In the movie “You’ve Got Mail,” Tom Hanks says, “‘The Godfather’ is the sum of all wisdom.” He’s wrong: William F. Buckley Jr. is. Words and phrases from his books, columns, and television shows continue to shed light years after they have expired, like a north star guiding conservatives home. Buried in an interview with an obscure Sixties radical during a forgotten, 49-year-old episode of Buckley’s PBS TV series, “Firing Line,” is the precise blueprint the Left used to transform the culture, radicalize three generations of Americans, and move the U.S. closer to the precipice of adopting socialism. The left-wing activist also revealed jarring but fundamental realities about the Left: “It’s anti-rational” and has a “greater tolerance of liquidating a class” of people by mass execution.
The episode — which was titled “Hate America” and which featured Buckley and fellow conservative intellectual Arnold Beichman speaking with a socialist agitator named Dotson Rader (who went on to be an entertainment reporter for Parade magazine) — was recorded on October 3, 1972. Weeks later, the nation’s “silent majority” would power President Richard Nixon to a historic, 49-state landside over the avatar of the New Left, George McGovern. The Left appeared to have suffered a definitive rebuke.
.png)
.png)
