Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr.: Is England Still Influencing America?

this program is a production of seea funding for firing line is made possible by a major Grant from the John M Olan Foundation Incorporated additional support is provided by the mobile corporation Monarch Financial Services Incorporated Farley Industries Incorporated Payne Weber the friends of firing line and by the financial support of viewers like you [Music] welcome to Firing Line I'm Mike Kinsley of the new Republic magazine during World War II Harold McMillan made his famous remark that from now on Britain's role in the world would be as great to America's Rome teaching the brass young Empire how it's done but these days most analogies between America and the Roman Empire of the decline and fall variety so what role does that leave for Britain Britain spent the 1980s in what the corporate world likes to call a turnaround situation it looked as if the country's long economic Decay might be reversing and Mrs Thatcher Margaret Thatcher the Prime Minister became a leading player on the international stage but recent economic news has been discouraging Mrs Thatcher's polls are terrible and events in Continental Europe have led many to believe that Germany and not Britain is the European nation poised for renewed greatness Christopher Hitchens has vicious fun with the Greece and Rome analogy in his new book about Britain and America he also has some vicious fun with William F Buckley's anglophilia the book is called class excuse me blood class and Nostalgia subtitle anglo-american ironies Mr Hitchens is a prominent British journalist who has lived in New York and Washington for a decade now he is a columnist for the nation and Washington editor of har magazine he embodies everything conservatives mean when they say America love it or leave it joh O Sullivan by contrast embodies anglo-american special relationship at its most incestuous it's incestuous only Alistair Cook has succeeded in having it for having it both ways for longer in the 70s Mr ulvan worked for the Daily Telegraph in London then he was editor of policy review at the Heritage Foundation in Washington then he was back at the telegraph in the times in London then he was editorial page editor of the New York Post then he was associate editor of the London times and a special adviser to Mrs Thatcher in London in 1988 he came back to New York as editor of the National Review and that's where he sits at least for the moment Mr Buckley Japan and Germany don't give any sign of even wanting America for their Greece given that if everyone's being knocked down a peg doesn't seem to me there's much of a role left for Britain at all well I think that's uh really a theme that Mr hens plays with in his uh in his book his tendency is always of course uh disruptive and iconic plastic and um uh but this this is part of his um uh his voice setting so it shouldn't necessarily distract one from what he tried to say the the the thing about Great Britain I think is that U um oh 40 years ago when I got out of college people were saying it it it's it's over it has nothing nothing left to say uh but um that doesn't seem really to have been uh the case it may well be this is primarily as you acknowledge uh in some respects an accident of uh of of of of language John Lucas once said the single most important fact of the first 50 years of the N 20th century future historians will note uh is that U Americans speak English and the most important fact of the last 50 years may prove to be that Russians are white now that's that's that's a form of reductionism but um it it's something that um launches us on the question of uh is England as As Dead As she's supposed to be is she well I've said in the book not because um just as people were beginning to write the old country off and as even Churchill was admitting defeat which is what he did at his famous appearance at Fulton in 1946 his last major speech last major speech in fact was he said you know we we're through we've borne the Heat and burden of the day the torch has to be passed but fortunately we have our American cousin and the British Spirit as it were must enter this new and young and vigorous body and that will give us um a further say and a further leason life and the first stage in doing that really of course was what um someone well known to you James Burnham called the receivership into which the United States took the British Empire if you look at where American foreign policy is now concentrated from Pakistan to Palestine and so on it's an inheritance from the British Empire and the other is obviously cultural um one of my favorite examples is to say to people well is George Wallace of wasp and people say not really no he seems rather a fga chap and so on but I say he's very white extremely Anglo-Saxon very Protestant with the things about George Wallace we say is William Buckley a wasp they absolutely he's what's meant by wasp and I say well white enough but in fact Irish and Catholic in Providence so wasp is a term of class as well as of um ethnicity in America and that's impossible to understand unless you understand the special way in which America is appealed to by the British imagination uh cynically or non cynically because I would say genuin both I would say genuinely that there is there is a real affection that's based on a common sacrifice in war on blood on language on literature and so on and there are certain kinds of emulation which I attack in the book I think a rather pathetic sort of Showbiz attitude to the British royal family for example and in politics too easy a resort to things like and Churchill and the windier aspects of British