20 November 1986
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 127 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 181 : 7
Program details: Sidney Blumenthal's book had been hailed by liberals and
leftists, and regarded as a hatchet job by many conservatives. In person
Mr. Blumenthal seems nervous and tentative, and this show never really
comes alive. SB: "I think often the anti-Communism of the conservative
is offered as an emblem of positive belief from which not only flows
rejection of Communism but a number of other items that suggest a
coherent program and a complete philosophy."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.960
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6894
item Program Number S0719,
1625
"What Should Conservatives Look for in President Reagan's State
of the Union Address?"
Guests: Davidson, James Dale. : Weyrich,
Paul. : White, F. Clifton.
13 January 1987
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 127 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 181 : 7
Program details: The State of the Union address was just two weeks away,
and, as WFB puts it, "there is ghoulish speculation about what he will
say," given the Iran-Contra imbroglio and the attendant debacle in the
senatorial elections. Our guests, old pros all, advise the President
firmly to take a hard line, and Mr. Davidson advises him to take a
really hard line ("I would say that instead of concerning himself solely
with what is good in terms of his political perspective, I would say
let's talk about the true state of the Union. And in doing that, one of
the texts that I would advise him to look to is Jonathan Edwards's
sermon about the sinners in the hands of an angry God, where he points
out that sometimes you can sin a long time and not be brought to justice
for it, but eventually it catches up with you. And I think we are in
that position in terms of the federal deficit"). A lively four-handed
conversation that goes back and forth between political tactics and
policy substance.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.965
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6899
item Program Number S0720,
1626
"Has America Lost Its Industrial Know-How?"
Guests:
Halberstam, David.
1 December 1986
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 127 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 181 : 8
Program details: The rise of Japan in international trade, and the
concomitant slip of the United States, had led to much Angst about
America's ability to compete and many calls for renewed tariffs. Mr.
Halberstam's book approaches the story by offering parallel portraits,
of the Nissan and Ford automobile companies. This hour offers no
fireworks, but solid exposition and penetrating insights. Mr.
Halberstam: "The Japanese worker of today is really rather more like our
grandparents or the great-grandparents of people in Detroit. He's
someone who takes that job--and he's an immigrant, really: not someone
from a foreign country, but from a very primitive peasant life--and he
can compare his life as a Nissan worker with the almost feudal condition
of his parents on a primitive farm: how poor they were, how little
dignity they had, how much illness there was, how little food, how
vulnerable they were to forces outside their control."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.961
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6895
item Program Number S0721,
1627
"How Do We Stand on Disarmament?"
Guests: Rowny, Edward.
1 December 1986
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 127 : 4
Transcript: Box/Folder 181 : 8
Program details: At the Reykjavik "preparatory summit" in October,
President Reagan had stunned many of his allies, at home and abroad,
with his proposed "zero option": we and the Soviets would, within ten
years, eliminate all our ballistic missiles. The summit broke down only
when Secretary Gorbachev said, "Oh, by the way, and you'll stop this
Star Wars business." General Rowny has been dealing with apocalyptic
matters most of his adult life, but it seems to have dampened his
spirits not at all, and he takes us genially through the ins and outs of
arms control. ER: "The Soviets say that they don't want a nuclear war
because a nuclear war could never be won ... Yet they continue to pile
up large numbers of nuclear weapons, and how do you account for this
anomaly? They must feel that there's some psychological value ... Now if
we could reduce the number of weapons so that neither side had a
first-strike capability--we don't have one today, the Soviets do--then
we have begun to reduce the risk of nuclear war."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.962
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6896
item Program Number S0722,
1628
"Does Sex Education Work?"
Guests: Pilpel, Harriet F. : Van
den Haag, Ernest.
11 December 1986
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 127 : 5
Transcript: Box/Folder 181 : 9
Program details: As WFB puts it in his introduction, "The New York public
schools ... have been distributing to children material which a
generation ago was available only from dirty old men in Paris
bookstores." Over to our guests, old antagonists, spirited as always.
Mrs. Pilpel: "Parents ... know that a dangerous situation exists where
there's ignorance ...they do not feel adequate in explaining things to
their own children, and they are delighted at the prospect that decent
information... will be given in an academic atmosphere, where the
children learn about other things." Mr. van den Haag: "Parents are very
willing, it seems to me, to abdicate their authority when they are told
there are specialists who know how to do these things. Forgive me, there
is nothing that these sex-education specialists teach the children that
an ordinary, commonsensical person couldn't teach them.""
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.963
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6897
item Program Number S0723,
1629
"Afterthoughts on Reykjavik"
Guests: Kissinger, Henry, 1923-
13 January 1987
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 127 : 6
Transcript: Box/Folder 181 : 9
Program details: "When in doubt, consult no less than Talleyrand
himself," as WFB puts it; and so, to explicate Reykjavik and the
European reaction to it, we're off on a bracing hour with the man who,
agree with him or not, has seen more and done more in international
affairs than anyone else now living. One sample from Mr. Kissinger:
"Gromyko was rather rigid and morbidly suspicious. Gromyko was like an
African rhino who charged in a straight line, always quite predictably.
Now they've got Dobryn in there, who was ambassador in Washington and
who must have taught them that what you see is what you get, and you can
afford to accept American proposals because they indeed may not be in
the American interest. They may result from a bureaucratic
compromise."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.966
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6900
item Program Number S0724,
1630
"Why I Should Be President"
Guests: Du Pont, Pierre S. [Du
Pont, Pete; DuPont, Pete]
23 January 1987
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 127 : 7
Transcript: Box/Folder 181 : 10
Program details: Mr. du Pont was the first hopeful to declare himself
officially a candidate for the 1988 Republican nomination, and his
record as governor certainly makes a good case for why he should be
President. As WFB puts it, "He was handed a state close to bankruptcy
and eight years later, following policies which we will examine during
this hour, left a state regenerated." Unfortunately, as the nation would
learn over the next two years, Mr. du Pont's charisma level does not
match his intelligence or his good nature. PdP: "Gary Hart ran for
President for a year and a half, and Walter Mondale turned to him one
day and said, 'Where's the beef?' Pete du Pont's campaigning started by
putting the beef on the table the first day: ending farm subsidies,
tying drivers' licenses to drug tests, researching and deploying the
Strategic Defense Initiative, and so forth."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.967
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6901
item Program Number S0725, 1631,
1631R
"Anglican Priestpersons"
Guests: Spong, John Shelby. :
Wantland, William C. : Oddie, William.
23 January 1987, 5 June 1987
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 127 : 8
Transcript: Box/Folder 181 : 10
Program details: Three members of the Anglican Communion--two American,
one English--discuss with their Roman Catholic host a matter that had
already been roiling the waters for more than a decade: "If the
Episcopal Church ordains a woman, does that make her a priest?" If not,
why not? The two traditionalist Anglicans hold (a) that there is no
warrant in Scripture for women priests, and (b) that for Anglicans to go
further down this road would block any possible reunion with Rome or
Constantinople. (Father Oddie: "A great Episcopal bishop once said,...
'It may well be that it is the historic vocation of the Episcopal Church
... to show the rest of the Catholic Church that [the ordination of
women] does not work.' ") Bishop Spong holds that the Bible is not much
of a guide, because "the place of women in the Biblical tradition is a
very ... sexist, oppressive position ... that reflects the period." A
crackling debate on a topic with implications for all the Eucharistic
churches.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.968
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6902
item Program Number S0726,
1632
"Arms Control: The Cutting Edge of the Argument"
Guests:
Courter, Jim. : Green, Mark J.
23 February 1987
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 127 : 9
Transcript: Box/Folder 181 : 11
Program details: Rep. Courter, a senior member of the House Armed
Services Committee, had been pressing for termination of the ABM
(Anti-Ballistic-Missile) treaty, and he makes his case dashingly here.
JC: "Let's say it's 1997, and you're President of the United States, and
there's a confirmed launching of a sea-launched ballistic
missile--one--aimed at the United States. What would you do if you won
this debate today and we didn't have any type of defensive capability?"
Examiner Mark Green: "I would say, 'That congressman, he made it more
likely the Soviets would launch a first strike because of his insane
technology called SDI' " JC: "I asked a legitimate question. What would
you do?" MG: "And I answered it. It's more likely that we would have a
war because of your system." JC: "The question is: What would you do?
The answer is: You couldn't do anything. You'd watch it come."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.969
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6903
item Program Number S0727,
1633
"Pull Out of NATO?"
Guests: Krauss, Melvin. : Eagleburger,
Lawrence S.
23 February 1987
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 127 : 10
Transcript: Box/Folder 181 : 11
Program details: As Mr. Krauss's second affiliation suggests, there is
nothing anti-European or pro-Soviet in his assertion that we ought
indeed to pull out of NATO: he believes that by supplying so much of the
West's defense, "We have made our allies into weak allies, and now to
preserve allied unity we have to adjust our policies to our weak
allies." Mr. Eagleburger denies that our allies are unreliable: "In my
experience ... and particularly when dealing with Europe, when an
American went behind closed doors and said, 'We have had enough, and
we're not asking now, we're telling you, this has got to stop,
'ninety-nine times out of a hundred, that in fact happened." And we're
off for a bracing look at our principal alliance system."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.970
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004OEIOOM
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6904
item Program Number S0728,
1634
"Should We Ship Ex-Nazis Back to the Soviet Union?"
Guests:
Ryan, Allan. : Zumbakis, S. Paul.
24 February 1987
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 127 : 11
Transcript: Box/Folder 181 : 12
Program details: "As we meet here," Mr. Buckley begins, "in Israel a man
is being tried for war crimes; his name: Demjanjuk. It is alleged he was
known as 'Ivan the Terrible' during the terrible days of Treblinka, the
most consummate killing factory in the history of the world." John
Demjanjuk had been an American citizen for forty years, but had been
tracked down by the Office of Special Investigations, established in
1979 to hunt for Nazi war criminals. In this chilling debate on a
gruesome subject, Mr. Ryan asks, "Does it shock one's conscience that
Karl Linnas, who has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt in American
courts to be a mass murderer, might now face a death sentence [in the
Soviet Union]?" Mr. Zumbakis replies that it does shock the conscience
"to take an alleged war criminal and send him to certified war criminals
for trial.... I think Americans first of all should be tried here and
punished here ... If we're dumping people that we don't want to punish
ourselves, we're avoiding a moral obligation."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.971
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6905
item Program Number S0729,
1635
"Grilling the Host of
Firing
Line
"
Guests: Greenfield, Jeff.
: Pilpel, Harriet F. : Green, Mark J.
24 February 1987
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 127 : 12
Transcript: Box/Folder 181 : 12
Program details: Never a dull moment with these three favorite
Firing
Line
grillers back at the old stand. Specifics range from abortion to
taxes to human rights in China to the "shopworn" topic WFB would have
preferred to "just agree not to mention," Iran-Contra. One sample: MG:
"You're a tough critic of government. Awkwardly, a close friend, a man
you respect, is the head of government. Aren't you going to be relieved,
as a journalist, when your friend leaves Washington, so you won't feel
inhibited by friendship to defend what's indefensible?" WFB: "You as a
lawyer know what it's like to defend the indefensible, I suppose. But I
ask myself: What would be the alternative? If Pericles were waiting to
take office I would then say, 'Well, Mr. Reagan, let's go back to the
farm.' "
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.972
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6906
item Program Number S0730,
1636
"Can We Republicanize the South?"
Guests: Campbell, Carroll.
: Hunt, Guy. : Martin, James.
25 March 1987
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 97 : 11
Publicity File: Box/Folder 127 : 13
Transcript: Box/Folder 181 : 13
Program details: Sometimes this hour slips into self-congratulation--but
perhaps that should be allowed in men who are the first Republican
governors in their respective states since the 1870s. And when they
buckle down to analysis, they are acute if not scintillating. CC: "What
we were able to do was to differentiate what the intervention of
government might be. [Southerners] don't want the Federal Government
intervening. They do want an activist state and local government dealing
with problems." ... JM: "I got maybe 15 percent of the black vote [in
1984]. But particularly it was stronger in those are as where those
blacks who are in business live." ... WFB: "Purely at an objective--if
you like, Machiavellian--level, would it help Republicans for Jesse
Jackson to simply run away with the Democratic vote?" GH: "In looking
over the main front runners on the Democrat side, we'd be very happy to
have any of those opposing us in 1988."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.973
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6907
item Program Number S0731,
1637
"The Role of South Korea"
Guests: Walker, Richard Louis,
1922- : Holbrooke, Richard C.
25 March 1987
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 127 : 14
Transcript: Box/Folder 181 : 13
Program details: We went to war for South Korea, and yet, as WFB puts it,
Korea more or less refuses to engage the attention of the American
people. This has got to change, for ... a very big event is scheduled in
Korea next spring: the beginning of democracy." Mr. Walker is known as a
conservative, Mr. Holbrooke as a liberal, but their perceptions of Korea
are as one. What this hour lacks in fireworks it more than makes up in
vivid description and analysis. Mr. Walker: "The Korean political style
is to go right up negotiating ... to the very precipice, and then back
off and come down with a practical, pragmatic solution. What worries me
is, sometimes we in the United States . . . don't understand some of the
dynamics of what's occurring in that society." Mr. Holbrooke: "North
Korea is the closest thing on earth today to George Orwell's 1984. It is
a true, crazy nightmare of terror and totalitarianism. [South] Korea is
a place where income is rising, people have a growing freedom to move
around, and things are moving forward."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.974
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6908
item Program Number S0732,
1638
"Mortimer Adler on the Constitution: Part I"
Guests: Adler,
Mortimer Jerome, 1902-2001.
6 April 1987
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 127 : 15
Transcript: Box/Folder 181 : 14
Program details: Mr. Adler's latest book is We Hold These Truths, an
examination of the American Constitution, understood as comprising the
Declaration of Independence, the Constitution itself, and - the
Gettysburg Address. The discussion, as always with this favorite
Firing
Line
guest, is rich but never abstract; and if Mr. Buckley and many of
his fans will disagree with Mr. Adler at times - well, even Homer nods.
MA: "In every other constitutional system I know ... there's a
separation between the head of state and the chief of government - which
we don't have. We combine head of state and chief of government in the
same man and therefore give, symbolically, much more gravity to the
Presidency than it should have.... I've often said that we ought to have
a front-parlor President who speaks very well, the way Reagan does, and
a back-parlor President who thinks better than Reagan does."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.975
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6909
item Program Number S0733,
1639
"Mortimer Adler on the Constitution: Part II"
Guests: Adler,
Mortimer Jerome, 1902-2001.
6 April 1987
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 127 : 15
Transcript: Box/Folder 181 : 14
Program details: Mr. Adler's latest book is We Hold These Truths, an
examination of the American Constitution, understood as comprising the
Declaration of Independence, the Constitution itself, and - the
Gettysburg Address. The discussion, as always with this favorite
Firing
Line
guest, is rich but never abstract; and if Mr. Buckley and many of
his fans will disagree with Mr. Adler at times - well, even Homer nods.
MA: "In every other constitutional system I know ... there's a
separation between the head of state and the chief of government - which
we don't have. We combine head of state and chief of government in the
same man and therefore give, symbolically, much more gravity to the
Presidency than it should have.... I've often said that we ought to have
a front-parlor President who speaks very well, the way Reagan does, and
a back-parlor President who thinks better than Reagan does."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.976
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6910
item Program Number S0734,
1640
"What to Think about the Moscow Talks"
Guests: Hyland,
William. : Weiss, Seymour.
4 May 1987
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 127 : 16
Transcript: Box/Folder 181 : 14
Program details: Secretary of State George Shultz had just returned from
Moscow with a highly controversial agreement to eliminate
intermediate-range nuclear forces (our Pershing and cruise missiles, the
Soviets' SS-20s) from Europe. This hour is sometimes uncomfortably
technical for the non-specialist, but if we can keep up we learn a great
deal. WH: "We have to recognize that the Soviets have done something
here that is unusual. They've agreed to dismantle a major part of their
forces -- the SS-20 -- which proves the case, I think, that the
Pershings and the cruise missiles that we were putting in... matter to
them. They're prepared to pay a price." ... SW: "It's been Soviet policy
to sow seeds of dissension within the alliance and particularly between
the United State sand Western Europe from the inception of NATO. This is
just made to order to do that."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.980
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6914
item Program Number S0735,
1641
"Higher Education Has Failed Democracy"
Guests: Bloom,
Allan.
15 April 1987
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 127 : 17
Transcript: Box/Folder 181 : 15
Program details: Mr. Bloom's surprise best seller was gathering kudos and
brickbats around the country; the only disappointment here is that he
proves to be not always as focused viva voce as he is on the page.
Still, an interesting and often moving look at the sad state of the
American academy. AB: "Since I was in a university, since I began in
1946, the universities were instruments of egalitarianism. It was there
that the civil-rights movement was generated. Everybody I know affirmed
those American principles and worked for them. And then suddenly, when
the movement came to its head, it said that the universities were
corrupt instruments of the old accommodation. So the very source, the
place where the principles were held, and knowingly held in a scholarly
way, where people could affirm them not only with their passion but with
their reason, was discredited."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.977
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003GXE9XC
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6911
item Program Number S0736,
1642
"Where Is the Feminist Movement Going?"
Guests: Pilpel,
Harriet F. : Schlafly, Phyllis.
15 April 1987
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 127 : 18
Transcript: Box/Folder 181 : 15
Program details: The last time Harriet Pilpel discussed feminist issues
on this program, it was opposite Andrea Dworkin (
Firing
Line
s0635), by
comparison with whom Mrs. Pilpel sounded like a male chauvinist. She is
more comfortably positioned opposite the formidable Mrs. Schlafly. Both
guests agree that, despite the demise of the Equal Rights Amendment, the
feminist movement has changed the face of America--but they sharply
disagree as to whether that is for good or ill. HP: "I would think it
would be generally conceded that through the efforts of organizations
like Planned Parenthood we have done a great deal to decrease the kind
of terrible poverty, desperation, and illegal abortions which
characterize the Third World." PS: "Well, that's one point of view, I
think you could make quite an argument that because of the Planned
Parenthood ideology--the promotion of promiscuity with
contraceptives--we have all the problems of babies born out of wedlock
today. Once you increase the level of people who are engaging in
promiscuity, you're going to have more babies and you're going to have
more poverty."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.978
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6912
item Program Number S0737,
1643
"Uses of the Past"
Guests: Hart, Jeffrey Peter, 1930- :
Spengemann, William. : Russell, Francis.
4 May 1987
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 127 : 19
Transcript: Box/Folder 181 : 16
Program details: The sparkling conversation ranges back and forth over
striking moments in the past (chiefly the American and European past)
and how one chooses to write about them; and over the current desire in
the academy not to use the past, but rather to discard it. JH: "Europe,
in effect, came to an end in 1940." ... FR: "I remember August 1914, and
yet I remember it slightly differently with every decade, as things come
on. It isn't the same 1914 for me in 1987 as it was in '67." ... WS:
"Jeff talks about 1940 as a watershed year, a year that separates the
past from the present absolutely in some way. Nostalgic historians are
apt to locate that turning point wherever they want." WFB: "Wherever
it's convenient." WS: "Well, it isn't just a matter of convenience, it's
something the historian feels very deeply--that everything before that
point is different from everything after it."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.979
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6913
item Program Number S0738,
1644
"Are We Getting Anywhere in the UN?"
Guests: Walters, Vernon
A.
27 May 1987
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 127 : 20
Transcript: Box/Folder 181 : 16
Program details: A brilliant discussion of the United Nations? Well, yes.
General Walters is the latest in a line of splendid American
representatives to that body. As WFB relates in his introduction,
General Walters has been on the spot for four decades-from attending the
meeting between President Truman and General MacArthur on Guam, to
arranging for the meetings of Henry Kissinger and Le Duc Tho in Paris.
One sample from General Walters: "The first thing you have to remember
about the UN is that of 159 members, there are about 45 democracies. So
you've got to understand that the language spoken there is not the
language of democracy. It's the language of the one-person state or the
one-party state."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.981
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6915
item Program Number S0739,
1701
"The Crisis in the Catholic Church"
Guests: Novak, Michael.
: Weigel, George.
27 May 1987
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 127 : 21
Transcript: Box/Folder 181 : 17
Program details: The crisis in question is not the one of dwindling
vocations and lay questioning of Church teaching; but one high up in the
hierarchy, with the bishops' recent pastoral letters on war and on the
political economy. What ensues is a correspondingly high-level
discussion, with a great deal worth thinking about. Two samples: GW:
"Catholics have something that the evangelicals, I think are beginning
to understand that they need, and that is a way to talk about moral
norms in a pluralistic society. We call it natural-law theory; they call
it general revelation." ... MN: "The bishop on Long Island said that he
had a disagreement in conscience with Bill Casey. As I read the text, it
wasn't a difference in conscience at all, it was a difference in
political judgment about what's going on. Now to make that a matter of
conscience, I think, is a bit of theological imperialism."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.982
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6916
item Program Number S0740,
1702
"Two Dissenters"
Guests: Lekachman, Robert. : Reich, Robert.
1 June 1987
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 127 : 22
Transcript: Box/Folder 181 : 18
Program details: Dissenters from capitalism, that is. Although our guests
don't agree with each other on all their prescriptions, they are both
sufficiently opposed to their host that the two sides' positions are
brought out in sharp relief. RR: Protectionism is not the way to go
because protectionism ends up blaming them for a problem that is
fundamentally our problem. Americans are living high on the hog, and
unless we become more productive we are simply going to slip into deeper
and deeper debt to the rest of the world." WFB: "Well, now, I would
maintain, which both of you would disavow, that the principal delirium
under which we operate that makes this possible is the myth that any
dollar that's appropriated in Washington is self-generating."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.983
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6917
item Program Number S0741,
1703
"Sidney Hook Evaluates Liberalism"
Guests: Hook, Sidney,
1902-1989.
1 June 1987
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 127 : 23
Transcript: Box/Folder 181 : 18
Program details: "This side of the Soviet-Nazi pact," says Mr. Buckley in
his introduction, "nothing has cost the Communist movement in the world
more than the defection of Sidney Hook." A glorious hour with a man who,
at age 85, had spent much of the century in the ideological trenches.
SH: "We know there is no transference of training from one field to
another. Picasso was a great painter, but his views on politics were
absurd. Ezra Pound was a great poet, but he was a rabid anti-Semite who
should have been hanged." ... "Most people confuse the term relative
with relational. See, truth is relational, not relative. I'm always
suspicious of someone who tells me truth is relative, even when it's
Pascal."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.984
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6918
item Program Number S0742,
1704
"Buckley Quizzed by the Dissatisfied Right"
Guests: Lofton,
John. : Phillips, Howard, 1941- : Rusher, William A., 1923-
24 June 1987
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 127 : 24
Transcript: Box/Folder 181 : 19
Program details: Normally when Mr. Buckley becomes the one being
questioned, his examiners are political liberals. This time he finds
himself facing a trio to his right. A delicious hour, with some
surprises. WFB: "I tend to be nervously impatient ... and that nervous
impatience, for instance, in the American Revolution would probably have
had me on the side of Sam Adams rather than John. And in Israel I
probably would have joined the Irgun rather than its more sedentary
alternative. And in South Africa I would have said: 'To hell with these
people, I'm not going to live another day as a slave. I'm going to start
shooting people.' I'm not saying this is wise or prudent, I'm saying
this is the way I would behave, probably." WAR: "Bill, every once in a
while, whether he knows it or not, gets his kicks out of taking the
slightly angular position just to watch the ball bounce that way. He
doesn't, I think, regard it as that. He'll have an elaborate, almost
theological justification for what he's done. But in point of fact
there's a little gamin back in there that's having fun with the whole
situation."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.985
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6919
item Program Number S0743,
1705
"Sovietology"
Guests: Hyland, William. : Pipes, Richard.
8 July 1987
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 127 : 25
Transcript: Box/Folder 181 : 19
Program details: What do Sovietologists know that the rest of us don't
know? Our two guests are at the top of their field, and they take us
informatively and clearly through the technical aspects of their
epistemology. But they speak also of its limits (Mr. Hyland: "When the
issue is joined at the policy level, the Sovietologist then really
doesn't count for very much, because other interests come into it"),
and, under WFB's questioning, they move away from how they know to what
they (think they) know. Mr. Pipes: "I think [Gorbachev] is genuine in
his desire for reforms; I think he is running into tremendous difficulty
because of resistance and the complexity of the problem; and I give him
less than an even chance of success."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.988
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6922
item Program Number S0744,
1706
"What's with Solidarity?"
Guests: Mroczyk, Peter.
8 July 1987
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 127 : 26
Transcript: Box/Folder 181 : 20
Program details: A splendid hour with a man who was at the heart of the
Polish resistance in 1980-81 and who knows how to tell the story--both
of what went on then and of what was still, though on a much smaller
scale, going on six years later. PM: "The first reactions of the West
[to Solidarity] were extremely cautious, and I felt that the West went
left, right, and center assuring everybody who wanted to hear or who
didn't want to hear that they had nothing to do with Solidarity." WFB:
"Did you want to hear that?" PM: "I think, quite frankly, at that time,
yes. It was a good thing for the West to say. We were trying, we had to
prove to the Polish government... that we were a genuine indigenous
movement."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.989
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6923
item Program Number S0745,
1707
"The Controversy over Bork"
Guests: Cutler, Lloyd N. :
Taylor, William. : Taggart, John Y.
27 July 1987
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 127 : 27
Transcript: Box/Folder 181 : 21
Program details: Judge Bork's nomination to the Supreme Court had
already, two months before the Senate Judiciary Committee hearings would
begin, led to a pitched battle in the press,continued on this show. A
sizzling exchange on matters ranging from how judges decide (or should
decide) cases to whether there are any permissible "litmus tests" for
judges. Two samples: LNC: "Judge Bork['s]... mind, in my own view, is
quite open on whether he would overrule Roe v. Wade if he had the
opportunity. But if he were to say in the hearing, 'The first chance I
get I will overrule Roe v. Wade,-- I think a motion to disqualify him in
that case, when it comes up, would lie properly." ... WT: "I mean, it's
not that he thinks that Supreme Court decisions in the past have been
merely wrong ... He thinks that they're matters, in some areas, of
judicial usurpation."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.990
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6924
item Program Number S0746,
1708
"At Stake in Nicaragua"
Guests: Abrams, Elliott, 1948-
19 August 1987
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 127 : 28
Transcript: Box/Folder 181 : 22
Program details: Four years after the Contras had begun fighting in
earnest against their former allies, the Sandinistas appeared ready to
sue for peace. Mr. Abrams is low-key but persuasive and, as the
Administration's point man in this region, extremely well informed. Two
samples: "Democracy, that's the goal of the policy. We hope that
democracy can be obtained through a negotiating track.... If it cannot,
our view is you need to continue aid to the resistance as the only other
method short of U.S. use of force to obtain that goal." "I think it's
fair to say that the largest group of ex-anything among the Contras is
ex-Sandinistas, who have left in disgust and are now fighting for
freedom in Nicaragua."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.993
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6927
item Program Number S0747,
1709
"What Makes Al Haig Run?"
Guests: Haig, Alexander Meigs,
1924-
24 June 1987
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 128 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 181 : 22
Program details: From time to time General Haig gets bogged down in
details, but mostly this is an interesting show in its own right, and an
impressive performance by a man we are vetting as presidential material.
AH: "... That's the role of deterrence. And therefore [a nuclear force]
should be analyzed from the political-psychological point of view as the
first step, and the war-fighting point of view only as a secondary
step--as important as that war-fighting point of view is." "I think it's
rather ludicrous that Americans constantly turn to men who have had
nothing but legislative experience to take on a job which is, after all,
the chief executive office of this land."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.986
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6920
item Program Number S0748,
1710
"What Did the ABM Treaty Promise in Respect of Testing?"
Guests: Sofaer, Abraham.
27 July 1987
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 128 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 181 : 23
Program details: The Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty of 1972 had become the
touchstone of those who opposed President Reagan's Strategic Defense
Initiative. SDI's supporters maintained that, by the terms of the treaty
itself, we were entirely within our rights to go ahead with SDI. Mr.
Sofaer, as carefully questioned by Mr. Buckley, proves an admirable
guide through the thickets of "restrictive" versus "broad"
interpretations and "conventional" versus "exotic" systems. WFB: "What
is it that animates so many people--the editors of the New York Times
are an illustrious example--to seek a disadvantageous interpretation of
a treaty when the alternative is so clearly adducible? ..." AS: "I
really am not a psychologist. I can tell you that some people are
against SDI and that probably motivates some of this.""
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.991
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6925
item Program Number S0749,
1711
"Is South Africa Meeting the Test?"
Guests: Keyes, Alan L.
(Alan Lee), 1950- : Bloomstein, Charles.
19 August 1987
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 128 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 181 : 23
Program details: The Reagan Administration maintained that South Africa
was changing, and that the wrong kind of pressure could do more harm
than good. Many in Congress, the press, and the United Nations were for
full-scale sanctions at any cost. Today's show offers a civil but
passionate discussion. CB: "The real problem in the United States is we
think we can change South Africa... South Africa has to change itself."
ALK: "Politics boils down to some understanding of what it takes to
empower those who do not have power in such a way as to assure their
full participation without destroying the society of which they are a
part. I think it's fairly hard to dispute that that has to be the goal,
and if you look at sanctions, they don't serve that goal."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.992
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6926
item Program Number S0750,
1712
"The Implications of MacDonald v. McGinniss"
Guests:
McGinniss, Joe. : Abrams, Floyd.
