The National Association of Manufacturers provides an unlikely forum for this 1970 debate between Ramsey Clark and William F. Buckley. CBS News commentator Eric Sevareid presides. The topic is "Dissent Within a Lawful Society." Sevareid starts off with his own take on the subject. First warning that he is merely "a horseback philosopher" and quoting Walter Lippmann's self-deprecating view of journalistic analysis being "notes made by puzzled men," Sevareid then stakes out a centrist position, trying balance the desire of "the passionate young" for change with the older population's respect for order. He has more sympathy for the Civil Rights movement, calling the treatment of African-Americans a "true stain on the American soul," than for student-inspired campus takeovers, though he admits that the war in Vietnam does seem to call for some form of protest. What he sees as the solution is neither a radical reordering of the power structure nor a crackdown on those who call for such change but rather "a new art of government" to address these issues.
Ramsey Clark calls dissent "the principal catalyst in the alchemy of Truth." For him, protests, marches, sit-ins, etc., are "pleas for vision and understanding." They are resorted to by people who have no voice in our society and so must employ these unorthodox methods. Although he deplores violence he understands where the deep rage and desperation of rioting comes from. Tellingly, he urges the (obviously all-white) audience to try and understand what it is like to be black. He also, shockingly for a former Attorney General in 1970, points out that the police "are capable of illegal violence too." He concludes by calling for more communication between the government and its people as a way to reduce pressure and solve the pressing problems we face.
William F. Buckley turns Clark's formulation on its head. Rather than seeing dissent as a catalyst in some alchemical search, Buckley feels he knows certain Truths and wants to act on them. By knowing Truth one knows Error, which must be combatted and its adherents punished. There is no such thing, he argues, as the "peaceful revolution" championed by those who perform radical acts of dissent. Revolution is by nature violent. The opposite of revolution, he claims, is evolution. In practical terms, his seemingly mild-mannered prescriptions become more chilling. Foreign policy is largely the prerogative of the executive branch and must be supported. It can only be changed by elections. The waves of anger and protest sweeping the nation are being encouraged by "opinion-makers." He then singles out civil rights attorney William Kunstler, recommending his disbarment for encouraging illegal acts of protest and laments the failure of Congress to impeach Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas. The tyranny we should fear is from the Left. Our response should be "a sign of firmness."
A question-and-answer period follows during which both speakers elaborate their views. Clark calls for a diffusion of power back to the community level. Buckley emphasizes the need for order and compares student protestors to members of the Hitler Youth Movement. Aside from the debate itself, which sounds remarkably and depressingly topical almost fifty years on, it's interesting to hear the persona adopted by each speaker. Clark presents himself as a mere country lawyer full of concern for the common man. Buckley revels in his command of ornate English constructions and lengthily quotes from memory such conservative luminaries as Edmund Burke, Samuel Johnson, and Hilaire Belloc. One is struck by how none of the three speakers condescend to their audience. While the issues of 1970 remain relevant, the level of discourse over the ensuing decades has sunk, while the willingness to listen to the other side seems to have disappeared entirely.
Eric Sevareid (1912-1992) was a swashbuckling journalist and radio reporter who covered the fall of France and many other crucial episodes of World War II. One of "Murrow's Boys," he became a familiar face of CBS News during that network's rise to prominence, eventually settling into the role of commentator on national and international events. Albert Auster, writing for the Museum of Broadcast Communications website, recalls:
From l964 until his retirement Sevareid appeared on theCBS Evening News with Walter Cronkite. During that period his Emmy and Peabody award-winning two-minute commentaries, with their penchant to elucidate rather than advocate, inspired those who admired him to refer to him as "The Grey Eminence." On the other hand those who were irked by his tendency to overemphasize the complexity of every issue nicknamed him, "Eric Severalsides." Sevareid himself said that as he had grown older his tendency was toward conservatism in foreign affairs and liberalism in domestic politics. Despite this, after a trip to South Vietnam in l966 he commented that prolonging the war was unwise and a negotiated settlement was advisable.
One of Sevareid's most memorable comments was on Richard Nixon's resignation. "Few things in his presidency," he pointed out, "became him so much as his manner of leaving…"
Ramsey Clark (b. 1927) was the son of a former Attorney General and Supreme Court Justice. During his own tenure as Attorney General under Lyndon Johnson, he pushed to enforce civil rights legislation but also prosecuted anti-war protestors. His subsequent political evolution has been one of the most striking in American politics. As the Encyclopedia Britannica reports:
Upon leaving office as Nixon became president, Clark embraced his activist tendencies with a passion. For Clark, crime emerged from the dehumanizing effects of poverty, racism, ignorance, and violence. He argued that America needed to address those problems through education and rehabilitation rather than resorting to prisons, which he saw as criminal hothouses that only exacerbated the problem.
In addition to championing a more holistic approach to criminal justice, Clark sought to address specific issues. In 1973 he and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People’s Roy Wilkins launched an excoriating attack on the Chicago Police Department and the state’s attorney for their roles in the 1969 shooting deaths of Black Panthers Mark Clark and Fred Hampton. Clark claimed that violence occurs when such little value is placed on others that perpetrators see no wrong in seeking to control or destroy them. That charge would be the leitmotif of his subsequent political activism as his emphasis shifted from U.S. government actions at home to actions abroad.
Indeed, Clark has since become known for his fierce opposition to American overseas involvement in the Middle East, even going so far as to represent Saddam Hussein.
William F. Buckley (1925-2008) was the most visible conservative theorist of his day. His long-running television program Firing Line provided viewers with a contrasting view to the perceived "liberal bias" of the mainstream media. But it was the founding of The National Review in 1955 that will most likely be seen as his lasting contribution to the cause of conservative reform. Buckley legitimized what was then largely regarded as a movement whose advocates were politically untouchable. In its obituary, the New York Times reports:
The National Review helped define the conservative movement by isolating cranks from Mr. Buckley’s chosen mainstream. “Bill was responsible for rejecting the John Birch Society and the other kooks who passed off anti-Semitism or some such as conservatism,” Hugh Kenner, a biographer of Ezra Pound and a frequent contributor to National Review, told The Washington Post. “Without Bill — if he had decided to become an academic or a businessman or something else — without him, there probably would be no respectable conservative movement in this country.”
This nostalgic view of Buckley must be balanced against his longstanding approval of racial segregation and his infamous suggestion, at the height of the AIDS epidemic, that gay men should be tattooed on their buttocks. As this debate makes clear, beneath his famously feline delivery lurked some very sharp claws.
Audio courtesy of the NYC Municipal Archives WNYC Collection.
WNYC archives id: 151493
Municipal archives id: T7712, T7713, T7714, T7715 and T7716