irving kristol said i regret the cold war is over. we've lost. there is a case that could be made for that. and i don't know how you people come back together when there's disagreement. i've got a list of 20 or 30 from some people may disagree with them.q% same in 1960, maybe there were cold years in a lot of ways, voters are much more united at the truman cursor area and maybe the 60s and i don't people9%qw ever get that that. q%qw frankly if you've read that believe this thing is coming

governor of california and

president of the united states. >> i surely appreciate all of the people coming out to see me on this dark and stormy night. the weather is just horrible. there is a full moon here in fairhope, alabama. i'm glad to be here. someone should give me $100 for that commercial. [laughter] >> i will tell you, you are guinea pigs. this is the first speech i have given on ronald reagan. i have four books out right now at the same time. it is about to drive me crazy. i can't remember one day to the next ones must be doing. i made some notes on ronald reagan in case i opened my mouth and nothing comes out. at least i have something here you the reason i wrote this

book, reason i accepted the inquiry is because i realize -- about two or three years ago, my daughter was 10 or 11 at the time. no one is teaching modern presidents and contemporary politics in any schools. yet, i realize that politics is all around us. every day these kids are getting a big dose of politics, and they don't have the tools to look up presidents. nobody looks up a young adult book about ronald reagan. there are a few but some of the other presidents. i thought, well, i will start trend. i selected reagan because i think he was the most interesting of those contemporary presidents going back to john kennedy.

because of his childhood and -- he was a movie star, for heavens sake. i have met every president since kennedy. i did not meet kennedy. since then i was a reporter in washington for 10 years. i met johnson and nixon and ford. i met nixon when he was in the house. i had a place out in the hamptons. they came in on sunday night. they stopped at the restaurant and had dinner. i stopped off and sat at the family table, which is for divorcees and bachelors and wayward husbands. elaine came over and said that

[inaudible] is in the back of the room and wants to talk to. she said no, he really wants to talk to you. i went back there and that was where woody allen's that bid -- woody allen sat down. the guy had on a jimmy carter mask. it was actually jimmy carter. it turned out that the man was a publisher at doubleday. i knew the force george bush. i played tennis with him many years ago. i knew young george when he worked for red back in the early 1970s. in any case, this guy came out of nowhere.

he came from a little poor midwestern town. he was so poor he didn't even know he was for until he got to college. his father was a drunk, his mother took in laundry, and they got by. the first instance of his determination that i detected in all of the things that i read about him, was when he decided he was going to play high school football. he weighed 90 pounds. he was crushed, and he continued, and then he was eliminated from the scrub team. the next year he went back at it, and back at it again, until finally he became the captain of the team. that tells you something. now, all football captains do not wind up being presidents,

but it tells you something about the personality and drive. he got to college and a little college called eureka college in illinois. he was playing football, waiting on tables, and he got through the school with pretty good grades. he majored in economics. instead of politics, he was chairman of the -- president of the student government association. he enjoyed acting. he acted in all the players. he graduated in 1932 just in time for the worst part of the great depression. you think this last thing in 2008 was bad, this was really serious. his father had sobered up long

enough that they had a possibility of a job at montgomery ward. that is a big chicago store. it turned out that he did not do the job. and it turned out that he didn't get the job and he thanked his lucky stars ever since. so up at eureka, he is trying to figure out what he wants to be. he wants to be an actor, that there is no way to do that. so he finds a job at a radio station as a sportscaster. the way he got the job was -- mr. scotsmen said okay, reagan, i want you to give me like you were talking to the radio

audience. i remember the last five minutes of the game that eureka played that we won. so he broadcasted that. he did wonderful. he got the job. then he wound up being the voice of the chicago cubs, of all things. he was very well known and famous in the midwest as a sportscaster. one of the great stories was at one point he was broadcasting again. and they were extremely cheap during the depression. they wanted to send broadcasters out of trouble with the teams at all the different things. what they did was a guy would go to the games and telegraph all the radio stations what was going on with the game, so reagan would actually do the

play-by-play is as though he was there. this ought to work very well until one day -- one afternoon they were playing the cincinnati reds and the telegraph went dead. and it is the ninth inning. does he beat is the pitcher. -- so reagan calls a foul ball. the foul ball goes into the stands, so he describes the fight. he goes on for seven minutes. it was in ripley's believe it or not.

