Editorial
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr.
Editorial/R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. Har Har, A Manifesto • The man: his eyes roving, his sweaty hand yearning for another transient flesh-pressing, his head full of what we quickly recognize as...
...These are only two of the many remarkable Americans who seek to enlighten and improve us...
...They are prayerful...
...Ridicule does not elevate nonsense to any higher level than that at which it was hatched...
...They are stumped...
...It is a soothing emollient for our peculiarly troubled national spirit...
...The sophistries they spin are unworthy of more than a horse-laugh...
...Ridicule is the compliment lively intelligence pays to jackassery...
...They withdraw to their book-lined lairs, kiss their pictures of Matthew Arnold, and essay learned and rigorous rejoinders to the fanatics of the moment...
...Where else could astrologers, aging radicals, and John Dean do so well...
...Scholarship is important, serious analysis of contemporary problems is necessary, but when contemporary problems reek with foolishness and purposive foolishness at that, the only way to scotch the rascals is to pull off their vestments and expose their monkeyshines...
...I do not mean to denigrate serious scholarship nor do I intend to condemn an occasional serious polemic against some idiotic enthusiasm...
...they need a boost...
...A calumny against the plain folk, I reply, and a malversation against the record...
...They jeered and hootec at every asinine notion...
...What is more, in a world full of influenza, inflation, and Presidential primaries, it is about the only harmless amusement left...
...They wonder how next to battle this idiotic and baneful idea...
...America's chief inducements to extremism and charlatanry are talk shows and the college lecture circuit...
...The woman: her eyes roving, her face handsome enough, but her forehead suggestive of a knee, and her body lumbering beneath its caparison of contemporary elegance...
...Some carry placards in front of the house where Jerry sleeps...
...If they cannot bear the burden of those privileges too bad for them...
...Egalitarianism is a doctrine so bashed and battered by learned syllogisms that it is, intellectually speaking, a basket case...
...They are as moronic a mob of louts as has ever been at large in any civilized country since the dawn of Christendom, and certain intelligent persons still urge that the civilized minority grant them a respectful hearing and a serious rebuttal...
...The tracts have devastated every absurd claim, and today we can honestly say that women's liberation and homosexual liberation have ushered in not one intelligent or useful idea...
...the feebleminded amongst them capitulating to and countenancing obvious flapdoodle, while the sober-minded withdrew to the archives, and composed their tracts...
...Ladies and gentlemen, I give you two gifted Americans: the first, an American Senator hotly pursuing destiny's call, the second a women's liberationist dutifully earning a handsome living for herself and a cute wire-haired terrier...
...It was not the AFL-CIO and the Chamber of Commerce that accorded solemnity to the cause of the militant pederasts or to the sponsors of Alice Doesn't Day...
...In fact if recent history is any guide, it is clear that they resent it and hide from it...
...I prescribe ridicule...
...His dress is a confrontation between the garish and the vaguely Churchillian—there is something suggestive of a pallbearer at a homosexual funeral, yet a maniacal eagerness marks his every movement...
...I have never heard of a William Kunstler taking up the challenge of an Alexander Bickel nor do I expect I ever will...
...And yet the ideas endure and menace our freedom through legal prodigies like affirmative action...
...II was not the plain folk who were corruptec or hoodwinked...
...Some notions parading around the Republic today are so preposterous and sniveling that to accord them careful analysis and courteous rejoinder is to accord them a dignity that is as undeserved as it is injurious to public morals...
...Whoever heard of discussing immunology with a peripatetic snake-oil salesman...
...Truth to tell, those who bawl for women's " liberation, " homosexual "rights," black nationalism, populism, and the prohibition of tobacco in public places are charlatans whose very causes are often misnomers...
...Yet many otherwise sound minds lecture me on the impropriety of ridiculing that which is patently ridiculous...
...They write monographs, grant interviews, and even write books...
