Firing Line with William F. Buckley Jr. - "The Dalai Lama Looks Back"

I missed this when it originally aired in the 80's.
Two things were missing from this interview. The first was the Dalai Lama's interpreter. There were two assistants there but they didn't have enough ability to translate English to Tibetan and couldn't help him very much with the questions. Buckley didn't seem willing or able to speak in more simplified English and so missed out on what could have been the Dalai Lama's complete response to all the questions. The Dalai Lama is extremely intelligent and his confusion with some of the questions was due to Buckley's speech pattern and choice of words not the Dalai Lama's inability to grasp them.

Wm F Buckley Jr meets the Dalai Lama
This episode of Firing Line is from 1979, the Dalai Lama's first visit to the States. The very urgent and passionate topic is non violence in the face of Communist aggression. Buckley, the Dalai Lama and the third man, a former diplomat and cabinet member from Jimmy Carter's crew, all urgently want to know if it's possible to stand up to aggression and triumph with non violence. His Holiness' English is very basic and he has to fit refined thought into coarse language ability, but he does manage to it more or less. Actually, Wm Buckley is harder to understand than HHDL. It's nice to watch this clip together with the April 2012 Piers Morgan interview with HHDL. His views are unchanged, but now he can express himself and argue closely for his approach.



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