Editorial I
Jr, R. Emmett Tyrrell
"Editorial I" Richard Weaver's proposition that ideas have consequences is the kind of insidious commonplace that is treated suspiciously by the bovine of...
...Obviously these are all had ideas...
...Unfortunately when the solutions are advanced it becomes obvious that the* freedom of all mankind was part of the problem...
...He is a thorough gentleman, and one of the few public figures in America who emulates the Christian life without waving his arms Post there are not conservatives in America, only hyphenated conservatives like arch-conservatives and ultraconservatives, and all of these are racists and transgressors of the child labor laws...
...In these early years of the 1970s most of those who caterwaul about reordered priorities are, consciously or unconsciously, demanding a new kind of society...
...Now there are men who the Post would consider "conservative in the best sense" but I do not think you would want to nominate John Galbraith or Charles Reich...
...And if their society is based on bad ideas it will be a bad society...
...The American consensus on America's ultimate goal has dissolved of common purpose or an ultimate goal...
...To limit production is to deny to the poor jobs and inexpensive products...
...Ralph Nader as consumerism...
...He is confident, thoughtful, good humored and compassionate...
...Such persons generally" are honeyfogling their incomes from one form or another of the education swindle, and they reach for a lynching rope every time someone questions the value of "'good books," the benefit of "higher education for all," the need for "'continuing education," "'humanized institutions," "broad horizons," "new eras" or any of the other poppycock platitudes that these rascals marshal to defend their swindles...
...As for a man who will appeal to the left liberals on law and order you have two excellent choices in Mr...
...GWP and bellowing...
...Nixon presides over today...
...There is a less rosy corollary to it, that is bad ideas have bad consequences, and as bad consequences always come more numerously, more furiously and more swiftly than good consequences it is usually better for the author of ideas to open a hot dog stand or chase lewd women than to dredge from his noodle bright ideas...
...He might still be on the faculty at UCLA...
...But I have always been a party man, which is not to say a party boy - - bee hoe, a little levity there -- ahem - - and I must stick with the Republicans, after all there are several of them whom I could nominate for the same reasons, men like Percy and Packwood...
...The Senate would never know and he could share an office with Thurgood Marshall...
...Thanks for your help and next time you are in Washington, do stop by and see me, I shall be out in the back...
...R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr...
...That they are ages from understanding the profound political turbulence roiling the early years of the 1970s is more serious...
...As with so many of these social problems, it is always stated without any regard for economics but with dramatic solicitude for the rights of all of mankind...
...More ominously, America's consensus on what constitutes the good life (what is society's goal) was, at the end of the 1960s, more fragmented than at any time since the 1780s...
...Plunkitt: It has fallen to me, the President of the United States of America and of all the territories and protectorates, to nominate two men for the Supreme EDrrORIAL I (continued from page 3) ideas...
...Address all correspondence to The Bootblack Stand, The Establishment, R.R...
...From the 1960s thoughtful persons learnt that generally speaking - - all improvement is for the worse, and any man who is out to do good is certain to do bad...
...Plunkitt has agreed to advise American statesmen in this time of troubles...
...Nor are they simply questioning the means for realizing America's historic national goal...
...Billions were spent to implement abstractions at home (more billions were spent to defend abstractions abroad...
...George Will dealt exhaustively with this particular bad idea in our November symposium, clearly elucidating the idea's baleful consequences...
...George Nathan...
...Buckley's departure into journalism is not the result of dark sehemings in high places by men of the bolshevik persuasion...
...Now, through this column, the distinguished Dr...
...Due to the political pressure from the liberal media, I feel it behooves me to nominate only one strict constructionist advocate of law and order and to mollify the left a man whose position on law and order more reasonable...
...But when citizens cannot even agree on what that society's ultimate goal is, the life of the constitutional democracy is imperiled, and this is a sign of sickness...
...Individual achievement is denied...
...They cannot be expected to have grasped the sad lessons of the 1960s which is unfortunate...
...Further, he is very handsome and I believe he was awarded a Ph...
...when implemented their consequences will be adominable...
...But, lo, it is the call to duty, and though Mr...
...They both would have similar work habits...
...HIS appearances on television are generally entertaining and often inspiring...
...Consider the idea ot ~e quota system...
...D. in philosophy from The University of California at Santa Barbara...
...Community breaks into competing factions based on race, religion, geography or whatever the defining characteristics of a quota happen to be at the time...
...Whether they realize it or not many politicians and figures prominent in public life today disagree on the "promise of America...
...It is titled Escape' A New Demand Response System...