...Such tracts are often engaging and occasionally even edifying, but I suspect their impact on the public discourse is rarely more forceful than the State of the Union message or the poetry of Rod McKuen...
...When the American media decide to give evenhanded treatment to some burning matter, say, black nationalism, they generally feature every fuliginous lunatic raving in the land and balance them off with a lamented kleagle or a kinky anthropologist, steeped in the lore of Nordic supremacy...
...What is more they are the enthusiasms of profoundly committed fools...
...Now they are low...
...She thinks in slogans, and what she thinks is not sunny...
...When they hearc of respected thinkers meditating on them asinine ideas they were astonished (continued on page 39) 4 The Alternative: An American Spectator April 197( EDITORIAL (continued from page 4) When the asinine ideas became law they were discouraged...
...Serious replies to the canards heaved up by the women of the fevered brow are no doubt useful and desirable, but they are generally useful only to those who already know what is what or to those presently in transit...
...They are the people who pondered the absurdities of the last ten or so years...
...They are sober, assiduous, and abounding with advanced ideas...
...It is appalling...
...When they lend dignity to an idiotic position or when they perpetuate the misconception that idiots and mischievous zealots are fetched by reason, serious replies themselves become mischievous, for they send armies of bright and civilized persons off into the archives and leave the levers of power to the cranks...
...It is entertaining and far more edifying to the public discourse than the facile dissimulations now rampant there...
...It is an equitable response to the likes of Ralph Nader or John Gardner...
...It is a national treasure certified by Mark Twain, beloved by millions, and eschewed only at great peril...
...Yet today it rides high, and those who have pummeled it with their logic and learning are back in their libraries pondering how a world that has witnessed the likes of Einstein, Faulkner, and Charles Manson can still wobble at the thought that we are all easily and duly folded into cookie molds...
...What the sober-minded always neglect is the doleful fact that the proponents of mischief and nonsense are under no obligation to respond to intelligent criticism...
...This spoonery can be chalked, up to the intelligentsia and the urban sophisticates...
...When she was a little girl she strangled the family cat...
...Disillusioned liberals might take them seriously, psychiatrists might take them seriously, but there is no compelling reason why the civilized minority should corrupt ratiocination by hearing them out and replying soberly...
...My suggestion is that they roll up their sleeves, spit on their hands, and ridicule the rascals who afflict us...
...Far from giving truth a chance to triumph over inequity, those impresarios of dialogue merely contribute to the perpetuation of delinquency...
...In fact I would go so far as to say that most of those infamies of yesteryear still staggering around today are kept alive solely by the media, which forever seek them out to provide "balance" during discussions of today's infamies...
...Use it wisely and learn from it...
...He grins, "Call me Birch, not Senator...
...The rights of women and homosexuals are practically indistinguishable from the rights of the average Americano, and when these haranguers ask for something more they are asking for privileges...
...Har Har, A Manifesto • The man: his eyes roving, his sweaty hand yearning for another transient flesh-pressing, his head full of what we quickly recognize as hallucinations...
...Still the sober-minded resist, admonishing that, were they to give themselves over to lampooning the eminently lampoonable, the plain folk of the Republic would conclude that there exists no serious core of values for society to defend...
...These are the luminaries of the public discourse...
...No amount of careful argumentation is going to disabuse these fools of them...
...Some take to the barricades, such as they are these days...
...Some analysis may clarify the issues and even offer a passing opportunity for enlightenment, but that is about it...
...And why should I discuss sociology or Western History with some lunatic woman whose thesis is that rape has, since Adam, been the fundamental nexus between man and woman...
...But I do believe that a great deal of serious polemicism can be put down as wasted breath and—what is worse—delusion...
...Khaki is her color...
...Today the vast majority of panaceas for reform and justice are, in a word, foolish...
...They tour the nation speaking on TV shows, on college campuses, and at prandial atrocities...
Vol. 9 • April 1976 • No. 7
