and my concern about what the fcc has done is twofold. first of all, i do not believe that they have the legislative authority, the existing authority under the law to, essentially, view the internet from a common carrier status point of view and step in to regulate in this area. but secondly and more importantly, for many of my friends who as i do believe in open access and support this regulatory approach with what the fcc is doing with net neutrality, i say to them, be careful what you ask for. because this is a massive new intrusion that could lead to far greater tentacles of regulation of the internet than currently exists. one of the most dynamic things about the internet, one of the most phenomenal things about how it has grown has been its lack of regulation, its lack of

excessive taxation, and that freedom has caused the internet to become the dominant force in people's lives and the dominant force in the growth of our economy, and we don't want to lose that by turning over to a bureaucracy a regulatory process. antitrust laws, as i said at the outset, relate to enforcing laws that are on the books to make sure that things are fair. we'll look at this from the standpoint of do we need to tweak our antitrust laws to adapt to new situations? do we immediate to make sure that our antitrust system is accessible to smaller businesses and individuals because it can be very expensive to go through that process, but that kind of throw the book at the bad guy approach as opposed to the government writing massive rules of the road for the internet that the fcc wants to undertake is, in my opinion, the far better way to go to assure open access to the internet. >> host: representative bob goodlatte is chairman of the house subcommittee on intellectual property and the internet as well as co-chairman

of the congressional internet caucus. gautham nagesh from "the hill" newspaper, thank you both for being on "the communicators." >> guest: thank you, peter. >> up next on booktv, niall ferguson talks about the life and influence of sigmund war berg who's london-based bank played an important role in rebuilding post-world war ii europe. the new york historical society in new york city is the host of this event. it's about 50 minutes. [applause] >> well, thank you very much, indeed, dale. thank you, ladies and gentlemen, for coming tonight. a great pleasure to be with you in what turns out to be an extraordinarily appropriate venue. now, you may not associate bankers with ethical culture -- [laughter] but what i propose to do this

evening is to introduce you to a banker who was steeped in ethical culture and who, i feel, would have got on very well with felix adler, also a german-born jew who, of course, called this society into being. i want to begin by asking a very fundamental question, and that relates to how many of you know who siegmund warburg was. my guess is that it's only a minority of you who had heard of mihm before this -- him before this evening. his name is much better known in london where, indeed, he spent most of his financial career. but that's not really a sufficient explanation for the relative obscurity in new york of a man who was without question one of the towering figures of post-war world

finance. i think the key has to do with our neglect of bankers as a fit subject for biography. [laughter] why write the biography of a banker? as opposed, say, to a dictator? or perhaps a great dem distract leader -- democratic leader, a prime minister of a president? why be writing the biography of a banker when you could be writing the biography of a king or a princess or an actress? in order to show you how we attach importance to different kinds of historical figures, i want to show you some saw -- statistics. if you go, as i did recently, to the british library's general reference collection catalog and simply find out how many books

have been written about these different people, you will be rather startled by the results. hitler is the clear winner. [laughter] 478 books appear in that catalog about adolf hitler pitting stalin to the post for most storied dictator. mussolini comes in with the bronze medal edging out mao. winston churchill, i'm afraid, beats abraham lincoln, but don't feel bad because churchill was, of course, half american. [laughter] henry viii is the most written about royal. he has 90 books about him. diana, princess of wales, is quite a distant second on 39. notice that that's only one more

than marilyn monroe. [laughter] but when we get to bankers, it's as if biographers suddenly leave the library in embarrassment. there are two or maybe three books about siegmund warburg, three if you count the book about the entire warburg family, two if you only count my book and the other biography of warburg. jack, incidentally, was for many years francois mitterand's close confidant. it's a biography exclusively based, as far as i can tell, on the imagination. [laughter] my book is based on reading my way through about 10,000 letters and diary entries and memoranda which warburg kept in the course of his life.

unlike many financiers, i should explain, warburg was a remarkably prolific writer, and that for a biographer is a huge advantage. now, i don't really know quite why you would need to ask the question, why bankers. when you reflect on the events of the last three years, it should be obvious that bankers are historically important. and i would go so far as to say more important than actresses. [laughter] perhaps even more important than princesses. for if anything has shaped our lives in the last three years, it's been a financial crisis which many people are inclined to blame entirely on bankers. now, i'm not one of those people who thinks that bankers are solely responsible for a crisis that, clearly, was caused by a

whole coalition of negligent groups; regulators, rating agencies, not forgetting the politicians who did so much to stoke the real estate bubble. but still, you would have a difficult job, i think you'll agree, writing the history of the last decade and leaving out goldman sachs. i'll take goldman as an example, but it's just an example. i could equally well have taken any of the major financial institutions that have played such a dominant role in modern economic history. it has to be historically significant that on the eve of the crisis the chief executive of goldman sachs was being paid 2,000 times the average income in this country. it has to be significant that a bank had net revenues greater than the gross domestic product of more than 100 countries, and it has to be significant that that institution at a time of financial crisis not only

converted itself into a bank holding company from an investment bank, but also secured indirectly a bailout of aig at a time when the treasury secretary was the former chief executive officer of that bank. call me cranky, but i just think that's historically important. [laughter] for some reason lloyd blank fine's picture disappeared from that last slide i showed you which makes me feel slightly uneasy, i wonder what else has been removed. [laughter] and by whom. [laughter] when lloyd blankfein was challenged by the sunday times in the now-famous interview last year he replied, ironically, i think, that he was just doing god's work, but public reaction certainly in britain was not, i think, to detect the irony.

and the fact that the bank then had to settle with the sec for some $550 million to settle fraud charges tells you something very important about, about our price, about the bankers. when "rolling stone" magazine called goldman sachs the great vampire squid, i think that was a historically significant moment. i think that will appear in the history books. another one that ought to appear is john mack's famous declaration which i heard him make. he made it in new york. we cannot control ourselves. you have to step in and control the street. i was stunned when i heard him say that. though i suppose in some ways it was better than claiming to be doing god's work. [laughter] the collapse of public confidence, the public trust in bankers is one of the most striking features of our time. if you look at opinion data,

bankers are now less trusted by the public than journalists. [laughter] and that takes some doing. [laughter] i'm a historian, that's why i'm so engaged with and committed to the new york historical society. what historians are best at doing is taking documents, the things that people leave behind, and making historical sense of them. before i talk at all about siegmund warburg, i want to juxtapose his ethos, the financial ethos of his generation with the ethos of the present generation. and there is no document that does this better, in my view, than the e-mailed correspondence of pennsylvania reese tourre,

goldman sachs trader. these e-mails which were written to quite a large number of different girlfriends, he was diversify inside that respect -- [laughter] as in so many others, are, i think, a better summation of the spirit of our age than any other document you could possibly find. in order to grasp the full charm of these documents, it's necessary to read them in a french accent. [laughter] more and more leverage in the system. [laughter] it has threatened to collapse at any moment. only potential survivor is fabulous fab. [laughter] standing in the middle of all these complex, highly-levered,

exotic trades he created without necessarily understanding all the implications of these monstrosities. anyway, not feeling too guilty about this. [laughter] my job is to make capital markets more efficient and, ultimately, provide the u.s. consumer with more efficient ways to leverage himself. so there is a humble, noble and ethical reason for my job. huh, amazing how good i am in convincing myself! [laughter] [applause] let me take you back to a lost world. the lost world that produced siegmund warburg who grew up in the early 20th century in south germany. he was part of a distinguished

banking dynasty, established himself successfully in hamburg in the 19th century and had by the late 19th century almost emerged from the shadow of the rothschilds, the dominant jewish banking dynasty of the 19th century. but siegmund wasn't part of that hamburg scene. his father was a sickly, idiosyncratic number of the dynasty who would probably have been regarded poorly at that time. [laughter] there he is with the young siegmun, and lucy in the first picture. and because he was unsuited to the financial cut and thrust, he was sent to a kind of exile, and that's where siegmund grew up. from almost the first moment he

could, he read. he was a voracious reader, and i am here above all else to celebrate the book as a vehicle for the communication of culture and ethical culture. he married and flourished. he flourished not only as a banker, he hadn't really wanted to be a banker. he'd had, literally, an academic and even political ambitions. but circumstances obliged him to enter the family business. his father's savings were wiped out by the post-first world war, hyperinflation of 1923 and his ambitions in hamburg were dealt a lethal blow when the family bank of m.m.varburg more or less went bust in the crisis of 1930-'31. and then after that his hopes of any life in the germany at all were dashed by the advent of the