...Bucldey is a jaunty and sassy fellow, the cornerstone of his philosophy is duty - - the merest bleep from "the trumpet, and he is on his feet...
...He has had considerable experience with the law lately and he has a great deal of that youthful idealism that we hear so much about...
...This is called Enlightenment, and it never quite measures up to expectations...
...Have you any suggestions on this score or - - bee hee - - am I in the wrong ball park...
...In this issue we pause to meditate on William F. Buckley, for one of his most tantalizing books has just appeared and we have now learned that his flashing and sparking across the land is soon to end...
...At the universities the typical result of this bad idea is, that a number of unqualified Negroes are accepted because of their race and a number of Jews are rejected because - - according to society's proctors - - a disproportionate number of Jews attend universRies, and this is not healthy...
...In a constitutional democracy when citizens disagree about the means for realizing the society's ultimate goal, it is a sign of political vitality...
...Weaver's sunny apothegm is apt to sputter and backfire, for his assertion that ideas have conequences is only half the truth...
...Eventually it is even an embarrassment to the lofty fellow who, in the seeurityof his hath, dreamt it up...
...Now, I have nominated men in the Past and the affect on two of these men was such that several of my advisers have suggested I now nominate a pair of left liberal Democrats for the boost it might give to their careers...
...The consequence of consumerism's basic ideas are that the enlightened few will decide for the benighted many, eventuating in a loss of freedom, a loss~of efficiency, higher prices and the periodical loss of order -- the worst of both worlds...
...Ninty-five per cent of the people it afflicts are rendered yammering idiots in search of a cause, and when the cause pops up the idiots stampede...
...as interpreted by American liberals...
...Progress is hobbled...
...Roosevelt thought he was vonschsafing or that Mr...
...Yet, if repeated to them often and boomingly enough, it will eventually thud into the goo of their cerebra and leave them entranced - - stammering and shuffling about with tiny, sparkles of light popping before their eyes...
...Individual freedom and personal dignity lose their priority...
...Now I have always held as a certitude that any c a u s e , whether it be just or malign - - is a nuisance to free" men, especially during its time of stampede...
...Pollution is a wildy complicated, basically economic problem (involving what economists call externalities or the neighborhood effect...
...Of these, Manson is probably most qualified...
...Finally there is the idea that the United States should deny its interest in foreign affairs and attend to problems at home...
...became privy to the information that sometime this spring Mr..Buckley is to be designated American Consul to Ouagadougou...
...Unfortunately those persons leading this camuain rarely discuss economics...
...But upon implementation, ideas, more often than not, reveal themselves as bad ideas - - hence the parents of unpleasant consequences...
...President: Ha Ha Ha, "not to say a party boy," oh what a pawky sense of humor you have...
...In many ways it brings to mind Millard Fillmore, but on to delicious concerns...
...You might find support from the Post by nominating Alf Landon...
...They have utterly rejected that goal...
...So brilliantly has he distinguished himself as Commissioner for the Advisory Board of the United Court...
...I know there are some who will dismiss this statement as shameful or unserious...
...However the abominable consequences of these bad ideas are merely unpleasant legacies of the 1960s...
...Yet by 1970: a) the popularity of government and government officials had plummeted, b) the incidence of crimes against authority had skyrocketed to heights exceeded only during the Civil War and c) agreement on the very deftnition of welfare or liberty had shattered...
...What is more, any cause fired by Mr...
...A more suitable setting for such writing and a setting easily within his grasp is his own National Review, which already serves up some very thoughtful essays...
...Perhaps while in Africa he will give himself over to the ways of the land, drop his revs below the red line, watch the water buffaloes at play and spend some time on the piazza, sipping his gin, listening to the guzzling of the fauna at twilight and then he will scrawl a few notes on the sources of our perplexities at home...
...Consider the salient anti-pollution ideas...
...In regard to your conservative choice I am not sure whom you can nominate...
...That is, of course, where he belongs, amongst the high journalists Perhaps he is the American Bagehot, though certainly he is more elegant and less banal...
...Their reordered priorities constitute the priorities of a different kind of society, not the kind of society that Mr...
...More deeply perhaps than any other American, Mr...
...Not long ago one of our associates residing in Washington, D.C...
...Though the lessons of the 1960s are unpalatable, they are not impenetrable...
...Outlined a s the "right to a useful and renumerative job...the right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing...the right of every businessman, large and mnali, to trade in an atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or a b r o a d , " President Franklin Roosevelt gave a synoptic rendering of our national goal in his famous "Economic Bill of Rights," and whether one was a Republican or Democrat, conservative or liberal, the great consensus of Americans held that the American Dream was one of expanding prosperity and individual liberty...
