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     William F Buckley, Jr. and Dr. Giovanni Costigan Debate, University of
    Washington, Seattle, Washington (Part A)
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Oh well it's Chaminade John 1. All I can say. Is that if Mr Costigan qualifies as a historian I can understand why he calls this the problems. The tissue of crap with which he is just regaled here. Is not something that I would have permitted a freshman as a non historian. I respect you enough to suppose that you need a few minor corrections I can't catch up with them all but I'll give you a few. Neither I nor anybody I know I've. Ever said that like that General MacArthur had a right to resist the orders given to him by Harry Truman OK so what does it do with that point. I was going to buy as you noted just that a simile would have come back reorder his argument on what to do about it. We never. Advocated the atom bombing that of China. What we advocated 964 was a bombing of the nuclear
facilities of China after a 40 I ate our notice had been given in order for that deal. But those. Those of you who cannot see the distinction between the atom bombing of China. And the bombing of the nuclear facilities of China after giving 48 hours notice that that was our intention. I'm going to miss much of the distinctions on which I'm going to. Buy 964. It had been pretty well agreed that the great enemy of the survival of the human race was hydrogen bombs. There are those who worry about hydrogen bombs they'd be calm and done maken there were those more foresighted who worry about
hydrogen bombs before people get hold of them. It was Bertrand Russell who advocated going into the Soviet Union and keeping them from getting hydrogen bombs I wish we had done precisely what I. Would not have made life much easier for Mr. Costin. But that has to be one of the lesser worries of the century which he celebrates. Some of these rather confusedly by the way his terminology is off putting. He says I don't like you. Because I don't like the 20th century and you're members of the 20th century. The syntax is very. That. You're not members of the 20th century you live in the 20th century. It is as if one were to say that if one doesn't like sickness one doesn't like people who is sick. You do see the difference Mr. Cosden will. In due course. This cost go. Seek seems to be taking very great pride in the constancy
of his devotion to human kind which is shortly to be to be distinguished from the kind of devotion to human kind that was shared by people like can I be well Eisenhower or Johnson they were all terrified by Joe McCarthy even though he had been buried six or seven years. Earlier. But they were so terrified they proceeded to do the best they could to strive for a peaceful world. Forgetting to come to the provinces to take the advice of Mr. Constable. With Coston who's been giving advice for a very very long time I haven't researched him as Starlee as he has researched me it's not that easy. But you know. This to cost a gun. Who. Reviles with that splendid wit. People who feel that there are certain dangers in doing business with Red China was saying here in 1939 pullets Hitler was right.
They can be no peace between a totalitarian state and a democracy. And he was saying here in this campus in 1014 in the event of a German victory. We will be closely isolated and in more danger of war than we are now with the British Navy in front of the US. And he was saying. During that same season. If the British do not win the war the Nazis will certainly dominate South America if they subdue but there is no reason to believe that they cannot gain a stronghold in Mexico. I yield to the inventor of the domino theory. Those days. The fastest instrument of transportation was about one hundred and sixty miles an hour. Now it's 16000 miles an hour. The kind of thinking that led us to war in 1939 in
1940 was the kind of thinking that was based mutatis mutandis on those. Strategic steps those strategic calculations which have caused us after that. To try to take preemptive steps to prevent the same kind of thing from happening again. Is it going to happen again we don't know. Mr cost them is much given to historical moralism. It's the first of Chiang Kai shek. Frankly I couldn't care less myself whether it's the fault of the John. It's quite true. That the masses of all the Chinese peasants went into the arms of the red Communists of the Chinese Communist. What exactly that means I don't know. What does it mean that the Germans in one thousand eight hundred thirty two fled from the Weimar Republic into the arms of Hitler. Does that mean that we should be bro had to learn
anti the Weimar Republic. What does it mean that all of France finally collapsed after a gesture of resistance in 1940 1900 whether we should have abandoned them because they would be able to look after themselves. All we really expecting I think. Centuries millenia. Millennia of dynasties in which no freedom of any sort. Was was was permitted. After the overthrow the Manchu dynasty in one thousand Levon after the turbulence of the late part of the. Of the period before the 20s in the 20s after the. Coup in 1988 after the Civil War in 1934 after a war with Japan on two fronts. During that period a we really expect. That a people who had that experience or to behave as though they had just