18 September 1987
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 128 ; 4
Transcript: Box/Folder 181 : 24
Program details: Dr. Jeffrey MacDonald was the Green Beret convicted of
murdering his own wife and daughters (see
Firing
Line
s0580). He had now
sued Joe McGinniss, the author of a book on the case, not for libel
(where the First Amendment protections would have been clear) but for
fraud, intentional infliction of emotional distress, breach of contract,
breach of the covenant of "good faith and fair dealing," on the grounds
that Mr. McGinniss had seemed sympathetic but had wound up concluding
that MacDonald was guilty. This hour offers a fascinating tour through
the implications of the First Amendment and the workings of our civil
court system. JM: "One of the jurors said ... something ... which I
found rather chilling, if interesting, and that was, 'We felt there must
have been something wrong here or else the judge would not have
permitted it to get this far.' "
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.994
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6928
item Program Number S0751,
1713
"Why Are Our High Schools Screwing Up?"
Guests: Cheney,
Lynne V. : Ravitch, Diane.
18 September 1987
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 128 : 5
Transcript: Box/Folder 181 : 24
Program details: As horror stories go, this one is pretty rich. As WFB
paraphrases from Mrs. Ravitch's book, "Two out of three [high-school
seniors] don't know within 50 years when the Civil War took place. That
would mean that one-third of our high-school seniors think it happened
after 1910 and one-third before 1810." How did this happen? WFB: "Who is
the educational establishment?" LC: "Well it's all of us, I suppose. We
are all the enemy in the sense that, I think, as a nation we haven't
valued history and literature as much as we should." ... DR: "The issue
is not, Are we doing better or worse? That would be like saying: Well,
let's not worry about poverty, because there was worse poverty 50 years
ago ... Anyone who says that it's good enough to only educate half of
our children--not in the classics, but in the most basic knowledge
needed by all American citizens--is, I think, taking a rather elitist
point of view."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.995
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6929
item Program Number S0752,
1714
"Capitalism Viewed Historically"
Guests: Berger, Peter L.
1 October 1987
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 128 : 6
Transcript: Box/Folder 181 : 25
Program details: Mr. Berger is a former socialist who has been viewing
the world empirically for several decades and has concluded that "If you
want to intelligently bet on an economic system today which creates
wealth, which leaves people a high degree of freedom, which can
[support] human rights, which can be combined with democracy, it is the
safer bet to bet on capitalism. Socialism in any of its forms is, it
seems to me, a very poor bet." A rigorous look at a fundamental
question. PLB: "When ordinary people are given a choice, they almost
always opt for capitalism.... It's the intellectuals who are typically
those who do not like capitalism and adhere to various socialist
ideologies."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.996
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6930
item Program Number S0753,
1715
"The Secretary of Defense Look at Current Crises"
Guests:
Weinberger, Caspar W.
14 October 1987
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 128 : 7
Transcript: Box/Folder 181 : 25
Program details: Mr. Buckley invites his guest to start by looking at the
War Powers Act of 1973 and the current American presence in the Persian
Gulf, and to go on from there. Impressive and articulate, Mr. Weinberger
has no trouble keeping track of both forest and trees. WFB: "I can
understand people who get annoyed when ... the Spanish tell us that
they're not going to really let us use their air base--the primary
purpose of which is to defend Spain, not Wichita." CWW: "Well, it's to
defend NATO. Another purpose that is very close to the primary purpose
is to defend the United States. We aren't in NATO and we aren't in Japan
for altruistic reasons only. We're there because forward defense is the
very best kind of defense. I would much rather defend California in New
Guinea or South Korea than I would in Oregon."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.999
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6933
item Program Number S0754,
1716
"The Day after the Big Republican Debate"
Guests: Tarrance,
Lance : Barrett, Laurence. : Leubsdorf, Carl. : Hines, Cragg.
29 October 1987
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 101 : 3-4
Publicity File: Box/Folder 128 : 8
Transcript: Box/Folder 182 : 1
Program details: Three veteran newspapermen and a pollster join WFB for a
review of the Republican candidates' performance. But they quickly move
from a technical discussion of the candidates to the substance of what
was discussed. WFB: "Well, take ... farms. Kemp reacted with horror at
the thought effacing Iowa with a platform of badmouthing farm subsidies.
Reagan was there a year ago and said, 'I want to remind you all that
under my Administration you've been paid four times as much as by any
previous Administration.' This, from a party that seeks to shrink
federal subsidies and to balance the budget, is intellectually
unnerving, isn't it?" CH: "But politically very honest." WFB:
"Politically very what?" CH: "Honest." WFB: "Well, I don't really think
that's correct." CH: "Or realistic...." CL: "You know, Reagan was also
talking about phasing out price supports over a period of time, but the
difference of course is that he's not running for anything any more."
LB: "Reagan is also making a point that that would be the goal if our
trading partners cut down or cut out their support of their agricultural
industries in their several countries." WFB: "That's like saying, 'I
won't murder anybody as long as I can see that nobody else is murdering
somebody.' "
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1003
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6937
item Program Number S0755,
1717
"A New Republican Looks at Her Party"
Guests: Kirkpatrick,
Jeane J.
14 October 1987
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 128 : 9
Transcript: Box/Folder 182 : 2
Program details: Actually, the new Republican looks at the world in
relation to her party--from the intermediate-range nuclear forces treaty
to Nicaragua to the Great Society to NATO. Low-key but never shallow.
JK: I'm ready to settle for almost any ... political system that a
people decides on for themselves, that isn't imposed from outside--by
the Soviet Union in the case of Afghanistan, by Vietnam in the case of
Cambodia. Now, in Nicaragua, I would be willing to settle for a
government that the Nicaraguans were willing to settle for, providing
the Nicaraguans were willing to choose that government through some sort
of free and self-determining processes. But they have a government
that's been imposed by force, that governs by force, which force is
provided by a remote foreign power."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.998
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6932
item Program Number S0756,
1718
"Debates and Politics"
Guests: Weyrich, Paul. : Burnette,
Kevin. : Brookhiser, Richard.
29 October 1987
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 128 : 10
Transcript: Box/Folder 182 : 2
Program details: In this hour we look at the meeting of the Republican
candidates through a conservative prism. As WFB poses the question,
"What were [the candidates] saying to American conservatives on the
issues? ... Indeed, what is it that conservatives most wish to hear
these days?" Occasionally rambling but often insightful. RB: "If the
person who wins the Republican nomination has any political intelligence
at all, which may eliminate George Bush, they have to take into account
the force and the effect that Robertson has had." ... WFB: "The thing
[Haig] said that struck me with greatest force is: Look we ought to be
awfully happy that we're not living in a nuclear-free world. Fifty
million people were killed the last time we had a nuclear-free war....
Now I think that's a very important point to make at a moment when the
President of the United States, who is our leader, has taken, in effect,
a position that thinks in terms of international denuclearization."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1004
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6938
item Program Number S0757,
1719
"Better a Shield than a Sword"
Guests: Teller, Edward,
1908-2003.
19 October 1987
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 128 : 11
Transcript: Box/Folder 182 : 3
Program details: A radiant hour with a man who has spent half a century
at the highest levels of nuclear physics and has never checked his
conscience at the laboratory door. The discussion begins with the Space
Shield--SDI--but Mr. Buckley is soon leading his guest into
reminiscences. Dr. Teller: "We now know that the dropping of the bomb
did not change a single vote in the Japanese war cabinet: three of them
were for unconditional surrender before Hiroshima, and three for
fighting on for better terms, and not a single vote was changed, except
that the Emperor violated the constitution and appealed to the
people.... Had we demonstrated, had we dropped an atomic bomb at 30,000
feet over Tokyo Bay that would have lit up the evening sky, that would
have been seen and heard by 10 million Japanese--heard like thunder--not
a single person would have been killed. I think the Emperor would have
acted."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1001
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6935
item Program Number S0758,
1720
"Three Young Latin Americans Wish to Be Heard"
Guests:
Arguello, Juan Ramirez. : Rivera, Antonio. : Brito, J. T. Gonzales. :
Hitchens, Christopher.
1 October 1987
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 128 : 12
Transcript: Box/Folder 182 : 3
Program details: Our three guests are engaging but, unfortunately, not
completely fluent in English. The result is some good moments mixed in
with a good deal of floundering. Examiner Christopher Hitchens: "Was I
wrong in getting the idea that nothing will satisfy you but the removal
of the FSLN--Sandinista--government from power in Managua?" Mr. Ramirez:
"No. Only a true democratic system will satisfy us. They can remain with
their party if they want. That's not a problem.... So what we want is
for them to dismantle the totalitarian system they have been trying to
implement... Dismantle the ration cards which they use to control the
population; dismantle the security system they have--we call it CDS, the
committee of defense in the slums--that they use to repress the people;
that they separate the state from the party, the army from the
party."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.997
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TZ8GR9Q
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6931
item Program Number S0759,
1721
"Soviet Words and Deeds: Afghanistan"
Guests: Cherne, Leo,
1912- : Birch, John.
3 December 1987
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 128 : 13
Transcript: Box/Folder 182 : 4
Program details: The Soviets had invaded Afghanistan during the Carter
Administration; eight years later they were still there, still
maintaining that they did not invade, they only, as Mr. Buckley phrases
it, "answer[ed] fraternally the call of a friendly government for help
against reactionary fascist forces." But there were signs that they
might be thinking of pulling out, and the UN General Assembly--in a move
led by, among others, Mr. Birch--had voted to condemn the occupation.
About one-third of this show is devoted to viewing a British documentary
on the war in Afghanistan. Mr. Birch gives historical perspective ("I
think that the Russians have come to realize after all these years and
the bravery of the Afghan resistance--they have learnt a lesson that we
in fact learnt in the last century, which is that you can't have a
military victory in Afghanistan"); Mr. Cherne: "I think the Soviet Union
knows that it has lost this war. You know that I'm not given to
optimism. I wish I were. I would be very depressed if I thought we would
be sitting here a year from now facing this situation." (In the event,
while the Soviets started pulling out the following summer, George Bush
had been inaugurated before they finished--and at that the story wasn't
over; see
Firing
Line
s0831.)
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1005
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6939
item Program Number S0760,
1722
"The Drive for Disarmament"
Guests: La Rocque, Gene R. (Gene
Robert), 1918- : Courter, Jim.
19 October 1987
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 128 ; 14
Transcript: Box/Folder 182 : 4
Program details: Admiral LaRocque--whose active service goes back to
Pearl Harbor and who retired as a Rear Admiral in 1972--is an ardent
advocate of disarmament. Mr. Courter is an ardent advocate of the Space
Shield. At times their ardency bursts into shrillness, but mostly this
is an exciting and instructive hour. JC: "We and the Soviet Union do not
mirror-image each other.... The Soviets will use [on-site] inspection
for the gathering of intelligence. We'll use inspection for the purpose
of corroborating their compliance with arms-control agreements." GL:
"Arms control as we've known it... has been singularly unsuccessful....
They meet over there in Geneva, and they come out...[and] say: We have
agreed that we will build no more square weapons, no more round weapons,
and no more triangular weapons. That's seen as a challenge, then, to the
engineers and the scientists and the militarists to build
tetrahedrons."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1000
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6934
item Program Number S0761,
1723
"Where Are We on the War Powers Act?"
Guests: Solarz,
Stephen J. : Roth, Toby.
3 December 1987
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 128 : 15
Transcript: Box/Folder 182 : 5
Program details: The War Powers Act had been brought to the fore again by
events in the Persian Gulf: not what we now think of as the Persian Gulf
War, but the latter days of the Iran-Iraq war, which had led to attacks
on shipping in the Gulf. This had led in turn to a beefing up of the
American naval presence there, and some of our ships had been fired on.
So: "Should President Reagan go to Congress for permission to continue?"
A brisk and informative discussion. SS: "If there's any one lesson we
should have learned from the war in Vietnam, it's that in order to
sustain a military presence abroad, we need the support of the Congress
and the American people at home." WFB: "Which we didn't have." SS:
"Which we didn't have then, and which I think the President does have
now, but it's important to send that signal to our friends and foes in
the region."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1006
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6940
item Program Number S0762,
1724
"Morality and Disarmament"
Guests: Pipes, Richard. : Coffin,
William Sloane.
10 December 1987
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 128 : 16
Transcript: Box/Folder 182 : 5
Program details: A hard-fought but never bad-tempered debate between a
veteran Cold Warrior and a veteran pacifist. Mr. Coffin: "I would use
moral leverage to insist that it's a great mistake to fight evil as if
it were something totally outside of yourself. I think
self-righteousness is the most immoral position nations can take." Mr.
Pipes: "Why are you insisting on blurring the moral differences between
systems, between ways of life, between ideologies? There surely are
profound differences. It doesn't mean that one is all good and the
other's all evil, but on balance there are enormous differences and I
don't see why one has to blur these differences to be moral."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1007
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6941
item Program Number S0763,
1725
"The Problems of the Catholic Church"
Guests: Neuhaus,
Richard John.
10 December 1987
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 128 : 17
Transcript: Box/Folder 182 : 6
Program details: Actually, this exhilarating hour is more about the
potential of the Catholic Church, it being Pastor Neuhaus's contention
that a religious revival is on the way and the Catholic Church will lead
it. This broad and deep discussion includes the right relation of
religion and politics, the nature of worship, and the meaning of true
ecumenism. RJN: "What we're moving to is a genuine pluralism, which is
not the pluralism of pretending that our differences make no
difference.... That's shallow, superficial, and it's finally
dehumanizing ... I mean, you can dress it up in all kinds of humane,
liberal, caring, compassionate language, but what it's really saying is
that I don't take you seriously, and I don't take seriously most
particularly what you think is the most important thing in your life:
namely, your relationship with God, the meaning of your existence, and
your eternal destiny."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1008
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6942
item Program Number S0764,
1726
"Max Lerner's America"
Guests: Lerner, Max, 1902-
30 December 1987
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 128 : 18
Transcript: Box/Folder 182 : 6
Program details: This show meanders at times, but it's worth staying with
it for the distillation we get of Max Lerner's six decades on the public
scene. ML: "I think [the Republicans'] problem is that they are so
wedded to the traditional ethos and traditional value system that there
is a kind of stasis that sets in with them.... In the case of the
Democrats I think that their problem is that they have not really
confronted the entire question, and they make a cult of change without
asking: In what direction? At what pace? For whom? For what
purposes?"
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1009
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6943
item Program Number S0765,
1727
"How Do Conservatives View 1988?"
Guests: Pilpel, Harriet F.
: Green, Mark J. : Kinsley, Michael E.
30 December 1987
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 128 : 19
Transcript: Box/Folder 182 : 7
Program details: A fast-paced installment of the semi-annual turnabout,
with three
Firing
Line
regulars grilling their host. Topics range from
economics to AIDS to arms control, and more. One sample: WFB: "How, in
fact, do you move against a GNP that gives 23.7 per cent of its income
to federal spending unless you can do something about entitlements, over
which Reagan has no control whatsoever?" MK: "Well, he's been President
of the United States for eight years. If Ronald Reagan wasn't going to
take on entitlements, who ever will?" WFB: "Well, he can have a coup
d'etat, and do away with the House of Representatives, and do something
about entitlements."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1010
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6944
item Program Number S0766,
1728
"Coming Up: The INF Hearings"
Guests: Perle, Richard Norman,
1941- : Hyland, William.
7 January 1988
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 128 : 20
Transcript: Box/Folder 182 : 7
Program details: It was Mr. Perle who had originated the "zero option"
idea (see
Firing
Line
s0721), and Mr. Hyland is not impressed ("To break
up the American-German alliance for an agreement with Gorbachev strikes
me as almost total madness"). A fine discussion of INF
(intermediate-range nuclear forces) and related matters, generating both
heat and light. Mr. Perle: "One reason why I hope there will be a
serious ratification debate is that we have not taken arms control very
seriously for a long time. People stand up and cheer any treaty, the
concept of a treaty, agreement for agreement's sake--and that, I think,
is very damaging. It leads to sloppy negotiating. It encourages
concessions, including unwarranted concessions. I think real scrutiny
would be a good thing. I think the Administration should be put through
the wringer on this."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1011
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6945
item Program Number S0767,
1729
"Do Capitalists Go Too Far?"
Guests: Forbes, Malcolm S.
7 January 1988
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 128 : 21
Transcript: Box/Folder 182 : 8
Program details: One of the world's most exuberant capitalists attacks
the question with verve. One sample: WFB: "I think it's true that, in
democracies in particular, people tend to want to punish a system
because there are conspicuous people within it who, in their judgment,
abuse that system. Now, would you concede that we have very conspicuous
abusers of capitalism right now?" MSF: "Oh, no question. I don't know
that they're worse now than they ever were, they're just on a larger
take basis, they're dealing with larger sums--Mr. Boesky and Company. I
really think that in this country we take the functioning of capitalism
for granted, but we're not happy about those many who fall through the
net. We're not happy with the unsolved problems. And it's not just
villainy, there are shortcomings in capitalism."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1012
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6946
item Program Number S0768,
1730
"Impasse in Israel"
Guests: Zogby, James J. : Zion, Sidney.
19 January 1988
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 128 : 22
Transcript: Box/Folder 182 : 8
Program details: Not a pleasant program to watch--as the animosity
between the guests mirrors all too clearly that in the Middle East--but
an instructive one. Two samples: SZ: "If it's true that the PLO
(Palestine Liberation Organization) is representative of the Palestinian
people, they are then represented by a group that... each year passes
again its charter that says: We will destroy the state of Israel. Clear
cut. No doubt about it." JZ: "But Israel is involved daily in the
destruction of the Palestinian national identity, occupation of
Palestinian land, the deportation and expulsion of Palestinian leaders."
... WFB: "If France was prepared to receive the president of West
Germany four or five years after the second of those terrible conquests,
and if we could receive the people who actually bombed Pearl Harbor, it
seems to me that one could hope historically that there might be some
means by which the essential requirement of both peoples could be
met."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1013
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6947
item Program Number S0769,
1731
"The Libertarian Candidate"
Guests: Paul, Ron, 1935-
19 January 1988
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 128 : 23
Transcript: Box/Folder 182 : 9
Program details: Dr. Paul, a former Republican, is the Libertarian
Party's candidate for President, and he proves, in this energetic
exchange, to be a well-spoken exponent of the libertarian creed. WFB:
"As somebody who occasionally calls himself a libertarian, I regret the
extent to which the libertarian position is discredited by a kind of
reductionism that is simply incompatible with social life. You want to
destroy the FBI, for instance. Why?" RP: "Well, we could point out,
first, that the first 125 years of this country existed without an FBI.
That came about, I believe, during the First World War. The CIA is a
really recent phenomenon, 1947." WFB: "Well, we existed 125 years
without an airplane, too."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1014
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ANCWV20
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6948
item Program Number S0770,
1732
"A Tribute to Clare Boothe Luce"
Guests:
19 January 1988
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 128 : 24
Transcript: Box/Folder 182 : 9
Program details: This is only the second time that
Firing
Line
has paused
to mark the passing of a favorite guest (the first being the tribute to
Allard Lowenstein, s0415). This show includes delicious excerpts from
Mrs. Luce's four
Firing
Line
appearances, and concludes with Mr.
Buckley's eulogy at her memorial Mass at St. Patrick's Cathedral in
Manhattan: "Clare Luce, now at Mepkin finally, is no longer disturbed.
It is only we who are disturbed, Hank Luce above all, and her friends;
sad, so sad without her, yet happy for her, embarked finally, after
stooping so many times to pick up so many splinters, on her way to the
Cross."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1015
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6949
item Program Number S0771, 12
"The Pope's New Encyclical"
Guests: McBrien, Richard P. :
Novak, Michael.
29 February 1988
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 128 : 25
Transcript: Box/Folder 182 : 10
Program details: These guests, a leading Catholic liberal and a leading
Catholic conservative, had been signed up before the announcement of
Sollicitudo Rei Socialis, an encyclical which had been criticized by,
among others, Messrs. Buckley and Novak for being, as Mr. Buckley puts
it, "susceptible to the argument of moral equivalence; namely, that
there are not important moral differences between the two contending
blocs pursuing a cold war." Here they have as a foil Father McBrien, who
does not by any means agree with his Pope on everything but does agree
with him on this question. WFB: "[The Pope] said it is insufferable that
people should be suffering from a lack of food anywhere in the world,
while in the Midwest they are destroying food. Now I think it is
insufferable morally, but I know of no way to avoid that problem. I
really don't." RM: "You know what you've done, though? As a theologian I
recognize what you've done, and I think it's absolutely legitimate.
You've just made a distinction between a moral principle and its
application."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1016
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6950
item Program Number S0772,
1734
"Should We Legalize Drugs?"
Guests: Glasser, Ira. : Stutman,
Robert.
29 February 1988
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 128 : 26
Transcript: Box/Folder 182 : 10
Program details: Changing hearts and minds on this particular issue is
one of the hardest tasks in the public arena, but our guests and their
host have another go at it. Each has excellent arguments, vividly
presented. Do we make laws for everyone with the 12-year-old in mind?
Does the War on Drugs turn people into criminals, or were a majority of
users of illegal drugs criminals first? Has the War on Drugs
actually--and contrary to what is often asserted--reduced the number of
addicts in the United States? You pays your money and you takes your
choice, but these three lay out the choices for us.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1017
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6951
item Program Number S0773,
1735
"Will Doctors Have to Go Out of Business?"
Guests: Fischer,
Lee A. : Montgomery, Robert M., Jr. : Musgrove, Martha
15 April 1988
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 128 : 27
Transcript: Box/Folder 182 : 11
Program details: A highly combative exchange among a doctor, a lawyer,
and a journalist on the state of medical malpractice. As Mr. Buckley
gives the background: "In Dade County, Florida, in 1987, the average
malpractice insurance premium for doctors was $165,000 per year. That
was up, in four years, from $30,000. In Palm Beach County ...
malpractice insurance for obstetricians ... added $700 to the delivery
cost for a baby. Enough, finally, was enough." Doctors walked off the
job, until the legislature passed a bill altering the malpractice law.
Mr. Montgomery tends to see doctors in these cases as entirely in the
wrong; Dr. Fischer returns the compliment concerning lawyers.
Still--thanks largely to Mrs. Musgrove--we do get an idea of the points
at issue.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1019
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6953
item Program Number S0774,
1736
"Scare Tactics and AIDS"
Guests: Fumento, Michael Aaron. :
Tamarkin, Norman R.
31 March 1988
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 128 : 28
Transcript: Box/Folder 182 : 11
Program details: As Dr. Tamarkin puts it, "This whole issue of AIDS is so
sensitive politically ... it's a lightning rod for a lot of strong
opinions because it has to do with seeking pleasure, with sex, with
drugs, with a contagious illness for which there is no cure." Mr.
Fumento is a serious student of the spread of the disease, and while his
findings are far from uncontroversial (he was working on a book to be
called The Myth of Heterosexual AIDS), he has the facts and figures in
hand for this perhaps surprisingly low-key discussion of a highly
emotional topic.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1018
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6952
item Program Number S0775,
1737
"The Problems of Mayor Koch, Democrat"
Guests: Koch, Ed,
1924-
28 April 1988
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 128 : 29
Transcript: Box/Folder 182 : 12
Program details: WFB leads off: "Mayor Koch, one charge that you leveled
against Jesse Jackson was that he was untruthful. Haven't you invited
the same charge to be made against yourself? Because before the New York
primary you said that under President Jesse Jackson the country would be
broke in three weeks and defenseless in six. A few days later, you said
that if it came to that alternative, you would vote for candidate
Jackson against candidate Bush on the grounds that a President Jackson
would do 'less damage' to the country than a President Bush. Were you
suggesting that under President Bush the United States would be broke in
less than three weeks?" And we're set for the usual delicious mix of
substance and chutzpah. EK: "... regrettably, what I did was to use
words that were too sharp. Jesse Jackson is more than a candidate, he is
an emotional symbol to large numbers of our population, and they did not
want to hear my commentary, or did not want to hear the sharp
rhetoric."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1020
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6954
item Program Number S0776,
1738
"Chile and a Novel Approach to Social Security"
Guests:
Pinera, Jose.
28 April 1988
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 128 : 30
Transcript: Box/Folder 182 : 12
Program details: Soon after Mr. Pinera became Chile's Minister of Labor
in 1978, he proposed a startling new idea: privatize Social Security.
Perhaps even more startling, the Pinochet regime agreed, and the system
has been a fabulous success. Mr. Pinera explains why, lucidly and
engagingly, also explains why it would be a good idea here, and talks
about the prospect of re-establishing democracy in his country. One
sample, which takes on a haunting resonance in the light of the campaign
launched against Augusto Pinochet eight years after he stepped down as
president (see
Firing
Line
s01190): "Basically, what the military has
said is: Look, in 1973 there was this Marxist government; they were
violating the constitution, it was like a tiger going around creating
problems. People asked us to mount the tiger. We have mounted the tiger.
We have dominated the tiger. Now we ride to decide how to dismount the
tiger without being eaten."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1021
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6955
item Program Number S0777,
1739
"Mortimer Adler on The Closing of the American Mind"
Guests:
Adler, Mortimer Jerome, 1902-2001.
6 May 1988
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 128 : 31
Transcript: Box/Folder 182 : 13
Program details: Mr. Adler had dissented from Allan Bloom's runaway best
seller (discussed on
Firing
Line
s0735), and Mr. Buckley here invites
him to explain why. As the hour plays out, Mr. Adler spends more time-as
engagingly and cogently as always-on education in general and some of
his own concerns in particular, though when he turns to his fellow
philosopher he is illuminating: The two great political philosophers
that Bloom admires most are Plato and Rousseau, and neither is a
democrat in my sense of the term. Neither would take Mill's view that
democracy is the ideal form of government with a long future and almost
no past."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.1022
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6956
item Program Number S0778,
1801
"Dirty Rock Lyrics"
Guests: Gore, Tipper. : Simmons, Doug. :
8 June 1988
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 129 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 182 : 13
Program details: This is the first
Firing
Line
in a new format: it runs
half an hour instead of an hour, and, instead of an examiner called in
somewhere past the midpoint of the show, there is a moderator, as in the
Firing
Line
debates, who starts things off. As it happens, each of these
guests is something of a Johnny One-Note (Mrs. Gore: "We have to show
that we respect the First Amendment and artists' rights ... but at the
same time be sensitive to young children." Mr. Simmons: "The record
industry ... would love to get rid of [heavy metal].... Why worry about
it?"), but Mr. Buckley is on top form: "To whip up community sentiment,
whether it's against acid rain or against child abuse, is a legitimate
function of social invigoration, and to suggest that because you might
stumble into something that was intended to be artistic is to ask for a
kind of protection that you can't legitimately hope for.""
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1024
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TZ8GE30
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6958
item Program Number S0779,
1802
"Who Should Be Vice President and Why?"
Guests: Maslin,
Paul. : Green, Mark J.
6 July 1988
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 129 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 182 : 14
Program details: This vigorous discussion is about evenly divided between
what sort of person a Vice President should be and--since our guests are
both liberal Democrats--whom Michael Dukakis should pick as his running
mate. (Most of the running-mate discussion is on the plausibility of
Jesse Jackson, though Mr. Maslin does mention Lloyd Bentsen as a strong
contender.) MG: "One point I would like to make, if I could, that we are
leaving out of this equation: ... Democrats are frustrated because they
have been out of the White House 16 of 20 years, and are extremely
united behind Dukakis because they don't want a Reagan successor.
Therefore, there will be very little moaning if Dukakis picks someone
that's not ideal, unlike the Republicans, who are already complaining
that Governor Tom Kean is the keynoter [at the convention], and you have
Republicans like Howard Phillips and Richard Viguerie bitterly attacking
Reagan and Bush. I don't think you will see that phenomenon in the
Democratic Party this year."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1031
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6965
item Program Number S0780,
1803
"The Central American Mess"
Guests: Van den Haag, Ernest. :
Farer, Tom J.
8 June 1988
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 129 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 182 : 14
Program details: Messrs. van den Haag and Farer are the co-authors of
U.S. Ends and Means in Central America: A Debate and they know their
stuff--although, as their book title suggests, they disagree on what
those ends and means should be. Mr. Farer takes a laid-back,
laissez-faire view of the Soviets' potential installation of missiles in
Latin America ("We have the means to act directly and immediately to
deal with it, which ... makes it very unlikely that it would be
attempted"), Mr. van den Haag takes a more pre-emptive view ("It may not
be a reasonable thing for the Soviet Union to place nuclear arms in
Cuba, but they did it. And I see no reason to believe they may not act
equally irrationally in some Central American republic.... We should be
ready"), and Mr. Buckley keeps them on track ("One can't reasonably
assume that the Soviet Union is going to invest a billion dollars a year
in Nicaragua, which I am told has been done for the last four years,
unless they intend to do something other than to Bolshevize the
bananas").
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1023
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6957
item Program Number S0781,
1804
"Update on Drug Legalization"
Guests: Grinspoon, Lester,
1928- : Szasz, Thomas Stephen, 1920-
29 June 1988
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 129 : 4
Transcript: Box/Folder 182 : 15
Program details: Guests and host all agree that drugs should be
legalized, but at that point Dr. Szasz takes leave of the others (and,
some would say, of his senses). Dr. Grinspoon would legalize drugs but
tax them heavily, to pay for the social costs of drug use; Mr. Buckley
was developing his "federal drugstore" idea, to provide drugs cheaply
enough to get organized crime out of the business, but in a regulated
fashion; and Dr. Szasz calls any sanctions "scapegoating." One sample:
TS: "Let's take some heroin addict who, at age 25, ODs. Look at the
amount of money he has saved society by not being on welfare for the
next 60 years, and not being in jail and not mugging people." WFB: "But
suppose he wasn't going to be on welfare. Suppose he was going to be
Thomas Edison." TS: "That's unlikely that he would be so undisciplined
then." WFB: "I don't think it's unlikely at all... Unfortunately there's
no correspondence between genius and the capacity to self-destruct."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1028
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6962
item Program Number S0782,
1805
"A Bishop Rethinks Sexuality"
Guests: Neuhaus, Richard John.
