Letters: from Ed Williams, Bob Moffit, Andrew Hopkins, Hon. Henry B. Gonzolas, Nathan
The Alternative January, 1971 19 Letters To the Editor: In a review of Merlo J. Pusey's The Way We (:o to War in Alternative, November, 1970, Mr John L. Kelley refers to the Veterans of Future...
...The Alternative January, 1971 19 Letters To the Editor: In a review of Merlo J. Pusey's The Way We (:o to War in Alternative, November, 1970, Mr John L. Kelley refers to the Veterans of Future Wars as "an organization of the 1920's founded by a group of Princeton pacifists...
...We had hoped, through the use of satire, to make the situation so laughable as to create some public sentiment against treasury raids by every pressure group that came along I am sure that Alternative would consider this a commendable aim...
...To deny him tenure would be to deny future generations of Purdue students buckets full of condign hilarity...
...Consider this preposterous concatenation of shiftiness lifted from the Report's very first paragraph: The crisis on American campuses has no parallel in the history of the nation...
...It may even be yours- why not give it a try...
...How can it...
...At the same time, we do know if Mao is ill or, that the Red Guards killed so and so many peasants in a particular province, for these facts our sources of information can be trusted: the first group of statements does not fit our preconceived notions about "them" and the second group does I do not have anything personal against the writer of the Cuban article, I do not know him and I don't care to...
...Now of course this passage most certainly accomplishes the fundamental purpose for which every presidential commission is established...
...And what is there to do if liberal - radical - leftist - socialist - communist - Marxist - Leninist - Maoist -lunatics (many words for the same "thing") confront moderate conservatives on the "respectable" side...
...Or exactly how does this great crisis lack a parallel...
...Campus unrest reflects and increases a more profound crisis in the nation as a whole...
...In fact I am not sure who he could have found to write this portion of the Report...
...For while M. Marceau's masterful bamboozlements originate from an aesthetic heart endeavoring to entertain, the typical campus commissioner has the spirit of a Machiavellian endeavoring to yoke Lamentably the American people, who possess unparalleled wealth and live in unapproachable freedom, have divested themselves of any satisfying conception of virtue...
...See for yourself what so many other intelligent Americans are finding regularly in NR-.good writing, sharp reporting-the news you can't find anywhere else!--plus special features and hard-hitting articles...
...There must be a national cease-fire...
...It gorges the busybodies' appetite for unction and magic by demanding the President exert "moral leadership" and devote several days every week to ministering to Americans much like the village shaman ministered to his cretinous aborigines...
...It did indeed become a little more dangerous to inhabit our Liberal empire--though not so dangerous as the imaginative pundits would have us believe...
...I IWe'll send you a FREE copy of Wm...
...Is all this a ghastly flight of imagina tion, utterly unthinkable in middle class America...
...Unresponsive" souls, such as I, after a reflection upon the day's idiocies will most often succumb to a nausea sure to disturb a night of studious endeavors Well, I used to rely on Pepto Bismal But that doesn't work anymore So, upon returning to my humble abode, financed by poor but honest me, I reach for the antacids on my shelf and sinfully indulge id the heresies of the latest Alternative...
...The divisions are reflected in violent acts and harsh rhetoric, and in the enmity of those Americans who see themselves as occupying opposing camps...
...N.Y., N.Y...
...Why have we been trying to define and refine concepts and terms, to distinguish political aims and means and practices and ideas, ideologies and programs...
...I am not ready to stand up for Cuba in this case: whether Cuba is a good place or a bad place is secondary...
...I am sure that we members of the Class of 1936 at Princeton, many of whom were charter members of the organization, would be somewhat surprised to hear that we were pacifists For Mr...
...Today the American intellectual class would brand such a report, shall we say, pusillanimous...
...If not clearcut evidence but rather a conjunction of factors is demonstrated-such as: in the 1920's millions of Chinese died of starvation yearly and additional millions of children with hunger swollen bodies survived in misery, but in contrast there is no evidence of mass starvation in China today--it is rejected out of hand...
...Why do we tell them that this society is a modern society...
...Cool, refreshing, crisp and clear, one doesn't have to trade an upset stomach for a headache Slightly relieved, I can then return to a behavioural analysis of the fascist brutalities inherent in our capitalist system...
...It snares the widest range of dolts, titillating the jaded, scaring hell out of the Middle Americano and assuring the radical and pop students that their childish tantrums are earthshaking events...
...And he courageously stands above the roar of artillery demanding a "cease-fire " Who does he imagine himself to be, U Thant...
