Talk:William F. Buckley Jr.

Is Buckley's early Time Magazine Letter to the editor worth including here

It was the issue of Aug 20, 1945, where he argued that being a Catholic does not mean he, or others, are against our alliance with the USSR. "We" are against communism because it is atheistic, but not against the country or individuals"

Simply signed William F. Buckley JR Lieutenant, USA Camp Gordon GA

I was tickled when I came across this, and is probably not in digital form, so I would have to put it on my personal blog, and use that as a link. Not sure it's even meaningful.

alvrdb-brt@yahoo.com

The Buckley School of Public Speaking

The Buckley in question is Reid Buckley, not Bill Buckley. It's a big family, and while Reid and Bill do share a similarity in looks and probably a common ancestor, they are in reality two different people.

Source: The link at the bottom of the Wikipedia page. Reid Buckley is identified on the first page.

-- davidtwery _at_ comcast _dot_ net (not a Buckley)

"right-wing political commentary"

How come articles often single out Right Wing thinkers and attach a derogatory label to them, but almost never do the same for Left Wing thinkers? Equal, neutral treatment would enhance the credibility of Wikipedia. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.49.27.38 (talk) 21:02, 14 May 2022 (UTC)

New Yorker reference

In The New Yorker's Issue of 2006-07-31 article Know It All: Can Wikipedia conquer expertise? by Stacy Schiff, this artile is referred to with:

What can be said for an encyclopedia that is sometimes right, sometimes wrong, and sometimes illiterate? When I showed the Harvard philosopher Hilary Putnam his entry, he was surprised to find it as good as the one in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. He was flabbergasted when he learned how Wikipedia worked. “Obviously, this was the work of experts,” he said. In the nineteen-sixties, William F. Buckley, Jr., said that he would sooner “live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University.” On Wikipedia, he might finally have his wish. How was his page? Essentially on target, he said. All the same, Buckley added, he would prefer that those anonymous two thousand souls govern, and leave the encyclopedia writing to the experts.

Final Public Appearance at Yale University, November 2, 2006

There was a change tonight (11/2) which was just deleted and should be restored:

+ On November 1st, 2006 at the Yale Political Union Buckley delivered his final public speech on matters of policy. The topic of his speech was "Resolved: The Democratic Candidates for November 7th should Withdraw".

Link at the Yale Political Union website —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.36.87.217 (talk • contribs) 06:03, 2 November 2006

Buckley and white supremacy

Hexapodia has edited the article to remove material stating that William F. Buckley Jr. supported white supremacy. I don't disagree with the edit because Buckley changed his views over time, but during the 1950s he made some troubling statements such as the following:

Four days before Thurmond began his record-setting filibuster [of what became the Civil Rights Act of 1957] and a week before the Senate approved Johnson's jury amendment, National Review published an editorial Buckley wrote, entitled "Why the South Must Prevail." The piece put the magazine on record in favor of both legal segregation where it existed (in accordance with the "states' rights" principle) and the right of southern whites to discriminate against southern blacks, on the basis of their race. The editorial defended the right of whites to govern exclusively, even where they did not constitute a majority of the population in certain political jurisdictions. National Review justified its position on the grounds that whites were "the more advanced race," and as such were "entitled to rule." Buckley, the author of the editorial, made no mention of the role southern whites had played, through the social and legal systems they had put into place, in keeping southern blacks from rising to the point where he – or their white neighbors – would consider them "advanced" and therefore eligible to participate in the region's governance. He went so far as to condone violence whites committed in order to perpetuate prevailing practices. "Sometimes the minority cannot prevail except by violence," Buckley wrote. Should a white community go this route, he urged that it first determine "whether the prevalence of its will is worth the terrible price." (A decade later, after southern whites, often incited by political leaders, increasingly resorted to violence to repress African American aspirations, Buckley began to moderate his opinions and eventually changed them.)

References

Strawberry4Ever (talk) 14:22, 10 September 2017 (UTC)

More (from National Review[1]):

Buckley came away from the experience with a deepened understanding of the estrangement African-American youths felt from mainstream American society and of the almost universal distrust so many inner-city residents had of the police. Buckley described the corruption he had seen in urban areas — which often came at the expense of African Americans — and the selective harassment of African Americans that he had witnessed. He wrote admirably of the charm, street smarts, and idealism of young community leaders he had encountered, and was impressed by their efforts to improve schools and attract capital to their neighborhoods. “Anyone expecting to hear better speech, better-organized ideas, greater enthusiasm, in the graduate schools of the Ivy League, has a pleasant surprise coming,” he wrote. On January 13, 1970, 39 years before Barack Obama was sworn in as president of the United States, Buckley published in Look magazine a piece titled “Why We Need a Black President in 1980.” Such an event, he noted, would confer upon African Americans a reassurance and social distinction similar to what Roman Catholics had felt after the election of John F. Kennedy. It would be “welcome tonic” for the white soul, he added. Buckley’s thoughts harkened back to Whittaker Chambers’s description of the African-American experience in a 1946 Time cover story about opera contralto Marian Anderson. Buckley wrote that Chambers had called African Americans “the most man-despised and God-obsessed people in the history of the world,” who “on coming to this strange land . . . had struck their tuning fork, and the sorrow songs, the spirituals, were born.” Such sentiments in no way resembled those he advanced in an infamous 1957 NR editorial entitled “Why the South Must Prevail.” While Buccola’s book [The Fire Is upon Us] is a worthy and welcome addition to the Baldwin literature, those seeking insight into Buckley on matters pertaining to race will have to look elsewhere, perhaps beginning with the writings of the great man himself.

