As prepared for delivery

Remarks at Tribute to Bill Buckley and *National Review*

October 6, 2005

Henry A. Kissinger

For over fifty years, Bill Buckley has been a friend – a staunch support in every crisis and an inspiration amidst the political turmoil of the times.

It cannot be said that our relationship began auspiciously. What brought us together was a journal called *Confluence* that I – then a second year graduate student – was editing. Its purpose was to reconcile European and American attitudes by inviting authors from both sides of the Atlantic to write essays on the same topic. Shortly after the publication of *God and Man at Yale*, I invited Bill to contribute. I cannot recall what possessed me to make this – in the Harvard context – foolhardy decision. I have no recollection of what I expected. In fact, there was no basis for forming any expectation because, in the 1950s, conservatives were an unknown species at Harvard.

When I read Bill's draft, all ambiguity vanished. By Harvard standards, it

was beyond unorthodox, verging on the sacrilegious. So we turned the
article down, preserving our prospects for Harvard tenure. It is not an action
of which I am proud – though no doubt we found an elevated justification at
the time.

Bill gave me my comeuppance during the controversy over détente when he
said – in my presence – on “Firing Line”: “Henry Kissinger reminds me of an
athlete carried around the arena to the applause of the multitude while
someone else is winning the race.”

Despite unpromising beginnings, Bill and I became close friends. He has
always been tolerant of deviant opinions, and his civilized urbanity that had
vanquished such veterans of ideological struggle as Ken Galbraith found it
easy to disarm a Rockefeller Republican -- so much so that as time went on,
Bill occasionally appointed himself as my conscience. For example, he was
part of the press corps accompanying President Nixon to China. While I was

2

CJ

briefing the journalists on the Shanghai Communiqué, Bill respected our friendship too much to ask a hostile question. But he made sure to sit in the front row with a raised eyebrow that was not lowered once during an hour's briefing.

Bill could leave me defensive amidst general adulation because I cherished his integrity, his warmth, his serenity and his values. Having escaped a totalitarian society, I appreciated his resistance to the politics of manipulation. When Bill first appeared on the scene, the dominant agenda tended towards the homogenization of societies, without regard to history, culture and circumstance. Bill's message was that every society must tread a path partially charted in its past, that its future depends on the sustaining value it can draw from its roots. The dominant agenda treated society as a mechanism subject to continuous tinkering. Bill's conservatism saw society as an organism requiring its own special nurturing. This is why conservatives strive to replace the tyranny of programs with respect for the unknowable

3

and an acute sense of responsibility for the possibilities of unintended consequences. The insistence on imposing perfection in a finite time is a cause of much of humanity's suffering. Real conservatism believes in absolute values but is willing to reach them in imperfect stages. This humility - which in Bill's case could be described as flamboyant - is the prerequisite to achieving the ultimate liberation of man and societies to evoke the best within them.

The most difficult challenge for any society is to chart the path between its past and its future. To travel that road, courageous guides are needed, not afraid to stand alone and capable of both battles and reconciliations.

Bill has performed this service for our society.

Let me conclude with a quotation from Winston Churchill:

4

"What is the use of living, if it be not to strive for noble causes and to make
this muddled world a better place for those who will live in it after we are
gone? How else can we put ourselves in harmonious relation with the great
verities and consolations of the infinite and the eternal?"

Bill always has recalled us to the great verities. It has been a privilege to be
his contemporary, an honor to be his friend.

5