William F Buckley, Jr. and Dr. Giovanni Costigan Debate, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington (Part B)

The caution by bringing in atrocities for for every atrocity that he can mention I could mention other. I disdain to do so. But I will remind him of me now. Which is our national shame. And which he attributes this is the one atrocity that he discusses For weeks he refused to believe it. He and Mendel rivers were of the same mind for weeks. And finally when it did dawn upon him that even the army admitted it. Then do you know what he attributed it to. Not to the brutalize ation and the demoralization of our troops not to the criminal nature of this war. No he attributed riches of her Mrs. Ness of American society. He all but held Dr. Spock responsible for it. And in conclusion I think my time is up. I'm sorry for that. He threw in a suggestion. About his so there's a child.

For my. Particulars. For my emotional serenity. I thank him for being so solicitous on my behalf. From. Who are. You may have guessed we are now in the stage of rebuttal Mr Buckley now for approximately 10 minutes we were. Just accosted him. First reminds us that he is a star and. Then tells us. That in virtue of

being a professional historian he really knows nothing because he knows how much there is not. He doesn't. And he says as a historian I have to tell you my friends. And I regret to tell you that you can't bring millions of people into the modern age without. Without force. The traditional formulation is without breaking a few stops. I don't know. Who's being applauded I hope not I. Since it's possible. That Mr Rubb caustic and researches will not take him. Away. Before he goes through with this vale of tears I should like to introduce him to the state of Japan having disposed of that problem. I would like also.

I would also like to remark just briefly before going on to another point that I. I really don't see that there is. And ethical as distinguished from a purely professional point in foreign policy. If we are going to quote disdain atrocities that would be possible to wipe out atrocities either in this country or in other countries this aigrette. But I do think that there is a difference between that state which uses atrocities as a national instrument and that state which uses atrocities in the course of an extra ideological point. I don't doubt that they were as it has been established British housewives who took pitchforks and put them into live matches when they parachute down into the fields this is a different kind

of atrocity. Perhaps not for the victim but it is a different kind. Of atrocity from a program of the kind described by the tone in the in the passage in recent Chinese history which I discussed with you. I would like to ask you please to meditate on what I consider to be. A movement in American politics which I have found illuminating we all know that that lot of people have changed their. Mind. We all know that a lot of people who are thought of as as liberal seem seemed to share one enthusiasm one historical enthusiasm a bubble. It was an enthusiasm of the fountain down the road. B We all know that the Americans for Democratic Action. OK mout last spring that is 24th annual convention

for impeaching Richard Nixon for high crimes in Indochina and we know that the people. In that group which is the organized group of militant liberalism in America should as I say that one great enthusiasm in the search for a man who used to make a national commitment as proof use Leah's federal agencies troops to Iceland a destroyer is being run renames to Singapore on attachments to Africa. But it was all right then and that it was on account of the arsenal of democracy which is what we used to call it before we decided to call it the military industrial complex. As recently. As recently. As a nine hundred and sixty one Mr Fulbright was being asked what about presidential powers. And his answer was that

although the president has breaching international powers in point of fact he doesn't have sufficient powers to meet his responsibilities. Now of course Mr Fulbright is taking a completely different position. And now we have the people who begged Franklin Delano Roosevelt to exercise more and more power spending their time in the Senate of the United States passing all kinds of inhibiting resolutions so that the current president wouldn't have the freedom to the freedom to exercise what they understood to be his responsibilities of office. A great many things have happened and they're not very easy to explain but they certainly aren't easy to explain out of them. That Fulbright is stupid manifestly he's not. And yet it is certainly true that what he said last week in the Senate of the United States is exactly the contrary what he said in 1961. Certainly it's true that the intellectuals

in the Americans for Democratic Action were talking about the necessity for strong executives as recently as four five years ago. We're moving in the other direction and there's got to be for those of us who are interested in the foreign policy of the future. It's got to be some effort to understand why we on moving in that direction. And I want to tell you why I think we are not expecting that to abide. But nevertheless that's my responsibility and here's what I think what's happening. What is happening I think is that the assault on America is taking its toll. Be intellectual class America by and large obviously there are exceptions and we all know about them. But the intellectual class in America does not like this country they're always finding something wrong with it. We are racist we are imperialist. We engage in bloody wars. Modern Luther King says we are the

greatest purveyor of violence in the world today. We want we take great pleasure out of persecuting the blacks as Mr. Koskinen just told you that I did about the great pleasure of persecuting the blacks. Susan Sontag says that the white race is the cancer. Of history and inevitably I think this has an effect and the effect it has I think is actually to give rise to the question is often policy really rooted because of foreign policy no doubt about it depends alternately on nuclear sources. But if we even acknowledge the existence of nuclear resources it's in order to defend something. But since we know how evil how apocalyptic How is the meaning of a nuclear bomb. You've got to know. That the threat to use it is in behalf of something that we want to preserve. This isn't to Senator Fulbright two or three months ago speaking at Yale