national socialist regime in 1933 and the subsequent so-called aryanization of the varburg family bank. so the life course was fundamentally altered by inflation, depression and totalitarianism. and he had to start over. almost from scratch because it was so very hard for somebody of his religion leaving germany to take money with him. so my story is a story of somebody who had to start over, and he chose to start over in london. it might very well have been new york, but his wise swedish father-in-law, a man named phillipson, gave him outstanding

advice. he saw that warburg's skills would be more salient, would have more impact in the stuffier, clubbier, somewhat more sclerotic atmosphere of london. maybe the truth is if siegmund had come to new york, there would have been more people to compete with. the londoners, i will show you, he cut an extraordinary, almost unique figure in the post-war period. the new york side of the story is fascinating. some of you will be familiar with it. through his uncles, paul and felix, warburg was related to the schiff family and, therefore, had a direct interest in that extraordinary cousinhood that dominated manhattan and particularly the financial world of the early 20th century. the firm of lobe and company has vanished, gone the way of all

flesh along with more recent casualties like lehman brothers. but it was once a maim to conjure with in this city. it was, in fact, the name on a par with j.p. morgan in the days when jacob schiff, the great patriarch at the center of the family group, was the master of railroad finance. in this city. so for those of you who are dedicated to the study of new york history and new york history alone, this book has something for you. [laughter] what it has is a tale of failure. siegmund war burg's failure to persuade his relatives that he had to change lobe or it would die. it's an extraordinary drama, a transatlantic drama. warburg became a directer, spent weeks and months in new york

trying to turn the firm around and, ultimately, failed, was ultimately thwarted by his own relatives. the rest, if you want to follow that story, is in the book. [laughter] so the scene after the failure to turn the firm around shifts to london, and it's a tale of resurrection. resurrection of thety of london as -- of the city of london as a financial center. my argument is that nobody contributed more to the revival of london as the world's great international financial center than siegmund warburg. in a whole series of innovations, he turned london around. and to grasp the magnitude of his achievement, you need to recognize that in 1945 london was pretty much finished or seemed finished as a financial center. a bankrupt country with a socialist government, capital

controls, exchange controls, rationing of everything hardly seemed like a place that would rise to rival new york in the post-war period. that it did owes much to warburg. warburg made a distinction which will be familiar to many of you between two kinds of banking, transactions banking and relationship banking. and the interesting thing is that in his mind transactions banking was an earlier model that could be blamed for the depression, and relationship banking from the vantage point of the 1950s was the future. we often tend to think of it as the oh way around. -- other way around. relationship banking was slightly old-fashioned and was swept away in the heroic days of the 1980s and 1990s. from the vantage point of warburg's situation, that was

the wrong way to think of it. we ran the experiment of transaction banking with the same results. if financial institutions are dominated by volume transactions, piling them high and selling them cheap or more likely saling them dear, if relationships with clients are replaced purely by transactions with counterparties, don't be surprised if you come close to another great depression. the distinction set out very clearly here in one of the memoranda on the subject, transactions banking was just about channeling money. relationship banking was about changing and adjusting management capital structures of industrial and financial businesses to aroundations in our environments -- alterations in the our environments. to him, that was the true purpose of banking. personally, he wrote in 1964, i'm not interested in the waves of despondency and enthusiasm. these are appropriate for people who look upon matters purely

from a stock exchange point of view. however, if we want to succeed -- meaning the bank that took his name after the war, s.g. warburg and company -- we must make up our mind to follow a policy of establishing new values and new procedures rather than to act mainly as traders and sellers or securities which we find relatively easy to dispose of. in other words, we must be aware that we are primarily bankers and only o secondarily stock exchange traders. one way of understanding the history of our time, ladies and gentlemen, is that the traders took over from the bankers with results we all now know. well, let me briefly tell you what this bank did. it was a small firm by modern standards, small in terms of the capital, small in terms of the number of employees, small because warburg believed that small was beautiful and that financial institutions should not be too large. it was a bank that did a lot of

fee-based corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions. he pioneered the hostile takeover as an art form in post-war london. it was an asset management firm though he rather disapproved of that side of the business. the eurobond market which was enormously vital for harnesses the accumulated dollars on the continent and elsewhere and putting them to work was, in the large measure, his bank's invention. he also pioneered an entirely different way of managing a bank internally. banks, in his early years, were more like gentlemen's clubs. the partners sat in oak-paneled rooms, and the clocks were on a different floor and never, ever had anything to do with the partners. the major senior employees would turn up at about 10 a.m., have the first predinner -- prelunch drink at about 12 and be thinking about the golf course by about 4.

warburg changed all that. open plan offices, an egalitarian structure in which all directors no matter how senior or junior had equal voice. he changed the culture of banking. he made them start work early. so this is an extraordinary story of innovation, financial innovation of what -- which i think was of a positive nature. one fee which we earned from giving good service to one of our large industrial clients could be far in excess of what we earn in a whole year in connection with eurobond issues. for warburg relationships with corporate clients were the key. it was a profitable bank. this chart shows you real net profits adjusted for inflation, and you can see what extraordinarily buoyant years the '50s and '60s were and what a struggle the '70s were. you can also see that the share

price packed that performance pretty much exactly. it was a great thing to buy a share in the parent company mercury securities in the '50s or early '60s. it was rather tougher to hold on to it during the 1970s when double-digit inflation caused so much trouble to the u.k. economy. but, ladies and gentlemen, it's not the performance of the bank i want to focus on. because that's not what siegmund warburg focused on. i was very puzzled when i was writing this book because as i read through siegmund warburg's letters and diaries and memoranda, i couldn't find any references at all to the bottom line. in fact, he hardly ever talked about money. sums, fees, profits, cash flow, it's not there. and for about three years i couldn't write the book. i was paralyzed. how could i write a book about a

banker who didn't appear to care about money? who on earth would want to read that? then, slowly as i suspect only comes from immersion in documentary sources, i began to get it. i ban to see -- began to see that for warburg the bottom line was not the most important thing. it was something that would take care of itself if you did things right. in a wonderful memorandum to john schiff in 1953, warburg set out what he called the important elements of a first class private banking business. these were the five haute banque principles. that's why the book is called "high financier." number one, moral standing. number two, reputation for efficiency and high quality brain work. number three, connections.

number four, capital funds. number five, personnel and organization. of those five i think it is fair to say ha most institutions -- that most institutions in the financial world over the past 20 or so years dropped number one and number four. by the time they were done, all they were left with was the connections. i want to talk about each of these in, but the most important by far was moral standing. can you imagine any of today's financial geniuses putting moral standing first? is moral standing a phrase that fab, too, would use in e-mails to his many girlfriends? i think not. [laughter] the basic conception of our firm has always been founded on the following principles: success. success from the financial and from the prestige point of view, important and self-understood as it is, is not enough.

what matters more is constructive achievement and adherence to high moral and aesthetic standards in the way in which we do our work. for me that was the aha moment, the moment i suddenly got it. yes, of course. the bottom line's important, but you don't really need to think about it all the time. it's a necessary by-product of adherence to high moral and aesthetic standards. high quality work. i don't want you to get the idea that i'm delivering a sermon and that this book is some kind of austere moral code for future bankers. it is, also, fun. it's fun because warburg's was a fun place to work. fun although it was hard work and sometimes terrifying work. peter storm darling was a relatively junior directer.

one day he was at home when the phone rang, and it was his boss. i do hope i'm not disturbing you. oh, no, mr. warburg, not at all. well, it's about your note dated 22nd december on the american stock market. do you have a copy in front of you? uh, no. uh, i'm afraid my copy's in the office. let me remind you of your second sentence in the fifth paragraph. i think there should be a comma after the word "development." this is, in itself, characteristic of warburg, but what makes the story significant is that this happened on christmas day. [laughter] perfectionism, an obsession with precision grammar and syntax and spelling and punctuation was one

of the trademarks of s.g. warburg. and that, seems to me, to be an important point about this man. his belief that if one pursued perfection, even aesthetic perfection in the letters you wrote to the bank of england, then the bank would be bound to succeed. the pursuit of perfection, seems to me, to be one of the keys to understanding his personality. point number three, connections. most of the substantial transactions which have been done by are the result of cultivation of contacts over very many years. this is, of course, important that the technical details of a transaction are dealt with in the most thorough and pain staking manner possible, but this should not make us forget that this would be fruitless without human contact with the client in question. the continuity of valuable connections overrides the important conclusion of specific transactions. and there you have it, the essence of the difference between the transactions-based model and can the

relationships-based model. warburg saw that as essential to the activity of a banker. in fact, he frequently compared himself to a physician, to a doctor and would describe his relationship to corporate clients as like the relationship between a doctor and a patient. ..