...And if he dies before you get thi~ letter nominate him anyway...
...A cursory review of a few of those great ideas of the late 1960s still attracting oohs and ahhs today will document my point...
...Ultimately the bad idea of the quota system is opposed to individual achievement, dignity, personal freedom and progress...
...His loss to conservative missionary endeavor will be immeasurable, for he is the whirling axis from which a multimedia assault on liberal orthodoxy derives its energy...
...it can be purchased in all bookstores...
...A more serious condition troubles the early years of the 1970s, for it is the consumation of decades of bad ideas, and its consequences will be devastating...
...Let us then hope that Bill Buckley will come home soon and bring with him a fat packet of manuscript...
...Upon losing all of this to Ouagadougou conservatives have reason to speculate if Mr...
...By 1971 the Federal government had grown over 200 per cent larger than it had been in 1960...
...The A l t e r n a t i v e December, 1971 3 Richard Weaver's proposition that ideas have consequences is the kind of insidious commonplace that is treated suspiciously by the bovine of every community...
...Kennedy heralded or that Mr...
...It is true that in his writing he has rarely paused to peer deeply into the gorgeous and troubled con= dition of the Supermarket Republic, but that he is capable of doing it with real genius no one who has heard his speeches or read his interviews doubts...
...Buckley understands what ails us...
...Then, too, there are his books, his gladiatorial antics on "Firing Line," his numerous appearances on the college Chautauqua circuit and his nationally syndicated column...
...He has been a monument to the way public persons ought to live...
...In point of fact some of the consequences of the quota system have been the recrudescence of implicit anti-semitism, tainted degrees for every Negro regardless of his achievement and an increase in factionalism...
...Obviously when voices demand that, in pursuit of pure air, we diminish industrial output or that, for the sake of some egalitarian paradigm, Harvard deny admission to a young man because he is Jewish and from the East or that, for the approved benefit of the majority, a minority will select what Americans are to consume or that in the name of "new priorites" at home, we trust our future to the good will of foreign powers rather than our own military strength, they are not merely lugging about bad (continued on page 20) 20 The A l t e r n a t i v e December, 1971 Dr...
...It will be their society...
...I'would only add that when the carriers of this had idea urge Washington to solve its problems at home what they have in mind are certain conditions which they perceive as problems and for which only their solutions are considered feasible...
...Assuredly, ideas have consequences...
...all he has to do is to pick up his quill...
...Consider the ideas emerging from that glob of embellished discontent marketed by Mr...
...11, Box 360, Bloomington, Indiana 47401, Continental U.S.A...
...Richard Speck and Professor Charles Manson...
...Dear Mr...
...These are but the most obvious consequences flowing from popular anti.pollution ideas...
...To enhance opportunities for the underprivileged, quotas based on one defining characteristic or another ~xe established for employment or admission to universities...
...For he need not give the catastrophe much more cerebration than he has already devoted to it...
...Generally they are upper-class personswhose solutions involve an invidious campaign against producers, the acquittal of inconsiderate consumers, the demand for limiting production, a highnosed disregard for the basic theories of economic distribution and a reprehensible inatteution to the situation of the poor...
...Eagerly, Richard M. Nixon President Dear Mr...
...Whatever the case, he is held in high esteem in academic circles, and his credentials for zero population growth are impeccable...
...Ori~mlly the ultimate goal of the American democracy was what the founders called "Republican Virtue...
...In h i s journal, National Review, conservative intellectuals jump through hoops and otherwise perform their acts of derring-do to the mortification of leftish provincials who have been saying from time out of mind that these creatures were - - if they did indeed exist - - dull pedagogues incapable of such razzle dazzle...
...Published in August, it focuses on the unique position of minority groups in the Congolese electoral process...
...But not only conservatives will miss him...
...Further, he is one of the very few conservative American journalists possessed of the education and disposition to indulge in high journalism...
...It was fraught with contradictions, finally evolving into the national goal that served us for some 170 years...
...More than half of that growth issued from government's attempted to "promote the general welfare and secure the Blesings of Liberty...
...At any rate, the particular specifications and pressures of a thrice weekly newspaper column do not allow the scholarliness, the extended analysis and the occasional philosophical plumbing characteristic of this higher genre...
...According to the Washington States Information Service that two of the White House's assistant presidents now desire to slip him into a diplomatic foxhole in that sensitive though uncelebrated spot on the globe...
...George Washingtor/Plunkitt, our p~ize-winning political analyst, has just completed a penetrating study of the last Congolese election...
Vol. 5 • December 1971 • No. 3