received a degree in Political Science on the ethics of democratic behavior from the cost of them. What is his point really. All the stress and John spoke very shrewdly. A year and a half ago when he said there was one. Truly. Racist lis which you can discover in American Negroes that is this suspicion that communism isn't so bad for. Him. Sure. We don't want it. We don't want not to be permitted to express ourselves we don't want anybody to take off freedom to travel to leave the country if we want to but somehow if their skins are yellow or black that simply is one of those things that his history has just been his designs and this seems to be the attitude of Mr. Cosden a they deserve it. And B it isn't all that bad on this theme he speaks rather frequently he said in 1961. No doubt under the
influence of McCarthy all the while under stand he was the only person brave enough to resist. Joe McCarthy the rest of the country having been caught. He said. He said there has been a great modification of tyranny since Stalin no longer will our absolute condemnation of Russia hold approximately on the tenth anniversary of that statement Henry cannon having spent three years in post Stalin the Soviet Union came back and said I've read. That. In Russia. In contemporary Russia one sees the greatest assault on the human spirit. Ever attempted by the hand of man. It's ridiculous to accuse. Mr. Cosson of anything short of it. Ignorance and an incapacity properly to relate it may be Joe McCarthy who's responsible for his inability to read
the word macaca in the National Review without in media the jumping to the conclusion that we were in favor of MacArthur's committing civil disobedience. It may be impossible as a result of the trauma that Joe McCarthy visited on him to read about the necessity of doing something to keep Red China from developing a nuclear arsenal without saying that it is our ambition to atom. Bomb. China. These may be the hyperboles in which he was and I like to think that this is necessary I say for his emotional serenity it is a substitute for thought. I know one isn't encouraged to think in front of a thousand people but I'm going to commit the commit the presumption of doing so by saying a few things extremely candid. What I'm saying is comes down to this there are many ways of plotting our future policy. In Asia.
I refuse to applaud a policy in Asia which has resulted in the kind of misery that was experienced in China. For 20 years. I know. I know. That there has been misery in many parts of the world in fighting. But there is a distinction between that kind of misery that is caused by phantom famine by flood by pestilent Spike attacks trophy and that kind of misery that was intended caused as a result of that orgiastic effort to give flash to the thoughts of Mao Tse-Tung. How did they hold it. They had some wonderful words for one purge. One single purpose of the 12 or 13 that took place since the time of the Chinese people rushed to embrace Mao Tse-Tung validating this to cost of one's analysis of the human nature. One of them was called by the Chinese government for its on the
correct handling. Of contradictions among the people. 800000 executed. I don't know what it is. That we was supposed to and learnt from our experience in that subject. I know that two years ago three years ago. A German playwright called us brought out a play in New York which was a great success. It had one theme the theme was that the pope happened done as much as he could do. To save six million Jews from being executed. I think he was right. I think he was right because I think nobody. Did enough to prevent that. There is no way to bring these Jews back to life. But I would like to know why is it that when the subject is raised we all hang our head just a little bit. It has got to be sure. Because we feel. A kind of involved.
World. A sense of a universality that makes us all cool responsible for that kind of thing. What kind of plays Will they be showing in New York 15 20 or 30 years from now. What have been our exertions in behalf of the is the 10. That's the lowest figure. It goes as high as 30 40 50 million people who have been executed in Red China during a period when we sit back here and talk about the evils of shoe McCarthy. Joe McCarthy who named a total of two hundred and eleven people as being loyal to the risks who only called three people members of the Communist Party doings and Time-Life about whom our supply and ethical markets had been slaving in order to expiate him from the American system.
They can't stand that accretion in our blood. Meanwhile we remember the Jews in Germany and what happened to them and we forget the fact that there is a reenactment of that tragedy and they have been several re-enactments of that tragedy in China during a period when the cost to GM's of the. Insists that America's policy ought to be not much more amiable towards the leaders of that. I'm not suggesting. That I have any idea of what to do about it I'm not suggesting that the way to do the thing to do about it is to bomb Peking or whatever it may very well be that we have the final dilemma. But now in a nuclear age we can't do anything. That may very well be it. But if we can do it I want at least to see particularly by people who cannot turn the corner on without breasting that great spiritual involvement in mankind.