[laughter] >> that was the kind of wit that the man had. he seemed blessed with some sort of star that shines bright upon him. the guy that owned the chicago cubs was wrigley, the chewing gum man. they took the cubs team to spring training. he remembers this girl from eureka at spring training, and she has a job as a dancer or something in the movies. he asked her about it. how do i get into movies? she directs him to an agent. he goes to see the agent. there he went, i think to mgm, and he's in a movie. there he was.

they wanted to change his name, but he says, look, i don't know what you know about me, but i am pretty well-known throughout the midwest. people make fun of reagan. i watched a movie -- it was a very good comic, but it makes the man look like a fool. when you watch things that were a movies, this guy was a very good actor. william holden and william powell and john wayne. all these guys. walter pigeon, edward g. robbins. he was well in the movie

business until world war ii breaks out. but what he did was, he never had the money to ride horses when he was in college and all that. so they had the program that is rotc. he became a lieutenant in the calgary of the united states. he got to write the best horses in the world for free. for one weekend a month. the calgary became the armor. it looked like he was going overseas, but his [inaudible] was so bad that they said you can't leave the united states. he figured out who he was, they put him in the motion picture division. he sat there in san francisco and collected all of these technical guys in all these studios. they would build replicas of

tokyo or cities in japan that they were going to bomb -- exact replicas of the cities that were as big as this room -- he did well at this. he went back into the movie business in 1945 when the war was over. and it had changed a lot. the studio system was starting to break up. they told the director what shows you're going to do. this is beginning to change. it did not work as well for ronald reagan because a lot of these other guys stayed, and they had not gone to war. they became the new movie stars. but reagan did become the head

of the screen actors guild. every class known to man as a union in the movie business. the people who put in [inaudible]. that was about the time when the communists were trying to infiltrate hollywood because they thought it would be great propaganda. the acting class had always been a little bit to the left. but it became big time to the left in the 1920s and 1930s because -- and i hope i'm not getting too far -- in new york, they sent a lot of these actors over to moscow to be trained because it was free. why they were training, they

were also training to be communists. when they came back, they were also communists are they migrated from manhattan now into the movie business in hollywood in the 1920s and 1930s, and by the time reagan became president of the screen actors guild, it was just about taken over by communists. some were well-known actors and directors. what they did was -- the big time actors -- they just paid their dues. they neglected this screen actors guild. anyway, this was about the time that the congressional -- there you go.

the american activities committee was holding its hearing. so there was a great day blowout. what reagan did was get rid of -- he testified that we don't need to outline it we are not outlawing communism. he got all the big time actors. they came in and voted the communists out. that was, i think, the beginning of his conversion from being a democrat to becoming a republican, because reagan had been raised as a democrat all his life. his father was an irishman who was in poverty, but as close as he came to any respectability was working for the government and the administration.

reagan had been raised as a democrat. he became employed by general electric. they got reagan to go around and make speeches to all of the factories -- it was a huge corporation. then he acted in the commercials. he spoke against communism. he suddenly realized that there was a great force out there that was against him. it was not necessarily for communism, but he was a conservative and they were liberals, and tension grew. one day, he was at a lecture hall delivering a speech, and a woman said to him from the back of the room, mr. reagan, when are you going to become a republican? >> and he said, well, i think i probably ought to.

i have just never gotten around to it. she said i'm a register. all register you right now. so there he was. his famous statement was that i did not leave the democratic party. the democratic party left me. so his acting career and speaking career morphed into a political career. he was approached -- there were always people who approached him -- the approached him and asked if they wanted him to run for governor. he said, you're crazy. so reagan said all right, i will run for governor.

he had a tendency to wear a lot of makeup. this is the only reason he was good on tv. the first day he got to hollywood, and put makeup on, and made them look funny. he had good skin to start with. there he was. he reads all these comments in the newspapers about him wearing makeup. everybody, including the integer -- interviewers -- i don't have any makeup on, what are you talking about? this is a huge political coup. he did well, i think, as a governor. he spent too much money. he was not one of these guys that play along to go along. you have to do that in politics if you want to do things. what he wanted to do was ease

the state debt. while he didn't succeed in that, he did a lot of other good things. one of the stories that is told about him -- he got into office in 1967, which is the year i got back from vietnam. there were all these demonstrations going on at berkeley. he was the governor, and the governor supports the university system out there in california. he went to berkeley to meet with some of these people because he thought well, maybe that will settle them down. they yelled and hollered and so on. finally, after they settle down enough where one guy started to speak he said, governor, we don't think you're going to understand us at all. you didn't grow up with what we did. we are growing up in an age of

jet planes and space travel and instant communication. you don't understand what were talking about. and reagan said well, that may be so am i. but let me tell you something. my generation is the one that invented those things. [laughter] >> he left the governor's office and then, of course, the big question popped. would he be interested in running for president to again, he thought they were insane. nixon had made -- he disgraced himself and president ford was a bright man, but he did not establish himself in office. ronald reagan ville advisedly ran in the primary against

