Editorial / The Great White Ph.D
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr.
EDIT0RIAL "THE GREAT WHITE PH.D" At this writing the nomination of Barry Commoner as presidential candidate for the newly-hatched Citizens Party is not yet official, and it is my sad...
...Unfortunately, the ballots are being sent by mail...
...Has he perhaps been living it up in the Caribbean...
...Hence, its convention's nominee will not actually be c e r t i f i e d until a majority of the party's members, now numbering some 3500 conscientious Americanoes, has voted on his nomination...
...Our nation's professional demonstrators too seem to have lost their gung-ho spirit...
...In listening to Dr...
...tor's Washington columnist and Washington editor of Harper's...
...One sees it at work everywhere, in Social Security, in f e d e r a l l y - a i d e d education, even in the military...
...How comforting it must be to Naderites, welfare recipients, et al., to believe that by depositing their checks at the bank they thereby keep the wheels of industry turning...
...For that matter every enthusiasm of our bizarre Left is treated as a matter of moment on by R. Emmett T y r r e l l , J r. NPR, and perhaps this is the source of Dr...
...We all sit down, as tardy Nader-lovers with labels on lapels continue to arrive...
...For instance, Dr...
...The Citizens Party is about as far to the left as the Birch Society is to the right, and to read its party platform is to read the howls of the Nation, the Progressive, and Mother Jones simultaneously...
...The members of the most pristinely democratic party of all have a long record of disdaining the views of the American majority...
...Not only was "Big Business Day" a flop, but, when Earth Day 1980 was celebrated on April 22 only the Wall Street Journal seemed to care...
...they almost succeed in convincing me that they are oblivious of the media's attendon...
...No such luck, I'm afraid...
...The Left that Dr...
...Hello, My Name Is Rachel...
...The forces of left-wing reform--that gallimaufry of environmentalists, consumerists, anti-nuclear activists, and personal liberationists--have worked their will, not with the American voters, but in spite of them...
...ism entailed a lot of "coerced consumption," citing chemical dumping at Love Canal to prove his point, before the Rev...
...Commoner seems to have missed...
...Better it would be for Dr...
...Postal Service, though safely insulated from the capitalists' clutches, is an exceedingly uncertain communications channel, and though it grows ever more expensive it also seems to grow ever less useful...
...They demand rather than supply, and that no doubt is why they champion the interests of "consumers," a category that serves merely to demarcate the productive...
...Mid-April's "Big Business Day" dawned full of sunshine and balmy breezes, nonetheless verv few demonstrators turned out to growl about corporate infamy...
...When he apprised the citizenry of his positions on the issues, the swoon set in...
...They bust up the joint and then repine that any politician resistant to their threats is endangering the Republic...
...Much of the misery of the last 15 years can be laid to these nuisances...
...Parson Anderson is a winner only at Beverly Hills fundraisers...
...summon forth even greater efforts on the part of the p r o d u c t i v e . . . Hush, here to interrupt my reveries comes Ralph Nader himself, tall, angular, and blue-suited, accompanied by his tousle-headed deputy, Mark Green...
...What, after all, do they produce...
...David Burgess, one-time CIO organizer, began to deliver the invocation: " . . . condemn those who sell the righteous for s i l v e r . . , textile workers slowly dying of brown l u n g . . . chemical workers slowly poisoned by w a s t e . . , struggle for e q u i t y . . . never-ending struggle for justice," Amen...
...Nonetheless, I am glad Dr...
...The thing flopped everywhere but on National Public Radio, where it was treated as a matter of very great moment...
...Commoner, a trained scientist and proud member of the intelligentsia, has yet to trip over it...
...Which brings to mind another thing that Dr...
...Brown's campaign never could get the wind up...
...E D I T 0 R I A L THE GREAT WHITE PH.D...
...that is to say, they are about to grow violent again and to send t h e i r 4 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR .JUNE 1980 students out to fight their good fights for them...
...The fact that the average American sees the inhabitants of the Citizens Party as increasingly absurd is reassuring but not reassuring enough...
...Jimmy is for McGovernism ineptly executed...
...They and their burning causes are rendering America ungovernable, undemocratic, and absurd to those who watch us from afar...
...So earnestly do they converse, with such an evident lack of awareness of the pressing paparazzi, that...
...Commoner is running, and I have a plan to enliven the proceedings...
...Captains of industry show some spunk...
...Yet there seem to be many political realities that Dr...
...We then listened to a speech by someone called Bob Peterson (wearirrg a three-piece business suit, with red spotted tie), who was pleased to inform us that big business had "declared war on the workers," THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JUNE 1980 5...
...The time for dirty tricks is now...
...deludes himself here, just as he deludes himself when he claims he wants the average American to have a larger voice in government...