I don't want to see some sense of contrition some sense of shame some sense of impotence. It may very well be that the only job that I can policy in the future is to keep the bastards away. That may very well be what it comes down to but when we say that I wanted neat I don't want to splice through a lot of phony rhetoric in which we are. Asked to polarize the world between the evil Joe McCarthy and the great Mao Tse-Tung to the peasants fled in their duress. Now for 10 minutes in rebuttal.
Gotta cost again. I had to hope I confess that Mr Buckley would reply in order at least in part of his speech to the four main points I indicated instead of this we had a sporadic scatter gun approach. It was a good many personal remarks directed to myself. These I don't resent. These are these I don't resent because I had a few pleasantries at his expense. And as a matter of fact I hope to have a few. I have only 10 minutes let me not waste time. I must first of all congratulate him on thinking that a subject as insignificant and deed almost as
incapable of being observed as myself was worse. The object of this deception to search on his behalf. He must have employed someone. There are advantages. There are advantages in being a scion of the oil and gas industry. And and these I don't have access to what feeble efforts I have made are my own but I confess I'm flattered and I thank you Mr. Buckley for thinking that whatever I might have said it's true as it was just 15 or 20 years ago is worth your diligent investigation. Has he ever stoop so low before. If. He also remarked. That he didn't have much trouble because
the amount of water I had had to say all right was too small. There is a reply to that and I would commend to him this moment. I would suggest that if he wrote less and saw more we might have reason to listen to him better. In the course of his researches he discovered that I had had a horror of Hitler and he wondered why if I opposed Hitler I don't oppose equally. I why I thought the United States was menaced by Hitler. That if Britain had gone under in the days of Mr Churchill. Perhaps he remembers them. He was 15 at the time. He doesn't seem to see that we have entered the age of nuclear war. In which an all out war with Russia or an all out war with China. Will mean the end of everything we can conceivably want in our unconscious some of
us desire. I would say more. There is no time. Let him well note in the gestes remarks. As a matter of fact I think in the course of his diligent research if he had discovered that I had approved of the Nazi-Soviet pact of 1939 he would have been even more pleased. He rebuked me folk for saying that he condemned the twentieth century. Without involving the people who live in it what does he imagine the 20th century is just a 20th century leader platonic existence somewhere divorced from the people who inhabit the earth. Please make no mistake about it in condemning the 20th century he's
condemning the people who live in it. And I must admit. Not without some justification. But my grounds for feeling this worlds apart from his who he condemns what I admire and I admire what he condemns and I'm content to have it. He then talked about Senator McCarthy and had a great play with McCarthy and. Allow me to read from a very reputable American historian. Whom even Mr Buckley I think will respect. This is from Samuel Elliot mana sort of Harvard an admiral of the United States Navy among other things. I quote from his Oxford History of the American people. He says McCarthy's efforts to root out subversives from government from colleges and even business ruined the careers and reputations of thousands of patriotic Americans whose only offense was to have lent their name to some front organizations
during the Second World War including those who were the second front be opened in 1943 which was the official policy of the United States government at that time. And Samuel Eliot Morison goes on to say that for success in dividing a country by sowing suspicion of treason in high places there has been no one to equal Joe McCarthy since Marah in the French Revolution. He turned to the subject of atrocities in China. Now if he intends to imply and I do not know whether he does or not. He can tell us if he intends to imply that I am more heartless more callous more unconcerned than he is about the loss of human life on a mass scale. I must beg him to reconsider his opinion. The facts are the years that when you try to move. A vast mass of people 200 million in Russia 700 million in China out of the Middle Ages into the 20th century
in a single generation. It cannot be done except I regret to say and I am in spite of his remarks. A student of history. A lifelong student of history that's the only title I lay claim to. I'm not a practicing politician but I know that you cannot move. Vast masses of people out of misery destitution prostitution starvation and disease into a more prosperous and healthy society. Without. Sion. If I had had any. You hear the interjection. If I had had any passage in the fashioning of the world I assure you I would have ordered things differently. But I was not consulted in the days of creation. There are some people. Notably who took a
civilised people. And condemned a large part of it to a frightful and ignominious death. There was no reason for it. Have you not heard. I'm speaking of Nazi Germany and comparing it with Soviet Russia and. Communist China. Have you not heard. That little is that fester. Smell far worse than we need. As Mr Buckley never read that in Shakespeare. And does he not apply here. Well you could develop. He has talked with some of the government about my knowledge or lack of knowledge of history. I would be the first to admit and I admitted to him candidly that having spent my whole life studying history I know very little about it because I have a sense of how much more there is to know. But a little knowledge of history that I
have. I believe is realistic and not like his hysterical. His. I truly think that his interpretation of China in the last 20 years is far more hysterical than historical. Then it was inevitable. I feared it. I hoped it wouldn't happen but it did take place. He brought up as he always brings up the story of atrocities. The last refuge of a man who has no other rational argument is to deal in Chastity's. He's written much about the atrocities of the weird tongue of the fear Nam war and they have taken place. The Vietcong and so forth. As far as I know he's certain nothing. Condemning the atrocities which have taken place on the other side. The Phoenix Program is a savage and barbarous a program. I am glad to read in The Wall Street Journal this morning that it is failing.