[inaudible] and he lost. but jimmy carter did get elected. but the country was fairly miserable after one year. inflation was so bad -- i was living in new york then. there was a big supermarket. i go to steve's to buy groceries, and there weren't any prices on anything. you had to go up to the checkout counter where they had a list. prices were going up so fast. they were going up 10 cents every hour. you could get 19% interest in a money market fund, which is a bad if you have a lot of money. but most people did not. it was killing the country. it was the same time that the russians were stirring up a lot of trouble.

there were some very serious nuclear problems that had not been resolved. jimmy carter had left the military in a terrible state. they did not have enough money to buy fuel for aircraft. anyway, ronald reagan ran against jimmy carter and he won. he had the famous, there you go again, lien on the debates. he was the chairman to try what was then called [inaudible] economics. it trickled down -- what it is is to get the regulations of everybody's back. it did take a while. of course, when he got in, he

got a lot of flak from the mainstream media and from the democrats, liberals, and i knew pretty well -- there was a gentleman who called reagan an amiable dunce. i work with jimmy breslin. ruslan called him senile and monumentally stupid or something like that. just kind of a field day -- everything he did, it was criticized. he liked to eat jelly beans. he always kept a jar of jelly beans. they got a psychologist to see what color of jelly beans he was eating to see what was going on his mind.

he didn't care. it bounced right off him. he would say, remember sam donaldson? he would make like he couldn't hear. it would drive donelson crazy. he was a man of good cheer. but he was determined when he got in that office to do some things that he thought were both important and necessary. the economy took care of itself read when he left office, the interest rates were back to normal. unemployment had gone back to normal -- whatever it is. but i think his biggest success was in his foreign policy. i'm not going to get into the caribbean stuff, but with the

soviet -- he faced them down. there were some serious situations. they had 3600 warhead missiles pointing at this country. we would have been destroyed. from the cold war days after world war ii -- there was a policy of probably a decade of what they called containment. were we are trying to contain the soviet expansion. vietnam was part of that. vietnam was part of that in various other places. that sort of morphed over with henry kissinger to coexistence. we were going to try to be friends with the communist.

reagan thought that they treated the people like barnyard animals. people who live under communism live like slaves. he made a moral judgment that you're not supposed to make, but he made it. here was his initial problem. all these old guys, they all died. finally he got mikael gorbachev. he was well educated. curse you, he wasn't educated. gorbachev was an educated man. it did not start off well, and

reagan got a lot of flak when he came back from iceland where he was supposed to have a big arms talk to get rid of these missiles. gorbachev flat would not do it. but reagan had from the beginning of his presidency, he went off in may to visit the first year -- he went to visit someplace in idaho or colorado -- and he asked his guide, the colonel general, what are our defenses against this? he says, we don't have any. we can't do it. he said what do you mean? if the soviets decide on a first strike, they would not hit -- the first strike was going to

hit everybody. reagan went back to berkeley where he had good connections for being governor, and he said that we have to get something going here. it could have worked. it terrified the russians and the soviets because they did not have the money to do that. this was an anonymously expensive proposition to set up all these huge space stations and satellite when they entered space. this was in the norma's tool that reagan had. every time they would have a meeting, he would say we need to do away with this number of missiles or that. but you have to do away with the star wars thing.

he said, i'll give to you. once we get it finished, i'll give it to you so that nobody can shoot missiles at anyone else. they're not? >> no, they didn't want that. as a result, the soviets stewed and grieved and grumbled. then reagan went over in 1985 where there was the berlin wall. he made a great speech. and he had made friends with gorbachev. he still was determined -- he wanted to get that down. he said this in his speech, the state department was horrified that he said such a thing. mr. gorbachev, if you want peace, bring down this wall. the germans were thinking that

mr. gorbachev lives on the other side of the wall, and reagan is going to be gone tomorrow. everybody was stunned. suddenly, the german people picked it up on both sides of the wall. gorbachev knew that he was having problems. first of all, he had a terrible economic start -- the people took power and you saw the whole eastern bloc of the soviet union began to crumble. reagan was out of office at this point by a dear, -- by a year. if you could think of one single point that brought down soviet communism in the east, he actually -- satellite countries

such as czechoslovakia, poland, hungary -- he went to visit moscow and gorbachev. gorbachev was happy about it. reagan made a speech in moscow. he talk to these guys. they never heard anyone talk about democracy and freedom. it was against the law. he was cheered, and so he left. that was his legacy. his legacy is that he was a lot smarter than anyone gave him credit for. one of the things that i found -- presidents always have speech writers. but reagan wrote his own speeches. i have the books with his own handwriting in them. he kept a diary.

