Books
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “McCarthyism: Past, Present, Future”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on May 16, 1966, uploaded to YouTube on June 2, 2010.Guest: Leo Cherne Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Playboy Philosophy”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 12, 1966, uploaded to YouTube on May 10, 2010.Guest: Hugh Hefner Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Are Public Schools Necessary?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 12, 1966, uploaded to YouTube on January 24, 2014.Guest: Paul Goodman Summary: Buckley begins by saying of guest Paul Goodman, “Where he stands, ideologically, in conventional terms, it is hard to say. Probably no one would wish… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Academic Freedom and Berkeley”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 16, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on July 15, 2010.Guest: Harold Taylor Summary: We eventually get to Berkeley–where the Free Speech Movement and associated radicalisms had completely broken down academic discipline–but before… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Role of the Advocate”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 19, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on July 15, 2010.Guest: F. Lee Bailey Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Future of the UN”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 19, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on July 15, 2010.Guest: Francis T. P. Plimpton Summary: The United Nations had been energetically debating the right of Rhodesia to declare independence unilaterally and the right of South Africa to… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “LBJ and Vietnam”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on March 6, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on July 15, 2010.Guests: Vance Hartke and Dickerman Williams Summary: As Buckley introduces him, Senator Hartke “is perhaps best known, at this point in his career, as one of the leaders in the… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Politics and the Press”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on March 7, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on July 15, 2010.Guest: Tom Wicker Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Black Power”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on March 7, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on July 15, 2010.Guest: Nat Hentoff Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Is There a Role for a Third Party?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on March 8, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on July 29, 2010.Guest: Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr. Summary: 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,… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Do We Have Anything Left to Fear from Socialism?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on March 9, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on February 23, 2011.Guest: Sidney Hook Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The World of LSD”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on April 10, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on July 29, 2010.Guest: Timothy Leary Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Censorship and the Production Code”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on April 10, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on August 13, 2010.Guest: Otto Preminger Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Regular in Politics”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on May 1, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on August 13, 2010.Guest: Carmine De Sapio Summary: De Sapio was the Tammany Hall “boss” defeated in 1963 by a young “reform Democrat” named Edward Koch. Buckley attempts in this hour… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “How to Protest”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on May 1, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on August 13, 2010.Guest: Dwight Macdonald Summary: Mr. Macdonald had recently been an organizer of the “Step Out Movement”–that is, to step out of a hall where Vice President Humphrey would… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Vietnam Protests”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on June 26, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on August 13, 2010.Guest: Benjamin Spock Summary: Dr. Spock, Mr. Buckley begins by recounting, has said that the threat to our children from “nuclear annihilation” is “a thousand times… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Decline of Anti-Communism”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on June 29, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on August 13, 2010.Guest: Fred Schwarz Summary: Buckley 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Is It Possible to Be a Good Governor?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 6, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on August 13, 2010.Guest: Ronald Reagan Summary: 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,”… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Is the World Funny?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 7, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on May 7, 2010.Guest: Groucho Marx Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “A Foreign Policy for the GOP”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 11, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on May 7, 2010.Guest: Charles Percy Summary: 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]… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Future of the GOP”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 14, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on August 13, 2010.Guest: Richard Nixon Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Medicare”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 25, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on May 7, 2010.Guest: Wilbur Cohen Summary: Mr. Cohen’s public career had begun, as Buckley reminds us, in the Roosevelt Administration, where he was research head of the Committee on Economic… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Struggle for Democracy in Brazil”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on November 13, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on February 23, 2011.Guest:Brazilian statesman Carlos Lacerda Summary: Mr. Lacerda had been known for decades as a vigorous opponent of most of Brazil’s political class. Today’s discussion focuses… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Mobilizing the Poor”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on December 11, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on March 28, 2011.Guest: Saul David Alinsky Summary: The common aim of all Mr. Alinsky’s organizations is to mobilize the poor–mobilize them by whatever means comes to hand (marches,… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Was Goldwater a Mistake?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on December 14, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on April 7, 2011.Guest: Mark Hatfield Summary: Senator Hatfield, from the liberal side of the Republican Party, positions himself perfectly in his opening answer: Goldwater wasn’t a mistake in a… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Wallace Crusade”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 24, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on August 13, 2010.Guest: George Wallace Summary: Mr. Buckley had sharply criticized Mr. Wallace in print, both for his once-adamant attachment to segregation and for his New Deal statism, and Mr. Wallace… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Philby and Treason”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on February 26, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on August 13, 2010.Guest: Rebecca West Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Culture of the Left”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on February 26, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on August 13, 2010.Guest: Malcolm Muggeridge Summary: “He calls himself,” says Buckley in his introduction to the first of Muggeridge’s several appearances on Firing Line, “a man of… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Avant Garde”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on May 7, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on August 15, 2010.Guest: Allen Ginsberg Summary: Some installments of Firing Line would not lose much if the video faded out, but this one is an exception: Ginsberg’s hair (as Buckley puts it,… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Armies of the Night”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on May 28, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on August 15, 2010.Guest: Norman Mailer Summary: This surprisingly genial conversation starts with the subject of Norman Mailer–as most conversations with Norman Mailer do–and goes on from there.… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Rib Uncaged: Women and the Church”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on June 24, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on February 11, 2011.Guests: Rosemary Radford Ruether, Sidney Cornelia Callahan Summary: This show proves to be less of a bare-knuckle battle and more of a conversation than one might have expected, ranging… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Socialist Workers’ Party and American Politics”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 10, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on February 11, 2011.Guests: Fred Halstead, Paul Boutelle Summary: WFB starts off by reminding us that the Socialist Workers are “the principal political heirs of Leon Trotsky in this country,” and… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Hippies”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 3, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on August 15, 2010.Guests: Jack Kerouac; Ed Sanders; Lewis Yablonsky Summary: Hold onto your hat for this free-for-all among four men who aren’t simply coming from different… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Money Troubles”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 9, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on February 9, 2011.Guests: Joseph Barr, Arthur Edward Burns Summary: The federal deficits were becoming a matter of serious worry, and not only to Republicans. Although Mr. Barr is a member of the Johnson… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Cold War”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 23, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on February 9, 2011.Guest: Zbigniew Brzezinski Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Politics and Show Biz”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on October 7, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on February 9, 2011.Guest: Orson Bean Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Republic of New Africa”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on November 18, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on May 7, 2010.Guest: Milton Henry Summary: “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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Muhammad Ali and the Negro Movement”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on December 12, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on August 16, 2010.Guest: Muhammad Ali Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Radical Chic”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on December 17, 1970, uploaded to YouTube on January 13, 2014.Guest: Tom Wolfe Summary: Tom Wolfe–one of the leading exponents of New Journalism–was now, with his white suits and his dramatic manner, becoming a prominent public figure. “Radical… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “What to Do about the Post Office”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on April 23, 1973, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Ernest F. Hollings Summary: The spirited conversation with Senator Ernest F. Hollings–who strongly opposed the way the quasi-privatization of the Post Office had been… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Proposals for Welfare”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on April 23, 1973, uploaded to YouTube on December 19, 2012.Guest: Jimmy Carter Summary: This show was the first nationally televised appearance of Jimmy Carter. In this encounter, Governor Carter sounds quite conservative in talking about welfare… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “What Now for the Ghetto?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 24, 1973, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Thomas Bradley Summary: Thomas Bradley was the first black mayor of a predominantly white major city; previously he had been a Los Angeles policeman, and sat on the City Council.… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Heredity, IQ, and Social Issues”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on October 16, 1973, uploaded to YouTube on March 25, 2011.Guest: Thomas G. Bever, Richard J. Herrnstein Summary: The second show in the series on human behavior, this one on the explosive subject of heritability of IQ. “Explosive,”… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Tax Reform”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 21, 1974, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Stanley S. Surrey Summary: A thoughtful discussion of the federal tax system between Mr. Buckley and Stanley S. Surrey; both men have spent much of their professional lives studying… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Revisionist Historians”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 23, 1974, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Dean Rusk Summary: Former Secretary of State Dean Rusk, reviled at the time by the elite press and revisionist historians, was exiled, as his Ivy League friends saw it, to the wilds… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Should the United States Disarm?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on May 10, 1974, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Les Aspin Summary: Rep. Les Aspin had been, as Mr. Buckley reminds us, “one of Secretary McNamara’s whiz kids in the Pentagon,” and was now one of the… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Amnesty, with Ramsey Clark”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on June 3, 1974, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Ramsey Clark Summary: Another go at the debate over whether to offer unconditional amnesty to draft dodgers and deserters, in a high-energy exchange between our guest, Ramsey Clark,… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Future of the GOP, with Gerald R. Ford”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on June 28, 1974, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Gerald R. Ford Summary: The third Firing Line on “The Future of the GOP,” Mr. Buckley attempts to engage Vice President Gerald Ford on the question whether President… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Limits of Journalistic Investigation”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 9, 1974, uploaded to YouTube on December 19, 2012.Guests: Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein Summary: In a show taped while Watergate was still underway, Woodward and Bernstein are candid– as they were in their book–in admitting that… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Democratic Culture”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on November 15, 1974, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Leslie Fiedler Summary: Democracy per se doesn’t get into this rich discussion of culture much, with the much-admired and much-criticized American critic, Leslie Fiedler, but… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Intellectual’s Responsibilities in a Totalitarian Age”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on February 5, 1975, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Stephen Spender Summary: Stephen Spender had spent the Thirties, as Mr. Buckley puts it, “dancing along the precipice, attempting at once literary integrity and Communist… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Integrity and Journalism”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on March 10, 1975, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guests: Tom Wicker, William Safire Summary: This conversation among a card-carrying liberal, a card-carrying conservative, and a Republican moderate winds up centering on the revolt at… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Feminism”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on March 31, 1975, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Clare Boothe Luce Summary: The peg for this show was the Equal Rights Amendment, at the time stalled in the state legislatures. But the discussion between these two old friends soon… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Tom Wolfe and The Painted Word”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 9, 1975, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Tom Wolfe Summary: “The Painted Word” had angered whichever portions of the intelligentsia had not previously been hostile to Tom Wolfe. As Mr. Buckley points out, the… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Ten Years of Firing Line”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 20, 1976, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guests: Richard Howard Stafford Crossman, Germaine Greer, Harold Macmillan, Clare Boothe Luce, Mary McCarthy, Dame Rebecca West, Norman Mailer, Stephen Spender, Hugh Kenner, George S.… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “G. Gordon Liddy: An Enigma”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 11, 1978, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: G. Gordon Liddy Summary: 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. Amongst… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Mission of the Pope”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 6, 1978, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Malachi Martin Summary: The new pope being discussed on this show is not John Paul II but his predecessor, John Paul I, who would die a month after his election. Nonetheless, Malachi… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Television Machine”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on June 29, 1979, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guests: Dorothy Fuldheim, Ben Stein Summary: Is the most remarkable thing about present-day television, as Ben Stein maintains in this vivid exchange, its pervasive left-wing, anti-business… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Human Rights in Vietnam”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 6, 1979, uploaded to YouTube on November 11, 2011.Guests: Joan Baez and Ginetta Sagan Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Crime and Punishment: Gary Gilmore”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on October 11, 1979, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Norman Mailer Summary: A low-key and thoughtful appearance by the usually boisterous author of “The Executioner’s Song.” This new novel–on the life and death… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Abscam Controversy”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 5, 1981, uploaded to YouTube on May 7, 2010.Guest: Michael Tigar Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Are We Menaced by Moral Majority?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 22, 1981, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guest: Jerry Falwell Summary: Whether or not one agrees with him on specific moral or theological points, Reverend Jerry Falwell ably defends his organization against accusations–by,… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Do We Need a Foreign Policy Doctrine?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 15, 1981, uploaded to YouTube on May 7, 2010.Guest: George Ball Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Question of Namibia”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 17, 1981, uploaded to YouTube on May 7, 2010.Guests: Peter Kalangula; Aryeh Neier Summary: Father Kalangula’s organization in South West Africa (a/k/a Namibia) had won an internationally observed democratic election against the… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Is Modern Architecture Disastrous?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on October 1, 1981, uploaded to YouTube on May 2, 2011.Guest: Tom Wolfe Summary: A rip-roaring attack on the shibboleths of modern architecture–and with a Firing Line rarity, visual aids (illustrations from Wolfe’s book). Wolfe:… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Economy and the Blacks”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 13, 1982, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guest: Jesse Jackson Summary: Operation PUSH was holding its annual convention, on the theme “Black America: An Economic Common Market,” emphasizing the “means of using… More