Has almost failed. People who deal in a faucet is not taking account of the fact that in war and this is why war is so hateful that both sides. Even the best commit atrocities once the madness of war breaks out. Take the Spanish Civil War the Spanish Republic committed the most frightful atrocities and Franco retaliated the only thing is that after a few months the Spanish Republic brought its atrocities under control and they ceased whereas Franco's went on increasing to the end. But it is really. It is really too bad. Too. To pollution. Haven't they got along. All I can say. Is that if Mr Costigan qualifies as a historian I can understand why he calls this the provinces. The tissue of crap with which he is just regaled here.
Is not something that I would have permitted a freshman as a non historian. I respect you enough to suppose that you need a few minor corrections I can't catch up with them all but I'll give you a few. Neither I nor anybody I know I have. Ever said to block that General MacArthur had a right to resist the orders given to him by Harry Truman OK so what does it do with that point. I was going to buy you want it just thought a simile would have come back. Reorder his argument on what to do about it. We never. Advocated the atom bombing that of China but we advocated 964 was a bombing of the nuclear facilities of China after a 40 I ate our notice had been given in order for that deal. But those.
Those of you who cannot see the distinction between the atom bombing of China. And the bombing of the nuclear facilities of China after giving 48 hours notice that that was our intention. I'm going to miss much of the distinctions on which I'm going to. Buy 964. It had been pretty well agreed that the great enemy of the survival of the human race was hydrogen bombs. There are those who worry about hydrogen bombs they'd be calm and make and there are those more foresighted who worry about hydrogen bombs before people get hold of them. It was Bertrand Russell who advocated going into this of a union and keeping them from getting hydrogen bombs I wish we had done precisely died. It would not have made life much easier for Mr. Costin. But that has to be one of
the lesser worries of the century which he celebrates. Some of these rather confusedly by the way his terminology is off putting. He says I don't like you. Because I don't like the 20th century and you're members of the 20th century. The syntax is very. That you're not members of the 20th century you live in the 20th century. It is as if one were to say that if one doesn't like sickness one doesn't like people who is sick. You do see the difference Mr. Cosden will. In due course. This cost. Seek seems to be taking very great pride in the constancy of his devotion to human kind which is shortly to be to be distinguished from the kind of devotion to human kind that was shared by people like can I be well Eisenhower or Johnson they were all terrified by Joe McCarthy even though he had been buried six or seven years earlier.
But they were so terrified they proceeded to do the best they could to strive for a peaceful world. Forgetting to come to the provinces to take the advice of Mr. Constable. With Coston who's been giving advice for a very very long time I haven't researched him as startling as he has researched me it's not that easy. But he did. Mr. Costin gun. Who. Who reviles with that splendid wit. People who feel that there are certain dangers in doing business with Red China was saying here in 1939 pullets Hitler was right. They can be no peace between a totalitarian state and a democracy. And he was saying here in this campus in 1014 in the event of a German victory. We will be closely isolated and in more danger of
war than we are now with the British Navy in front of us. And he was saying. During that same season. If the British do not win the war the Nazis will certainly dominate South America if they subdue but there is no reason to believe that they cannot gain a stronghold in Mexico. I yield to the inventor of the domino theory. Those days. The fastest instrument of transportation was about one hundred and sixty miles an hour. Now it's 16000 miles an hour. The kind of thinking that led us to war in 1939 in 1940 was the kind of thinking that was based mutatis mutandis on those. Strategic steps those strategic calculations which have caused us after that war.