...Commoner and his colleagues' complaints about inflation, unemployment, the dislocations of modern life, the aggrieved environment, and so forth one is reminded that many of these problems are now actually being exacerbated by the foolishness that these popinjays have already inflicted on us through their control of the judiciary and the bureaucracy...
...The Citizens Party, a splendid goulash of radicals and enthusiasts, has set out to be the pristinely democratic party of the land...
...They nod and then frown, transferring file folders from one hand to the other (click-click-click, w h i r r r . . . ). I'll swear Nader has a sun tan today...
...Does demand create supply, then...
...Could anyone in the world prevail on them to return to their nunnery an.d say the rosary...
...They carry files and stand together in frowning conversation while the still-photographers and television cameras give them their focused attention...
...One look at the fellow tells you he is too piggish to turn down their loot, and I should very much relish the day when it was revealed that he was in the pay of the Giant Corporations...
...Domestically Reagan is markedly less statist than Jimmy...
...Moreover, my guess is that the Goody-Goodies of the Citizens Party are about to grow more concerned...
...The miseries of the Massachusetts Messiah are far more the product of his positions than the product of his Adapted from RET's Monday Column in the Washington Post...
...I barely had time to ask him why he so disapproved of voluntary transactions between consenting adults, capitalby Tom B e t h e l l ism in a nutshell, and he barely had time to reply that in his view capital...
...Commoner's political career had the votes been sent via United Parcel Service or a privatelyowned carrier pigeon service...
...indiscretions on that infamous isle...
...Now, there is the dirty little secret...
...Commoner apparently has failed to note that there is a considerable difference between the two most probable presidential candidates, for he complains of their sameness indignantly and darkly hints that it is all part of a conspiracy against average Americans like himself...
...Beyond the borders of a few college campuses the Hon...
...Most wear longish skirts with side slits, some wear well-cut riding jackets with ties, giving a mannish look...
...C A P I T O L I D E A S CITIZEN NADER'S LOADED DAIS As I sat in the resplendent Cannon Caucus Room (the size of an aircraft hanger, with glistening chandeliers, gilded moldings, bright television lights) awaiting the commencement of Ralph Nader's "Big Business Day" ceremonies, I found myself thinking about that preeminent Keynesian inversion of truthmone of the most influential falsehoods of the twentieth century--to the effect that "demand creates supply...
...Their reforms, which have been extensive, have been implemented through America's least democratic institutions, the courts and the bureaucracy...
...It is a wonder that Dr...
...Presently, the ruler of what the Wall Street Journal has described as a "vast conglomerate" with "interlocking directorships" strode off and I had a brief word with Mark Green, who is as charmingly boyish as ever...
...When all he had against him was Chappaquiddick, Teddy was as popular as springtime and laughter...
...And further, that by demanding cost-ofliving increases they will simply Tom Bet~sell is The American Specta...
...A t this writing the nomination of Barry Commoner as presidential candidate for the newly-hatched Citizens Party is not yet official, and it is my sad mission to report that his nomination may never become official...
...Yet it is not just the American voter who has grown deaf to the sirens and unguents of the American Left...
...Would Dr.Commoner really like to live under a government whose policies accurately reflected average American's views on busing, capital punishment, prayer in public schools and Proposition 13 fever...
...When the morally upright of the American Left cannot get their own way quietly, they usually commence the demonstrations, the threats, and the lamentations that democracy is being thwarted...
...Perhaps only someone whose kingdom was not of this world could do that...
...What, I wonder, are they doing here, auditing this anti-business conclave...
...Alas, the great white Ph.D...
...Reagan stands pretty much for the foreign policy that has governed us since World War II...
...This, of course, is a burlesque of democracy, and inasmuch as these reforms for which the Citizens Party thumps so e a r n e s t l y amount to moonshine the burlesque grows all the more lurid and ludicrous...
...Of course the differences between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan are easily observable...
...During this year's primaries the plain folk of the Republic have given the candidates of the Left short shrift and few votes...
...I urge the officers of the Fortune 500 to have their corporations donate to his campaign...
...Truth be known, our U.S...
...Commoner's belief that, as he puts it, "We are undergoing a sea change in American politics...
...This phenomenon of ceaselessly rising governmental costs and steadily lowering governmental performance seems to be one of the invincible laws of modern collectivist government...
...They are at once the problem and the "solution...
...Commoner has failed to note...
...Commoner espouses is most comfortable, not with the e l e c t o r a t e , but with the mandarins in the judiciary and in the bureaucracy...
...Children, old-age pensioners, college students, hospital patients, welfare recipients, and numerous government employees contribute solely to the demand side of economic life, and to that list could be added Naderites, I concluded as I observed Nader's willing minions filing into the room...
...Hello, My Name Is Marcia...
...But the nuns, still stuck in the late 1960s, wear short habits, almost to the knee...
...Hello, My Name Is Sister Antonelle...
Vol. 13 • June 1980 • No. 6
