The Nation's Pulse / Le Rai Est Mort
Rusthoven, Peter J.
"The Nation's Pulse / Le Rai Est Mort" saying he lost $30,000 cash in a poker game. But he can't remember who with. Meanwhile he just keeps on spending more and more money. This is too much, so he is taken before the magistrate again,...
...The tearful vigil outside the front gate, itself decorated with musical notes and guitars, was disrupted at one point by a drunken hit-and-run driver, who careened wildly through the crowd leaving two dead bodies in hiswake...
...The Wisdom of Adam smith brings together his most incisive and eloquent observations on subjects ranging from political and economic history to morals, philosophy, art, education, war and the American colonies...
...Often, his songs had no discernible theme at all, but were simply fun to listen to and fun to dance to—as in"Hound Dog," or " Jailhouse Rock," or the incomparable "Tutti Frutti...
...The Roots of Capitalism By John Chamberlain A provocative look at the intellectual forces and practical accomplishments that have created American capitalism...
...the final battle, discant his disciples...
...Is it a divine gift or an outmoded theory of human rationalism...
...In the Midwest, at least, it is impossible to watch TV or listen to the radio without hearing a pitch for any of a number of hastily put together collections of Elvis songs, presented in that all too familiar style that is now virtually a genre in the ad business ("This unique tribute to Elvis is not available in any store" / "$6.98 for albums, $8.98 for tapes" / "So you don't forget, send your check or money order before midnight tonight to ELVIS, Post Office Box...
...When I was in college, rock music was a critical part of the surroundings...
...Quantity Title Price Per Copy Total enclosed: $ Please make checks payable to Liberty Fund, Inc...
...Given the egocentricity of most show business types, the thought must have crossed the mind of more than one celebrity in Memphis last month that, "However 'big' I become, when I go it won't be anything like this...
...Chapter and verse are provided for each quoted passage...
...Now I ask you, who is crazy here, Sibert...
...Or the gullible magistrate, so faithfully reflecting the cockeyed values of our time...
...Thus the Carter policy was "superficial and unnecessarily risky...
...They spoke of romance beginning (as in "It's Now or Never," set incongruously but beautifully to the score of "0 Sole Mio"), or of romance ending (as in his rendition of "Are You Lonesome Tonight"), and even of the importance of a neat appearance (as in the immortal "Blue Suede Shoes...
...A2 Indianapolis, Indiana 46250 Please send me the following books...
...One young man, displaying a truly remarkable ability to mimic the voice and style of the now-deceased King of Rock and Roll, has even put out a 45 RPM "tribute" which, when first heard, sounds eerily like Elvis singing about his own departure...
...Young's diplomacy, the Post added, was characterized by "improvisations and insults and affectations of moral superiority and personal importance...
...In liberaldom, that, too, is a verboten thought...
...Some aspects of the phenomenon that Elvis' death—like his life—became no doubt merit such a reaction...
...While the commercial exploitation might easily have been predicted, some of the other occurrences in the week following Elvis' death seem straight from the pen of an over-imaginative screenwriter...
...To give just one example, here is an editorial entitled "Andrew Young Is Not the Problem...
...Rusthoven Le Roi Est Mort...
...His death brings home the passing of time in a surprisingly personal sense that I never expected to feel until I was much older—the sense that I am told the elderly feel when they turn to the obituary pages and see yet another two-inch block of newsprint recording the ending of their times...
...His songs partook of simpler, purer, more basic and more honest themes...
...The official Communist Party has been attacked for over a decade by purists in the art of the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the testimony of the dissidents who have been allowed to leave the Soviet Union has begun to register on many minds...
...The Servile State By Hilaire Belloc A perceptive warning, first published in 1913, of the consequences of statism and the effect of socialist doctrine on capitalist society...
...Without this element, which Raymond Aron calls "prophetism," it is doubtful that the idea of the collectivist regimentation of society could ever have attracted the amount of popularity that it did...
...Whether it translates into wise policy is something else again...
