Let Us Talk of Many Things : The Collected Speeches with New Commentary by the Author

545 Pages·2000·14.045 MB·English

by  William F. Buckley Jr

Praise for
Let Us Talk of Many Things
“Now, thanks to the publication of Let Us Talk of Many Things, we can go
back and, in appreciating the speeches, we can reach a fuller appreciation of
the speaker himself, that enigmatic, indispensable man who, almost single-
handedly, won American conservatives’ acceptance, if grudging acceptance,
in the political and cultural mainstream.” —National Review
“What is surprising . . . is how personally revealing these speeches are.
Framed by their newly written introductions, they are scenes from the
a utobiography that Buckley has never written. Though he has afforded us,
before, several book-length glimpses of a week in his busy life, he has never
before shown us that life in long profile.” —The Weekly Standard
“Scattered throughout are delicious anecdotes, piquant quotations, and
much evidence of a keen moral sensibility, capable of asking such probing
questions as ‘A good society needs to be hospitable to virtue . . . but
shouldn’t it also be inhospitable to dereliction?’ If not an essential Buckley
book, this one yet contains his essence.” —Booklist
“Mirth, wit, and humor abound, and readers of all stripes will wonder at
Buckley’s mystical ability to conjure from our common language phrases of
staggering beauty, elegance, and power.” —The Charlotte Observer
“David Brooks, in his foreword, calls this a primary document in the
h istory of the Cold War, and it is. But this is not the Cold War as history; it
is war as it is being fought, and the speeches from that time bristle with
e nergy and purpose and the glint of Buckley’s weapons. His is the kind
of rapier wit where the rapier inflicts real wounds.” —D Magazine
ALSO BY WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR.
God and Man at Yale(1951) * High Jinx(1986)
McCarthy and His Enemies, Racing through Paradise(1987)
co-authoredwith L. Brent Bozell Jr.
* Mongoose, R.I.P.(1988)
(1954)
Keeping the Tablets, co-edited with
Up from Liberalism(1959)
Charles R. Kesler (1988)
The Committee and Its Critics
On the Firing Line(1989)
(ed.) (1962)
Gratitude(1990)
Rumbles Left and Right(1963)
* Tucker’s Last Stand(1990)
The Unmaking of a Mayor(1966)
Windfall(1992)
The Jeweler’s Eye(1968)
In Search of Anti-Semitism(1992)
Odyssey of a Friend,by Whittaker
Happy Days Were Here Again,
Chambers, introduction and notes
edited by Patricia Bozell (1993)
by WFB (1969)
* A Very Private Plot(1994)
The Governor Listeth(1970)
* The Blackford Oakes Reader (1995)
Did You Ever See a Dream Walking?
(ed.) (1970) * Brothers No More (1995)
Cruising Speed(1971) Buckley: The Right Word,edited by
Samuel S. Vaughan (1996)
Inveighing We Will Go(1972)
The Lexicon(1996)
Four Reforms (1973)
Nearer, My God(1997)
United Nations Journal(1974)
* The Redhunter(1999)
Execution Eve(1975)
* Spytime(2000)
* Saving the Queen(1976)
* Elvis in the Morning(2001)
Airborne (1976)
* Nuremberg(2002)
* Stained Glass(1978)
* Getting It Right(2003)
A Hymnal(1978)
The Fall of the Berlin Wall (2004)
* Who’s on First(1980)
Miles Gone By(2004)
* Marco Polo, If You Can(1982)
* Last Call for Blackford Oakes(2005)
Atlantic High(1982)
* The Rake (2007)
Overdrive(1983)
Cancel Your Own Goddam Subscription
* The Story of Henri Tod(1984)
(2007)
* See You Later Alligator (1985)
Flying High: Remembering Barry
* The Temptation of Wilfred Malachey
Goldwater(2008)
(1985)
The Reagan I Knew(2008)
Right Reason, edited by
Richard Brookhiser (1985)
*Fiction
WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY JR.
Let Us Talk
of
Many Things
THE COLLECTED SPEECHES
A MEMBER OF THE PERSEUS BOOKS GROUP
NEW YORK
Copyright © 2000 by William F. Buckley Jr.
Hardcover first published in 2000 by Forum, an imprint of Prima Publishing
Paperback published in 2008 by Basic Books,
A Member of the Perseus Books Group
All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America.
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any
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The Library of Congress has catalogued the hardcover edition as follows:
Buckley, William F. (William Frank)
Let us talk of many things : the collected speeches / William F. Buckley Jr.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-7615-2551-3
1. Speeches, addresses, etc., American. I. Title.
PS3552. U344 L48 2000
815'.54—dc21 00-025551
Paperback: ISBN: 978-0-465-00334-1
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments . . . . . . . . .
. ...... Xill
Foreword: by David Brooks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . XVI
Notesfrom the Lecture Circuit: A New Yorker Essay .... XXI
THE FIFTIES
Today We Are Educated Men . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
An address to follow graduates
The Trojan Horse of American Education? . . . . . . . . . 7
A defonse of private schools
