For the Record / Memoirs of a Dissident Publisher
Regnery, Henry & Morley, Felix
B00K IN REVIEWS - "For the Record / Memoirs of a Dissident Publisher" sprang from the Old (Jewish) Left. This rebirth, which the author spells out in an epilogue, will spring from the same sources whence it first saw the light of day, capitalism and...
...military preparations yield big govern32 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1980 Unpredictable Reading From An U,nlikelySou ". .an intellectually respectable forum for the dissemination of, believe it it or not, Ideas...
...Why the parting of ways...
...ergo, the Communist threat shouldn't and doesn't exist...
...4 c u t t i n g edge in American religious t h o u g h t . " -Michael Novak [ ] One-year subscription . . . $9 [ ] One-year Canadian or foreign subscription . . . $11 [S3 Sample copy . . . $2 [ ] One-year student or retired person's subscription . . . $7 Mail to: NAME ~Please o,,~t o, woe~ New Oxford Review Department M-I STREET ADDRESS 6013 Lawton Ave...
...Morley, cherishing the structure of checks and balances in foreign as well as domestic policy, maintains he is only being consistent...
...and there was simply not enough powerful equipment on the ground to take out wellemplaced artillery...
...forces...
...he recalls that Bach on his deathbed asked his family to sing "Before Thy Throne With This I Come...
...It is true that some T-33 trainers and Sea Furies survived the air strikes and caused heavy damage to B-26 support missions and to the invading force, most particularly to two of the invasion vessels...
...COMMONSENSE is an avowedly partisan publication which rests on the premise that the partisan contest for votes must also be a contest of ideas.The Ideas it attracts come from those, not exclusively Republicans, who value the concept of political parties as Instruments for the introduction of Ideas into the policy debate...
...Karl O'Lessker in The American Spectator "...published occasionally under the unlikely sponsorship of the Republican National Committee...
...aN$, I ehrnan /mann Nedl ~baum I r L. BerRe r Burkley r-~d C Ikle Jck WOod Number I A Republican Journal of Thought and Opinion--according to conservative columnist Patrick Buchanan, "a phrase which until lately would have been dismissed as a contradiction in terms...
...What makes this split between two former colleagues generally interesting is their normality...
...This rebirth, which the author spells out in an epilogue, will spring from the same sources whence it first saw the light of day, capitalism and antiSemitism...
...Articles, reviews, significant news, etc...
...Joseph P. Duggan The Greensboro Record "Rumor has it that the thing is actually quite presentable...
...Maturing, monopolistic capitalist society" will prove a hostile environment for Jews who, as small businessmen, professionals, managers, and administrators, "stand outside of the politico-economic core where real power is vested...
...and for accommodating them to the diverse desires of a pluralistic people who despite what they hold separately can say in common, "we hold these t r u t h s . . . " I I .I I I I I I t l I I m m Please enter my subscription to COMMONSENSE for one year [4 issues] and [] bill me $12 enclosed...
...begins a typical sentence...
...Under its auspices, Regnery published a series of books and pamphlets which soon grew into a separate company of his own...
...Oakland, CA 94618 ClTV STATE ZrP coPE PAYMENT MUST ACCOMPANY ORDER . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . FOR THE RECORD Felix Morley / Regnery/Gateway / $15.00 MEMOIRS OF A DISSIDENT PUBLISHER Henry Regnery / Harcourt BraceJovanovich / $12.95 Richard Brookhiser I n the late 1940s, when rightwingers were considered hicks or pinheads, Felix Morley and Henry Regnery helped midwife the modern conservative intellectual movement, and their autobiographies offer, among other things, some interesting insights into the movement's nature and direction...
...Yet, beyond these general professions, Morley says almost nothing about religion, and what little he does say is garbled or eccentric (he refers at one point to the parable of the camel and the needle's eye as a "superstition...
...Rather, it would be but one consequence of an impoverishment--p0ssibly already in its initial stages--of all Americans, brought about more by accumulated confusion, ineptitude, and politial paralysis than by actual malice...
...Morley also opposes special exertions against the Soviet Union today...
...Human Events marked a juncture, a switching point, afteL which the thinking of the two men began slowly, glacially, to diverge...
...both, moreover, cite religion as a necessary foundation of freedom and social virtue...
...THE BAY OF PIGS: THE UNTOLD STORY Peter Wyden / Simon & Schuster / $!2.95 Stephen Bryen I have never worked with Hollywood in mind, but if I did, I would be sorely tempted to write a book as Peter Wyden has...
...Clearly the brigade had to survive on its own, or fail...
...Peter L. Berger on Religion and the AmeriCan Future Donald G. Bloesch, Thomas Howard, and Robert E. Webber on the Chicago Call J.M...
...National Review Bulletin ". . .exciting " The Cincinnati Enquirer . _9 mightily...
...A copy of the Republican National Committee's report is filed with the Federal Election Commission and is available for purchase from the Federal Election Commission, Washington, D.C...
...and, again, Kennedy had no intention of committing U.S...
