Politico’s excerpt of Open To Debate features several pages from Chapter Four- Chivalrous Pugilism: How Firing Line tried to KO Women’s Lib
William F. Buckley Was No Feminist, But He Was an (Unintentional) Ally
By inviting female intellectuals onto his TV show and taking their arguments seriously, Buckley showed that their ideas were worth listening to—giving feminists a platform to reach an influential audience.
“William F. Buckley was not a feminist.
This hardly constitutes a shocking revelation. In the 1960s, the women’s liberation movement was not a welcome cultural turn for him. He could, by contrast, more fully understand the pressing concerns of the civil rights movement, and acknowledged that racism was a pernicious problem. Likewise, he understood that countercultural youth—antiwar activists, poets, musicians—were seeking a better world, even as he disagreed about what made the world flawed and what would make it better.”