The Artist as Aggressor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
On congressional investigations
Only Five Thousand Communists? . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Welcoming the House Committee on Un-American Activities to town
Should Liberalism Be Repudiated? . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Debating James Wechsler
THE SIXTIES
In the End, We Will Bury Him . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Protesting Khrushchev's visit
VI CONTENTS
Scholar, Fighter, Westerner . ..... 38
Introducing Jacques Soustelle
The Lonely Professor. . ................... 41
Saluting 0. Glenn Saxon
An Island of Hope . . ·42
Defending Taiwan's independence
Norman Mailer and the American Right.
A debate
What Could We Learn from a Communist? . . . . . . . . 58
An appeal to the Yale Political Union
Who Did Get Us into This Mess? .............. 68
Debating Murray Kempton
The Impending Defeat of Barry Goldwater . . . . . . . . 74
Off the record, to the Young Americans for Freedom
A Growing Spirit of Resistance ... . ....... 78
To the New York Conservative Party
The Free Society-What's That? . . 85
Applauding Henry Hazlitt
Buckley versus Buckley . . ...... 88
A self-interview, on running for mayor of New York
The Heat of Mr. Truman's Kitchen . . . . . 93
Celebrating National Review's tenth anniversary
On Selling Books to Booksellers ................ 96
Addressing the American Booksellers Association
The Aimlessness of American Education . . . . . . . . . . 100
In defense of small colleges
"You Have Seen Too Much in China" ............ 108
To a concerned organization
CONTENTS Vll
The Duty of the Educated Catholic . 112
To a high-school honors society
Did You Kill Martin Luther King? .
. ........ 117
To the American Society of Newspaper Editors
Life with a Meticulous Colleague . . . . . 123
Saluting William A. Rusher
On the Perspective of the Eighteen-Year-Old ....... 128
To graduating high-school students
Words to the Counterrevolutionary Young ......... 133
Addressing the Young Americans for Freedom
THE SEVENTIES
On the Well-Tempered Spirit ................ 145
A commencement address
Resolutely on the Side of Yale's Survival . . . . . . . . . 149
At a twentieth reunion
The Republic's Duty to Repress .
To a conference ofj udges
"That Man I Trust" .
Appreciating James L. Buckley
The World That Lenin Shaped ............... 168
On visiting Brezhnev 's Soviet Union
John Kerry's America .... 179
To the cadets of West Point
The West Berlin of China.
Upon Taiwan's expulsion from the United Nations
Affection, Guidance, and Peanut Brittle . ....... 189
A special toast
Vlll CONTENTS
On Preserving the Tokens of Hope and Truth. .... 191
Saluting Henry Regnery
Without Marx or Jesus? . . ........ 197
To the American Society of Newspaper Editors
The "Leftwardmost Viable Candidate" .......... 202
Debating John Kenneth Galbraith
The Terrible Sadness of Spiro Agnew ........... 208
To the New York Conservative Party
The High Cost of Mr. Nixon's Deceptions . . . . . . . . 21 1
To the New York Conservative Party
On Serving in the United Nations. . . 213
Testimony to a Senate committee
No Dogs in China ....................... 218
At the National War College
The Courage of Friedrich Hayek . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
Addressing the Mont Pelerin Society
The Protracted Struggle against Cancer .
. 235
To the American Cancer Society
A Salutary Impatience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 238
A commencement address
Cold Water on the Spirit of Liberty ............. 242
Replying to President Carter
The Reckless Generosity of John Chamberlain ...... 249
A tribute
A Party for Henry Kissinger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
A birthday toast
What Americanism Seeks to Be . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
To the Young Republicans
CONTENTS lX
THE EIGHTIES
His Rhythms Were Not of This World ............ 261
Remembering Allard Lowenstein
The Rudolph Valentino of the Marketplace ......... 263
Saluting Milton Friedman
The Greatness of James Burnham .............. 268
To a friend and mentor
Halfway between Servility and Hostility .......... 272
At a historic college
Earl Warren and the Meaning of the Constitution .... 275
Addressing a class off uture lawyers
Sing a Song of Praise to Failure ............... 277
At a graduate business school
How Leo Cherne Spent Christmas ............. 287
An introduction
10 Downing Street: The Girls Club of Britain ...... 290
A transatlantic salute
Moral Distinctions and Modern Warfare .......... 292
Parsing nuclear war
Democracy and the Pursuit of Happiness . . . . . . . . . 301
A commencement address
The Genesis of Blackford Oakes ............... 308
On the distinctively American male
Waltzing at West 44th Street . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 316
An ode to the America's Cup
The Blood of Our Fathers Ran Strong . . ..... 320
Celebrating National Review's thirtieth anniversary