**REALITY CHECK** Charlie doesn't have every question set-in-bronze! As the host, there's still room to rephrase a question, perhaps to make it more significant. He's WORKING, not just reading a TelePrompter!! That's what makes his one-on-one so effective...
I've always felt as someone who is religious, I don't want to live any longer than my time. When my time comes I'm ready to leave. I don't want to prolong pain and suffering. I believe in the lord.
Likewise. Never agreed with his politics but the man was brilliant AND erudite in the old school way as Vidal, Plimpton, etc....Gone now! replaced with billionaires who captivate the attention of the current culture. Sad
I always appreciated Buckley for making me challenge my own ideas. One of his lesser applauded skills he had cultivated over the years was his ability to extract information out of people. He always asked the right questions. He was able to get people to further expand on their ideas and present a perspective they wouldn't provide otherwise.
When he lost his beloved wife, Pat, I think he lost the will to go on. All his friends were dying and he couldn't do what he loved to do. Very sad. He was such a dynamo and a gift to all who loved the gentility and orderliness to the universe, which he embodied. A classy man, erudite, witty.............he had it all.
Very good point. Also, He was having health problems as well. After my foster dad passed away I saw what it did to my foster mother. She lasted for about 6 years after his death. Even when he became bed-fast she at least had him there with her. It was sad to watch her just pine away.
@@sunsetsky3605 I think that is the biggest reason for WFB to have been so very depressed and despondent in this interview. He lost his closest partner. Very sad all around.
2:53 He does his sly smile. I love that even after all those years and with only months left to live. It’s still Mr Buckley, his body is older but his spirit is intact. I hope he was pleasantly surprised with what he found. I hope we all are.
I wouldn't want to be 20 again (I'm 63) since this world is growing more and more evil and I know that it will continue on that path... I've seen enough and as a Christian, I'm looking forward to going to Heaven where I will have a brand new body that will be perfect beyond believing ! No sin ! No evil ! No sickness, no disability, no more pain ! And most importantly, I'll have brand new heart and a thoroughly cleansed soul ! And I will be free of my melancholy and depression ! And I will truly worship the Trinity in beauty and wonder and with deep gratitude and love ! Like Mr, Buckley, I am also weary of this life and each year I am reminded of family and friends that have died and the list continues to grow... I am also reminded by this rotted culture that I don't belong here... I grew up in a far better, if imperfect, culture and watched it get progressively worse since 1965... The problem with age is that you have memories and regrets...
If you have a chance to read Buckley's book "Miles Gone By", do so. The man has led a very full life. I hope that I can look back on my life and be as satisfied as he is.
nobody. buckley was unique. o'reilly is not a conservative and he certainly isn't invested in the republican party like Buckley was. Perhaps if you combined O'reilly with Krauthammer and sprinkled in some Medved and Reagan and added a dash of Limbaugh, you'd come close but no cigar.
Keyser Söze I think you are only partly right, namly, Buckly was of the "RIGHT"true conservative.... BUT O' Rilly ia a neo-conservative what you Americans need is Pat Buchannan or a person like late Joseph Sobran. Given that today's conservative in US have moved to the left, & thererefore the is NOT much difference between the Democrats & Republicans today. eg. issue of immigration no difference between the parties, attact on traditional culture/institution no difference etc etc.
Keyser Söze I enjoyed ever so much listening to WFB on television when I was younger. We did, however, live in more "thoughtful" times. Now the average person's attention span is barely longer than the time it takes to draw a breath. I watch The Factor from time to time and Bill O'Reilly is a good man. I agree with him on many things. He gives to others to the tune of millions and millions of dollars a year and on his show he gives opposing viewpoints a chance to present their case. he has some strange positions on cell phones and the internet, as if the internet is "alice" instead of a simple tool for humans to express what kind of people they are. We do not now, unfortunately, have anyone like William Buckley and I miss his sound reasoning very much. I can not even watch "our" president on television without wanting to puke. Check our Saul Alinsky and Bill in another video... Alinsky can't even put a proper sentence together.
What?! It is utterly refreshing. No great thinker I know of believed that the point of life is merely living for its own sake, but rather HOW and WHY one lives. WFB was endearingly frank and clear-sighted about this here, to his very great credit. It is touching, honest, poignant, but hardly sad.
Gerry Cooney I've seen very little of Bill O Reilly but I think the premise is that he is the star of his show, and his opinions are the drawing card. Charlie Rose isn't in that position. But he yammers on and on and on anyway...desperate to impress with his erudition and moderation and penetrating insight, but he's dull as dishwater. His ego is completely unjustified. HE needs to take a few lessons from Brian Lamb at C-Span. Ask a succinct question, shut the fuck up, let the guest answer. Repeat.
