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Speaker 1: Judge Harvey Wilkinson, one of the nation's most eminent federal judges,

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Speaker 1: has a new memoir called All Falling Faiths, Reflections on

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Speaker 1: the promise and Failure of the nineteen sixties. Judge Wilkinson

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Speaker 1: has served on the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals in

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Speaker 1: Virginia since four when he was appointed by President Ronald Reagan.

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Speaker 1: Over the years, he's been mentioned many times as a

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Speaker 1: possible nominee to the Supreme Court, and he is also

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Speaker 1: a prolific writer of articles and books. His new book

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Speaker 1: looks at the impact of the nineteen sixties on American society.

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Speaker 1: Judge Wilkinson, welcome back to Bloomberg Law. That's a pleasure

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Speaker 1: to be with you. Tell us, Judge, why did you

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Speaker 1: write this book? Well, I thought I wasn't sure I

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Speaker 1: was going to write it. I thought I had left

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Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties behind. I thought it was in the

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Speaker 1: rear view mirra for a while. Uh, And then I

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Speaker 1: found it had only gone into remission. And the experiences

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Speaker 1: that the things that I've witnessed and the divisions that

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Speaker 1: I've watched over the past two years, um made me

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Speaker 1: realize that so much about the nineteen sixties is storming back,

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Speaker 1: and so I thought I would would, would would write

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Speaker 1: a memoir which would implore younger generations not to repeat

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Speaker 1: the experience that we have had, and also would urge

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Speaker 1: my own generation, where we did so much in our

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Speaker 1: younger years to drive America part to spend our later

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Speaker 1: years trying to heal and maybe if it is all possible,

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Speaker 1: to bring this wonderful country back together. And I wanted

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Speaker 1: to do it in a memoir because it's been so

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Speaker 1: much shouting about the nineteen sixties and so much screaming,

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Speaker 1: and so many people heading for the barricades, and I thought,

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Speaker 1: maybe this is a little we need to have a

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Speaker 1: little bit different approach, hand in hand approach which just

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Speaker 1: indicates it was like to live through those years, um,

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Speaker 1: the good and the bad, and basically why we don't

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Speaker 1: want to repeat them. Judge Wilkinson, you're write about the

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Speaker 1: wreckage of the nineteen sixties having an imprint on what's

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Speaker 1: happening today. Explain what you mean by the wreckage and

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Speaker 1: the lasting effect it's had. Well it in so many ways, Um,

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Speaker 1: Just to begin, the big part of the wreckage was

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Speaker 1: the harm done to the spirit of tolerance in higher education,

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Speaker 1: and the sixties pioneered such techniques which I wish it,

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Speaker 1: which I witnessed firsthand, sitting in an administration buildings and

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Speaker 1: grabbing microphones from speakers and shouting down speakers and roughing

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Speaker 1: up speakers, um and it was like people had had

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Speaker 1: stopped listening. And there was a a negativity to imparted

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Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixties about everything about America. There was

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Speaker 1: a negative attitude taken to the to the private sector

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Speaker 1: in some of the history courses I took, and it

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Speaker 1: was a negative attitude taken toward American history which was

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Speaker 1: just portrayed. Sometimes there's one long saga of oppression. And

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Speaker 1: this is not a perfect country by any means. The

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Speaker 1: private sector isn't perfect. We've had shameful chapters of segregation

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Speaker 1: and slavery. But there's so much good about this country

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Speaker 1: and it was overlooked at in in a significant part

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Speaker 1: during the nineteen sixties, and there the the good side

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Speaker 1: of the American story wasn't told. And uh, there's only

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Speaker 1: so much negativity toward a country that that it that

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Speaker 1: it can endure, and that's only part of the damage. Judge,

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Speaker 1: during the in one of your chapters, you about law

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Speaker 1: you call the sixties and a a period of quote lawlessness

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Speaker 1: writ large? What did what did you mean by that?

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Speaker 1: Because people were taking the law into their own hands.

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Speaker 1: It saddened me. Um. The assassinations, of course, were the

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Speaker 1: most horrible example of it. Of I still remember what

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Speaker 1: I was doing each night on the Kennedy John Kennedy's assassination,

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Speaker 1: Robert Kennedy's assassination, Martin Luther King's assassination by people who

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Speaker 1: thought that their vision of the right was more important

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Speaker 1: than the law. And then there were a series of

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Speaker 1: riots and Watts and Rochester and and Harlem and Newark

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Speaker 1: and Detroit, which in which great damage was inflicted on

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Speaker 1: the livelihood of shopkeepers and on motors. And then there

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Speaker 1: were police departments who were charged with enforcing the law.