: Spong, John Shelby.
8 June 1988
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 129 : 5
Transcript: Box/Folder 182 : 15
Program details: Put on your flak helmets for this one: Bishop Spong, in
calm, reasonable tones, argues for, oh, nothing more than a complete
remaking of Christian sexual morality ("The issue is that we live in the
20th century.... What we have done in our society is to separate puberty
from marriage by ten to fifteen years with no corresponding ethic to
tell young people how to deal with sexual energy ... Do you think
they're going to refrain from sexual activity? I think they're not, and
therefore I suggest that we find a way to enter into that world and
provide a relationship that can be a committed relationship and have an
aspect of holiness about it"). Pastor Neuhaus does not pretend to take a
detached view ("Why do you want to take a Christian position when the
argument of your book is that there is nothing normative about the
Christian Scriptures or the Christian tradition?"). A high-voltage
exchange, generating light as well as much heat.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1025
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6959
item Program Number S0783,
1806
"Shaking Up the Republican Party"
Guests: Kean, Thomas H. :
Dowd, William.
6 July 1988
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 129 : 6
Transcript: Box/Folder 182 : 16
Program details: Mr. Kean--who would be the keynote speaker at the
Republican convention the following month--had indeed shaken up his
party with his landslide re-election three years earlier, in which he
had won 60 per cent of the black vote and two-thirds of the union vote.
Was the secret of his success a "laudable politics of inclusion"? Or was
it--as some Republicans protesting his choice as keynote speaker
argued--that he was a Democrat in Republican's clothing? Or was it
simply his personal attractiveness, which comes through clearly on this
show? A low-key but interesting discussion of a moderate's views: "I
found a simple fact, and that is that crime is much greater in the black
community than anywhere else in the state, so if you stress law and
order, blacks are just as concerned about that if not more concerned
than anybody else."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1029
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6963
item Program Number S0784,
1807
"The Right to Make Fun of Public Figures"
Guests: Falwell,
Jerry. : Pilpel, Harriet F.
6 July 1988
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 129 : 7
Transcript: Box/Folder 182 : 16
Program details: Hustler had published a satire which included Jerry
Falwell having sexual relations with his own mother, and Mr. Falwell had
sued. Some had expected the Rehnquist Court to take the opportunity to
modify the "New York Times rule" on libel suits involving public
figures, but instead of softening the rule it held that obvious satire
does not constitute "reckless disregard for the truth." This show offers
a crackling debate on the whole subject of civil liberties versus
individuals' rights. JF: "Had the ad been of Harriet and her mother or
father, I rather think she might be sitting where I'm sitting today
rather than there defending the issue." WFB: "No, actually she wouldn't,
because Harriet is a very principled woman, and she would, I think
incorrectly, feel that this was a sacrifice necessary to sustain the
vitality of the First Amendment."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1030
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6964
item Program Number S0785,
1808
"How Does It Go with Deregulation of the Airlines?"
Guests:
Borman, Frank. : Kahn, Alfred E. (Alfred Edward)
29 June 1988
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 129 : 8
Transcript: Box/Folder 182 : 17
Program details: Mr. Kahn had been the principal force behind airline
deregulation in the 1970s (see
Firing
Line
s0337); Mr. Borman had been
one of its chief opponents. Mr. Borman now says: "I think the
experiment's worked extremely well.... I read somewhere that in 1977
only 25 percent of Americans had flown. This year, 75 per cent have
flown. So we really have made available a wonderful facility to people
who in any other country in the world can't enjoy it." A good-tempered
discussion of how free-market theory actually plays out in people's
lives.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1026
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6960
item Program Number S0786,
1809
"When Should We Step Aside and Let Death Take Over?"
Guests:
Callahan, Daniel. : Etzioni, Amitai.
29 June 1988
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 129 : 9
Transcript: Box/Folder 182 : 17
Program details: An absorbing and intensely disturbing discussion of
medical ethics and the aged. Mr. Callahan starts from the fact that a
tremendous amount of money is spent on medical procedures in what proves
to be the last year of a patient's life. He also points out that, "by
constantly trying to extend lives and find more and more ways to apply
the technology to the elderly ... we're not getting a happier group of
elderly, we're getting an elderly more fearful of growing old and more
fearful of death." He finds the expenditures essentially unfair to the
young and would "set limits"--apparently an arbitrary age--after which
certain procedures could not be done. Mr. Etzioni fairly sputters with
indignation but makes some good points about allocation of resources. We
may not wind up completely agreeing with either, but we will be left
with a great deal to think about."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1027
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6961
item Program Number S0787,
1810
"The French-American Connection: Accord or Discord?"
Guests:
Francois-Poncet, Jean. : Wahl, Nicholas.
24 August 1988
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 129 : 10
Transcript: Box/Folder 182 : 18
Program details: French-American relations had come a long way since the
days when de Gaulle was referring to "les deux hegemonies," but there
were now two unsettling factors on the horizon: U.S.-Soviet
implementation of the INF treaty, to remove intermediate-range nuclear
missiles from Europe, and the unification of Europe, scheduled for 1992.
Our extremely knowledgeable guests are worried but non-apocalyptic. JFP:
"There was a time when there was a certain opening of France towards the
Soviet Union. This has changed. There is a lot of reluctance, a lot of
caution in assessing the Gorbachev experiment. Our feeling is that a
close coupling with the United States is necessary for our defense,
although we have a deterrent, want to keep it, and want to modernize
it."NW: "I think that the French have become the most anti-Soviet people
in Europe."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1032
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6966
item Program Number S0788,
1811
"Contra Aid"
Guests: Purcell, Susan Kaufman. : Roett,
Riordan.
24 August 1988
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 129 : 11
Transcript: Box/Folder 182 : 19
Program details: A ceasefire had been in effect in Nicaragua since April,
but talks had broken down. What should the United States be doing?
According to Mr. Roett, "The Nicaraguan situation needs to be looked at
in the context of 1988-1989, not in the context of President Reagan's
inauguration, when he himself took on the Contras as a very personal
cause. He is finished; they, too, will soon be finished." To Mrs.
Purcell, "When you set up a negotiating process between one side that is
heavily armed by the Soviets and the other side that really doesn't even
have food and boots, it is a very unequal negotiation." Mr. Buckley,
taking issue with Mr. Roett, asserts that "There is no such thing as a
nice clinically, hygienically, hermetically sealed Soviet satellite in
Central America." Heat but also light on this subject of protracted
American consideration.
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.1033
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6967
item Program Number S0789,
1812
"Media Bias"
Guests: Rusher, William A., 1923- : Clurman,
Richard M.
24 August 1988
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 129 : 12
Transcript: Box/Folder 182 : 20
Program details: A fast-paced but never superficial look at the media by
three elder statesmen who have spent most of their adult lives in the
media. RMC: "Everybody knows, it's no secret, they [journalists] mostly
vote Democratic.... The biographical argument has nothing to do with
what comes out of the media. This week we have Quayle under glass, but
on the other hand we had fried Geraldine Ferraro much worse when she ran
for Vice President." ... WAR: "What I am also concerned about is that
the pendulum has swung too far in the other direction, that we have
found ourselves in a situation in which the media ... far from being
Greek-chorus commentators on the situation, are partisan participants in
every situation, with opinions on every major issue, and pushing those
opinions by a selective process in their news reportage."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1034
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6968
item Program Number S0790,
1813
"Southern Strategy: The Bush Agenda"
Guests: Campbell,
Carroll.
8 September 1988
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 97 : 12
Publicity File: Box/Folder 129 : 13
Transcript: Box/Folder 182 : 20
Program details: A pleasant session with one of the new breed of Southern
Republicans. Governor Campbell doesn't give away any state secrets about
the Bush strategy, but he and Mr. Buckley look informatively at the
Democratic Convention (CC: "When ... the dust settled, and people were
able to go back and look at Mike Dukakis, not against Jesse Jackson
but... really against the whole of America, they realized that they had
a [candidate] on the Left ... and once they began to discern that, I
think that the efforts of the Democratic Convention began to unravel")
and the black vote in the South (CC: "For too many years the black
population of the South has been assumed by the Democratic Party.... The
Republican Party made a great mistake in that we said: 'Okay, they've
got it, we don't need to try.' Well, we're not saying that any more....
We don't need to alter what we stand for, we need to sell what we stand
for").
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1036
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6970
item Program Number S0791,
1814
"Battle for the South: Election '88"
Guests: Courson, John.
: Fowler, Don.
8 September 1988
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 101 : 5
Publicity File: Box/Folder 129 : 14
Transcript: Box/Folder 182 : 21
Program details: A relaxed discussion centering on how different the
South still is, or isn't, from the rest of the country, and why blacks
vote as they do, and how representative government differs from
plebiscitary government. One sample: MK: "Mr. Buckley ... were you
saying, and I hope you were, that the Republicans ought to try to get
black votes by telling black voters, 'Listen to Charles Murray; we want
to cut off all your social welfare, and it'll really be good for you'?
You recommend that as a political strategy?" WFB: "Well, it's obviously
useless as a political strategy, because it would be no more useful than
if I were to tell you to start going to church every Sunday. You would
deeply resent it, even though it would do you a lot of good. But I do
think that slowly there's got to be a penetration."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1037
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6971
item Program Number S0792,
1815
"Broken Alliance: Blacks and Jews"
Guests: Kaufman,
Jonathan. : Williams, Juan.
27 September 1988
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 129 : 15
Transcript: Box/Folder 182 : 21
Program details: A discussion that is painful at times but deeply honest
and perceptive, and of great interest even to non-combatants such as
white Gentiles. One sample: JK: "To be fair, I think Jews, like most
whites, still underestimate what it's like to be black in this country.
I mean, I've been in a number of forums with Jews talking to blacks and
it is striking to me still the kind of patronizing tone that Jews bring
to those dialogues very often. There's a sense in which Jews feel that
they understand blacks better than blacks understand blacks." JW: "And
that's grating to blacks, let me just tell you."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1038
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6972
item Program Number S0793,
1816
"What Constitutes a Dirty Campaign?"
Guests: Shrum, Robert.
: Irvine, Reed.
27 September 1988
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 129 : 16
Transcript: Box/Folder 182 : 22
Program details: Not the most tightly focused debate, but guests and host
score off each other with such gusto that we can just sit back and enjoy
the ride. RS: "I don't think this Pledge of Allegiance issue [Governor
Dukakis had vetoed a bill punishing schoolteachers who failed to lead
their charges in the Pledge] has much to do with liberal or
conservative." WFB: "It's part of a syndrome.... [Dukakis] is so clearly
on the side of that part of the Court... which seeks to attenuate the
responsibility for inculcating civic--and it used to be also
religious--values, that I can't think of anything more important for
people to focus on, as distinguished from what the minimum wage should
be, $5.45 or $6.45." RS: "It's probably not important to you what the
minimum wage is, but it is important to lots of other people." WFB: "No,
because in the long run you're going to get conclusions about the
minimum wage based on more fundamental characteristics."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1039
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6973
item Program Number S0794,
1817
"The Post Office Mess"
Guests: Miller, James, III. : Biller,
Moe.
27 September 1988
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 129 : 17
Transcript: Box/Folder 182 : 22
Program details: Who would have thought a discussion of the Postal
Service could be so much fun? Mr. Biller is a force of nature, light
years away from the usual TV talking head; quotations offer only a pale
image: MB: "You know what I resent? Mr. Miller speaks of the Congress of
the United States as if it doesn't represent the people. The people
elect the Congress of the United States just as they do a President...."
JM: "May I ask one question? How much money has your political-action
committee spread around on Capitol Hill on this issue [privatization of
the Post Office]?" MB: "That doesn't mean you're buying votes! Your
party doesn't get political contributions? Political contributions are
not being made to Mr. Bush?" Mr. Miller does get the unexpected pleasure
of being able to say to, of all people, Mr. Buckley, "To ask that
question is to fail to appreciate the importance of competition."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1040
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6974
item Program Number S0795,
1818
"Stopping START"
Guests: Kissinger, Henry, 1923-
11 October 1988
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 129 : 18
Transcript: Box/Folder 182 : 23
Program details: Soviet Foreign Minister Eduard Shevardnadze had just
visited with Secretary of State George Shultz to discuss the START
(Strategic Arms Reduction Talks) negotiations in Geneva. Messrs. Buckley
and Kissinger begin there and take us on a brilliantly lucid tour of the
current state of arms control and much else. HK: "Arms control, which
started about 25 years ago under totally different circumstances, has
become an esoteric numbers game which is almost its own purpose and
whose contribution to stability and security is growing more and more
elusive." ... HK: "If we have seen how Gorbachev has treated his own
colleagues on the Politburo--every one of whom that voted him into
office has since been purged--it would be rather reckless for us to
stake everything on one man." WFB: "Recent polls ... have shown that the
majority of Europeans believe that Reagan is a greater threat to the
peace than Gorbachev. Now you can dismiss this as an eccentricity or ...
some sort of schoolboy iconoclasm, but there are, I think, deeper
implications that Gorbachev's road show carries with it a terrible and
conceivably even fatal psychological potential."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1042
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6976
item Program Number S0796,
1819
"The Long Not-So-Hot Campaign"
Guests: Kinsley, Michael E.
11 October 1988
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 129 : 19
Transcript: Box/Folder 182 : 23
Program details:
Firing
Line
here takes advantage of having been, a year
earlier, the first venue for each party's candidates to meet in a
nationally televised forum. In this session, we see three segments each
from George Bush's and Michael Dukakis's performances, with Messrs.
Buckley and Kinsley commenting after each pair. MK: "My main reaction to
both [of the autobiographical segments], especially the Bush one, is: I
remember seeing them at the time and thinking: 'This is so
excruciatingly contrived and phony I can't stand it.' But my standards
have really plummeted about artifice in politics since then." WFB: "You
now think it's sublime?" MK: "Well, I wouldn't go sublime, but it seems
tolerable, which it didn't at the time. I think my standards have sunk
quite a bit because of the way this campaign has gone."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1043
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6977
item Program Number S0797,
1820
"Japanese Takeover: Good or Bad?"
Guests: Powell, Jim. :
Bryant, John.
11 October 1988
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 129 : 20
Transcript: Box/Folder 182 : 24
Program details: The amount of money that foreigners had invested in the
United States had recently exceeded, for the first time, the amount of
money that Americans had invested abroad. Rep. Bryant was the author of
a bill requiring all foreign holdings in the U.S. to be registered. Was
this the first step towards protectionism? A fast-paced and engrossing
show on a topic that many of us might expect to find overly technical.
WFB: "I'm trying to get a philosophical fix here before we go into the
economics of it. Is it your blanket position that any foreigner doing
any kind of business in America ought to have exactly the same license
as an American?" JP: "Yes. I think you judge the moral caliber of a
civilization by how well it treats strangers."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1044
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6978
item Program Number S0798,
1821
"The Philippine Dilemma under Aquino"
Guests: Solarz,
Stephen J.
7 November 1988
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 129 : 21
Transcript: Box/Folder 182 : 24
Program details: It had been nearly three years since Ferdinand and
Imelda Marcos had fled the Philippines and Corazon Aquino had taken over
as president (see
Firing
Line
s0710). The Communist insurgents were
still active, and Mrs. Aquino's vice president had recently urged her to
step down and call new elections. In this spirited debate, Mr. Solarz
argues strongly that "Mrs. Aquino has not only succeeded in establishing
democracy and reviving the economy, but in winning the confidence of the
Filipino people." SS: "What you have in the Philippine press is the
background music of democracy. As someone who edits the National Review
magazine, you should be entirely comfortable with that proposition."
WFB: "Not if it's atonal. Background music has got to be harmonious for
democracy to work."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1045
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6979
item Program Number S0799,
1822
"What's So Bad about Being Poor?"
Guests: Murray, Charles A.
7 November 1988
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 129 : 22
Transcript: Box/Folder 182 : 25
Program details: The phrase "thinking outside the box" might have been
coined for Mr. Murray. It has been his specialty--and has more than once
made him the subject of searing controversy--not to be satisfied with
the conventional wisdom, and today's conversation is a mind-opener. CM:
"We have tended to [say]... we don't know how people enjoy themselves,
we don't know how they get self-esteem, but let's take care of the money
and then let people take care of the rest of their lives as they see
fit. I think that's only true for a very small segment of the
population.... For a great many people, the way they go about providing
for their material resources is intimately bound up with their
self-esteem, bound up with the way they enjoy themselves, bound up with
the way they form their communities, and it has been fundamentally
unhelpful to say that we can tie off this one area of life and deal with
it independently."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1046
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6980
item Program Number S0800,
1823
"Loyalty and Betrayal in Politics"
Guests: Shays,
Christopher.
28 November 1988
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 129 : 23
Transcript: Box/Folder 182 : 25
Program details: "The theme of this show is less loyalty and betrayal"
than, as Mr. Kinsley puts it in his introduction, "the role of 'voting
against' in a democracy." WFB had just spearheaded Buck PAC, a
political-action committee to defeat Republican Senator Lowell Weicker,
the self-described "turd in the punchbowl of American politics" (and
incidentally to replace him with Joseph Lieberman). To Mr. Shays (who
happens to be Mr. Buckley's own congressman), "The narrower the view
that it includes, the smaller that party becomes. What you left me with,
as a Republican ..., is a state now represented by two very liberal
senators. I served [in the state government] with Joe Lieberman. I
happen to like him a lot, but he is a very liberal senator."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1048
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6982
item Program Number S0801,
1824
"A Democrat Critiques the Reagan Years"
Guests: Carter,
Hodding, III.
28 November 1988
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 129 : 24
Transcript: Box/Folder 182 : 26
Program details: This show is often entertaining, though weakened by the
fact that Mr. Carter, who served his presidential namesake as State
Department spokesman, tends to repeat, without evidence, all the cliches
about President Carter's successor. HC: "... you have for the first time
created a thought in this society that we may be permanently divided by
class, that it may be okay, acceptable, inevitable that we're going to
leave behind 20 per cent of our folks ... that the idea that anybody was
going to have a chance to reach up and grab and go forward has been to a
large degree minimized." WFB: "... If there were going to be a
stratification of America into a class system, then you would say: Well,
exactly the same people who constituted the 10 per cent richest eight
years ago constitute the 10 per cent now. Statistics show--and on this a
tremendous amount of work has been done by Thomas Sowell--that the
descent from there and the ascent to there has been as dynamic as at any
time in American history."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1049
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6983
item Program Number S0802,
1825
"National Review's Predictions for 1989"
Guests: Allison,
Wick. : O'Sullivan, John. : Rusher, William A., 1923-
5 January 1989
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 129 : 25
Transcript: Box/Folder 182 : 26
Program details: At the end of the Reagan Administration, two generations
of National Review honchos (including our host, the Editor-in-Chief)
stick their necks out about the future, giving us some good fun but also
food for thought. WA: "The oldest baby-boomer is now 42 years old....
The bulk of the population are settling in to establishment of their
families, to the purchase of homes ... One might be fairly liberal in
one's attitude, or tolerant of other people's weirdnesses, but you get
less so when it's the protection of your family and neighborhood." ...
JO: "I think conservatives are going to talk a lot about the idea of
empowerment, a word that's sometimes been used by people like Jesse
Jackson on the Left, but which has much more meaning, I think, when
conservatives use it." ... WAR "The Soviet Union, I am absolutely
convinced, is going through a period of recognition at long last, forced
on it--there's nothing voluntary about it--forced on it by facts, that
it simply isn't making it as a 20th-century, let alone a 21st-century
society, and that it is going to have to change radically. That's fine
with me and I encourage them, and I'm sure it's fine with Reagan and
he's encouraging them."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1051
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6985
item Program Number S0803,
1826
"What about the New French Abortion Pill?"
Guests: Pilpel,
Harriet F. : O'Sullivan, John. : Buckley, William F. (William Frank),
Jr., 1925-2008.
28 November 1988
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 129 : 26
Transcript: Box/Folder 182 : 27
Program details: Ru-486 had been developed in France, and the question
was, should it be licensed for use in the United States? This sometimes
painful and often profound discussion revolves around what Ru-486
actually is (an abortifacient or a contraceptive?) and how, therefore,
it fits into the abortion argument. HP: "If [a woman] took the pill she
would not know whether she had been pregnant or not; therefore, if she
had any doubt as to whether she wanted to have an abortion, she would
not have to confront that issue...." WFB: "I don't really see how
morally you evade the responsibility by cultivating ignorance. If you
lean out of your apartment building with a .22 rifle and shoot into a
crowd without any idea as to whether you hit anybody, I don't think
you're entitled to feel better." ... WFB: "You'd like to make it
[abortion] illegal ... but in a society in which it's not illegal, is
there a presumption that because it's distasteful you want it to be
difficult to consummate?" JO: "I don't want it to be dangerous, if
that's the drift of your question. I don't want to punish people who
have abortions by making it more likely that they will perish or suffer
some dangerous illness."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.1050
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6984
item Program Number S0804,
1827
"The Real Justice Holmes"
Guests: Lerner, Max, 1902- :
Berns, Walter, 1919-
7 November 1988
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 129 : 27
Transcript: Box/Folder 182 : 27
Program details: A rich discussion of an historical topic with strong
current implications. WB: "I don't deny that he [Justice Holmes] was a
very powerful figure in the field of the common law, and his fame is
deserved there, but the Constitution of the United States is not a
common-law document... He gave rise to a school of thought that
effectively undermines the Constitution." ... WFB: "It' s also Oliver
Wendell Holmes who says: 'If my fellow citizens want to go to hell, I
will help them; it's my job.' Do you consider it his job as a Supreme
Court Justice to help the American people go to hell?" ... ML: "I go
along with the fact that there are natural rights, but who decides what
they are? The Warren Court liberals, Justice Brennan now, Justice
Thurgood Marshall, Justice Harry Blackmun have a very different notion
of natural rights--don't they, Walter?--from your notion of natural
rights?"
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1047
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6981
item Program Number S0805,
1828
"Day of Reckoning: The Reagan Legacy"
Guests: Friedman,
Benjamin.
5 January 1989
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 129 : 28
Transcript: Box/Folder 182 : 28
Program details: Whether or not one signs on to Mr. Friedman's
thesis--that the federal deficit is a disastrous legacy of the Reagan
Administration--this is a lucid and engaging discussion of a
constellation of important questions. BF: "If this [the 1986 revision of
the tax code] was the big reconsideration of our tax system for fifty
years, which is what it was billed as being, we should have used that
opportunity to get away from an income tax towards a consumption tax."
... WFB: "It seems to me that if the government goes to you and asks you
for $100 from your savings, and then ten years later gives you $110, but
[it] can only buy you what $45 used to buy you, somebody has swindled
somebody without having to answer to the SEC ..." BF: "I see it not as a
matter of a swindle, but a risk."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1052
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6986
item Program Number S0806,
1829
"Vice Presidency: Nothing or Everything"
Guests:
Schlesinger, Arthur M. (Arthur Meier), 1917-2007.
5 January 1989
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 97 : 13
Publicity File: Box/Folder 129 : 29
Transcript: Box/Folder 182 : 28
Program details: A surprising conversation about the Vice Presidency,
which Mr. Schlesinger proposes to abolish. WFB: "The reason I don't
dwell on Quayle is that the gravamen of your case doesn't rest on his
shoulders." AS: "It's pre-Quayle." WFB: "...But you'd like to adduce
Quayle to fortify your argument, wouldn't you?" AS: "Why not? ... The
selection of Quayle brought as much dismay to the Republicans as it
brought glee to the Democrats." ... AS: "Originally the Constitution
only provided that the Vice President, in case of the death, removal,
resignation of the President, should inherit the power and duties of the
office, but not the office itself. John Tyler staged a constitutional
coup in 1841 when he seized the office. John Quincy Adams wrote at that
time, 'Contrary to the views of the Constitution, we now have as
President of the United States a man who was never intended for that
office.' "... AS: "What do you think Dr. Freud would have made of the
fact that recently George Bush has been in Texas shooting quail?"
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1053
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6987
item Program Number S0807,
1830
"Health Risks in a Nuclear Environment"
Guests: Bailie, Tom.
: Steele, Karen Dorn. : Fox, Michael F.
10 January 1989
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 129 : 30
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 1
Program details: Mr. Bailie had charged that emissions from the Hanford
Nuclear Facility had been causing health problems in the region for
forty years; Mr. Fox says, "The Hanford operation is one of the safest
operations in the state"; Ms. Steele's research leads her to concur with
Mr. Bailie, although she points out that "The U.S. Department of Energy
has never done a baseline study--who was here, where they went, and how
they were affected." The show suffers from Mr. Fox's tentativeness as a
debater, but we still learn a lot. In Mr. Buckley's summation: "Let's by
all means say to the government: Find out what's going on. And say to
the scholars: Find out what did go on, and attempt to distinguish
between the two. Meanwhile, don't let perestroika, as Mr. Shrum
suggests, give us a false sense of complacency."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1054
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6988
item Program Number S0808,
1831
"An Insider Look from a Nuclear Community"
Guests: Connor,
Tim. : Steele, Karen Dorn. : Burnham, John B.
10 January 1989
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 129 : 31
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 1
Program details: This time (as opposed to the previous show) the nuclear
forces score a clear victory, thanks to Mr. Burnham's knowledge and
persuasiveness. JBB: "... Chernobyl was a Russian experiment in which
they purposely bypassed three safety systems in order to run the
experiment. In the second place, Chernobyl is a reactor that's totally
unlike any reactor we have in the United States.... Chernobyl is a
terrible example. Three Mile Island is a good example." WFB: "On Three
Mile Island you would make the point that after all there wasn't a
meltdown, and therefore, what?" JBB: "It was an economic disaster, but
it was a technical wonder. Everything went wrong. Everybody pulled the
wrong levers. And no one was hurt. That's sensational."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1055
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6989
item Program Number S0809,
1832
"Saint or Sinner: Junipero Serra"
Guests: Maholy, Noel. :
Castillo, Edward.
10 January 1989
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 129 : 32
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 2
Program details: Junipero Serra, the Franciscan founder of the string of
missions along the California coast, had been beatified by Pope John
Paul II, raising protests from those, like Mr. Castillo, who believe
that the system that he established here was "not of benefit to the
Indians." Today's conversation doesn't always connect, but there are
interesting bits along the way. Father Maholy: "If at any time I became
convinced that Father Junipero Serra was not a saint in his own day and
in his death, I would have asked to be relieved of the job, because
there are too many valuable things to be done and important things to be
done." Mr. Buckley finds it, well, outrageous that an "Ad Hoc Serra
Outrage Committee"-- according to a newspaper headline, of "Indian and
leftist and atheist groups"--was presuming to tell the Church who was
and wasn't a saint.
Availability: On archive.org. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1056
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6990
item Program Number S0810,
1833
"The Great Harold Macmillan"
Guests: Horne, Alistair.
20 March 1989
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 130 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 2
Program details: A wonderful conversation about a man who was himself a
favorite
Firing
Line
guest. Mr. Horne had been named his official
biographer--but with the stipulation that his book not appear until
after Macmillan had died, which he had done, at the age of 92, in late
1986. One sample from Mr. Home: Macmillan felt passionately about the
Falklands and said he wished he were still there in power. He wrote to
Mrs. Thatcher and said: "Can I be of any help, just give you support in
the country? Though the country was not divided as it was over Suez. To
his amazement she called him in, and he was there for two hours. She
actually asked him how to run a war and, in fact, took all his
recommendations. He was then 88.""
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1057
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6991
item Program Number S0811,
1834
"The Vietnam Tragedy"
Guests: Sheehan, Neil. : Clurman,
Richard M.
20 March 1989
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 130 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 3
Program details: Mr. Sheehan's new book was a topic of heated
controversy; he describes his experiences ably and often movingly here,
in this discussion with two journalists of a pre-Vietnam generation. NS:
"In World War II, if... George Patton gave you a briefing on what was
going on in the Battle of Normandy, it bore a pretty good relationship
to what was happening. Suddenly, in Vietnam, you were in a situation
where ... you were seeing one thing when you went out in the field, and
the command [in Saigon] was telling you another--and you were trying to
reflect the truth.... We thought as reporters our duty was to report the
truth about this war so that the President would change policy and win
the war." ... RC: "You've had the experience and I've had the experience
... of hearing people blame the press for losing the war in Vietnam.
It's an argument that I totally reject...." WFB: "I think that the press
became anti-Vietnam partisans, and to suggest that the press didn't
influence domestic attitudes is to undermine the power and the prestige
of the press. You wouldn't want to do that, would you?"
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1058
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6992
item Program Number S0812,
1835
"Sex in Schools"
Guests: Prather, Hilma Skonberg. : Brock,
John.
20 March 1989
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 130 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 4
Program details: Kentucky had the nation's highest birth rate among white
teenagers, leading the legislature to pass a law requiring sex education
with an emphasis on abstinence throughout primary and secondary school.