To try to take preemptive steps to prevent the same kind of thing from happening again. Is it going to happen again we don't know. Mr cost them is much given to historical moralism. It's the first of Chiang Kai shek. Frankly I couldn't care less myself whether it's the fault of the John. It's quite true. That the masses of all the Chinese peasants went into the arms of the red Communists of the Chinese Communist. What exactly that means I don't know. What does it mean that the Germans in one thousand eight hundred thirty two fled from the Weimar Republic into the arms of Hitler. Does that mean that we should be bro had to learn anti the Weimar Republic. What does it mean that all of France finally collapsed after a gesture of resistance in 1941. Do you wonder whether we should have abandoned them because they would be able to look after themselves. All we really expecting after.
Centuries millenia. Millennia of dynasties in which no freedom of any sort. Was was permitted after the overthrow the Manchu dynasty in one thousand Levon after the turbulence of the late part of the. Of the period before the 20s into the 20s after the. Coup in 1928 after the Civil War in 1934 after a war with Japan on two fronts. During that period a we really expect. That a people who had that experience or to behave as though they had just received a degree in Political Science on the ethics of democratic behavior from the cost of them. What is his point really. All the stress and John spoke very shrewdly. A year and a half ago when he said there was one.
Truly. Racist lis which you can discover in American Negroes that is this suspicion that communism isn't so bad. Sure. We don't want it. We don't want not to be permitted to express ourselves we don't want anybody to take off freedom to travel to leave the country if we want to but somehow if their skins are yellow or black that simply is one of those things that his history has just been designed for. And this seems to be the attitude of Mr. Cosden a they deserve it. And B it isn't all that bad on this theme he speaks rather frequently he said in 1961. No doubt under the influence of McCarthy all the while under stand he was the only person brave enough to resist. Joe McCarthy the rest of the country having been caught. He said. He said there has been a great modification of tyranny since Stalin no longer will our absolute condemnation of Russia
hold approximately on the tenth anniversary of that statement Henry cannon having spent three years in post Stalin the Soviet Union came back and said I've read. That. In Russia. In contemporary Russia one sees the greatest assault on the human spirit. Ever attempted by the hand of man. It's ridiculous to accuse. Mr. Cosson of anything short of it. Ignorance and an incapacity properly to relate. Maybe Joe McCarthy who's responsible for his inability to read the word macaca in the National Review without in mediately jumping the conclusion that we were in favor of MacArthur's committing civil disobedience. It may be impossible as a result of the trauma that Joe McCarthy visited on him to read about the necessity of doing something to keep Red China from developing a nuclear arsenal without saying that it is our
ambition to atom bomb China. But these may be the hyperboles in which he was and I like to think that this is necessary I say for his emotional serenity it is a substitute for thought. I know one isn't encouraged to think in front of a thousand people but I'm going to commit the commit the presumption of doing so by saying a few things extremely candid. What I'm saying is comes down to this there are many ways of plotting our future policy. In Asia. I refuse to applaud a policy in Asia which has resulted in the kind of misery that was experienced in China. For 20 years. I know. I know. That there has been misery in many parts of the world in fighting. But there is a distinction between that kind of misery that is caused by phantom famine
by flood by pestilent Spike attacks trophy and that kind of misery that was intended caused as a result of that whole GST. I thought to give a flash to the thoughts of Mao Tse-Tung. How do they call it. They had some wonderful words for one purge. One single purpose of the 12 or 13 that took place since the time of the Chinese people rushed to embrace Mao Tse-Tung validating this to cost of one's analysis of the human nature. One of them was called by the Chinese government for its on the correct handling of contradictions among the people. 800000 executed. I don't know what it is. That we was supposed to and learnt from our experience in that said Germany. I know that two years ago three years ago. A German playwright called us brought out a play in New York which was a great
success. It had one theme the theme was that the pope happened done as much as he could do. To save six million Jews from being executed. I think he was right. I think he was right because I think nobody. Did enough to prevent that. There is no way to bring these Jews back to life. But I would like to know why is it that when the subject is raised we all hang our head just a little bit. It has got to be sure. Because we feel. A kind of involved. In the world. All of a universality that makes us all cool responsible for that kind of thing. What kind of plays Will they be showing in New York 15 20 or 30 years from now. What have been our exertions in behalf of the is it
10. That's the lowest figure. It goes as high as 30 40 50 million people who have been executed in Red China during a period when we sit back here and talk about the evils of show McCarthy. Joe McCarthy who named a total of two hundred and eleven people as being loyal to the risks who only called three people members of the Communist Party doings and Time-Life about whom our supply and ethical markets had been slaving in order to expiate him from the American system. They can't stand that accretion in our blood. Meanwhile we remember the Jews in Germany and what happened to them and we forget the fact that there is a reenactment of that tragedy and they have been several re-enactments of that tragedy in China during a period when the cost of the MNS of the.
