Muhammad Ali and William F. Buckley

Muhammad Ali died last night. Because we live in a time that hates to know its own history — some days, hates to know anything at all — few people remember that there was a time when Ali was one of the most polarizing people in America.

Although he later converted away, Ali was, for a time, one of the most prominent members of the Nation of Islam, and he embraced wholeheartedly its radical racial politics. I won’t pretend I don’t find those politics hateful and disgusting, but it was against that backdrop that Ali made his famous refusal to go to Vietnam, a stand which did cost him three years of his prime.

So to remember a forgotten part of who Ali was, take a spare hour today and watch this old episode of Firing Line, where William F. Buckley interviews and debates Ali at length:

As a side note, the video shows once again how poor our political thinkers have gotten. Ali, terrible though his views are at this point in his life, has far more to say than, say, Ta-Nehisi Coates with his arguments-by-juxtaposition and his comic books. And on the other side, Buckley can actually stand to let Ali finish a sentence because he can make an argument. He can make an argument because he thinks about things and knows things. Hannity would have just blown out a vocal chord.