>> every now and then the mood would take him, and he would write these wonderful comedies in which the foibles of the firm's chief would be satirized. how many firms in the financial world today produce quality satire in house? [laughter] in the way in which it was

organized, the way this bank was run, fantastically interesting combination of the culture of the jewish refugees. not only warwurg, but -- warburg, but his partner and the others who would come in the 1930s. and the public schoolboys they recruited from winchester, eaton and the rest. public schoolboys treated the german and austrian refugees like the house masters, so the monday morning meeting that they all had to attend was referred to as morning prayers. [laughter] the culture, i think, was a highly creative and, in many ways, appealing one. it was a culture that required brains but also the written word. there was an expansive communication of warburg's. all the ingoing and outgoing correspondence was pulled and everybody was expected to read it. there was little reliance on the telephone.

if the telephone was used, a memorandum had to be written. and they had a rule of four in which any transaction had to be signed off by four directors of the company. this is, to me, fascinating and more important than let us say the sex life of marilyn monroe. ..

>> basically they come into the financial world the year that siegmund died. where did that come from? where can we go to produce that kind of framework? if you have livered -- lived through hyperinflation you would be risk adversed. it wasn't just that. it was the way he brought up. to me the most moving document that i read was a document in which warburg remembered what his mother said on the eve of his bar mitzvah.

i want you to quote it and memorize it and say to it your children and grandchildren. siegmund warburg grew up believing you should always cry over split milk and always cross bridges before you came to them. i think that's because of his

mother. and perhaps if today's bankers had had mothers like lucie warburg, we might not be in quite the economic mess that we're in. now with that, i'm going to thank you for your attention and invite you to ask me difficult questions. thank you very much. [applause] [applause] [applause] [applause] >> the rules of the game are as follows. someone other than me chooses to ask the questions. you have to raise your hand. if you have a chosen, a microphone will magically appear in your hand. when the microphone appears in your hand, please stand up so that c-span and the waiting nation can see you. when you are chosen to speak,

the object is to ask a question. not to make a speech or give a lecture. that's me. i do that. [applause] >> so questions please. >> you mention the effect that his mother had on him. what was his effect on his children? >> that's a great question. what was his effect on his children? i learned a lot from writing this book over 12 years. as a father, and one the things that i learned which is very important is that when you have a son, you have not cloned yourself. many men make the mistake of thinking that their son, particularly their first born son, is a clone. and they expect that son to be the same as them. and i think siegmund warburg made that mistake.

i don't say he wasn't a loving father. but his expectations of his son george i think ultimately were not realistic and didn't make account of his son's character and temperament. at the heart of the book there was a tragic relationship that would be much too strong. but a painful and fascinating study in how a father/son relationship can be undermined by unrealistic expectations and a failure to make the imaginative leap that recognized your son as someone quite different. so what i began this book before i had really done the research, i know i put too much pressure on my son about homework. particularly history homework. [laughter] >> and i remember reading some of the letters between siegmund

and george and thinking i'm going to make the same mistake if i'm not careful. no, i think he was a good son. in many ways the perfect son. but as a father, i think he asked too much. or maybe just asked the wrong things. his daughter, anna, i think had a better deal. perhaps she was more like him, but also because she was a daughter and not expected to be a clone. in answering that question, i hope i made it clear even if you are terribly interested in finance at all and don't care from a eurobond is, this is a book full of human drama. the drama of exile, the drama that coming when you lose your homehand and the culture, and also the drama that i suppose every family has going on within it. another question please. yes, ma'am? >> do you think this is a blueprint for today's bankers to

start to turn things around? >> i think calling it a blueprint for today's bankers is putting is a bit strongly. the world has changed in many ways and continues to change in ways that i think are in many respects disturbing. the fact that the bulk of trades on the new york stock exchange are executed by algorithms in microseconds should worry us. the transactions model has triumphed despite the crisis should trouble us. the degree to which it's hard today to set up a new bank should trouble us. it's hard. because if you are siegmund warburg today, and after all, he started his bank after a depression, you would find the odds were stacked against you by the too-big-to-fail institutions, and they enjoy subsidies.

blueprint is not. when we consider business education, and i am half of my time at harvard, the professor of the business school, we should be making students more aware of financial history. history has been a neglected part, and make them aware of the framework, if not just to be a bernie madoff that didn't get found out. it's not a blueprint, but i think it's something that people read and take to heart. if it makes some of the readers uncomfortable and makes them aware of what was absent of their decision making process. whether they will read it, i don't know. maybe a one page executive summary would be a good idea. i hope it's not a blueprint. at least it will serve as a reminder that the finance wasn't

always a model. you know, there was a danger in a crisis like this that we swing to the opposite extreme. we conclude that all bankers are crooks and all bankers are untrustworthy, and they all belong in jail. that's as absurd to believe that markets are always efficient and the best stock market crisis. and the preera. no, i think it's important to recognize the volume of the institutions that we have. one the things i try to argue in the assent of money, finances is an integral part. it's been for good and not evil. warburg was a chance to zoom in and make the same point in micro. i think he's personifies the

kind of finance that has been a lasting for the man. >> i have written a biography of francis yates, who was familiar with warburg institute for a couple of years. i have a couple of books. where are siegmund's papers? what led you to him? what was his relationship with abby warburg? and did he have any affiliation with the warburg -- [inaudible comment] >> i'm always impressed when someone packs four questions into one. i was once asked a question by a german who managed to get nine in. that's the record. [laughter] >> warburg's papers are in london. it's likely they are not certain that they will leave the hat and garden archive where they are currently held and will go to a

university collection in the uk. i tried and failed them to get them to the morgan library at the harvard business school. the reason that i wrote the book, after the rough child book, i wrote a history of the rough child bank, some of the warburg's former colleagues approached me with the idea that i might write a biography. at least i was rather reluctant. when i sat down and read his diary of 9 -- 1933, i was thunder stuck. if you want to get a sense of how confusing it was to be a young, brilliant, german jew in 1933, read my quotations from his book in my diary. that's what persuaded me i was write the book. abby warburg correction was not as close as the connection with

abby's younger brother, paul. the five brothers, for those of you who don't know the warburg, who were of like the rerun of the rough child. expect they didn't all go into finance. they had wider opportunities in the late 19th century. abby was the one that was least seated to finance and academic. as you know, others may not know, his more financial live savvy brother max made a deal that max would take over the family bank and provide abby with a lifetime supply of all of the books that he wanted. this is one the worst deals that max warburg ever did. because his brother's library is absolutely vast. the library ended up in london and became the basis for the warburg institute, because it obviously had to be rescued from the clutches of the nazis.

this then became a home for modern art history, in many cases the home. you'll know the work for vance, who was based at the institute. if you haven't read his history of the world, do, it's a masterpiece. i think i have answered all of your questions. [inaudible comment] >> no, he was not. fourth question, he did not have any link to warburg institute, and donate the his own library, which is very large, siegmund collected books almost as enthusiastically as library. but he donate the his library in london where his daughter went. four out of four. would anybody else like to ask four questions? yes, sir? >> in the united states, other much of the 20th century, after bankers achieved some professional success, they sought to move into public life and public policy.