Insists that America's policy ought to be not much more amiable towards the leaders of that. I'm not suggesting. That I have any idea of what to do about it I'm not suggesting that the way to do the thing to do about it is to bomb Peking or whatever it may very well be that we have the final dilemma. But now in nuclear age we can't do anything. That may very well be it. But if we can do it I want at least to see particularly by people who cannot turn the corner on without breasting that great spiritual involvement in mankind I want to see some sense of contrition some sense of shame some sense of impotence. It may very well be that the only job that I can policy in the future is to keep the bastards away. That may very well be what it comes down to but when we say that I wanted neat.
I don't want to splice through a lot of phony rhetoric in which we are. Asked to polarize the world between the evil Joe McCarthy and the great Mao Tse-Tung to the peasants fled in their duress. Now for 10 minutes in rebuttal. Gotta cost again. I had to hope I confess that Mr Buckley would reply in order at least in part of his speech
to the four main points I indicated instead of this we had a sporadic scatter gun approach. It was a good many personal remarks directed to myself. These I don't resent. These are these I don't resent because I had a few pleasantries at his expense. And as a matter of fact I hope to have a few. I have only 10 minutes let me not waste time. I must first of all congratulate him on thinking that a subject as insignificant and deed almost as incapable of being observed as myself was worse. The object of this deception to search on his behalf. He must have employed someone. There are advantages.
There are advantages in being a scion of the oil and gas industry. And and these I don't have access to what feeble efforts I have made are my own but I confess I'm flattered and I thank you Mr. Buckley for thinking that whatever I might have said it's true as it was just 15 or 20 years ago is worth your diligent investigation. Has he ever stoop so low before. If. He also remarked. That he didn't have much trouble because the amount of water I had had to say all right was too small. There is a reply to that and I would commend to him this moment. I would suggest that if he wrote less and saw more we might have reason to listen to him better. In the course of his researches he discovered that I had had a horror of Hitler
and he wondered why if I opposed Hitler I don't oppose equally. I won. I thought the United States was menaced by Hitler. That if Britain had gone under in the days of Mr Churchill. Perhaps he remembers them. He was 15 at the time. He doesn't seem to see that we have entered the age of nuclear war. In which an all out war with Russia or an all out war with China. Will mean the end of everything which is conceivably what in our unconscious some of us desire. I would say more. There is no time. Let him well note in the gestes remarks. As a matter of fact I think in the course of his diligent research if he had discovered that I had approved of the Nazi-Soviet pact of
1939 he would have been even more pleased. He rebuked me folk for saying that he condemned the twentieth century. Without involving the people who live in it what does he imagine the 20th century is just a 20th century leader platonic existence somewhere divorced from the people who inhabit the earth. Please make no mistake about it in condemning the 20th century he's condemning the people who live in it. And I must admit. Not without some justification. But my grounds for feeling this worlds apart from his who he condemns what I admire and I admire what he condemns and I'm content to have it. He then talked about Senator McCarthy and had a great play with McCarthy and. Allow me to read from a very
reputable American historian. Whom even Mr Buckley I think will respect. This is from Samuel Elliot from on a sort of Harvard an admiral of the United States Navy among other things. I quote from his Oxford History of the American people. He says McCarthy's efforts to root out subversives from government from colleges and even business ruined the careers and reputations of thousands of patriotic Americans whose only offense was to have lent their name to some front organizations during the Second World War including those who were the second front be opened in 1943 which was the official policy of the United States government at that time. And Samuel Eliot Morison goes on to say that for success in dividing a country by sowing suspicion of treason in high places there has been no one to equal Joe McCarthy since Marah in the French Revolution.