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Speaker 1: And in Birmingham with Bull Connor and his his his

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Speaker 1: police dogs, and in Chicago at the nineteen sixty eight

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Speaker 1: Democratic Convention, and at Stonewall in New York. Judge Wilkinson,

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Speaker 1: you were appointed by Republican Ronald Reagan. You are known

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Speaker 1: generally as a conservative judge, for whatever that means. And

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Speaker 1: you but in the book you talk about some of

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Speaker 1: the assassinations we were talking about earlier in the show

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Speaker 1: during the nineteen sixties, including that of Robert Kennedy, and

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Speaker 1: in writing about Kennedy, it seemed to me you were

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Speaker 1: fairly admiring. Yet he's an icon of the left these days.

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Speaker 1: You know, liberals tend to idolize him. What does Robert

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Speaker 1: Kennedy mean to you? Well, you know, he represented hope

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Speaker 1: to me. Uh. First of all, Um, he simply along

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Speaker 1: with with with John Kennedy and King Uh, they represented

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Speaker 1: hope in this country. And I think they rejected the

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Speaker 1: neilism of the of the nineteen sixties, UM, because they

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Speaker 1: were great believers in America. And that's what made their

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Speaker 1: death so immensely sad. And when Robert Kennedy, he went

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Speaker 1: to Appalachia, he went to he went to the Delta UM,

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Speaker 1: he went to the ghettos, he went to the Indian

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Speaker 1: Reservations UM. And his message was, look, don't give up

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Speaker 1: on this country. And that's why UM, I admired him

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Speaker 1: so because he he could see the need for reforms,

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Speaker 1: but he also saw the good side of America. And

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Speaker 1: that's what I'm trying to convey in and in in

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Speaker 1: this part of what I'm trying to convey in this

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Speaker 1: uh memoir myself is that we're not a We're not

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Speaker 1: a sainted nation, but we're neither are we a sinning nation? Um,

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Speaker 1: we are. In Robert Kennedy's life, I think helped to

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Speaker 1: represent this. We are a nation that's tried. And whatever

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Speaker 1: else you can say about the United States, and you

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Speaker 1: may you may seek to criticize it, and that's fine.

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Speaker 1: You may seek to praise it, and that's fine too.

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Speaker 1: But what Robert Kennedy saw is America will never give

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Speaker 1: up on itself. Um. He was a man who tried,

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Speaker 1: and this country is a nation that has tried. We've

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Speaker 1: tried to get it right. You can't reach utopia in

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Speaker 1: a day, but dog gone, this wonderful country of ours

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Speaker 1: has tried. Judge. We're divided now into Red America and

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Speaker 1: Blue America more and more. Are there lessons from the

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Speaker 1: sixties that could change that in the future, Well, I

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Speaker 1: think so because the um what the sixties told is

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Speaker 1: that we we have these class divisions that were sewn in,

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Speaker 1: and we had many other kinds of differences that were

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Speaker 1: sewn in. But we have to go um at at

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Speaker 1: at this together. And one of the things that I'm

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Speaker 1: trying to do is at the end of this memoir, UM,

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Speaker 1: I will hope that we will overcome, that we can

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Speaker 1: try to overcome the great divisions of the nineties sixties,

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Speaker 1: because the sixties teaches us, really that there's almost only

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Speaker 1: so much of this recurring rancor and bitterness that even

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Speaker 1: the most beautiful and wonderful country, as well as he is,

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Speaker 1: UM can sustain. And I'm hopeful and in my memoir

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Speaker 1: that at the end of it, whether you love the

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Speaker 1: sixties or you dislike the sixties intensely, UM, that you

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Speaker 1: we will be able to appreciate as Americans the other

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Speaker 1: side of the sixties argument, because the sixties showed us

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Speaker 1: just how damaging division can be to society, and anyone

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Speaker 1: that lives through it knows the scars and the wounds

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Speaker 1: that a decade like that inflicted. And it teaches really

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Speaker 1: the need to understand each other, to listen to each other,

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Speaker 1: to try to heal, because we can't go on the

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Speaker 1: way we're doing well. You know, Judge, a lot of

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Speaker 1: people would say that the way you have to persuade

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Speaker 1: people to see how you feel is through protests. And

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Speaker 1: you write a fair amount in the book about protests

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Speaker 1: in the sixties, and in fact, you right that the

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Speaker 1: civil rights movement, which was non violent, was uplifting, but

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Speaker 1: that you feel that many miscalculated and thought that law

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Speaker 1: breaking could be limited to good causes and UM, So

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Speaker 1: what what's your view of what went wrong with protest

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Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixties. Well, something changed in the middle

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Speaker 1: of the decade, and UM, UM, because in nineteen sixty

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Speaker 1: three you had that great March on Washington, and then

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Speaker 1: you had that wonderful march from Selma to Montgomery UM

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Speaker 1: in nineteen sixty five, and it led to the passage

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Speaker 1: of the UH, the Great Civil Rights Act. But then

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Speaker 1: you asked what changed? And for some reason, UM, the

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Speaker 1: very successful tactics of UM nonviolent resistance and non violence

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Speaker 1: that Martin Luther King had pioneered. UM, the movement kept

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Speaker 1: moving left. In the situations that were Black power, for example,

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Speaker 1: was a different kind of UM operation in the Southern

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Speaker 1: Christian Leadership Conference. So that was was one thing that changed.

