Conservatism vs. Liberalism: William F. Buckley, Jr. vs. George McGovern Debate (1997)
William Frank Buckley, Jr. (
November 24, 1925 --
February 27, 2008) was a conservative
American author[3] and commentator. He founded the political magazine
National Review in
1955, which had a major impact in stimulating the conservative movement. He hosted 1,429 episodes of the television show
Firing Line from 1966 until
1999, where his public persona was famous for a wide vocabulary. He also wrote a nationally syndicated newspaper column, and wrote numerous spy novels.
George H. Nash, a historian of the modern
American Conservative movement, states that
Buckley was "arguably the most important public intellectual in the
United States in the past half century
... For an entire generation, he was the preeminent voice of
American conservatism and its first great ecumenical figure."[7] Buckley's primary contribution to politics was a fusion of traditional
American political conservatism with laissez-faire economic theory and anti-communism, laying groundwork for the new American conservatism of
U.S. presidential candidate
Barry Goldwater and
President Ronald Reagan.
Buckley wrote
God and Man at Yale (1951) and over 50 other books on writing, speaking, history, politics and sailing, including a series of novels featuring
CIA agent
Blackford Oakes. Buckley referred to himself as either a libertarian or conservative.[8][9] He resided in
New York City and
Stamford, Connecticut. He was a practicing
Roman Catholic, regularly attending the traditional
Latin Mass in
Connecticut.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_F_Buckley
George Stanley McGovern (July 19,
1922 --
October 21,
2012) was an
American historian, author and
U.S. Representative,
U.S. Senator, and the
Democratic Party presidential nominee in the
1972 presidential election.
McGovern grew up in
Mitchell, South Dakota, where he was a renowned debater. He volunteered for the
U.S. Army Air Forces upon the country's entry into
World War II and as a
B-24 Liberator pilot flew 35 missions over
German-occupied Europe. Among the medals bestowed upon him was a
Distinguished Flying Cross for making a hazardous emergency landing of his damaged plane and saving his crew.
After the war he gained degrees from
Dakota Wesleyan University and
Northwestern University, culminating in a PhD, and was a history professor. He was elected to the
U.S. House of Representatives in
1956 and re-elected in
1958. After a failed bid for the
U.S. Senate in 1960, he was elected there in 1962.
As a senator, McGovern was an exemplar of modern
American liberalism. He became most known for his outspoken opposition to the growing U.S. involvement in the
Vietnam War. He staged a brief nomination run in the
1968 presidential election as a stand-in for the assassinated
Robert F. Kennedy. The subsequent McGovern--Fraser
Commission fundamentally altered the presidential nominating process, by greatly increasing the number of caucuses and primaries and reducing the influence of party insiders. The McGovern--Hatfield Amendment sought to end the Vietnam War by legislative means but was defeated in
1970 and
1971. McGovern's long-shot, grassroots-based
1972 presidential campaign found triumph in gaining the
Democratic nomination but left the party badly split ideologically, and the failed vice-presidential pick of
Thomas Eagleton undermined McGovern's credibility
. In the general election McGovern lost to incumbent
Richard Nixon in one of the biggest landslides in American electoral history. Re-elected
Senator in
1968 and
1974, McGovern was defeated in a bid for a fourth term in
1980.
Throughout his career, McGovern was involved in issues related to agriculture, food, nutrition, and hunger. As the first director of the
Food for Peace program in
1961, McGovern oversaw the distribution of U.S. surpluses to the needy abroad and was instrumental in
the creation of the United Nations-based
World Food Programme. As sole chair of the
Senate Select Committee on Nutrition and
Human Needs from 1968 to
1977, McGovern publicized the problem of hunger within the United States and issued the "McGovern
Report" that led to a new set of nutritional guidelines for
Americans. McGovern later served as
U.S. Ambassador to the
United Nations Agencies for
Food and Agriculture from
1998 to
2001 and was appointed the first UN
Global Ambassador on
World Hunger by the World Food Programme in 2001. The McGovern-Dole
International Food for Education and
Child Nutrition
Program has provided school meals for millions of children in dozens of countries since
2000 and resulted in McGovern's being named
World Food Prize co‑laureate in 2008.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_mcgovern