reagan kept a diary, which is extremely articulate. he wrote letters, and they are collected in places. i was fascinated by the turn of this guy's mind. he was so clear. he was so smart. he was a meat and potatoes guy. he had a branch ranch you love to go to in the mountains outside of santa monica. -- excuse me, santa barbara. santa somebody. [laughter] >> one of the things he did, the press would always go with telescopic cameras -- they paid $10,000 for the lens -- they

would wait all day long to see what would happen. one day he [inaudible] -- [laughter] >> suddenly the reporters go crazy. then he smiled. [laughter] >> what i thought i do here, i hate reading things, if you want to read something, i will let you read it. the last couple of pages of this book that i wrote sums up, i think, what reagan was and what he did. it is only by page and a half in the book. he passed away of alzheimer's

disease. he wrote a lovely note -- i didn't include it here, but he explained what was going to happen to them and he knew and he basically had a good time and thanked everyone for their kindness. he even thanked sam donaldson. on june 3, 2005, ronald reagan passed away at his home in bel air. he was 93 years old. on june 9, his body was flown to washington dc to lie in state in the rotunda of the u.s. capitol. where 1000 -- 104,000 mourners viewed it on june 11. the funeral service was held at the national cathedral, attended by many of the world's greatest leaders, including his old adversary, mikael gorbachev.

he was buried in california at the reagan -- ronald reagan presidential library. on his gravestone were inscribed words from the speech of the dedication of the library. i know in my heart that man is dead. that what is right will eventually try him if there is purpose and worth to each and every life. during his political career, -- today they are still those who belittle his career and the ultimate failure of soviet communism. but there are many others who remember reagan fondly and greatly, mainly from his record

of 34 television network addresses to the american people. what these people were called him and no matter what their politics or his, was a man of great means. of straight talk. good humor and good will. he was a [cheers] president no matter what came his way. there were times he could be angry. reagan had a clear sense of right and wrong, which infuriated many of the leading academics and established journalists. most of whom still remain convinced that applying such moral convictions to politics

can be dangerous. in contrast, reagan believed he knew what was right and wrong as he saw it. above all else, reagan was an american original. he had his heart rates and times and lived an important life and guide his own hat. he had come along way. a poor boy from illinois. he knew he was poor, a sportscaster, movie star, president of the screen actors guild award, governor, and president of the united states. and it was all because he did not get a job at montgomery ward in 1932. that was the way he's done. if you ever visit the reagan library you will notice that there is a concrete slab

monolith. on the side that faces west, it is painted in colorful graffiti of butterflies and flowers. but the site reminds gray. that is an actual 338-pound chunk of the berlin wall sent by the citizens of grateful germany as a symbol of reagan's tear down the wall speech. the monolith, reagan said let our children and grandchildren come here and see this wall and reflect on what it meant to history. let let them understand.

each year they come, by the tens of thousands, the schoolchildren will read the words and look out over the valley ridge. just a little to the right and most fittingly, also facing west. you arty know the end of the book. you have been a great group of guinea pigs, and i hope i have not taken up too much of your time on this night. thank you all for coming so much, and we can sign some books

>> thank you all for coming and supporting independent bookstores around the world. we have a very special guest here for you today. he is a professor at williams university. his writings have been published in the nation, usa today, and the boston globe. he's here today to discuss his book. please welcome mr. carl t. bogus. >> thank you very much. good evening. it's a pleasure to talk to you today about william at ugly. maybe most speakers don't begin by telling you there political

affiliation, but i think that is important and necessary. i happened to be a liberal. i know i am speaking about a conservative icon and a figure who is beloved to millions of people. i think it is important that i confessed my beliefs first. i happen to admire buckley in many ways. but i also disagree with many of his ideas. i wanted to be up front with you about that. historians debate whether history is made by individuals or structural forces. if george washington happened to have lived, or james madison, or abraham lincoln, with the united states exists?