Mrs. Prather and Mr. Brock engage in an energetic debate on a subject of
interest far beyond Kentucky's borders. HSP: "As educators we don't just
list positive things. We need to give students both sides of the
picture, not just the methods that we prefer ... Abortion is here. They
have to be taught to deal with it...." JB: "I'm saying that if we list
[abortion] as an alternative to an unwanted pregnancy, that, to some
youngsters, would send a confused signal: that if it is an alternative,
and if our teachers are telling us it's an alternative, then it's
something we can consider doing."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1059
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6993
item Program Number S0813,
1836
"The Democratic Party: A New Political Force in South Africa"
Guests: Worrall, Denis. : Beer, Zac de.
21 April 1989
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 130 : 4
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 4
Program details: A splendid counterpoint to the
Firing
Line
Special on
South Africa (
Firing
Line
FLS104). Since the guests on this show are
considerably closer to one another politically, we don't get the
fireworks that the Special offered, but we do get a solid grounding for
the American audience. Mr. Welsh's opening question sets the tone: "Now,
Mr. Buckley, I'd like to ask you whether, in general, the American
public knows that there is quite a live, vital, liberal opposition to
apartheid in South Africa by whites." Mr. de Beer: "I submit to you that
what unites black people in South Africa today is the common experience
of oppression, and the day they cease to be oppressed, they will be at
least as fragmented among themselves as the white people are now." ...
Mr. Worrall: "Democracy is a very delicate plant. We know this. I mean,
South America, much of Asia-democracy hasn't grown easily. We're
fortunate in South Africa in this respect, that we have certain
advantages. We have a parliamentary tradition which is very well
established. We have a very well developed legal system, a proud legal
system, an excellent judiciary with independent judges. And we have a
reasonably highly developed economy by African standards. So those are
all factors that work in favor of democracy."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1064
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6998
item Program Number S0814,
1837
"A Controversial Prime Minister Speaks Out"
Guests: Hawke,
Robert J. L. (Robert James Lee), 1929-
12 April 1989
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 130 : 5
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 5
Program details: The second appearance on
Firing
Line
of this feisty,
often outrageous (his own word) political leader, covering economics,
foreign relations, labor relations, and much more. One sample: WFB:" Are
there Australians about whom we should worry who feel that the United
States is in any sense acting imperiously in its relations with
Australia on the matter of mutual defense?" BH: "William, I think people
like you tend to be professional worriers ... but I don't think there's
anything for you to be worried about. The fact that you have some people
who make stupid noises and have positions which are based on prejudices
rather than any intellectual position-well, we've got our share of them,
but I don't worry about them and I don't think you should either."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1060
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6994
item Program Number S0815,
1838
"What Is the South African Left Up To?"
Guests: Alexander,
Neville.
21 April 1989
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 130 : 6
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 5
Program details: The third in the South African series (see
Firing
Line
FLS104 and s0813): a somber but absorbing session with a black activist
opposed to continued white rule in South Africa. NA: "I think I must
stress, as somebody who operates in a legal framework in South Africa,
that I'm not advocating violence. I'm simply saying that one needs to
understand why it is that organizations which in all other respects are
democratic, are committed to a democratic ethos-that organizations like
those have found themselves in a position where they had to take up
arms. The Afrikaners did that here in South Africa, incidentally, and
they look back with pride on their record of resistance to British
imperialism."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1065
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6999
item Program Number S0816,
1839
"A Comparison View of Sex, Booze, Politics: Australia vs.
America"
Guests: Adams, Phillip. : Veliz, Claudio.
12 April 1989
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 130 : 7
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 6
Program details: A freewheeling look at popular behavior in two New World
countries. PA: "We have things on television, on national television,
that you would only see on cable. We have frontal nudity, you can say
all sorts of naughty words without too much problem..." CV: "I think
that what is missing here-it's not that I'm crying for it to be there-is
the puritanical component. There were no puritans as a group established
early in Australia to help to shape Australian society." ... CV: "I was
just wondering whether... the United States and Australia are as
different as all that. I think they are different, but they're more like
each other than like any of their neighbors. The similarities of
countries inhabited by people who use the English language and who have
originated from England is remarkable." ... PA: "I don't recognize the
country that Claudio is describing. I've never lived there."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1061
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6995
item Program Number S0817,
1840
"Racism and Immigration: An Australian Dilemma"
Guests:
Blainey, Geoffrey. : MacPhee, Ian.
12 April 1989
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 130 : 8
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 6
Program details: A calmer discussion than one might have expected, given
the strong differences between the two guests, but solidly informative
on a topic that has increasingly come to the fore in our own country. As
Mr. Olle frames the question: "Australia is one of the world's misfits.
Physically, of course, we're part of Southeast Asia, but
psychologically, emotionally, ever since whites' settlement some two
hundred years ago, the bonds that bind have tied us to ... the
Motherland, Great Britain. And ... we tended to contrive an immigration
policy aimed at preserving a white Australia, a fact that conveniently
ignores forty thousand years of pre-occupation by Aboriginal
Australians." ... GB: "I think that a country which sees itself as the
defender of the free world but can't control its own borders is not
necessarily a country sufficiently in charge of its own destiny to give
assurance to its allies." ... IM: "We are a compassionate society, and
amongst other things we recognize an obligation to the refugees of the
world, so we bring in those refugees whom we think we can settle."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1062
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/6996
item Program Number S0818,
1901
"Mother Teresa Talks with William F. Buckley Jr."
Guests:
Teresa, Mother, 1910-
2 June 1989
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 130 : 9
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 7
Program details: Mr. Buckley begins by explaining that "This program is
designed as a forum for the exchange of opinions. I would like to think
that I would suppress any opinions of my own that differ from Mother
Teresa's and I propose, therefore, to be inordinately, gratefully quiet
as we listen to her." Some of what we duly hear is what we might expect
from this holy woman ("We deal with the lepers, we deal with the dying,
we deal with AIDS.... It is an opportunity for the people to share in
the joy of loving"), but there are also surprises: "Once I met a lady
who was in terrible pain of cancer, and I told her, 'This is but the
kiss of Jesus, a sign that you have come so close to Jesus on the cross
that he can kiss you.' And the lady, though she was in such great pain,
she joined her hands together and said, 'Mother Teresa, please tell
Jesus to stop kissing me.' "
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1066
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004OEIOOW
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7000
item Program Number S0819,
1902
"Should We Trust the Soviets?"
Guests: Weinberger, Caspar W.
2 June 1989
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 130 : 10
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 8
Program details: The NATO summit at the end of May, approached
apprehensively, had proved a smashing success for President Bush. Mr.
Buckley invites his deeply knowledgeable guest to help him explore the
issues and the background. CWW: "If you only went on what was
politically realistic, the Falklands would belong to Argentina and
probably NATO would be confined to somewhere west of France ... You
can't just look at things that seem to be politically impossible or
military impossible and then shrug your shoulders and give them up." ...
"We can dismantle and the Soviets can apparently dismantle. They can
take these 500,000 troops out and they can turn them into farmers and
say, 'You go work in the wheat fields.' But in 24 to 48 hours they can
have them back in uniform armed and trained again, and we can't do that.
We would debate such a change for ten or eleven years."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1067
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7001
item Program Number S0820,
1903
"The Government Maze"
Guests: Kemp, Jack.
2 June 1989
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 130 : 11
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 8
Program details: Even when he is talking about the most dismal
topics--poverty, homelessness, despair--Mr. Kemp can't help being
exuberant: "I'm saying with all my heart that I don't think we ought to
leave fighting poverty to the Left. We know what cures poverty: jobs and
education and housing and opportunities." WFB: "The Left don't know how
to cure poverty-- Charles Murray proved that definitively." JK: "They
know how to redistribute bread. We've got to show people how to create
bakeries." ... JK: "The foreign minister of Vietnam the other day ...
said that rent controls have done to Hanoi what American bombs could not
do: 'It destroyed our housing stock. We were stupid'-- quote,
unquote--'and we must change.' Now goodness gracious, if Communists can
change ... maybe some of the cities of the United States can reconsider
the type of policies that diminish the stock of housing and affordable
housing for the poor."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1068
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7002
item Program Number S0821,
1904
"Brzezinski and the Cold War"
Guests: Brzezinski, Zbigniew,
1928-
7 June 1989
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 130 : 12
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 9
Program details: This discussion of turmoil in the Communist world was
taped three days after the massacre in Tiananmen Square and five months
before the Berlin Wall came down. A hopeful but never facile look at the
opportunities and dangers ahead. ZB: "Communism in Eastern Europe is
doomed because it never had any genuine social roots. Unlike China
unlike the Soviet Union where whether one liked it or not... the
Communist revolutions were still indigenous in Eastern Europe they were
quite literally foreign imports imposed by Soviet bayonets. And now with
the Soviet Union in turmoil the East European societies ... are throwing
off this artificial graft ... But implementing democracy is going to be
very difficult... We ought to try to help them but many people in the
Communist countries now have a simplistic notion of free
enterprise."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1069
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7003
item Program Number S0822,
1905
"The Fight for Bach"
Guests: Tureck, Rosalyn.
7 June 1989
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 130 : 13
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 9
Program details: On a previous appearance on
Firing
Line
, Mr. Buckley
recalls, "Miss Tureck had insisted that young people were discovering
Bach. I don't think she was wrong about Bach, but I am very much afraid
that she overestimated the musical curiosity of our youth, since, as I
look out of my window, I don't see students in Tiananmen Square
clamoring for more Bach." The conversation this time ranges delightfully
from--once again--affinities between rock and Bach to the differences
between performing earlier centuries' music on contemporary instruments
and performing it on modern instruments: "There's a certain exoticism in
seeing and hearing, say, an early-18th-century instrument ..., and
although it's tremendously important for musicians to know them ... we
are negating our 20th century altogether and erasing our present
selves."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1070
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004SQFRH8
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7004
item Program Number S0823,
1906
"Mortimer Adler and Education"
Guests: Adler, Mortimer
Jerome, 1902-2001.
7 June 1989
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 130 : 14
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 10
Program details: The conversation goes over ground covered before-why
Professor Adler's Chicago colleague Allan Bloom has hold of the wrong
teaching method; why Aristotle is the greatest philosopher--but there
are always new insights from this remarkable philosopher: "I would say
to you, there's one and only one self-evident proposition in the whole
field of moral thought, and that is: 'We ought to seek everything that's
really good for us and nothing else.' Now, play that on your piano as
follows. We'll test it as a proposition. Think the opposite: 'We ought
not to seek what is really good for us; we ought to seek what is really
bad for us.' Both of these are unthinkable. If the opposite of a
proposition is unthinkable, then you have a self-evident truth."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.1071
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7005
item Program Number S0824,
1907
"Was the Supreme Court Wrong about Flag Burning?"
Guests:
Glasser, Ira.
23 August 1989
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 130 : 15
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 10
Program details: A hard-hitting but good-natured discussion of this,
well, combustible topic. IG: "Whether or not you feel allegiance to the
flag as a piece of cloth that symbolizes something or whether you feel
allegiance to the principles that the flag represents, the paradox is
that one of [those] principles ... is freedom of speech, freedom of
expression, freedom to say, 'Bleep your flag, to hell with your country,
I don't like it.' And that's what the First Amendment is about." ...
WFB: "May I make a confession? I frankly don't much worry about the flag
issue, but here's what I worry about tremendously: that is our
disposition to say, 'If the Supreme Court says it's so, it's so.' I
wrote a book about 17 years ago in which I said, 'Before I die, I want
to see a constitutional amendment that simply says no to the Supreme
Court, and I don't much care which one.' "
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1073
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7007
item Program Number S0825,
1908
"The Legal Future of Abortion"
Guests: Pilpel, Harriet F. :
Wattleton, Faye. : McFadden, J. P.
23 August 1989
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 130 : 16
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 11
Program details: Earlier in the summer, the Supreme Court, in Webster v.
Reproductive Health Services, had modified the effective carte blanche
for abortion given in Roe v. Wade. Would it go further yet in its next
term, in which it had agreed to hear three more abortion cases? This is
an exciting though not always coherent show, as the combatants
occasionally all talk at once, but light as well as heat is generated.
MK: "Are you really prepared for the full legal implications of the
position that all fetuses, even two-minute-old fetuses, have every human
right that you and I have?" ... WFB: "We're entitled, are we not, to say
there has been a certain evolution in moral thought during the past two
hundred years? The Declaration of Independence is a morally historic
document, and so is the Emancipation Proclamation. And it seems to me
that in the past 75 years there was a feeling that not only did the
mother have rights, but so did the unborn child."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.1074
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7008
item Program Number S0826,
1909
"The Political Aspects of Abortion"
Guests: Pilpel, Harriet
F. : Wattleton, Faye. : McFadden, J. P.
23 August 1989
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 130 : 17
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 12
Program details: Round Two of this debate, again focusing more on the
central issues-the rights of a woman versus the rights of her unborn
child-than on the specific aspects mentioned in this show's title. FW:
"Mr. Buckley, you have raised the specter of slavery repeatedly... and I
think that there is a very important distinction between living
people-human beings-and fetuses, and to equate fetuses with living
blacks who were in bondage and enslaved against their will is not quite
fair to this argument." WFB: "I'm not equating them; I'm saying there
are things in common, namely an evolutionized moral attitude towards
that institution." FW: "There was no woman that was being forced to
carry a slave against her will...." JPM: "We are speaking about a class
of people who were not considered persons under the law or the
Constitution, just as people like me believe that the fetus is a person
but is not given constitutional rights." FW: "It's a little hard to see
my ancestors the same as fetuses, and I reject the argument and the
analogy."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.1075
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7009
item Program Number S0827,
1910
"Michael Harrington Remembered"
Guests:
7 September 1989
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 130 : 18
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 12
Program details: Socialist and poverty-warrior Michael Harrington, who
had been the very first
Firing
Line
guest back in 1966, had died, of
cancer, at the age of only 61. In this tribute to an old friend and
adversary--the third such tribute on
Firing
Line
, the others being to
Allard Lowenstein and Clare Boothe Luce (
Firing
Line
s0415 and
s0770)--Messrs. Buckley and Kinsley reminisce and comment on clips from
Mr. Harrington's
Firing
Line
appearances. From WFB's summation: "Michael
Harrington is a marvelous example ... of the extent to which the
rhetoric of social gentility tends to help the left-winger. He reaches
to Adam Smith for a quote that says, in effect, even the father of
modern conservatism can care for people. Conservatives have never, I
think said that people should not care for other people, with the
possible exception of Ayn Rand, with her war on altruism."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1076
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7010
item Program Number S0828,
1911
"Is the War on Drugs Lost and Over?"
Guests: Raab, William
von.
7 September 1989
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 130 : 19
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 13
Program details: Mr. von Raab had just been fired by Treasury Secretary
Nicholas Brady for saying publicly that the Bush Administration was not
serious in its war on drugs. He proves to be a most articulate and
engaging guest, on a topic one might have thought had already been
talked out. WFB: "Let me ask you why so bright a guy as Bill Bennett,
whom you admire and whom I admire, why is he underwriting a scenario
that is as synthetic as you insist this one is?" WvR: "No, I didn't say
it was synthetic. I think the scenario is good. I don't think it will be
carried out. I don't think the money is sufficient, and I don't think
the bureaucracy will support it.... The State Department... has too many
balls in the air, and they don't want to have their debt negotiations
with Mexico skewered because of a wrangle over the drug traffic."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1077
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7011
item Program Number S0829,
1912
"How to Make Public Schools Less Mediocre"
Guests:
Lieberman, Myron. : Flanigan, Peter M.
7 September 1989
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 130 : 20
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 13
Program details: Mr. Lieberman favors radical school choice. Mr.
Flanigan's organization puts together poor students and sponsors who not
only pay for them to go to private (mostly parochial) schools but also
serve as mentors. Guests and host are agreed that the public schools are
a mess; the question, in this provocative discussion, is the best and
most politically feasible way to fix them. ML: "There is a movement now
in this country for public-school choice [choice of schools, but limited
to public schools]. I regard this as a big banana peel. Some
conservatives favor it because they think it has some resemblance to the
free-enterprise system, but the notion that you're going to get the
benefits of free enterprise from choices offered by a public monopoly, I
think, is ludicrous on the face of it."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1078
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7012
item Program Number S0830,
1913
"What's Up to Date in Missouri on Abortion?"
Guests: Lee,
Samuel H. : Carlson, Karen. : Susman, Frank, 1941-
10 October 1989
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 130 : 21
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 14
Program details: Webster v. Reproductive Health Services (see
Firing
Line
s0825) was a case originating in Missouri, where our guests have been
longtime combatants. Although the topic is hot, the discussion here is
civil and insightful. SHL: "Over and over you see the majority of people
... particularly if you're focusing on Missourians-believe abortion is
wrong.... When it comes down to specific restrictions they may be in
favor of abortion for rape or incest or the hard cases, but when it
comes down basically to abortion as a backup for birth control, the
majority of people are opposed." ... FS: "Before Webster you had the
pro-choice forces who enjoyed the status quo and were clearly the
'ins.'...It's easier to mobilize and energize those who are on the
'outs,' ... and that was the 'antis.' This is the very first time in 16
years ... that both sides have fielded teams. It remains to be seen who
will win the game, but it's the first time there have been two teams on
the field."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.1082
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7016
item Program Number S0831,
1914
"Update on the Afghan Resistance"
Guests: Tomsen, Peter. :
Karzai, Hamid.
10 October 1989
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 130 : 22
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 14
Program details: A low-key show, but very informative, on the current
state of play in Afghanistan. The Soviets had made a big show, back in
February, of withdrawing their troops (see
Firing
Line
s0759)--but since
then, as Mr. Tomsen tells us, "they have been massively supplying their
puppet government in Kabul--It's the biggest Soviet airlift since World
War II." ... HK: "We have a country that's divided into so many ethnic
groups and so many tribes and so many political parties--there are eight
political parties in the coalition government in Peshawar--there are
bound to be differences. And they're all armed. But it does not have any
bearing at all on the performance against [the puppet government]."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1080
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7014
item Program Number S0832
"Re-Evaluating a Famous Liberal: Robert Maynard Hutchins"
Guests: Ashmore, Harry S.
10 October 1989
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 130 : 23
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 15
Program details: Robert Maynard Hutchins had never appeared on
Firing
Line
, but a favorite
Firing
Line
guest, Mortimer Adler, had been a
sidekick of his (see
Firing
Line
s0683); indeed, Mr. Hutchins was the
editor-in-chief of the Great Books series. On this show we look at
American education through the prism of Mr. Hutchins's ideas about it.
HAS: "Hutchins took the position that the distinction of American
education that set it apart from that of the older universities on the
continent was that we had no ruling class here, and the problem was to
educate every citizen to perform effectively in a democratic society....
It was an article of his faith that any child above the level of moron
could be educated. And he felt that the burden of educating children who
came from diverse backgrounds, particularly those who came from inferior
backgrounds, rested upon the educator."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1081
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7015
item Program Number S0833,
1916
"William F. Buckley Jr. Looks Back with Barry Goldwater on
Politics, Etc."
Guests: Goldwater, Barry M. (Barry Morris),
1909-1998.
16 October 1989
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 130 : 24
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 15
Program details: At age 80, and two years retired, Senator Goldwater
hasn't lost his savor. In this splendid session, his old friend asks him
to "take a fix on issues that concerned conservatives in 1964, to ask
how they look to us now, 25 years later." The first of these issues is
civil rights: "You voted with 21 other senators against the civil-rights
bill. Do you have reasons to regret that vote?" BG: "I still agree with
my vote, that you have the right to rent your house to whoever you damn
please-black, white, green, or purple." They go on from there to
immigration and the effects of different ethnic groups ("Well, having
said what I've said on this, I'm not worried"), to the Supreme Court, to
the Soviet Union ("I do think, as old as I am, I'm going to live to see
the day when there's a freer economic system in the Soviet Union than
they have today.").
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1083
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00G709SDC
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7017
item Program Number S0834,
1917
"William F. Buckley Jr. Looks Forward with Barry Goldwater on
Politics, Etc."
Guests: Goldwater, Barry M. (Barry Morris),
1909-1998.
16 October 1989
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 130 : 25
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 16
Program details: Different topics, same vision, clear as the desert air.
BG: "I voted against federal aid to education, and I argued strongly
against it, because I don't believe that some jackass sitting in
Washington can tell my teachers in Arizona how to teach our children. I
want to leave that up to the parent-teacher associations, if we still
have them, leave it up to the families." ... "There is a very
determined, strong effort going on in this country to take away the
prerogatives and the strength of the President and confer them onto the
legislative branch. I don't believe in that.... You'd be amazed sitting
in that body if you listen to the amendments that are being offered that
just mean: Move a little more power, move a little more power."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1084
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00G709I2S
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7018
item Program Number S0835,
1918
"William F. Buckley Jr. and the Phoenix Symphony"
Guests:
Chapin, Schuyler. : Sedares, James.
16 October 1989
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 130 : 26
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 16
Program details: This show that includes part of the rehearsal of a
harpsichord concerto Mr. Buckley would play with the Phoenix Symphony
the following night. But first, a lively discussion of the music world,
here and there, past and present. SC: "Beginning at the beginning, how
did we get into what you have called 'this mess'?" WFB: "It began with a
letter sent by the manager of this orchestra--some people suspect he was
drunk when he sent it--but in any event, he asked me if at any time in
1989 or 1990 I would consent to play a harpsichord concerto by Bach with
this symphony orchestra. I read it a dozen times wondering whether he
were serious, and ... well, you get sort of a Walter Mitty rush, and
here I am." ... SC: "If you name the three oldest continuing orchestras
in the world, two of them are American. This always startles people, but
it happens to be true. I'm not now talking about orchestras in Europe
like the Gewandhaus or the Leipzig or whatever that have come and gone
and come and gone. But in the sense of continuous performance the [two]
oldest in the world are the Vienna Philharmonic and the New York
Philharmonic--in 1842 both were started--and the third is the St. Louis
Orchestra."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1085
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7019
item Program Number S0836,
1919
"President Kennedy and Prime Minister Macmillan: Part I"
Guests: Horne, Alistair. : Schlesinger, Arthur M. (Arthur Meier),
1917-2007. : Galbraith, John Kenneth, 1908-2006.
17 November 1989
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 130 : 27
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 17
Program details: The Berlin Wall had just come down, and this rich
discussion with three men who were behind the scenes in Washington and
London starts with the erection of the Wall in 1961. (Macmillan served
as Prime Minister from 1957 to 1963, stepping down just a month before
Kennedy was killed.) One sample: AH: "From Kennedy's point of view,
Cuba, ninety miles off the coast of Florida, was absolutely overriding,
and it swept off his vision any threat to Berlin. Macmillan, three
thousand miles away but much closer to Europe, saw Berlin as the
possible danger, and he saw that what Khrushchev may have been playing,
as he often did in his rather crazy, adventurous policies, was a maximum
and a minimum. The maximum was achieved if Kennedy lost his nerve and he
could get Cuba, and then he could roll up Berlin. But the minimum might
have been to have taken Berlin as a pawn and exchange a pawn ... over
Cuba.".
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1090
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0064EGOB0
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7024
item Program Number S0837,
1920
"President Kennedy and Prime Minister Macmillan: Part II"
Guests: Horne, Alistair. : Schlesinger, Arthur M. (Arthur Meier),
1917-2007. : Galbraith, John Kenneth, 1908-2006.
17 November 1989
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 130 : 27
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 17
Program details: The Berlin Wall had just come down, and this rich
discussion with three men who were behind the scenes in Washington and
London starts with the erection of the Wall in 1961. (Macmillan served
as Prime Minister from 1957 to 1963, stepping down just a month before
Kennedy was killed.) One sample: AH: "From Kennedy's point of view,
Cuba, ninety miles off the coast of Florida, was absolutely overriding,
and it swept off his vision any threat to Berlin. Macmillan, three
thousand miles away but much closer to Europe, saw Berlin as the
possible danger, and he saw that what Khrushchev may have been playing,
as he often did in his rather crazy, adventurous policies, was a maximum
and a minimum. The maximum was achieved if Kennedy lost his nerve and he
could get Cuba, and then he could roll up Berlin. But the minimum might
have been to have taken Berlin as a pawn and exchange a pawn ... over
Cuba.".
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1091
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0064EGODS
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7025
item Program Number S0838,
1921
"What's Wrong with America?"
Guests: Silber, John, 1926-
17 November 1989
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 130 : 28
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 18
Program details: Mr. Silber was a legend in his own time, both for his
accomplishments and for his personality (as Mr. Kinsley puts it in his
introduction, "No one that I'm aware of has compared [Harvard President]
Derek Bok to Socrates and Churchill or to Hitler and Stalin. John Silber
has elicited all of these flattering comparisons"). Here, he is
consistently interesting on the modern American academy. Two samples:
"There is no way to make ideas safe for students. You have to make
students safe for any and all ideas." ... WFB: "Would you consider it
reason for disqualification if somebody were in fact a Marxist--i.e.,
would you not hire a Marxist?" JS: "No, I have knowingly hired Marxists,
but I think it is very important to see the kind of work they're doing
and the way in which they operate with regard to evidence ... [in]
pursuit of truth."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1092
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7026
item Program Number S0839,
1922
"Awaiting Execution?"
Guests: Tigar, Michael.
1 November 1989
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 130 : 29
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 18
Program details: If 75 per cent of the American people believe, as WFB
puts it, "that cold-blooded murder ought to be punished by execution,"
and if "we have a republic that writes its own laws," then why are so
few murderers executed? Is it because of "the cool resources of very
bright people" determined "to render the law nugatory"? In this return
visit by one of those very bright people, we get an illuminating
discussion of crime and capital punishment. MT: "For every Ted Bundy you
point out, where the process took so long, we find that there are three
or four people who are in the seventh or eighth or ninth year, and all
of a sudden a competent principal lawyer gets a hold of the case and
finds that there's some reason there that this penalty ought never to
have been given." ... WFB: "The lawyers have [made it]... an almost
impossible epistemological question to establish basic guilt or
innocence ... This makes a travesty of the law and a travesty of the
democratic process."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1086
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7020
item Program Number S0840,
1923
"Animal Rights?"
Guests: Nuland, Sherwin B.
1 November 1989
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 130 : 30
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 19
Program details: Animal-rights fanatics had escalated their attacks on
research facilities to the point where, as Dr. Nuland tells us,
"Scotland Yard has recently called the Animal Liberation Front, after
the IRA, the most dangerous terrorist organization in the United
Kingdom." In this fascinating session, Dr. Nuland informs us of the
centrality of animal research to virtually "all research as we have
known it in biomedicine in the 20th century"--from vaccination to heart
surgery--and he and Mr. Buckley discuss the moral context. SN: "There's
a difference between ... animal welfare and ... animal rights. The
difference, of course, being: Do animals have rights in the true
theological, moral, philosophical, sociological sense as human beings
do, or do they not?" WFB: "I would say animals have no rights, but we
have an obligation not to amuse ourselves by treating any animal
sadistically or wantonly."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1087
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7021
item Program Number S0841,
1924
"The Romanticizing of War"
Guests: Fussell, Paul.
1 November 1989
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 130 : 31
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 19
Program details: Mr. Fussell--a decorated combat veteran and highly
regarded literary critic--had been accused of pacifism and lack of
patriotism because of his books on the nature of warfare. This rich
discussion disposes of the simplisms and places war in its full context.
PF: "I really wrote the book for younger people. I wasn't aware ... that
I would get so much flak from people my age, because I thought it was
fairly obvious that I thought the [Second World] War was a war in a good
cause and a necessary cause. Obviously the Nazis and the German armed
forces had to be destroyed. No question about it." "I was trying to make
it impossible for people to talk again about body counts,... as if the
people being killed were not human beings with, forgive the expression,
souls, no matter how loathsome or offensive. I killed a great many
Germans, and I doubt if I killed a single Nazi, actually.... Even in a
good war you have to do terrible things." "I don't really object to war,
in a sense. I object to not understanding war."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.1088
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7022
item Program Number S0842,
1925
"Student Concerns and Fears"
Guests: McManus, Joseph. : Van
Meter, Margi. : Virendra, Sunaina.
17 November 1989
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 131 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 20
Program details: Older viewers, listening to these bright young officials
of the American Association of University Students, are likely to
sigh--whether in relief or disappointment--and say, "How things have
changed!" MK: "When I was in college, which was the Sixties and
Seventies, students were in a perpetual rage about almost everything.
They don't seem to be in a rage today, but what are the issues that
really can get kids in college excited, overwrought, mad today?" MVM:
"Tuition increase." SV: "Tuition increase."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1089
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7023
item Program Number S0843,
1926
"The Link between Attitude and Healing"
Guests: Cousins,
Norman.
22 January 1990
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 131 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 20
Program details: Mr. Cousins had written, 14 years earlier, an article
about his own experience as a patient that led to his being made an
adjunct professor of medicine, specializing in "psychoneuroimmunology."
Mr. Cousins is careful here not to overstate his case ("It would be a
mistake to encourage people to believe they can ha-ha their way out of
any serious illness"), but he maintains--genially, and from the
perspective of the informed layman--that how doctors treat their
patients in the human sense can be nearly as important as how they treat
them medically. NC: "The question is not whether we should tell [the
patient] the truth, but how do we tell the truth? This is where the
doctor's art comes into play. You can tell the truth in a way that will
devastate a person and actually impair the environment of effective
treatment, or you can tell the truth in a way that challenges."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.1097
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7031
item Program Number S0844,
1927
"What's Up with Capitalism?"
Guests: Forbes, Malcom S.