A Firing Line Debate: Resolved: That Reducing the National Deficit in the Next Four Years Is a Top Priority
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on December 8, 1992, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guests: James Dale Davidson, Warren B. Rudman, Clive Crook, Lester C. Thurow, Robert Kuttner, Robert Eisner, David A. Levy Summary: Ronald Reagan had warned of “social, cultural,… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Confidence and Betrayal”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on February 22, 1983, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guests: Florence Cohalan, Harriet F. Pilpel, Norman R. Tamarkin Summary: A profound discussion among, as Mr. Buckley puts it, “a very thoughtful lawyer, a very thoughtful doctor, and… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Election: A View from New York”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on August 31, 1984, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guest: Ed Koch Summary: Mayor Ed Koch surveys the political scene as the dust settles from the national conventions. One sample: “I drive people in my own party crazy-angry with me,… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Where Is the GOP Headed?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 11, 1985, uploaded to YouTube on November 11, 2011.Guests: Newt Gingrich and Bill Green Summary: Mr. Gingrich was already a leader of the conservative wing of the GOP, and Mr. Green was prominent among the remnant of “Rockefeller… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Bill Buckley and Firing Line Get Roasted”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 14, 1986, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guests: Jeff Greenfield, John Kenneth Galbraith, Harriet F. Pilpel, Henry Kissinger, Eugene J. McCarthy, Tom Wolfe Summary: This interrogation of Mr. Buckley by favorite guests John Kenneth… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Firing Line 1966-1986: A Potpourri of Persuaders”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 14, 1986, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guests: Robert Shrum, Edward F. Prichard, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, Zbigniew Brzezinski, George S. McGovern, Margaret Heckler, Phyllis Schlafly, Allard K. Lowenstein, Henry Kissinger, Tom… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Terrorism: Viewed from Abroad”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on May 30, 1986, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guests: Benjamin Netanyahu, Claude de Kemoularia Summary: What is terrorism? Can we accept Benjamin Netanyahu’s definition–“the systematic and deliberate attack, the… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “For Central America: A Radical Prescription”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on October 2, 1986, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guest: Manuel F. Ayau Summary: Francisco Marroquin University had been a tremendous success. Imagine: a university, teaching everything from literature to engineering to biology, but also… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Textbook Controversy in Tennessee”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on October 10, 1986, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guests: Michael P. Farris, Timothy B. Dyk, Vicki Frost, Faye P. Taylor Summary: An illuminating look at a deep division within our society. The case being referred to as “Scopes… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Human Rights, Foreign Policy, and Ronald Reagan”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on October 16, 1986, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guest: Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. Summary: An amazingly good-tempered show on the Reagan Administration’s policies, human rights, and foreign policy given that there was a time when… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Three Young Latin Americans Wish to Be Heard”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on October 1, 1987, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guests: Juan F. Ramirez Arguello, Antonio Rivera, J.T. Gonzales Brito, Christopher Hitchens Summary: Our three guests are engaging but not completely fluent in English. The result is some… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Dirty Rock Lyrics”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on June 9, 1988, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guests: Tipper Gore, Doug Simmons Summary: This inaugural episode of Firing Line in a half hour format features a discussion of censorship, freedom of expression and the American music… More
A Firing Line Debate: Resolved: That Free-Market Competitiveness Is Best for America
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 13, 1989, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guests: Jack Kemp, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, Newt Gingrich, George S. McGovern, Gary Hart, Pat Schroeder, John Kenneth Galbraith Summary: In his introduction for this debate on the free market,… More
On the Firing Line: The Public Life of Our Public Figures
– Random House, 1989.Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “New Insights on the Russian Revolution”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on December 13, 1990, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guest: Richard Pipes Summary: A gripping look at the Soviet Union, with Richard Pipes, a man who has spent all his adult life studying it. Pipes: “There are signs that the right-wing… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Why Are We in a Recession?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on October 6, 1992, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guest: John Kenneth Galbraith Summary: Mr. Buckley and his old friend and adversary, John Kenneth Galbraith, occasionally have such a good time slanging each other that they have to remind… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Threat of Nuclear Destruction – New Voices”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on August 16, 1993, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guests: Henry Kissinger, Douglas Feith, Russell Seitz, Henry Sokolski Summary: An extraordinarily rich trio of shows on various aspects of nuclear proliferation, with insights into the… More
A Firing Line Debate: Resolved: That the Death Penalty Is a Good Thing
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on May 24, 1994, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guests: Ed Koch, Walter Berns, Susan Boleyn, Ira Glasser, Leon Botstein, Stephen B. Bright, Bryan Stevenson Summary: Many of the arguments regarding the death penalty are familiar: the… More
A Firing Line Debate: Resolved: That the Women’s Movement Has Been Disastrous
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on December 7, 1994, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guests: Betty Friedan, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Arianna Huffington, Helen Alvare, Karen S. Burstein, Camille Paglia, Kathryn Kolbert Summary: Anyone who thinks “the women’s… More
A Firing Line Debate: Resolved: That All Immigration Should Be Drastically Reduced
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on June 6, 1995, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guests: Peter Brimelow, Daniel Stein, Arianna Huffington, Leon Botstein, Ed Koch, Frank Sharry, Ira Glasser Summary: Moderator Michael Kinsley starts out by drawing attention to the text of… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Have We Learned Anything about the Good Society?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 11, 1996, uploaded to YouTube on March 4, 2015.Guest: John Kenneth Galbraith Summary: Another encounter between old friends and adversaries William F. Buckley Jr. and John Kenneth Galbraith. This time round they discuss… More
A Firing Line Debate: Resolved: That Social Security Should Be Privatized
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on December 4, 1996, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guests: Pierre S. Du Pont, John C. Goodman, Peter G. Peterson, Henry J. Aaron, Robert Eisner, Robert Kuttner, Theodore R. Marmor Summary: Is the Social Security system a Ponzi scheme that… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Problems of Gay Life”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 23, 1997, uploaded to YouTube on March 4, 2015.Guest: David Brudnoy, Arianna Huffington Summary: David Brudnoy, a veteran libertarian journalist (and frequent contributor to “National Review”), is also a homosexual who, it… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Did Camelot Have a Dark Side?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 13, 1998, uploaded to YouTube on March 4, 2015.Guests: Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Thomas C. Reeves Summary: Seymour Hersh had just published “The Dark Side of Camelot,” about John F. Kennedy’s private life. On this… More
A Firing Line Debate: Resolved: That the ACLU Is Full of Baloney
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on May 4, 1998, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guests: Lino A. Graglia, William A. Donohue, Robert H. Knight, Ira Glasser, Nadine Strossen, Leon Botstein, Barry W. Lynn Summary: Nadine Strossen starts by stating that, “The… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Looking Back on Bosnia”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 9, 1998, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guest: Richard C. Holbrooke Summary: “Bosnia” in this show’s title is a synecdoche for the whole explosive region of the Balkans, of which Kosovo was currently the… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Goldwater Revisited”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 9, 1998, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guest: Barry Goldwater Summary: Senator Goldwater had died at the age of 89, in his beloved Phoenix. Before showing clips from his last Firing Line appearance, Mr. Buckley recalls his old… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley “Is New York City Out from Under?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 13, 1999, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guest: Rudy Giuliani Summary: Mr. Buckley reminds us, that Theodore White once wrote that New York City was ungovernable. Prior mayors proved White correct. Then Ed Koch took over, followed… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley “Tom Wolfe and His Critics”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 19, 1999, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guest: Tom Wolfe Summary: Tom Wolfe had just published his first novel in 11 years, “A Man in Full,” to significant, but not universal, acclaim. Amongst the negative review were… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley “Kissinger’s Years of Renewal”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on April 15, 1999, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guest: Henry Kissinger Summary: Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s latest volume of memoirs, “Years of Renewal,” covers the period from Richard Nixon’s… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley “Professor Galbraith Names Names”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on May 18, 1999, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guest: John Kenneth Galbraith Summary: John Kenneth Galbraith had just written, Mr. Buckley tells us, a book of “biographical sketches of mighty men and women he has known,”… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley “Looking Back on Senator Joe McCarthy with Kramer and Navasky”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on June 29, 1999, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guests: Hilton Kramer, Victor S. Navasky Summary: Mr. Buckley had just published “The Redhunter,” a novel based on the life of Joe McCarthy (who had also been the subject of his… More
How ‘Firing Line’ Transformed the Battleground
– Laurence Zuckerman, New York Times, December 18, 1999.Excerpt: Even many of the guests who turned out at the Museum of Broadcasting on Tuesday to pay tribute to William F. Buckley Jr. on the occasion of the taping of the final broadcast of… More
Bill Buckley’s Lesson for Today’s Conservatives
– Neal B. Freeman, Wall Street Journal, February 27, 2016.Excerpt: What did “Firing Line” add to the culture of its day? It became, first, a national megaphone for conservative values. It wasn’t one of dozens of right-leaning talk shows. It… More
Essays
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “McCarthyism: Past, Present, Future”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on May 16, 1966, uploaded to YouTube on June 2, 2010.Guest: Leo Cherne Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Playboy Philosophy”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 12, 1966, uploaded to YouTube on May 10, 2010.Guest: Hugh Hefner Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Are Public Schools Necessary?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 12, 1966, uploaded to YouTube on January 24, 2014.Guest: Paul Goodman Summary: Buckley begins by saying of guest Paul Goodman, “Where he stands, ideologically, in conventional terms, it is hard to say. Probably no one would wish… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Academic Freedom and Berkeley”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 16, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on July 15, 2010.Guest: Harold Taylor Summary: We eventually get to Berkeley–where the Free Speech Movement and associated radicalisms had completely broken down academic discipline–but before… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Role of the Advocate”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 19, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on July 15, 2010.Guest: F. Lee Bailey Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Future of the UN”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 19, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on July 15, 2010.Guest: Francis T. P. Plimpton Summary: The United Nations had been energetically debating the right of Rhodesia to declare independence unilaterally and the right of South Africa to… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “LBJ and Vietnam”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on March 6, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on July 15, 2010.Guests: Vance Hartke and Dickerman Williams Summary: As Buckley introduces him, Senator Hartke “is perhaps best known, at this point in his career, as one of the leaders in the… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Politics and the Press”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on March 7, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on July 15, 2010.Guest: Tom Wicker Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Black Power”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on March 7, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on July 15, 2010.Guest: Nat Hentoff Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Is There a Role for a Third Party?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on March 8, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on July 29, 2010.Guest: Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr. Summary: 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,… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Do We Have Anything Left to Fear from Socialism?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on March 9, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on February 23, 2011.Guest: Sidney Hook Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The World of LSD”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on April 10, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on July 29, 2010.Guest: Timothy Leary Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Censorship and the Production Code”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on April 10, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on August 13, 2010.Guest: Otto Preminger Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Regular in Politics”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on May 1, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on August 13, 2010.Guest: Carmine De Sapio Summary: De Sapio was the Tammany Hall “boss” defeated in 1963 by a young “reform Democrat” named Edward Koch. Buckley attempts in this hour… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “How to Protest”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on May 1, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on August 13, 2010.Guest: Dwight Macdonald Summary: Mr. Macdonald had recently been an organizer of the “Step Out Movement”–that is, to step out of a hall where Vice President Humphrey would… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Vietnam Protests”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on June 26, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on August 13, 2010.Guest: Benjamin Spock Summary: Dr. Spock, Mr. Buckley begins by recounting, has said that the threat to our children from “nuclear annihilation” is “a thousand times… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Decline of Anti-Communism”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on June 29, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on August 13, 2010.Guest: Fred Schwarz Summary: Buckley 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Is It Possible to Be a Good Governor?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 6, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on August 13, 2010.Guest: Ronald Reagan Summary: 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,”… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Is the World Funny?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 7, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on May 7, 2010.Guest: Groucho Marx Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “A Foreign Policy for the GOP”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 11, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on May 7, 2010.Guest: Charles Percy Summary: 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]… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Future of the GOP”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 14, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on August 13, 2010.Guest: Richard Nixon Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Medicare”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 25, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on May 7, 2010.Guest: Wilbur Cohen Summary: Mr. Cohen’s public career had begun, as Buckley reminds us, in the Roosevelt Administration, where he was research head of the Committee on Economic… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Struggle for Democracy in Brazil”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on November 13, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on February 23, 2011.Guest:Brazilian statesman Carlos Lacerda Summary: Mr. Lacerda had been known for decades as a vigorous opponent of most of Brazil’s political class. Today’s discussion focuses… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Mobilizing the Poor”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on December 11, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on March 28, 2011.Guest: Saul David Alinsky Summary: The common aim of all Mr. Alinsky’s organizations is to mobilize the poor–mobilize them by whatever means comes to hand (marches,… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Was Goldwater a Mistake?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on December 14, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on April 7, 2011.Guest: Mark Hatfield Summary: Senator Hatfield, from the liberal side of the Republican Party, positions himself perfectly in his opening answer: Goldwater wasn’t a mistake in a… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Wallace Crusade”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 24, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on August 13, 2010.Guest: George Wallace Summary: Mr. Buckley had sharply criticized Mr. Wallace in print, both for his once-adamant attachment to segregation and for his New Deal statism, and Mr. Wallace… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Philby and Treason”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on February 26, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on August 13, 2010.Guest: Rebecca West Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Culture of the Left”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on February 26, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on August 13, 2010.Guest: Malcolm Muggeridge Summary: “He calls himself,” says Buckley in his introduction to the first of Muggeridge’s several appearances on Firing Line, “a man of… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Avant Garde”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on May 7, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on August 15, 2010.Guest: Allen Ginsberg Summary: Some installments of Firing Line would not lose much if the video faded out, but this one is an exception: Ginsberg’s hair (as Buckley puts it,… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Armies of the Night”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on May 28, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on August 15, 2010.Guest: Norman Mailer Summary: This surprisingly genial conversation starts with the subject of Norman Mailer–as most conversations with Norman Mailer do–and goes on from there.… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Rib Uncaged: Women and the Church”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on June 24, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on February 11, 2011.Guests: Rosemary Radford Ruether, Sidney Cornelia Callahan Summary: This show proves to be less of a bare-knuckle battle and more of a conversation than one might have expected, ranging… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Socialist Workers’ Party and American Politics”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 10, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on February 11, 2011.Guests: Fred Halstead, Paul Boutelle Summary: WFB starts off by reminding us that the Socialist Workers are “the principal political heirs of Leon Trotsky in this country,” and… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Hippies”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 3, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on August 15, 2010.Guests: Jack Kerouac; Ed Sanders; Lewis Yablonsky Summary: Hold onto your hat for this free-for-all among four men who aren’t simply coming from different… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Money Troubles”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 9, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on February 9, 2011.Guests: Joseph Barr, Arthur Edward Burns Summary: The federal deficits were becoming a matter of serious worry, and not only to Republicans. Although Mr. Barr is a member of the Johnson… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Cold War”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 23, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on February 9, 2011.Guest: Zbigniew Brzezinski Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Politics and Show Biz”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on October 7, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on February 9, 2011.Guest: Orson Bean Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Republic of New Africa”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on November 18, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on May 7, 2010.Guest: Milton Henry Summary: “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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Muhammad Ali and the Negro Movement”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on December 12, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on August 16, 2010.Guest: Muhammad Ali Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Radical Chic”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on December 17, 1970, uploaded to YouTube on January 13, 2014.Guest: Tom Wolfe Summary: Tom Wolfe–one of the leading exponents of New Journalism–was now, with his white suits and his dramatic manner, becoming a prominent public figure. “Radical… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “What to Do about the Post Office”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on April 23, 1973, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Ernest F. Hollings Summary: The spirited conversation with Senator Ernest F. Hollings–who strongly opposed the way the quasi-privatization of the Post Office had been… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Proposals for Welfare”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on April 23, 1973, uploaded to YouTube on December 19, 2012.Guest: Jimmy Carter Summary: This show was the first nationally televised appearance of Jimmy Carter. In this encounter, Governor Carter sounds quite conservative in talking about welfare… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “What Now for the Ghetto?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 24, 1973, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Thomas Bradley Summary: Thomas Bradley was the first black mayor of a predominantly white major city; previously he had been a Los Angeles policeman, and sat on the City Council.… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Heredity, IQ, and Social Issues”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on October 16, 1973, uploaded to YouTube on March 25, 2011.Guest: Thomas G. Bever, Richard J. Herrnstein Summary: The second show in the series on human behavior, this one on the explosive subject of heritability of IQ. “Explosive,”… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Tax Reform”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 21, 1974, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Stanley S. Surrey Summary: A thoughtful discussion of the federal tax system between Mr. Buckley and Stanley S. Surrey; both men have spent much of their professional lives studying… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Revisionist Historians”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 23, 1974, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Dean Rusk Summary: Former Secretary of State Dean Rusk, reviled at the time by the elite press and revisionist historians, was exiled, as his Ivy League friends saw it, to the wilds… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Should the United States Disarm?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on May 10, 1974, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Les Aspin Summary: Rep. Les Aspin had been, as Mr. Buckley reminds us, “one of Secretary McNamara’s whiz kids in the Pentagon,” and was now one of the… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Amnesty, with Ramsey Clark”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on June 3, 1974, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Ramsey Clark Summary: Another go at the debate over whether to offer unconditional amnesty to draft dodgers and deserters, in a high-energy exchange between our guest, Ramsey Clark,… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Future of the GOP, with Gerald R. Ford”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on June 28, 1974, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Gerald R. Ford Summary: The third Firing Line on “The Future of the GOP,” Mr. Buckley attempts to engage Vice President Gerald Ford on the question whether President… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Limits of Journalistic Investigation”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 9, 1974, uploaded to YouTube on December 19, 2012.Guests: Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein Summary: In a show taped while Watergate was still underway, Woodward and Bernstein are candid– as they were in their book–in admitting that… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Democratic Culture”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on November 15, 1974, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Leslie Fiedler Summary: Democracy per se doesn’t get into this rich discussion of culture much, with the much-admired and much-criticized American critic, Leslie Fiedler, but… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Intellectual’s Responsibilities in a Totalitarian Age”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on February 5, 1975, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Stephen Spender Summary: Stephen Spender had spent the Thirties, as Mr. Buckley puts it, “dancing along the precipice, attempting at once literary integrity and Communist… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Integrity and Journalism”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on March 10, 1975, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guests: Tom Wicker, William Safire Summary: This conversation among a card-carrying liberal, a card-carrying conservative, and a Republican moderate winds up centering on the revolt at… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Feminism”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on March 31, 1975, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Clare Boothe Luce Summary: The peg for this show was the Equal Rights Amendment, at the time stalled in the state legislatures. But the discussion between these two old friends soon… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Tom Wolfe and The Painted Word”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 9, 1975, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Tom Wolfe Summary: “The Painted Word” had angered whichever portions of the intelligentsia had not previously been hostile to Tom Wolfe. As Mr. Buckley points out, the… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Ten Years of Firing Line”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 20, 1976, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guests: Richard Howard Stafford Crossman, Germaine Greer, Harold Macmillan, Clare Boothe Luce, Mary McCarthy, Dame Rebecca West, Norman Mailer, Stephen Spender, Hugh Kenner, George S.… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “G. Gordon Liddy: An Enigma”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 11, 1978, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: G. Gordon Liddy Summary: 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. Amongst… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Mission of the Pope”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 6, 1978, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Malachi Martin Summary: The new pope being discussed on this show is not John Paul II but his predecessor, John Paul I, who would die a month after his election. Nonetheless, Malachi… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Television Machine”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on June 29, 1979, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guests: Dorothy Fuldheim, Ben Stein Summary: Is the most remarkable thing about present-day television, as Ben Stein maintains in this vivid exchange, its pervasive left-wing, anti-business… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Human Rights in Vietnam”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 6, 1979, uploaded to YouTube on November 11, 2011.Guests: Joan Baez and Ginetta Sagan Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Crime and Punishment: Gary Gilmore”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on October 11, 1979, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Norman Mailer Summary: A low-key and thoughtful appearance by the usually boisterous author of “The Executioner’s Song.” This new novel–on the life and death… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Abscam Controversy”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 5, 1981, uploaded to YouTube on May 7, 2010.Guest: Michael Tigar Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Are We Menaced by Moral Majority?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 22, 1981, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guest: Jerry Falwell Summary: Whether or not one agrees with him on specific moral or theological points, Reverend Jerry Falwell ably defends his organization against accusations–by,… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Do We Need a Foreign Policy Doctrine?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 15, 1981, uploaded to YouTube on May 7, 2010.Guest: George Ball Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Question of Namibia”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 17, 1981, uploaded to YouTube on May 7, 2010.Guests: Peter Kalangula; Aryeh Neier Summary: Father Kalangula’s organization in South West Africa (a/k/a Namibia) had won an internationally observed democratic election against the… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Is Modern Architecture Disastrous?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on October 1, 1981, uploaded to YouTube on May 2, 2011.Guest: Tom Wolfe Summary: A rip-roaring attack on the shibboleths of modern architecture–and with a Firing Line rarity, visual aids (illustrations from Wolfe’s book). Wolfe:… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Economy and the Blacks”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 13, 1982, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guest: Jesse Jackson Summary: Operation PUSH was holding its annual convention, on the theme “Black America: An Economic Common Market,” emphasizing the “means of using… More
A Firing Line Debate: Resolved: That Reducing the National Deficit in the Next Four Years Is a Top Priority
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on December 8, 1992, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guests: James Dale Davidson, Warren B. Rudman, Clive Crook, Lester C. Thurow, Robert Kuttner, Robert Eisner, David A. Levy Summary: Ronald Reagan had warned of “social, cultural,… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Confidence and Betrayal”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on February 22, 1983, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guests: Florence Cohalan, Harriet F. Pilpel, Norman R. Tamarkin Summary: A profound discussion among, as Mr. Buckley puts it, “a very thoughtful lawyer, a very thoughtful doctor, and… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Election: A View from New York”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on August 31, 1984, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guest: Ed Koch Summary: Mayor Ed Koch surveys the political scene as the dust settles from the national conventions. One sample: “I drive people in my own party crazy-angry with me,… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Where Is the GOP Headed?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 11, 1985, uploaded to YouTube on November 11, 2011.Guests: Newt Gingrich and Bill Green Summary: Mr. Gingrich was already a leader of the conservative wing of the GOP, and Mr. Green was prominent among the remnant of “Rockefeller… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Bill Buckley and Firing Line Get Roasted”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 14, 1986, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guests: Jeff Greenfield, John Kenneth Galbraith, Harriet F. Pilpel, Henry Kissinger, Eugene J. McCarthy, Tom Wolfe Summary: This interrogation of Mr. Buckley by favorite guests John Kenneth… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Firing Line 1966-1986: A Potpourri of Persuaders”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 14, 1986, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guests: Robert Shrum, Edward F. Prichard, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, Zbigniew Brzezinski, George S. McGovern, Margaret Heckler, Phyllis Schlafly, Allard K. Lowenstein, Henry Kissinger, Tom… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Terrorism: Viewed from Abroad”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on May 30, 1986, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guests: Benjamin Netanyahu, Claude de Kemoularia Summary: What is terrorism? Can we accept Benjamin Netanyahu’s definition–“the systematic and deliberate attack, the… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “For Central America: A Radical Prescription”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on October 2, 1986, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guest: Manuel F. Ayau Summary: Francisco Marroquin University had been a tremendous success. Imagine: a university, teaching everything from literature to engineering to biology, but also… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Textbook Controversy in Tennessee”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on October 10, 1986, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guests: Michael P. Farris, Timothy B. Dyk, Vicki Frost, Faye P. Taylor Summary: An illuminating look at a deep division within our society. The case being referred to as “Scopes… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Human Rights, Foreign Policy, and Ronald Reagan”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on October 16, 1986, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guest: Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. Summary: An amazingly good-tempered show on the Reagan Administration’s policies, human rights, and foreign policy given that there was a time when… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Three Young Latin Americans Wish to Be Heard”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on October 1, 1987, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guests: Juan F. Ramirez Arguello, Antonio Rivera, J.T. Gonzales Brito, Christopher Hitchens Summary: Our three guests are engaging but not completely fluent in English. The result is some… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Dirty Rock Lyrics”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on June 9, 1988, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guests: Tipper Gore, Doug Simmons Summary: This inaugural episode of Firing Line in a half hour format features a discussion of censorship, freedom of expression and the American music… More
A Firing Line Debate: Resolved: That Free-Market Competitiveness Is Best for America
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 13, 1989, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guests: Jack Kemp, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, Newt Gingrich, George S. McGovern, Gary Hart, Pat Schroeder, John Kenneth Galbraith Summary: In his introduction for this debate on the free market,… More
On the Firing Line: The Public Life of Our Public Figures
– Random House, 1989.Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “New Insights on the Russian Revolution”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on December 13, 1990, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guest: Richard Pipes Summary: A gripping look at the Soviet Union, with Richard Pipes, a man who has spent all his adult life studying it. Pipes: “There are signs that the right-wing… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Why Are We in a Recession?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on October 6, 1992, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guest: John Kenneth Galbraith Summary: Mr. Buckley and his old friend and adversary, John Kenneth Galbraith, occasionally have such a good time slanging each other that they have to remind… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Threat of Nuclear Destruction – New Voices”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on August 16, 1993, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guests: Henry Kissinger, Douglas Feith, Russell Seitz, Henry Sokolski Summary: An extraordinarily rich trio of shows on various aspects of nuclear proliferation, with insights into the… More
A Firing Line Debate: Resolved: That the Death Penalty Is a Good Thing
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on May 24, 1994, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guests: Ed Koch, Walter Berns, Susan Boleyn, Ira Glasser, Leon Botstein, Stephen B. Bright, Bryan Stevenson Summary: Many of the arguments regarding the death penalty are familiar: the… More
A Firing Line Debate: Resolved: That the Women’s Movement Has Been Disastrous
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on December 7, 1994, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guests: Betty Friedan, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Arianna Huffington, Helen Alvare, Karen S. Burstein, Camille Paglia, Kathryn Kolbert Summary: Anyone who thinks “the women’s… More
A Firing Line Debate: Resolved: That All Immigration Should Be Drastically Reduced
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on June 6, 1995, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guests: Peter Brimelow, Daniel Stein, Arianna Huffington, Leon Botstein, Ed Koch, Frank Sharry, Ira Glasser Summary: Moderator Michael Kinsley starts out by drawing attention to the text of… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Have We Learned Anything about the Good Society?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 11, 1996, uploaded to YouTube on March 4, 2015.Guest: John Kenneth Galbraith Summary: Another encounter between old friends and adversaries William F. Buckley Jr. and John Kenneth Galbraith. This time round they discuss… More
A Firing Line Debate: Resolved: That Social Security Should Be Privatized
