Patriot radio host Seth Leibsohn in Arizona often has us on his terrific radio show, and yesterday he and his regular Monday guest Chris Buskirk, who curates the DownStreamPolitics website, were on the air discussing my post from over the weekend about Harry Jaffa and how “The Cold War Never Ended.” Seth and Chris were actually present for the lecture that I quoted from, the lucky guys.
Before going to a sound clip below, you should know this about Seth, from his recollection of encountering Jaffa as an undergraduate. You see, Seth was a college leftist—until he encountered Jaffa. I’ll let him take up the story, as he told it to National Review last year:
The next day [after a Jaffa public lecture], from my leftist point of view, I wrote and published an editorial highly critical of Jaffa. Jaffa read it, called me, and asked me to stand by what I wrote by debating him publicly. I declined, saying something like, “Sir, there’s no way, I’m a junior in college and you’re a master of rhetoric and intellect.” He said, “Well how about I buy you a cup of coffee, then?”
And so began the lifelong learning and total change of intellectual pursuit to which I owe my whole worldview. Harry took my hand, started introducing me to a line of thought and reason I never even knew existed, walked me through everything he could teach me, and never let go. I bought every book he ever wrote and took them with me everywhere I lived, only to reread them again and again over the course of the last 25 or so years, always learning something new. He changed my whole life. Years and years of meetings, of calls, of questions I had for him; years and years of his unbelievable volumes of scholarship — I digested as much as I could and will never be able to thank him enough. Nor will there be enough room for others to tell almost exactly the same kinds of stories, of how he personally led them to a life of learning they never knew possible.
Here’s Seth and Chris, discussing Power Line, Jaffa, and political correctness on campus for about 12 minutes over two segments. Lots of good stuff here:
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