17 January 1990
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 131 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 21
Program details: Another visit with the world's most exuberant
capitalist, on topics ranging from the bad press the Robber Barons have
got to the future of Eastern Europe. Two samples from Mr. Forbes:
"Somehow it has a better aura if you put all your money into a J-boat
and defend the America's Cup in the middle of the Depression at very
high cost than if you build a palace or light 100,000 candles." "They're
going to be surprised, most of the people [in Eastern Europe] that think
... all they need to do is vote and then they have an economy. It's
going to be disappointing. But I think the West is going to be surprised
by the degree to which, when people are freed--and most of those people
have had an education; they're not coming from centuries of blackness
and darkness and chaos. These were countries that had economies before
... I think we're going to be surprised by the relative rapidity with
which the creeping capitalism begins to trot."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1093
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7027
item Program Number S0845,
1928
"Ed Koch, Veteran Politico, Speaks Out"
Guests: Koch, Ed,
1924-
17 January 1990
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 131 : 4
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 21
Program details: As WFB puts it in his introduction, "Our guest today is
for the first time in memory a private citizen," having been defeated by
David Dinkins in a four-way Democratic primary. Defeat doesn't seem to
have dampened his spirits, on anything from the ACLU ("I liked them when
they supported the rights of other people to advocate whatever they
wanted to ... But [then] they became ... advocates of the bizarre
ideas") to the difference between ethnic pride and racism. WFB: "Bloc
voting is in part the kind of ethnocentrism which doesn't offend us ...
But ethnocentrism which is really a reflection of hostility to the other
race is something more ... Now what kind of ethnocentrism was it that
brought Mr. Dinkins in? Both kinds?" EK: "Well, I would say 'both kinds'
is fair. But there's no question that if you get 97 per cent of the
black vote there is an element other than racial pride. No other group
has ever voted that way."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1094
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7028
item Program Number S0846,
1929
"What's Up with Evangelical Christianity?"
Guests: Sproul,
R. C. (Robert Charles), 1939-
22 January 1990
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 131 : 5
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 22
Program details: Dr. Sproul had founded his Ligonier Ministries to fill
the gap in Christian education between, as Mr. Kinsley summarizes,
"Sunday Schools on the one hand and graduate seminaries on the other."
He proves here to be a likable apologist from the Evangelical point of
view, dealing with-even if not managing to solve in half an
hour-questions such as the problem of pain and the sense in which the
apocalyptic prophecies in the Bible are true. "We can only embrace by
faith what we understand at least in part by the mind. This is when
Augustine says that rationality is a necessary precondition for
authentic faith. A faith without rationality he defined as credulity,
and I agree with him. That's where superstition comes into religion, and
there's a great deal of that."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1098
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7032
item Program Number S0847,
1930
"The Art of Negotiating"
Guests: Burt, Richard.
21 February 1990
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 131 : 6
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 22
Program details: More than a year after our last look at the START
(Strategic Arms Reduction Talks) negotiations (see
Firing
Line
s0795,
with Henry Kissinger), and even as the East-West dynamic was being
radically recast by events in Germany, Rumania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary,
and Poland, Mr. Burt gives us a sobering but illuminating insider's view
of everything from nuclear proliferation in the Third World, to the
stabilizing effect of redundant weapons. RB: "There is, in fact, a kind
of second Russian Revolution under way. Remember, at the beginning of
the first French Revolution no one would have predicted that 13 years
later Napoleon's army would have been marching around Europe."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1099
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7033
item Program Number S0848,
1931
"A Princely Look at Russia and Eastern Europe"
Guests:
Romanov, Nicholas.
22 February 1990
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 131 : 7
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 23
Program details: Even before the Gorbachev regime had disintegrated,
there was talk of restoring the Russian monarchy, and Prince Nicholas's
was one of the names often mentioned. Here he speaks movingly and
informatively of the country he regards "as his homeland, although his
parents had fled before he was born. If you could just install a czar or
a king in Moscow it would not solve problems.... What has to be
recreated is something that has been partially lost... It's a national
feeling, a feeling of pride, historical pride, national pride ... Then
even a Romanov fits in the picture, because it's part of the past and
can smoothly bring over the past and tie it up with the present. We need
that. We, as exiles, also need to recognize present Russian history as
part of our history."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1101
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7035
item Program Number S0849,
1932
"Is There a Theme to The Bonfire of the Vanities?"
Guests:
Wolfe, Tom.
17 January 1990
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 131 : 8
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 24
Program details: Is Mr. Wolfe simply an (unusually brilliant) observer?
Or does he have a reform agenda, a la Dickens and Zola? A quicksilver
conversation about the social scene, the art of the novel, and more. TW:
"New York and many large cities in this country today are like resort
communities in that the wealth, the prestige, celebrity, high life,
luxury belong to one set of people. Political power belongs to the
natives. And the advantages of the swell life are yours only so long as
there is no conflict... with the native political structure." ... TW: "I
never like to think of Bonfire in terms of a thesis because ... that
sets boundaries. If it's only this, then it can't be that." WFB: "Yes, I
understand that, but at the same time I simply decline to think of you
as entirely passive... I believe that you do get indignant. I believe
that there are things you genuinely don't like even though you try to
treat them with a certain dispassion that makes them literature."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1095
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7029
item Program Number S0850,
1933
"Why Do Things Work in Switzerland and Not in the U.S.A.?"
Guests: Galbraith, Evan G. : Freymond, Jacques.
22 February 1990
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 131 : 9
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 24
Program details: "We're in Switzerland," Mr. Buckley begins,
"unquestionably the smallest nation to exercise such influence ... since
the heyday of Portugal and Athens." The mystery is how the country not
only survives but prospers when "it seems to violate all the rules": it
has four official languages, its cantons make their own laws, and "it is
the most militarized country in the West in terms of per-capita
obligations, and hasn't fought a war since the days of Napoleon." It's
easier to ask than to answer; M. Freymond is doubtless right in saying,
"You have to explain that through the history. Switzerland is the oldest
system of collective security in the world--seven hundred years. And it
has worked." Mr. Galbraith adds the banker's perspective: Switzerland
has "a long tradition against protectionism," "a bank secrecy ... which
is enforced by criminal laws," and a combination of "hard work and
capital." All in all, a pleasant tour of this lovely country.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1100
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7034
item Program Number S0851,
1934
"Should We Legitimize the Current Practice of Living Together?"
Guests: Pilpel, Harriet F. : Van den Haag, Ernest.
22 January 1990
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 131 : 10
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 25
Program details: "San Francisco had passed a domestic partnership" law,
giving some of the legal benefits of marriage to unmarried couples,
whether gay or straight. An article in Mr. Kinsley's magazine had said
this was the wrong direction: the answer was to permit "gay marriage."
After a lively discussion of the new modalities, Mr. Buckley speaks on
behalf of old-fashioned common sense: "Permit me to be square enough to
say that one of the problems we face today ... is the problem of the
broken family, and the problem of the broken family has to do with a
feeling of only tangential loyalty when people live together.
Eighty-three per cent of the people who were born in the Bronx the year
before last were born to single-parent households. Now it may not
significantly change that situation to restore the old orthodoxy, but I
should think it would move in that direction."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1096
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7030
item Program Number S0852,
1935
"What Do They Do about Drugs in England and Amsterdam?"
Guests: Gazzaniga, Michael S.
22 May 1990
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 131 : 11
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 25
Program details: Another go at the drug question--this time by looking,
with a close student of the matter, at what has actually resulted in
places that have, in different ways, liberalized their drugs laws. The
city of Amsterdam, as Mr. Kinsley reminds us, had decriminalized
possession of marijuana; Britain had a policy (partly abandoned) of
giving maintenance doses of heroin to registered addicts. Mr. Gazzaniga
has the facts at his finger tips and gives us a detail-filled
counterpoint to the recent
Firing
Line
debate on drugs (See
Firing
Line
FLS107): "You have to remember the magnitude of the problem was slight
[in Britain] compared to the United States. In 1968 there were only
2,000 [heroin] addicts in all of the UK, while probably in New York at
that time there were 150,000. So right away when you go to use these
cross-cultural comparisons, you have to be very careful."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1104
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7038
item Program Number S0853,
1936
"Is England Still Influencing America?"
Guests: Hitchens,
Christopher. : O'Sullivan, John.
22 May 1990
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 131 : 12
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 26
Program details: Not as many fireworks as one might have expected from
these two friendly antagonists--both guests being Britons who have spent
much of their working lives in the United States--but an amusing look at
the present state of the "special relationship." CH: "Why can't I go
into a supermarket without seeing a picture of Princess Diana, whom I
left England to get away from? ... If I go back to England, what do I
get? McDonald's hamburgers and American nuclear bases." ... JO: "The
reason why the Americans always wanted the British in the European
Community was because they would represent [the Americans'] thought, the
ideas of free trade and free markets, which would mean that the
Community would never be closed to American goods and American
capital."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1105
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ANCX048
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7039
item Program Number S0854,
1937
"A King Speaks Out"
Guests: Constantine II, Former King of
the Hellenes, 1940-
22 May 1990
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 131 : 13
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 26
Program details: King Constantine was deposed by the Colonels in 1967 and
had stepped foot in his country only once since, for his mother's
funeral. But he had spent the intervening years thinking deeply about
the role of monarchy in the late 20th century, and this show proves as
instructive as it is moving. MK: "Mr. Buckley,... a lot of people may be
thinking you're verging on conscious self-parody here. Are you actually
a monarchist? ..." WFB: "In respect of America I'm a republican with a
capital R and a small r. I don't, however, feel that it's ever correct
to assume that the cultural institutions that are natural for a
particular country are natural elsewhere." ... King Constantine: "The
tremendous success of the king and his two prime ministers ... in
restoring democracy in Spain is a wonderful example of what can be
achieved in countries like mine."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1106
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7040
item Program Number S0855,
1938
"What Is Intellect?"
Guests: Adler, Mortimer Jerome,
1902-2001.
6 June 1990
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 131 : 14
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 27
Program details: The title question does not address interesting but
superficial topics like IQ versus other measures of intelligence. It
goes right down into questions of materiality versus immateriality, body
and soul. MA: "We cannot think without our brains, but we don't think
with them.... The brain is a necessary but not a sufficient condition of
intellectual activity." ... "There is no theology in the argument at
all. As you say, there are consequences. If the immateriality of the
intellect is denied, it raises a very serious question about the
immortality of the soul. If the immateriality of the intellect is
affirmed, there's some reason for supposing that an immortal soul is
possible."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.1108
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7042
item Program Number S0856,
1939
"Who Belongs in the Loony Bin?"
Guests: Millett, Kate. :
Farber, Seth.
6 June 1990
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 131 : 15
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 28
Program details: Ms. Millett was one of the founding mothers of modern
American feminism, the author of Sexual Politics. In 1973 her family had
her committed to a mental institution as a manic-depressive, and her
story since, recounted in her new book, was one of doubting her own
sanity and finally examining the nature of sanity in general. A
disturbing and fascinating show. SF: "What I think Kate documents so
powerfully is how once a label is put upon her and once the people
around her start accepting the psychiatric version of reality as the
absolute truth, then any statement she makes, any action she makes, can
be interpreted as a sign that she's crazy."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1107
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7041
item Program Number S0857,
2001
"Does a Politician Have to Be a Good Actor?"
Guests: Moore,
Roger.
22 February 1990
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 131 : 16
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 28
Program details: In the age of television, would aspiring politicians be
well advised to take a screen test? This relaxed conversation between
two old friends may not tell us much we couldn't have guessed, but they
say it so well. RM: "There are a number of tricks you learn in acting.
You should look people in the eye. Your eyes should never waver, because
the minute you look away, even if you look away to think, you've broken
attention--attention and tension -- You have to look straight in the
eye, and at the same time the wavering of the eye can appear to be a
lie." WFB: "It usually is, I suppose, with a politician, isn't it?" ...
WFB: "What about Reagan?" RM: "The Great Communicator." WFB: "Why?" RM:
"His ability in closeup. He came, maybe, with a natural ability ... but
I think those years of experience of talking to cameras paid off. There
is an honesty and a sincerity, and an ability not to do things that
nerves otherwise might do."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1102
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7036
item Program Number S0858,
2002
"The Legal Implications of Abortion"
Guests: Tribe, Laurence
H.
6 June 1990
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 131 : 17
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 29
Program details: Mr. Kinsley begins: "The talk-show host Larry King says
that when the subject is abortion, the host never learns anything new.
One goal of today's program is to prove him wrong." Whether that goal
was achieved is debatable, but it certainly is unusual to hear someone
who says, as Mr. Tribe does, "I think it's awfully hard to deny that
forcing a woman to remain pregnant against her will, to make a use of
her body that she has come to find profoundly offensive,... is a deep
assault on her freedom and, indeed, on her equality," also say, "The
fetus surely is alive. There's no doubt that it's a member of the human
species. Its very helplessness cries out for protection." An unusually
thoughtful and thought-provoking discussion of a topic that often
incites to a trading of slogans.
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.1109
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7043
item Program Number S0859,
2003
"The Battle over Freedom of Expression"
Guests: Mathews,
Tom. : Chapin, Schuyler.
10 July 1990
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 131 : 18
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 29
Program details: "After months of heated public debate over the National
Endowment for the Arts' funding of obscene material, four
artists"--including Karen Finley, the woman who covered herself with
chocolate--had been denied renewals of their grants. This program offers
a genial and instructive conversation about the whole question of
support for the arts. Two samples: WFB: "When you consider that the
record of the public critics is so dismal--I mean, Van Gogh couldn't
sell a single canvas; ninety obituaries were written about Bach, only
two of which mentioned that he also composed music--what makes us feel
that the NEA is spurring on the kind of critical judgment that makes us
satisfied that the money is being well spent?" SC: "Part of the answer
is simple: You never know. But because you do not know, I do not think
it is plausible to withdraw patronage, which in one way or another has
been key to the creation of art." .. . TM: "Patronage has always come
with strings.... It's unreasonable for an artist today to think that
funds that come from the Federal Government won't have some strings
attached."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1111
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7045
item Program Number S0860,
2004
"The Opposition to Cuomo"
Guests: Rinfret, Pierre. : London,
Herbert.
10 July 1990
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 131 : 19
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 30
Program details: Mr. Rinfret had notoriously been chosen by a group of
Republican pols going through one of their number's Rolodex. Mr. London,
who passionately wanted the GOP nomination, does not hide his
bitterness. The result is sometimes unpleasant, but good theater. PR:
"You're really out to destroy the Republican Party." HL: "That is
certainly not the case." PR: "That's what you told me." HL: "I said I'm
out to destroy any party that continues to increase taxes without any
regard at all for the working-class population in this state." WFB:
"That would or would not include the Republican Party?" HL: "That would
certainly include the Republican Party." WFB: "Therefore you are out to
destroy the Republican Party."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1112
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7046
item Program Number S0861,
2005
"Should Lawyers Work for Nothing?"
Guests: Pilpel, Harriet
F. : Abrams, Floyd.
10 July 1990
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 131 : 20
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 30
Program details: New York State was desperately short on public defenders
for the poor, and so the state's chief judge had proposed requiring
lawyers to spend 20 hours a year on pro bono work. Many lawyers had
responded that this was a violation of the Fifth and Thirteenth
Amendments. Our guests here are two lawyers who believe that, as Mr.
Abrams puts it, "I don't think it is unjust or unconstitutional for the
state to make a claim on you ... to devote some minimum amount of
service for what is viewed as the public good." A productive discussion
of the title question and related matters, including the unlikelihood of
an unrepresented tenant's winning in housing court, and the fact that
lawyers are so widely hated.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1113
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7047
item Program Number S0862,
2006
"The Cambodian Dilemma"
Guests: Solarz, Stephen J.
1 August 1990
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 131 : 21
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 31
Program details: In one of the stranger enemy-of-my-enemy situations, the
United States, not only under President Carter but also under Presidents
Reagan and Bush, had supported the infamous Khmer Rouge against
Cambodia's Vietnamese invaders. Secretary of State James Baker had just
withdrawn that support, and Mr. Solarz had persuaded congressional
Democrats to go along. This show offers a serious discussion of a
tangled moral and geopolitical problem. WFB: "We tend to ... [be] so
contented by the general evidence that the Communist enterprise is
self-discrediting that we assume that... it is everywhere discredited.
Unhappily that is a false and optimistic epistemology." ... SS: "We have
to recognize that this is a situation in which our influence is at best
highly limited. China and Vietnam will have far more to say about the
future of Cambodia than we will."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1118
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7052
item Program Number S0863,
2007
"Economics Is Not a Dismal Science"
Guests: Buchholz, Todd.
: Passell, Peter.
24 July 1990
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 131 : 22
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 31
Program details: The assertion in the title is borne out by this
entertaining and substantive look at various "defunct economists," to
borrow Keynes's phrase (quoted by Mr. Kinsley), and their modern
followers. PP: "There's economic theology from the Right, which these
days is more dramatic than economic theology from the Left. There's no
Left left, let's face it. There's a rabble of ideas ... from the Left,
and there's quite an organized and interesting set of ideas from the
Right. And I'm not from the Right." ... TB: "It's much easier to be
Richard Gephardt and travel the country condemning the practice of
foreign countries and claiming that the only way we're going to preserve
American industry and American jobs is if we erect trade barriers.
That's just a lot more stirring ... than if you agree with the 98 per
cent of economists who believe he's wrong."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1114
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7048
item Program Number S0864,
2008
"Spies: Heroes or Thugs?"
Guests: Raviv, Dan, 1954- :
Melman, Yossi.
24 July 1990
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 131 : 23
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 32
Program details: Our guests are the co-authors of Every Spy a Prince: The
Complete History of Israel's Intelligence Community, and under Mr.
Buckley's questioning they tell us things we would never even have
thought to ask. YM: "Friendly nations do spy against each other. They
share information, they collaborate, yet at the same time they spy
against each other." WFB: "Well, (a) I know this, and (b) I approve of
it. That is to say, however intimate Israeli-American relations become,
it seems to me only prudent that to the extent that we can get
information about Israel that Israel hasn't given us, we proceed to
listen for it, and vice versa." . . . DR: "When it comes to operational
capabilities, simply getting a job done, I've heard it repeatedly from
CIA veterans: 'Nobody does it like the Israelis.' ... But we still look
at the strategy behind it and find that often it is flawed. The
politicians are listening to their intelligence agencies, and we think
that it's about time for better control."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1115
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7049
item Program Number S0865,
2009
"An Extraordinary Supreme Court Decision"
Guests: Neuhaus,
Richard John. : Fried, Charles.
24 July 1990
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 131 : 24
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 32
Program details: Justice Scalia had stunned many conservatives with his
opinion in Employment Division v. Smith, ruling that a state's drug laws
did not have to make an exception for Indians' ceremonial use of peyote.
Not all conservatives, though, which lays the groundwork for today's
profound discussion. RJN: "In one of the most callous statements ... in
the recent history of Court language, he [Scalia] says we will recognize
that this will create a certain disability for minorities in our
society, namely those that aren't able to muster a majority in the
legislature." ... CF: "A lot of countries ... proclaimed freedom of
religion--for instance, Revolutionary France and the Soviet Union--and
what they meant... was: you're free to be religious so long as you are
intensely private about it.... If I thought Scalia's decision were
taking us to a kind of French Revolutionary notion I would be as
horrified as you are, but I don't see it that way."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1116
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7050
item Program Number S0866,
2010
"Why All the Fuss over Brennan's Successor?"
Guests:
Kilpatrick, James Jackson, 1920-
1 August 1990
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 131 : 25
Transcript: Box/Folder 183 : 33
Program details: Justice William Brennan had just retired after 34 years
as the brains of the liberal-activist wing of the Supreme Court, and
Judge David Souter had been nominated to replace him. This
high-spirited, deeply informative discussion ranges from the specific to
the general and back again. (WFB and Kilpo aren't even afraid to say
that Brown v. Board was wrongly argued.) WFB: "It seems to me Mr. Souter
would be entitled to say, 'Well, I'm against abortion, but whatever I'm
against has nothing to do with how I will reason constitutionally.' "...
JJK: "I don't know, speaking as a conservative, exactly what I would
want a conservative Justice to do. What activism would I ask of him? I'm
not sure. . . . Take a look at the Miranda rule and stop it a little
bit. Stop the excesses of the exclusionary rule. That's about all you
can ask of a conservative on the Court."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1117
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7051
item Program Number S0867,
2011
"William F. Buckley Jr. on the
Firing
Line
"
Guests: Kinsley,
Michael E. : Kramer, Michael. : Pakenham, Michael.
1 August 1990
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 131 : 26
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 1
Program details: The semi-annual frolic in which the guests question
their host, except that our guests this time seem less interested in
tripping up Mr. Buckley than in finding out just what these puzzling
conservatives do believe. Mr. Kinsley: "Suppose that Bush got Souter
into a room before he picked him and said to him, 'Now just whisper into
my ear. Would you or would you not overturn Roe v. Wade? ...' Which
answer do you think Bush wanted?" WFB: "I don't know, and I'll tell you
why I don't know. Because a lot of people who are against abortion are
afraid of overturning Roe v. Wade?... They feel it would create, at
least for a while, close to a civil-war atmosphere in a lot of states,
places like Missouri and Louisiana." ... Mr. Pakenham: "It seems to me
that the position you've taken on the decriminalization of narcotics has
got to be either true loony libertarianism, which I find hard to scan
but am delighted to hear you defend, or it's a very neat way--as is
being increasingly perceived by minority leaders--of keeping a
troublesome underclass comatose."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1119
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7053
item Program Number S0868,
2012
"Oil Gouging and Japanese Skulduggery"
Guests: Pickens, T.
Boone.
20 September 1990
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 131 : 27
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 1
Program details: Not the most intellectually satisfying of
Firing
Lines
,
but Mr. Pickens's righteous indignation with the Japanese makes for good
theater. TBP: "I have been given an opportunity to see some part of
corporate Japan on the inside, and I want to see more of it. I want to
become a member of the board of directors, I want to participate in the
management of the company.... I want to be given a chance. In America
you get a chance. And I don't understand why in Japan you don't get a
chance."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1121
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7055
item Program Number S0869,
2013
"Crime and Punishment"
Guests: Tigar, Michael. :
Schwarzschild, Henry.
20 September 1990
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 131 : 28
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 2
Program details: Host and guests find some fresh angles in this
stimulating return to an old question. WFB: "As long as you are against
capital punishment under any circumstances you are willing to use the
law in any way that you possibly can to manipulate the jury to agree
with you, de facto." MT: "I hope I misunderstand what you said, but if
that is a statement that I would manipulate the law in a way contrary to
the law, then that's not true." ... HS: "... the heart of our
disagreement with you: namely, ... whether it isn't much more
importantly true that a society that uses homicide as an instrument of
social policy, when it's called the death penalty, is to that extent
regressive and barbarous ..." WFB: "[That position was not accepted by]
that barbarian Immanuel Kant or that barbarian Hegel, who said that
precisely it is an affirmation of someone's humanity and rationality to
hold him responsible for his actions."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1122
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0064EGOGU
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7056
item Program Number S0870,
2014
"Are Vouchers and/or Choice the Way to Go in School?"
Guests: O'Beirne, Kate Walsh. : Fliegel, Sy.
1 October 1990
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 131 : 29
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 2
Program details: A rich discussion of an emotion-laden topic. Mrs.
O'Beirne: "Among more affluent families, they choose schools all the
time? What's revolutionary and, I guess, threatening now to the
education establishment is that many of us are arguing that low-income
families should have the same choices that other Americans have always
had." ... Mr. Fliegel (who was formerly a superintendent in the New York
City public-school system): "You can't allow the bureaucracy to become
an excuse for not doing anything.... Too many schools say: I can't do
it; the bureaucracy won't let me do it; the unions won't let me do it.
Then what are you doing here?"
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.1124
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7058
item Program Number S0871,
2015
"A Family Quarrel in the Conservative Party"
Guests: Sobran,
Joseph. : Lambertson, Giles.
1 October 1990
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 131 : 30
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 3
Program details: President Bush's Desert Shield had indeed provoked a
fierce family quarrel, with charges like "Interventionist!" and
"Isolationist!" being hurled across the dinner table. There is more heat
than light in this half-hour, but the central points do get raised. WFB:
"Something should have been done about Hitler earlier than it was.
Fifty-five million people were killed in World War II. We should have
prevented it, right? Now if Hussein is allowed to develop a nuclear
arsenal, it seems to me that he is of a temperament that simply casts
aside normal humane considerations, as he did in Iran ..." GL: "If we
manage to get him out of Kuwait and get him home again and nothing else,
he'll consolidate his power and do it again. I think he is a threat."
JS: "... this guy, in an eight-year war, could only take a 50-mile strip
of Iran ... He just doesn't seem to me to be anything like a Hitler,
much less a threat to us."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1125
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7059
item Program Number S0872,
2016
"Are Presidential Campaigns Mostly Theater?"
Guests: Simon,
Roger. : Kinsley, Michael E.
20 September 1990
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 131 : 31
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 3
Program details: A sometimes hilarious, sometimes horrifying look at how
Presidents are made (sausage, anyone?). Mr. Kinsley (who introduces the
show and then takes his place as a guest) points out that our current
primary system, now widely thought to need serious reform, was itself a
reform of the smoke-filled-room system. RS: "It has been suggested, I
think with some accuracy, that the Republicans select stronger, more
disciplined candidates because their process is slightly less
democratic. They don't allow as many small, factional groups to control
primaries." . . . "We watch [debates] as we watch the Indy 500, to see
who crashes and burns." . .. MK: "Would that we could get back to what
was considered outrageous manipulation and anti-democratic practices in
1968."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1123
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7057
item Program Number S0873, 2017,
2017R
"Two Friends Talk: Ronald Reagan and William F. Buckley Jr.: Part
I"
Guests: Reagan, Ronald.
11 October 1990, 1 September 1991
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 132 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 4
Program details: There are no fireworks at this meeting of two old
friends, but there is broad and deep discussion of the world and how Mr.
Reagan may have changed it. WFB: "Conceivably, might there be
USSR-American cooperation in developing SDI?" RR: "Well... I have told
[Gorbachev] that I would advocate making that information open to the
world ... in return for all of us destroying our nuclear weapons. But I
said the reason for having it is- I used the example of World War I. I
said all the nations of World War I met and outlawed poison gas, but we
all kept our gas masks. I said, Who can say that down the way somewhere
there won't be another Hitler, there won't be another madman that could
use the knowledge of how to make weapons and blackmail the earth?"
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1130
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0064EGOU6
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7064
item Program Number S0874, 2018,
2018R
"Two Friends Talk: Ronald Reagan and William F. Buckley Jr.: Part
II"
Guests: Reagan, Ronald.
11 October 1990, 8 September 1991
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 131 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 4
Program details: There are no fireworks at this meeting of two old
friends, but there is broad and deep discussion of the world and how Mr.
Reagan may have changed it. WFB: "Conceivably, might there be
USSR-American cooperation in developing SDI?" RR: "Well... I have told
[Gorbachev] that I would advocate making that information open to the
world ... in return for all of us destroying our nuclear weapons. But I
said the reason for having it is- I used the example of World War I. I
said all the nations of World War I met and outlawed poison gas, but we
all kept our gas masks. I said, Who can say that down the way somewhere
there won't be another Hitler, there won't be another madman that could
use the knowledge of how to make weapons and blackmail the earth?"
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1131
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0064EGOZG
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7065
item Program Number S0875,
2019
"Educational Practices Gone Wrong"
Guests: Cheney, Lynne V.
2 October 1990
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 132 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 4
Program details: Mrs. Cheney had just issued a report on the American
educational establishment called Tyrannical Machines, and under Mr.
Buckley's questioning she outlines lucidly and engagingly what she would
do to change that establishment. WFB: "I heard somebody say that
Aristotle, if he were to rematerialize, would not qualify to teach
philosophy in a public school in New York City. That's not an
exaggeration, right?" LC: "No, it's true. He wouldn't have been properly
certified. He wouldn't have taken the right number and kinds of courses
in education." . . . LC: "It doesn't work just to put your head down and
keep ramming against the SAT or the way we train teachers or the way we
select textbooks. You just waste your energy doing that. The way we
should approach these ... is to set alternatives into place. Then you
set competition going and then you give people motivation to
improve."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1126
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7060
item Program Number S0876,
2020
"The Pros and Cons of Coal"
Guests: Quenon, Robert. : Pope,
Carl.
9 October 1990
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 132 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 5
Program details: This meeting of an environmentalist and a coal man is
surprisingly uncontentious--but very informative, as each finds ways of
making the subject vivid to the layman. Mr. Quenon: "Many of the things
that we know today we know as a result of the advances of science--how
many parts per million there are in this piece of atmosphere and that
piece of water.... I defy you to travel anywhere except a remote Pacific
island to find an atmosphere that's as clean as ours is." ... Mr. Pope:
"If I had a business behind your house, and as part of this business I
made big barrels of sulphuric acid, you might benefit from my business;
I might be producing electricity and you might be burning my
electricity. I don't think you'd find it acceptable for me to go and
dump my barrels of sulphuric acid in your back yard, although this might
be the low-cost solution."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1127
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7061
item Program Number S0877,
2021
"Does Appalachia Deserve Our Tax Money?"
Guests: Wise,
Robert E., Jr. : Weidenbaum, Murray.
9 October 1990
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 132 : 4
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 5
Program details: As Mr. Kinsley points out, the War on Poverty was
prompted not by the inner cities but by Appalachia. In the 35 years
since, conditions there have improved greatly but far from completely.