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...On 12 December President Nixon disputed the conclusions of the Scranton Commission Report in a letter to Mr...
...Yet this is not to imply that society should punish these "criminals" Surely that is no answer Rather society should understand them...
...Unfortunately, some of our contemporaries were no more perceptive than Mr...
...With this in mind it seems to us that such a witless statement about violence will only serve to justify the enrages...
...But to write an article about my country without any reference to sources...
...For what purpose do they build libraries and buy books...
...SPECIAL OFFER: If you enclose payment with order, we'll send you a FREE copy of the new edition of Wm...
...And maybe this presidential commission should have been less dissembling and provided something more than a circus for the morons It takes no enormous thrust of the imagination to envision our leftish radicals as rightist youth...
...The epigones of Herr Marcuse and Herr Kunstler make pretty good marchers and bombers and burners...
...10016 ~ ^ 1 I Gentlemen: I want to find out about National Review for I myself...
...A similar effect is conjured by the presidential commission but with grave differences...
...And this is where our presidential commissions depart from their prototype, Marceau For the audience that pays to see Marceau expects to be deceived while in the audience paying for a presidential commission only the shrewdest commissionwatcher anticipates fraud...
...Seriously, Bob, I would venture to say that you have pieced together the finest journal of student opinion found anywhere within the confines of this imperfect, yea redeemable, natural order...
...Please send me the next 18 issues (36 weeks a $10.80 newsstand value-you save $3.85) at the spe- I cial introductory rate of just $6.95, postpaid...
...we refuse to believe...
...All who applaud these evil acts share in their evil...
...If the "crisis on American campuses has no parallel in the history of the nation, "how is it the roots of the crisis are "as deep as any since the Civil War...
...Why do we write books about them that nobody reads and lecture on them when...
...On 9 December the Princeton Undergraduate Assembly overcame their Dean's objections and voted for the reinstatement of the extra-curricular ROTC program which had been suspended after the Cambodian invasion...
...Surely Mr...
...The McGill Manufacturing Company Supports The Alternative Approach to a Better America Valparaiso, Indiana SPECIAL INTRODUCTORY OFFER "...but Greta...for my ancient title, my 10,000 serfs, and my subscription to The Alternative...
...This effect has not been achieved by the advance of invincible logic but by uncompromising idiocy...
...A few years ago we would have greeted such passages with waves of laughter but now those waves prelude troubled reflections even among the jaunty fellows of the Saturday Evening Club The left-wing radicals are uttering crude sentiments that stir faintly disquieting recollections The fiery obsessions, the anti-intellectualism, the odd cant, the antisemitism the atavism somehow we have heard it all before...
...Would the com missioners speak as they do in the present report of a "new youth kultur" emerging amongst students Its members love this country, but they are scornful of the traditional values and outdated social structures held by their elders They are idealistic and they are fearful of what they consider the unnatural Jewish elite which governs this country...
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...Continuing Crisis (continued from page 2) arrested six SDS Weathermen for plotting to bomb a bank Dr...
...Think of it, not only does the author of this confused little ditty forthrightly denounce "violence," but he opposes' "needless" assaults and shootings" (Is this to say that what America really needs are indispensable assaults and shootings which the commission would then presumably call "needful...
...Where do we go to find that crisis' In all my travels I cannot claim to have encountered this historic division, at least not above sea level There is some ignorance, some benign apathy and much enlightened repugnance, but about campus unrest there is no critical division Even the silent majority finds it distasteful, if they notice it at all...
...Kelley's whole point of view, therefore, becomes somewhat suspect since one cannot help wondering if his logic and reasoning are no better than his research...
...A counterargument, on the situation in Cuba or elsewhere in the "East," could not and would not be brought forward they will say, except by a communist sympathizer...
...There is a vague uneasiness warm ing the air, unemployment and confronta tion as a "new culture" confronts the police, and let us imagine that Heinrich Bruning's liberal republic issues a report: We utterly denounce violence...
...If evidence is presented, statistics for example, to support the positive argument, they are judged a lie...
...Why do people of this state support universities...
...How do you know...
...Andrew Hopkins Ann Arbor, Michigan Editorials (continued from page 2 ) Further I suggest that it be widely distributed as a calculable remedy for insomnia and melancholy, It is that good I Now the presidential commission, though a prodigiously useful device for governing Americans, is not the creation of Yankee ingenuity...
...Louis N. D'Ascoli, principal of Eastchester High School in New York, announced a national campaign for changing the last words of the Pledge of Allegiance to read "seeking liberty and justice for all...
...What a waste...
