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. “LBJ and the Intellectuals”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 12, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on July 15, 2010.Guest: Hans Joachim Morgenthau. Summary: A rich discussion of our political culture, starting with the Johnson administration’s confused objectives in Vietnam (Morgenthau: “Does… 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. “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
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. “LBJ and the Intellectuals”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 12, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on July 15, 2010.Guest: Hans Joachim Morgenthau. Summary: A rich discussion of our political culture, starting with the Johnson administration’s confused objectives in Vietnam (Morgenthau: “Does… 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. “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
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. “LBJ and the Intellectuals”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 12, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on July 15, 2010.Guest: Hans Joachim Morgenthau. Summary: A rich discussion of our political culture, starting with the Johnson administration’s confused objectives in Vietnam (Morgenthau: “Does… 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. “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
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. “LBJ and the Intellectuals”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 12, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on July 15, 2010.Guest: Hans Joachim Morgenthau. Summary: A rich discussion of our political culture, starting with the Johnson administration’s confused objectives in Vietnam (Morgenthau: “Does… 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. “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
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. “LBJ and the Intellectuals”
– Firing Line Videos, Hoover Institution, taped on January 12, 1967, uploaded to YouTube on July 15, 2010.Guest: Hans Joachim Morgenthau. Summary: A rich discussion of our political culture, starting with the Johnson administration’s confused objectives in Vietnam (Morgenthau: “Does… 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. “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