maybe they are going to revisit that. did siegmund ever harbor any of these ambitions and did he do anything outside of the banking sphere? >> yes, that's a great question. he did. in fact, he had hoped to be a politician in the late '20s and '30s. the plan was to use the bank as a launching pad as a liberal politician. he would have in the german democratic party, gdp, of course, all of that fell apart for the reasons that we know. he never seized to believe politically engaged. he was a passionate believer in european unity. they were among the most important benefactor, a man who has now largely forgetten the profit of pan european unity in the 20s and 30s. after the war, siegmund warburg was convinced that european

unity can only be brought about by economic means. he felt that nationalism was too power in europe. so he was very affective in the economic integration of europe. and in one the chapters of the book, i try to show how institutions like the europe bond market and congress bond mergers means to an end of european unity. although he did become disasolutioned with the way it turned out, he still believed that was a desirable goal. most interestingly, he became the behind-the-scene advisor to harold wilson during the 1960s. this is the most -- from a british readers point of view, extraordinary. it's probably lost on the u.s. audience. i don't mean to sound prudential. but harold wilson made regular

attacks on bankers. one of his most famous attacks is when he named what he calls the gnomes of zürich, it's a wonderful phrase, for starling crisis in 1967. while he was denouncing the gnomes of zürich, behind the scenes and unknown to the members of the government, he was dining with siegmund warburg, who was his back channel advisor. i found an occasion when he brought a swiss banker to london to meet wilson so wilson could see what a gnome of zürich was really like. there was a lot of politics, british politics, and cold war politics. two interesting points, unlike some other financiers, warburg was absolutely unrelenting to communism. he would do no business with any

communist regime period. second fascinating point, in the early 1970s crisis in the middle east, some of you will know that a boycott was one weapon that the arab league deployed in addition, of course, to the oil price hike. it was directed against jewish banks. one the banks singled out along with roth child and others. warburg found himself in the midst of the great mideastern crisis, facing the possibility of kidnapping and assassination. i'm fascinating by the way in which he dealt with that problem. he and his fellow directors were extraordinarily quick to phone up and harangue any nonjewish bank that appeared to be appeasing the arab league. the most way in which this happened, the banks would drop

warburg or roth child that was set up from major bond and sock issues. he was unforgiving against anybody that shows signinging -- signs of caving. that's one reason why i was drawn to it. one more question. dale? >> what was the relationship of the political contribution in warburg's time as it is today. we know when aig was bailed out, langfine, and other goldman and sachs people were there, and made sure the money was aig was given to them 100% when everyone else didn't get there. if we want to blame the bush administration, there was an excellent film "inside job" in which a person that back filled points out that none of the

people in obama administration has been investigated for all of the fraud they committed, and if one looked a the political contribution of the goldman in the last election, it went mainly to the democrats and obama. what was the relationship? maybe that's the key question. what happened to money and politics in warburg's time in contrast to ours? >> well, i haven't seen the film that you mentioned. it's clear it will take financial historians a great deal of time to unravel the relationship between bankers, congressman, and members of the financial crisis. we already know from some books that the relations were too close for comfort. we also know thanks to the transparency of the political system, who gave what to who?

i'm amazed to find in 2007 and 2008 on whether wall street or washington had caused the crisis. i was amazed to find the scale from aig and other institutions not least fannie mae and freddie mac, two key figures in congress part of the reform bill. bonnie frank and christopher dodd. go figure. is this new? no. no, it's not now. one of the points that i tried to make, it goes all the way back and carried through the 18th century, the age of john law, the 19th century, the age of james rothchild, 20th century, the age of john and so forth. this is a problem at the heart of our capitalist democracy, and

the biggest problem is the parallel that we simplify it. in our frustrations, we swing to populist extremes. we say democracy is corrupt, and jewish finances corrupts it. this is the argument that hit. and there were books a plenty until the 1920s, 1930s trying to find the way that democracy was tied to jewish finance. my role as a historian, this is the last thing that i have to say, dale. my role as a historian is to show the relationship between showing the true historical nature and steer a literate public away of the sort that might fuel let's say, a tea party these days.

thank you very much indeed. [applause] [applause] >> i'm a retired infantry officer from the army, and dean of academics in the army inspector general who writes books about the world war ii. this is my second. i mention that because my first one was on the battle of bulge, "the key of the bulge." i researched that one at the same time in research for this book. i did them in parallel. because i was dealing in these cases with two obscure events that didn't have a lot of secondary source literature on

them, i had to make certain that i was in a polings -- position to contact the veterans while they were living, german and american. my take on history, military history specifically from world war ii is human aspect. my intact in -- my background is in english. i'm not a historian. i'm going back to school to get a phd now. i try to approach my attempts of these battles from the perspective being able to teach future soldiers what's it's like to be in combat. i too at this point am a combat veteran president at -- combat veteran. i wanted to take a lot of lessons from our veterans both american and german and try to

capture them in the books that i wrote. i use them in interdisciplinary approach to writing military history with a lot of the social and cultural aspects in all commands, leaders at all levels to include what happened with the individual soldiers. i'm particularly focused on battles or events that have great significance, but have never been touched upon before. so one of my passions is to seek one of these out and once i do to try to figure out what happened and why it was important. so with this disruption of the mountain division, you are probably wondering why a mountain division? why should any of us care what happened to the one division out of many at the end of the second world war and the wanes days of the war and the european theater? >> this tuesday february 23rd, visit booktv.org at 7 p.m. to

watch bruce reidel live online discussing his book "deadly embrace" simply go to booktv.org and click on the watch button on the featured program. also follow us on twitter at booktv. for up to the minute schedule updates on future, live online programs throughout each week. >> roger kimball, and john hilboldt present. >> hello, i'm john. it's my privilege to welcome you to our auditorium. we welcome those who join us on the heritage web site, and will ask those in house to make the

courtesy check the cell phones turned off. our speakers and recorders will appreciate it. we will most the program within 24 hours on the heritage web site for everyone's future reference. and we remind our internet visitors that questions and comments can be sent to us e-mailing at speaker@heritage.org. dr. east side wards is -- edwards is the speaker. he's simply the distinguished fellow in conservative thought at our american studies. he serves importantly as chairmans of the victims of communism memorial foundation and adjunct professor. he's published 17 books, as well as biographies of ronald reagan, barry goldwater, and edwin meese

among others. he served on the political journalism at georgetown, as well as a fellow at the institute of politics at the john f. kennedy school at government at harvard. he's been a media fellow at the hoover institution, as well as the past president of the wonderful society where some of our panelist are members of the philadelphia society. please join me in welcoming my colleague, lee edwards. lee? [applause] >> well, thank you, john. and thank you all very much for coming. did william f. buckley jr. ever write a dull page? never. a dull paragraph? impossible. a dull sentence? well -- perhaps once or twice. but only to demonstrate that man is not perfect. but bill buckley was as close to

a perfect writer as we shall ever see. he wrote millions of words in the second half, everything from liberal arrogance to conservative prudence and the dangers of nation building. a man of inany fit interest, he dissected politicians. he's a gem. a lot of champions of freedom like alexander, and margaret thatcher saluted the special gifts of artist and ewely guised mentors and were deeply in depth to roger kimball for editing most of them less than 1,000 words in length and who better

as editors than they? linda was hired by bill buckley in 1969 to join the national review editorial department. she served ten years as the magazine's managing editor. roger is co-editor and publisher of the new criteria, surely the most literate journal in america and president and publisher of encounters book. he's a critic on both sides of the atlantic, and author "ten-year radicals: how politics has corrupted our higher education." i prediction their collection of buckley will corrupt many in higher education in the right way. ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming linda bridges and roger kimball for a discussion of "standing athwart

history." [applause] [applause] >> thank you, lee. i always tell my authors that the one thing they should do is show the book. here it is. and i believe it's available for an attractive price outside this room. well, it's wonderful to be back at the heritage foundation. it's a great institution. and i'm proud to be here. i'd like to begin by saying a word about words. since the author of "athwart history" is unavailable for comment, the books editor, linda bridges and i have been disputed

to act as the book's ambassador to the world at large. linda and i like all of the best emissaries generally work alone and i do not know what linda's experience in the field so far have been. my own experiences in bringing the gospel buckley to new audiences, it's been largely present. i have have a couple of surprises. i want to talk about one of them in the beginning. perhaps the biggest surprise that the first thing that many interlockers want to talk about is the size of bill's vocabulary and his pension for words rare and wonderful. many people, otherwise, well disposed to bill and his bulletins on behalf of ordered liberty seem to be affronted by his delight in the resourcers of the english language. some even wondered weather his deployment, including perhaps

the word reckondiet, detracted from his effectiveness as a communicator. bill career as editor, intellectual, political figure, television personality, and best selling author seem to me to be indisputable evidence that whatever else he was or wasn't, he was an extremely successful communicator. this being the case, i always find myself nonplus from the large that reasons vocabulary to incapacity. here you have one the most celebrated words smith, a man who's influential columns were nationally syndicated and eagerly digested. who's books regularly scale the best seller list, who host the longest running public affairs

and was so warmly greeted by the marketplace of ideas that he was regularly invited to deliver in excess of 70 lectures per year across the country for several decades. clearly somebody thought he was communicating effectively. so i've been surprised when bill's tendencies are introduced as often it seems as evidence for the profession. your honor, he was obscure, per ten issue, difficult, we called this half a century of a william f. buckley jr. omnibus. i do not know what linda's experience, but omnibus, as does

phellemmics, even that phrase furrows some customer's brows, mostly, i expect, from the word thwart. the read word comes from -- it means by the way hostile or commentary, it's it's the word that buckley would have given. now i have don't want to belabor the issue. on the contrary, i'd like to expose it of. bill buckley enjoyed the english language. he wanted to share it's riches. he was fond ever words and did not discriminate against any word because it was unusual or polysyllabic. every word deserved a fair chance to stand on it's feet, even if it had more than two. he was not a pheasant. he was too merry. he was a connoisseur.