Imperial Bluster when some piece of American foolishness needs to be defended overseas it's too easy to reach for this sort of stock of metaphors so Sullivan and his newspapers that do it all the time they say this is Munich you know uh if we don't take our stand here America will be dragged in the M the appeal to the churchan and the John bull Spirits so we Vanquish the fand islands exactly and the malus go down and so forth and that this is but this is testimony to an extraordinary dur ility of English imagery and and culture in America even though it's been mutated in this slightly suspect way sorry for such a long burst you got problem there yeah I mean um if you read um Mr hitch's book I think you get a picture of the relationship which is half true or rather the half that's true is emphasiz uh half that's true is neglected and the half that's not true is is emphasized now essentially England and America are two different powers the're two different states but the two constitute in a sense a single cultural Community along with other countries and that politic there's a political Community there as well so that in England uh which is a kind of sub theme not developed in the book um the left has often looked to the United States it's admired American institutions it's admired republicanism uh the lack of an aristocracy uh what it misperceived as a as a classless society of course America does have classes as well and it's perfectly true that conservative forces in America have looked back towards England uh and admired certain elements of English uh life and the Imperial ethic was one of them willingness to play a major role in the world now um this it seems to me is evidence that the two countries um will often be um arguing and debating um but it's it's not exactly two countries it's two different political TR i s in each country arguing it out now Mr Hitchens is an example just as much as I am and indeed Mr Kinsley is an example just as much as I am uh of the ability of the special relationship to be a left as well as a right-wing uh set of ideas so we're left and right and the fact is that the two countries um at different times have uh have represented the left or right at the moment for example now that the cold war is so to speak waning and your book is a very much a cold war book product I mean you're attacking Britain in American terms for leading America into the Cold War I think that's a mistake but I think it was Myer I think the the the the uh it's a mistake to think we did it I mean the person who pushed America into the C war was Joseph Stalin who whose links with England are extremely remote now but the crystallization did come as a result of the Fulton speech I think well I think it came as a as the The Fulton speech was at the time considerably attacked and internally the Improvement Administration was very nervous about it didn't welcome it thought the church was was to extreme going off his rocker um the the American establishment reacted very very Ambiguously to it it was only when everything The Churchill said was confirmed by Stalin um and when you had the blockade of Berlin the coup in Czechoslovakia uh and finally of course the invasion uh of Korea by the North South Korea by the North Koreans that there was a um a rallying to the standard raised by Churchill but be mind John why they didn't like the speech because half of it sorry to borrow your analogy of the halves was was off its rock it was saying that the United States should make an alliance with Britain against communism and the first step in this was for the United States to come to the rescue of the British Empire the the the United States and the British Empire including India and Africa were to become the same condomin and it seems to me that what the United States took from the speech was what it wanted which was a claran call against communism within and without um and dumping all the Cent m al appeal via rhetoric and tradition that they rescue the Empire but but paradoxically or as I prefer to put it ironically um taking on an imperial character in doing this that's my theory in a nutshell I've I've always assumed that um there there was a certain amount of ethopian language in the Fon speech uh in which Churchill was saying something which is better communicated than than Express or at least more easy so namely we we we had our burdens during the 19th century we British and during the P first part of this Century our Fleet tranquilized uh the world we don't have it anymore we were exhausted by the second world war plus the impulse to separatism which I declin uh explicitly to endorse you you you've got you've got to take over in the sense but but you don't say it in those words because it sounds uh it sounds like too much self Happ ation and politically is impossible to say is that not a fair reading of what he was saying that first half I would say it was and in the same way as for example Kipling's most famous poem about which I have a chapter is called The White Man's Burden it's one of the few lines of Kipling everybody knows take up The White Man's Burden now people I found are surprised to find Kipling wrote that poem directly as an address to the United States but it's obvious from the line because you wouldn't you wouldn't talk to the country that already had The White Man's Burden namely Britain and tell it to take it up what in fact is being said said by keping to the United States is Take Over The White Man's Burden it's made very clear and it was addressed to Congress in in the hope that Congress would anex the Philippines which did but when Kipling when Kipling uh wrote those lines uh uh the historical perspective of say 150 200 years