He turned to the subject of atrocities in China. Now if he intends to imply and I do not know whether he does or not. He can tell us if he intends to imply that I am more heartless more callous more unconcerned than he is about the loss of human life on a mass scale. I must beg him to reconsider his opinion. The fact is that when you try to remove. A vast mass of people 200 million in Russia 700 million in China out in the Middle Ages into the 20th century in a single generation. It cannot be done except I regret to say and I am in spite of his remarks. A student of history. A lifelong student of history that's the only title I lay claim to. I'm not a practicing politician but I know that you cannot move. Vast masses of people out of misery destitution prostitution
starvation and disease into a more prosperous and healthy society. Without. Sion. If I had had any. You hear the interjection. If I had had any passage in the fashioning of the world I assure you I would have ordered things differently. But I was not consulted in the days of creation. There are some people. Notably who took a civilised people. And condemned a large part of it to a frightful and ignominious death. There was no reason for that. Have you not heard. I'm speaking of Nazi Germany and comparing it to Soviet Russia and. Communist China. Have you not heard. That little is that fester.
Smell far worse than we need. As Mr Buckley never read that in Shakespeare. And does he not apply. Well you could develop. He has talked with some of the government about my knowledge or lack of knowledge of history. I would be the first to admit and I admitted to him candidly that having spent my whole life studying history I know very little about it because I have a sense of how much more there is to know. But a little knowledge of history that I have. I believe is realistic and not like his hysterical. His. I truly think that his interpretation of China in the last 20 years is far more hysterical than historical. Then it was inevitable. I feared it. I hoped it wouldn't
happen but it did take place. He brought up as he always brings up the story of atrocities. The last refuge of a man who has no other rational argument is to deal an atrocity is. He certain much about the atrocities of the feared tongue of the feared Nam war and they have taken place. The Viet Cong and so forth. As far as I know he's certain nothing. Condemning the atrocities which have taken place on the other side. The Phoenix Program is a savage and barbarous a program. I am glad to read in The Wall Street Journal this morning that it is failing. Has almost failed. People who daily necessities not taking account of the fact that in war and this is why war is so hateful that both sides. Even the best commit atrocities once the madness of war breaks out. Take the Spanish Civil War the Spanish Republic committed the most frightful atrocities and Franco retaliated. The only thing is that after a few months the Spanish
Republic brought its atrocities under control and they ceased as flankers went on increasing to the end. But it is really. It is really too bad. To. Tell You.
Title
William F Buckley, Jr. and Dr. Giovanni Costigan Debate, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington (Part A)
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Description
Description
William F. Buckley, Jr. and Dr. Giovanni Costigan held a debate at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington on November 11, 1971. The event was held at the Hec Edmundson Pavilion with over 8,000 people in attendance. For two and half hours, they debated the subject of U.S. foreign policy in Southeast Asia. William F. Buckley, Jr. (November 24, 1925-February 27, 2008) was a conservative political author and commentator. In 1951, he graduated from Yale University where he studied political science, history and economics. He founded the National Review in 1955 and wrote a syndicated column called On the Right in 1962. Buckley was most recognized for his weekly PBS show Firing Line that first aired in 1966. Giovanni Costigan (1905-1985) was a critic of the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. He earned his PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 1934, he accepted a position in the history department at the University of Washington where he taught Irish and English history. This audio recording PA 432 A is continued on audio recording PA 432 B.
Asset type
Program
Genres
Debate
Subjects
southeast Asia; foreign policy
Media type
Sound
Duration
00:51:44
Embed Code
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Credits
producing station: WYSO FM 91.3 Public Radio
AAPB Contributor Holdings
WYSO-FM (WYSO Public Radio)
Identifier: WYSO_PA_432A (WYSO FM 91.3 Public Radio; CONTENTdm Version 5.1.0; http://www.contentdm.com)
Format: Audio/wav
WYSO-FM (WYSO Public Radio)
Identifier: PA 432 A (WYSO)
Format: 1/4 inch audio tape
Generation: Dub
Duration: 0:51:41
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Citations
Chicago: “ William F Buckley, Jr. and Dr. Giovanni Costigan Debate, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington (Part A) ,” WYSO, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC, accessed June 6, 2025, http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-27-cr5n873977.
MLA: “ William F Buckley, Jr. and Dr. Giovanni Costigan Debate, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington (Part A) .” WYSO, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Web. June 6, 2025. <http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-27-cr5n873977>.
APA: William F Buckley, Jr. and Dr. Giovanni Costigan Debate, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington (Part A) . Boston, MA: WYSO, American Archive of Public Broadcasting (GBH and the Library of Congress), Boston, MA and Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-27-cr5n873977