University very casually as is his way I am not suggesting this that the Russians are lacking and in ambitions in the Middle East there is no doubt that they decide to maximize their influence in the Arab world. And that they derive gratification from sailing their warships around the Mediterranean This however is normal behavior for a group. It is quite similar to what we to keep a fleet in the Mediterranean which is a good deal further from our shores than it is from the Soviet Union. And our main objection to Soviet influence in the Arab countries is that it detracts from our own. We're not for the fact that they are communist and therefore quote bad people. Why we are Americans and therefore puts good people. Out policies would be nearly indistinguishable. The appeal.

Of that analysis is the appeal of the man who says that if you push an old woman and whether you push in the way of a bus or push out of the way of a bus that which matters is that you pushed up. United States United States of America has militarily crossed the borders of 31 countries in this century and we have moved out of those countries. Is this the assistance for some of the Fullbright could give him an A privileged roster of the Soviet Union which wants to parade in the Mediterranean week. It is a list that begins and ends with Austria. To suggest therefore. As the son as the chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee of the United States Senate does. That really there's no difference between our function in the Mediterranean and the Soviet Union function in the United States in the Mediterranean.

Is to. Reduce its historical meaning to a totally empty of elitism. If there is no meaning between our tanks landing at Normandy. And the Soviet tanks landing at Prague 968 then I say it's going to be impossible to understand foreign policy other than in the completely automatic context which robs it of any life opposite of any meaning and certainly robs us of any suggestion whatsoever that foreign policy is worthwhile as an instrument for our own survival. This I see as what is happening it is happening as a result of the intelligentsia has sense that America. Has ceased to mean anything. And this in my judgment is causing people to wonder whether it becomes possible taxonomically to distinguish between us and them. I say it is possible to do and that any failure to do

so is an aspect of the blindness of the observer not of the sins of the observer. I. Was. John. I know. That you. Will experience. A sense of letdown. And I don't blame you and I certainly didn't. Assume my share. Of the blame. All I can tell you is that simply. As a human situation. You don't. Really sit down. And. Discuss with. A great deal of precision. Problems on policy. The thought of a 10000. People. That's that's the way.

Fidel Castro administers justice. Not pursues truth. As I say. There is very little in a situation like this. That one can hope to leave an audience with. I hope I don't need to make that. Point. I'd settle for. Namely that no foreign policy. Of any intelligible kind. Is going to grow out. Of a vision. So blinded. As to make it impossible for us to distinguish. Between. For instance us and this view. We're all guilty says Mr cost the trouble with saying We're all guilty is an elementary psychologist of the knowledge this will tell you it means that none of us is guilty if you are as bad as that of Hitler than that of Hitler wasn't that bad because you know that.

And this is the great monstrous historical copout who says we can criticize the Red Chinese for killing a few dozen million people. What about the negro situation in the south and so this is a mode of argumentation. The purpose of which is in my judgment precisely to dampen or to distinguish the beginning the purpose of thought is the taking of careful measurement. Here in the last few minutes all of a sudden we see Cuba celebrating. Where this situates dock the cost of them in terms of the spectrum of political thought I don't know. I do know that it was only last spring that a group of intellectuals Latin American American and French addressed a public letter to Fidel Castro as a result of that public letter Lamond

said that a lot of Mokpo to the effect of break of European United States and Latin American intellectuals with the Cuban regime that they had so enthusiastically supported in the 1960s and they protested the treatment by Castro of a poet by the WHO. Having written a poor one that was not friendly to the regime was taken by the secret police. Thirty eight days later the ministry of information issued a confession by Paddy on which he said of himself that he was a good noble. Just cowardly and treacherous and untruthful. So Zappos Satara the spokesman for this committee of intellectuals tells us that we are no longer to support Castro. The information came rather than later than some of us needed it.

I even saw. Mr. Assad and his fellow intellectuals. I did not take a concomitant oath to stop instructing us on foreign policy. It was they who and Mr. sapa had the honesty to say this in this public Latta they who as late as nine hundred sixty six had said about Castro's regime that it was quote a model in the realm of socialism is not a fact that's exactly what it was a model. Socialism but the point is that people who are given to instructing us about foreign policy are people who when you get real close to them and listen real hard say that there is no difference between us in the Mediterranean to try to keep the peace in the Soviet Union in the Mediterranean in order to try to colonize all of Europe and they have us doing it sometimes. Our man Clinton Francis Clinton a predecessor a couple times ago to George Bush and the United Nations got up one day. I saw him and he said I think that it is matter for