uh Justified what uh you now I think uh consign is an act of condescension whatever was going on in India which nobody I know of defends even you uh stopped going on when the white men said don't do that don't don't bake widows burn themselves on the pile of their husand marks himself said that the British influence on India was in some extent and degree a civilizing influence that it broke up the cast system and and Millennial slavery yes why' you say Mar why did you say Marx himself well it's it's not expected of Marx that he would have defended the British putting down the Indian Mutiny but he did do so so I mean on the argument of evidence against presumed interest it's more to be remarked upon than other cases Kipling I think he was much more farsighted than people give him credit for he he could see the exhaustion of that coming this didn't get the way the way of Marx's proletariat uh thing he wasn't talking about the proletaria being put down no by no means so so therefore it oughtn't to a surprise you that marks would have made that comment it doesn't surprise me I guess I was hoping it might surprise you but but can we get onto this passing the torch it seems to me that two points are important here first of all England used to be one of the greatest power in the world it is now a mediumsized power which doesn't mean to say it's not important in all sorts of ways but nonetheless it doesn't have the grand role it had now what's missing in it seems to me in your book you talk about ties of Blood Ties of class uh class and ties of nostalgia you never talk about the ideas that to some extent unite England and America and which when England ceased to be the predominant power in the world made it clear that the English would like to hand that torch onto America and not to anybody else it wasn't just questions of Interest it was that in America the English saw and I think largely still do see a country which represented more or less the same ideals but they also see proy they see proy as well but it's much easier to hand on to a country in which believes also roughly in free trade in democracy in a liberal International order and which has so to speak a stewardship view of the world rather than simply a plundering power and a record of stability and a record of stability and institutions which even when they differ as say the Supreme Court does nonetheless differ in a recognizable and understandable way so I think it was easy for the English well not easy there are elements of resentment and we used to run the show now we no longer do all those kind of passions and irritants exist but nonetheless it was possible to say America is the country which we would like to see uh succeed us rather than any other power well I think that's true and I probably should have said more about it but it is noticeable what kinds of borrowing you in fact come across um for example um the many people in the United States admire and I've noticed this especially since the televising of Westminster Parliament uh the tradition of the British question time where the Prime Minister just has to get up and take it and there's no evading it twice a week and I can see why Americans admire it because they can not easily imagine presidents Reagan or bush surviving that and I think there's a it's a a decent Envy to have but you never get that kind of call or haven't until recently no one in America sort of wants to borrow anything like the British national health service for example either which would be another excellent bit of emulation instead what you tend to get is what I got yesterday actually when by chance I had to call an emergency room in a hospital and before I could blurt out why I needed one the woman said where are you from I just love your accent it's real neat why did you just keep talking and I said well Madam I know we have a reputation politeness but I must insist on this happens to me a lot and what it is actually is a kind of snobbery a sort of inferiority complex why can't I go into a supermarket without seeing a picture of Princess Diana who I left England to get away from but then this cultural thing works in Reverse as well doesn't it for example when I go exactly see the same if I go back to England what do I get McDonald's hamburgers in American nuclear bases so it seems to me there's something in the relationship that tends to reinforce the conservative and the commercial and the what shall we say you Delight in saying the reaction I think it's odd to want to get away from Princess Diana you do yeah well I mean if if she were frumpy fry and ban now well then let me put it like this I'd like to do the same thing as I suspect she'd like to do and get away at least from her husband um in other words from the the uh popular celebration of of the House of Windsor I could I could do with the rest from that and I thought I could get it in in the country of George Washington which went to all this trouble not just to expel the monarchy but to make sure it could never come back let me suggest by now you have an imperial presidency let me suggest why your book concentrates on the um cooperation uh between the right-wing in both countries to promote an imperial ideal and why it neglects the leftwing interest in in borrowing American Democratic and Republican institutions because this theme disappeared from British leftwing thought in the early '70s and is only now reappearing with the waning of the Cold War when you've got Charter 88 which although it borrows its name from Czechoslovakia nonetheless is a left-wing organization in Britain designed to borrow American in political institutions and Transplant them in order to prevent Mrs thata continuing to run