Machan's Musings - David Brudnoy, RIP
by Tibor R. Machan
Boston, Mass., will never be the same. David Brudnoy, its most intelligent and high-spirited talk show personality, who broadcast from WBZ-AM, died of skin cancer, at age 64, on December 9th, after a career in various branches of journalism and media work.
I have a very special spot in my heart for David, who was the first one to review my very first book, 'The Pseudo Science of B. F. Skinner,' just after it appeared in 1974, in the pages of 'National Review,' where he was an editor at the time. We became friends shortly thereafter, sometimes linking up at one or another of the many libertarian-conservative conferences.
David was a loyal champion of human liberty all his life, moving gradually from attempting to educate Republicans and conservatives about how they ought to be more principled in their defense of the Founders’ vision, to eventually embracing the libertarian alternative outright. He taught several courses at the John F. Kennedy School of Government and indeed he was kind enough to invite me to lecture in one of his classes on the nature of human rights when I was still teaching back in Fredonia, New York. (Incidentally, such an invitation did a young professor’s career a world of good, given how the academy is mired in the nearly blind worship of prestige!)
It was after I gave this lecture to a bunch of top-of-the- line Harvard students that I figured out the main difference between my students back in Fredonia and those at Cambridge—self-confidence. None at Harvard began a question to me, following my presentation, with "This may be a stupid question." They all *knew* their questions had merit, whereas my students, who asked questions of equal substance, always tended to apologize.
Later, when David became the host of his own radio program—in addition to being a reviewer on, I believe, Boston’s PBS television station—he made absolutely no bones about his devotion to human liberty. Despite being in the center of modern liberal, welfare statist academic (as well as public) opinion, David pulled no punches but championed free minds and free markets on the air whenever he could.
So when I began to get some more of my work published in books, David immediately took the opportunity to have me on his program and the two of us went at discussing the fallacies of statism. His audience was vast—in the end reaching 38 states and Eastern Canada—and he and his guests would receive calls from every nook and cranny of the country. It was a delight to sit across from him in the studio and interact with a pretty formidable radio audience comprised of both severe critics and enthusiastic supporters of the free society.
David had a style about him that was both firm and gracious, so those with whom he disagreed seemed very rarely to get mad at him even though he shut some of them off once they proved to be insufferably thickheaded. He was openly gay from I cannot remember what year and suffered from AIDS, without, however, succumbing to the illness even after a couple of very close calls. As a gay man, libertarian, and highly cultured individual he was also a cosmopolitan, and someone who believed that individual liberty is for everyone, including for homophobes who would not extend the same civilized attitude toward him.
Although David grew up close to the budding conservative movement led by William F. Buckley, Jr., he wasn’t bitter about how so many millions of supposedly pro-American conservatives betrayed their loyalty to the Founder’s vision by urging homophobic laws and regulations or the war on drugs everywhere. David detested, mostly philosophically, such duplicitousness, yet dealt with those exhibiting it most cordially. (It must have been agonizing for his adversaries to be treated so decently, when they often lashed out at him with open venom.)
David Brudnoy’s memoirs, 'Life Is Not A Rehearsal' (Bantam, 1997), are a wonderful, racy and cheerful account of his adventuresome life. It conveys how one can fare well even in a world in which all too many people wish one ill.
Discuss this Article (4 messages)
|