if it did exist, would be the same country that we know it to be? would other people have come forth and fill their shoes and done what they did, or would things be markedly different. for our purposes, tonight the question is if william f. up legionnaire would not have lived, would conservative conservatism be what it is today? if there had been a movement, would it have achieved the same success? i'm going to put that question aside for the moment and try to circle back to it later. let's start with who was buckley? well, he had six different

careers. he did things that would have been -- that would have filled cruise for six people and made them all successful. let's start with the fact that he was a syndicated columnist. he wrote for many years, up until he died, a column called on the right. it was published three times a week and 350 newspapers. he was one of the most widely read columnist in the country. he produced, in the course of his life, 5600 columns. if you just took his newspaper columns and you published them in book form, they would fill 28 volumes this size. he did this extraordinarily well. he won the best columnist award in 1967. i suggest if he had just been a syndicated columnist, he

would've been enormously successful and influential. but he also wrote 56 books. six of those books have adobe magazine articles and speeches, most were on politics, but he also wrote about all kinds of other things or if he wrote a very successful spy series. he wrote about the oceans. in addition to these books, many of which were national bestsellers, he published countless magazine articles. not only in his own magazine, national review, but in magazines that publish themselves as the best magazines, the new yorker, and esquire. he won an award for the best history in paperback one year. he won the lowell thomas travel

journalist award. if he had just done that, it would've made a very successful career. he was a public speaker. he was probably the most sought after in the united states. at his height, he delivered and averaged 70 talks a year. he did this in large part to raise extra revenue to help support his magazine, national review. he was the television host of "firing line." he does this from 1967 until 1999 and he still holds the record of being the show -- "firing line" is the longest show with a single host in history. he did this extremely well. he won an emmy award for outstanding achievement for his

television show. if he just had done the television show, it would have been an honest congressman -- an honest accomplishment. he founded national review in 1955. he edited it until 1990. he maintained control until 1999. probably many of you know national review biweekly or bimonthly conservative opinion is the most influential opinion journal on the left or the right in the united states. yet, it was a vehicle for redefining conservatism in the 50s, 60s and creating a

conservative movement. it is still an enormously influential magazine. buckley was a man of extraordinary wit and charm. for those of you who remember him probably remember this. he had to gnash, he had charisma. he did things no one else thought of doing. let me take you back to 1965 when he happened to fit in among all of these other things, running for mayor of new york could he ran for mayor on the conservative party ticket. he did it for two reasons. the first was to communicate conservative ideas to a wider audience, not just intellectuals who read opinion magazines and watch highbrow shows. but to a wider audience. he also did it to extinguish the political career of a rising liberal republican, john

lindsay. he believed that lindsay was a dashing, handsome rising star in the republican party. he was a liberal. and he had not endorsed the republican standard barry goldwater in 1964. there was a battle raging for the heart of the republican party. but we hope that by running on a conservative party line he would drain an up republican party votes to defeat him. let me take you back to his first press conference. we will use some excerpts from his press conference. understand that the conservative party has persuaded buckley to run for mayor. they are introducing him to the

public for the first time. this is how the press conference proceeds. portions of it. reporter, do you want to be mayor, sir? >> buckley, i have never considered it. >> now, you can imagine the conservative party officials standing there aghast. this is their candidate. what is he doing? do you think that is something a -- at present should be considered? what is important is that certain points of view should prevail. whether you or i present those points, assuming you're a good reporter. >> but you are asking people to vote for you. if you win, will you serve? buckley pauses as if he is considering the question for the first time. if elected, i will serve. reporter, do you think you have

a chance at winning? buckley. no. reporter, how many folks you expect to get conservatively speaking. >> buckley, conservatively speaking, one. a week later another reporter asked him what would you do if you did when? and he said demand a recount. >> now, the conservative party officials may have been horrified, but from that first moment, buckley galvanized the attention of many people, especially young people. it is almost an oxymoron, he was in the honest politician -- he was an honest politician.

he spelled that expressing ideas was more important than winning. >> let me take you further back in time to 1951. i picked 1951 because that is when buckley became famous. a 26-year-old recent graduate of yale university. he wrote a book called trim five. the book was all about the economics and religion departments at keio university and what yells professors were teaching in various classrooms and what textbooks they were using. who would predict that this would become a bestseller? it did become a bestseller. in 1951 he writes "god and man

at yale." in 1955 he founded national review. conservatism had been given up as dead and buried by lots of people. the liberal candidate or president -- the liberal candidate captured the republican nomination. in the past four presidential cycles. thomas dewey in 1944 and 1948, thomas eisenhower -- dwight eisenhower described himself in 1952 as a modern republican and also as a liberal republican. many people thought that conservatism was irrelevant. it had been vanquished. everyone was liberal. what was conservatism then?

