Harvard Hates America
Boutillier, John Le
BOOK REVIEW Harvard Hates America John Le Boutillier / Gateway Editions / $7.95 Richard Brookhiser LLarvard Hates America is John Le Boutillier's first book, a record, at 25, of his political...
...Oimilar confusions mar the chapters which give the book its name, Le Boutillier's thesis is that Harvard is infested with elitists, and elitists are bad...
...Thus most of the money raised by the corporate political action committees in 1978 went to buy the favors of liberal incumbents...
...Thus a market economy counters even the greed of Harvard Business School graduates...
...For the first hour of the class we dis cussed standard questions concerning storage costs, transportation methods, and product " packaging...
...Boy, I really don' t know what I have done The last statement, at least, is true, for once Le Boutillier gets down to details the "major revolution" sorts itself into a collection of proposals, mostly half-baked...
...These principles in turn suggest at "new civil and political philosophy" which Le Boutillier names The New Homestead (his caps, his italics...
...Note, however, wliat he chooses as an instance of capitalist corruption: I'll never forget the time early in the fall term when we had a case dealing with the inventory practices of a company producing medical catheters...
...and businessmen are earnest players in the interest-group sweepstakes which Le Boutillier deplores...
...Le Boutillier is no more informative in his discussion of the liberal elite of Harvard College "I don't doubt the Liberals' good intentions," Le Boutillier concedes, "they do want to stop injustice, hunger and suffering...
...Le Boutillier is impressed with this concept, as are many of his acquaintances: "One good friend of mine, Dunston Wai, from the South of Sudan...said, 'John, what you are proposing is a major revolution in American political thought...
...John Le Boutillier is an ambitious and energetic man...
...Le Boutillier's crass classmates predictably think that's just fine, and Le Boutillier milks his indignation for the rest of the chapter- "Well, what about making huge profits off of sick people...
...As a responsible nation," he declares, "we are soon going to be faced with the question, 'Where should our people live?' And if, as a nation, we can reach agreement concerning basic populational priorities, then the concept of a Local Planning and Development District becomes vital to our national growth...
...The act called for local home-ownership loan funds, designed to channel capital into areas where it was "either non-existent or only available on unfavorable terms...
...Le Boutillier's catheter profiteers are said to be turning profits of 60 percent...
...until it seems that the leading growth industry in America, behind cybernetics and disco music, is the production of ruinously overpriced catheters...
...The question arises, or should arise, since, with after-tax profits running at about 5 percent, there should be a stampede of manufacturers to the catheter market-as a result of which the profit margins would sink...
...Le Boutillier's point, to be sure, is that greed is immoral-but in his haste to make it he seizes on ready-made rhetoric, and ignores the cases where capitalist amorality is firing its own house...
...A profound and major change...
...But if Le Boutillier had met Roger Starr he would know that one reason mortgage capital is "non-existent" in the first place is that the government has distorted the lending market-which knowledge wcmld suggest another, possible solution...
...but don't wait for Harvard Hates America to explain how...
...Vital indeed-unless, of course, we decide to let "the people" themselves choose where they shall live...
...The title is somewhat misleading, since Le Boutillier interspersed his studies at Harvard College and Harvard Business School with fund-raising for the Republican Party, and he interrupts his narrative to give an account of his prescriptions for the party's, and the nation's, woes...
...BOOK REVIEW Harvard Hates America John Le Boutillier / Gateway Editions / $7.95 Richard Brookhiser LLarvard Hates America is John Le Boutillier's first book, a record, at 25, of his political experiences and ruminations...
...And two paragraphs after that, he adds, "in reality, it was themselves they hated, for they suffered from a massive case of guilt...
...I am proud of it.' This," Le Boutillier goes on, "from a Harvard Ph.D...
...Then the professor said, "OK, I think there's another question here we should discuss...
...Le Boutillier draws five principles from the Homestead Act for the guidance of Republicans today: "the family frame of reference," "availability of opportunity," "incentive," "no governmental expansion," and "decentralization...
...This is quite true, and it is a truth often lost on conservatives: Capitalists are the least reliable allies of capitalism, and businessmen, in many cases, are as to get on the take as welfare queens and social scientists...
...For instance, he endorses the National Home Ownership Foundation Act, written by liberal Republican John McClaughry and introduced (unsuccessfully) in the Senate in 1967...
...McClaughry, Le Boutillier notes, is "the type of person we should'have in politics...
...What do you think of a company such as this making 60 percent profit off of a medical product...
...All these may simultaneously be true...
...Devising a philosophy, however, is more difficult, for it requires the guidance of sound ideas...
...At age 20, he was the youngest national finance chairman of a. Senate campaign in history...
...At Harvard \ Business School, Le Boutillier encounters "the Big Business mentality," and finds it "ethically and morally corrupt...
...Le Boutillier fares little better with solutions to what he identifies as "the three problems most threatening to the American family today"-homes, health care, and higher education...
...Doesn't that strike you as wrong...
...In a section devoted to ' 'New Types of Government," Le Boutillier calls for a proliferation of local and regional planning districts, without seeming to wonder how these might serve the principle of "no governmental expansion...
...As a model for the party's regeneration, Le Boutillier puts forward the Homestead Act of 1862, which allowed anyone over 21 to secure title to 162 acres of frontier, provided he worked it for five years...
...Established businesses are among the firmest supporters of the regulatory agencies which free-market economists rail against...
...But turn again to the example...
...Le Boutillier's, at least on this showing, are not enough...
...and an avowed African socialist...
...Though the requirements of the act could be fulfilled by individuals, it worked in practice to the benefit of industrious families...
...These digressions are the most interesting parts of the book...
...But, three paragraphs later, he says that "many of them are hypocrites, both intellectually and personally...
...He does not say whether the case was hypothetical or, if not, whether there were some peculiar barriers to entry in the medical supplies industry...
Vol. 12 • April 1979 • No. 4
