“We’re in the end times” is a refrain I often hear from older conservatives, especially those of an Evangelical stripe. They praise the halcyon wonder of the ’50s, early ’60s, and then the Reagan ’80s — quick to remind a young conservative that his generation will see the end of the American Experiment and the death of all that is good.
Well, thanks. If you’ll excuse the arrogance of a young man, a guy has to laugh at the rose-tintedness; else, he’ll become a Claremont writer.
To the older conservatives’ credit — many of them preparing to keelhaul me in the comment section — I’m profoundly grateful they have many happy memories of America’s past. Their silver-haired peers on the left can’t claim the same joyful reflections — especially not around the activist youth who ply them for donations. For many on the left, any period of success and progress in the past must be dunked in the acid vat of American sin, leaving very little for them to remember fondly. Climate change before them, irredeemable racism and empire behind them — what a self-conceived legacy. (I’d also drive a dismal Chevy Bolt EV if that’s what I thought of myself.)
So, the Buick LeSabre and Mercury Grand Marquis owners of the conservative coalition have a point — a darn fine one. When I watch and read William F. Buckley’s work, I know even better what they mean. While there are material and social benefits to modernity, the intra-conservative debates of yore had a classiness that the modern fights will never sniff the coattails of. An apt example of that brilliance is the Panama Canal debate between WFB and then-former governor of California Ronald Reagan.
The debate’s participants were a who’s who of gentlemanly conservative intellectualism. Buckley and his team, composed of James Burnham (NR senior editor), George Will (NR’s Washington columnist), and Adm. Elmo Zumwalt (former Chief of Naval Operations), argued in favor of the Senate allowing control of the Panama Canal to Panama.
Reagan arrived with Patrick Buchanan (polemicist and author), Prof. Roger Fontaine (anti-Soviet Latin America expert), and Adm. John McCain Jr. (commander of military forces during Vietnam and father of future Senator John McCain), to argue against surrendering control of the canal.
Buckley recapped the debate sometime later, writing:
In 1977 Warren Steibel, the producer of my television show, Firing Line, came up with the idea of supplementing its weekly schedule with special two-hour programs four or five times per year. The first of these, in January 1978, was a formal debate on an issue that had divided the American Right.
The question of the Panama Canal’s future had recently become acute when President Jimmy Carter signed a treaty that would cede control of the Canal Zone to Panama. This would mean a diminution of American control over the canal itself, and a hint of any such thing — especially so soon after the Vietnam debacle — greatly alarmed conservative America.
I traveled to Panama in October 1976, and the visit caused me to change my opinion. Departing from conservative ranks, I urged the Senate to ratify the proposed treaty, mainly on the grounds, as I wrote in my column, that Panamanians of all political colorations saw “the reintegration of the Canal Zone as something of a magical restoration of the nation’s dignity: the elimination of an ugly birthmark that now condemns Panama to wander around the world conspicuously sullied.”
Earlier that year, Ronald Reagan, energetically campaigning for president, had begun rallying conservative forces to stand behind the existing arrangements. Reagan had lost narrowly in the New Hampshire and Florida primaries, but in North Carolina, he made his opposition to the treaty (which President Ford had already started negotiating) a major part of his campaign — and he won. It proved too late to wrest the nomination from Ford, but Reagan did not forget the impact, especially among conservatives, of his stand on the Panama Canal.
We went back and forth on the subject over the next year, in public and in private. Then I asked him, in the course of a telephone conversation, whether he would consent to debate the subject in a two-hour Firing Line. His first reaction was to say, “Why would I want to get into a debate with you?” — but eventually he reconsidered. We exchanged correspondence about the issue in the weeks that preceded our debate.
Reagan was the first speaker. He performed eloquently for 15 minutes. I followed for 15 minutes. Each of our seconders made a briefer statement. Then the time came for the cross-examination.
REAGAN: Well, Bill, my first question is, Why haven’t you already rushed across the room here to tell me that you’ve seen the light? [Laughter and applause.]
BUCKLEY: I’m afraid that if I came any closer to you the force of my illumination would blind you. [Laughter and applause.]
REAGAN: Well, all right. The United States has run the canal at no profit. We have maintained its neutrality throughout the history of the Canal. We have certainly vastly benefited Panama. What do we gain by making this change?
BUCKLEY: Well, what we gain by making this change, to quote myself, is increased security and increased self-esteem . . .
. . .