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on December 4, 1996, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guests: Pierre S. Du Pont, John C. Goodman, Peter G. Peterson, Henry J. Aaron, Robert Eisner, Robert Kuttner, Theodore R. Marmor Summary: Is the Social Security system a Ponzi scheme that… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Problems of Gay Life”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 23, 1997, uploaded to YouTube on March 4, 2015.Guest: David Brudnoy, Arianna Huffington Summary: David Brudnoy, a veteran libertarian journalist (and frequent contributor to “National Review”), is also a homosexual who, it… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Did Camelot Have a Dark Side?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 13, 1998, uploaded to YouTube on March 4, 2015.Guests: Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Thomas C. Reeves Summary: Seymour Hersh had just published “The Dark Side of Camelot,” about John F. Kennedy’s private life. On this… More
A Firing Line Debate: Resolved: That the ACLU Is Full of Baloney
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on May 4, 1998, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guests: Lino A. Graglia, William A. Donohue, Robert H. Knight, Ira Glasser, Nadine Strossen, Leon Botstein, Barry W. Lynn Summary: Nadine Strossen starts by stating that, “The… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Looking Back on Bosnia”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 9, 1998, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guest: Richard C. Holbrooke Summary: “Bosnia” in this show’s title is a synecdoche for the whole explosive region of the Balkans, of which Kosovo was currently the… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Goldwater Revisited”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 9, 1998, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guest: Barry Goldwater Summary: Senator Goldwater had died at the age of 89, in his beloved Phoenix. Before showing clips from his last Firing Line appearance, Mr. Buckley recalls his old… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley “Is New York City Out from Under?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 13, 1999, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guest: Rudy Giuliani Summary: Mr. Buckley reminds us, that Theodore White once wrote that New York City was ungovernable. Prior mayors proved White correct. Then Ed Koch took over, followed… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley “Tom Wolfe and His Critics”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 19, 1999, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guest: Tom Wolfe Summary: Tom Wolfe had just published his first novel in 11 years, “A Man in Full,” to significant, but not universal, acclaim. Amongst the negative review were… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley “Kissinger’s Years of Renewal”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on April 15, 1999, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guest: Henry Kissinger Summary: Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s latest volume of memoirs, “Years of Renewal,” covers the period from Richard Nixon’s… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley “Professor Galbraith Names Names”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on May 18, 1999, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guest: John Kenneth Galbraith Summary: John Kenneth Galbraith had just written, Mr. Buckley tells us, a book of “biographical sketches of mighty men and women he has known,”… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley “Looking Back on Senator Joe McCarthy with Kramer and Navasky”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on June 29, 1999, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guests: Hilton Kramer, Victor S. Navasky Summary: Mr. Buckley had just published “The Redhunter,” a novel based on the life of Joe McCarthy (who had also been the subject of his… More
How ‘Firing Line’ Transformed the Battleground
– Laurence Zuckerman, New York Times, December 18, 1999.Excerpt: Even many of the guests who turned out at the Museum of Broadcasting on Tuesday to pay tribute to William F. Buckley Jr. on the occasion of the taping of the final broadcast of… More
Bill Buckley’s Lesson for Today’s Conservatives
– Neal B. Freeman, Wall Street Journal, February 27, 2016.Excerpt: What did “Firing Line” add to the culture of its day? It became, first, a national megaphone for conservative values. It wasn’t one of dozens of right-leaning talk shows. It… More
Commentary
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “McCarthyism: Past, Present, Future”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on May 16, 1966, uploaded to YouTube on June 2, 2010.Guest: Leo Cherne Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Playboy Philosophy”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 12, 1966, uploaded to YouTube on May 10, 2010.Guest: Hugh Hefner Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Are Public Schools Necessary?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 12, 1966, uploaded to YouTube on January 24, 2014.Guest: Paul Goodman Summary: Buckley begins by saying of guest Paul Goodman, “Where he stands, ideologically, in conventional terms, it is hard to say. Probably no one would wish… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Academic Freedom and Berkeley”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 16, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on July 15, 2010.Guest: Harold Taylor Summary: We eventually get to Berkeley–where the Free Speech Movement and associated radicalisms had completely broken down academic discipline–but before… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Role of the Advocate”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 19, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on July 15, 2010.Guest: F. Lee Bailey Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Future of the UN”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 19, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on July 15, 2010.Guest: Francis T. P. Plimpton Summary: The United Nations had been energetically debating the right of Rhodesia to declare independence unilaterally and the right of South Africa to… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “LBJ and Vietnam”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on March 6, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on July 15, 2010.Guests: Vance Hartke and Dickerman Williams Summary: As Buckley introduces him, Senator Hartke “is perhaps best known, at this point in his career, as one of the leaders in the… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Politics and the Press”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on March 7, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on July 15, 2010.Guest: Tom Wicker Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Black Power”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on March 7, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on July 15, 2010.Guest: Nat Hentoff Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Is There a Role for a Third Party?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on March 8, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on July 29, 2010.Guest: Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr. Summary: 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,… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Do We Have Anything Left to Fear from Socialism?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on March 9, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on February 23, 2011.Guest: Sidney Hook Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The World of LSD”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on April 10, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on July 29, 2010.Guest: Timothy Leary Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Censorship and the Production Code”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on April 10, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on August 13, 2010.Guest: Otto Preminger Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Regular in Politics”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on May 1, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on August 13, 2010.Guest: Carmine De Sapio Summary: De Sapio was the Tammany Hall “boss” defeated in 1963 by a young “reform Democrat” named Edward Koch. Buckley attempts in this hour… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “How to Protest”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on May 1, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on August 13, 2010.Guest: Dwight Macdonald Summary: Mr. Macdonald had recently been an organizer of the “Step Out Movement”–that is, to step out of a hall where Vice President Humphrey would… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Vietnam Protests”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on June 26, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on August 13, 2010.Guest: Benjamin Spock Summary: Dr. Spock, Mr. Buckley begins by recounting, has said that the threat to our children from “nuclear annihilation” is “a thousand times… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Decline of Anti-Communism”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on June 29, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on August 13, 2010.Guest: Fred Schwarz Summary: Buckley 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Is It Possible to Be a Good Governor?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 6, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on August 13, 2010.Guest: Ronald Reagan Summary: 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,”… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Is the World Funny?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 7, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on May 7, 2010.Guest: Groucho Marx Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “A Foreign Policy for the GOP”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 11, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on May 7, 2010.Guest: Charles Percy Summary: 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]… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Future of the GOP”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 14, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on August 13, 2010.Guest: Richard Nixon Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Medicare”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 25, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on May 7, 2010.Guest: Wilbur Cohen Summary: Mr. Cohen’s public career had begun, as Buckley reminds us, in the Roosevelt Administration, where he was research head of the Committee on Economic… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Struggle for Democracy in Brazil”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on November 13, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on February 23, 2011.Guest:Brazilian statesman Carlos Lacerda Summary: Mr. Lacerda had been known for decades as a vigorous opponent of most of Brazil’s political class. Today’s discussion focuses… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Mobilizing the Poor”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on December 11, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on March 28, 2011.Guest: Saul David Alinsky Summary: The common aim of all Mr. Alinsky’s organizations is to mobilize the poor–mobilize them by whatever means comes to hand (marches,… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Was Goldwater a Mistake?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on December 14, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on April 7, 2011.Guest: Mark Hatfield Summary: Senator Hatfield, from the liberal side of the Republican Party, positions himself perfectly in his opening answer: Goldwater wasn’t a mistake in a… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Wallace Crusade”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 24, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on August 13, 2010.Guest: George Wallace Summary: Mr. Buckley had sharply criticized Mr. Wallace in print, both for his once-adamant attachment to segregation and for his New Deal statism, and Mr. Wallace… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Philby and Treason”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on February 26, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on August 13, 2010.Guest: Rebecca West Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Culture of the Left”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on February 26, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on August 13, 2010.Guest: Malcolm Muggeridge Summary: “He calls himself,” says Buckley in his introduction to the first of Muggeridge’s several appearances on Firing Line, “a man of… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Avant Garde”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on May 7, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on August 15, 2010.Guest: Allen Ginsberg Summary: Some installments of Firing Line would not lose much if the video faded out, but this one is an exception: Ginsberg’s hair (as Buckley puts it,… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Armies of the Night”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on May 28, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on August 15, 2010.Guest: Norman Mailer Summary: This surprisingly genial conversation starts with the subject of Norman Mailer–as most conversations with Norman Mailer do–and goes on from there.… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Rib Uncaged: Women and the Church”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on June 24, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on February 11, 2011.Guests: Rosemary Radford Ruether, Sidney Cornelia Callahan Summary: This show proves to be less of a bare-knuckle battle and more of a conversation than one might have expected, ranging… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Socialist Workers’ Party and American Politics”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 10, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on February 11, 2011.Guests: Fred Halstead, Paul Boutelle Summary: WFB starts off by reminding us that the Socialist Workers are “the principal political heirs of Leon Trotsky in this country,” and… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Hippies”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 3, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on August 15, 2010.Guests: Jack Kerouac; Ed Sanders; Lewis Yablonsky Summary: Hold onto your hat for this free-for-all among four men who aren’t simply coming from different… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Money Troubles”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 9, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on February 9, 2011.Guests: Joseph Barr, Arthur Edward Burns Summary: The federal deficits were becoming a matter of serious worry, and not only to Republicans. Although Mr. Barr is a member of the Johnson… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Cold War”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 23, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on February 9, 2011.Guest: Zbigniew Brzezinski Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Politics and Show Biz”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on October 7, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on February 9, 2011.Guest: Orson Bean Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Republic of New Africa”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on November 18, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on May 7, 2010.Guest: Milton Henry Summary: “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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Muhammad Ali and the Negro Movement”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on December 12, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on August 16, 2010.Guest: Muhammad Ali Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Radical Chic”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on December 17, 1970, uploaded to YouTube on January 13, 2014.Guest: Tom Wolfe Summary: Tom Wolfe–one of the leading exponents of New Journalism–was now, with his white suits and his dramatic manner, becoming a prominent public figure. “Radical… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “What to Do about the Post Office”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on April 23, 1973, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Ernest F. Hollings Summary: The spirited conversation with Senator Ernest F. Hollings–who strongly opposed the way the quasi-privatization of the Post Office had been… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Proposals for Welfare”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on April 23, 1973, uploaded to YouTube on December 19, 2012.Guest: Jimmy Carter Summary: This show was the first nationally televised appearance of Jimmy Carter. In this encounter, Governor Carter sounds quite conservative in talking about welfare… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “What Now for the Ghetto?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 24, 1973, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Thomas Bradley Summary: Thomas Bradley was the first black mayor of a predominantly white major city; previously he had been a Los Angeles policeman, and sat on the City Council.… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Heredity, IQ, and Social Issues”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on October 16, 1973, uploaded to YouTube on March 25, 2011.Guest: Thomas G. Bever, Richard J. Herrnstein Summary: The second show in the series on human behavior, this one on the explosive subject of heritability of IQ. “Explosive,”… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Tax Reform”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 21, 1974, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Stanley S. Surrey Summary: A thoughtful discussion of the federal tax system between Mr. Buckley and Stanley S. Surrey; both men have spent much of their professional lives studying… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Revisionist Historians”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 23, 1974, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Dean Rusk Summary: Former Secretary of State Dean Rusk, reviled at the time by the elite press and revisionist historians, was exiled, as his Ivy League friends saw it, to the wilds… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Should the United States Disarm?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on May 10, 1974, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Les Aspin Summary: Rep. Les Aspin had been, as Mr. Buckley reminds us, “one of Secretary McNamara’s whiz kids in the Pentagon,” and was now one of the… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Amnesty, with Ramsey Clark”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on June 3, 1974, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Ramsey Clark Summary: Another go at the debate over whether to offer unconditional amnesty to draft dodgers and deserters, in a high-energy exchange between our guest, Ramsey Clark,… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Future of the GOP, with Gerald R. Ford”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on June 28, 1974, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Gerald R. Ford Summary: The third Firing Line on “The Future of the GOP,” Mr. Buckley attempts to engage Vice President Gerald Ford on the question whether President… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Limits of Journalistic Investigation”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 9, 1974, uploaded to YouTube on December 19, 2012.Guests: Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein Summary: In a show taped while Watergate was still underway, Woodward and Bernstein are candid– as they were in their book–in admitting that… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Democratic Culture”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on November 15, 1974, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Leslie Fiedler Summary: Democracy per se doesn’t get into this rich discussion of culture much, with the much-admired and much-criticized American critic, Leslie Fiedler, but… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Intellectual’s Responsibilities in a Totalitarian Age”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on February 5, 1975, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Stephen Spender Summary: Stephen Spender had spent the Thirties, as Mr. Buckley puts it, “dancing along the precipice, attempting at once literary integrity and Communist… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Integrity and Journalism”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on March 10, 1975, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guests: Tom Wicker, William Safire Summary: This conversation among a card-carrying liberal, a card-carrying conservative, and a Republican moderate winds up centering on the revolt at… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Feminism”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on March 31, 1975, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Clare Boothe Luce Summary: The peg for this show was the Equal Rights Amendment, at the time stalled in the state legislatures. But the discussion between these two old friends soon… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Tom Wolfe and The Painted Word”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 9, 1975, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Tom Wolfe Summary: “The Painted Word” had angered whichever portions of the intelligentsia had not previously been hostile to Tom Wolfe. As Mr. Buckley points out, the… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Ten Years of Firing Line”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 20, 1976, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guests: Richard Howard Stafford Crossman, Germaine Greer, Harold Macmillan, Clare Boothe Luce, Mary McCarthy, Dame Rebecca West, Norman Mailer, Stephen Spender, Hugh Kenner, George S.… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “G. Gordon Liddy: An Enigma”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 11, 1978, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: G. Gordon Liddy Summary: 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. Amongst… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Mission of the Pope”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 6, 1978, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Malachi Martin Summary: The new pope being discussed on this show is not John Paul II but his predecessor, John Paul I, who would die a month after his election. Nonetheless, Malachi… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Television Machine”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on June 29, 1979, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guests: Dorothy Fuldheim, Ben Stein Summary: Is the most remarkable thing about present-day television, as Ben Stein maintains in this vivid exchange, its pervasive left-wing, anti-business… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Human Rights in Vietnam”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 6, 1979, uploaded to YouTube on November 11, 2011.Guests: Joan Baez and Ginetta Sagan Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Crime and Punishment: Gary Gilmore”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on October 11, 1979, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Norman Mailer Summary: A low-key and thoughtful appearance by the usually boisterous author of “The Executioner’s Song.” This new novel–on the life and death… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Abscam Controversy”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 5, 1981, uploaded to YouTube on May 7, 2010.Guest: Michael Tigar Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Are We Menaced by Moral Majority?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 22, 1981, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guest: Jerry Falwell Summary: Whether or not one agrees with him on specific moral or theological points, Reverend Jerry Falwell ably defends his organization against accusations–by,… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Do We Need a Foreign Policy Doctrine?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 15, 1981, uploaded to YouTube on May 7, 2010.Guest: George Ball Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Question of Namibia”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 17, 1981, uploaded to YouTube on May 7, 2010.Guests: Peter Kalangula; Aryeh Neier Summary: Father Kalangula’s organization in South West Africa (a/k/a Namibia) had won an internationally observed democratic election against the… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Is Modern Architecture Disastrous?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on October 1, 1981, uploaded to YouTube on May 2, 2011.Guest: Tom Wolfe Summary: A rip-roaring attack on the shibboleths of modern architecture–and with a Firing Line rarity, visual aids (illustrations from Wolfe’s book). Wolfe:… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Economy and the Blacks”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 13, 1982, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guest: Jesse Jackson Summary: Operation PUSH was holding its annual convention, on the theme “Black America: An Economic Common Market,” emphasizing the “means of using… More
A Firing Line Debate: Resolved: That Reducing the National Deficit in the Next Four Years Is a Top Priority
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on December 8, 1992, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guests: James Dale Davidson, Warren B. Rudman, Clive Crook, Lester C. Thurow, Robert Kuttner, Robert Eisner, David A. Levy Summary: Ronald Reagan had warned of “social, cultural,… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Confidence and Betrayal”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on February 22, 1983, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guests: Florence Cohalan, Harriet F. Pilpel, Norman R. Tamarkin Summary: A profound discussion among, as Mr. Buckley puts it, “a very thoughtful lawyer, a very thoughtful doctor, and… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Election: A View from New York”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on August 31, 1984, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guest: Ed Koch Summary: Mayor Ed Koch surveys the political scene as the dust settles from the national conventions. One sample: “I drive people in my own party crazy-angry with me,… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Where Is the GOP Headed?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 11, 1985, uploaded to YouTube on November 11, 2011.Guests: Newt Gingrich and Bill Green Summary: Mr. Gingrich was already a leader of the conservative wing of the GOP, and Mr. Green was prominent among the remnant of “Rockefeller… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Bill Buckley and Firing Line Get Roasted”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 14, 1986, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guests: Jeff Greenfield, John Kenneth Galbraith, Harriet F. Pilpel, Henry Kissinger, Eugene J. McCarthy, Tom Wolfe Summary: This interrogation of Mr. Buckley by favorite guests John Kenneth… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Firing Line 1966-1986: A Potpourri of Persuaders”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 14, 1986, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guests: Robert Shrum, Edward F. Prichard, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, Zbigniew Brzezinski, George S. McGovern, Margaret Heckler, Phyllis Schlafly, Allard K. Lowenstein, Henry Kissinger, Tom… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Terrorism: Viewed from Abroad”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on May 30, 1986, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guests: Benjamin Netanyahu, Claude de Kemoularia Summary: What is terrorism? Can we accept Benjamin Netanyahu’s definition–“the systematic and deliberate attack, the… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “For Central America: A Radical Prescription”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on October 2, 1986, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guest: Manuel F. Ayau Summary: Francisco Marroquin University had been a tremendous success. Imagine: a university, teaching everything from literature to engineering to biology, but also… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Textbook Controversy in Tennessee”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on October 10, 1986, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guests: Michael P. Farris, Timothy B. Dyk, Vicki Frost, Faye P. Taylor Summary: An illuminating look at a deep division within our society. The case being referred to as “Scopes… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Human Rights, Foreign Policy, and Ronald Reagan”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on October 16, 1986, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guest: Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. Summary: An amazingly good-tempered show on the Reagan Administration’s policies, human rights, and foreign policy given that there was a time when… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Three Young Latin Americans Wish to Be Heard”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on October 1, 1987, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guests: Juan F. Ramirez Arguello, Antonio Rivera, J.T. Gonzales Brito, Christopher Hitchens Summary: Our three guests are engaging but not completely fluent in English. The result is some… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Dirty Rock Lyrics”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on June 9, 1988, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guests: Tipper Gore, Doug Simmons Summary: This inaugural episode of Firing Line in a half hour format features a discussion of censorship, freedom of expression and the American music… More
A Firing Line Debate: Resolved: That Free-Market Competitiveness Is Best for America
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 13, 1989, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guests: Jack Kemp, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, Newt Gingrich, George S. McGovern, Gary Hart, Pat Schroeder, John Kenneth Galbraith Summary: In his introduction for this debate on the free market,… More
On the Firing Line: The Public Life of Our Public Figures
– Random House, 1989.Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “New Insights on the Russian Revolution”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on December 13, 1990, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guest: Richard Pipes Summary: A gripping look at the Soviet Union, with Richard Pipes, a man who has spent all his adult life studying it. Pipes: “There are signs that the right-wing… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Why Are We in a Recession?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on October 6, 1992, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guest: John Kenneth Galbraith Summary: Mr. Buckley and his old friend and adversary, John Kenneth Galbraith, occasionally have such a good time slanging each other that they have to remind… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Threat of Nuclear Destruction – New Voices”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on August 16, 1993, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guests: Henry Kissinger, Douglas Feith, Russell Seitz, Henry Sokolski Summary: An extraordinarily rich trio of shows on various aspects of nuclear proliferation, with insights into the… More
A Firing Line Debate: Resolved: That the Death Penalty Is a Good Thing
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on May 24, 1994, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guests: Ed Koch, Walter Berns, Susan Boleyn, Ira Glasser, Leon Botstein, Stephen B. Bright, Bryan Stevenson Summary: Many of the arguments regarding the death penalty are familiar: the… More
A Firing Line Debate: Resolved: That the Women’s Movement Has Been Disastrous
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on December 7, 1994, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guests: Betty Friedan, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Arianna Huffington, Helen Alvare, Karen S. Burstein, Camille Paglia, Kathryn Kolbert Summary: Anyone who thinks “the women’s… More
A Firing Line Debate: Resolved: That All Immigration Should Be Drastically Reduced
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on June 6, 1995, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guests: Peter Brimelow, Daniel Stein, Arianna Huffington, Leon Botstein, Ed Koch, Frank Sharry, Ira Glasser Summary: Moderator Michael Kinsley starts out by drawing attention to the text of… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Have We Learned Anything about the Good Society?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 11, 1996, uploaded to YouTube on March 4, 2015.Guest: John Kenneth Galbraith Summary: Another encounter between old friends and adversaries William F. Buckley Jr. and John Kenneth Galbraith. This time round they discuss… More
A Firing Line Debate: Resolved: That Social Security Should Be Privatized
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on December 4, 1996, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guests: Pierre S. Du Pont, John C. Goodman, Peter G. Peterson, Henry J. Aaron, Robert Eisner, Robert Kuttner, Theodore R. Marmor Summary: Is the Social Security system a Ponzi scheme that… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Problems of Gay Life”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 23, 1997, uploaded to YouTube on March 4, 2015.Guest: David Brudnoy, Arianna Huffington Summary: David Brudnoy, a veteran libertarian journalist (and frequent contributor to “National Review”), is also a homosexual who, it… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Did Camelot Have a Dark Side?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 13, 1998, uploaded to YouTube on March 4, 2015.Guests: Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Thomas C. Reeves Summary: Seymour Hersh had just published “The Dark Side of Camelot,” about John F. Kennedy’s private life. On this… More
A Firing Line Debate: Resolved: That the ACLU Is Full of Baloney
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on May 4, 1998, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guests: Lino A. Graglia, William A. Donohue, Robert H. Knight, Ira Glasser, Nadine Strossen, Leon Botstein, Barry W. Lynn Summary: Nadine Strossen starts by stating that, “The… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Looking Back on Bosnia”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 9, 1998, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guest: Richard C. Holbrooke Summary: “Bosnia” in this show’s title is a synecdoche for the whole explosive region of the Balkans, of which Kosovo was currently the… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Goldwater Revisited”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 9, 1998, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guest: Barry Goldwater Summary: Senator Goldwater had died at the age of 89, in his beloved Phoenix. Before showing clips from his last Firing Line appearance, Mr. Buckley recalls his old… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley “Is New York City Out from Under?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 13, 1999, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guest: Rudy Giuliani Summary: Mr. Buckley reminds us, that Theodore White once wrote that New York City was ungovernable. Prior mayors proved White correct. Then Ed Koch took over, followed… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley “Tom Wolfe and His Critics”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 19, 1999, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guest: Tom Wolfe Summary: Tom Wolfe had just published his first novel in 11 years, “A Man in Full,” to significant, but not universal, acclaim. Amongst the negative review were… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley “Kissinger’s Years of Renewal”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on April 15, 1999, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guest: Henry Kissinger Summary: Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s latest volume of memoirs, “Years of Renewal,” covers the period from Richard Nixon’s… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley “Professor Galbraith Names Names”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on May 18, 1999, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guest: John Kenneth Galbraith Summary: John Kenneth Galbraith had just written, Mr. Buckley tells us, a book of “biographical sketches of mighty men and women he has known,”… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley “Looking Back on Senator Joe McCarthy with Kramer and Navasky”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on June 29, 1999, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guests: Hilton Kramer, Victor S. Navasky Summary: Mr. Buckley had just published “The Redhunter,” a novel based on the life of Joe McCarthy (who had also been the subject of his… More
How ‘Firing Line’ Transformed the Battleground
– Laurence Zuckerman, New York Times, December 18, 1999.Excerpt: Even many of the guests who turned out at the Museum of Broadcasting on Tuesday to pay tribute to William F. Buckley Jr. on the occasion of the taping of the final broadcast of… More
Bill Buckley’s Lesson for Today’s Conservatives
– Neal B. Freeman, Wall Street Journal, February 27, 2016.Excerpt: What did “Firing Line” add to the culture of its day? It became, first, a national megaphone for conservative values. It wasn’t one of dozens of right-leaning talk shows. It… More
Multimedia
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “McCarthyism: Past, Present, Future”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on May 16, 1966, uploaded to YouTube on June 2, 2010.Guest: Leo Cherne Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Playboy Philosophy”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 12, 1966, uploaded to YouTube on May 10, 2010.Guest: Hugh Hefner Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Are Public Schools Necessary?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 12, 1966, uploaded to YouTube on January 24, 2014.Guest: Paul Goodman Summary: Buckley begins by saying of guest Paul Goodman, “Where he stands, ideologically, in conventional terms, it is hard to say. Probably no one would wish… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Academic Freedom and Berkeley”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 16, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on July 15, 2010.Guest: Harold Taylor Summary: We eventually get to Berkeley–where the Free Speech Movement and associated radicalisms had completely broken down academic discipline–but before… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Role of the Advocate”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 19, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on July 15, 2010.Guest: F. Lee Bailey Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Future of the UN”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 19, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on July 15, 2010.Guest: Francis T. P. Plimpton Summary: The United Nations had been energetically debating the right of Rhodesia to declare independence unilaterally and the right of South Africa to… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “LBJ and Vietnam”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on March 6, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on July 15, 2010.Guests: Vance Hartke and Dickerman Williams Summary: As Buckley introduces him, Senator Hartke “is perhaps best known, at this point in his career, as one of the leaders in the… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Politics and the Press”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on March 7, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on July 15, 2010.Guest: Tom Wicker Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Black Power”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on March 7, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on July 15, 2010.Guest: Nat Hentoff Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Is There a Role for a Third Party?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on March 8, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on July 29, 2010.Guest: Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr. Summary: 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,… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Do We Have Anything Left to Fear from Socialism?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on March 9, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on February 23, 2011.Guest: Sidney Hook Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The World of LSD”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on April 10, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on July 29, 2010.Guest: Timothy Leary Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Censorship and the Production Code”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on April 10, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on August 13, 2010.Guest: Otto Preminger Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Regular in Politics”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on May 1, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on August 13, 2010.Guest: Carmine De Sapio Summary: De Sapio was the Tammany Hall “boss” defeated in 1963 by a young “reform Democrat” named Edward Koch. Buckley attempts in this hour… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “How to Protest”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on May 1, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on August 13, 2010.Guest: Dwight Macdonald Summary: Mr. Macdonald had recently been an organizer of the “Step Out Movement”–that is, to step out of a hall where Vice President Humphrey would… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Vietnam Protests”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on June 26, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on August 13, 2010.Guest: Benjamin Spock Summary: Dr. Spock, Mr. Buckley begins by recounting, has said that the threat to our children from “nuclear annihilation” is “a thousand times… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Decline of Anti-Communism”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on June 29, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on August 13, 2010.Guest: Fred Schwarz Summary: Buckley 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Is It Possible to Be a Good Governor?