...Roger Kaplan Voices for Europe A special book review essay of The Totalitarian Temptation by Jean-Francois Revel (translated by David Hapgood, Doubleday, $8.95) and Plaidoyer Pour L'Europe Decadente by Raymond Aron (Robert Laffont, Paris, F. 49.00...
...The closest he ever strayed to such nonsense was a forgivable venture into the largely harmless humanitarianism of the early 1960s, entitled "In The Ghetto"—and even that, unlike the talentless screeching which dominates today's charts, was well sung...
...And the Style section has become merely feeble, filled with reviews by third-rate critics or daily reminders by black theologians of the fourth estate that we live in a racist society...
...Thus the editorial page comes as something of a surprise...
...The sinister and dangerous, heroic and perverse dream of a perfect world has always been deeply entrenched in the more irrational recesses of Western consciousness...
...Born in Tupelo, Mississippi, reared in Tennessee, son of a truck driver, and, for a time, a truck driver himself, he rose on the strength of his talent (as well as some shrewd management by Colonel Tom Parker) to a level of wealth and fame beyond comprehension...
...T-shirts and pennants and posters are readily available, indeed, were hawked by scores of streetPeter J. Rusthoven is an Indianapolis attorney...
...And Elvis had hardly been enshrined in the Presley mausoleum when a plot to kidnap the body and hold it for ransom was discovered and...
...What he says precisely is that it is either the most Roger Kaplan is a doctoral candidate with the Committee on the History of Culture at the University of Chicago...
...Compiled by British scriptwriter and playwright John Haggarty, edited and with an introduction by Benjamin A. Rogge...
...Elvis Presley was a wonder, and I shall miss him...
...He made no pretense to brilliance, or to insight, or to anything other than being an entertainer, and in his field he was unexcelled...
...The paper's National section is still conventionally liberal in its "optional stories"—those not dictated by breaking news events...
...The glamour and excess and virtual idolatry that accompanied his rise were possible only in the affluent, media-conscious culture of this land...
...Bob Dylan was a beacon to many who saw themselves as little living examples that "the times, they are a-changin' ." Pete Seeger and his ilk provided musical accompaniment to the holy moral struggle against "the war...
...The idea keeps recurring, and, like all irrational ideas, revelations of what it leads to never seem to be sufficient to explode it...
...Today, the Soviet model is not quite a la mode...
...Not so long ago, for instance, Jean-Paul Sartre, that incredibly foolish genius, was getting away with enormities like: "I know there are concentration camps in the Soviet Union, but I object to the use the bourgeois press makes of them...
...The Wisdom of Adam Smith Adam Smith may have been the first great economist, but he was no dismal scientist...
...Trite as the saying may be, Elvis Presley's was indeed a uniquely American Available for Christmas: The Concise Bible A condensation by Frances Kanes Hazlitt While only one-twelfth the size of the complete Bible, this edition introduces the reader to all 66 books, with the full text of the most famous passages from the King James version...
...Yet its demonology continues to haunt guilt-ridden and frustrated intellectuals in those parts of the world where it is still only a proposal, not yet a somber practice...
...LibertyPiessLiber fossics LibertyPress/LibertyClassics 7440 North Shadeland, Dept...
...That address again is ELVIS...
...What are its origins...
...it is even more important to explain our successes...
...Edmund A. Opitz...
...However, in the rush of pretentious and banal commentary, offered in the wake of his death by a variety of supercilious and self-important commentators, Elvis has also been portrayed as a "revolutionary" precursor of the more "modern" pop music that has produced such questionable delights as Kiss and the Rolling Stones, and this is slanderous nonsense...
...Aron calls the French intellectual class the most intelligent in the world, and he, very possibly its most intelligent member, knows what he is talking about...
...His music was simple, it was fun, it was good—all that one could ask...
...For a time, RCA had people working overtime, seven days a week, trying to keep up with the sudden surge in demand for Elvis recordings...
...for example, noopportunity to paste the oil companies or business in general is overlooked...
...A casual observer may be forgiven for deriving a certain detached and cynical amusement from all this...
