Capitol Ideas / Mission to America
Bethell, Tom
goody Liberal exists who does not hear a voice in the back of his skull whispering "You are a little creep." Even Galbraith hears the voice. The voice does not lie. For f i f t e e n years The...
...Not a bad system, you may say, but how do you think the barons felt about it...
...To order, or for a copy of our catalogue, write: LibertyPress/LibertyClassics 7440 North Shadeland, Dept...
...Please allow 4 to 6 weeks for delivery...
...Your average Englishman not only Tom Bethell is The American Spectator's Washington correspondent...
...Moreover we have not gathered together merely the old-line conservatives and libertarians...
...It goes almost without saying, incidentally, that we are talking only about the educated classes--what the Soviets call the "ruling circles...
...In unspecified areas the people shall be left alone and shall be free to decide things for themselves...
...C!02 Indianapolis, IN 46250 The history of the world, in a way, is a history of knights and barons finding ways to lord it over peasants and "serfs...
...In fact (as I can attest) he has just been struck by a horrible wave of doubt...
...Prepayment is required on all orders not for resale...
...The framers of the Constitution understood the crucial point that only through the power of coercion can barons rule serfs...
...Could be an awful lot of brainpower going to w a s t e . . , and of course in America there was and t h e r e remains a clas~ of potential barons, consisting of people who had gone to all that trouble and expense to go to places like Harvard and Yale and P r i n c e t o n - - t o elevate themselves above t h e i r peers in o t h e r words--and had then emerged, years later, with diplomas anfflaw degrees in hand...
...What really amazes me, looking back on that period twenty years ago, is that so many Americans I met not only tolerated my rude remarks, but eagerly elicited them, enjoyed them, agreed with them, and pressed me for even more detailed indictments...
...Therefore the new Constitution built a stout fence around government: These powers you may have--these and none other...
...To give him his due, he is also likely to come to his senses before too many months have passed...
...Then they will fall silent...
...Furthermore...
...The reason he THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1982 5 keeps his mouth shut of course is that the French w o u l d n ' t t o l e r a t e such behavior for an instant...
...They are egged on from the word go...
...I clearly understood, then, that Americans were awaiting only my instructions and advice...
...The American Spectator's distinctive position in American intellectual life is that it has been the journal where old Liberals joined without rancor with conservatives and libertarians...
...The so-called Liberals have created a wholly politicized fantasy world and slammed it down hard on all of us...
...They have become the third wave of totalitarian brutes to threaten liberty and Western values in this c e n t u r y , and all t h e i r prot e s t s against such b~tes noires as the Moral Majority amount to so much picklewash against this colossal fact...
...Within about six months he may frequently be seen in a pensive posture, staring down at the sidewalk with pursed lips gripped between thumb and forefinger, looking for all the world like someone who has absent-mindedly forgotten one of his p o s s e s s i o n s , and is trying to remember where...
...Wepay book rate postage on prepaid orders...
...Cockburn or anyone else is motivated by such base considerations...
...For f i f t e e n years The American Spectator has been trying to amplify this voice...
...Missionary work lay ahead...
...With the American Revolution, however, there was a dramatic break with the past...
...Or, rather, tell the assembled tribe how deplorable "Middle America" is...
...The working class seems more or less immune to the disease...
...And p r e t t y soon they w e r e n ' t serfs any longer...
...How can this be...
...Has anything he has been saying in the past six months made any sense at all...
...It was the first magazine where neoconservatives and conservatives cohabited...
...There is diversity under our roof and the crowd grows larger all the time...
...That's what everyone said about America, even newly arrived Eriglishmen: No class system here...
...begins to preach within five minutes of stepping off the boat...
...Liberal students of the Danger On The Right have studiously avoided reporting the news, but The American Spectator grows withevery year...
...simply, and clearly, the various ways in which t h e i r country could be improved, why, then they would be overwhelmingly grateful...
...They were Middle America...
...Over the next fifteen years the little voices in the yahoos" skulls are going to get louder...
...Not three months earlier I had graduated from a famous British university with a Bachelor of Arts degree...
...As the Queen Elizabeth was nudged by tugs into the New York dock, and i gazed out at the s t a t e l y skyline, a crew-cut American at my elbow remarked that I would not have to worry about Red Indians shooting arrows at me as I set foot on the pier, nor were the skyscrapers in imminent danger of falling down, should I decide to take a stroll through Manhattan...
...Well, things worked out very nicely for the serfs as a r e s u l t . If they decided that they wanted to make certain things, houses and tables and chairs, for example, they just went right ahead and made them without having to get permission from anyone...