he used word to above all instruct. he strove for per significance. which sometimes required more than two syllables, and he did not talk down to his audience, rather he talked to them. he treated them as fellow pilgrims, equal participants in the curious journey of discovery that is life. the world is full of amazing things. many of those things have names, and not all of those names appear in the "new york times" or other such demonic publications. he saw no reasons to deprive his readers and listeners of the wondering on account of that. i think he was right to do so. that's all i'll say about words. let me turn to the substance of the history. what we endeavored was a kind of collection that represented the

intellectual buckley. the controversialist and thinking. our aim was to produce a last big miles gone by, the literary autobiography that include bill as an actor or subject. it contains, especially in the section called grace notes. they will find charming excursions about some of his avocations, as well as skiing, failing, and last and probably least peanut butter. elsewhere you will find the defense of the three ma -- martini lunch, or at least a rebuke who would prohibit or tax them out of existence. but our chief aim was not that side of bill. our chief aim was to reintroduce to the public the serious,

occasionally pugnacious bill buckley. nearly half of the pieces collected are appearing between hard covers for the first time. many others are from books now out of print. a large proportion of the pieces deal with matters of urgent public concern. not a few tackle basic questions of political philosophy. speaking of basic questions, let me return to the phrase, "athwart history." it comes as many of you know the famous publicker statement issuing of inaugural issue of national review in 1955. national review is out of place, that bulletin informed readers in the sense that the united nations and the league of women voters as "new york times" and henry field is in place, it is out of place because in it's maturity, literate america rejected conservative in favor of radical, social

experimentation. this bill. this brash new magazine alived with the brash young editor to cast a cold light on that presumption. the magazine stands athwart history, bill announced, yelling stop. at a time when no one is inclined to do so or have much patient with those who so urge it. now this is written nearly 60 years ago. but how relevant it seems to the realities that we face now, today, circa 2010. radical experimentation, the inroad that relativism has made on the american soul and the liberals that run the country. those are a few concerns. those yelling stop in 1955 were out of place, how much more out of place now in 2010 when what bill called the relationship of the state to the individual and

the united states is posed to undergo it's most thorough going transformation in history? now that's quite a statement. the most thorough going transformation in history. is it hyperbolic? ponder these phrases. stimulus package, cap and trade, spread the wealth around, nationalized health care. just before the 2008 election, barack hussein obama declared he was only a few days away from, and i quote, fundamentally transforming the united states of america. fundamentally transforming the united states of america. if you didn't believe it then, if you talk all of the talk about about fundamentally transforming, program the last year and a half will have convinced you otherwise. and ask yourself this. the united states of america, at least then, was the richest, the

mightiest most secure country in history. if you were going to fundamentally transform such a country, what would you do to those things? now ideas, billion conserved in the editor, ruled the world. on the positive side, liberty. the united states was conceived in liberty. the idea of individual freedom of the gaining principal. by 1955, it had been undermined by the well intentions of the literate america as bill put it, intoxicated as it was by the radical social experimentation. think of it, in 1955, bill buckley not yet 30 argued that there never was an age of conformity like this one. and today, looking back we understand that the dampening spirit on conformity and the assault on freedom were then in

their infancy. they have suddenly come of age. the question is not whether bill 's inaugural is still pertinent. it could hardly be more so. the question is whether those uncorroded will command the whit and rhetoric to stand tomorrow, whispering, explaining, sometimes even yelling stop in order that freedom might have an opportunity to prevail. now these were the sorts of questions that i found myself asking frequently as linda and i assisted through the enormous buckley air to arrive at the latest volume. written just a few weeks before bill's death is a reflection on candidate obama ice mischievous suggestion will increase the chance that quote, every

american child will benefit from mighty american capitalism." it was, bill, observed, a false promise that would quote, foster frustration and stimulate disallusion. the earliest piece in the book which opens the volume dates from the summer of 1951. you know, a long time ago. in it, bill invoking van hayek's road, the communistism pearlism and the homegrown threat of government paternalism. government paternalism. the fall of the soviets signaled not the end but the metamorphosis of the threat. i do not have to remind this audience the threat of government paternalisms more patent than every.

reading through, i was brought up by the historical shortening. they were written in 1967 or 1977, but the words seemed minted yesterday or possibly this morning. look at the topics. environmentalism, the oil crisis, religious rights, state rights, reforming health care, immigration, illegal and the other kind, the future of social security, israel, irresponsible accusations of racism, the supreme court, iran and the bomb, there's even a peace from 1970 called why we need the black president in 1980. again, and again you'll find substance, as well as the subject of these pieces could have been taken from what is happening now, today. in part, no doubt, the contemporaneous is no doubt explained by the passage from

eclose yays tease. we aren't much different in 1950 and 1960. it's not surprising the problem that we face are in essentials the same. but the uncanny contemporary feel of so much he wrote half a serge reago has a root in something else too. among bill's gift as a writer was an instinct for the pertinent. when he wrote about a matter of public interest, he went for and generally hit upon the jugular. i do not mean onlily that he deployed the successful debaters trick of touching upon spots that were sore or week. bill was an available debater, true enough. and he was plenty adept in exposing his opponents weaknesses, invasions, ambiguities, and unwarranted presumptions. he also had a talent for getting to the heart of the matter. whether the subject was environmentalism, or school

choice, or religious observances, or enroaching statism, what he wrote was likely to touch upon what was central and enduring. that was one the benefits of conservatism. embracing the permanent, one maybe unfashionable, but one is never out of date. literature, said, is news that stays news. i've met few people before informed about public affairs than bill buckley, but his mastery of today was only a prelude to the principals that underlay the controversies. consider this from 1959, quote, a great nation can indulge in little extravagances. but a long enough series of little extravagances can add up to a stagnating, if not a crippling economic overhead. i wish bill had been around to see the bumper sticker i saw the

other day that reads it's a good thing obama doesn't know what comes after trillion. he would have liked that. [laughter] >> he wouldn't have like the big extravagances in washington today. if were with us to comment on them. let me end by quotes just a few more snippets of bill's contemporary observations. what, he asked more than 50 years ago, is the indicated course of action? what should we do? bill's answer is as vital today as 1960. it wasn't a program, exactly, call it, bill said, a no program if you will. it resolved around the effort to, quote, maintain and wherefore possible enhance the freedom of the individual to acquire property and dispose of that property in ways that he decides upon. and to deal with problems like

unemployment locally, placing the political and humanitarian responsibility on the lowest feasible political unit. i will not, bill wrote, see that more power to the state. i will not willing see more power to anyone, not to the state, not to general motors, i know it's now called government motors, not to the ceo, i will hoard my power like a miser and drain it away and use my power as i see fit. i mean to live my life an obedient man. but obedient to man, to the wisdom of my ancestors, never to the authority of political truths arrived at yesterday at the voting booth. i couldn't put it better myself. there's a lot more where that came one. as one of bill's ambassadors, let me invite you to inquire the book, the valuable ammunitions

for the battles ahead. thank you. [applause] [applause] >> thank you. great to be here at heritage again and talking about my favorite subject, my late employer. many roger and i started working on this project, i had some idea of what we were getting into, since i was bill's researcher and editor on both his collection of speeches, let us talk of many things, and on the other anthology, "miles gone by." bill wrote so many millions of words in his nearly 60 words on the national stage that even skimming through his writings to make the first cut was a matter

not of weeks but months. that was the first problem. the second was how to choose. our space limit was generous, it would seem, but it was still a limit. for every one of the nearly 200 articles and exerts in the book, there were at least three or four more we would have liked to include. one the most striking things about bill, of course, is the breads of his interest. roughly speaking, nothing out of bounce to him or as he put it [inaudible] in this volume, we read, of course, at government intrusions on our freedom, we read about the myths of the spontaneous generating dollar, that is the motion of a dollar from the government is sent out from your city, it didn't cost anybody anything. we read about the evil of communist, and about people living in free societies who apologize for communism. we read about the notion that it

