Noam Chomsky vs. William F. Buckley, 1969

Is there such a thing as the benign use of inter­na­tion­al force? It’s a ques­tion that Noam Chom­sky and William F. Buck­ley, lead­ing thinkers from the left and right, took up in 1969. And, of course, the whole ques­tion of Viet­nam loomed in the back­ground. As you’ll see below (and in Part 2 here) the debate is remark­ably civ­il. And when Buck­ley threat­ens to punch Chom­sky in the face, it’s said much more lov­ing­ly than when he offered to do the same to Gore Vidal in 1968.

As an inter­est­ing aside, when Buck­ley died ear­li­er this year, Chom­sky revis­it­ed the 1969 debate and Buck­ley’s lega­cy and essen­tial­ly saw him look­ing a lot bet­ter than his con­ser­v­a­tive heirs — although I’m not sure that Chom­sky was real­ly pass­ing along a deeply felt com­pli­ment here.

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