Not necessarily. Olivia De Havilland (age 101), who starred in "Gone With the Wind"(1939), has just sued FX over her depiction in the mini-series "Bette and Joan". **SHE'S VERY MUCH ALIVE...**
Charlie Rose, as usual , asks a question and then doesn't let his guest answer but answers it himself. Rather than listening to Rose babble on I would have dearly loved to have heard Buckley speak some more on the profound subject of Death.
This is how you feel when you have had a life well lived, without much regret. Buckley was fortunate to do exactly what he wanted to do for a living and accomplished much worth merit. To simply "exist" after so many years is not much of an enticement.
Death has a way of stressing the point that humility should accompany-this inevitable Event-and i can notice-what great humility he speaks with-while preparing for his demise! I have really admired Mr. Buckley for having disposed all the gestures, which before-he exaggeratedly would represent as an elitist, a man full of obvious arrogance, and superior intelligence; non-pareil. I am very happy to have seen this, uploader-for i would not have expected it! i thank you.
I see what you mean. I thoroughly concur. (I am 48, btw). One only has to see a lot of Buckley's interviews on RU-vid with people like Chomsky, Leary and Ginsberg to see how far our television media has fallen in the last 30 years, just to use a singular example. Now the left slags off the right and vice versa, merely on the grounds that they are "not like them" and this is also happening on a world-wide cultural level. Dark times indeed!
There's a bit of a difference in being a warrior for a cause and being a person who just spreads hate and disconcernation. I approached the thought posed by greenrate about how unspectacular Buckleys statements regarding the lack of fervor for the rest of his life from that aspect. I didn't know Mr. Buckley (as you don't know me), and I commented on what I would feel knowing what I know of him from his public life. It is a surprsing comment from someone of his ilk, and my attempt to reason it.
I'm a progressive. I agree with Gore Vidal on most issues and disagree with Buckley on just about everything. But I found his comments here--about death--to be arresting.
He advocated the illegal/immoral war in Indochina, held a fanatical position on abortion and was against the civil rights movement. He is/was only a 'national treasure' if you're morally bankrupt.
+MetrazolElectricity "Tired of life" I take he meant literally. I don't see this as a sign of depression. He's just old, living is taxing now, and he's got nothing to look forward to. Naturally, he's tired of it. But. Imagine he's 20 again, oh-la-la. He can get it up again, and is full of desires. I doubt he'd be spending a lot of time on Charlie Rose show bitching about being "tired of life", LOL.
+john dow I would add also, I think he meant that, knowing what he knew at that point and felt then as well, if he could choose to be 20 years younger, he wouldn't choose so because he probably thinks it wouldn't matter as much. Just my two cents.
+jolorulz Yea, definitely. But... Like Montaigne said, "appetite comes to me while eating", lol. My experience strongly suggests it is so. How we feel tends to be very shaky, temporary, influenced by a lot of stuff we're not even aware of, such as weather, health, and general state of mind at the moment. That's why the saints of the old avoided temptation. They knew that direct exposure may affect them in unwanted ways.
Bill was one of my great heroes, but he was also for me the living testimony of the fact that really smart people, really good people, even really wise people, can be very wrong about so many things.
Well said Robert L, and I agree with you. I didn't agree with Buckley on all of his positions, but he was articulate, educated, and passionate. I still vividly remember watching Buckley crushing liberal dimwits in back and forth exchanges after a speech at U.C. Berkeley. It was like watching a lion toying with mice. Vaya con Dios, Mr. Buckley.
Agree. Never agreed with his politics BUT I so admired him for his erudition, education, and snobbery YUP! I think being a erudite snob is under rated! I consider myself a snob and the up-side is...It FORCES me to be better, smarted, more well read, traveled etc....I love being a snob. if i roast in hell, well...I'll have lots of space
@@gregevans1502 maybe you ought to watch chomsky crushing the life out of buckley in their debate......but thats not the point...the point is idiots like you see only with your bias...and just how would you know who was intelligent or not?..lol
@@jadezee6316 LOL...as if Chomsky's irrelevant, unicorn riding idealistic socialist posturing counts as genuine intellect. What a typically sour, ugly, ad hominem comment from a left wing ideologue. Be gone
Someone above wrote that it was recorded on May 7, 2007 and that Buckley died. On February 27th 2008. I hope I got those numbers right because I can't go backwards here to check and write it again...
