A second marked characteristic of the Liberal in debate with the conservative is the tacit premise that debateis ridiculous....Many people shrink fro… - William F. Buckley Jr.
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A second marked characteristic of the Liberal in debate with the conservative is the tacit premise that debateis ridiculous....Many people shrink from arguments over facts because facts are tedious, because they require a formal familiarity with the subject under discussion, and because they can be ideologically dislocative. Many Liberals accept their opinions, ideas, and evaluations as others accept revealed truths.
William F. Buckley, Jr. (November 24 1925 - February 27 2008) was an American author, conservative journalist, who founded the conservative political magazine National Review in 1955 and hosted the television show Firing Line from 1966 until 1999.
Biography information from
Wikiquote·
Portrait adapted from
Wikimedia Commons, SPC 5 Bert Goulait, US Military (Public domain / CC0)
Also Known As
Native Name:
William Frank Buckley, Jr.
Alternative Names:
William Frank Buckley Jr.
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William Frank Buckley
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William F. Buckley, Jr.
Radical conservatives in this country have an interesting time of it, for when they are not being suppressed or mutilated by Liberals, they are being ignored or humiliated by a great many of those of the well-fed Right, whose ignorance and amorality have never been exaggerated for the same reason that one cannot exaggerate infinity. There are, thank Heaven, the exceptions. There are those of generous impulse and a sincere desire to encourage a responsible dissent from the Liberal orthodoxy. And there are those who recognize that when all is said and done, the market place depends for a license to operate freely on the men who issue licenses — on the politicians. They recognize, therefore, that efficient getting and spending is itself impossible except in an atmosphere that encourages efficient getting and spending. And back of all political institutions there are moral and philosophical concepts, implicit or defined. Our political economy and our high-energy industry run on large, general principles, on ideas — not by day-to-day guess work, expedients and improvisations. Ideas have to go into exchange to become or remain operative; and the medium of such exchange is the printed word.
What would happen if the Communists occupied the Sahara? Answer: Nothing — for 50 years. Then there would be a shortage of sand.
I Would Rather Be Governed By the First 2,000 People in the Telephone Directory than by the Harvard University Faculty.