--Hodgdon's secret garden (talk) 17:29, 8 June 2020 (UTC)

I also agree with the removal of any blanket statement that says directly or implies indirectly that Buckley ever supported "white supremacy" as the term is used today: the (scientifically discredited) view that whites have some sort of "supremacy" that's inherent in the race. What he actually believed in this regard was explained later in life two different ways: 1) that blacks in the south were not as evolved sociologically in their culture, education and abilities as whites (regardless of the fact that whites kept them down through Jim Crow laws and other mechanisms), and 2) that his support for "white" control was only temporary, and because he thought that the ultimate equality/advancement could have come naturally through societal evolution. What changed in his thinking over the years was not his views that whites were somehow genetically superior (again, this has been proven scientifically to be untrue), but that the changes in equality (between blacks and whites) could have/would have happened without some sort of forced intervention by the government. Any of Buckley's quotes (some of which are noted above) are easily interpreted this way if looked at impartially and in this context. I would even contend that over the course of many decades (from the 1950's through the early 2000's) he has been very consistent with his view on civil rights and racial equality to the extent that if there was even a single statement made by Buckley that sounds even remotely close to the possibility of "white supremacy" that he would simply have been guilty of poor phrasing and wording, rather than that he ever actually believed in that myth. Indeed, while there have been some people that believed in "white supremacy" that might have also had beliefs that were on the political right (or on the left, for that matter), "white supremacy" has never been ideologically on the "right" side of the spectrum (nor on the "left"). "White supremacy" is a fringe concept that transcends the spectrum and does not have a foundation in the philosophy of any side, very similar to other scientifically discredited myths (such as the planet Earth being "flat").JimSchuuz (talk) 15:32, 20 May 2021 (UTC)

Army Branch?

Does anyone know in which branch he served? He claimed he served in the infantry. The article only said that he served in the Army. Creuzbourg (talk) 16:19, 8 June 2019 (UTC)

The (United States) Army is the branch. You might be referring to which unit he was assigned or where he served? Unless there was a significant campaign in which he fought or other special circumstances, simply identifying him as an infantryman in the U.S. Army and the years served is sufficient.JimSchuuz (talk) 15:37, 20 May 2021 (UTC)

In Popular Culture?

Should there be an "In Popular Culture" section? Buckley's distinctive speaking style was widely parodied probably most notably by Robin Williams as the Genie in Disney's "Aladdin". I think "Saturday Night Live" did several references to him as well. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 12.108.42.226 (talk) 04:11, 16 July 2020 (UTC)

I dont see why not, best bet is to just be bold with your editing and make the section. I think it would add to the article quite nicely!Eruditess (talk) 09:08, 28 September 2021 (UTC)

Threats of violence

In the fourth paragraph the article says that "...Buckley displayed a willingness to respond to [Noam Chomsky's and Gore Vidal's] verbal jousting with physical violence." This is an unfair statement in its implication. It's being implied that Buckley was unable to respond somehow to whatever Chomsky and Vidal were saying and instead threatened the use of violence. While that may be true in the Vidal case (I haven't looked) it certainly isn't true in the Chomsky case. The full context of the clip is that Chomsky was saying he may or may not lose his temper in a certain argument or something like this, to which Buckley responded he'd better not because he'd punch him in the face. It was clearly a joke, delivered as such and received as such by Chomsky. He laughed and so did the people in the room. To say that Buckley was "willing to respond to their verbal jousting with physical violence" is weasel wording made to make Buckley look bad. Again, maybe it's true in the Vidal case, but it's certainly not in the Chomsky case. This line should be investigated further and possibly removed as it makes Buckley look violent when he isn't.

The joke starts at about 9:00 of the Chomsky debate. IkeFromPike (talk) 04:38, 25 March 2022 (UTC)

I reviewed the Vidal case. Feel free to diagree with me. The Vidal case was not "verbal jousting" like the article says. It was insults flying, both ways, and Vidal escalated it too far, and Buckley responded with a threat of physical violence. Saying "During separate recorded debates with Chomsky and Gore Vidal, Buckley displayed a willingness to respond to their verbal jousting with physical violence," right after saying "Buckley's standing as an intellectual was questioned by others" is really just a roundabout way of trying to say "Buckley is stupid, and when people were too smart for him he tried to hit them." It dishonestly portrays both events, where Chomsky's was a joke and the Vidal one was (in my opinion) a justifiable reponse to an insult. I'm taking the liberty to delete this sentence as it is dishonest. IkeFromPike (talk) 06:20, 27 March 2022 (UTC)

Incongruous information in Education section

In the childhood section, Buckley is credited with attending the Millbrook School (a preparatory school) until graduating in 1943. I believe this to be true.

However, in the Education and Military Service section, he is said to have graduated from the National Autonomous University of Mexico in 1943 (the same year as his high school graduation). His LA Times obituary says he dropped out before joining OCS. Does anyone have a good source with more specifics on the timeframe between high school in 1943 and officer candidacy school in 1944? CyberAuditor (talk) 21:05, 14 July 2023 (UTC)

References