is morally necessary to fake from the rich and not merely to give to the poor. if there were no poor, it would still be necessary to take from the rich agaltarianism being the primary goal of the liberal ideology. that was published in 1959, two years before barack obama was born. we also read about less obvious concerns of the observer. in an say entitled "politics and beauty" bills writes of the pleasure ginn by surroundings. whether in a village, or in a city like paris. he writes about music. occasionally about music he hates, as in how i discovered that rock is here to stay. but mostly about music he loves. he turns up again and again in the volume from the short obituary to a comparison of mel gibson the q at the passion of

the christ" and i didn't tell you which one he believes gives a better account to the discussion of why we needs to give thanks to our cultural pat are money and conservative it those who will come after us. he also gives thank to george washington for discovering the peanut, without he could not have had his daily peanut butter. he writes about growing old and young brits and americans who went off to india in search of spiritualty, instead of gospel and st. paul. he writes of skiing and the wonderful days of hollywood. that is what my colleague, richard, was talking about when in the blurb for the book he wrote william f. buckley jr. needs anthology to put his work in focus. like the two, one a man of

right, the other a man of the left, bill was a famous commentator, but he was so much broader in the scope or interest than partisan or even policy politics. actually, i was speaking quite carefully a minute ago when i said that roughly speaking nothing was alien to bill. there was one subject to which he was completely tone deaf. that was team sports. tennis he could appreciate, horse racing, down hill ski racing, golf even. but he was as attuned to baseball or football or basketball as a man from mars. there's a story about the time that ira of the aclu finally got him to a mets game. he stayed for the whole game and asked some intelligent questions. intelligent, that is, for a

marrian. decoded to the story, a couple of years later, someone else invited bill to a game. he said, no thanks, i've been. now how did he write all of these millions of words? i recall when i was first at national review, we had a bright and talented under performing young man who used to say he could be as productive as bill if only he had two personal secretaries and a researcher and driver and household staff. no. when he wrote "god at men at yale" when he was first married, he had a royal typewriter and a stack of clippers he had collected. that was it. not only no secretarial staff, no household staff. indeed, bill had to go help in the kitchen wherefore pat had

done something to anger the pressure cooker and was afraid to deal with it. he produced two books "god and man" and "mccarthy and his enemies." the later co-authored. he also wrote for the three right written periodicals. we include articles from each of those publications, written when bill was in the late 20s. they hold up indeed. the only problem is reading them is likely to make someone sad and angry sense we can observe how far we have slid down the slope towards statism. then in 1954, bill entered a period when he wrote almost nothing for publication. what happened? writers block? no, he decided to start a new

journal. all of the hours spent in raising money for national review, and finding staff, office space, and all of that for it. during the first several years, he wrote very little outside of his panels. but many of his editorials in those days were splendid pieces in writing. we have included several in this book. however, bill couldn't sit still for very long. once he assembled the staff, and anchored by jim, he was free to spend time doing other things, like writing the column three times a week, doing the 30 episodes, and give the 70-80 speeches a year. in the 1960s, even as our national culture seems to be crumbling, he became a hero. he was caricatured, and invited to appear on tv. this is as i first knew him when

he hired me in 1969. he has been described as a whirl wind of activity. that's not quite right. that subjected something frenzied. he was decisive, but never feverish. he simply exercised the quiet self-discipline, and benefited from the fact as he complained he was a slow reader, he was a fast writer. and he seized opportunities. that first summer that i worked for him, i went up to the office to ask him to autograph a book for a friend back home. sure, he said, and while you are here, please cut 100 words from this column. i was 20 words old and being asked to cut bill buckley. oh yeah, and don't cut any of the jokes. :

>> somehow the legend grew up that he typically wrote his columns in 20 minutes, a legend cited by his admirers and by his ce tractors as proof of his superficiality. in fact, he took anywhere from one to two hours during which he would telephone staff members or friends to get bits of information. he'd let his dog in and out of the office, he'd take phone calls from everybody under the sun, be but he would finish the column. and then once it was sent off, he didn't want to reread it. or once it was finished, he didn't want to the reread it even. i don't believe he ever let a column sit for a few hours and then reread it in a fresh light the way most of us do. nor, at least in his own mind,

did he enjoy writing. i remember one evening when he was giving me a ride home from the office, he said -- suddenly said, i hate george will. i said, what? but you're friends. he said, did you see what he told an interviewer the other day? he said, there's nothing he liked better than taking a transcontinental flight because that meant he would have five uninterrupted hours of writing time. can you think of anything less inviting, bill said? [laughter] now, put together a schedule of three columns a week with 70 or more speeches a year not to mention the annual book writing trip to switzerland, and you can perhaps imagine how grateful he and his staff were when someone invented the fax machine. because until that happy day, columns written on the road had to be dictated over the phone. and even after we had the fax, there was still times when dictation was the only way of getting it there. this led to one of my most humbling experiences, but one that i wouldn't have missed because of what it showed me

about bill. he had been invited by, of all people, the dominican republic's navy to take part in a three-day training voyage on its tall ship. he thought he had his schedule well in hand, but then some problem arose at national review, and he was running behind. well, okay, he would write his column on the plane and dictate it from santo domingo. that day i came upstairs and found his personal staff in turmoil. frank sis, dorothy and tony all had something they were scheduled to do that evening and that they wanted to do. staying for the column was not on they agenda. oh, i said, i don't have any plans, i can stay. basking in their gratitude and having been geffen a quick lesson on the tape recorder, i settled down to await bill's call. it came at about the appointed time, and after a few pleasantries, he started in. took him about 15 minutes to dictate the column, and then he thanked me and rang off.

i decided i'd better just listen to a minute or so of the tape before leaving it for tony to transcribe in the morning. sheer, stark horror. there was nothing on the tape. nothing. after a few minutes of this near-death experience -- [laughter] i went back to the machine and practiced what i should have done in the first place until i was sure i knew how to use it. but now what? everyone who knew where bill was was out having fun. i rang for an overseas operator and fortunately, got an admirer of bill's. she would do whatever she could. but, she warned me, everything would depend on who we got on the other end. she got hold of a dominican operator, and i explained our problem. i needed to find my boss. i was sure he'd be staying in the best hotels, and could she possibly tell us which those were? oh, yes, she said, rattling off

three or four names. she put us through to the first one and bingo, she was there. so far my luck was incredibly, but i still had to tell a man who hated wasted effort that he would immediate to redictate his column. bill did not go in for tantrums, but still a few well chosen terms of abuse would not have been entirely out of place. he came on the line, i explained what i had done or, rather, what i had failed to do. all he said was, that's okay. but you do know how to work the machine now? yes, i said, i do know how to work it now. so he launched in. this time he did say better make sure it's okay before i hang up. i did, and he was relieved to hear his own voice on the tape. and that's the last that was ever said of it. i later learned that others who had made stupid but unintentional mistakes had received the same unostentatious forgiveness. add that to all his other attributes, and he was truly a man for all seasons.

[applause] >> we could just sit here and listen to that all day long, couldn't we? huh? [laughter] what the heck, what are you guys -- anything to do? we can just stick around here for another hour or two. >> we can read you passages. >> right. >> read passages, tell stories. [laughter] thank you so much. that was truly, truly wonderful. please, questions from the floor. and we have a microphone here. >> yes, good afternoon. i have a question about what sort of visuals might accompany a synopsis of his experiences such as appearances that he's made and people that he's met? have you collected visual support? i assume that there are none in this publication, but if you were to put together some type of a video or some other --

>> well, there's a great cover photo. [laughter] but no other photos in the, in the book. linda probably knows more about what the archive contains, but i know that bill was someone who enjoyed documenting his experiences. so, for example, the big event at the pierre hotel on the 80th birthday, there's a cd of that. and i'm sure there are many similar things. the complete run, i think the complete run of firing line exists at the hoover institution, that's a kind of documentation. i know that on youtube and other such outlets if you google bill buckley, you can find sometimes scratchy but nonetheless interesting and compelling documentation of debates he had, for example, with james baldwin. there was a debate he had either at cambridge or oxford -- >> [inaudible]