personified by robert taft, who had been the conservative standard for the nomination. it was characterized by prudence, caution, before world war ii isolation and skepticism of military force, and buckley changed it. he transformed it. buckley was not a political philosopher. his ideas -- they were not his own. many were inherited from his bother and borrowed from other thinkers. but buckley was a brilliant polemicist. he was also an extremely gifted leader. as gifted leaders know, building a movement is not about personal

glory. it is about creating an army. you can think of buckley as a conductor of an orchestra. he didn't write the music, he did not play the instruments, but he decided what was going to be played, he decided who was going to play it, he decided who to invite into the office and who not to invite him. he decided who to expel from the orchestra. he made all these strategic decisions and was extremely good at it. now, what did he create? i will tell you what he created, but it will not surprise you. it is what we have come to associate with conservatism. we have become used to it. we tend to think that conservatism was always this way. buckley created it this way. it is really a three-legged

stool sitting on libertarianism, what we call neoconservatism and religious or social conservatism. we can think of it as a coalition of these three different philosophies, three different groups, if you will. but we happened to embrace all three within his breast. he may not have been the purest of the pure and anyone word of the phrase. there were many inconsistencies and incompatibilities among these three schools of thought, but he was largely all three of these things. by libertarianism, i mean the philosophy that says the right to live your life -- we all have a right to live our lives as we choose, as long as we do not infringe on the equal rights of others. his idea of not being coerced,

particularly by government, but not being coerced by anybody, this leads many libertarians to a purist, absolutist, lays off air glossary. lossy fare. in fact, very little government. the musician who buckley -- speaking metaphorically, the recruiter of the national review was frank maier, and he believed that government just has to legitimate functions. one is to protect citizens against violent assaults, whether it is invasion from abroad or criminals and

domestically. and to adjudicate conference. to have a court system. particularly to adjudicate commercial complex. that way the economy can keep coming along. government should be very small and weak. on neoconservatism, that term did not exist back in 1985, that ideas that we have come to call neoconservatism were starting up. what i mean by that, well, years later ernie crystal davis the famous description. he gave us the famous description. a neoconservatism is a liberal that has been mugged by conservatism. what he meant was the world is a hard place. there are bad people and bad countries. you cannot be naïve. you cannot coddle --

domestically cannot coddle people or criminals. you cannot coddle the poor. they have to have tough love, make them stand on their feet. the musician that buckley invited in national review was the first neoconservatism. throughout the cold war, american strategic doctrine, articulated by all presidents, democratic and republican, was containment. boehm said that is too timid, too weak. he advocated rollback. we have to rollback communism through clandestine operations

and subversion and stimulating revolutions within the communist bloc and more. we have to not shirk from confronting them militarily. the third stool is religious conservatism or social conservatism. what i mean by that is finding religion very central towards political views. not nearly as a source of inspiration, but perhaps in guidance or policy. let me read you two sentences that buckley wrote in "god and man at yale" when he was 26 years old. in 1951. he said, i myself believe that the duel between christianity and atheism is the most important in the world.

i further believe that the struggle between individualism and collectivism is the same struggle we produced on another level. so what he is saying here that there is the struggle, this cosmic struggle, between good and evil, between christianity and atheism. whether it is on the international stage between the west and communism, socialist systems, collectivist systems, or whether it is even domestic. between the individualist viewpoint and the collectivist viewpoint, the socialist viewpoint. that itself is tied up with the struggle between good and evil.

that good, christianity and good, is on the side of a particular political philosophy. now, it is a complicated story as to how buckley got these particular views together and how he got them to try him. -- how he got them to triumph. i believe that he wasn't a conscious, strategic thinker. i believe that he was intuitive, but brilliant in his intuition as to what to do. i just have a few minutes left. i want to suggest one of the

competing philosophies that he prevailed over. back in the 1950s, there were other people saying conservatism was going another direction. it was not his buckley saying this is the path to follow. there was competition. one of the most interesting alternative approaches is being authored by a group called -- at least for particular individuals, they were called the new conservatives. they were burnt beans. they were followers of edmund burke. the great 18th century statesman, who argued that we should honor traditions and institutions, and we should honor them because they have developed for particular evolutionary reasons. it was almost a darwinistic view of society. we have institutions, we have traditions. they are very important to our

society. they have come to be the way they are because they have come to work. we don't always understand exactly what they do and how they do it and how they work, but wisdom is the product of experience, and wisdom has been impressed into these institutions. mr. burke as someone who has been misunderstood in the status quo. mr. burke argued peridot we we required change. i could go on and talk about the philosophy, suffice to say, it was entirely incompatible with buckley. libertarians are individualists. they believe in individualism. they disagree about liberty.