...Paris, France, has been for a very long time one of the great distilleries of Marxism...
...Far from it—he gave away Cadillacs, and on each occasion when he did so, contributed more to the sum total of human happiness on this planet than all the wailing Joan Baez has ever done for unionized grape picking...
...Almost everyone had a stereo system in his room —some of them quite elaborate...
...What are the obligations of liberty...
...Elvis Presley's death, of course, has caused but a momentary fluctuation in the nation's pulse, and even that for only some of the nation...
...Anyone who in fact had that thought is right, of course...
...Perhaps living in the most beautiful city on earth softens the brain...
...I have previously criticized the Washington Post as though it were the principal national fountainhead of correct liberalism...
...corner entrepreneurs to mourners outside Presley's Memphis mansion, even as his body lay in state inside...
...Elvis was regally above and beyond such foolishness...
...As one born in 1951, I suppose it would have been more normal for me to have viewed Elvis as "before my time," but through the fortuity of having two brothers roughly ten years older than I, my introduction to the King was an early one...
...The Rolling Stones, of course, were featured phonographic entertainment at most any weekend party, and occasionally served in the front lines of the anti-war movement as well: I can still vividly recall seeing, during the riot in Harvard Square in April 1969, my freshman year, this grinning, bearded face staring with wide-eyed delight at the window-breaking, police-baiting spectacle going on three stories below him, as the lyric strains of "-Street Fighting Man" blared forth from the speakers he had thoughtfully placed on his window sills in honor of the occasion...
...Revel's principal theme is that there always has been too much tolerance of the Communist Party in France, and too many excuses made for Communists in general...
...Indeed, one of the curious things about the history of political ideas in liberal democracies is the recurrence of what Jean-Francois Revel calls the "totalitarian temptation...
...Hardcover $7.95, Paperback $1.95...
...It is not enough to expose the lies and the failures of the enemy...
...I shall make great use of it personally and am glad to commend it to all people who are interested in a greater knowledge of the Bible"—Rev...
...To me, as to millions of others, he was indeed the King, a part of the background of my life...
...Hardcover $9.00, Paperback $3.00...
...The recent death of Elvis Presley at the age of 42 has set off a series of events—some quite touching and even moving, others simply bizarre, still others coldly, calculatingly commercial—which the demise of no other performer in this country could have inspired...
...Scores of artists seemed devoted to providing music to match the every mood of the adolescent identity crises loading down all the serious little people going through school with a set of headphones on poppa's money...
...Norman Vincent Peale...
...Reporting their existence was wrong if it distracted the public from the great Soviet achievements...
...The death knell of capitalism, quoth the Protestant Jew in the British Musuem...
...Both Revel and Aron have written books which are exceedingly far-reaching not only in their attack on Communism but also in their defense of liberal capitalism...
...Elvis is often credited with having been the creator as well as monarch of Rock and Roll, and justly so...
...intelligent or the most unreasonable...
...They Preached Liberty The church today is vitally concerned with liberty...
...With an introduction by Robert Nisbet...
...For the funeral itself—which featured a snow-white hearse followed by one white Cadillac limousine after another—a myriad of the more eminent individuals from the entertainment world joined them on Elvis Presley Boulevard in Memphis...
...They are thought of as tough 32 The American Spectator November 1977...
...Like every true American hero, he never forgot his humble beginnings, and his way of saying thanks to the commoner folk reflected his continued understanding of the dreams of the people from whom he had sprung...
...Hardcover $5.95, Paperback $1.25...
...THE NATION'S PULSE by PeterJ...
...My admiration and affection developed immediately and remained constant throughout, for the most basic of reasons: Elvis could sing, and sing beautifully...
...indulgent youth throughout the world, that he was never part of this trend...
...He recognizes in state-controlled economies the threat to political liberty which they are, but his intense dislike of nation-states as such leads him to propose, somewhat nebulously, economic planning on a world scale...
...Guilt can be a powerful and legitimate human impulse...
...This anthology of timely quotations includes an introductory essay and biographical sketches by the Rev...
