A History Lesson
by Beezone
“Wherever speech becomes an instrument of power and propaganda, the essence of human communication is destroyed.”
— Josef Pieper, Abuse of Language, Abuse of Power
From Wit to War: The Long Collapse of Dialogue
“Currents that would, over the next sixty years, widen into the cultural divide we know today.”
In 1966, two figures of American media sat across from each other on national television. William F. Buckley Jr., the polished conservative polemicist and founder of the National Review, and David Susskind, the urbane liberal producer and host, met on Firing Line to debate the question of a “prevailing bias” in American institutions. On the surface, their exchange was witty and sharp. But beneath it lay deeper currents — currents that would, over the next sixty years, widen into the cultural divide we know today.
At first glance, the argument was simple. Buckley contended that America’s major institutions — media, universities, even churches — were dominated by a liberal consensus. Susskind agreed, but framed this dominance as progress. Yet the real story was not just what they argued, but how they argued. Rather than grappling directly with lived realities, both men often retreated into abstraction and cleverness. Even Buckley’s best-known phrases — like calling universities “liberal laundromats for unwashed minds.”
In the course of the debate, Buckley acknowledged that conservative voices had some outlets — citing Billy James Hargis, Clarence Manion, and others — but insisted that liberal institutions held “a leverage on public opinion infinitely greater than that of some of the magazines and broadcasters you mentioned.” Access alone, he argued, did not balance the cultural scale. Susskind countered by saying that liberal voices dominated simply because they were more in tune with modern sensibilities, suggesting of conservative spokesmen, “When you’ve said 12 of them, you’ve said them all, and the rest are just bloody bores who make bad television.”
Here the deeper erosion shows itself. Even in 1966 — in the midst of what still passed for civil debate — we see performance taking priority over understanding. Buckley’s verbal skill often replaced engagement with dismissal. Susskind’s breezy contempt suggested that conservatism was not something to be argued with, but something barely worth noticing. Debate had already begun to shift from seeking common ground to asserting certainty.
Their sparring revealed much, but a deeper question emerged when a Fordham law student in the audience stepped forward. In one of the plainest moments of the evening, he asked: “Why are the professors, by and large, liberal? What does it say about the intellectual life of the country?”
Buckley answered by tracing the roots to ultra-rationalism, skepticism, utopianism, and the loss of faith, suggesting that liberalism was not simply a set of political ideas, but the outcome of a much older philosophical shift. Susskind, in contrast, gave a practical answer: that liberal policies had worked and that experience, not ideology, explained liberal dominance in universities.
Liberalism the Default of the Educated Class
The question itself points to the real shift underway. Liberalism had ceased to be just one set of ideas among others. It was becoming the default language of the educated class. A culture that once saw freedom as tied to truth and responsibility was beginning to see freedom as change for its own sake. Beneath the sharp debate and flashes of wit, the deeper drift was already in motion: the quiet assumption that liberalism, rather than being one tradition among many, had become reality itself.
Buckley understood that this shift was not neutral. In one of his clearest points, he warned that unless “the censors of outrageous opinions apply equally to the left and the right,” voters would not be choosing freely but reacting to distorted portrayals shaped by cultural power. Even access to alternative ideas would not matter if those ideas were quietly discredited by the consensus that framed them as irrational, dangerous, or obsolete.
This larger dynamic mirrors what we traced in From Cogito to Code: As Reason displaced Faith, language itself — once a bridge to mystery and truth — became a tool for winning battles rather than seeking understanding. Public conversation shifted from exploring reality to defending positions. Sophistication became a substitute for wisdom; cleverness displaced dialogue.
In a final moment of strange agreement, Buckley and Susskind both acknowledged that a liberal orthodoxy had taken hold. Buckley mourned it. Susskind accepted it as the natural outcome of modern life. But neither man could offer a path back to a shared ground for dialogue.
Seen in this light, today’s shouting matches, cultural silos, and mutual incomprehension are not surprising. They are the fruit of seeds planted long ago. When dialogue becomes theater, when language loses its connection to truth, when public speech becomes primarily about winning and losing — the collapse of real discourse is only a matter of time.
From Wit to War: What Can Be Recovered
If there is a way forward from the impasse, it will not be found in new techniques, new platforms, or new slogans. It will require a recovery of something older: a respect for truth, a respect for language, and a willingness to meet others not as enemies but as fellow seekers. Dialogue is not just exchanging opinions. It is the act of trusting that truth is bigger than we are, and worth searching for together.
To speak is to risk. To listen is to admit, even briefly, that we might not know everything. Without this humility, no amount of cleverness or intelligence will save us. Without it, words will continue to be used as weapons, and conversations will continue to become battlegrounds.
The way back is hard, but not impossible. It begins when two people, even in small moments, choose to meet not as combatants, but as people willing to believe that meaning and truth are still possible.
Epilogue: When Ideals Become Their Own Opposites
The collapse of dialogue is not only a failure of communication. It is the inevitable result when ideals, whether liberal or conservative, are driven to their extremes without true understanding.
Liberalism and conservatism are not self-contained worlds. They define and shape each other. One cannot exist without the other, and each is drawn, almost irresistibly, into reaction against the other. In a healthy culture, this tension creates balance — a steady negotiation between freedom and order, change and continuity. But when humility is lost, when each side sees only the corruption of the other and none of its own, the poles harden. Movement and counter-movement begin to mirror each other, not in principle but in structure.
When liberalism is pushed too far, it becomes a rigid demand for conformity under the guise of liberation. When conservatism is pushed too far, it becomes a rigid defense of power under the guise of tradition. Each loses sight of the good it once sought to defend. Each, in its excess, ceases to be a guard against tyranny and becomes a form of it.
Opposites both attract and repel, but they also shape and reflect. A culture that forgets this truth — that refuses to see how every ideal can collapse into its own opposite — is a culture that will endlessly reproduce conflict without understanding its source.
The real danger is not that one side will defeat the other. The real danger is that both sides, in losing their humility and forgetting their limits, will become reflections of the same will to dominate — and in the process, destroy the fragile ground on which true dialogue and freedom stand.