...Have you been there...
...Kelley's information, the Veterans of Future Wars was founded as a protest against the bad habit that the Veterans of World War I had contracted of mounting campaigns for more and larger bonuses...
...Wishing to purchase counseling facilities and the necessities of life for American draft-dodgers in Canada the World Council of Churches sought to raise $210,000.23 and compared the plight of these draft-dodgers to the flight of the Jews into Egypt some centuries ago...
...Clip and mail the coupon today (pay later, if your checkbook isn't handy the important thing is to do it now...
...A vague uneasiness warms the air...
...Is he addressing two sovereign nations...
...He is assisted by Amy Gruberg...
...Would the Scranton Report demand all this soul searching from America's burghers...
...And it soothes the mob by assuring that the idealistic youths who bomb university and government buildings are "criminals...
...Paul Weaver, the Report's editor, is not the culprit...
...The prevailing economic system demands discipline and self-denial from a man during his productive hours and wanton materialism when he leaves the office or plant at night...
...Weaver is renowned for his knowledge and intelligence, and I have it on the best of testimony that he is a fellow of the most civilized sensibility...
...Now this last bit of information might shock some readers but only those who have not read the report which abounds with enormities such as the following quotation which so successfully fulfilled the political function of the Report that the New York Times was duped into publishing it in the Times' editorial: We utterly condemn violence...
...Their decision still needs approbation from the If we penetrate the existing gap between "them" and "us" on preconceived notions and emotionalism and do not resort to our intellectual capacities for any other purpose than improving and maximizing the machinery to defend "us" from "them"--we are not better than animals with the natural instinct of self-defense...
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...Now such solicitude for fact would flaw the Report's idiocy and thereby vitiate its usefulness as a device for governing the gullible But we at The Alternative feel there is a consideration of greater moment regarding this particular report...
...Learn firsthand what people are talking about...
...Attempting to Evaluate by Dov Ronen Assistant Professor, Political Science Purdue University Yesterday a "free copy" of The Alternative was placed in my mailbox...
...According to the evidence of my research staff, the Report was mostly written by its commissioners and a team of retired cigarette advertisers who had spent much of their professional careers writing Salem and Marlboro ads and experimenting with lysergic acid diethylamide...
...Why do we stand in class teaching our students to question, to doubt, to inquire...
...I have my own doubts about some An aspects of the Cuban experiment, of which I know little more than the average person...
...It is probably useless to argue the difference between our participation in World War II and the current fiasco, but if being a pacifist means to object to the insane course we are now following in Southeast Asia, I shall be as proud a pacifist as I was a soldier Sincerely, Edward M Williams To the Editor: Climbing out of the sewers of academe after a long day of absorbing the "relevant" pollutants and rapping with the "kids" is quite an ordeal...
...It is the atmosphere I am referring to, an atmosphere of hatred, of unawareness, of lack of intellectual or intelligent curiosity, of unreceptiveness to differing arguments that may or may not be correct...
...There must be a national cease-fire...
...And we certainly do hope Professor Doktor Ronen gets that promotion that seems to be troubling him so...
...without any attempt to inquire, to evaluate, to marshal evidence...
...Well what about middle-class Germany in 1930...
...Why do we tell them that a modern society is a rational society, where our attempts to control and change our environment are not guided by blinding emotions...
...Yours in Heresy, Bob Moffit To the Editor: I just read your November issue and want to thank you for the splendid job you seem to be doing Your point of view is little heralded in America today (for it seems the press is more eager to write about violence), but if calm is to return and progress to continue it is people who think as you who will prove crucial...
...Had the author understood the meaning of the word violence, he would have realized that police charged to deal with riots are rarely guilty of violence simply because of the definition of the word, but students who bomb and burn are always guilty of violence...
...It is the tone of the article (and of the paper as a whole I assume) that counts, the attitude...
...Police and National Guardsmen who needlessly shoot and assault students are criminals All who applaud these evil acts share in their evil...
...Now, for the first time, this great journal of opinion will send a one-year subscription to any student or faculty member for the reasonable price of fifty cents All others unfortunately still must pay four dollars-at least until our CIA grant slips through Name Street City State Zip Student or faculty [1 (50 ) Other O ($4 00) Institution...
...Nixon on 12 December took issue with Scranton's conclusions he was probably out of touch with the "new culture.' George Nathan 13 Editorial II The Alternative Chastized The following article was published in the PURDUE EXPONENT'S "Guest Column...
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...Why waste money and energy and research time when their minds may in any case be set on the unalterable image of totalitarian, dictatorial, oppressive, militant, warmongering or what-have-you Cuba...
