On Watch
Cropsey, Seth
EDITORIAL (continued from page 4) nous complaints Citizen Nader has lodged against American business and American government I believe that he is discomfited by something far deeper than...
...Like Adm...
...Think of it, the Nobel Prize awarded to a man who publicly consorts with the vilest totalitarian threat of this century, the Chilean iunta...
...Such turbulence is intolerable to a liberal society...
...The suspicion arises that the courses taken by each man are dictated more by allegiance to their respective "unions" than by genuine policy differences...
...The hour grows near...
...Soon he wanted to deregulate air fares but to regulate other industries...
...As dismaying as it might be to Citizen Nader, I personally prefer thinking persons to believers...
...It has controlled Capitol Hill for months...
...He completed his term, wrote this memoir of his four years in the Navy's highest post, and ran for Senate from Virginia...
...Dear Fr...
...Thoroughly detailed is the evidently vigorous contest for recognition and funds among the Navy's three "unions"-aviators, submariners, and surface sailors...
...Garry Wills' syndicated columns must continue to convey the sense of moral urgency that is essential to sustain the feeling of contained neurosis so necessary for a properly humane critique of our ghastly system of macho-capitalisto-militarism...
...Are wage-earners gladly going to live in suspense over the fate of their banks, their insurance systems, their transportation investments...
...Free citizens must live with some reasonable expectations for the future...
...Zumwalt, Jr...
...Last is a description of the already famous palace intrigues which heralded the twilight of the Nixon administration and coincided with the end of Zumwalt's term as CNO...
...THE BOOTBLACK STAND Dr...
...Freedom and tolerance are at issue here...
...Rickover...
...Kissinger, increases the anticipation with which we regard the publication of his memoirs...
...Originally he set out to reform the Corvair, then it was General Motors, then all corporations, then health care...
...It is proudly claimed t h a t he refuses to employ such bounders and feels it his right to inquire into the smoking habits of potential employees...
...For me the answer has been shouted aloud by his public record...
...Rickover favors a smaller Navy composed of much larger ships whose underlying mission is submarine-based strategic bombardment and the projection of essentially amphibious power...
...He throws darting glances, verbal abuse, and physical objects at inept or disagreeing underlings...
...Frankly I think it is best you continue your demonstrations at least for a year or so just to be sure...
...Today he speaks ominously of scrapping the capitalist system, and in favor of what...
...On the matter of his liberalism and.his devotion to progress he spoke volumes recently when he lamented in the New York Times Magazine that "We ask our people to think instead of asking them to believe...
...Zumwalt sniffs at this maneuver for its "laughably academic" approach to a military situation...
...He also charges Kissinger with having delayed the vital airlift of weapons to Israel in 1973 in order to "create a new reality...
...There are some discomforts attendant here--individuals will have to make their Qwn choices--but I prefer the discomforts of freedom to the securities of serfdom...
...So long as our democratic society tolerates diversity and resists the standardization that Nader's regulatory commissions and bureaucracies demand, safety, health, and reform will be thwarted...
...This requires a considerable number of primarily surface vessels...
...The anti-Rickover corner argues the strategy of confronting the Soviet navy at its weakest point--its problem of supply...
...In too many matters of choice and tolerance Citizen Nader has opted for coercion...
...Can laborers train themselves for jobs that may suddenly disappear by edict of this necromancer of the public interest...
...GWP 32 The Alternative: An American Spectator December 1976...
...and what is the character of a man who sleeps four hours a night, snoops into the private lives of his employees, follows a teenager's dietary habits while lecturing the whole nation on health, and in the end laments that we Americans are given to thinking rather than believing...
...According to an unusually reliable anti-war activist the Vietnam war is over...
...EDITORIAL (continued from page 4) nous complaints Citizen Nader has lodged against American business and American government I believe that he is discomfited by something far deeper than pollution, corruption, and booby-trapped cars...
...For that is another of Citizen Nader's ingratiating qualities...
...The government of course claims that the war has been over since the spring of 1973, but official Washington is of course not to be trusted and my contacts with Hanoi are not as good as they once were...
...What is most interesting about this internal squabble is probably not what the author intended...
...Tell me, do you think there is any possibility that we may get into another war again soon...
...the logic of his proposals casts doubt on the possibility it will ever improve...
...What he finds will not surprise...
...He can charm...
...To me the most nettling matter in the Nobel Prize committee's award is the obvious fact that the prize has become political...
...Thus comes the unappealing idea that the utmost questions of American military strategy are inordinately governed by the narrowest issues--those least attentive to the necessity for naval excellence...
...BOOK REVIEW On lVatch ElmoR...
...That liberals have missed the import of Citizen Nader's critique, does not speak well for them...
...for so long as the common folk are free to choose one value over another, for instance cheapness over safety, life will be full of treachery...
...Zumwalt minces no words in recounting his quarrels...
...At any rate this news explains why the turnout at our Christian peace rallies has been so low, and why my letters have not been published in the New York Times...
...Citizen Nader is the latest edition in American Puritanism...
...What can The Nation do now...
...Advocates of democracy and liberalism have held that their society encourages intelligence, sentience, and responsibility, that is to say, a sturdier and better Homo sapiens than the poor waif slouching under the enlightened rule of an autocrat...
...Even if Coca-Cola surrenders tomorrow, the conspiracies of General Motors are shut down forever, and Lake Erie becomes a health spa, Citizen Ralph will not be able to shake himself loose from the coils of the publi~ interest...
...One of his dearest dreams is to eliminate smoking from federally regulated areas...
