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Comment by ttfkam | Hacker News Reader

It was a debate, and Buckley got his ass handed to him. Soundly. Baldwin literally wiped the floor with him, and everyone there knew it.

It was legendary for Buckley only insofar as he got the debate version of a royal beat down in public.

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It is frustrating as a viewer in the present moment to see the rhetorical tricks that Buckley plays against his guests. Surely he was playing to his conservative audience members but a lot of his points seem indefensible to my modern ear. the best example I think being a protracted interrogation on Malcolm X’s “real name”. It’s not that asking the question itself it is out of bounds, but surely Buckley knew that Malcolm X would not budge on this topic and the whole thing was just fodder for his viewers to see Malcolm as obstinant.

Somehow it’s even worse than the ham fisted strategies Fox News employes now like just talking over an interviewee, because Buckley was /so smart/.

You're not serious? Baldwin's ideas haven't stood the test of time.

The left-wing radicalism of the 60's fizzled out due a failure in the competition of ideas.

in what ways have they not stood the test of time?

baldwin and his contemporaries were influential to the civil rights movement, which had a concrete impact on improving the nation.

> The left-wing radicalism of the 60's fizzled out due a failure in the competition of ideas.

i don't think it was "the competition of ideas" that caused them to fizzle out. unless you consider state propaganda to be a part of that?

and i don't think it's fizzled out. the new left is the dominant mode of american leftism at the current moment in time.

Which of his ideas exactly, have not stood up?

Reality of the American Dream? Minorities have made more economic progress in the US than many white Americans.

Let's start with that.

The other arguments about systemic racism are the same arguments pushed by the radical left today, I'd hardly call it "widely accepted".

Thanks for the clown-shoe polemic. I left the GOP because of folks like you. Don't bother replying as I suspect I could map out the quality in advance.

The lack of actual rebuttal, combined with an ad hominem, tells me all that I need to know about the intellectual rigor of your political beliefs.

Thanks William F Schmuckly. Enoch Powell called, and wants his underpants back.

Ah yes, the competition of ideas is when the FBI murders Huey Newton and the state imprisons war protestors for burning draft cards.

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