the country now now you neglect this because during that during the 70s and the 80s the theme of the British left has been that a Britain is an occupied country that America is an occupying power uh that we're simply a province in in the American Empire book sophisticated exactly sophisticated and moderate and entertaining version of that theory yeah that's fair enough I mean to I but I'm I'm a founding signature of Charter 88 and I think one can have it both ways in fact I'm wedded to the view one it both ways I think you can have an American Constitution explicitly modeled on the American pill of rights which itself written by some very fine English colonists there no need for nationaly model the Bill of Rights critically minded guys and um there's no need in other words for any national self-hatred about this and one can have that without having the presence of uh nuclear bases which are governed by no treaty and ratified by no parliamentary agreement uh which I think does qualify the country to be to be as as all well described it way it happened first occupied and those were even in Wartime well as a matter of fact what all said was that he met a man he he read a piece about a uh in which a man said the American troops were in Britain not to invade Germany but in order to suppress a British revolution and he said you have to been an intellectual to say things like that no ordinary person could be so stupid yeah that's uh that's that's true and I and I deserve it but you'll remember the the peace um about the soldiers in Picadilly and so forth and the the fact that the that the troops and bases were welcomed so why in that case didn't the government be honest about saying we have allowed our teritory to take you're not suggesting the Americans wouldn't go f EXC you speak you're speaking awfully fast I don't always follow you are you suggesting that there's something surreptitious about the existence of nuclear bases in Great Britain in the book I quote the then Secretary of Defense forestal as you know came to a sticky end but was then in a lucid interval who said as far as he knew uh there had never before been an agreement by whereby one power stationed its forces on the terch of another without a treaty without any form written understanding of any kind many smaller and weaker countries such as the Philippines have a ratified renewable agreement in that the United Kingdom just doesn't have this testifies in my view to the m strength of the special relation people don't think of Americans as foreign in 46 he was a lawyer an international lawyer as a specialist and for him to say this is the first time that something has happened does not suggest that it's outrageous by no means uh not of itself no the the fire bombing of Dresden had never happened before and it was also outrages but the uh uh the the EV the evolution of of NATO uh is not something that suggests um other than that uh England as a partner to Nato would have um carried its share the responsibility to make NATO effective uh it seems to be that you in in in your book you attach a a kind of importance to that that uh uh is isn't uh earned that I can see well if I don't if I don't carry the point in that way I I don't if I'll be able to convince you now I think there is a difference though and I I make it by contrast with Deo who once asked the commander of American forces in his country you like that yeah can you tell me how many American nuclear weapons there are in France the guy said I can but I'm not allowed to you're not allowed to know that and the go said well all right but no no French president will ever be talked to in those terms ever again and meant it without removing France from the West he said no we there certain decisions we will we will not find out have been taken for us the British government in um in other words is quite prepared to find out second what American Military and nuclear policy is even though it's committed its country and its national territory as a forward Basin I mean it may not be as well known here as it is in England to your audience but a lot of British people don't like that I'm one did you all tell SP what you got in jalter do you all tell Spain what you got in Jala well I'm for the I'm for the restoration of all these anomalies um to their to their uh but but but uh the fact you you should be really I think makes uh makes your book more of a of a of a template uh for that which is surreal the fact of the matter is that we guarded the peace in Europe for 40 years through a series of Arrangements some of which were anomalous as for instance toal's separation from formal separation but we kept the peace and all of a sudden things got to go our way well let say even say your way in East in east east Europe now uh but but you seem to be you seem to want to go back and say ah but they there were certain uh uh legal anomalies and Solosis here that uh historically Disturbed me well they can disturb you it seems to be only if you're you insist on a kind of a reading of history that history doesn't ever lend itself to it doesn't strike you then that the that this what we' been talking about this uh unspoken treaty nuclear treaty suggests an amazingly deep latent connection between the two countries it does that's all I'm really saying it does and in fact one it's one that I applaud incident I never thought of myself as an Ang affilia and I've been denounced as angle for which I God knows I'm not but that's irrelevant uh we have common interests and also we can communicate uh I don't read German journals but I read English journals and uh uh uh isn't that that one of the reasons why there is a more natural Affinity than there would be say with uh