Today on Uncommon Knowledge, the final segment of the 1998 interview with William F. Buckley, Jr. and Christopher Hitchens–and a couple of remarkable displays of a certain kind of humility. The segment begins with Christopher Hitchens, recanting:
Robinson: Were the Black Panthers justified in engaging in violence?
Hitchens: At the time, I certainly would have said yes, and did say so, because I thought it was very stirring. They were blacks who didn’t ask for anybody’s permission anymore. They didn’t wait until the moment was right. They didn’t wait until there was a liberal consensus. They said, “We want to do it on our own. We have a perfect right to do that.” That struck me as a good thing, though in the case of the Black Panthers it led to awful consequences, to gangsterism and so forth. I remember being more impressed by it than I should have been.
Robinson: Do you wish from this vantage point that we had simply never gone into Vietnam?
Buckley: Yes.