Firing Line Friday: Panama Debates and Crotchety Conservatives

     In the hopes of encouraging a more civil, and illuminating, discourse, here is another episode of William F. Buckley, Jr.’s “Firing Line”.

     An article this past week in the National Review Online about old-fogey conservatives and their whipper-snapper counterparts. In it they highlight how the past wasn’t so rosey colored when it came to intra-conservative battles and debates:

“When I watch and read William F. Buckley’s work, I know even better what they mean. While there are material and social benefits to modernity, the intra-conservative debates of yore had a classiness that the modern fights will never sniff the coattails of. An apt example of that brilliance is the Panama Canal debate between WFB and then-former governor of California Ronald Reagan.

“The debate’s participants were a who’s who of gentlemanly conservative intellectualism. Buckley and his team, composed of James Burnham (NR senior editor), George Will (NR’s Washington columnist), and Adm. Elmo Zumwalt (former Chief of Naval Operations), argued in favor of the Senate allowing control of the Panama Canal to Panama.”

     Until next Friday.

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