It started in 1978. Milton Friedman had retired from teaching at the University of Chicago, and he and Rose moved to San Francisco, where I live. Milton had learned to ski in his 30s in California. I had skied my whole life, and we started talking about skiing together. Bill did all of his skiing in Switzerland by then, but it seemed obvious that something wonderful could happen if he joined us in California.
We agreed to meet for a long weekend at a small California ski resort in which my father and Walt Disney were early investors. I remember very little about that first year at Sugar Bowl except that I was deathly ill and nearly had to cancel. I do remember that Bill brought a case of wine, which we consumed entirely. (It became an interesting measure of something how this prodigious quantity declined over the years.)
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It was magical. We talked and laughed and skied our hearts out. Even though I was deathly ill, we had the time of our lives, and we resolved to move the venue to Alta, Utah, and make it an annual event.
Each of the next 17 years, we stayed in the Alta Lodge and skied on the second weekend of January in the center of powder-snow country. A couple of times when one of us got sick, somebody else would fill in. But it was special, just the three of us, and we resisted the temptation to expand the group.
In 1994, Milton began to suffer leg pains that forced him to give up skiing. The following January, Bill’s great friend Van Galbraith joined us, and Milton came and shared meals. But the magic was gone. Our grand adventure was over.
Our Alta Rituals Every year I felt the extraordinary privilege it was, sharing these intimate experiences with these two giants of conservatism. Looking back, I wish I had taken better notes on the conversations we had, the personal insights, the humor. Since Milton represented the libertarian side of conservatism (what I call the freedom Right), and Bill combined the freedom and order Right, this was an 18-year conversation on global events, but also on the tensions between the two great themes in modern conservative thought. Our conversations helped clarify answers to what Irving Kristol once said was the greatest unsolved intellectual challenge: to integrate libertarian and traditionalist thought.
While they shared worldviews in important and obvious respects, the differences between Milton and Bill were in some ways more interesting. These conversations greatly influenced my own peculiar “transpartisan” ideology.
Before sharing pieces of these conversations, I want to describe the rituals and traditions that came to define our time together. The most important of them had to do with eating. Milton was naturally gregarious and was pleased to talk to perfect strangers at any time of the day. Bill was not. (I was more with Bill on this.) This difference became apparent in our very first meal at the American-plan Alta Lodge, which at the time (it seemed) had some kind of ideological commitment to random mealtime seating of hotel guests. At our first meal, the maître d’ seated us at a table for six, with the three of us facing three total strangers. Since we had just arrived and were eager to talk among ourselves, Bill, who was sitting between us, choreographed a three-way conversation by swiveling his head from one side to the other, to Milton and to me — as if the others at the table were not there. After two courses of this, the large woman sitting across from us leaned forward and said, in a loud voice: “I’m Lucy Goldfarb.”
I got my MBA from Chicago. My undergraduate degree was in economics, so I jumped at the chance to hear him give a lecture. It was transformative. The clarity of his writing had always impressed me, but hearing him in person was a revelation. (In more ways than one -- I had no idea he was so short)
As the article reveals, he was very approachable. After the lecture I hung around just to give him a few words of thanks, and he starts a conversation with me! 'Why did you choose Chicago, what do you want to do with your degree, oh you're from California have you ever been to ...' This was in 1970, before his Nobel prize, but well after he had become famous. I got the distinct impression that he spoke to me, a 22 year old nobody, the same way he spoke to kings and presidents.
On the wall of my office hangs a copy of a letter from my father to Milton Friedman. In retirement my father was an amatuer blogger in the pre-internet days, and he wrote to Friedman on his typewriter with a question about the gold standard. Freidman wrote back with handwritten comments. The kindness of Freidman to take the time to answer my father's question is remarkable.
In my youth I used to ski every day during the season, sometimes more than 100 days a year. During a USSA race, I rode the lift with a competitor, who refused to chat with me, because he was in a race, and he needed to concentrate. Boo hoo.
During the same race, I had the pleasure of another lift ride with Pete Patterson, a US Ski Team champ and one of the genuinely nicest people on the planet. Pete would never pass up the chance to talk with anyone for the sake of something as mundane as a ski race. As usual, we had a great conversation.
I'm sad to learn that skier WFB was a genuine snob. He is not in the same category as the kindly Milton Freidman, or the gracious Pete Patterson.
That said, ski areas need rich snobs. Without them, there would be no basements to crash in, no food left on cafeteria trays to scrounge, no ticket lines to chisel, no last year’s equipment to buy at a 90% discount.
Thanks Mr. Chickering. This is the type of article and writing which, every time I run across it, makes me fall in love with NR all over again.
WFB would have been proud.
As a fan of both Friedman and Buckley, I enjoyed this piece also. But I can't help commenting on the "tensions between the two great themes in modern conservative thought."
Todays republican party no longer seems aware that these tensions even exist. That's because the presidency of George W. Bush marked the triumph of big-government conservatism. By that I don't just mean the deficit spending, but also the overemphasis on social issues (i.e. restricting reproductive rights) and a militant foreign policy (both forms of big-government).
While the tea-party claims to be in favor of small government, I don't see its members fighting for the same libertarian values that Milton Friedman stood for (which included legalizing drugs). If they did, they would have supported not Ron Paul, but Gary Johnson. Too bad.
This has always been one of my favorite stories of WFB, having read his account earlier. Thank you for adding your details.
Living a few minutes from Alta I was amazed to learn such great men skied annually at a local resort. It is one of my few regrets that I never ran into any of you on the slopes. It would have been amazing.
One note of local trivia: the peak behind Mr. Buckley is Superior. Great skiers ski down its wild, steep face. And live.
I listened to WFB's audio book reading of "Miles Gobe By" in which he touches on these ski trips. I remember thinking that someone ought to wright a book about them. I'm glad you at least wrote an article, Mr. Chickering (though sad to find out that Mr. Friedman was contemptuous of religion).
On January 17, 1998, I had the distinct pleasure of sitting next to Mr.Buckley, Dr. Friedman and another of their ski buddies (whose name I forget) during an avalanche interlodge at Alta Lodge. I heard Dr. Friedman expound on the economic advantages of polygamy. Alta and Alta Lodge are international treasures, and a 45 minute conversation with two luminaries of 20th century thought in such a setting was the experience of a lifetime!
I guess this really hits a cord for those of us who grew up with these two intellectual giants. The personal aspect of the article is really incredible. But we can't give way to too much nostalgia. There are other giants out there now and we need to find them. Giants of libertarianism and Giants of the Traditional. We really need them more than ever now.