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Speaker 1: But I think the major thing that changed was UM.

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Speaker 1: The Vietnam War and when it came along UH, particularly

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Speaker 1: as it heated up in the latter part of the decade,

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Speaker 1: it inculcated UM so much bitterness and so much distrust

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Speaker 1: on the part of citizens to their government that that

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Speaker 1: it just put everything in into a more violent temper

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Speaker 1: and more violent frame of mind. And law was a

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Speaker 1: casualty of that. But Vietnam was a a dreadful miscalculation,

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Speaker 1: and along with some other with some other things, that

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Speaker 1: it changed the whole tone and tenor of the decade

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Speaker 1: to where the last five years of it we're far

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Speaker 1: more acrimonious than the way it it's in the way

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Speaker 1: it started out, because the early days of the civil

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Speaker 1: rights movement in particular, we're quite moving and lyrical, um

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Speaker 1: in in every way, and then along came Vietnam. I

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Speaker 1: want to turn for a second to your writing itself.

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Speaker 1: Judge how different is it to write a book like this,

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Speaker 1: which is so personal, compared to writing a legal opinion

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Speaker 1: which you have a flair for well legal opinion. UM.

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Speaker 1: I love the discipline of legal writing, and I think

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Speaker 1: that that contributes to the beauty of it. UM. It's

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Speaker 1: always good to work within within forms and frameworks, but

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Speaker 1: at the end of the day, sometimes and and and

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Speaker 1: on weekends, I just feel a need to sort of

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Speaker 1: UM run over open land without those constraints. And as

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Speaker 1: much as I love my colleagues on the court and

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Speaker 1: they're wonderful people and I do UM sometimes it's it's

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Speaker 1: it's fun to write in a way that you can

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Speaker 1: just um air it out and say what you believe

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Speaker 1: without the need to convince one or two other very

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Speaker 1: fine judges that you're not completely crazy. So these are

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Speaker 1: just two very different forms of writing. I love both

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Speaker 1: of them, but uh, one of arms one one gives

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Speaker 1: you a greater freedom, uh, the other has more more constraints.

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Speaker 1: They're both very necessary. Um. I love both forms of them,

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Speaker 1: but I just I need to vary between the two.

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Speaker 1: I just can't do one exclusively. Well. In in doing

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Speaker 1: this writing which is in and it is an easy

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Speaker 1: book to read, I must say the the one of

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Speaker 1: the things you talk about is that you know, sort

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Speaker 1: of latter day terrorists and others who seek to inflict

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Speaker 1: harm around the globe are sort of the inheritors of

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Speaker 1: some of the mistakes you see in the nineteen sixties.

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Speaker 1: Why did what made you say that? Well, again, it

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Speaker 1: comes back to this whole view that if you think

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Speaker 1: your view of your utopia and your own view um

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Speaker 1: is right and indisputably right, so that nobody else's view

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Speaker 1: really matters. UM, you get to the point of just

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Speaker 1: taking law into your own hands and you put yourself

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Speaker 1: above the law, and that if you then when that

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Speaker 1: starts to happen, then then civilization is we've known it

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Speaker 1: UM is impaired. And the thing that makes it so

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Speaker 1: much more dangerous is that the amplification uh that that

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Speaker 1: people who take law into their own hands, they enjoy

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Speaker 1: the amplification sometimes of social media, and the the weapons

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Speaker 1: of destruction are so much more lethal than they were

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Speaker 1: UM during the nineteen sixties, so small minorities of terrorists

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Speaker 1: in everything who inherit the idea that that law is

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Speaker 1: if any one person, how anyone person wants to define it.

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Speaker 1: That was bad in the sixties. But the dangerous thing

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Speaker 1: is that when the theory of law breaking carried forward

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Speaker 1: into our present day, the means of destruction and the

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Speaker 1: means of amplification have made it more of a threat

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Speaker 1: and have made it more you though, and this is

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Speaker 1: one of I think the very unhappy legacies that the

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Speaker 1: nineteen sixties have left America. Well our thanks to Judge

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Speaker 1: Harvey Wilkinson, whose book All falling Faith's reflection on the

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Speaker 1: promise and the failure of the nineteen sixties is a

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Speaker 1: fascinating read. We appreciate your being here on Bloomberg Law