This Thanksgiving, We Remember Why We’re Grateful

Editor’s Note: These remarks were originally delivered November 29, 1988, by William F. Buckley Jr. at the Intercollegiate Studies Institute’s 35th Anniversary Dinner at the Mayflower Hotel, Washington, D.C.

Frank Chodorov published, about 40 years ago, a pamphlet called A Fifty-Year Plan. He calculated that at least a half century would be needed to displace the dominant shibboleths of socialism. That pamphlet was greeted so enthusiastically that he set out to organize a society to further its aims. Organizing anything was alien to the vaguely anarchic spirit of Frank Chodorov, and so he told me one day that I would be the president of the Intercollegiate Society of Individualists. It was my habit in those days to do anything Frank asked, and so for a while I was president of ISI. Then one day I got a note from him, a note that sticks easily to the memory. It said, “Dear Bill: You’re fired. I’ve decided a Jew will do better as president of ISI, so I have appointed myself. Love, Frank.”