...He now defines himself as "essentially 'Libertarian' "--though "it is with great reluctance that I yield the old Richard Brookbiser is an editor at National Review...
...presented a problem...
...t r*'(t (? rkl~, P Martin AnOer~on aulN M~(io,ke ~ Ir ' '~e~'lrtltl R Hottman WHy WE DON'T BECOME KEPUBLICANS ENERGy AND THE ECONoMy: The Moral Equivalent of Surrender SOME PARADOXE S OF CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM A CAUTIONARy NOTE ON SYN-FUELS NOTEs ANO REVIEwfi Oulllne$ el ~ i l i N(h'ma n Pc rlSs O~ D Kohler / H~rbert I SDJro 1 Volume I h'all,, K Prkr~,lrr,, k I he~Xlor~* S A, rrln~t()n Also him .~ Th be Gerakl R ~ ord e rR~ j AM Ki,n At/It ft,i I.m)v, W (Tea.f.r S J t't.t'.akav.a Herbert A v~ander / ~ob~.rr Rmg r h)hn T N(~)ndn hflhp N I r u o(k J |)l~l I R (arn~rl)n Number 3 |o~,tor ~" H.th Nathan ddr,h~nn ,~k, .rod l ~n Wddavsky Bill Brock aide Mue Id Rurnsfeld Graevenrtz tWak...
...Moreover, it is not a thorough book, because it fails to take up the important political and military questions raised by the Bay of Pigs...
...Far more important was {he heavy artillery concentration of Castro's forces against the invaders...
...Various points of view are presented...
...Morley meanwhile slipped gradually out of the mainstream...
...Both men opposed America's entry into World War II...
...The "far Right of the Republican Party" with which Regnery moved on to associate" himself is the ideological home of millions of Americans, and the intellectual construction--built over 30 careful years--of dozens of eminently sensible thinkers...
...the Communist threat induces military preparations...
...ATTENTION: Evangelicals, Catholics, Eastern Orthodox, and Other Believers Did You Miss...
...Regnery is no more of a theologian than Morley, yet the' subject is frequently on his mind...
...Cameron on Ronald Knox and His Brothers Carl F.H Henry on Issues in New Testament Theology Michael Novak on How He Has Changed His Mind J Richard Quebedeaux on the Left wing Evangelicals / L Paul Seaburu on John C. Bennett's Pseudo Niebuhrianism G.B...
...It is wrong to conclude it could not have done so, at least in its first phase--even with the limitations on action imposed by the President...
...Both men were born in small towns...
...In such an event, there would, of course, be scapegoating...
...Corporate checks not acceptable...
...Morley covered the Washington bureaucracy for the Philadelphia North American during World War I. In 1944, after six years on the staff of the Baltimore Sun and seven years--and a Pulitzer Prize-as editor of the Washington Post, Morley helped Frank Hanighen found a four-page newsletter called Human Events...
...Besides, it is doubtful whether battle-ready forces could have been moved in quickly enough to save the brigade...
...Make checks payable to COMMONSENSE: A Republican Journal...
...Regnery joined the publica...
...Emmett Tyrrell, Jr...
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...PROBLEM OR SOLUTION wr~ ~ Thr~e vrews orl our nalJon.s t ~ taryrndn i ~ t m ro(tu( n l~'er;~r(ibh,nl~ h...
...President Kennedy, himself a strong advocate of Algerian independence and a critic of the effort of France to impose a military solution on the FLN, could not in good conscience back the use of American armed forces in nonbelligerent countries...
...Morley of course is right--the Third World War has disequilibrated our institutions as badly as the Second...
...He recounts conversations with Gabriel Marcel and Karl Jaspers...
...To do that would have required concentrated air strikes from the U.S...
...Both Regnery and Morley are religious men...
...Indeed, it may already have started in its classic form as the group at the bottom of the economic ladder has begun to focus its grievances on the Jews...
...The second difference is more elusive, though perhaps ultimately more important...
...President Kennedy's decision to limit air strikes against key targets in Cuba, which reduced the initial punch of the invasion, is a major theme in Wyden's book...
...It should be remembered that Kennedy's administration was trying to appeal to the emerging nations of the world, to win them over as allies and encourage their economic development...
...Both religious and secular issues are addressed...
...Morley, for all his rich personal experiences, displays a less cosmopolitan mind...
...From early on, it appears, the President was resolved to go ahead with the operation only if the United States kept a low profile, by allowing the CIA to carry the burden of the invasion, and by not committing American forces directly...
...I am not at all sure that Felix Morley would care to be called a conservative," Regnery concurs in his Memoirs...
...Regnery would presumably say that he judges the Soviet threat to be overriding...
...Both learned to be skeptical of big government from close contact with it: Regnery spent two disillusioning years in the Resettlement Adrfiinistration...
...He prefers to be known as an old fashioned liberal...
...and on the other, by a determination to act with some finesse, i.e., not to send American forces into a foreign land to overthrow a revolutionary government...
...for testing and refining those ideas...
...In other words: Big government is bad...