It was then my turn to cross-examine Reagan. The evening moved briskly along, with our debating partners bringing in a useful variety of perspectives, until Senator Ervin sounded the warning bell as only he could:
ERVIN: The chair is going to have to interrupt. Personally, I wish this debate could go on till the last lingering echo of Gabriel’s horn trembled into ultimate silence, but we are prisoners of time, and at this time, the chair is going to call on Governor Ronald Reagan for his rebuttal and going to give the very sad advice that it has to end at strictly 10:44.
REAGAN: I claim that the United States, with a military force trained on the ground, which has defended the canal against any attempt at sabotage through four wars, recognizing the fact that it’s going to take more than a single saboteur slipping in in the night with a hand grenade or an explosive charge — it’s going to take a trained demolition team, with plenty of time to work and no interruption, to do something to disable the gates, the locks, and so forth. Now, I submit that with an American armed force on hand guarding those vulnerable points, they are far safer than if the Panamanians are in charge and the Americans are not there.
Now, we have to face the Panamanians in a negotiation, not because we’ve been threatened that they’re going to cause trouble — I say that this is one of the first things that should have called off the negotiations. When they threatened violence, I believe the United States should have said to them, “We don’t negotiate with anyone under threats. If you want to sit down and talk in a spirit of goodwill, we’ll do it.” [Applause.]
I don’t believe that in Latin America we would do anything to strengthen our position by, again, yielding to the unpleasantness in this treaty. I think, if anything, we would become a laughingstock by surrendering to unreasonable demands, and by doing so, I think we cloak weakness in the suit of virtue. This has to be treated in the whole area of the international situation. The Panama Canal is just one facet of our foreign policy, and with this treaty, what do we do to ourselves in the eyes of the world, and to our allies? Will they, as Mr. Buckley says, see that as the magnanimous gesture of a great and powerful nation? I don’t think so, not in view of an administration that is hinting that we’re going to throw aside an ally named Taiwan. I think that the world would see it as, once again, Uncle Sam putting his tail between his legs and creeping away rather than face trouble. [Applause.]
Then it was my turn to sum up:
BUCKLEY: Governor Reagan says we don’t negotiate under threats, and everybody here bursts out in applause. The trouble with that is that it’s not true. We do negotiate under threats. Ninety-nine percent of all the negotiations that have gone on from the beginning of this world have gone on as a result of threats, as the result of somebody saying, “If you don’t give me a raise, I threaten to leave my job.” That’s a threat, isn’t it? What do you call what we did to George III? It was a most convincing threat.
The fact of the matter is that there are people in Panama who don’t accept the notion of Governor Reagan about the undisputed, unambiguous sovereignty that the United States exercises over that territory. We do have there the absolute right, which I do not deny and which my colleagues do not deny, to stay there as long as we want. But to say that we have sovereignty, as Governor Reagan has said, is to belie the intention of the people who supervised our diplomacy in the early part of the century, and it is also to urge people to believe that we harbor an appetite for colonialism . . .
I think that Governor Reagan put his finger on it when he said the reason this treaty is unpopular is because we’re tired of being pushed around. We were pushed out of Vietnam because we didn’t have the guts to go in there and do it right, just as Admiral McCain said. [Applause.] We’re prepared, as it was said, to desert Taiwan because three and a half Harvard professors think that we ought to normalize our relations with Red China. [Applause.] We are prepared to allow 16 semi-savage countries to cartelize the oil that is indispensable to the entire industrial might of the West because we don’t have a diplomacy that’s firm enough to do something about it. And, therefore, how do we get our kicks? How do we get our kicks? By saying no to the people of Panama. [Laughter and applause.]
You can review the debate in its entirety here:
WFB concludes by recounting a visit to Reagan soon after:
A few months after the debate I was headed for the Reagans’ house in Pacific Palisades for dinner. “Drive carefully as you approach the house,” Reagan had warned me over the telephone. “I have special instructions for you on my driveway.” I did as I was told. At intervals of 20 yards there were cardboard strips hand-painted with huge block letters. They read, in sequence:
WE BUILT IT.
WE PAID FOR IT.
IT’S OURS!
Well, the Senate did ratify the treaty, and the Panama Canal proceeded to operate just as smoothly as it always had. In other words, Ronald Reagan was, as a prophet, simply mistaken. And I, for my part, did not go on to be president.
I get it. If the above chivalrous interlocution is what I grew up on, and then I saw videos from TikTok and the WWE, *ahem* I mean, CPAC, offered as modernity’s vehicles for serious political debate, who could argue that the world doesn’t deserve its predetermined end?
However, given I don’t know the day or the hour, it’s probably best that I keep working, writing, and paying for the Social Security I’ll never see.
Please keep telling stories of the better days — they may not return, but we can try to approximate their best attributes in the decades to come. American goodness is worth a generational campaign — Buckley and Reagan certainly thought so.