...One must conclude that there is some aspect of the American system which is on the whole congenial to the workers and distasteful to the intelligentsia~ What can this be...
...I believe we have been successful...
...If one would only t a k e the time to exp!ain, patiently...
...The great journalistic hopes of the Liberal, all funded by old and lavish wealth, a p p e a r to much fanfare then collapse, but The American Spectator endures...
...Undoubtedly, however, I e n l i g h t e n e d my hosts with some profound ruminations on the topic of billboards and their proliferation, the ubiquity of gasoline stations, the pre-pacl~aging of food, and in fact all of life, and various other observations suitable for inclusion in a Bill Moyers commentary...
...There follows a period of unaccustomed silence, lasting for several weeks...
...Did he realize that politics would be jammed into our most intimate activities...
...And that of course is the main reason why newly arrived Englishmen are inclined to behave the way they do...
...The phrase is useful, although the Soviets are a bit out of date because they mean it to apply to such people as the chairman of Exxon, Reagan's kitchen cabinet, and so on...
...I thanked the insolent man for his advice, with the mental note that I should by now be giving it, not receiving it...
...So I set about my missionary task with enthusiasm...
...No Englishman in his right mind would dare to speak comparably to the French about France, even though he might well feel more critically disposed toward Franc than America...
...We know that we are the party of liberty and civilized values...
...If he stays on in the country much longer than t h a t , t h e r e is a good by Tom Bethell chance that he will end up defending it against its numerous detractors, mostly homegrown...
...You have just arrived in America and you wish to be lionized at Manhattan p a r t i e s ? Then tell the natives how backward they are...
...There are always exceptions, an example being the left-wing writer Alexander Cockburn...
...The serfs and the peasants were already managing p e r f e c t l y well on t h e i r own, thank you very much...
...Become managers of men, by any chance...
...Moreover, one sensed that they knew t h e i r place, which was subordinate to that of an Englishman...
...this point is missed only by morons and slippery Liberal scholars like Peter Steinfels whose bogus studies of the nonLiberal intellectual ferment have been essays in damage control...
...the r e a d e r s and writers of The American Spectator cheerfully oppose these louts...
...Is that really such a good idea...
...Well of course there weren't any...
...And only governments and laws can grant this power of coercion...
...dollars...
...Our circulation, once free and numbering only a few thousand, has increased to a paid circulation of over forty thousand...
...who has preferred to remain in the missionary position and has found it much to his taste...
...Did they want some music, by any chance...
...Americans, one had been told many times, were childlike, in addition to being seriously deficient in c u l t u r e . Still, as a r e s u l t of abundant n a t u r a l r e s o u r c e s , they were prosperous beyond measure, and generous to a fault...
...Hmmmmm, the Englishmen wondered to themselves in quiet l i t t l e corners...
...We have brought together a large number of those liberals who could endure the voice in their skulls no longer...
...Thirty-six years ago in "Politics and the English Language" George Orwell wrote that "In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics...
...All orders from outside the United States must be prepaid in U.S...
...But I do not wish to suggest that Mr...
...Hostesses galore will scribble your phone 'number down...
...MISSION TO AMERICA I t was twenty years ago this autumn that I arrived in the United States...
...All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia...
...It's quite a relief to me now that I cannot remember a single thing that I then said...
...Those outside are yahoos...
...They went right ahead and made that, too--called it "jazz" or "ragtime" or " b l u e s . " No one had to phone Europe first, to make sure it was okay with the authorities, no one needed to apply f6r a grant from the National Endowment, or check it out with Stravinsky or Sir Thomas Beecham...
...Such s e l f - d e n i g r a t i o n would be understandable and sensible in a country which had obviously failed-the Soviet Union, for example, But it is really grotesque that in America the educated elites (by and large) have been filled with loathing for a system which rapidly e l e v a t e d the whole country, and themselves within it, to a pre-eminent position in the world...
...my passport was British, and my credentials were excellent...
...Then they would exchange these things among themselves, and they would decide the terms of trade, too...
...Well...
...I should have realized years ago that this characteristically American t h i r s t for accusation was a sign of grave weakness in the country...
...Orwell had it right, but did he realize how far the politicization of life was going to go...
...No one had to get planning permission or anything of that nature...
...Nevertheless, the diploma'd ones were positive there was something they could do to (continued on page 53) 6 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1982...
...To do what...
...After all, we were already tied up alongside the jetty...
Vol. 15 • December 1982 • No. 12