...The solution appeared to be a CIA-directed Free Cuba invasion brigade, which would hold a position on Cuban soil long enough for the invading Cuban exiles and sympathetic Cuban citizens to establish a counter government to Fidel Castro...
...So much for theories--especially since friendship and respect, in this case at least, transcend them: Morley's book was published by Henry Regnery, whose courtesy is acknowledged, in the Foreword, by Felix Morley...
...They are excluded, except for a few anomalies, from the executive suites, and the "corporate power-elite" is "objectively" anti-Semitic...
...He left Human Events over policy disagreements in 1950 ("Frank [Hanighen] and Henry," he says in For the Record, "moved on to associate with the far Right in the Republican Party...
...Tennyson on the Rumors about TS E l i o t Sheldon Vanauken on the Ordination of Women Dale Vree on Worshiping the Zeitgeist It's time for you to discover the New Oxford Review, a unique and fresh monthly magazine...
...yet why the President thought to do this he leaves unexplored, and the effects of the decision he blows out of proportion...
...In the expansive economy following the Second World War this fact was treated by Jewish organizations as a "status irritant" rather than "a major stumbling block to Jewish mobility...
...The "old fashioned" liberalism, or "Libertarianism," to which Morley owes allegiance springs neither from a morbid interest in economics, nor from gaseous philosophizing about the individual and his prelapsarian prerogatives, but from a deep-seated reverence for the federal system of the Founders...
...Wyden pays almost no attention to this error in judgment, but instead blames the failure of the Bay of Pigs on the inability of the CIA to destroy Castro's air power...
...This "forward look," however, was constrained, on the one hand, by considerations of national security, which meant the new administration was not going to back independence movements, like Castro's, that were merely fronts for the Soviet Union...
...There was little that could be done to help them--the B-26 is not an accurate bomber and was flying too high to be effective against anything but large formations...
...But the air battle in this respect was not decisive, although it did indeed add to the cost of the invasion...
...Whatever the reality of the Soviet threat...
...Morley represents a noble tradition-the tradition of Cromwell and Milton, of Penn and Jefferson--but it is not the only Western tradition, nor even the most important one...
...Regnery, in detail after detail, shows an acquaintance with ideas which lie beyond and beneath Anglo-American thought...
...Two causes suggest themselves...
...This was the unanticipated factor, made possible in part by fortuitous deliveries of Soviet artillery...
...1 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1980 33 ment...
...terminology of 'liberal' to the socialists...
...he speaks proudly of new translations of Aquinas he has published...
...carrier Essex, or bombardment from the sea...
...However, the concentration of Russian artillery, fully unanticipated, turned the tide, a point 34 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1980...
...Emphasis is given to enhancing understanding between Catholics and Evangelicals...
...It is true that the position of the Jews, which for a brief moment in history looked relatively secure, now appears increasingly insecure...
...However, any systematic impoverishment of the Jews would not be the result of monopolistic capital and the "objective" hostility of the "power elite...
...By relying on interviews with those directly and indirectly involved in the Bay of Pigs operation, Wyden has produced a marketable melodrama, in which, predictably, President Kennedy and the CIA are cast in less than complimentary roles...
...But, according to Liebman, in a shrinking economy it is a serious threat, because the decisions made by the "power elite" will inevitably go against the economic interests of-the Jews, who are on the economic periphery no matter how prosperous they might now appear...
...In short, Castro's forces were able to pin down and overwhelm the invasion force...
...n o t unpalatable to the general reader...
...For the next 30 years, the Henry Regnery Company introduced most of the seminal works of American conservatism, including the second book of an obscure Michigan history instructor named Russell Kirk, and the first book of a recent Yale graduate, William F. Buckley, Jr...
...Send to: COMMONSENSE, 310 First Street, S.E., Washington, D.C...
...Obviously, then, Castro's Cuba Stephen Bryen is executive director of the Coalition for a Democratic Majority...
...We had decided not to commit our aircraft, but even if we had, the invading force would still have had to have been reinforced...
...We are not dealing here with Randians, Carlists, Birchers, anarcho-science-fiction fans, or any of the other oddballs who pass in and out of the right wing like migrating terns...
...Unfortunately, the brigade failed to take into account the heavy weapons of the Cuban armed forces...
...David S. Broder " . . . t h e GOP's days as the 'stupid party' may well be behind it...
...But no particular credit accrues to Liebman for his predictions based upon hoary and specious Marxist premises if, given the present political climate, almost anything might come to pass...
...Religious, c u l t u r a l , and p o l i t i c a l affairs are discussed from the perspective of the t r a d i t i o n a l values of Western c u l t u r e . Whether you're concerned about our eroding c u l t u r a l standards or the crisis of f a i t h and practice in the churches, y o u ' l l want to become acquainted w i t h the New Oxford Review...
...Morley does not seem to consider, however, whether conservatives might also be right-whether all or some of those distortions might have been necessary for American survival...
...The first concerns foreign policy...
...The Human Events of the 1940s was an analytical journal, more like the Freeman of Albert J. Nock than the brassy dope sheet it is today...
...tion in its first year as treasurer...
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Vol. 13 • January 1980 • No. 1