>> in, like, 1950 or something. it's a very interesting debate. so we don't have them, or i don't have them, but they exist. >> yeah. we have, we have a lot of still photos, but not terribly well organized. but hoover, as roger says, has the entire firing line archive, and they are working, they have a couple of donors who have given money specifically for that. so as they can they're making these available, and they're selling them through amazon. >> it's interesting that linda and i were talking about this because we had heard some rumors about documentaries being done of, of bill; history channel, bbc -- >> there is at least one, actually, because i was interviewed for it. >> okay, please. >> i think it's bbc, some establish group. >> but that's been killed, unfortunately. >> oh, it has? >> lack of funding, yeah. >> so the incredible fact is that at this point i to not believe that there is any documentary film being produced

or -- of bill buckley. so if there's anyone out in the audience either here today or listening on c-span that would like to underwrite that, please, get in touch with us. >> related, were there any film makers he particularly appreciated? and i was also curious in your opinion about other writers of his generation and younger that he read, admired and respected. >> oh, gee. well, there were, there were lots. he would cite -- most of his favorite writers of his generation or younger, he got them to write for national review if he possibly could. certainly, he adored evelyn wall, arnold lund, both slightly older than he. he frequently cited d. keith

mannow who was a columnist for us, rick brookheiser who he hired at about the same age as me, 20, although he had first published rick when he was 12? 15? 15, i think. he sent an unsolicited manuscript from his high school, if you cast your mind back to those moratorium days, well, he did moratorium. he loved the sailing novels of patrick o'brien. oh, there's so many. he was always -- i now can't remember which was the thriller writer he liked and which was the one he hated. but it launched him on his own blackford oaks books. um, he was very, he was always reading something. in fact, um, in one of those

blackford oaks books -- this was drawn from life, to be sure -- blackford is -- no, that's right. this he attributes to henry grunewald, but he always had a book if his pocket lest he should be alone and without reading matter for two minutes. and as the worst blackford oaks was injured, tortured at various times, but the worst torture that he ever underwent was when he was locked in a cell without reading matter for two weeks by the soviets. >> was he into film at all? or he didn't, he never really -- >> oh, he liked going, he liked going to films. >> i don't think you'd call them films though. >> no. >> he would have called them movies. you know, he liked movies. >> yeah. near the end of his life he

wrote a wonderful column, i think it was his old friend from childhood, alistair horn, who put him on to that german film, what was it called -- >> [inaudible] >> the lives of others. >> lives of others. >> that's right. >> that's right. >> and he took the afternoon off from, i think that was the goldwater book he was working on, he took the afternoon off and had his research assistant find him where it was being shown near stanford, and they went to an early afternoon showing. and he wrote a glowing column about it. >> basically, i think, bill used the movies the way ludwig wicken stein did, for entertainment. after a long day, he would watch a long movie. it almost didn't matter what it was, was my impression. >> yeah. it was ski season in switzerland, and he invited a

bunch of us over, and he had just heard about this movie in which a bunch of young people robbed banks, and they'd rob the banks wearing masks of retired presidents. and that's what intrigued bill about the movie. so we watched this wretched movie with, what's his name? keanu reeves? worst movie i ever saw in my life, but we watched every minute of it. he wasn't into the channel flipping in those days. >> right, right. [laughter] >> hi, i -- one of the things i miss most, i suppose, about bill buckley is the obituaries. and in the last year we've seen two senators, one primarily that mr. buckley loved writing about. one of my favorite pieces is entitled "justice pothead" during the clarence thomas hearings where he went after ted

kennedy because kennedy was say, you know, a justice who has smoked pot is not fit for service on the high court. and buckley responded and said, well, then one must ask, you know, what disqualifies a united states senator? [laughter] and he goes after kennedy. it's a brilliant piece. and i read eleanor roosevelt, the obituary he wrote which was just scathing. jaw hung wide open. i'm curious, what do you think bill buckley might have written about ted kennedy's death had he been alive to write that obituary? >> he would certainly have brought up, he would certainly have brought up the more egregious performances. this book contains that, his scathing column about kennedy's dreadful savaging of judge bork, yeah. without a shred of truth in it, i mean, a shred of truth in what

kennedy said, and just a disgraceful performance. bill wouldn't have forgotten things about that. he would probably on the basis of his, his obituaries that we also include, for example, lyndon johnson, a couple of others, he would probably in christian forbearance have found something to praise about him. probably. >> yeah, i -- one of the early communications i had from bill was he wrote me a note about an essay i'd written on the great greek biographer who did parallel lives of the greeks and the romans. and i quoted in that piece a, one of the comments from the life of chi man, i think, where he says, you know, when we're talking about great men, we should really not dwell on their

foibles, their failures, their deficiencies because they have those in common with the rest of us. we should dwell primarily, you know, not exclusively, but not to the, not to alter the record, but primarily on what made them great. and, you know, we have several obituaries. i think you'll see that was, basically, bill's procedure. he could be very cutting, he could be -- he certainly didn't like a lot of what ted kennedy, for example, did. but i think had he been charged with writing his obituary, you would not have found it a, you know, a polemical work. he would have mentioned chappaquiddick, he would have mentioned the shameful performance on floor of the senate. but he would also have tried to give a balanced view of what ted kennedy aspired to do. i'm glad i didn't have to do it.

>> yeah. >> please. >> as people may know mr. buckley best, i was interested in your thoughts of perhaps reading christopher buckley's memoir, losing mum and pup, what was your reaction if you have read the book? is. >> well, i think that, that partly it was a beautifully-written thing, of course, as everything christopher does is. i think what roger just said does, does speak to that in part. so many of the things, you know, he's talking talking about their end-of-life problems. and those are the things that they had in common with everyone who, who lives -- who as bill put it, everyone who outlives his strength. so whether that, you know, was the best thing to have done, it was his, it was his choice, and

as their son he had the right to do it. you could say that he should have dwelt on other things instead. >> it's very difficult being the son of a famous father. >> who were some of mr. buckley's inspirations in his youth, some people that you might be able to point out him growing up, and also, did he have an opinion on snowboarding? >> yes, he had an opinion on snowboarding, or at least on most snowboarders which is -- [laughter] >> [inaudible] >> family program. >> exactly. this is a family program. now, leah's just been writing on some of the great influences on him, and i think you've pretty well got them taped. his parents, first. then albert j. knock, a great libertarian writer who was a

great friend of will buckley's, mr. buckley sr.. frank chertoff whom we mentioned. he wasn't one of the big four, but he was very important. >> yeah. >> he was a younger, he was midway in age between knock and bill, and he was very influential on bill as a young man, when bill was a young man. whitaker chambers, of course. jim burnham. that, i think -- >> maybe willmore kendall. >> who was his professor at yale. >> yep. and then a bit later, milton friedman. >> to that list maybe i'd, also, perhaps add one of bill's closest friends, namely henry kissinger. they went way back, and i think that henry had a, i think it was a mutual, a mutual influence. but they were very close. >> yeah, yeah. and hayek.

>> you'll note how many libertarians there are among those. >> yeah. well -- >> that was always a part of bill buckley. he was, of course, a very devout roman catholic, very much a believer of the church, followed the church, believer. but also he did have a very strong libertarian strain in him, no question about that. >> in fact, it's interesting, his starting -- he started the column in '62, and in be i think it was '66 he did his first collection. it included some longer pieces, but it was mostly a collection of columns, the jeweler's eye. and then he did those collections, oh, every two or three or five years up until 1993 or '4, and that was the last one, and that is happy days are here again, and that is subtitled, reflections of a libertarian journalist.

>> good afternoon. good afternoon. it's a really wonderful book. i can't think of two better people to have done this book. it's really so beautiful. and congratulations. and it's a wonderful thing that it comes out at the same time as lee edwards' biography. what a, what a perfect timing, providential maybe. i have two questions, completely unrelated. the first is particularly given the time that we're living in, suspect it about time for a back -- isn't it about time for a blackford oaks film? a lot of us remember the james bond films and others that are kind of in that genre. you mentioned earlier the influence. it may have been lock erie who you were think of in the day of the jackal. >> yeah, that's right. >> but at any rate, i'd love to think where you think blackford oaks would make a wonderful film and, if so, why. and secondly, among all of

bill's books, each of you, which do you believe -- not what bill may have believed -- but what do you believe is his best book? >> well with, i'm agnostic on the question of blackford oaks. >> um, i think, i think some of them would make delightful movies, and there have been, there have been negotiations. somebody was mentioning it even within the past year. i think saving the queen would be a terrific, terrific movie. i think maybe my favorite blackford oaks, though, is see you later, alligator, partly because of the characters. just wonderful characters. i think they'd make good movies. so if anyone out there is a movie maker -- [laughter] you know, christopher buckley has the rights, so go to him and ask him. bill's best book. [laughter]