...Thousands upon thousands of ordinary, farfrom-wealthy citizens dropped everything and headed straight to the mansion known as "Graceland" when the news broke...
...He was instead a man of great philosophical and historical learning, and his literary style was widely admired...
...The New England ministers of the American Revolution answered these questions so wisely that their answers have special significance today...
...Print name Address City State Zip The American Spectator November 1977 31 story...
...But this has not necessarily made any less powerful and popular the old myths of the left, nor less virulent the vituperations against the bourgeois-liberaldemocratic "system...
...Elvis' style and personality were original, his rhythm and beat perhaps revolutionary, and his voice without doubt richly unique, and all these played their part in making him great...
...Hardcover $8.00, Softcover $2.00...
...And the tragedy of his early death, including the more grotesque and bizarre events which accompanied it, was, in its way, uniquely American as well...
...But at the very least, it was the demise of one who brought simple andhealthy pleasure to a generation of younger Americans, and not a few older ones as well...
...I doff my cap...
...A landmark of political thought in this century"—Walter Lippmann...
...A vastly persuasive case for capitalist theory and practice"—Barron's...
...A specter, wrote Karl Marx in 1848, is haunting Europe: Communism...
...The conclusion: "Those who question the administration's Africa policy should look first to President Carter and to his own evident motivation...
...One hundred and thirty years later, Communism is an established fact in half of Europe and more than half of Asia, and in the countries where it reigns it has produced stagnation and repression...
...Hardcover $7.95, Paperback $1.95...
...For the dissatisfied, sexually confused, harassed, overeducated, underwise intellectuals, for the impotent little would-be dictators, for the busybodies and the envious, the sloganeering reduction of the problems of society to supposedly rational and inevitable solutions has proven irresistible again and again...
...immediately foiled...
...But his music remained simply music—and in this, too, lay much of the explanation for his greatness...
...One of the reasons intellectuals rarely bring themselves to revile Communism with quite the same thoroughness and passion they bring to their detestation of fascism is that they continue to identify Communism as an "aberrant" or "too brutal" variety of the same progressive humanism which they think they stand for...
...There was no one better...
...Not for Elvis the protest march, or the benefit concert for trendy causes, favored by some performers as a device for expressing "solidarity" with the "working man...
...The sophomoric pomposity of "revolutionary" or "political" pop music was not to Elvis' taste...
...Therefore this might be the place to say that the Post's editorial page, of late, has become, if anything, fairly conservative, especially in its foreign policy editorials...
...Franklin P. Cole...
...The continuity of the entire Bible is maintained t)3, skillful abridgement...
...But to this observer, who has never been particularly casual when it comes to Elvis, the most significant feature amid all the nonsense and commercialism was the spontaneous, quite genuine, and surprisingly deep grief displayed by masses of regular people who simply loved Elvis Presley and thought he was the greatest...
...The Post pointed out that President Carter "was slow to rally to the cause of racial justice in the American South, and this failure filled him with a sense of guilt...
...At this point, the commercial repercussions are the most evident...
...This is a volume to be treasured in itself"—Rev...
...Revel argues that the hatred of capitalism, upon which this delusion is based, is really a hatred of industrial society, rooted in an ambivalence stemming from the ambiguous and precarious status of many intellectuals...
...We pay postage on prepaid orders...
...and to me it seems eminently just that the depth of mourning for Elvis Presley far surpass that which other entertainers may reasonably antici30 The American Spectator November 1977 pate in whatever private visions they cherish of a dramatic send-off...
...This is too much, so he is taken before the magistrate again, and released again on the same unsecured bond, but this time—you guessed it—he must see a psychiatrist for "screening...
...He contends that democratic socialism (which he espouses) can only come about through and in alliance with capitalism...
...It was, in fact, one of Elvis' virtues, in this era when popular music has assumed such unwarranted importance in the lives of presumptuous and self...
...Fellow-travelling is a way of life in the elegant cafes of the posh neighborhoods...
Vol. 11 • November 1977 • No. 1