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 6, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on August 13, 2010.Guest: Ronald Reagan Summary: 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,”… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Is the World Funny?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 7, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on May 7, 2010.Guest: Groucho Marx Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “A Foreign Policy for the GOP”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 11, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on May 7, 2010.Guest: Charles Percy Summary: 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]… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Future of the GOP”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 14, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on August 13, 2010.Guest: Richard Nixon Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Medicare”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 25, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on May 7, 2010.Guest: Wilbur Cohen Summary: Mr. Cohen’s public career had begun, as Buckley reminds us, in the Roosevelt Administration, where he was research head of the Committee on Economic… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Struggle for Democracy in Brazil”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on November 13, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on February 23, 2011.Guest:Brazilian statesman Carlos Lacerda Summary: Mr. Lacerda had been known for decades as a vigorous opponent of most of Brazil’s political class. Today’s discussion focuses… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Mobilizing the Poor”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on December 11, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on March 28, 2011.Guest: Saul David Alinsky Summary: The common aim of all Mr. Alinsky’s organizations is to mobilize the poor–mobilize them by whatever means comes to hand (marches,… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Was Goldwater a Mistake?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on December 14, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on April 7, 2011.Guest: Mark Hatfield Summary: Senator Hatfield, from the liberal side of the Republican Party, positions himself perfectly in his opening answer: Goldwater wasn’t a mistake in a… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Wallace Crusade”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 24, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on August 13, 2010.Guest: George Wallace Summary: Mr. Buckley had sharply criticized Mr. Wallace in print, both for his once-adamant attachment to segregation and for his New Deal statism, and Mr. Wallace… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Philby and Treason”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on February 26, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on August 13, 2010.Guest: Rebecca West Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Culture of the Left”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on February 26, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on August 13, 2010.Guest: Malcolm Muggeridge Summary: “He calls himself,” says Buckley in his introduction to the first of Muggeridge’s several appearances on Firing Line, “a man of… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Avant Garde”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on May 7, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on August 15, 2010.Guest: Allen Ginsberg Summary: Some installments of Firing Line would not lose much if the video faded out, but this one is an exception: Ginsberg’s hair (as Buckley puts it,… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Armies of the Night”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on May 28, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on August 15, 2010.Guest: Norman Mailer Summary: This surprisingly genial conversation starts with the subject of Norman Mailer–as most conversations with Norman Mailer do–and goes on from there.… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Rib Uncaged: Women and the Church”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on June 24, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on February 11, 2011.Guests: Rosemary Radford Ruether, Sidney Cornelia Callahan Summary: This show proves to be less of a bare-knuckle battle and more of a conversation than one might have expected, ranging… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Socialist Workers’ Party and American Politics”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 10, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on February 11, 2011.Guests: Fred Halstead, Paul Boutelle Summary: WFB starts off by reminding us that the Socialist Workers are “the principal political heirs of Leon Trotsky in this country,” and… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Hippies”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 3, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on August 15, 2010.Guests: Jack Kerouac; Ed Sanders; Lewis Yablonsky Summary: Hold onto your hat for this free-for-all among four men who aren’t simply coming from different… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Money Troubles”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 9, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on February 9, 2011.Guests: Joseph Barr, Arthur Edward Burns Summary: The federal deficits were becoming a matter of serious worry, and not only to Republicans. Although Mr. Barr is a member of the Johnson… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Cold War”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 23, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on February 9, 2011.Guest: Zbigniew Brzezinski Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Politics and Show Biz”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on October 7, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on February 9, 2011.Guest: Orson Bean Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Republic of New Africa”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on November 18, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on May 7, 2010.Guest: Milton Henry Summary: “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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Muhammad Ali and the Negro Movement”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on December 12, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on August 16, 2010.Guest: Muhammad Ali Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Radical Chic”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on December 17, 1970, uploaded to YouTube on January 13, 2014.Guest: Tom Wolfe Summary: Tom Wolfe–one of the leading exponents of New Journalism–was now, with his white suits and his dramatic manner, becoming a prominent public figure. “Radical… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “What to Do about the Post Office”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on April 23, 1973, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Ernest F. Hollings Summary: The spirited conversation with Senator Ernest F. Hollings–who strongly opposed the way the quasi-privatization of the Post Office had been… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Proposals for Welfare”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on April 23, 1973, uploaded to YouTube on December 19, 2012.Guest: Jimmy Carter Summary: This show was the first nationally televised appearance of Jimmy Carter. In this encounter, Governor Carter sounds quite conservative in talking about welfare… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “What Now for the Ghetto?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 24, 1973, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Thomas Bradley Summary: Thomas Bradley was the first black mayor of a predominantly white major city; previously he had been a Los Angeles policeman, and sat on the City Council.… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Heredity, IQ, and Social Issues”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on October 16, 1973, uploaded to YouTube on March 25, 2011.Guest: Thomas G. Bever, Richard J. Herrnstein Summary: The second show in the series on human behavior, this one on the explosive subject of heritability of IQ. “Explosive,”… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Tax Reform”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 21, 1974, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Stanley S. Surrey Summary: A thoughtful discussion of the federal tax system between Mr. Buckley and Stanley S. Surrey; both men have spent much of their professional lives studying… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Revisionist Historians”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 23, 1974, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Dean Rusk Summary: Former Secretary of State Dean Rusk, reviled at the time by the elite press and revisionist historians, was exiled, as his Ivy League friends saw it, to the wilds… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Should the United States Disarm?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on May 10, 1974, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Les Aspin Summary: Rep. Les Aspin had been, as Mr. Buckley reminds us, “one of Secretary McNamara’s whiz kids in the Pentagon,” and was now one of the… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Amnesty, with Ramsey Clark”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on June 3, 1974, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Ramsey Clark Summary: Another go at the debate over whether to offer unconditional amnesty to draft dodgers and deserters, in a high-energy exchange between our guest, Ramsey Clark,… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Future of the GOP, with Gerald R. Ford”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on June 28, 1974, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Gerald R. Ford Summary: The third Firing Line on “The Future of the GOP,” Mr. Buckley attempts to engage Vice President Gerald Ford on the question whether President… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Limits of Journalistic Investigation”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 9, 1974, uploaded to YouTube on December 19, 2012.Guests: Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein Summary: In a show taped while Watergate was still underway, Woodward and Bernstein are candid– as they were in their book–in admitting that… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Democratic Culture”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on November 15, 1974, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Leslie Fiedler Summary: Democracy per se doesn’t get into this rich discussion of culture much, with the much-admired and much-criticized American critic, Leslie Fiedler, but… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Intellectual’s Responsibilities in a Totalitarian Age”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on February 5, 1975, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Stephen Spender Summary: Stephen Spender had spent the Thirties, as Mr. Buckley puts it, “dancing along the precipice, attempting at once literary integrity and Communist… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Integrity and Journalism”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on March 10, 1975, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guests: Tom Wicker, William Safire Summary: This conversation among a card-carrying liberal, a card-carrying conservative, and a Republican moderate winds up centering on the revolt at… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Feminism”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on March 31, 1975, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Clare Boothe Luce Summary: The peg for this show was the Equal Rights Amendment, at the time stalled in the state legislatures. But the discussion between these two old friends soon… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Tom Wolfe and The Painted Word”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 9, 1975, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Tom Wolfe Summary: “The Painted Word” had angered whichever portions of the intelligentsia had not previously been hostile to Tom Wolfe. As Mr. Buckley points out, the… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Ten Years of Firing Line”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 20, 1976, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guests: Richard Howard Stafford Crossman, Germaine Greer, Harold Macmillan, Clare Boothe Luce, Mary McCarthy, Dame Rebecca West, Norman Mailer, Stephen Spender, Hugh Kenner, George S.… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “G. Gordon Liddy: An Enigma”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 11, 1978, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: G. Gordon Liddy Summary: 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. Amongst… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Mission of the Pope”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 6, 1978, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Malachi Martin Summary: The new pope being discussed on this show is not John Paul II but his predecessor, John Paul I, who would die a month after his election. Nonetheless, Malachi… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Television Machine”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on June 29, 1979, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guests: Dorothy Fuldheim, Ben Stein Summary: Is the most remarkable thing about present-day television, as Ben Stein maintains in this vivid exchange, its pervasive left-wing, anti-business… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Human Rights in Vietnam”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 6, 1979, uploaded to YouTube on November 11, 2011.Guests: Joan Baez and Ginetta Sagan Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Crime and Punishment: Gary Gilmore”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on October 11, 1979, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Norman Mailer Summary: A low-key and thoughtful appearance by the usually boisterous author of “The Executioner’s Song.” This new novel–on the life and death… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Abscam Controversy”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 5, 1981, uploaded to YouTube on May 7, 2010.Guest: Michael Tigar Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Are We Menaced by Moral Majority?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 22, 1981, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guest: Jerry Falwell Summary: Whether or not one agrees with him on specific moral or theological points, Reverend Jerry Falwell ably defends his organization against accusations–by,… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Do We Need a Foreign Policy Doctrine?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 15, 1981, uploaded to YouTube on May 7, 2010.Guest: George Ball Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Question of Namibia”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 17, 1981, uploaded to YouTube on May 7, 2010.Guests: Peter Kalangula; Aryeh Neier Summary: Father Kalangula’s organization in South West Africa (a/k/a Namibia) had won an internationally observed democratic election against the… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Is Modern Architecture Disastrous?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on October 1, 1981, uploaded to YouTube on May 2, 2011.Guest: Tom Wolfe Summary: A rip-roaring attack on the shibboleths of modern architecture–and with a Firing Line rarity, visual aids (illustrations from Wolfe’s book). Wolfe:… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Economy and the Blacks”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 13, 1982, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guest: Jesse Jackson Summary: Operation PUSH was holding its annual convention, on the theme “Black America: An Economic Common Market,” emphasizing the “means of using… More
A Firing Line Debate: Resolved: That Reducing the National Deficit in the Next Four Years Is a Top Priority
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on December 8, 1992, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guests: James Dale Davidson, Warren B. Rudman, Clive Crook, Lester C. Thurow, Robert Kuttner, Robert Eisner, David A. Levy Summary: Ronald Reagan had warned of “social, cultural,… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Confidence and Betrayal”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on February 22, 1983, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guests: Florence Cohalan, Harriet F. Pilpel, Norman R. Tamarkin Summary: A profound discussion among, as Mr. Buckley puts it, “a very thoughtful lawyer, a very thoughtful doctor, and… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Election: A View from New York”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on August 31, 1984, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guest: Ed Koch Summary: Mayor Ed Koch surveys the political scene as the dust settles from the national conventions. One sample: “I drive people in my own party crazy-angry with me,… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Where Is the GOP Headed?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 11, 1985, uploaded to YouTube on November 11, 2011.Guests: Newt Gingrich and Bill Green Summary: Mr. Gingrich was already a leader of the conservative wing of the GOP, and Mr. Green was prominent among the remnant of “Rockefeller… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Bill Buckley and Firing Line Get Roasted”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 14, 1986, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guests: Jeff Greenfield, John Kenneth Galbraith, Harriet F. Pilpel, Henry Kissinger, Eugene J. McCarthy, Tom Wolfe Summary: This interrogation of Mr. Buckley by favorite guests John Kenneth… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Firing Line 1966-1986: A Potpourri of Persuaders”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 14, 1986, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guests: Robert Shrum, Edward F. Prichard, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, Zbigniew Brzezinski, George S. McGovern, Margaret Heckler, Phyllis Schlafly, Allard K. Lowenstein, Henry Kissinger, Tom… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Terrorism: Viewed from Abroad”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on May 30, 1986, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guests: Benjamin Netanyahu, Claude de Kemoularia Summary: What is terrorism? Can we accept Benjamin Netanyahu’s definition–“the systematic and deliberate attack, the… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “For Central America: A Radical Prescription”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on October 2, 1986, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guest: Manuel F. Ayau Summary: Francisco Marroquin University had been a tremendous success. Imagine: a university, teaching everything from literature to engineering to biology, but also… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Textbook Controversy in Tennessee”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on October 10, 1986, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guests: Michael P. Farris, Timothy B. Dyk, Vicki Frost, Faye P. Taylor Summary: An illuminating look at a deep division within our society. The case being referred to as “Scopes… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Human Rights, Foreign Policy, and Ronald Reagan”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on October 16, 1986, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guest: Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. Summary: An amazingly good-tempered show on the Reagan Administration’s policies, human rights, and foreign policy given that there was a time when… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Three Young Latin Americans Wish to Be Heard”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on October 1, 1987, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guests: Juan F. Ramirez Arguello, Antonio Rivera, J.T. Gonzales Brito, Christopher Hitchens Summary: Our three guests are engaging but not completely fluent in English. The result is some… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Dirty Rock Lyrics”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on June 9, 1988, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guests: Tipper Gore, Doug Simmons Summary: This inaugural episode of Firing Line in a half hour format features a discussion of censorship, freedom of expression and the American music… More