Death should be Embraced and celebrated, it is the main purpose of life. Without life we have no death to look forward to, the only thing worse than living is knowing there'll be no death at the end
He’s clearly clinically depressed. The give away is that he says not a word about his religion, which always was of great importance to him. His literary hero Evelyn Waugh would have said something like ‘I prefer life in Heaven to that on earth.’
that great shark like smile to the end. we are losing one of the greatest generations of thinkers and writers and humanity will be poorer for it. We are doomed
One has to remember that Mr Buckley would not have viewed death in the same way a lot of our largely Agnostic or Atheist society would have done. In Christianity death is a transformation not an end.
In this video, Buckley has Bell's Palsy, a paralysis of the left side of the face. And those familiar with it can tell he's had it awhile to the extent it was unlikely to get better.
This . . . is a little surprising to me. The conclusions Buckley makes, I have no problem with. I share them. But his reasons seem to me unworthy. To say that one hasn't the energy or the resources to continue is one thing. But to say that there is nothing worth continuing for . . . reveals a poverty of emotional imagination.
Well I don't know if things are different today than back in 2007. But today they have a contract called a "DNR Order" (Do Not Resuscitate Order). Meaning, you don't want doctors and medical personnel to save your life if you are in a life-threatening situation in which only medical attention can save you. Hospitals today try to push family members into singing one for their elderly loved-ones. This is called "advanced, modern healthcare". But don't get me wrong, I would not want to be resuscitated because I am not afraid to die and life in this world is a bore and a literal pain in the ass. 60+ years of living is enough for me and I am not looking forwards to 70s and 80's or, god forbid, beyond. Very few people have healthy, painless lives past 65 or 70. Increasing the life-expectancy rates is a complete disservice to society - it only benefits the medical community and those who are afraid of death.
I couldn't agree with you more and essentially, I think, that was precisely the point that Buckley was trying to make. It would be equivalent to staying in high school more than four years and even the fourth year becomes a bore.. you simply want to move on.
I endorse your comment, even if I am at the other end of the spectrum to most of this man's arguments. However, I do not believe we are doomed: it will always continue to be even when we are not, for there was no beginning and therefore is no end, despite what the Bible or Science says.
Of course it would be nice to keep the body, memory, and quick wit of a 20-something year old, however even all of that is not much in the place of the knowledge and wisdom one gains over a lifetime and even without physical age i intuit the notion that a sense of tiredness of living would still persist.
I don't gather that from this. I find that what he's saying is the " knowledge and wisdom one gains over a lifetime and even without physical age" is useless and meaningless regardless of whether "you have done it or not"... What he was saying before the interrogator was hounding him about his funeral and what music he will be playing is the crux of this interview.
I was wrong to say he was clinically depressed. He clearly was functioning at a high level. Maybe life just didnt offer the pleasures it once did and as a Catholic, Buckley was looking forward to the promises of his faith.
How many of you here in the comments are even 50 or 60 yet? Have any of you accomplish everything you wanted to in life yet? Say, have you designed and built your own home, maintained it for 20 years. Have you spoken on national radio where millions of people were listening to you talk? Have you had your science technical awarded and published art work featured in NASA websites, and other noted famous venues? Have you been invited to lecture many times to students in schools and universities, or in a large public venue? Now tell me, how many of you here are over 80 years of age yet?
Since a lot of "virtue" somehow involves self-sacrifice it seems quite at odds with the "modern" way of living, especially in the corrupted (IMHO) form of individualism which seems to pervade it. Hence the conflict between modernism and - idealised - previous thought structures like Islam and Christianity (although they make the mistake of projecting a "Golden Age" in the past). It's a problem, no doubt about it.
@tonydepalma Sorry, but that's not right. From Merriam-Webster: 2 a : disposition in politics to preserve what is established b : a political philosophy based on tradition and social stability, stressing established institutions, and preferring gradual development to abrupt change. In fact, the inception of our country stands at odds with the heart of conservativism. They fought to change both the political system (monarchy) and its established choice of religion (Chruch of England).
It's tough to hear anyone say they're tired of life, but I imagine that when William F Buckley, of all people, is losing his vocabulary, that's God's way of saying the ride's over.
Or maybe all his prestige and fame was basically a result of being born who he was born as. And that's a crushing conclusion on a man to draw at the end.
Only the ego in me would dream of claiming to know the cause of virtue; I wish it were true! I would hazard that it comes from good upbringing, which is predicated on a stable, undisturbed "family". I would further hazard that it in some way stems from the process which is termed "the study of philosophy" (showing my classical leanings) and - possibly (and I'm not being facetious here) - "God". It is summed up by what is termed the Golden Rule, which is not culture specific. It is not political