...If so, I would appreciate specifics...
...How long it has been over is unclear...
...I prefer the first edition...
...Urgently, Dan Berrigan, S.J...
...Soon or late liberals are going to have to ask themselves what manner of ideologue this Citizen Nader is...
...The free and democratic society is an evolutionary step up from the paternalistic tyranny he favors...
...Berrigan: If the war has ended it is news to me...
...Those who have no familiarity with the military will find this book helpful...
...Not content with the reasonable practice of segregating smokers on airplanes, he would have them totally eliminated...
...The government is always sending out phony leaks like this...
...Plunkitt: The report that Milton Friedman has been awarded the 1976 Nobel Prize for economics is the worst news since the death of Joseph Stalin--a death that has always struck me as curious, coming as it did during the height of the McCarthyite horror...
...Following a long recollection of his "Z-grams' '--his celebrated memos aimed at changing what he called the Navy's "Miekey Mouse" regulations as well as its discrimination against Negroes--Zumwalt examines Secretary of State Kissinger, the wounds of the failing Nixon administration, and the military actions which the Navy took part in from 1970 to 1974...
...As to your recourse, I suggest you all hand The Nation over to its creditors and become a band of urban guerrillas...
...Hijack a subway and order it to Cuba...
...George Washington Plunk#t, our prize-winning political analyst, has accepted a staff position with the House Ethics committee, but he has graciously consented to continue advising American statesmen in these times of troubles...
...Address all correspondence to The Bootblack Stand, c/o The Alternative...
...Moreover, Zumwalt is inconsistent with his previous attention to the larger questions of foreign policy by ignoring the injustice of treating a close ally so badly...
...He argued with Admiral Hyman Rickover over the kinds of weapons the Navy ought to have, with Richard Nixon over the kind of discipline it ought to enforce, and with Henry Kissinger over nearly everything...
...No one knows...
...He is congenitally litigious, especially toward those who take issue with his causes and speak their minds...
...His zealotry on behalf of something as impalpable and protean as the public interest gives no hint as to what he might attack next...
...He overlooks the question of its palpable success...
...Plunkitt: Last week Garry Wills and I went to what was supposed to be the largest anti-war rally to be held on the East Coast this year, and we heard some surprising news...
...A final malady," he writes, Seth Cropsey is assistant editor of The Public Interest...
...Citizen Nader's record as a civil libertarian is poor...
...Zumwalt's dispute with Rickover is instructive...
...Are people m be free to choose chiropractors over medical doctors...
...If this is his position on a discomfort as trivial as smoking how can one conclude he would be more tolerant of graver inconveniences ? Would he tolerate Mennonites cluttering the public roads with their horse-drawn vehicles...
...In issue after issue The Nation has attempted to warn our government of Friedman's "advisory" trips to Chile...
...Not only is Citizen Nader subversive to freedom and a pluralistic society, he is also subversive to- stable institutions...
...Character is a prelude to action...
...It is a grim little reminder of the dull, sedulous, and stultifying grip of bureaucracy...
...Quadrangle / $12.50 Seth Cropsey Elmo Zumwalt was appointed Chief of Naval Operations in 1970...
...Why the State Department and the CIA have yet to step in defies decency...
...I read Garry Wills faithfully and he has given no indication the emergency is over...
...GWP Dear Dr...
...Rickover, the Secretary of State is highly successful at bureaucratic infighting...
...that afflicted--and continues to afflict-the whole Navy, though the surface Navy was and is the greatest sufferer, can be described in one word...
...What Zumwalt objects to is the lobby Rickover has built up in favor of a nuclear-powered navy, a lobby that has been fortified by Rickover's enviable skills in political suasion and his position at the Atomic Energy Commission (now at the Energy Research and Development Administration...
...Clark: Oh woe, the DREADFUL FIFTIES are with us again (these things are cyclical...
...And history has always gone to those who ask people to believe"--Also sprach not Der FLihrer or Chairman Mao, but one of the most renowned reformers ever to rise up in the Great Democracy...
...La lotta continua, t Sic semper tyrannus...
...I am heartsick and can no longer hold down my sunflower seeds...
...Dear Dr...
...This is reinforced by the The Alternative: An American Spectator December 1976 31 polemics of the attack on Rickover and further supported by the author's failure to explain the political pressures which subtend and advance each position...
...The four years he served as CNO, 1970-1974, were also the final years of Richard Nixon's Presidency, and, as Zumwalt describes them, they were years of disagreement...
...Do not flag or fail...
...Himself a surface sailor, Zumwalt implicitly admits that his disagreement with Rickover, an old submariner, is a reflection of that intra-service rivalry...
...Delicacy prevents me from uttering the word, delicacy and anxiety about waking up to an army of libel lawyers...
...Remember Sacco and Vanzetti, Blair Clark Editor, The Nation Dear Mr...
...Will investors venture their savings in enterprises that may be banned tomorrow...
...The only explanation for the Nobel Prize Committee's abominable choice is that it has finally capitulated to the United States Chamber of Commerce, or is it possible that Chile's CIA (the nefarious DINA) has reached even into Stockholm...
...Unwilling to discuss the intricacies of SALT in detail, Zumwalt settles for an outline of the accusation that Kissinger exchanged strategic superiority for the political capital of an agreement...
...On Watch also manages to place Zumwalt at a fitting remove from the Nixon administration-something well advised for an aspiring Democrat who once served it-and by its preoccupation with Mr...
Vol. 10 • December 1976 • No. 3