A Firing Line Debate: Resolved: That Free-Market Competitiveness Is Best for America
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 13, 1989, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guests: Jack Kemp, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, Newt Gingrich, George S. McGovern, Gary Hart, Pat Schroeder, John Kenneth Galbraith Summary: In his introduction for this debate on the free market,… More
On the Firing Line: The Public Life of Our Public Figures
– Random House, 1989.Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “New Insights on the Russian Revolution”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on December 13, 1990, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guest: Richard Pipes Summary: A gripping look at the Soviet Union, with Richard Pipes, a man who has spent all his adult life studying it. Pipes: “There are signs that the right-wing… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Why Are We in a Recession?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on October 6, 1992, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guest: John Kenneth Galbraith Summary: Mr. Buckley and his old friend and adversary, John Kenneth Galbraith, occasionally have such a good time slanging each other that they have to remind… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Threat of Nuclear Destruction – New Voices”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on August 16, 1993, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guests: Henry Kissinger, Douglas Feith, Russell Seitz, Henry Sokolski Summary: An extraordinarily rich trio of shows on various aspects of nuclear proliferation, with insights into the… More
A Firing Line Debate: Resolved: That the Death Penalty Is a Good Thing
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on May 24, 1994, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guests: Ed Koch, Walter Berns, Susan Boleyn, Ira Glasser, Leon Botstein, Stephen B. Bright, Bryan Stevenson Summary: Many of the arguments regarding the death penalty are familiar: the… More
A Firing Line Debate: Resolved: That the Women’s Movement Has Been Disastrous
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on December 7, 1994, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guests: Betty Friedan, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Arianna Huffington, Helen Alvare, Karen S. Burstein, Camille Paglia, Kathryn Kolbert Summary: Anyone who thinks “the women’s… More
A Firing Line Debate: Resolved: That All Immigration Should Be Drastically Reduced
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on June 6, 1995, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guests: Peter Brimelow, Daniel Stein, Arianna Huffington, Leon Botstein, Ed Koch, Frank Sharry, Ira Glasser Summary: Moderator Michael Kinsley starts out by drawing attention to the text of… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Have We Learned Anything about the Good Society?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 11, 1996, uploaded to YouTube on March 4, 2015.Guest: John Kenneth Galbraith Summary: Another encounter between old friends and adversaries William F. Buckley Jr. and John Kenneth Galbraith. This time round they discuss… More
A Firing Line Debate: Resolved: That Social Security Should Be Privatized
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on December 4, 1996, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guests: Pierre S. Du Pont, John C. Goodman, Peter G. Peterson, Henry J. Aaron, Robert Eisner, Robert Kuttner, Theodore R. Marmor Summary: Is the Social Security system a Ponzi scheme that… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Problems of Gay Life”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 23, 1997, uploaded to YouTube on March 4, 2015.Guest: David Brudnoy, Arianna Huffington Summary: David Brudnoy, a veteran libertarian journalist (and frequent contributor to “National Review”), is also a homosexual who, it… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Did Camelot Have a Dark Side?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 13, 1998, uploaded to YouTube on March 4, 2015.Guests: Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Thomas C. Reeves Summary: Seymour Hersh had just published “The Dark Side of Camelot,” about John F. Kennedy’s private life. On this… More
A Firing Line Debate: Resolved: That the ACLU Is Full of Baloney
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on May 4, 1998, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guests: Lino A. Graglia, William A. Donohue, Robert H. Knight, Ira Glasser, Nadine Strossen, Leon Botstein, Barry W. Lynn Summary: Nadine Strossen starts by stating that, “The… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Looking Back on Bosnia”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 9, 1998, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guest: Richard C. Holbrooke Summary: “Bosnia” in this show’s title is a synecdoche for the whole explosive region of the Balkans, of which Kosovo was currently the… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Goldwater Revisited”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 9, 1998, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guest: Barry Goldwater Summary: Senator Goldwater had died at the age of 89, in his beloved Phoenix. Before showing clips from his last Firing Line appearance, Mr. Buckley recalls his old… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley “Is New York City Out from Under?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 13, 1999, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guest: Rudy Giuliani Summary: Mr. Buckley reminds us, that Theodore White once wrote that New York City was ungovernable. Prior mayors proved White correct. Then Ed Koch took over, followed… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley “Tom Wolfe and His Critics”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 19, 1999, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guest: Tom Wolfe Summary: Tom Wolfe had just published his first novel in 11 years, “A Man in Full,” to significant, but not universal, acclaim. Amongst the negative review were… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley “Kissinger’s Years of Renewal”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on April 15, 1999, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guest: Henry Kissinger Summary: Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s latest volume of memoirs, “Years of Renewal,” covers the period from Richard Nixon’s… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley “Professor Galbraith Names Names”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on May 18, 1999, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guest: John Kenneth Galbraith Summary: John Kenneth Galbraith had just written, Mr. Buckley tells us, a book of “biographical sketches of mighty men and women he has known,”… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley “Looking Back on Senator Joe McCarthy with Kramer and Navasky”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on June 29, 1999, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guests: Hilton Kramer, Victor S. Navasky Summary: Mr. Buckley had just published “The Redhunter,” a novel based on the life of Joe McCarthy (who had also been the subject of his… More
How ‘Firing Line’ Transformed the Battleground
– Laurence Zuckerman, New York Times, December 18, 1999.Excerpt: Even many of the guests who turned out at the Museum of Broadcasting on Tuesday to pay tribute to William F. Buckley Jr. on the occasion of the taping of the final broadcast of… More
Bill Buckley’s Lesson for Today’s Conservatives
– Neal B. Freeman, Wall Street Journal, February 27, 2016.Excerpt: What did “Firing Line” add to the culture of its day? It became, first, a national megaphone for conservative values. It wasn’t one of dozens of right-leaning talk shows. It… More
Teaching
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “McCarthyism: Past, Present, Future”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on May 16, 1966, uploaded to YouTube on June 2, 2010.Guest: Leo Cherne Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Playboy Philosophy”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 12, 1966, uploaded to YouTube on May 10, 2010.Guest: Hugh Hefner Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Are Public Schools Necessary?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 12, 1966, uploaded to YouTube on January 24, 2014.Guest: Paul Goodman Summary: Buckley begins by saying of guest Paul Goodman, “Where he stands, ideologically, in conventional terms, it is hard to say. Probably no one would wish… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Academic Freedom and Berkeley”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 16, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on July 15, 2010.Guest: Harold Taylor Summary: We eventually get to Berkeley–where the Free Speech Movement and associated radicalisms had completely broken down academic discipline–but before… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Role of the Advocate”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 19, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on July 15, 2010.Guest: F. Lee Bailey Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Future of the UN”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 19, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on July 15, 2010.Guest: Francis T. P. Plimpton Summary: The United Nations had been energetically debating the right of Rhodesia to declare independence unilaterally and the right of South Africa to… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “LBJ and Vietnam”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on March 6, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on July 15, 2010.Guests: Vance Hartke and Dickerman Williams Summary: As Buckley introduces him, Senator Hartke “is perhaps best known, at this point in his career, as one of the leaders in the… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Politics and the Press”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on March 7, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on July 15, 2010.Guest: Tom Wicker Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Black Power”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on March 7, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on July 15, 2010.Guest: Nat Hentoff Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Is There a Role for a Third Party?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on March 8, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on July 29, 2010.Guest: Franklin D. Roosevelt Jr. Summary: 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,… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Do We Have Anything Left to Fear from Socialism?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on March 9, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on February 23, 2011.Guest: Sidney Hook Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The World of LSD”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on April 10, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on July 29, 2010.Guest: Timothy Leary Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Censorship and the Production Code”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on April 10, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on August 13, 2010.Guest: Otto Preminger Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Regular in Politics”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on May 1, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on August 13, 2010.Guest: Carmine De Sapio Summary: De Sapio was the Tammany Hall “boss” defeated in 1963 by a young “reform Democrat” named Edward Koch. Buckley attempts in this hour… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “How to Protest”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on May 1, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on August 13, 2010.Guest: Dwight Macdonald Summary: Mr. Macdonald had recently been an organizer of the “Step Out Movement”–that is, to step out of a hall where Vice President Humphrey would… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Vietnam Protests”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on June 26, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on August 13, 2010.Guest: Benjamin Spock Summary: Dr. Spock, Mr. Buckley begins by recounting, has said that the threat to our children from “nuclear annihilation” is “a thousand times… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Decline of Anti-Communism”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on June 29, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on August 13, 2010.Guest: Fred Schwarz Summary: Buckley 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Is It Possible to Be a Good Governor?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 6, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on August 13, 2010.Guest: Ronald Reagan Summary: 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,”… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Is the World Funny?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 7, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on May 7, 2010.Guest: Groucho Marx Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “A Foreign Policy for the GOP”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 11, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on May 7, 2010.Guest: Charles Percy Summary: 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]… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Future of the GOP”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 14, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on August 13, 2010.Guest: Richard Nixon Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Medicare”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 25, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on May 7, 2010.Guest: Wilbur Cohen Summary: Mr. Cohen’s public career had begun, as Buckley reminds us, in the Roosevelt Administration, where he was research head of the Committee on Economic… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Struggle for Democracy in Brazil”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on November 13, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on February 23, 2011.Guest:Brazilian statesman Carlos Lacerda Summary: Mr. Lacerda had been known for decades as a vigorous opponent of most of Brazil’s political class. Today’s discussion focuses… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Mobilizing the Poor”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on December 11, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on March 28, 2011.Guest: Saul David Alinsky Summary: The common aim of all Mr. Alinsky’s organizations is to mobilize the poor–mobilize them by whatever means comes to hand (marches,… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Was Goldwater a Mistake?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on December 14, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on April 7, 2011.Guest: Mark Hatfield Summary: Senator Hatfield, from the liberal side of the Republican Party, positions himself perfectly in his opening answer: Goldwater wasn’t a mistake in a… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Wallace Crusade”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 24, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on August 13, 2010.Guest: George Wallace Summary: Mr. Buckley had sharply criticized Mr. Wallace in print, both for his once-adamant attachment to segregation and for his New Deal statism, and Mr. Wallace… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Philby and Treason”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on February 26, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on August 13, 2010.Guest: Rebecca West Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Culture of the Left”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on February 26, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on August 13, 2010.Guest: Malcolm Muggeridge Summary: “He calls himself,” says Buckley in his introduction to the first of Muggeridge’s several appearances on Firing Line, “a man of… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Avant Garde”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on May 7, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on August 15, 2010.Guest: Allen Ginsberg Summary: Some installments of Firing Line would not lose much if the video faded out, but this one is an exception: Ginsberg’s hair (as Buckley puts it,… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Armies of the Night”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on May 28, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on August 15, 2010.Guest: Norman Mailer Summary: This surprisingly genial conversation starts with the subject of Norman Mailer–as most conversations with Norman Mailer do–and goes on from there.… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Rib Uncaged: Women and the Church”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on June 24, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on February 11, 2011.Guests: Rosemary Radford Ruether, Sidney Cornelia Callahan Summary: This show proves to be less of a bare-knuckle battle and more of a conversation than one might have expected, ranging… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Socialist Workers’ Party and American Politics”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 10, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on February 11, 2011.Guests: Fred Halstead, Paul Boutelle Summary: WFB starts off by reminding us that the Socialist Workers are “the principal political heirs of Leon Trotsky in this country,” and… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Hippies”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 3, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on August 15, 2010.Guests: Jack Kerouac; Ed Sanders; Lewis Yablonsky Summary: Hold onto your hat for this free-for-all among four men who aren’t simply coming from different… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Money Troubles”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 9, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on February 9, 2011.Guests: Joseph Barr, Arthur Edward Burns Summary: The federal deficits were becoming a matter of serious worry, and not only to Republicans. Although Mr. Barr is a member of the Johnson… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Cold War”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 23, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on February 9, 2011.Guest: Zbigniew Brzezinski Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Politics and Show Biz”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on October 7, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on February 9, 2011.Guest: Orson Bean Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Republic of New Africa”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on November 18, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on May 7, 2010.Guest: Milton Henry Summary: “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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Muhammad Ali and the Negro Movement”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on December 12, 1968, uploaded to YouTube on August 16, 2010.Guest: Muhammad Ali Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Radical Chic”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on December 17, 1970, uploaded to YouTube on January 13, 2014.Guest: Tom Wolfe Summary: Tom Wolfe–one of the leading exponents of New Journalism–was now, with his white suits and his dramatic manner, becoming a prominent public figure. “Radical… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “What to Do about the Post Office”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on April 23, 1973, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Ernest F. Hollings Summary: The spirited conversation with Senator Ernest F. Hollings–who strongly opposed the way the quasi-privatization of the Post Office had been… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Proposals for Welfare”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on April 23, 1973, uploaded to YouTube on December 19, 2012.Guest: Jimmy Carter Summary: This show was the first nationally televised appearance of Jimmy Carter. In this encounter, Governor Carter sounds quite conservative in talking about welfare… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “What Now for the Ghetto?