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...They believe that America has lost its sense of human purpose and must renew that purpose by colonizing...
...The humor, sharp and satirical, is far superior to anything I have seen published by the student Left So, keep sending your irreverent dissent out here to unreconstructed Arizona Keep doing your part to keep the "kids" morally outraged...
...The world doesn't have the slightest chance to survive this madness built on fear and hatred...
...It was the first time I have seen it...
...The only people I know of who favor campus unrest are the clinically insane--persons like the Students for a Democratic Society, the editors of The New York Review of Books and Professor Charles Reich Not even the distinguished Mr Scranton approves...
...nobody listens...
...Kelley's "pacifists," however inaccurate, is mild And, of course, we were the men who, a few short years later, enlisted in overwhelming numbers in all branches of the armed services...
...If they described themselves as young idealistic Nazis would the New York Times refer to them as "the kids" or "the youngsters...
...I t l Irvame k l I Address l I City -. ---State -,-_Zip I I l 0 Payment of $6.95 enclosed* 0 bill me later I 0 1 prefer the special rate of $16.95, for 40 issues (20 months of NR)), saving me $7.05 over the newsstand price I (prices include alt Postage and handling], Olt *MANY THANKS...
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...Derived from the French version of government, the prototype for the American presidential commission was brought to these shores by the gifted Monsier Marcel Marceau--a French mime, who, before adoring audiences on specially prepared stages, creates from shadows and gesticulations the most wonderful world of fantasy...
...Scranton (see Continued on Page 22 I I "National Review is my kind of magazine...
...Students who bomb and burn libraries and synagogues are criminals...
...Thank you...
...Although I haven't read all through it--my temperament does not fit the forbearance such an enterprise would demand--I have read the article on Cuba...
...The result has been unendurable boredom, and practically the entire nation is itching with restlessness...
...Just because of the physical distances between "East" and "West," ways of communication other than through ideas are difficult to develop...
...p faculty-dominated University Council and faces rough-going The Narragansett Boy Scout Council of Rhode Island unanimously approved James Clark's Eagle Scout award which had previously been denied on the grounds that he was an atheist...
...And does campus unrest really reflect and increase "a more profound crisis in the nation as a whole...
...to write to provoke hatred, hatred and fear...
...But that was in Germany and this is America, and when Mr...
...Last year America was visited by over 4,500 bombings and bomb threats...
...Actually, as is customary with presidential commissions, the politicians imposed upon this man's sense of patriotism to come to Washington, assist them in writing the two intelligent chapters of the Report ("Student Protest in the f960's" and "The Causes of Student Protest") and correct the commissioners' misspellings...
...Students who bomb and burn are criminals...
...20 The Alternative January, 1971 But the fraudulence perpetrated by a presidential commission is not the kind of swindle that we customarily expect from a public servant, for whereas a Bobby Baker or a Senator Dodd attempts to sound plausible the typical presidential commission attempts to sound bewilderingly idiotic...
...Actually the author is directing this stentorian twaddle toward the police authorized by law (though not always respectful of it) and a small band of juvenile delinquents authorized by perversity...
...One group fusses about, hectoring the majority for its "immoral" public policy, while personally adhering to a moral code that would elicit despair from an occasionally principled alley cat And the majority schizophrenically presumes itself morally unassailable, while articulating no moral vision at all...
...Thus all the idiots who believe in the authority of presidential reports have come away from the Scranton Report smacking their chops, satisfied that the federal government cares for them...
...how can anyone else see any positive aspects in anything labeled communist...
...Interpretations of available evidence vary...
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...Kelley, and collegians at campuses all over the country who had joined the organization were branded with epithets among which Mr...
...F. Buckle y's best-selling "The Jeweler's Eye" (a $.95 retail value...
...We do not know...
...the society is bored, its culture jejune and its politics in need of engaging the citizenry's antsy attentions or anaesthetizing its longings Viewed from this perspective the Scranton Commission is an unforgettable performance...
...Police and National Guardsmen who needlessly shoot and assault students are criminals...
...Featuring a narrative that is the most arresting since Rabelais, it advocates a squirt of ether for every sort of lame brain...
...This crisis has roots in divisions of American society as deep as any since the Civil War...
...If we cannot bring people to question, to search, to think, to read, to be open to different views, understanding may never come...
...Why not take a moment to find out for yourself about today's most exciting young magazine...
...We are republishing it as our editorial on the mental state of the Ritualistic Liberal...
Vol. 4 • January 1971 • No. 3
