February 8, 2009

William F. Buckley vs. Noam Chomsky

February 27th is the anniversary of the death of conservative icon William F. Buckley Jr. He served conservatism well, in an insightful, intellectual way. Below are two excerpts of his debate with Noam Chomsky. Thanks William for your contributions.

As an aside, the tone of the debate is something lacking in today's discourse.

Part 1




Part 2

3 comments:

  1. I just realised you forgot to post part 3, the best one where he gets all irritated and threatens to punch chomsky in the face, an old habit he has when he cant bully his opponent intellectually.

    Im sure it is to be found on youtube.

    ReplyDelete
  2. I didn't find that part, though I know he did threaten to punch him. But come on, Buckley threatening to punch anyone is more facetious than anything else; who'd be afraid of Buckley physically? As for bullying Chomsky intellectually, Buckley did just fine.

    ReplyDelete
  3. He tries but isnt impressing chomsky, as chomsky knows to adress his arguments with his factual knowledge.Buckley is getting more frustrated towards the end when chomsky just keeps throwing facts he doesnt want to hear at him, it must have been annoying him to listen to what chomsky had to say about the Vietnam war and not having any arguments against it.

    Buckley keeps it respectfull tough, most opponents of chomsky resort to ad hominem attacks and ridiculing his views to not having to adress his argumentation.
    I am rather interested in both figures altough i agree with chomsky more often Buckley has a very interesting mind. Unlike a lot of politicians today has substance and is open to reason, especially when he got older he got wiser in his views.

    Also if youre interested there is also a interview with gore vidal which he threatens to punch in the face when called a crypto-nazi, vidal later corrected himself, he meant to say crypto-facist.

    Great fun to watch intellectuals fight with words.

    ReplyDelete

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