universal rejoicing that colonialism. Has ended. Throughout the world. He said this to a chamber in which there were 13 countries which do the metronomic bidding of a single state in order to avoid tanks and infantry coming over them that they don't. As I say they have lost say by precisely getting into our nervous system and refusing to make these distinctions. They have us thinking in terms of who is the aggressor. We are just as aggressive as they are now because after all we are we're in Vietnam not to be sure because Goodyear wants us to be there. This is a minor consideration docked customs at all Coca-Cola or the Chase National Bank. But because of the monstrous eco system of NS on. I say so. For what a born isn't a bow. God knows we've made a lot of mistakes other mistakes in my judgment we made was and others I think a country of which is built on the facts and that has a messianic

responsibility to control the whole of the world to get the weapons to do so. Time obviously the full purpose of statecraft is to abort crisis and weeks but the purpose of state craft now is much more subtle than it would have been 10 15 or 20 years ago. Oh it was Churchill and the great General Marshall who presided over a war in which Thirty one million people were killed and five six years later we were facing the Soviet Union that atom bomb. Had we even freed Poland the biggest general in the world and one of the greatest statesman of the world simply let go something along the lines of We haven't had a successful foreign policy. I'm not you know fend off on policy but I mean to say one very simple thing no foreign policy with thinking about it starts all issues out of anything other than a knowledge that there is a difference between us. And then. I am. Perhaps.

I want to use the precious few minutes to say something positive and not reply to what's been said but just about to mention the Purdue U. Case in Cuba. I can only say I agree with him wholeheartedly. And it has nothing to do with what I said about the general increase in the prosperity of the Cuban people. He is right of course but also just as John Paul Stark refused the Nobel Prize once he mentions out Mr. Buckley is that red blooded American should ever accept a Nobel Peace Prize. But I myself had never heard that John Wayne was being suggested. And now let me be serious. I remember to beat John Fitzgerald

Kennedy made on the 10th of June it was a Monday evening. Five months before he had in which to my knowledge the first time during the Cold War he made an attempt to get it and bring it to an end. He told the nation and once before he had that in the event of a total nuclear exchange the computers at the Pentagon told him that there would be in one hour a hundred million Americans dead. Hundred million Russians and 100 million West Europeans this he thought was a tragedy so capable of being imagined by civilized people that it must be avoided at all costs. And so he moved towards the test ban treaty which I regret to say Mr Buckley opposed. Now what we're talking about tonight is this. Are these three great powers of the world. All of them to US nuclear weapons to proceed upon an

antagonistic course to build up and build up and build up. Not satisfied with a modest amount of overkill which is already lunacy but to go in for more and more. We have spent we alone have spent as everyone knows 1000 thousand million dollars. One trillion dollars since the war for security and the end result of that is that we have less security than we had in 1945. The simple reason being that there's no security in the atomic age. Our next question therefore is how are we to encourage rivalries jealousies suspicions and antagonisms or are we to try to work for humanity as a whole. It's a very long and difficult task. It means casting aside inherited prejudices. It means giving up hatreds when they've gone stale and rancid. But this is what the future means if we are to survive. And one reason why I like being associated with the

universe today is that I find this apprehension about the right course for the future. Lying in the attempt however difficult to achieve accommodation understanding to cease from mutual reviling I find that awareness very acute among the young and for obvious reasons because they have more to do. This is why I condemn totally the reliance upon the bankrupt policy of anti communism anti communism is no policy a toll it's purely negative. It leads us to place our whole support upon an aging tyrant like Chiang Kai shek or upon a phony dictator like GM. And now we have few. One of the reasons why Chiang Kai shek never listened to General Marshall was the fact which Tang so records in his history of this period that America had no one else to to him.

We were so tied to this puppet that we had no other alternative. The same was true of DMN and South Vietnam and the same is true of today. I submit that a great nation and in some ways the greatest in the world humiliates itself and demeans itself by fastening its own foreign policy upon the whims of a puppet dictator in a far country in Asia. So I hope we shall hear less and less in the future. And Mr. Nixon's visit to Peking press age is such a thing. Less and less of this. Once malignant. Declining doctrine of hatred and fear. And finally five minutes is a short time. I will quote a man whom I think Mr. Buckley mentioned earlier a man whom I respect very much indeed. I know he does not. I would quote to you tonight the words of a man who even at the age of 97 looks forward to the

future of the world with confidence perhaps you will say that after such a long time he should have had more wisdom. At any rate he continued to hope just as much as any young person here today. And what Patton Russell said as his last message to mankind was only this. He said Remember your humanity and forget the rest. Yeah oh. Yeah. I am showing is for both of these highly articulate gentlemen we wish to express our thanks to them. And to you. Barry. My.

Job for. You my audience thank you very much.