as i have already alluded to, libertarians believe that liberty is about being free from coercion burkians believes they require certain opportunities that you cannot have in society -- freedom to pursue your dreams. unless you have certain opportunities in education and other things. wholesome communities. libertarians believe that government is necessary for liberty. -- the check on consolidated power is structural. it is separation of powers. federalism. other things. it is not small and weak government, which burkians

considers to be dangerous. there were four major fermentable thinkers who are advocating the approach. he wrote a book called conservatism revisited in 1949. the book stood for what he believes. in seeking community. there was a political scientist named clinton rossiter. you could read any of these three books today and find them provocative, compelling writers. they were great writers and

great thinkers. in my opinion, rossiter and nisbett. most important was a fellow named russell kirk. russell kirk was in many ways like buckley and in many ways not like buckley. he was like buckley because at a very early age, 35 years old, assistant professor of michigan state, he wrote a book that became a sensation. it was really a doctoral thesis. it was unlikely that the book would become a sensation, but a copy attention of certain editors of time magazine. they published it in a very special edition in 1953. the book took off. kirk argued that burke is the

true school of thought. burke argued that libertarians were too realistic and what counted was the permanent things -- religion, tradition, community, art, literature. he argued that -- one of his races was everything isn't about getting another piece of pie and another pat of butter. society and what we are about is about more important things than just economic growth. he was very opposed to libertarians, and he was attacked by buckley and libertarians quite passionately, quite personally. then buckley realized, i'm

founding a magazine, and this fella is a potential major competitor. he decided to [inaudible] from the magazine. russell kirk did a rash thing. he quit his day job. he decided he was going to be an independent public intellectual. he had tough going. he was scraping by. buckley made a pilgrimage up to the costa, michigan, a tiny little place. that was with kirk. he said to kirk, i would like to join that national review.

buckley, being a -- and handsome and charming guy, kirk's being awkward, he shows in his library. buckley says, this is a wonderful library. they reappear at a local tavern. buckley says this is a great tavern. he convinces them to write for the national review. buckley says i would like you to write a column on educational policy. educational policy is a subject dear to russell kirk's heart. but i suggest to you that the battle for conservatism was not going to be decided over educational path we -- educational policy. there was frank maier and the libertarians, and he picks up the phone and calls buckley and was outraged.

he said take me off the masthead. buckley does taste -- taken off. he writes this column for the academy. he wrote it for 25 years. for 25 years he silenced his criticism of libertarianism. after he quit "national review" in 1980, the following year he resumed his slashing critique of libertarianism. the battle had been over many years before that. for other reasons, rossiter and derek left the field of battle as well. they fell into criticizing each other. they never cohered. they decided that if you can't

take the heat, get out of the kitchen. they were bashed by conservatives. one went on to retreat to poetry. rossiter went back to being an academic. robert nisbett, who did continue to write for many years, also took a very long hiatus. he went into university ministration for 10 years. now, here's the irony on this. the burkians never acted together. buckley was an individualist. he formed a community, "national review." that community became a very vibrant community. it was just not a community of thinkers and writers, but

readers who look forward to getting this magazine. they felt a part of something. part of something new, something dynamic. they looked up to buckley. they looked up to the people that buckley promoted and the people in the magazine, and it is my belief that had there been no william f. buckley junior, conservatism would not be the way we think of it today i cannot tell you what i think it would be, and nobody can do alternative history, but i do believe that conservatism became what we consider it to be today because buckley took it that way, and he was a person many people, particularly young people, admired and wanted to follow. thank you [applause]

>> i will take questions. yes, sir. >> [inaudible question] >> several things. but here's one. it is my sense that we are entering the new era of biological redefinition. this may go on for some time. partly because of their successes, liberalism and conservatism have both kind of run out of gas to a certain extent. they are in distress or other reasons. i think there is a lot of searching going on, i think that the occupied movement and tea parties are symptoms of this, and because that is my sense, i wanted to take a look at the last time one of these great ideologists went through a process of redefinition. >> do you explore new book what

shapes the mentality of the [inaudible]? >> yes, i do a great link. i believe that it was his father. strangely enough, i think it was his father's experiences in mexico during the mexican revolution were his bother when not to make his fortune in the oil business, his mother developed a particular worldview, particular philosophy and transmitted that to buckley and his siblings. >> [inaudible question] did you serve in world war ii? >> buckley did serve in the army, and he did serve in the army, but not overseas. >> did he see people blown up in the war? >> he did not personally see

people blown up in the war. >> guesser. >> is a self identified liberal, you did a fair job on william f. buckley. i want to ask you about the distinction between berkeley is -- buckley and burkian. on the right, they see it mainly as a power to government. not something that is anti-family, anti-religion, anti-groups. but something that is deeply suspicious of government -- governments going beyond what would be their legitimate role. i don't see that much of a battle between libertarianism in that sense.

