Today on Uncommon Knowledge, part three of the 1998 program with William F. Buckley, Jr. and Christopher Hitchens. The question of the day: Any regrets?
Hitchens: There was a slogan that was painted on the walls of Paris at one point in the great upheaval of May ’68, which said, “Take your desires for reality.” I regret the certain hedonistic utopianism to which I succumbed.
Buckley: I regret that I didn’t, sooner than we did, come forward with a countdown on the Vietnam War. We were always being told in 1969, 1970, that victory was just around the corner. They tended to say that persuasively, and a lot of people were persuaded. I went to Vietnam three times, and wrote back that it looked good. I was told – and believed – that it looked good.