This sometimes heated discussion explores the history and the current
state of play. REW: "Even though the Reagan Administration sought to
eliminate the Appalachian Regional Commission several times, four times
on an overwhelming bipartisan vote it was approved. Those were a lot of
representatives not from Appalachia, but they recognized the importance
of this program and they also recognized how little it cost in terms of
what it brought back." MW: "There's an old principle they understand.
It's called back scratching. You scratch my back ... I'll scratch your
back .. ." RW: "It's also called federalism--recognizing the needs of
each region of our country."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1128
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7062
item Program Number S0878,
2022
"The Illusion and Reality of China"
Guests: Mosher, Steven
W.
9 October 1990
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 132 : 5
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 6
Program details: Sixteen months after Tiananmen Square, what's going on
in China? Our guest is, as Mr. Kinsley puts it, "a notorious figure in
... American relations with China." As a Stanford graduate student in
the 1970s, Mr. Mosher was allowed to visit a small Chinese village. The
reports he brought back--of forced abortion and infanticide--infuriated
the Chinese officials and led Stanford to expel him. He here fills us in
on the often grim but fascinating story of what has happened since. WFB:
"I don't think it necessarily follows that people who are sadists,...
even genocidists, can't be charming, do you? I experienced Chou En-lai
very briefly, but I did find him absolutely charming.... This didn't
mean that I was going to go back home and write that he was other than
what I knew him to be." . . . SM: "I don't believe that the [Communist]
ideology has a great hold in China today. ... On the other hand, the
institutional apparatus of Communism, the oppressive secret police, the
use of the army to inhibit and, indeed, if necessary, actually kill
people to force them into the political line, that's still very much in
place."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1129
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7063
item Program Number S0879,
2023
"What Do We Owe Our Country?"
Guests: Friedman, Milton,
1912-
13 December 1990
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 132 : 6
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 6
Program details: "Mr. Buckley," as Mr. Kinsley puts it, "will be required
to defend himself from charges of apostasy by a conservative even better
credentialed than himself." WFB's book Gratitude had proposed a year's
national service between high school and college. Fasten your seatbelt
and watch these two old comrades-in-arms have at it. MF: "You, of all
people ... somebody who's spent his life trying to fight the overgrown
government, who's spent his life defending the virtues of individual
freedom, of the free market, and here you come up with a program that's
the opposite of everything you've stood for all your life." ... WFB: "We
live in a society in which young people and older people don't give any
evidence of gratitude for what it is that we inherit, and I'm looking
for the redevelopment of an ethos that causes people to show that they
are willing to reciprocate." MF: "The question is, why is it that we
have had so much of a reduction in the sense of gratitude? In my opinion
it's primarily because we've been doing so much through government ...
and as a result we have destroyed a sense of individual responsibility
and responsibility to one another."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1134
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ANCWWGU
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7068
item Program Number S0880,
2024
"How Does International Law Affect Foreign Policy?"
Guests:
Moynihan, Daniel P. (Daniel Patrick), 1927-2003.
13 December 1990
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 132 : 7
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 7
Program details: Senator Moynihan proves an excellent guide through these
thickets, in a discussion prompted by President Bush's having invoked
international law as the basis for our countering of Saddam Hussein's
invasion of Kuwait. WFB: "We either know or we don't know that
international law has been broken--people disagree about that. Sometimes
six lawyers say yes and six lawyers say no...." DPM: "They do that
before the Supreme Court five days a week when it's in session, and no
one ever doubts that there's a federal legal system.... That law is
there, it's in writing, rarely is it truly ambiguous."... WFB: "Can
[Bush] say to Congress: I don't need you any more, because the United
Nations Charter's the supreme law by which I'm governed in this matter?"
DPM: "And under Article 25 a nation must abide by a ruling of the
Security Council. I think he could say that. I hope he doesn't."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1132
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7066
item Program Number S0881,
2025
"New Insights on the Russian Revolution"
Guests: Pipes,
Richard.
13 December 1990
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 132 : 8
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 7
Program details: A gripping look at the Soviet Union, with a man who has
spent all his adult life studying it. RP: "Intellectuals [in Russia], as
in many other parts of the world, had a very ambivalent attitude towards
the Bolshevik experiment. They didn't approve of it, and yet they felt
that the cause which Bolshevism represented was in some way progressive,
whereas the cause of capitalism was regressive.... So, for example,
during the critical civil war, the socialist intelligentsia sided with
the Bolsheviks and not with the Whites." ... "There are signs that the
right-wing groups [i.e., the hard-liners] are becoming very impatient
with all of this [perestroika and glasnost], and it's entirely possible
that they will, in the next few months, strike, and by means of a Putsch
impose a right-wing dictatorship, with or without Gorbachev" (as in fact
they did attempt, eight months after this conversation).
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1133
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TZ8GB74
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7067
item Program Number S0882,
2026
"Does Oil Dominate World Policy?"
Guests: Yergin, Daniel.
8 January 1991
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 132 : 9
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 8
Program details: Opponents of our intervention in the Persian Gulf were
shouting, "We won't die for oil!" How important is oil? "Our whole
society is really shaped by oil," Mr. Yergin explains. "It determines
where we live, how we live, how we commute, how we travel, how we
conduct our courtships." WFB: "Oughtn't we to say to Saudi Arabia: We've
been in there and we've helped you during these very, very tough days.
Now please sign a 50-year accord to sell oil at a price that makes it
impossible to revive OPEC. Would that be sound statesmanship in your
lights?" DY: "Well, it's certainly a very intriguing idea if you can get
it to work in this era of nation-states. Where it maybe really happens
is not in a de jure but a de facto fashion ... But the one problem you
always come down to is, What is the just price? ... It all depends on
whether you're a buyer or a seller."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1136
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7070
item Program Number S0883,
2027
"Are Blacks and Hispanics the New Majority? What Does This
Portend?"
Guests: Brookhiser, Richard. : Chavez, Linda.
8 January 1991
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 132 : 10
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 8
Program details: A civil and productive conversation on the hot topic of
ethnicity in the United States. WFB: "Ms. Chavez, in your judgment does
the vision--or, if you prefer, the fantasy--of the WASP still affect
ethnic thought in America in the sense of its being an archetype?" LC:
"What troubles me ... is that somehow we seem to be talking about
bloodlines here. ... In fact, in the United States what is most
remarkable is that these ethnic divisions disappear over time, and it is
now more common for Eastern and Southern Europeans to marry outside of
their group ... And I think that is increasingly becoming true of
Hispanics, and we even see some increase in intermarriage rates between
blacks and whites." ... KB: "[WASPs], because they happened to get here
first, put a character type in place, and then what happens after that
is assimilation ... A lot of the ... problems we have come from an
abandonment of these WASP principles of living, and the main villains in
that were WASPs themselves."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1137
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7071
item Program Number S0884,
2028
"Are All Religions Equal?"
Guests: Adler, Mortimer Jerome,
1902-2001.
8 January 1991
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 132 : 11
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 9
Program details: When in doubt about the nature of truth and the way
philosophical truth applies to religion, call in our time's philosopher
par excellence. MA: "There's no Chinese physics; there is no Japanese
physics or Hindu physics or mathematics or technology ... In some sense
the whole world has been Westernized by technology, has it not? ..."
WFB: "And do you predict-" MA: "That in due course people will be aware
of the fact that acting and living and using the truths of these
transcultural elements in their culture requires them to face up to the
inconsistency between what is asserted logically in technology and
physics and mathematics, and what they hold in their religions." ...
WFB: "If you can foretell the collapse of the non-rational aspects of
the religions you cite ... then why can you not forecast a recognition
of the truths of religion within our own culture?" MA: "Because our own
culture ... is dominated by a philosophy that's made a mockery of truth:
positivism. It asserts that the only truths we have are the truths of
science."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.1135
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7069
item Program Number S0885,
2029
"Momentous Changes in Eastern Europe"
Guests: Kirkpatrick,
Jeane J.
15 January 1991
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 132 : 12
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 9
Program details: A rich discussion of Eastern Europe and, especially, the
Soviet Union, a year after the Berlin Wall came down and just as
Gorbachev had shaken his Western supporters by the crackdown in
Lithuania. JJK: "I believe that a totalitarian state almost by
definition requires an ideological core, because how else are they going
to control culture as well as society?" ... "I think [Gorbachev]
probably is [still a closet Communist]. I've talked to a number of
Soviet reformed Communists and reformed socialists and dissident
democrats, some of whom have known Gorbachev quite well and who believe
that he has always been a Communist, in fact, on the model of Dubcek. He
was seeking Communism with a human face, believed it was possible--his
fundamental delusion. But Communism with a human face involved a lot of
diminishing of the role of brute force in that government."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1138
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7072
item Program Number S0886,
2030
"Failure of Morality in Foreign Policy"
Guests: Martin,
David, 1914- : Sanders, Sol.
15 January 1991
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 132 : 13
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 10
Program details: This show is a bit slow moving, but gripping even so in
the stories both guests have to tell. We start off with the subject of
Mr. Martin's book: Churchill's dropping of Draza Mihailovic in favor of
Josip Broz Tito as our ally in Yugoslavia in World War II. It is Mr.
Martin's thesis, backed up by newly declassified British files, that
Churchill was deliberately misled by a Communist sympathizer in British
intelligence, who convinced him that Mihailovic was a fascist. SS:
"Traditionalist conservative figures in nationalist movements are not
those with which Americans can immediately commune.... It has always
been easier for us to deal with Communists, who were internationalists,
who could talk to us in slogans that we would understand."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1139
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7073
item Program Number S0887,
2031
"Politics and Corruption in Higher Education"
Guests: Sykes,
Charles J., 1954- : Spengemann, William.
15 January 1991
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 132 : 14
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 10
Program details: Mr. Sykes here continues the free-swinging attack on the
modern university that he began in The Hollow Men and earlier books. He
takes as a locus classicus of academic corruption Dartmouth College; the
only weakness in this show is that Mr. Spengemann, who defends his
institution, doesn't speak up more. When he does, the sparks fly. WS: "I
don't understand, Charles. On the one hand you say that students ... are
told that nothing is more right than anything else, and then in the next
breath you tell us that they're being told continually what's right and
what's wrong?." CS: "You have hit on one of the paradoxes, which is that
the politically correct approach to these issues begins with the idea of
deconstruction--the idea that if we can't undermine the state structures
we'll undermine the structures of language. We'll tell you that all
beliefs are equal.... But the idea is not to leave a blank slate. It is
to clear the field for the imposition of often very, very draconian
ideological perspectives."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1140
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7074
item Program Number S0888,
2032
"Remembering Malcolm Muggeridge"
Guests:
15 January 1991
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 132 : 15
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 11
Program details: It's not as if
Firing
Line
viewers were being deprived
of their Muggeridge fix by his death (in November 1990, at the age of
87). Two of the shows featuring him, "How Does One Find Faith?" and "Do
We Need Religion or Religious Institutions?" (
Firing
Line
s0432 and
s0433), had been rebroadcast every year at Christmastime, a tradition
that would continue throughout
Firing
Line's
own life. But this masterly
redaction brings in Mr. Muggeridge's comments--which are often, as WFB
points out in the newly taped introduction, "mischievous"--on much
outside the scope of those two session. One sample: "I regard liberalism
as the great disease of our society, and when I said that people like
Mrs. Roosevelt, admirable though they were in their intention, would be
seen to have done more damage than people like Hitler and Stalin, I
meant precisely that."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1141
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00G709KJE
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7075
item Program Number S0889,
2033
"Desert Storm and the Plight of the Democrats"
Guests:
Solarz, Stephen J.
9 April 1991
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 132 : 16
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 12
Program details: In the aftermath of Desert Storm, President Bush, as Mr.
Kinsley points out, "had the highest poll ratings since poll ratings
began," and Democrats, especially those who had "left hostages to
fortune in the form of quotations warning about huge American
casualties," were hurting. Mr. Solarz was one of a comparatively few
congressional Democrats who had voted in favor of going to war, and he
uses his position of strength to launch a superb defense of his wounded
brethren: "I think it's entirely legitimate to question the judgment of
those who opposed the resolution authorizing the use of force in the
Gulf. But I think it is ludicrous for some Republicans ... to accuse
those Democrats... of representing the party of appeasement."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1143
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7077
item Program Number S0890,
2034
"Are Our Presidents Lacking in Greatness?"
Guests: Shogan,
Robert.
9 April 1991
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 132 : 17
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 12
Program details: This show offers much more than a rate-the-Presidents
parlor game (although that's fun too). As Mr. Shogan explains, "What I
tried to do ... what I think would be valuable is, since the Presidency
affects all our lives greatly, to understand what are the factors that
allow Presidents to succeed in certain situations and what inhibits
success." Two specifics: Reagan's success with the economy stemmed from
the interaction of "his ideology, the feeling that freedom is the
greatest good and government is its enemy; his values, his respect for
the American past; and his kind of personality, which took so much of
the sting out of his rhetoric." LBJ was "a consensual
President"--meaning that "He pretended that there was just a common
agreement on nearly everything. ... He did that because he didn't want
to have to explain himself."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1144
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7078
item Program Number S0891,
2035
"Blacks and the Failure of the War on Poverty"
Guests:
Lemann, Nicholas.
9 April 1991
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 132 : 18
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 13
Program details: Mr. Lemann's controversial book looks at the subject of
black poverty from an arresting angle: by considering the movement of
blacks from the rural South to the urban North in the mid 20th century
to be every bit as much a mass immigration as the 19th-century movement
of rural Italians or Irish to those same Northern cities. If we accept
his construct, it has major implications for where poor blacks might be
on the assimilation curve. NL: "There's a whole theory that I just
disagree with, which is: the key to individual economic success is
empowerment in American society.... I don't accept the paradigm: Grandpa
came to Ellis Island and he became empowered as a hod carrier, and then
Dad became empowered as an IBM junior executive. It sounds like a wacky
concept to me, and the real question is: Do people get the skills they
need and the motivation to get a job and join the mainstream of American
society?"
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1145
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7079
item Program Number S0892,
2036
"The Politics of Race and Sex on Campus"
Guests: D'Souza,
Dinesh, 1961-
21 May 1991
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 132 : 19
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 13
Program details: The discussion, like Mr. D'Souza's book, is about all
aspects of racial and sexual politics on campus, from admissions
policies to speech codes to curriculum. DD: "When universities practice
preferential admissions, and when students ... are outmatched by their
peers, there's a great temptation to believe that the reason I am
experiencing some difficulty in reading Hamlet by Monday is not because
I am not well enough prepared, but is because Shakespeare is a white
male." ... DD: "The argument is not that Bach wrote bad music, but that
Bach wrote white music, and that in a curriculum that is open to all
groups there should be ... representation for other forms of music .. ."
WFB: "Yes, but of course that gets into the way of the principal
operative axiom of the melting-pot society, which is that people of your
ethnic background, and of mine, and of Michael's, and of everybody's in
this room, can adapt to a culture and exploit its special
resources."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1146
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7080
item Program Number S0893,
2037
"Is Political Funding Ruining Colleges?"
Guests: Roche,
George Charles.
21 May 1991
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 132 : 20
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 14
Program details: Mr. Roche's impressive performance here reminds one why
conservatives were so dismayed by his downfall eight years later. The
"political funding" of the title refers to the way government funding is
used as a wedge to impose affirmative action on private colleges. That
is why Mr. Roche famously established Hillsdale's policy of refusing any
government funding. GR: "We had matriculated blacks and women on the
Hillsdale campus for over one hundred years before the government took
any interest in the question one way or another." WFB: "Back when it was
passing the Fugitive Slave Laws." GR: "That's right. In fact, for equal
treatment irrespective of race or sex, Hillsdale was the first
institution in the United States to formally write that into its
charter."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1147
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7081
item Program Number S0894,
2038
"Do the Tests Show Our Students Third Rate or Worse?"
Guests: Cheney, Lynne V.
21 May 1991
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 132 : 21
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 14
Program details: President Bush had just proposed a national achievement
test for high-school students and had run into criticism both from the
Left, anxious to protect the under performing teachers unions, and from
the Right, uneasy with the specter of national control of local schools.
Mrs. Cheney is the perfect guide to this debate, outlining what other
countries do and explaining the difference between aptitude tests, which
attempt to test what the student is capable of, and achievement tests,
which find out what the student has actually learned. LC: "Any time you
have a high-stakes exam, teachers will teach to it and students will
study for it. The point is to get an exam in place that is worth
teaching to, that is worthy studying for." ... "When you try to explain
to a Frenchman or a Japanese or a German that we test for this thing
called aptitude, they're very puzzled that we even think you can test
for it."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1148
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7082
item Program Number S0895, 2101,
2101R
"Is There a Problem of Nuclear Waste Disposal?"
Guests:
Hollister, C. D. : Makhijani, Arjun.
4 June 1991, 27 October 1991
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 132 : 22-23
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 15
Program details: Apart from actual meltdown, the biggest worry about
nuclear power plants has to do with radioactive waste: how can you
dispose of it without risking its radiation getting into the water
supply, or being loosed by an earthquake? Mr. Hollister thinks he has
the answer: sea mud. His verve in describing his idea (actually, an idea
worked out in a 15-year study by scientists from 8 countries) is matched
only by his lucidity in explaining it. CH: "To me the key is
predictability. As you correctly point out, the key is going to a place
where nothing has happened for the past 60 or 70 million years;
therefore the next half-million years looks like a pretty safe bet,
because the world is a probabilistic world."... AM: "The Department of
Energy has been singularly unsuccessful politically and scientifically
in managing nuclear waste. In 1970 they said: We will have a repository
in 10 years. In 1982 they said: We will have a repository in 16 years.
In 1990 they said: We will have a repository in 20 years."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.1151
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7085
item Program Number S0896, 2102,
2102R
"
Firing
Line
: Twenty-Five Years and Still Going Strong"
Guests: Thomas, Norman, 1884-1968. : Leary, Timothy Francis, 1920-
: Ali, Muhammad, 1942- : Luce, Clare Boothe, 1903-1987. : Thatcher,
Margaret. : Reagan, Ronald. : Bush, George, 1924- : Du Pont, Pierre S.
[Du Pont, Pete; DuPont, Pete]
26 June 1991, 24 November 1991
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 132 : 24-25
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 15
Program details:
Firing
Line
had celebrated its 20th anniversary with
three hour-long anthologies. For the 25th, the excerpts are
triple-distilled into one glorious half-hour, framed by brief comments
by Messrs. Buckley and Kinsley. Two of the excerpts remind us that not
only does
Firing
Line
comment on events, occasionally it shapes them:
the Panama Canal debate may have been a factor in Ronald Reagan's
victory in 1980; and it was on the Republican candidates' debate in 1988
that George Bush referred to Pete du Pont as "Pierre." One sample from
the new material: WFB: "Norman Thomas ... I really didn't like him.... I
think I didn't like him because he always understood himself to occupy
the entire spiritual stage. Anybody who was on the other side wasn't
simply wrong, he was evil."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1152
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00ANCWW6U
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7086
item Program Number S0897,
2103
"Is Peace Possible in the Mideast?"
Guests: Pipes, Daniel. :
Hauser, Rita E.
26 June 1991
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 132 : 26
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 16
Program details: In the aftermath of the Gulf War, Secretary of State
James Baker had decided to bring peace to the Middle East. Somehow,
though, the Israelis and Arabs didn't have his Nobel Prize at the top of
their agenda. In an amazingly civil discussion of this always highly
charged topic, Mrs. Hauser and Mr. Pipes both explain and illustrate why
it is so difficult. WFB: "Mightn't we ... say that there are two
irreducible minimums here: number one, Israeli security, and number two,
a homeland for the Palestinians? And then say: Okay, you-all discuss the
details. We'll act as a broker but this is--without calling it a
plan--this is indispensable to whatever plan you work out. Is that
fair?" DP: "I would not go that far." RH: "If we don't go that far and
even farther we will be in procedural discussions from now until the
next decade."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1153
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7087
item Program Number S0898,
2104
"Are We Unfair to the Israelis?"
Guests: Zion, Sidney. :
Zogby, James J.
26 June 1991
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 132 : 27
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 16
Program details: Back to shouting on the Middle East, in a show that
offers a microcosm of the conflict there. SZ: "To say that Jordan is not
Palestine is just a historical lie ... It was Palestine until 1946 ...
That should be a starting point for Palestinian nationalism. In 1947
they rejected that state. In 1967 they used that territory that they
said they'd be satisfied with to launch a war. And then they said that
the PLO is their sole and exclusive representative, and the PLO is
dedicated to the destruction of Israel--and they say so." JZ: "That's
not true." SZ: "From that territory, from that land that they were never
satisfied with, you want to set up another state. It would be quite
suicidal for us to do that. No other country would be asked to do that."
JZ: "It would be suicidal for Israel to maintain an occupation over a
million and a half people who, in fact, resist that occupation."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1154
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7088
item Program Number S0899,
2105
"Can We Rely on Soviet Peace Initiatives?"
Guests: Beichman,
Arnold.
4 June 1991
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 132 : 28
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 17
Program details: The U.S. and USSR had just concluded the CFE agreement
(Conventional Forces in Europe), clearing the way for a summit meeting
the following year. Mr. Beichman, a veteran student of the Soviet Union,
is unimpressed: "We have to keep negotiating. This is what I call
treadmill diplomacy. We have to go on, knowing full well that the
agreements will be violated ... We have to do so simply because of those
weapons." ... WFB: "Don't you see signs there of a genuine total
skepticism about Communism itself?" AB: "It's been there for a long time
among the people of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, but not in the
leadership ranks. If they gave up Marxism-Leninism, what do they have to
justify their monopoly rule?"--just the question, it turned out, that
the hard-liners in the Kremlin were asking themselves as they prepared
their Putsch against Secretary Gorbachev, attempted two months after
this show was taped.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1149
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7083
item Program Number S0900,
2106
"Is Darwin Obsolete?"
Guests: Johnson, Phillip E., 1940-
4 June 1991
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 132 : 29
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 17
Program details: Mr. Johnson was one of the first to argue against
Darwinism not from the point of view of Biblical literalism, but from
evidence about the complexity of organisms and variability within
species. A fascinating discussion of a theoretical subject that our
guest is able to make concrete. PJ: "When you look at the evidence of
life, just the single cell--you don't even have to get up to human
beings and complex creatures or flowers or anything beautiful, but just
bacterial cells--when you look at that evidence without prejudice, for
what it is, and what you see is something that is packed with
information, with a complicated program of instructions. That is the
kind of thing that as far as we can tell always comes from
intelligence."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1150
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7084
item Program Number S0901,
2107
"Do We Need a Space Station?"
Guests: Kerwin, Joseph. :
Green, Bill.
15 July 1991
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 133 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 18
Program details: A civil but spirited argument between a space-station
enthusiast and a skeptical member of the House Appropriations Committee.
WFB: "Dr. Kerwin, do you foresee economic benefits from the space lab
that will equal the cost of launching it?" JK: "At least, and I say that
from the experience of the Apollo program, which led to a 20-year period
of time of American leadership in space, and therefore in
aerospace-related products, including computers, including aircraft,
including medical equipment. We have been living on that Apollo legacy."
... BG: "At the present time, what's happened? One, the astronomers and
astrophysicists have no use for the station; the National Academy of
Sciences just came out with their wish list for astronomy for the next
decade and there's not a thing that goes on the station... The station's
useless for Mission to Planet Earth."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1155
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7089
item Program Number S0902,
2108
"Confirm Clarence Thomas?"
Guests: Norton, Eleanor Holmes.
15 July 1991
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 133 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 18
Program details: It would be another three months before Anita Hill burst
onto the nation's front pages, but Clarence Thomas's nomination to the
Supreme Court was already highly controversial. In this session we learn
how a black conservative looks to one black liberal: "We shall see what
Clarence Thomas's qualifications are. But where a nominee has set his
face against all that black Americans have struggled for for 100 years,
he cannot expect them to embrace him. He may go to the Court, but if so,
he should go without our imprimatur." ... WFB: "You seem to be saying
that the Supreme Court ought to reflect the racial and ethnic
composition of America, but it seems to me that in an ideal Platonic
sense that ought to be absolutely irrelevant." EHN: "Verboten, indeed.
... What kind of silly-looking court would it be that touched base with
the great diversity of our population?"
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1156
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7090
item Program Number S0903,
2109
"How Much Fact Checking Should Publishers Do?"
Guests:
Lehmann-Haupt, Christopher. : Theodoracopulos, Taki, 1937-
15 July 1991
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 133 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 18
Program details: Kitty Kelley's scabrous biography of Nancy Reagan had
sparked debates about just what the responsibility of a book publisher
is, or should be, and this is one of the more delightful ones. Host and
guests trade stories about libels here and in Britain, and argue about
the two countries' vastly different laws. Mr. Lehmann-Haupt is serenely
confident of the lightness of New York Times v. Sullivan; Mr. Buckley,
who has both sued and been sued for libel, asks, "Why, if you're elected
as a congressman, ought somebody be free to call you an adulterer or a
thief?"; and the raffish Taki (who had written a book about his
imprisonment for cocaine possession) finds himself on unaccustomed
middle ground: "There must be balance. I think that in America the fact
that you're a public person and anyone can write anything about you is
just as unfair as in England, where you can't write anything about a
public person."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1157
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7091
item Program Number S0904,
2110
"Is the Democratic Party Falling Apart in the South?"
Guests: Riley, Joseph P., Jr. : Fowler, Donald L.
29 August 1991
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 133 : 4
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 19
Program details: A year before the presidential election, Mr. Kinsley is
saying, "The failed coup in the Soviet Union ... allowed President Bush
to revel once more in the role of world leader... If a Democrat is ever
to be elected President again, the party will have to figure out a way
to appeal to the South." The two Southern pols who are our guests aren't
conceding anything. WFB: "If you have to point to a single problem it's
illegitimacy, risen by a factor of 280 per cent in the last 15 years....
Now, licentiousness and permissiveness is associated with the Democratic
Party." DLF: "Well, I guess we Democrats do get criticized for being
overly concerned with sex, and you Republicans are overly concerned with
money--and I don't know who gets the better side of that...." JPR: "You
use the term 'domestic agenda,' and that's too political sounding. I'd
say the American agenda, when a President walks in ... and talks about
illegitimacy in a leadership way. When has President Bush tried to
articulate that problem?"
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1159
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004SQFRJQ
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7093
item Program Number S0905,
2111
"An Expert View on Russia"
Guests: Pipes, Richard.
17 September 1991
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 133 : 5
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 19
Program details: The Soviet Union had held on longer than its Eastern
European satellites, but on August 19 the hard-liners forced the issue
with their coup against Mikhail Gorbachev. The resistance was led by
Boris Yeltsin, President of the Russian Republic, and on August 22 the
coup collapsed. Mr. Buckley starts off, "We all burst out with
spontaneous joy on the 22nd of August: We had won.... Now, between the
time of Hiroshima and the time that we won, I went from being a minor to
being a senior citizen, and it seems to me that those years in between,
relatively painless for me and for you, were climactically painful for
millions of people. So we are entitled to ask: . . . From what we now
know, how might we have accelerated the demise of this great
totalitarian monster?" Mr. Pipes answers straightforwardly: "I don't
think we could have done much about that. It had to collapse essentially
of its internal crisis. And I think, if anything, we accelerated it by
the policies adopted by President Reagan. I would not give him credit
for the collapse, but I think he contributed to it by his psychological
willingness to stand up to Communism." And we're off on a splendid
discussion ranging from the history of Communism around the world to the
likely "balkanization" of the Soviet empire.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1164
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7098
item Program Number S0906,
2112
"The Need for Education Reform"
Guests: Pursell, Carl. :
Donley, Edward.
29 August 1991
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 133 : 6
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 20
Program details: George Bush, the "Education President," had proposed a
major experiment in the nation's school system--and had asked
corporations to fund it. To Mr. Donley, that's just fine: "It's a small
percentage of the amount of money that the business community spends in
retraining people to make up for the deficiencies of the public
education.... We're going to have a massive number of experimental
efforts attempting to determine in a practical, daily, working world of
education whether there are ways to do it better. That appeals to the
business community." (Indeed, his Pennsylvania 2000 is part of this
effort.) Rep. Pursell doesn't have a great deal to say, but Mr. Donley
is quite capable of carrying the ball.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1161
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7095
item Program Number S0907,
2113
"How Far Can Political Ads Go?"
Guests: Bozell, L. Brent,
III. : Kinsley, Michael E.
17 September 1991
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 133 : 7
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 20
Program details: Clarence Thomas? In the run-up to Mr. Thomas's
confirmation hearings, Mr. Bozell's organization had provoked a
firestorm by producing an ad that asked just that question. Today's
discussion, often heated, starts with that ad and explores the history
and ethics of what we now call negative campaigning. LBB: "This man [Ted
Kennedy] undertook the most scurrilous character assassination campaign
against Judge Robert Bork ... These same people ... said: We're going to
'Bork' Thomas. And our point was, 'If you're going to try to do it
again, if you're going to put values and integrity on the line, we're
going to talk about yours.' Did it work? ... I submit that there hasn't
been the level of intensity against Thomas that there could have
been."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1162
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7096
item Program Number S0908,
2114
"How to Run a College"
Guests: Botstein, Leon. : Palms,
John. : Silber, John, 1926-
29 August 1991
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 133 : 8
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 21
Program details: We learn more about the difficulties of running a
college than about how it should be done in this engaging session that
begins with Mr. Kinsley saying, "Mr. Buckley, you've persecuted any
number of college presidents in your day . . ." WFB: "They are my
favorite pincushions." ... JS: "I think the college president has about
as much authority as he has the capacity to assert and sustain ... I
think most college presidents assiduously avoid any intellectual
argument with their faculty because I don't believe they can sustain
that encounter." ... JP: "Unfortunately, we don't complete the education
that we're supposed to complete in high schools, so many colleges are in
the process of completing that." ... LB: "Beware of the world which is
littered with so-called highly tested underachievers."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1160
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7094
item Program Number S0909,
2115
"The Right to Death"
Guests: Humphry, Derek.