Germany or and also one I think which is going to develop because I um I don't think we've reached the end of this story though uh Mr Hitchens may it seems to me that with the development of Europe the reason why the Americans always wanted the British in the European Community was because they would represent they thought the ideas of free trade and free markets which would mean that the community would never be closed to American goods and American Capital and so on and that is now going to become very important as the European Community uh grows incorporates the with the threat of 1992 with the thir of 1992 and if Britain now has a distinctive role in this area I would say it is to represent the ideals of free trade and free markets within the community which might develop in an aaric and protectionist Direction and eventually to lead um with the reduction of tariff barriers between the two sides of the Atlantic to the development of some kind of economic equip equivalent of NATO which uh the Americans uh would benefit from the British would certainly benefit from but so would the Europeans that's just not enough about my book I'm afraid I think it's all good stuff but I mean it's not enough about me you haven't even said whether you liked it oh I did like the book it's uh uh and once more but I have to ask myself like theing thing I have to ask the question that was the famous question that was asked in the lady chatterly trial would you let your wife or servant read this book I think um would you let someone who didn't know a lot about the subject already read it I'd have doubts they get a very distorted view I think I'd let them read it in the in the event of giving them five other books four of them by Bill on that on that note of a plug for your employer uh let me ask Mr Buckley how do you react to Mr Hitchens is charge that you're masquerading is a wasp or at least to his more serious Point underneath it that one of the cultural ironies is America's borrowing of a British class snobbery that is many people think is manifested among other ways in in the way you talk well I I can't think of a single occasion in my public or private life in which I have tried to disguise the fact that I'm a Roman Catholic I'm professing Roman Catholic to the extent that that excludes me from being a wasp it's it's the loss of the WASP not of the Catholics so uh uh uh wasp has simply become uh a word as far as I can see that simply designates uh uh uh people who are really TR traditionalists and I suppose non-jewish or or I don't know I I I can even imagine I can even think of some Jews who I think of as wasps I would have thought a wasp means someone who is not an accredited victim yeah yeah yeah that would be a Joe soin uh uh it certainly would I can just hear him saying it um I've campaigned for sometime to drop the W um because I think it's super I think one could reasonbly say these people are asps for example there are no basps um or yps and are unlikely to be um so it's a work of supererogation but um it's noticeable that you can be without offense even though hypher nation's in Decline called an Italian American or Greek American German American but the idea of an English American is something atically absurd about it that I think is interesting again doesn't offend me it intrigues me there is I think this is because what there is because they have the incident originally of English settlers yes the original settlement um the swarming of the English as wood Wilson called in his history and the presence of Englishmen in America but the reason why that and their dominance the reason why that seems so so imbricated so natural to the whole texture of the thing is is therefore what I mean by the the blood of nostalgia bit if not the class not just of course the English the Scots Irish the olster were a major part of the early settlement but again people don't regard them as a separate group they often describe themselves as Irish I believe they're 57 % of those who describe themselves as Irish in America but they they're not Irish yes that's right and from oler but they're not part of the Irish in the sense that they have this strong sentimental connection to Ireland uh which is sometimes expressed in sympathy for Irish republicanism well thank you very much uh Mr Christopher Hitchens author of blood class and Nostalgia which you are authorized by Mr uh uh by my Confederate here to read provided you mix it up with a few other books that way thank you ladies and [Music] gentlemen funding for firing line is made possible by a major Grant from the John M Olan found Foundation Incorporated additional support is provided by the mobile corporation Monarch Financial Services Incorporated Farley Industries Incorporated Payne Weber the friends of firing line and by the financial support of viewers like you this program was produced by SAA which is solely responsible for its content for a printed bound transcript of this program send $3 to Firing Line Post Office box 5966 Columbia South Carolina 29250 indicate the subject of the program and please allow 3 weeks for delivery this is PBS William F Buckley Jr offers 20 years of firing line guests from the 60s to the80s for 1995 you can receive this companion book by calling 1 1800 872 8642 credit cards are acceptable or send a check to Firing Line 2700 Cypress Street Columbia South Carolina 29205

Channel: Hoover Institution Library & Archives

Views: 20,642

Keywords: Firing Line, William F. Buckley Jr, Christopher Hitchens, Foreign Public Opinion, Foreign Relations, Great Britain, United Kingdom, United States

Id: ZdMszmjSAso

Length: 29min 18sec (1758 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 03 2017