>> no, he, you know, that's a hard question to answer because he wrote a lot. it depends on your mood really. i mean, sailing through paradise is a marvelous book, atlantic high's a marvelous book. if you're interested more in the questions we highlight in this book, linda mentioned the jeweler's eye or up from liberalism. you know, a long shelf of books on a wide variety of topics. i would sort of asking a parent which is your favorite children, you know? child. i think all of them. >> yeah, yeah. i would, i would put in, i would put in a plea for four reforms which is one of his less remembered books. when i was rereading that in working on strictly right a few years ago, i was blown over by

how, how sad it was that those reforms had not been done and how useful they would, they would still be if somebody would dust off that by now 40-year-old book and do the darn things it suggested back then. it was, one of them had to do with criminal courts, one with taxation, one with education, i forget what the fourth one was. but it's just a terrific and very valid book. >> i think, probably, i would cast a vote -- not that it's the best, but one that you really must read -- and that's god and man at yale, the first one, which he wrote at the age of 26. and it looks at some of the same issues that we're talking and struggle with today as roger and linda both have mentioned, the idea of what about free enterprise system, what about the role of faith and god in how

relative is our society. all of these questions which we're still struggling with. and to think that this young man, and he was a young man even as great as he was already, could come up this kind of an examination at the age of 26, i think, says quite a bit. and then it was a bestseller. >> yeah, yeah. >> it was a bestseller. so his public recognition of that genius and the extraordinary ability, unique ability it is. >> thank you for bringing this book to us. when you look at some of buckley's intellectual influences -- knock, chambers, hayek -- when they talk about society, they seem to be very pessimistic. so from whence came buckley's optimism? >> well, i think, you know, it's logical to a large part bill's faith had a great deal to do with it. i'm fond of saying he took very seriously that observation from the book of genesis where it says god made the world and saw

that it was good. bill was an impatient man, there's no question about that, but he was also someone who took great delight in the panoply of the world. and i think that kind of -- i think he felt we had an obligation to enjoy ourselves. not in the, not in the kind of demonic sense of the world, but we had an obligation maybe not to enjoy ourselves, but to joy, to joy which is something higher, isn't it? and, you know, that kind of attitude can't help but be contagious in one's prose, in one's outlook on life, one's philosophy. and i think it also helps explain why he was so adamantly,ic plaque my an enemy of communism. because he saw in communism a life-blighting, soul-blighting

attack on the very essence of humanity, namely freedom. why is it that when you think -- you cast your mind back over what it was like in the eastern europe, i mean, here you had, everything was dark, you know? there was no joy in life. it was the kind of society where they would mandate what kind of lightbulbs you could use. oh, we'll just stop there. [laughter] >> yes. [laughter] >> i think, also, that he would take a lesson from t.s. eliot who said that there were no lost causes because there were no gained causes. i think that was very important, also, in the kind of view that he took of life here and a greater life to come. >> thank you once again. you mentioned faith several times. any recollection on or his thoughts on vatican ii? >> oh, scathing. [laughter] scathing.

but they never -- and, of course, roger has written about bill and the latin mass since roger and alexander participated in bill's private, the private masses that his chaplain, father kevin fitzpatrick, used to say for him. no, he -- in fact, we run many this book his great essay, the end of the latin mass, and it's just, whew, you know, wear sunglasses when you read it, it'll just blind you. [laughter] but it never, it made him extremely angry, but it never diminished his faith. it diminished his enjoyment in mass, but it never diminished his faith. >> thank you. >> ladies and gentlemen, thank you so very much for joining us for this extraordinary conversation about bill buckley. [applause]

>> linda bridges was hired by william f. buckley jr. in 1969 and has worked for the national review throughout her career. including ten years as the magazine's managing editor. roger kimball is the president and publisher of encounter books and co-editor and publisher of the new criterion. for more information, visit encounterbook.com. >> former fortune magazine editor kate murphy presents a history of the law firm howe and hummel. this firm defended many residents of new york city shortly after the civil war. the corner bookstore in new york city is the host of this 35-minute event. [applause] >> thank you very much. a couple weeks ago i was in washington, d.c., and i went to the smithsonian museum of american history which is a marvelous place, and there's a

section of the museum that is just sort of an attic pull of stuff from the 19th century. and i was walking through this display, and at almost every exhibit i could make a connection to howe and hummel. so there's a ballot box, and i could talk about vote fraud. there was, you know, newspapers about a hanging, and i could talk about, you know, how there were lawyers to all the really good murderers. and it became fairly kind of like a parlor game. but what it speaks to is that howe and hummel really did connect with almost everyone who was anyone in late 19th century new york. those of you who don't need six degrees of separation, you need about one and a half, if that. so i thought i'd take as the theme for this talk famous people who knew howe and hummel and wished they didn't. [laughter] ..

>> she and her sister ran an auto newspaper that was the first to run marxist communist manifesto. but they were having some financial difficulties and they decided to cash in in the form of a secret. and the secret was that the feature was having an affair with his best friends wife. they publish this in the weekly, and a fellow named, famous name coming up, anthony comstock got the fed to charge them with setting up obscenities through the mail. how and hummel defended the

sisters on what i call the bible and shakespeare defense which is the naughty bits, the weekly seeing, the judge wasn't -- this one on for a year and a half and the sisters eventually got off on a technicality. so victory went all in anthony comstock. will gather, this was a name that surprised me. before will gather became a great american novelist, taking asher in the midwest, she was a theater reviewer in pittsburgh. and i had no idea of that. in 1900 of play came to york called -- and was the story of an innocent young diplomat who was seduced by an older woman who had also posed for the play.

to new york city tabloids, this might sound familiar, got into one of their spasms of morality. and they drummed up a crusade to ban her from the stage. of the two partners, william howe did more criminal stuff but abraham hummel was the premier theatrical lawyer of his time, and he defended her from charges of public indecency. she had toured the country before camden yards and it landed in pittsburgh. here's what willa cather thought of it. she said of the lead actress, never was olga so absolutely unique or original exception or finished or brilliant in execution. okay, here's our third name, buffalo bill cody. and how often you go to the speech we have henry ward beecher and buffalo bill cody in the first paragraph.

buffalo bill cody, we all know who he was, a showman of the west. he was also a man with a heart, and he fell in love with, frankly, a nasty little piece of work named catherine. he thought she was talented. no one else did, and he dropped about $70,000 trying to make her a star. she eventually dropped him, what i refer to as the obscure actress lottery by marrying the younger son of the great railroad baron. howard coulda family was so appalled by this connection that they invoked a clause in jay gould's will in which they stripped her half of the fortune. it's not uncommon in such cases this marriage was later followed by this divorce, and hummel acted for catherine clements.

one of howard's previous interests, young lady was defended by hummel when she said howard coulda for breach of promise. you go on. you get the idea. john l. sullivan, the great boxer. boxing was illegal for much of a 19th century. price fighting was not. what is the difference between boxing and price fighting? fighting? it's essentially a class distinction. prize fighting is what peter roosevelt had at harvard. boxing is what irish immigrants dead on the barge of mississippi for money. that said, boxing really was gaining an audience among middle-class respectable people. indeed, henry ward beecher was said to of attended a boxing match although it was probably called a price fight or an exhibition. but john l. sullivan comes to new york and he is scheduled to give an exhibition of scientific

price fighting at madison square garden to a gentleman named greenfield of england. the mayor of new york hears about this and is distraught. club having nothing better to do in the city, he has the city lawyers take them to court where they assure the judge there will be no boxing, it's going to be a scientific ex-vision -- exhibition. on that basis the judge allows them to box. a huge crowd at madison square garden. the bangkok shoot -- the betting action of course and credible. they were clearly taking home quite a bit of money. but the chief of police and a gentleman named inspector williams, named for his facility, was the placement of the nightclub are at ringside. in the second round the action

gets a little too interesting, and williams leads into the stage and stops the fight. and they are then hauled into court where the chief of police just makes an investment of himself by saying, you know, i had to stop it, there was blood. william howe says was there as much blood as a nosebleed? maybe, maybe not. this is -- does the police department have a boxing club? yes. it in their blood at those matches? yes. and that was the extent of the prosecution. so they were let off. oxen did not immediately become legal, but this was an important step in the legalization of boxing. p.t. barnum, the circus scenario. to connection to your. our beloved new york state legislature again having nothing better to do in the late 1880s i believe proposed a piece of

legislation to ban the wearing of tights on stage. , was the premier theatrical lawyer of the era, and at the behest of p.t. barnum, he challenge the legislation and it failed. p.t. barnum, saw the grandson of two young men, clinton in 1896 was getting married, and his brother, herbert, who it has to be said was a complete blithering idiot, decides to give his brother a bachelor party. he goes right to the theatrical agents and says something to the effect that he wants entertainment for a bachelor party, and remember, this is not a sunday school picnic. well, one of the girls, she was 16 years old, father was there

when the theatrical agent