17 September 1991
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 133 : 9
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 21
Program details: Mr. Humphry's how-to book on committing suicide had shot
to number one on the New York Times best-seller list, to a mixture of
adulation and accusation. On this absorbing show, Mr. Buckley does not
argue with his guest but rather draws him along, teasing out his
arguments and leaving the viewer with a great deal to think about. DH:
"The Hippocratic oath is the nonsense of the medical world, devised two
and a half thousand years ago by a group of Greeks.... In this age it
has no application." ... "I broke the law on two occasions: when I
helped my wife to die; when I helped my father-in-law to die. I
regretted doing that very much, the actual breaking of the law. I was
glad to help them. I thought it was the decent and honorable and loving
thing to do." ... "I don't want to encourage [assisted suicide]. I want
to legitimize it.... This sort of thing is a very serious matter and
it's wrong for it to be done covertly."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1163
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7097
item Program Number S0910,
2116
"The Split in the Black Community"
Guests: Carter, Stephen
L.
28 October 1991
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 133 : 10
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 22
Program details: Mr. Kinsley launches the discussion with the Clarence
Thomas confirmation hearings; after some wrangling over how good or bad
Judge Thomas's testimony was, we settle down into a productive
examination of affirmative action and the taboos surrounding it. SLC:
"The President, of course, said that race played no role in the
selection process, that Clarence Thomas was the single most qualified
individual. I don't think many people took that claim seriously. I think
the President probably could have done a lot of work toward binding up
some of the racial wounds in America had he said what was probably true:
'There were many outstanding candidates, people I thought would have
done a good job, and I used race as one means of sorting among them.'...
You know, the President does have a bit of a problem there since he was
engaging in exactly what he opposes--" WFB: "That's right." SLC: "--but
that's not a knock on Clarence Thomas.... The President seemed to be
under the impression that unless he could make a case that race played
no role in the selection, there was something wrong with the selection
process."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1165
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7099
item Program Number S0911,
2117
"Are Our Visions of Liberty Secure?"
Guests: Glasser, Ira.
28 October 1991
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 133 : 12
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 22
Program details: It had been 200 years since the Bill of Rights was
ratified, and the Supreme Court had agreed to hear a case involving an
invocation by a rabbi at a high-school graduation. Messrs. Buckley and
Glasser--longtime friendly antagonists--argue civilly but seriously,
focusing principally on the First Amendment and religion. WFB: "The
fanatical interpretation of the ACLU ... is that it is your holy
responsibility to protect any human being from the normal pressures that
he ought to identify with being a minority. I'm a Catholic; I'm a
minority; but it doesn't bother me at all that a Protestant version of
the Bible might be used by somebody who says a blessing at an event."
IG: "Well, the fact that it doesn't bother you doesn't mean that makes
it okay. The issue really is who else it bothers and what ought the
proper role of government to be."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1166
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7100
item Program Number S0912,
2118
"How Are Our Libel Laws Doing?"
Guests: Lewis, Anthony,
1927-
4 November 1991
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 133 : 13
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 23
Program details: Messrs. Buckley and Lewis surprise each other by the
extent of their agreement-- which only adds to the pleasure of this
profound exploration of the First Amendment's protection of public
speech. AL: "The real essence of the First Amendment... is the right to
disagree with the government.... And I'm confident that conservatives
and liberals alike would think that was an essence of democracy." ...
WFB: "Hugo Black thought there ought to be no libel law at all. If the
Founding Fathers said, 'There shall be no law... abridging the freedom
of speech,' then there should be no law.... Why should this right
transcend other rights?" AL: "You want me to defend the proposition that
it should. But I'm not an absolutist on the First Amendment. I didn't
agree with Justice Black, and moreover he didn't agree with himself....
When it came to kinds of speech that he didn't like ... he found ways to
get around his own absolutism."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1168
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7102
item Program Number S0913,
2119
"Are there Taboos in Publishing?"
Guests: Van den Haag,
Ernest. : Osnos, Peter.
4 November 1991
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 133 : 14
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 23
Program details: Mr. van den Haag had prompted this discussion by a
letter to Mr. Buckley in which he alleged, as he puts it here, "that
major publishers ... all seem, without conspiring, to have exactly the
same opinion: Let's not publish anything on black-white intelligence
differences; let's not publish anything that feminists may take offense
at; let's not publish anything that homosexuals would take offense at."
Mr. Osnos stoutly disagrees, and we're off and running. PO: "I can tell
you, sitting here as a representative of a major publisher, that it is
incredibly hard to get your books, even your best books sometimes,
reviewed. . . . The New York Times is inundated with books. There are
roughly 45,000 trade books published in the United States each year, and
about 5,000 of them can actually get reviewed one way or another in the
New York Times. That means that 40,000 books don't."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1169
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7103
item Program Number S0914,
2120
"Is Communism Really Over?"
Guests: Buckley, William F.
(William Frank), Jr., 1925-2008. : Adler, Mortimer Jerome, 1902-2001.
4 November 1991
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 133 : 15
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 24
Program details: Today's show is quite different from most of Mr. Adler's
Firing
Line
appearances, which bring basic philosophical concepts to
bear on everyday life. Here the philosophy is political philosophy, and
the bracing discussion centers more on Marx than on Aristotle, and on
how the Soviet Union got to be the way it is and what we can hope for in
the future. MA: "A capitalist economy, free-enterprise economy, with
pluralistic agencies of enterprise, with workers and owners being in the
same class for the most part, would achieve a socialist democracy." WFB:
"I regret very much the use of the word socialist, because it invokes
its own history, and its own history is one of a dogmatic,
anti-capitalist position... Moreover, distributive justice has never
been understood to be equal." MA: "Not equal now. Remember, the point
is: All haves, but some have more, some less. Never egalitarian; that's
wrong."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.1170
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7104
item Program Number S0915,
2121
"The New Europe and the Uses of Monarchy"
Guests:
Kuehnelt-Leddihn, Erik von.
28 October 1991
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 133 : 16
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 24
Program details: Another look (see the visits with Prince Nicholas
Romanov,
Firing
Line
s0848, and King Constantine, s0854) at the
possibility of restoring monarchy in the countries emerging from behind
the Iron Curtain. Whether you find Mr. Leddihn enthralling or
infuriating, where else can you hear from someone who has first-hand
memories of the Austro-Hungarian Empire? WFB: "There's no presumption,
is there, that the first-born male is going to have these particular
qualities? Is it simply your notion that to vest certain powers in him
rather than in the population at large is a safer historical bet?" EKL:
"I can give you here a saying: 'A monarch can be a Nero or a Marcus
Aurelius, and the people collectively can be a Nero, but never ever a
Marcus Aurelius.'"
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1167
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7101
item Program Number S0916,
2122
"How Much Is Hydropower Worth?"
Guests: Come, Matthew Coon.
: Cote, Marcel.
1 December 1991
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 133 : 17-18
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 25
Program details: In this first of five shows from what someone has called
"our troubled neighbor to the north," the discussion begins with the
plans of Hydro-Quebec to flood a large part of northern Quebec in order
to produce cheap, clean electric power. But it quickly moves into larger
issues, because (a) this was taking place on the eve of Quebec's
secession referendum, and (b) the Crees and Inuits who live on that land
were raising constitutional objections to Hydro-Quebec's plans. This
show starts slowly--at least for American viewers, who are unfamiliar
with the issues--but quickly picks up steam. Mr. Coon Come: "If Quebec
were to achieve its sovereignty, then it must recognize other peoples'
sovereignty. If they have that claim, why should there be a double
standard?"... Mr. Cote: "The Crees, and in fact all the aboriginals in
Canada, are under the protection of the Queen...and I don't think that
the Crees will allow themselves to be transferred from one country to
another without saying a word."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1171
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7105
item Program Number S0917,
2123
"Do Women Have It Better in Canada?"
Guests: Hosek, Chaviva.
: DesLauriers, Marguerite.
1 December 1991
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 133 : 18, 134 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 25
Program details: As Mr. Coxe frames the question, "Canada's crisis is not
just Quebec versus Anglo Canada; in addition, various groups of
Canadians who transcend provincial boundaries are ... saying they want
to be a part of reshaping Canada now that almost everything is up for
discussion." One such group is feminists, well represented in this
fast-moving exchange. CH: "One of the differences between Canada and the
United States is that there is ... a general social agreement that
sharing some of the risks of life in a communal way, through the state,
makes sense. That's the reason that we have the kind of Medicare that we
have in this country and you don't have it. That's one of the reasons we
have maternity insurance and maternity benefits and various other
programs. It's a different culture." ... WFB: "Isn't the discovery of
any right also the discovery of somebody else's duty? If you're going to
get paid when you have a child, somebody in this room's going to have to
put up the money ..." MD: "I want to quarrel with the language of
'discovering rights' as though they're sort of brute facts. Rights are
conferred in a social context and used in a social context."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1172
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7106
item Program Number S0918,
2124
"Bob Rae, Socialist, versus Wm. F. Buckley Jr., Conservative"
Guests: Rae, Bob.
3 December 1991
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 133 : 18, 134 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 25
Program details: As Mr. Coxe puts it, "Since the fall of the Berlin Wall,
market-oriented political parties have been very successful everywhere
from Sweden to Russia. But... in Canada the great political success
story... has been the New Democratic Party, the only party in Canada
which is avowedly socialist"--although not in the sense we may think,
Mr. Rae is at pains to explain. This highly informative show is not the
debate suggested by the title; rather, Mr. Buckley and his guest
continue the previous show's exploration of the differences between
Canada and the United States. WFB: "Could you tell us the extent to
which the socialism that you represent is an evolutionized form of
socialism, over against the orthodox socialism that we grew up with?"
BR: "The word [socialism] connotes many different things ... and the
fact that it's been used by Stalinists ... has meant that in North
American terms it's not always the most popular word to use. But the
evolution that's taken place ... has been a stronger commitment to
markets and a commitment as well to social institutions which promote
solidarity."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1173
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7107
item Program Number S0919,
2125
"Is the United States Buying Up Canada?"
Guests: Hurtig,
Mel.
3 December 1991
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 133 : 18, 134 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 25
Program details: This one is a debate and deliciously so, hard-driving
but never bad-tempered. MH: "The United States would never tolerate the
degree of foreign ownership that exists in Canada.... Today, in 1991,
there's not one single industry in the United States that's majority
foreign-owned and controlled by any non-residents ...; whereas in Canada
the automobile industry, electrical-apparatus industry, transportation
industry, rubber industry, tobacco industry--I could go on...." WFB:
"Money is fungible. Whether a Dutchman owns it or an American owns it is
entirely immaterial as far as I'm concerned. All I want is prosperity."
MH: "No, you're totally wrong. So much depends on where the profits end
up."... MH: "We love Americans in many ways, we admire you, we are
fortunate to live next door to you ... but we don't want to be
Americans...." WFB: "In the first place I didn't invite you to become an
American. However, I married a Canadian and after 41 years she became an
American, so we'll give you time to think about it."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1174
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7108
item Program Number S0920,
2126
"Is Canada a Better Place to Live than the U.S.?"
Guests:
Kenney-Wallace, Geraldine. : Blackstone, Simon. : Bretzler, Eric. :
Durrant, Audrey. : Gloin, Kevin. : Jones, Dylan. : Pinho, Armanda.
3 December 1991
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 133 : 18, 134 : 4
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 25
Program details: Professor Kenney-Wallace mostly turns her students loose
on their host, with satisfying results, both intellectually and
theatrically. AD: "Since the history of your country mandates that there
should be the freedom to bear arms ... shouldn't there be an equal
priority for the freedom to health care?" WFB: "No. "Why should there
be? If it mandates your right to free speech does that mean it mandates
your right to free abortions? They're unrelated." . . . EB: "Why can't
you use compromise? Why do you have to use force?" WFB: "Because we want
to look after you.... Who's going to say to North Korea day after
tomorrow, 'You can't have a nuclear weapon.' Canada?" . . . KG: "Would
it not be more advantageous to follow the lead of Canadians and be a
little more socially responsible in your economic policy?" WFB: "Well, I
think in certain respects that's absolutely true. For instance, in
Canada there is no ban against using public money in schools or
universities that are church-related. I think that's highly
civilized."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1175
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7109
item Program Number S0921,
2127
"President Bush and the Conservatives"
Guests: Sununu, John.
8 January 1992
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 134 : 5
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 25
Program details: George Bush had never been the conservatives' beau
ideal, but plenty of conservatives supported him in 1988 and found much
to applaud in his Administration. Breaking the No New Taxes pledge,
however, and signing what conservatives called the "quota bill"--the
Civil Rights Act of 1991, making it easier to sue for job
discrimination--had soured them, and National Review had just printed an
editorial welcoming a challenge to President Bush in the primaries. On
this show Mr. Sununu does not give an inch in defending his boss. WFB
(on the Civil Rights Act): "He vetoes and vetoes and vetoes, and then he
yields. Now, he may yield because of what the French call force
majeure." JS: "No. He yielded because he won.... The President vetoed a
piece of legislation that was quota producing.... When he gets
legislation that meets his criteria, he accepts it.... It is a good,
non-quota bill." ... JS: "When you take a good, hard look at what George
Bush has done in detail, conservatives will begin to understand that
this is probably the most conservative President of the 20th
century."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1176
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7110
item Program Number S0922,
2128
"Will Germany Be a Problem?"
Guests: Walters, Vernon A.
8 January 1992
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 134 : 6
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 26
Program details: A rich discussion, broad and deep, with the man who was
our ambassador to West Germany when the Berlin Wall came down. VW: "One
of the things that governs in Germany ... is the measure of guilt felt
towards different countries. The greatest measure of guilt is felt, I
think, towards Poland--justifiably. The second greatest measure of guilt
is France--unjustifiably. The French were treated better than almost
anybody else who was occupied by the Germans...." WFB: "What about
Russia?" VW: "That's where you'd expect the largest one to be, and
there's some, but it's a recent phenomenon. . . . When the Soviet Union
was threatening and still blockading Berlin and keeping the Wall up they
didn't feel any guilt." . . . VW: "Every time somebody in Europe would
say to me: 'Why don't you put your financial house in order?' I would
say: 'How do you think it got out of order? It got out of order
defending you! ... And you Europeans--just remember that we are the only
country in history that ever financed its competitors into competition
with us.' I know, I was in the Marshall Plan administration and I saw it
happen." WFB: "And no regrets?" VW: "I think not, overall. We've won the
long war. Freedom has won the long war."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1177
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7111
item Program Number S0923,
2129
"The Role of Television in Politics"
Guests: Minow, Newton.
8 January 1992
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 134 : 7
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 26
Program details: Mr. Minow has never been allowed to forget that he is
the man who proclaimed television "a vast wasteland"--but he believes in
its potential. A thoughtful discussion on the way our political
campaigns are run. WFB: "Do you have any philosophical or political
reservations about the coincidence between forensic virtuosity and civic
wisdom? Can't you envision a situation where A is clearly a better man
than B, but just doesn't quite make it on television? ..." NM: "Well,
many people say, Could Abraham Lincoln--he was not telegenic, he was not
a good-looking man, they say he spoke kind of slowly--could Abraham
Lincoln have been elected in a television age? My sense is that if a
candidate is on long enough--let's say if there were three or four
debates--the American people are wise enough to size him up. If it's 30
seconds--no. But I think if there's enough of a time period and a chance
to see, I think the American people can judge that."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1178
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7112
item Program Number S0924,
2130
"What to Do about the Problem of Refugees"
Guests: Kurzban,
Ira. : Stein, Daniel.
16 January 1992
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 134 : 8
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 27
Program details: As Mr. Reeder frames the question: "Several weeks ago 38
Cubans landed in Miami in a stolen helicopter and said they had come to
America because economic conditions in Cuba had become intolerable. On
the tape we just saw, we heard a Haitian man give much the same reason
for coming to this country. The Cubans were heralded as defectors, the
Haitians were intercepted and taken to Guantanamo. Do conservatives
think this policy is moral?" A serious discussion, but one that cannot
solve the dilemma that Mr. Buckley describes: "People who make heroic
efforts to gain freedom--the boat people in Vietnam come especially to
mind--show the intensity with which freedom is something people want,
and they ought to be applauded and encouraged. But it's also true that
you run into situations ... in which the nature of the existing organism
is threatened by an unregulated inflow.... So the question is, How do
you decide?"
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1181
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7115
item Program Number S0925,
2131
"Is There a Way Out for the Cities?"
Guests: Koch, Ed, 1924-
8 January 1992
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 134 : 9
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 27
Program details: Mr. Koch doesn't have to think twice about his answer:
"The deaths of the American cities have been predicted for hundreds of
years--ever since they were formed.. . . They will not die. The city
will not die because it provides something special for us." He and his
host discuss the grim topic of potential civicides--welfare demands,
labor-management disputes, high taxation--vigorously and entertainingly.
EK: "... a table in the New York Times ... showed what the costs were
amongst the 50 states for mental health per capita. My recollection is
that New York was spending $140 per capita for mental health, and New
Jersey, right across the river, was spending $50. I would say to people:
Are we three times crazier than New Jersey?" WFB: "Or do we make people
crazy after they come here?"
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1179
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7113
item Program Number S0926,
2132
"The Protocols of Alleging Rape"
Guests: Coombs, Mary Irene.
: Joseph, Paul.
16 January 1992
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 134 : 10
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 28
Program details: The rape trial of William Kennedy Smith the previous
fall had kept the nation's cartoonists in clover--and its feminists, who
tend to be Kennedy-lovers, in a state of trauma--for two months. In
contrast, this is a civil and productive discussion of why--feminism
apart--rape is such a difficult crime to prosecute justly. PJ: "I have
heard proposals that we lower the burden of proof in rape cases to
something like a preponderance of the evidence, and it horrifies me. It
makes me wonder what other crimes and what other classes of people we
are going to rule out of the presumption of innocence. .. ." MIC: "Rape
in some ways is a different crime ... For one thing there's essentially
no other crime where the consent of the victim is a crucial element of
the crime.... To say: 'I thought he wanted me to take his money, he was
inviting it,' is simply not relevant in robbery cases."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1180
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7114
item Program Number S0927,
2133
"A Report Card for Schools"
Guests: Castor, Betty. :
Resnick, Lauren.
16 January 1992
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 134 : 11
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 29
Program details: Ms. Castor was responsible for implementing Florida's
new law on educational accountability. Ms. Resnick served on the
National Council of Education Standards and Testing and was a co-founder
of the New Standards Project, which was working with 17 states,
including Florida, to develop appropriate standardized tests. Both
guests clearly know their stuff; unfortunately, neither, despite Mr.
Buckley's questioning, rises sufficiently above generalities to teach us
much we didn't know. LR: "We have, in fact, a double standard. We don't
say we do, we don't mean to, but we have it de facto. We have a hidden
tracking system that begins in kindergarten or first grade that's very
difficult to break and that allows certain children to slide through
with low expectations for them."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1182
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7116
item Program Number S0928,
2134
"What's Wrong with the Economy?"
Guests: Levy, David A. :
Reynolds, Alan.
26 March 1992
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 134 : 12
Transcript: Box/Folder 184 : 29
Program details: Mr. Botstein sets the stage: "Not since the Great
Depression of the 1930s has the United States public and all its
politicians and its commentators been so concerned about the state of
our economy." Like Mr. Botstein (cf. #FLS112, above), Mr. Levy believes
we're in a "contained depression"; Mr. Reynolds believes a few changes
in the law would work wonders. Both guests give us plenty of specifics
to hold onto as we follow them through their arguments. DL: "We try
cutting deficits, we try increasing spending, we raise taxes, we cut
taxes. One important reason why we keep incurring these huge deficits is
... because the private investment engine is temporarily stalling." ...
AR: "Who are we losing jobs to? The unemployment rate is 9.4 in Britain,
it's 9 something in France, it's 10 1/2 in Canada. The whole world
economy has been going through a disinflationary monetary crunch."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1183
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7117
item Program Number S0929,
2135
"A Mini-Debate: Should Blacks Vote Democratic?"
Guests:
McGovern, George S. (George Stanley), 1922- : Clyburn, James. : Buckley,
William F. (William Frank), Jr., 1925-2008. : Williams, Armstrong.
6 May 1992
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 134 : 13
Transcript: Box/Folder 185 : 1
Program details: This show -- the first in an election-year series -- is
accurately described as a mini-debate: there are no big opening or
closing statements, but instead of the informal give-and-take of a
regular
Firing
Line
, the participants take turns cross-examining each
other, as in the middle portion of a formal debate. Good fun even if
there aren't many surprises. WFB: "I would like to ask Mr. Clyburn . . .
whether it has ever occurred to him . . . that to the extent that you
have this unanimity which you have had in the recent past in black
reliance on the Democratic Party, which is the statist party, that there
might be some overhang there of a plantation mentality. . . ." JC: "I
find it very hard to figure out how you will apply an individual remedy
to a harm that was heaped upon a group. Now if the group was the
recipient of the harm, then it seems to me that it's the group that
needs to find the remedy, and the remedy must apply to the group. . . ."
AW: "As an African-American, I think that anybody can see that the
welfare system that the New Deal put in place -- even the President at
the time said, 'I pray to God that it doesn't become an opium to the
society' -- I think it's a tragedy that the welfare system has been put
in place to the extent that it still exists. Because I'll tell you, it
is the worst form of slavery. What you do is you enslave people's
minds."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1187
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7121
item Program Number S0930,
2136
"How Vulnerable Is George Bush?"
Guests: McGovern, George S.
(George Stanley), 1922- : Campbell, Carroll.
6 May 1992
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 134 : 14
Transcript: Box/Folder 185 : 1
Program details: In this second installment of the election-year series,
the panelists go at each other over the question posed by Judge Sanders:
"Will the economy and joblessness defeat Mr. George Bush?" GM: "Number
one, we've got a 7.3 per cent unemployment rate. That makes any
incumbent President vulnerable, particularly when you have one who is
widely perceived as being vitally interested in foreign affairs and
being bored about the domestic problems of the American people." . . .
CC: "It would be difficult if the economy went down for any President to
do well in the fall, including George Bush. However, I think we need to
recognize that the Congress of the United States, particularly the House
of Representatives, has been controlled by one party since the early
1950s. And that one party has been a party to the development of all of
the programs and the debt of this country because the spending and the
taxing start in the House of Representatives."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1188
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7122
item Program Number S0931,
2137
"A Mini-Debate: The Politics of Abortion"
Guests: Buckley,
William F. (William Frank), Jr., 1925-2008. : Tucci, Keith. : McGovern,
George S. (George Stanley), 1922- : Kissling, Frances, 1943-
5 May 1992
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 134 : 15
Transcript: Box/Folder 185 : 2
Program details: As many times as this subject has been discussed, the
participants in this mini-debate-the third installment of this
election-year series-find some new angles on it. WFB: "All of these
complicated considerations, don't they all apply to old people? I know
an old person who can't recognize his own children-very poor family,
great hardship keeping that guy alive. He gets no pleasure out of life.
He just lies there in bed and stares. Shouldn't we just kill him?" ...
FK: "What we have in America on this subject are two overlapping
majorities. You've got a majority of Americans who believe that the
government should not interfere in the decision of a woman to have an
abortion, and that same majority of Americans also is disturbed by the
number of abortions ... by the reasons they think women are having
abortions, and therefore they do support regulation and restriction of
abortion."
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.1186
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7120
item Program Number S0932,
2138
"Are CEOs' Salaries Out of This World?"
Guests: McGovern,
George S. (George Stanley), 1922- : Clurman, Richard M.
5 May 1992
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 134 : 16
Transcript: Box/Folder 185 : 2
Program details: The Time-Warner merger had rocked both the financial and
the publishing worlds and ended, as WFB puts it, "the special place that
Time magazine and its sister publications had in American culture." One
point at issue: the incredible "executive compensation" (salaries plus
bonuses and perks) being paid; Steve Ross, Mr. McGovern tells us, had
received a reported $79 million in one year, whereas Henry Luce, the
founder of Time-Life Inc., used to receive, according to Mr. Buckley,
about $350,000 a year. RMC: "In addition to disclosure, it would make a
big difference if the directors were really independent--if they didn't
sit on each other's boards, if they didn't, indeed, sit on each other's
compensation committees, because they all have a stake in raising the
level of what each of them gets paid."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1185
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7119
item Program Number S0933,
2201
"Democracy Asian Style"
Guests: Han, Sung-ju. [Han,
Sung-Joo]
26 May 1992
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 134 : 17
Transcript: Box/Folder 185 : 3
Program details: The first in a series of extraordinarily rich shows on
the future of Korea. (One plus: all the Korean guests were at least
partly American-educated and speak excellent English.) Mr. Han,
discussing past attempts to institute democracy in Asia: "Generally the
presidential system has been more difficult to maintain. Either the
president becomes dictatorial, as it happened in the Philippines, as it
happened in this country, or the president becomes very weak and subject
to takeover by the military or other factions. Now we've experienced
both of these situations, and I think because we have had these
immunizations we have a fairly firm ground for democratic development in
the future." ... WFB: "There's no point in democracy if you're going to
have Peron and Hitler elected all the time." HSJ: "We can't refrain from
democracy for fear of choosing the wrong man."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1189
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7123
item Program Number S0934,
2202
"Reunification in Korea: Is It Possible? Is It Probable?"
Guests: Kim, Kyung-Won.
27 May 1992
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 134 : 18
Transcript: Box/Folder 185 : 3
Program details: A moving account of the differences between the two
halves of this divided country. Mr. Kim: "We are, for good or bad,... an
exceptionally homogeneous nation... We became a united single state in
the 7th century and remained one until we became divided in 1945. So the
longing for unification was so much more intense, the anguish of having
to live under conditions of division was so much deeper. When we saw the
Berlin Wall come down and the Germans become reunited ... we were
euphoric. We said, 'Oh, if this could happen to the Germans we should be
able to expect it for ourselves.'"... "Pyongyang city is their
showcase... It's a totally artificial thing, it's no living organism ...
But when you move out of Pyongyang and go into villages and towns where
foreigners are not normally allowed to go, then you begin to see what
life conditions are like. And there it's not progress, it's
deterioration."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1192
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7126
item Program Number S0935,
2203
"What Kind of Ally Is Korea?"
Guests: Hyun, Hong-Choo. :
Gregg, Donald.
26 May 1992
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 134 : 19
Transcript: Box/Folder 185 : 3
Program details: A very good ally, Messrs. Hyun and Gregg agree, in a
detail-filled conversation that goes on to examine the current texture
of that alliance. Mr. Gregg: "The Koreans have had a magnificent
economic success by a formula which is quite interesting, which is
strong governmental control from the top, and free enterprise working
very vigorously from the bottom.... People like Paul Volcker ... think
it is now time for Korea to really free the market,... but like a parent
trying to teach a child to ride a two-wheel bicycle, the government is a
little reluctant to let go of the back of the seat." ... Mr. Hyun had
been in Los Angeles just after the Rodney King riots, in which Korean
storekeepers were hit especially hard. WFB: "When you spoke to Korean
victims of that lunacy that lasted three days, did they feel that
America has betrayed them?" HCH: "Actually there are three kinds of
conflicting emotions now prevailing . . . Some of them would like to
come back to Korea, the American dream soured; some of them would like
to move to a safer place to do business, the suburban areas. But the
majority of the people there would like to stay there and to
rebuild.""
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1190
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7124
item Program Number S0936,
2204
"Do We Need a U.S. Military Presence in Korea?"
Guests:
RisCassi, Robert.
26 May 1992
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 134 : 20
Transcript: Box/Folder 185 : 3
Program details: In case anyone had thought North Korea had given up
attempts at sabotage, ten days earlier a small detachment of North
Korean soldiers had been caught making their way through the
demilitarized zone. Mr. Buckley recounts the reaction from Pyongyang:
"'The South Korean puppet government has committed a grave provocation,
seriously getting on our nerves by fabricating a false report after
creating an incident.' It is," comments WFB, "like a time warp with just
a little echo chamber in Castro's Cuba." General RisCassi is no
polemicist, but he has a quiet authority that gives weight to his
assertions. WFB: "Are you free to tell us to what extent our technology
permits us to establish whether North Korea is actively engaged in the
development of a nuclear weapon?" RR: "I can tell you from all the means
that are available to me that we are convinced that they have
constructed a facility that will allow them to fabricate a nuclear
system within two to three years."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1191
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7125
item Program Number S0937,
2205
"How Should the Civilized World Deal with Peking?"
Guests:
Hu, Jason Chih-chiang. : Du Pont, Pierre S. [Du Ponte, Pete; DuPont,
Pete] : Rusher, William A., 1923-
29 May 1992
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 134 : 21
Transcript: Box/Folder 185 : 4
Program details: How, if you're the United States, do you deal with a
country that sells modern missile technology to rogue states in the
Middle East, and which three years earlier massacred hundreds of its own
people who were demonstrating for freedom? How, if you're the Republic
of China, do you deal with that same country, which wants to place you
under its totalitarian regime? A rich discussion of the changes that
have--and the changes that haven't--taken place in the People's
Republic, and of the best way of nudging Peking in the right direction.