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 24, 1973, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Thomas Bradley Summary: Thomas Bradley was the first black mayor of a predominantly white major city; previously he had been a Los Angeles policeman, and sat on the City Council.… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Heredity, IQ, and Social Issues”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on October 16, 1973, uploaded to YouTube on March 25, 2011.Guest: Thomas G. Bever, Richard J. Herrnstein Summary: The second show in the series on human behavior, this one on the explosive subject of heritability of IQ. “Explosive,”… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Tax Reform”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 21, 1974, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Stanley S. Surrey Summary: A thoughtful discussion of the federal tax system between Mr. Buckley and Stanley S. Surrey; both men have spent much of their professional lives studying… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Revisionist Historians”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 23, 1974, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Dean Rusk Summary: Former Secretary of State Dean Rusk, reviled at the time by the elite press and revisionist historians, was exiled, as his Ivy League friends saw it, to the wilds… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Should the United States Disarm?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on May 10, 1974, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Les Aspin Summary: Rep. Les Aspin had been, as Mr. Buckley reminds us, “one of Secretary McNamara’s whiz kids in the Pentagon,” and was now one of the… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Amnesty, with Ramsey Clark”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on June 3, 1974, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Ramsey Clark Summary: Another go at the debate over whether to offer unconditional amnesty to draft dodgers and deserters, in a high-energy exchange between our guest, Ramsey Clark,… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Future of the GOP, with Gerald R. Ford”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on June 28, 1974, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Gerald R. Ford Summary: The third Firing Line on “The Future of the GOP,” Mr. Buckley attempts to engage Vice President Gerald Ford on the question whether President… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Limits of Journalistic Investigation”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 9, 1974, uploaded to YouTube on December 19, 2012.Guests: Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein Summary: In a show taped while Watergate was still underway, Woodward and Bernstein are candid– as they were in their book–in admitting that… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Democratic Culture”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on November 15, 1974, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Leslie Fiedler Summary: Democracy per se doesn’t get into this rich discussion of culture much, with the much-admired and much-criticized American critic, Leslie Fiedler, but… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Intellectual’s Responsibilities in a Totalitarian Age”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on February 5, 1975, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Stephen Spender Summary: Stephen Spender had spent the Thirties, as Mr. Buckley puts it, “dancing along the precipice, attempting at once literary integrity and Communist… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Integrity and Journalism”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on March 10, 1975, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guests: Tom Wicker, William Safire Summary: This conversation among a card-carrying liberal, a card-carrying conservative, and a Republican moderate winds up centering on the revolt at… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Feminism”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on March 31, 1975, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Clare Boothe Luce Summary: The peg for this show was the Equal Rights Amendment, at the time stalled in the state legislatures. But the discussion between these two old friends soon… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Tom Wolfe and The Painted Word”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 9, 1975, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Tom Wolfe Summary: “The Painted Word” had angered whichever portions of the intelligentsia had not previously been hostile to Tom Wolfe. As Mr. Buckley points out, the… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Ten Years of Firing Line”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 20, 1976, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guests: Richard Howard Stafford Crossman, Germaine Greer, Harold Macmillan, Clare Boothe Luce, Mary McCarthy, Dame Rebecca West, Norman Mailer, Stephen Spender, Hugh Kenner, George S.… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “G. Gordon Liddy: An Enigma”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 11, 1978, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: G. Gordon Liddy Summary: 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. Amongst… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Mission of the Pope”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 6, 1978, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Malachi Martin Summary: The new pope being discussed on this show is not John Paul II but his predecessor, John Paul I, who would die a month after his election. Nonetheless, Malachi… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Television Machine”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on June 29, 1979, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guests: Dorothy Fuldheim, Ben Stein Summary: Is the most remarkable thing about present-day television, as Ben Stein maintains in this vivid exchange, its pervasive left-wing, anti-business… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Human Rights in Vietnam”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 6, 1979, uploaded to YouTube on November 11, 2011.Guests: Joan Baez and Ginetta Sagan Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Crime and Punishment: Gary Gilmore”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on October 11, 1979, uploaded to YouTube on March 2, 2015.Guest: Norman Mailer Summary: A low-key and thoughtful appearance by the usually boisterous author of “The Executioner’s Song.” This new novel–on the life and death… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Abscam Controversy”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 5, 1981, uploaded to YouTube on May 7, 2010.Guest: Michael Tigar Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Are We Menaced by Moral Majority?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 22, 1981, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guest: Jerry Falwell Summary: Whether or not one agrees with him on specific moral or theological points, Reverend Jerry Falwell ably defends his organization against accusations–by,… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Do We Need a Foreign Policy Doctrine?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 15, 1981, uploaded to YouTube on May 7, 2010.Guest: George Ball Summary: 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… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Question of Namibia”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 17, 1981, uploaded to YouTube on May 7, 2010.Guests: Peter Kalangula; Aryeh Neier Summary: Father Kalangula’s organization in South West Africa (a/k/a Namibia) had won an internationally observed democratic election against the… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Is Modern Architecture Disastrous?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on October 1, 1981, uploaded to YouTube on May 2, 2011.Guest: Tom Wolfe Summary: A rip-roaring attack on the shibboleths of modern architecture–and with a Firing Line rarity, visual aids (illustrations from Wolfe’s book). Wolfe:… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Economy and the Blacks”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 13, 1982, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guest: Jesse Jackson Summary: Operation PUSH was holding its annual convention, on the theme “Black America: An Economic Common Market,” emphasizing the “means of using… More
A Firing Line Debate: Resolved: That Reducing the National Deficit in the Next Four Years Is a Top Priority
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on December 8, 1992, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guests: James Dale Davidson, Warren B. Rudman, Clive Crook, Lester C. Thurow, Robert Kuttner, Robert Eisner, David A. Levy Summary: Ronald Reagan had warned of “social, cultural,… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Confidence and Betrayal”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on February 22, 1983, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guests: Florence Cohalan, Harriet F. Pilpel, Norman R. Tamarkin Summary: A profound discussion among, as Mr. Buckley puts it, “a very thoughtful lawyer, a very thoughtful doctor, and… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Election: A View from New York”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on August 31, 1984, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guest: Ed Koch Summary: Mayor Ed Koch surveys the political scene as the dust settles from the national conventions. One sample: “I drive people in my own party crazy-angry with me,… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Where Is the GOP Headed?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 11, 1985, uploaded to YouTube on November 11, 2011.Guests: Newt Gingrich and Bill Green Summary: Mr. Gingrich was already a leader of the conservative wing of the GOP, and Mr. Green was prominent among the remnant of “Rockefeller… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Bill Buckley and Firing Line Get Roasted”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 14, 1986, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guests: Jeff Greenfield, John Kenneth Galbraith, Harriet F. Pilpel, Henry Kissinger, Eugene J. McCarthy, Tom Wolfe Summary: This interrogation of Mr. Buckley by favorite guests John Kenneth… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Firing Line 1966-1986: A Potpourri of Persuaders”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 14, 1986, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guests: Robert Shrum, Edward F. Prichard, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, Zbigniew Brzezinski, George S. McGovern, Margaret Heckler, Phyllis Schlafly, Allard K. Lowenstein, Henry Kissinger, Tom… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Terrorism: Viewed from Abroad”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on May 30, 1986, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guests: Benjamin Netanyahu, Claude de Kemoularia Summary: What is terrorism? Can we accept Benjamin Netanyahu’s definition–“the systematic and deliberate attack, the… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “For Central America: A Radical Prescription”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on October 2, 1986, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guest: Manuel F. Ayau Summary: Francisco Marroquin University had been a tremendous success. Imagine: a university, teaching everything from literature to engineering to biology, but also… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Textbook Controversy in Tennessee”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on October 10, 1986, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guests: Michael P. Farris, Timothy B. Dyk, Vicki Frost, Faye P. Taylor Summary: An illuminating look at a deep division within our society. The case being referred to as “Scopes… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Human Rights, Foreign Policy, and Ronald Reagan”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on October 16, 1986, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guest: Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. Summary: An amazingly good-tempered show on the Reagan Administration’s policies, human rights, and foreign policy given that there was a time when… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Three Young Latin Americans Wish to Be Heard”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on October 1, 1987, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guests: Juan F. Ramirez Arguello, Antonio Rivera, J.T. Gonzales Brito, Christopher Hitchens Summary: Our three guests are engaging but not completely fluent in English. The result is some… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Dirty Rock Lyrics”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on June 9, 1988, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guests: Tipper Gore, Doug Simmons Summary: This inaugural episode of Firing Line in a half hour format features a discussion of censorship, freedom of expression and the American music… More
A Firing Line Debate: Resolved: That Free-Market Competitiveness Is Best for America
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on September 13, 1989, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guests: Jack Kemp, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick, Newt Gingrich, George S. McGovern, Gary Hart, Pat Schroeder, John Kenneth Galbraith Summary: In his introduction for this debate on the free market,… More
On the Firing Line: The Public Life of Our Public Figures
– Random House, 1989.Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “New Insights on the Russian Revolution”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on December 13, 1990, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guest: Richard Pipes Summary: A gripping look at the Soviet Union, with Richard Pipes, a man who has spent all his adult life studying it. Pipes: “There are signs that the right-wing… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Why Are We in a Recession?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on October 6, 1992, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guest: John Kenneth Galbraith Summary: Mr. Buckley and his old friend and adversary, John Kenneth Galbraith, occasionally have such a good time slanging each other that they have to remind… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Threat of Nuclear Destruction – New Voices”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on August 16, 1993, uploaded to YouTube on March 3, 2015.Guests: Henry Kissinger, Douglas Feith, Russell Seitz, Henry Sokolski Summary: An extraordinarily rich trio of shows on various aspects of nuclear proliferation, with insights into the… More
A Firing Line Debate: Resolved: That the Death Penalty Is a Good Thing
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on May 24, 1994, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guests: Ed Koch, Walter Berns, Susan Boleyn, Ira Glasser, Leon Botstein, Stephen B. Bright, Bryan Stevenson Summary: Many of the arguments regarding the death penalty are familiar: the… More
A Firing Line Debate: Resolved: That the Women’s Movement Has Been Disastrous
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on December 7, 1994, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guests: Betty Friedan, Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Arianna Huffington, Helen Alvare, Karen S. Burstein, Camille Paglia, Kathryn Kolbert Summary: Anyone who thinks “the women’s… More
A Firing Line Debate: Resolved: That All Immigration Should Be Drastically Reduced
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on June 6, 1995, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guests: Peter Brimelow, Daniel Stein, Arianna Huffington, Leon Botstein, Ed Koch, Frank Sharry, Ira Glasser Summary: Moderator Michael Kinsley starts out by drawing attention to the text of… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Have We Learned Anything about the Good Society?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 11, 1996, uploaded to YouTube on March 4, 2015.Guest: John Kenneth Galbraith Summary: Another encounter between old friends and adversaries William F. Buckley Jr. and John Kenneth Galbraith. This time round they discuss… More
A Firing Line Debate: Resolved: That Social Security Should Be Privatized
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on December 4, 1996, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guests: Pierre S. Du Pont, John C. Goodman, Peter G. Peterson, Henry J. Aaron, Robert Eisner, Robert Kuttner, Theodore R. Marmor Summary: Is the Social Security system a Ponzi scheme that… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “The Problems of Gay Life”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 23, 1997, uploaded to YouTube on March 4, 2015.Guest: David Brudnoy, Arianna Huffington Summary: David Brudnoy, a veteran libertarian journalist (and frequent contributor to “National Review”), is also a homosexual who, it… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Did Camelot Have a Dark Side?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 13, 1998, uploaded to YouTube on March 4, 2015.Guests: Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., Thomas C. Reeves Summary: Seymour Hersh had just published “The Dark Side of Camelot,” about John F. Kennedy’s private life. On this… More
A Firing Line Debate: Resolved: That the ACLU Is Full of Baloney
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on May 4, 1998, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guests: Lino A. Graglia, William A. Donohue, Robert H. Knight, Ira Glasser, Nadine Strossen, Leon Botstein, Barry W. Lynn Summary: Nadine Strossen starts by stating that, “The… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Looking Back on Bosnia”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 9, 1998, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guest: Richard C. Holbrooke Summary: “Bosnia” in this show’s title is a synecdoche for the whole explosive region of the Balkans, of which Kosovo was currently the… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. “Goldwater Revisited”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on July 9, 1998, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guest: Barry Goldwater Summary: Senator Goldwater had died at the age of 89, in his beloved Phoenix. Before showing clips from his last Firing Line appearance, Mr. Buckley recalls his old… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley “Is New York City Out from Under?”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 13, 1999, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guest: Rudy Giuliani Summary: Mr. Buckley reminds us, that Theodore White once wrote that New York City was ungovernable. Prior mayors proved White correct. Then Ed Koch took over, followed… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley “Tom Wolfe and His Critics”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 19, 1999, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guest: Tom Wolfe Summary: Tom Wolfe had just published his first novel in 11 years, “A Man in Full,” to significant, but not universal, acclaim. Amongst the negative review were… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley “Kissinger’s Years of Renewal”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on April 15, 1999, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guest: Henry Kissinger Summary: Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger’s latest volume of memoirs, “Years of Renewal,” covers the period from Richard Nixon’s… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley “Professor Galbraith Names Names”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on May 18, 1999, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guest: John Kenneth Galbraith Summary: John Kenneth Galbraith had just written, Mr. Buckley tells us, a book of “biographical sketches of mighty men and women he has known,”… More
Firing Line with William F. Buckley “Looking Back on Senator Joe McCarthy with Kramer and Navasky”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on June 29, 1999, uploaded to YouTube on March 5, 2015.Guests: Hilton Kramer, Victor S. Navasky Summary: Mr. Buckley had just published “The Redhunter,” a novel based on the life of Joe McCarthy (who had also been the subject of his… More
How ‘Firing Line’ Transformed the Battleground
– Laurence Zuckerman, New York Times, December 18, 1999.Excerpt: Even many of the guests who turned out at the Museum of Broadcasting on Tuesday to pay tribute to William F. Buckley Jr. on the occasion of the taping of the final broadcast of… More
Bill Buckley’s Lesson for Today’s Conservatives
– Neal B. Freeman, Wall Street Journal, February 27, 2016.Excerpt: What did “Firing Line” add to the culture of its day? It became, first, a national megaphone for conservative values. It wasn’t one of dozens of right-leaning talk shows. It… More