and more traditional conservatism. >> i hear you. but i think most libertarian thinkers would agree with what i've read from frank maier. the government has very small and narrow responsibilities, and they believe that that is essential to preserve freedom. i wrote quite a lot about this in the book, and also if you look at the cato institute, for example, they have libertarian think tanks. i'm not saying you are right or wrong, but i think lots of libertarians feel that way. probably ron paul, being among them, -- >> don't you think the libertarians are mostly opposed to big government? that is not necessarily a

burkian idea. except in the extent that it enforces even the things you talked about. the rule of law and protection of private property and individual safety. where specifically -- >> they disagree on many things. what the functions of government is, and even on taxes. this idea that taxes are bad and we should do everything to lower taxes, i think it is a bit of a libertarian view. it has to do with shrinking government and shrinking it down to size. >> yes. could you speak to the situation today with the tea party. is this the inheritor where the next position of the conservative movement based on your observations? >> i don't know.

it is a lot easier to look in the rearview mirror than out the windshield. i think that actually nobody can look with confidence of the windshield, but i think that we do learn an awful lot by studying history. it may not tell us exactly where we are going, but it does tell us what some of the possibilities are. i have no idea what the future is for the tea party, or whether that will be the trajectory that continues. >> there seems to be the difference between reality and ideology. even though a lot of the seniors -- about medicare. the government is saying that we have to cut these things and if there is waste.

how come people will suffer for ideology and vote for somebody who really might undermine their survival? there are a lot of people now in this country who are hurting. many people who are middle class, who are unemployed. and yet rather than voting the reality of their survival were their ability to continue functioning, they vote for ideology that may sabotage that. >> well, i believe there are two types of people. there are those who believe that their two types of people and those who don't. in much the same, i suggest that there are two types of people. there are people who admit they have an ideology. there are people who have an ideology, but do not admitted or are not aware of it. i think that we all do have an ideology.

it is a worldview we would not be able to walk around politically and have ideas without it. the issue is when confronted with facts, will facts trump predispositions. that is a separate question. william f. buckley would have said that for him that they did. the burkians would have said that for them that it does, because they would have said that we are about learning from experience and studying facts and making a pragmatic decision. certainly, robert taft did do that. he did have inclinations, but when he sat down and studied data, he would go against his

inclinations when the data led him that way. i think that is the real question. it is not whether we have an ideology, it is whether we are aware of it and can consider -- be open to and consider -- inconvenient facts and we reconsider our stance. >> i think the elephant in the room is religion and the libertarians that want less government or were just want rule of law, but yet passing laws that restrict other people's rights, women's rights, other things. in all of this, seems to be religion. all the politics -- and they also speak to why they may vote against economic self interest. >> i think that religion is an elephant in the room.

i think that maybe elephants war hippopotamuses are here as well. i think for a william f. buckley junior, his catholicism was that nothing was more influential to him than that. that affected his -- >> he was a white male. a lot of these questions he would never be affected by in reality. and in society. >> yes, ma'am. >> my question is for the election year, who is the candidate you're pushing for? >> i'm not pushing for a candidate in my book. >> in my first awareness of buckley, i thought he was kind of a contrarian who delighted in taking an opposite point of view no matter what the topic was. and then sort of intellectually bully people on television.

i wonder if in tracing the evolution of the conservative movement back to him, we can also trace back to him this kind of poisonous atmosphere that evolved about his wit and style in the way that these things were accomplished. >> that is an excellent and very important question. buckley was a very sharp debater. and he gave no quarter. he could lacerate an opponent pre-effectively. on the other hand, he counted among his closest friends ardent liberals, john kenneth galbraith, howard lowenstein, people whose ideas were endeared to him. they were dear friends of his.

he gave no quarter in debate, but he wasn't mean-spirited. he did know where the line was between being very tough and very passionate on an issue. and being personally mean. many people who profess to admire him, even emulate him, rush limbaugh, for example, says that other than his own father, liam f. buckley junior was the greatest influence in his life. i wish they would learn from him about that line.