On the evening of February 21, 1965, Malcolm X was gunned down in Harlem--"not by Ku Klux Klan agents," as WFB reminds us, "but by agents of Elijah Muhammad, the reigning Black Muslim leader."

Could the Strategic Defense Initiative really work? Wouldn't it destabilize relations with the Soviet Union? Dr. Keyworth's technical credentials are unassailable, and he proves able to explain difficult concepts so that non-physicists can grasp them.

With the Democratic National Convention still nearly a month away, the primaries had ended with the party firmly in the hands of what WFB calls "the Henry Wallace-George McGovern" wing. Walter Mondale was the presumptive nominee, although neither Gary Hart nor Jesse Jackson had formally conceded.

With the Democratic National Convention still nearly a month away, the primaries had ended with the party firmly in the hands of what WFB calls "the Henry Wallace-George McGovern" wing. Walter Mondale was the presumptive nominee, although neither Gary Hart nor Jesse Jackson had formally conceded.

William A. Rusher, Jim Leach

Mr. Braley is a slow and deliberate talker, and so this show lacks the energy of some. But many of the insights are acute. RB: "Watergate was a foreign affair. By that I mean the origins of Watergate and the passion aroused by Watergate was a passion not directed specifically against the instances of Watergate, but against the Administration that continued to pursue the Vietnam War against the advice of the New York Times and its allies."

Taped on 12/11/1984. The 1984 election suggested, as WFB puts it, "the collapse of liberalism as we have known it during the past half century," and he asks his two guests, one on the right, the other on the far left, where liberalism is likely to go from here. Messrs. Hitchens and Tyrrell actually talk more about the past than about the future, and it is illuminating (when they don't indulge in billingsgate) to get such different takes on the same set of events. CH: "I believe that the American Left, in starting the civil-rights movement for black Americans, in combating an unjust war in Indochina, and in beginning the emancipation of women ... changed the way everyone thinks and the way everyone lives ... the whole world is in debt to the American Left for these three enterprises." RET: "In the Sixties and Seventies the liberals achieved most of the things they set out to achieve, particularly welfare and civil rights, and then were overtaken by a lust for power. They refused to notice that they had indeed achieved these things ..." - The Firing Line Archives @ The Hoover Institute, Stanford University