A Review of Richard Brookhiser at the Athenaeum And a Review of a Review

The Salvatori Center for the Study of Individual Freedom in the Modern World brought Richard Brookhiser to the Athenaeum this past week. You can watch the event in its entirety (sans Question and Answer) here.

As a Salvatori research assistant, I had the pleasure of meeting with him for a private conversation at 4:30 PM, had dinner with him at the head table, and stayed until the very end talking with him.

I must say I found the experience entirely enjoyable and have sent along some information regarding whether or not Hamilton and Madison spoke Hebrew with one another, apropos of an earlier conversation.

I enjoyed his frank discussion at our dinner table of his efforts to change the law regarding medical marijuana, advocacy for which he regards as a natural outgrowth of his principles that the law should not be capricious. (I have written elsewhere on my views of medical marijuana.)

As for the talk itself, I thought it enjoyable, if a tad bit repetitive. (I had watched him on Off the Page talk about much the same stuff.)

I was a bit disappointed by his declaring that Bill Buckley had supported segregation, without going into any of the more complicated and more nuanced discussion that people such as William Voegeli has considered.

This was an oversight I sought to remedy in the question and answer period when I pointed to the fact that William F. Buckley published a great many things from Professor Harry V. Jaffa, who has argued for a conservative understanding of human equality. When I did as much, Brookhiser admitted that Jaffa actually had changed Bill Buckley's mind.

In any event, I enjoyed the talk and I look forward to this week's Steven Hayward talk on Ronald Reagan this upcoming week.

Addendum: Of course, Charlie Sprague, being his usual pompous self, didn't feel like staying for the whole talk and left early. Normally, that would absent him from writing a review of the talk for a respectable newspaper, but oh, no, not Charlie Sprague, who has a conventional leftist opinion on nearly everything, felt obliged to weigh in and suggest, among other silly things, that the Henry Salvatori center should ask for its money back. (Where, oh where, is Sprague asking those same kinds of questions about the many truly absurd speakers, like RuPaul Charles, I wonder...)

That's kind of a cheap thing to do, Charlie. Why not let people make up their own opinions? Fortunately, there's video available for them to do just that!