JCH: "... at least they probably are no longer proud of themselves being
called Communist. In fact many of their economic policies are turning
more or less market-oriented. But politically they still maintain a very
tight control. I often describe the situation in Mainland China as
someone who is driving a car giving you a left-turn signal but actually
has turned right."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1196
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7130
item Program Number S0938,
2206
"The Dark Days of Taiwan"
Guests: Chien, Frederick F.
28 May 1992
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 134 : 22
Transcript: Box/Folder 185 : 4
Program details: By 1965, as Mr. Rusher recounts in his introduction,
"the Republic of China had found its place in the sun: 16 years after
Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalists were driven off the Mainland by Mao
Tse-tung's Communists, the ROC had prospered to the point where it was
removed from the list of developing nations. Then the clouds rolled in:
in 1971 Taiwan was expelled from the United Nations in favor of Peking;
in 1978 the Carter Administration withdrew diplomatic recognition. But
instead of collapsing, Taiwan, as Mr. Buckley puts it, became stronger
and stronger, more and more powerful, more and more attractive." This
show is an often moving account of how Taiwan reached the point where,
as Mr. Chien puts it, "No longer are we talking about mutual defense
treaties; no longer are we talking about political alliances; we are
talking about trade, investment, environmental protection, technological
transfers. In all these fields the Republic of China is a country to be
reckoned with."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1193
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7127
item Program Number S0939,
2207
"One China or Two Chinas?"
Guests: Ma, Ying-jeou.
28 May 1992
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 134 : 23
Transcript: Box/Folder 185 : 4
Program details: It can be hard for Westerners to grasp the official ROC
position on "the China question," but Mr. Ma explains it compellingly:
"There is only one China, but China has been divided into two areas, the
Taiwan area and the Mainland area, and there are two political entities
controlling respectively the two areas." Sometimes there are language
difficulties and Mr. Ma doesn't quite seem to grasp the question he was
asked, but mostly this is a fine exploration of the political and
economic possibilities ahead, looking towards the time when, as Mr.
Rusher phrases it, "Deng Xiaoping is dead, the other older leaders of
the Long March are dead, and a new generation has come in, much
softer...and serious change is under way there...." MY: "Well, first of
all we don't think it's very likely that the Chinese Mainland will
deteriorate the way the Soviet Union or Eastern Europe did."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1194
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7128
item Program Number S0940,
2208
"The Premier of the Republic of China Speaks Out"
Guests:
Hau, Pei-tsun. : Hu, Jason Chih-chiang.
28 May 1992
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 135 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 185 : 4
Program details: After forty years of rule by Mainland-born members of
Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang, Taiwan was evolving towards a true
constitutional democracy. Other parties had been allowed to contest the
1990 election, and the Mainland-born Mr. Hau was Premier to the ROC's
first Taiwan-born President, Lee Teng-hui. This is only the second
Firing
Line
in which the guest has used an interpreter (the first having
also been from Taiwan, #S309 with then-Premier Chiang Ching-kuo). The
result is a slower pace than often, but it's well worth it for the view
from this unique vantage point. HP: "Sudden overnight change such as has
taken place in the Soviet Union could not happen in Mainland China ...
because 80 per cent of the population of Mainland China are farmers. For
the past ten years Deng Xiaoping's so-called agricultural village reform
guaranteeing income to each household has been quite successful. It has
allowed ... a great improvement compared to the days of Cultural
Revolution and the People's Commune. But because they are quite cut off
from news of the outside world, basically 80 per cent of the population
... are in a stable situation.... This is a basic difference between the
reforms of Deng Xiaoping and of Gorbachev."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1195
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7129
item Program Number S0941,
2209
"How Vulnerable Are Incumbents?"
Guests: Solarz, Stephen J.
16 September 1992
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 135 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 185 : 5
Program details: The day before this show, Mr. Solarz, who was completing
his 8th term as Representative of New York's 13th district, located in
Brooklyn, had learned that he would not be going back to Congress in
January. Under reapportionment, his district had been redrawn with the
aim of electing a Hispanic; in the event, he found himself running
against five Hispanics. This half-hour starts with the question of
whether only a Hispanic can represent Hispanics, only a Jew Jews, and so
on, but deepens into a general discussion of the theory of
representative government and the way the Executive and Legislative
Branches are supposed to play off each other. WFB: "The late Professor
Willmoore Kendall... in a famous essay called 'The Two Majorities,'
remarks that the role of a Chief Executive is to appeal to certain
Utopian instincts or appetites among people, and the role of Congress is
to apply mechanical brakes." ... SS: "While I disagree with many of his
policies, there is no question that Ronald Reagan was able to
effectively push his program through the Congress. I think part of the
problem we've had in the last four years is that President Bush simply
has not been actively or effectively engaged in the effort to push his
domestic program through the Congress."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1198
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7132
item Program Number S0942,
2210
"An Insider's Look at the Coming Election"
Guests: Shrum,
Robert.
16 September 1992
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 135 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 185 : 5
Program details: A splendid conversation between two old pros, starting
with WFB's question, "What is it about Bill Clinton that makes him a
moderate?" and going on to school choice, taxation, welfare, and much
else. One sample from Mr. Shrum: "If we were going to be dispassionate I
would tell you that what this election reminds me of is the 1980
election. We have a President who has severe economic problems; who
appeared to have a big success in the Middle East, which is now a very
modified success at best....And the Republican tack here is to assault
the character of the Democratic nominee-very similar, I think, to what
was going on with Reagan in 1980 when we were being told that he had an
unnatural affinity for pushing the button and starting a nuclear
war."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1199
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7133
item Program Number S0943,
2211
"Are Liberal Vulnerabilities Now Apparent?"
Guests:
Limbaugh, Rush H.
16 September 1992
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 135 : 4
Transcript: Box/Folder 185 : 5
Program details: Mr. Limbaugh's career was skyrocketing; the radio show
had led to the launching of a television show, and his latest book was a
runaway best seller. This show affords a fascinating look at two utterly
different personalities that have placed themselves in service to,
mostly, the same goals. One sample: WFB: "Style means a lot to me. I'm
waiting for the day when people would be laughed out of the campus who
use the word 'freshperson.' It's an idiotic attempt at hermaphroditic
excess." RL: "It is, but if you oppose it, you're the one laughed at."
WFB: "You oppose it." RL: "Oh, I do. But I'm brave, I'm courageous."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1200
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B001MBTSMM
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7134
item Program Number S0944,
2212
"What Truly Separates the Major Parties?"
Guests: Leo, John.
: Gigot, Paul.
6 October 1992
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 135 : 5
Transcript: Box/Folder 185 : 6
Program details: The parties' national conventions had both been highly
charged, and Mr. Buckley raises the question of what lies beneath the
rhetoric. JL: "I would say that family values is part of the social
issue, and it is an issue that is not gaining any salience in this
campaign, I think because of the excesses of the Republican convention.
Chattering about witchcraft and demonizing homosexuals is not the way to
present this issue, but--" WFB: "It's a good start, isn't it?" JL: "No,
I don't think so. No, I think to have Newt Gingrich jumping up and down
about Woody Allen is not the way to open up the family issue." Mr. Gigot
concurs: "It began to be perceived ... by a lot of people as, 'Anyone
who is a homosexual, for example, is not welcome in our party,' rather
than making it an issue that, say, 'Should you subsidize through the tax
code somehow, or through affirmative-action programs, the homosexual
lifestyle?'" A good-natured and productive conversation that moves from
family values to the abortion debate to the way Democratic convention
delegates were chosen.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1201
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7135
item Program Number S0945,
2213
"Why Are We in a Recession?"
Guests: Galbraith, John
Kenneth, 1908-2006.
6 October 1992
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 135 : 6
Transcript: Box/Folder 185 : 6
Program details: Mr. Buckley and his old friend and adversary
occasionally have such a good time slanging each other that they have to
remind themselves to get back to the recession, but the audience wins
either way. One sample: WFB: "We went longer than at any time in postwar
history without a recession. Now, was this simply the magical
accomplishment of Ronald Reagan, or is your profession learning
something about governing business cycles that we didn't know ten years
ago?" JKG: "That is an important question and I'm not going to attribute
further blame to Ronald Reagan, much as I enjoy doing it. We have
entered into something that is new, dangerously new, and that is a
high-unemployment/low-performance equilibrium. We had that in the 1930s.
This is much less serious than it was then, but the notion that there is
an automatic recovery process is something that we must now
question."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1202
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00TZ8GYOE
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7136
item Program Number S0946,
2214
"The Lawyer Problem"
Guests: Starr, Kenneth. : Glasser, Ira.
: Taggart, John Y.
6 October 1992
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 135 : 7
Transcript: Box/Folder 185 : 6
Program details: A year earlier Vice President Quayle had publicly
complained about the litigiousness of American society, and Mr.
Starr--whose name six years later would, for better or for worse, become
a household word--had undertaken to draw up a program of reforms. He
skillfully makes the case for his proposals, Mr. Glasser equally
skillfully makes the case against, and Messrs. Buckley and Taggart keep
the discussion on course. KS: "The loser should make the winner
whole.... It's a system that is used in all countries except this one.
It was once our system. We strayed away from it in an effort, among
other things, to encourage litigation ..." IG: "If I'm driving a Ford
Pinto and somebody hits me from behind and, because there's a defect,
the car blows up and kills my kid, who's sitting in the back seat, I
want to sue the Ford Motor Company for tort.. .. If I have to
contemplate not only the cost of hiring somebody but, as an ordinary
citizen working with a salary, who's not very well endowed, I have to
worry that if I should lose the suit I have to reimburse them for all
their fancy lawyers, it seems to me that it's a good bet that will
discourage litigation and discourage fairness."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1203
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7137
item Program Number S0947,
2215
"Conservatives Look at the Election"
Guests: O'Sullivan,
John. : Brookhiser, Richard.
4 November 1992
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 135 : 8
Transcript: Box/Folder 185 : 7
Program details: Bill Clinton had just defeated George Bush for the
Presidency of the United States, and, as WFB puts it, "I want to consult
with my colleagues about what happened and what is its meaning, and to
speculate whether America is doomed to hellfire for life everlasting." A
collegial and informative conversation, starting with the tax issue.
Messrs. Brookhiser and O'Sullivan both date the unraveling of the Bush
Administration to the 1990 budget deal--partly because, as Mr.
Brookhiser puts it, "the tax policies that they decided on were bad and
contributed to lengthening the recession"; partly because, as Mr.
O'Sullivan puts it, "you couldn't trust Bush--not for any discreditable
reason of personal character, but because [of] the tax issue ... 'Read
my lips. No new taxes,' as a lot of people have pointed out, is saying,
'Look, this isn't just another politician's promise. I really mean it.'
So when you break that pledge and when you then in addition go on to
say, 'Read my lips'--in other words, 'I'm treating your astonishment,
shock, and disappointment with contempt'--I think at that point he lost
his grip on the character and trust question. He never regained it."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1204
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7138
item Program Number S0948,
2216
"In Search of Anti-Semitism"
Guests: Podhoretz, Norman.
4 November 1992
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 135 : 9
Transcript: Box/Folder 185 : 7
Program details: Mr. Buckley had just published a book called In Search
of Anti-Semitism, prompted by several incidents, including a scurrilous
essay in The Nation by Gore Vidal--of which Mr. Podhoretz and his wife,
Midge Decter, were the primary victims--and certain remarks by Pat
Buchanan on the Israel lobby in the United States. Messrs. Buckley and
Podhoretz had been debating publicly and privately the issue of at what
point statements (e.g., Mr. Buchanan's) go over a line beyond which you
can't, as Mr. Podhoretz phrases it, reasonably say, "It doesn't matter
that much. It's not--as compared with other things--that serious." In
today's discussion these two old friends offer a detail-filled
exploration of the line between "iconoclasm" and hurtful prejudice,
although the conversation bogs down occasionally in "you'll remember I
wrote to you" recollections.
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1205
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7139
item Program Number S0949,
2217
"Reviving the American Dream"
Guests: Rivlin, Alice M.
4 November 1992
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 135 : 10
Transcript: Box/Folder 185 : 7
Program details: Mrs. Rivlin's book had startled the public-policy
community by recommending that the Federal Government withdraw from
education, housing, highways, and several other areas; however, it also
proposed having the Feds take over all health-care funding. This
vigorous discussion helps us focus on just what we mean by "federalism"
at the end of the 20th century. WFB: "As an economist, are you worried
about the increasing size of the wedge ... which is the difference
between what it costs me to hire you and what you get? ... It costs an
employer 35 per cent more than its employees get because of Social
Security, medical insurance, sick leave, etc.--and that, of course,
decreases our competitive mobility." AR: "I think one of the real
competitive problems is the high cost of health care in the United
States." WFB: "Sure. GM pays more for health care than for steel." AR:
"That's one of the reasons why I think we have to face up to this
health-cost problem and get it down. It's not just that people are
hurting, it's that our economy is hurting."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1206
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7140
item Program Number S0950,
2218
"Was Bush Reagan's Successor?"
Guests: Noonan, Peggy, 1950-
30 November 1992
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 135 : 11
Transcript: Box/Folder 185 : 8
Program details: To rephrase the title question, "Did George Bush
deliberately distance himself from Ronald Reagan, and, if so, is that
what cost him the 1992 election?" Miss Noonan had written celebrated
speeches for both men, including the line "Read my lips"--brilliantly
effective at the time, devastating in retrospect after President Bush
broke his no-new-taxes pledge. This half-hour offers a stimulating
conversation on the modes and substance of presidential public
appearances. PN: "I sometimes thought that [Mr. Bush] might have been
somewhat traumatized ... He saw in the Reagan White House a great deal
of attention being paid by Mike Deaver and Jim Baker to--almost the
aesthetics of an event: to the balloons falling; to the Dover Cliffs; to
where the President will stand. I think Reagan could look at all that
stuff and think: 'Well, here we are communicating, and this is how you
do it in a sophisticated world.' George Bush would look and think: 'This
isn't genuine, it isn't real, I don't like it, and I'm recoiling from
it.' "
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1207
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7141
item Program Number S0951,
2219
"A Conservative Quarrel"
Guests: Eastland, Terry. : Lind,
Michael.
30 November 1992
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 135 : 12
Transcript: Box/Folder 185 : 8
Program details: As WFB recounts, "conservatives' esteem for the
different branches of government has gone up and down over the decades;
at present, none of the three looked especially appealing. Mr.
Eastland's book, subtitled The Case for the Strong Presidency, is the
springboard for a discussion which, although polite in tone, goes in
substance beyond the level of quarrel" to total war. ML: "I find it
rather disturbing that in recent decades conservatives, because they
happen to control one branch of government, the Executive Branch,
started recycling ... the anti-legislative arguments which the
authoritarians in the Weimar Republic, for example, rehearsed. Their
argument was: The Reichstag is nothing but a collection of special
interests, it's completely corrupt, whereas the President, Hindenburg,
or the Chancellor somehow stands above parties ..."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1208
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7142
item Program Number S0952,
2220
"What's Wrong with the Deficit? Part I"
Guests: Crook,
Clive. : Davidson, James Dale. : Eisner, Robert. : Kuttner, Robert. :
Levy, David A.
8 December 1992
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 101 : 8
Publicity File: Box/Folder 135 : 13
Transcript: Box/Folder 185 : 9
Program details: A new departure for
Firing
Line
: after the formal
debate, an informal free-for-all. Although there are times when everyone
is talking at once, connoisseurs of public speech will enjoy seeing the
different formats back to back with (mostly) the same participants. And
there proves to be plenty more to say--e.g., Mr. Eisner's lucid
explanation of a most illucid subject, the federal deficit: "The federal
deficit--and by the way, it is not a 'national' deficit; it's a deficit
of the Federal Government--is of course the difference between its
spending and what it takes in in taxes--what it takes in in revenues, I
should say, which is taxes. The problem is that the Federal Government
keeps its accounts in away which resembles that of no private business,
state or local government, or foreign government. It does not separate
out capital expenditures from current expenditures.... It's as if a
person said, 'I'm going into terrible deficit because I am buying a
house.' "
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1211
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00G709ES6
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7145
item Program Number S0953,
2221
"What's Wrong with the Deficit? Part II"
Guests: Crook,
Clive. : Davidson, James Dale. : Eisner, Robert. : Kuttner, Robert. :
Levy, David A.
8 December 1992
Scope and Contents note
Background File: Box/Folder 101 : 8
Publicity File: Box/Folder 135 : 13
Transcript: Box/Folder 185 : 9
Program details: A new departure for
Firing
Line
: after the formal
debate, an informal free-for-all. Although there are times when everyone
is talking at once, connoisseurs of public speech will enjoy seeing the
different formats back to back with (mostly) the same participants. And
there proves to be plenty more to say--e.g., Mr. Eisner's lucid
explanation of a most illucid subject, the federal deficit: "The federal
deficit--and by the way, it is not a 'national' deficit; it's a deficit
of the Federal Government--is of course the difference between its
spending and what it takes in in taxes--what it takes in in revenues, I
should say, which is taxes. The problem is that the Federal Government
keeps its accounts in away which resembles that of no private business,
state or local government, or foreign government. It does not separate
out capital expenditures from current expenditures.... It's as if a
person said, 'I'm going into terrible deficit because I am buying a
house.' "
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1212
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00G709UYE
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7146
item Program Number S0954,
2222
"Mortimer Adler Sums Up"
Guests: Adler, Mortimer Jerome,
1902-2001.
30 November 1992
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 134 : 14
Transcript: Box/Folder 185 : 9
Program details: Some familiar topics are covered in this rich
conversation with a favorite
Firing
Line
guest-on the importance of
philosophy to the ordinary person; on teaching as "a cooperative
art"-but also something quite new: MA: "When one prays to God one
believes in God as one does not believe if one affirms God's existence
as a philosopher. So one has gone beyond philosophy. The leap of faith
is not from less sure grounds for the affirmation of God's existence to
more sure grounds, but it's from the affirmation of God's existence to
belief in God as benevolent, caring, just, and merciful." WFB: "Your
discovery of God was in the nature of an epiphany rather than in the
nature of philosophical deduction." MA: "Absolutely." WFB: "But having
had that epiphany you then proceeded-I know from a knowledge of your
books-to make certain deductions which in your judgment directed thought
about God in a fruitful channel, but not necessarily led to His
discovery." MA: "No. The leap of faith involves going beyond argument to
what cannot be proved, and the sign that one has made that leap is
asking God for help." (Note: Mr. Adler would become a Catholic in 1999,
at the age of 96.)
Availability: Special order, please contact the Archives. Hoover
Identifier number: 80040.1209
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7143
item Program Number S0955,
2223
"The Two Futures of the World"
Guests: Walters, Vernon A.
12 January 1993
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 135 : 15
Program details: This often grim discussion of post-Soviet Russia--where
a sharply deteriorating economy had led the Congress of People's
Deputies to order President Yeltsin to dismiss Prime Minister Gaidar--is
enlivened by both men's gift for the vivid illustration. VW: "Let me
just tell you an unpleasant joke that is circulating in Moscow. A man
gets up in the morning, flips on the light, and the light comes on. He
says, 'Gee, the light's back.' He goes into the kitchen, turns on the
water, and there's water. He says, "The water's back on.' Then he says,
'I bet the gas is working.' He turns on the gas and the gas is working.
He says to his wife, 'To the barricades! The Communists are back!"...
WFB: "I hate to use the word 'conservatives' in this context, but--" VW:
"I refuse to use it in this context. I refuse to call Boris Yeltsin's
opponents conservatives. They are extreme, leftist, Stalinist
Communists."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1213
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7147
item Program Number S0956,
2224
"President Clinton's Religious Left"
Guests: O'Sullivan,
John. : Sobran, Joseph.
26 January 1993
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 135 : 16
Program details: Mr. Buckley starts out by unpacking the title of this
show: "In the New York Times appearing a day before the inaugural of Mr.
Clinton and under the by-line of two liberals, Maureen Dowd and Frank
Rich, we read, 'It's more demanding than special interests. It's more
pious than political correctness. It's more evangelical than any rainbow
coalition. The painfully sincere tone and rigidly mandated diversity of
this week's inaugural events constitute a frightening new movement in
American politics; the Religious Left.' " Mr. O'Sullivan explains this
development by reference to an argument by Tom Bethell that "when people
stopped believing in God or they lost an old-fashioned secular faith
like patriotism or nationalism, there was a vacuum, and people can't
stand that kind of philosophical vacuum." Is it, asks Mr. Buckley, " 'Do
your own thing,' or is it 'Be your potty little self? Because after all,
those come from two distinctly different patrons--Woodstock and
Chesterton." Mr. Sobran: "No, this is much more 'Do your own thing.' But
the thing you do must be in some kind of conformity with the things that
other like-minded people are doing too."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1217
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7151
item Program Number S0957,
2225
"In What Direction Should Clinton Move?"
Guests: Green, Mark
J.
26 January 1993
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 135 : 17
Program details: Mr. Green's book, according to his host, devotes a
chapter of modest size to every problem in America with the possible
exception of "original sin." Mr. Buckley elects to start with voter
registration, and the conversation quickly deepens into an
exploration--marked by some breath-taking differences of perspective--of
the very nature of democracy. WFB: "Now, in our century we have seen the
vote given to women. Good. We have seen the vote given to blacks. Good.
We have seen votes given to illiterates. Bad...." MG: "Why in the world
shouldn't illiterates vote? Just because they're not literate or
intelligent by your standard? They have interests that are as important
to them as yours are to you...." WFB: "I put it once this way ... It was
established ... that 20 per cent of the American people had never heard
of the United Nations. Now, it seems to me, if we could actually locate
these 20 per cent of the people, we ought to say to them: Would you mind
not voting until you hear about the United Nations, because it's really
quite an important factor in your knowledge?"
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1218
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7152
item Program Number S0958,
2226
"Do We Need a Federal Community Property Act?"
Guests:
Wenig, Mary Moers. : White, Shelby.
12 January 1993
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 135 : 18
Transcript: Box/Folder 185 : 10
Program details: Even though two-thirds of all recent first marriages,
according to Ms. White, will end in divorce, and 80 per cent of married
women will eventually be widowed, most women do not know the law
regarding their and their husband's money. This proves to be a lucid and
instructive discussion of an underexplored problem. MMW: "Do you read
Ann Landers? Ann Landers provides wonderful insight into American
culture, and Ann Landers now and again will print a letter which shows
that many wives believe that they live in a state of community
property--that is, they do believe that everything that's acquired in
the course of the marriage really does belong to the two of them. And in
fact, they're wrong, unless they're part of the quarter of the country
that lives in the 10 community-property jurisdictions."
Availability: On amazon.com. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1214
DVD Link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004OEIOP6
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7148
item Program Number S0959,
2227
"Under Clinton: A Hotter War on Drugs?"
Guests: Morgan, John
P.
12 January 1993
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 135 : 19
Transcript: Box/Folder 185 : 10
Program details: President-elect Clinton had promised to renew and indeed
step up the War on Drugs, and Dr. Morgan is not impressed: "I think the
drug war worked in this fashion: by practically destroying a generation
of young black men we may have frightened a few white middle-class
youths away from using drugs." He is deeply informative on matters such
as the way addiction works, the historical relationship between drug
laws and actual drug use, and the relationship between marijuana and
other drugs. "If I believed that tomorrow legalization would ensue and
the amount of drug use would quadruple, sextuple, I would say no, we
can't risk that. But I see no evidence that will occur."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1215
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7149
item Program Number S0960,
2228
"Will It Be Economic War with Japan?"
Guests: Recchia,
Richard.
26 January 1993
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 135 : 20
Transcript: Box/Folder 185 : 11
Program details: The Clinton Administration had declared war on Japanese
minivans, proposing to increase tariffs on them tenfold. Mr. Recchia--a
Detroiter whose experience in the auto industry includes stints with
Chrysler, Fiat, and Ferrari--takes us on a brisk tour of the worldwide
economic scene from the automaker's perspective. WFB: "Why doesn't the
market provide cheaper new cars? ..." RR: "In order for you to provide a
low-priced car, it really has to have tremendous volume and worldwide
appeal. As long as you restrict the number of cars that are imported
into the United States, none of the worldwide producers like Toyota are
going to spend billions of dollars to produce a low-priced car... So
Toyota and all the other Japanese companies moved the type of products
that they import into the United States to the higher-priced models.
That took the pressure off the domestic industry to answer with a
lower-priced car."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1216
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7150
item Program Number S0961,
2229
"Should Women Be in Combat?"
Guests: Donnelly, Elaine. :
Horowitz, David, 1939- : O'Beirne, Kate Walsh. : Ripley, John. : Vaught,
Wilma. : Glasser, Ira. : Wilson, Heather A.
18 March 1993
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 135 : 21
Transcript: Box/Folder 185 : 11
Program details: The second installment of a new
Firing
Line
format:
after the formal debate, an informal free-for-all. There's plenty more
to say, and some different matchups bring out different points. WV:
"Where there's a problem with respect to sexual issues, there's usually
a lack of leadership." ED: "So you're saying that leadership is the
answer to the relationships that men and women have? You're going to
repeal the laws of nature with leadership?" ... WFB: "I'm trying to
resist the notion that we should restructure an entire tradition any
time it's possible to find an exceptional case ... You can find a
15-year-old who knows more about civic history than a lot of people who
vote, and I'm sure you can find one woman, two women, a hundred women
who are classier fliers than the average fighter pilot. But this
doesn't, in my judgment, suggest that either the Constitution should be
changed, or the service regulations, in order to expedite that
exception."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1220
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7154
item Program Number S0962,
2230
"Women's Right to Fight?"
Guests: Donnelly, Elaine. :
Horowitz, David, 1939- : O'Beirne, Kate Walsh. : Ripley, John. : Vaught,
Wilma. : Glasser, Ira. : Wilson, Heather A.
18 March 1993
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 135 : 22
Transcript: Box/Folder 185 : 11
Program details: The second installment of a new
Firing
Line
format:
after the formal debate, an informal free-for-all. There's plenty more
to say, and some different matchups bring out different points. WV:
"Where there's a problem with respect to sexual issues, there's usually
a lack of leadership." ED: "So you're saying that leadership is the
answer to the relationships that men and women have? You're going to
repeal the laws of nature with leadership?" ... WFB: "I'm trying to
resist the notion that we should restructure an entire tradition any
time it's possible to find an exceptional case ... You can find a
15-year-old who knows more about civic history than a lot of people who
vote, and I'm sure you can find one woman, two women, a hundred women
who are classier fliers than the average fighter pilot. But this
doesn't, in my judgment, suggest that either the Constitution should be
changed, or the service regulations, in order to expedite that
exception."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1221
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7155
item Program Number S0963,
2231
"Are We Demobilizing Too Fast?"
Guests: O'Keefe, Sean.
30 March 1993
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 136 : 1
Transcript: Box/Folder 185 : 12
Program details: A year earlier, Les Aspin, Chairman of the House Armed
Services Committee, had attacked the Bush Administration for proposing
an across-the-board reduction of the military, rather than a thorough
post-Cold War rethinking. A few weeks before this show, Les Aspin,
Secretary of Defense in the Clinton Administration, had ordered the
Joint Chiefs of Staff to come up with $10 billion in cuts within one
week. SO: "In many ways in [Secretary Aspin's] own terms it is a
tread-water budget and program that has no fundamental difference in
strategy, no different focus than what he inherited, but at the same
time he intends to spend less on it. And every time we've done that,
historically, we've lived to regret that."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1222
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7156
item Program Number S0964,
2232
"Are We Overmedicating?"
Guests: Wennberg, John E.
30 March 1993
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 136 : 2
Transcript: Box/Folder 185 : 12
Program details: A fascinating discussion that addresses its audience
both as potential patients and as citizens at the beginning of the
Clintons' push for a nationalized health-care system. What Dr. Wennberg
studies is not so much "overmedication" as the appropriateness of one
treatment as against another, and the extrinsic factors in prescription:
"The chances of having bypass surgery if you live in New Haven are about
twice that if you live in Boston, whereas about 75 per cent more people
with arthritis of the hip end up with surgery if they live in Boston
than if they live in New Haven"--just because of the biases of the
respective teaching hospitals. JEW: "Do you prefer the risks and
benefits associated, say, with surgery compared to the risks and
benefits associated with drugs? They're very different, and the
differences are subjective, and it requires the involvement, the
engagement of the patient in the decision process--which essentially
flips Western medicine upside down in terms of the traditional roles
between the doctor and the patient."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1223
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7157
item Program Number S0965,
2233
"One Woman's View of the GOP"
Guests: Richardson, Heather
30 March 1993
Scope and Contents note
Publicity File: Box/Folder 136 : 3
Transcript: Box/Folder 185 : 12
Program details: A bracing session with a rising star of the conservative
movement. WFB: "It fascinated me that you should say that the dirty
little secret of American politics is that the Democrat would beat the
Republican in a local election two out of three times." HR: "In any open
seat. That's my understanding of how the numbers run." WFB: "I wonder
why that should be so." HR: "I think primarily it's because Republicans
are busy out earning money and pursuing private-sector careers, whereas
the Democrats view government as a legitimate end in and of itself, so
they make careers of politics." "I spent some time living in public
housing and a lot of time going around to inner-city public schools.
Most of the lower-income blacks that I met and talked with agree
wholeheartedly with Republican principles, but they've rarely met a
Republican who bothered to come and talk to them or demonstrate any kind
of an interest."
Availability: Not available. Hoover Identifier number: 80040.1224
Digital Collections Link:
http://digitalcollections.hoover.org/objects/7158