Harvard Hates America
Boutillier, John Le
BOOK REVIEW Harvard Hates America John Le Boutillier / Gateway Editions / $7.95 Richard Brookhiser LLarvard Hates America is John Le Boutillier's first book, a record, at 25, of his political...
...This is quite true, and it is a truth often lost on conservatives: Capitalists are the least reliable allies of capitalism, and businessmen, in many cases, are as to get on the take as welfare queens and social scientists...
...And two paragraphs after that, he adds, "in reality, it was themselves they hated, for they suffered from a massive case of guilt...
...Oimilar confusions mar the chapters which give the book its name, Le Boutillier's thesis is that Harvard is infested with elitists, and elitists are bad...
...These principles in turn suggest at "new civil and political philosophy" which Le Boutillier names The New Homestead (his caps, his italics...
...Le Boutillier is no more informative in his discussion of the liberal elite of Harvard College "I don't doubt the Liberals' good intentions," Le Boutillier concedes, "they do want to stop injustice, hunger and suffering...
...Le Boutillier draws five principles from the Homestead Act for the guidance of Republicans today: "the family frame of reference," "availability of opportunity," "incentive," "no governmental expansion," and "decentralization...
...Established businesses are among the firmest supporters of the regulatory agencies which free-market economists rail against...
...Le Boutillier fares little better with solutions to what he identifies as "the three problems most threatening to the American family today"-homes, health care, and higher education...
...Le Boutillier is impressed with this concept, as are many of his acquaintances: "One good friend of mine, Dunston Wai, from the South of Sudan...said, 'John, what you are proposing is a major revolution in American political thought...
...Vital indeed-unless, of course, we decide to let "the people" themselves choose where they shall live...
...Thus a market economy counters even the greed of Harvard Business School graduates...
...As a model for the party's regeneration, Le Boutillier puts forward the Homestead Act of 1862, which allowed anyone over 21 to secure title to 162 acres of frontier, provided he worked it for five years...
...For the first hour of the class we dis cussed standard questions concerning storage costs, transportation methods, and product " packaging...
...Note, however, wliat he chooses as an instance of capitalist corruption: I'll never forget the time early in the fall term when we had a case dealing with the inventory practices of a company producing medical catheters...
...He does not say whether the case was hypothetical or, if not, whether there were some peculiar barriers to entry in the medical supplies industry...
...A profound and major change...
...and an avowed African socialist...
...until it seems that the leading growth industry in America, behind cybernetics and disco music, is the production of ruinously overpriced catheters...
...At Harvard \ Business School, Le Boutillier encounters "the Big Business mentality," and finds it "ethically and morally corrupt...
...Le Boutillier's catheter profiteers are said to be turning profits of 60 percent...
...For instance, he endorses the National Home Ownership Foundation Act, written by liberal Republican John McClaughry and introduced (unsuccessfully) in the Senate in 1967...
...As a responsible nation," he declares, "we are soon going to be faced with the question, 'Where should our people live?' And if, as a nation, we can reach agreement concerning basic populational priorities, then the concept of a Local Planning and Development District becomes vital to our national growth...
...All these may simultaneously be true...
...In a section devoted to ' 'New Types of Government," Le Boutillier calls for a proliferation of local and regional planning districts, without seeming to wonder how these might serve the principle of "no governmental expansion...
...John Le Boutillier is an ambitious and energetic man...
...but don't wait for Harvard Hates America to explain how...
...The title is somewhat misleading, since Le Boutillier interspersed his studies at Harvard College and Harvard Business School with fund-raising for the Republican Party, and he interrupts his narrative to give an account of his prescriptions for the party's, and the nation's, woes...
...These digressions are the most interesting parts of the book...
...I am proud of it.' This," Le Boutillier goes on, "from a Harvard Ph.D...
...BOOK REVIEW Harvard Hates America John Le Boutillier / Gateway Editions / $7.95 Richard Brookhiser LLarvard Hates America is John Le Boutillier's first book, a record, at 25, of his political experiences and ruminations...
...The act called for local home-ownership loan funds, designed to channel capital into areas where it was "either non-existent or only available on unfavorable terms...
...Then the professor said, "OK, I think there's another question here we should discuss...
...Though the requirements of the act could be fulfilled by individuals, it worked in practice to the benefit of industrious families...
...Le Boutillier's point, to be sure, is that greed is immoral-but in his haste to make it he seizes on ready-made rhetoric, and ignores the cases where capitalist amorality is firing its own house...
...At age 20, he was the youngest national finance chairman of a. Senate campaign in history...
...McClaughry, Le Boutillier notes, is "the type of person we should'have in politics...
...But turn again to the example...
...and businessmen are earnest players in the interest-group sweepstakes which Le Boutillier deplores...
...Doesn't that strike you as wrong...
...Le Boutillier's crass classmates predictably think that's just fine, and Le Boutillier milks his indignation for the rest of the chapter- "Well, what about making huge profits off of sick people...
...What do you think of a company such as this making 60 percent profit off of a medical product...
...Le Boutillier's, at least on this showing, are not enough...
...Devising a philosophy, however, is more difficult, for it requires the guidance of sound ideas...
...Boy, I really don' t know what I have done The last statement, at least, is true, for once Le Boutillier gets down to details the "major revolution" sorts itself into a collection of proposals, mostly half-baked...
...But, three paragraphs later, he says that "many of them are hypocrites, both intellectually and personally...
...The question arises, or should arise, since, with after-tax profits running at about 5 percent, there should be a stampede of manufacturers to the catheter market-as a result of which the profit margins would sink...
...Thus most of the money raised by the corporate political action committees in 1978 went to buy the favors of liberal incumbents...
...But if Le Boutillier had met Roger Starr he would know that one reason mortgage capital is "non-existent" in the first place is that the government has distorted the lending market-which knowledge wcmld suggest another, possible solution...
Vol. 12 • April 1979 • No. 4
