Spectator's Journal / Reaganism Meets the Third World
Crutcher, Anne
from a political point of view, the activities of the envy-arousal brigade notwithstanding. If the present level of interest rates can be explained as a simple matter of lenders demanding a...
...When, in India, a woman journalist asked her why, when millions are starving, without shoes, medicine, housing, or education, the United States spends so much money on instruments of death and destruction, she r e p l i e d , "The United S t a t e s invests in armaments for the same reason that India does...
...Just fill in the coupon now, while the invitation still stands...
...Getting rid of a mindset that equates progress with guerrilla warfare has freed the American government of many embarrassments...
...She wanted it, too . . . . "Listen, Trav," she said, trying to control the hot breath which blurred her voice [sic?], "You know this isn't a good idea...
...As a member, I will get a complete list of lar i r r i t a n t was without its cost in further misunderstandings...
...It doesn't offer best sellers that come and go...
...Her romantic hero is Edmund Richter, a blond-goateed, bisexual art historian of Russian parentage with a cat called Vico, an irritating habit of exclaiming bilingually, and a conversational style so self-indulgently pompous as to make even Bernard Shaw's seem terse and low-keyed by comparison...
...Not that easing up on this particuN OW you can own it all...
...But enough...
...Not one to counter inflamed r h e t o r i c with inflamed rhetoric, she achieved a more stunning effect by saying, in a letter to Third World ambassadors associated with certain anti-American fulminations, "You don't believe this nonsense any more than I do...
...New-wave mawkishness closes over him...
...If someone offered you 12 percent for your money early in 1979, it probably seemed generous at the time...
...At the same time, the Administration has made it clear that concern for Third World problems is not the same thing as the Carter Administration's itch to be "on the right side of history," or any other euphemism for promoting Marxist revolution...
...From J e a n e K i r k p a t r i c k , in August, people in a dozen countries in Latin America and S o u t h e a s t Asia had been hearing that kind of plain talk whenever impulses toward Yankee-baiting came to the fore...
...Nor are t h e s e the only sticking complete works of Shakespeare...
...and intensity...
...Come on, come on," he moaned...
...He wanted her . . . . "You want it, too," he said, "You want it, too...
...Lopez-Portillo himself has been outspoken on the importance of demeanor...
...It registered in Mexico and elsewhere in Latin America as a reasonable regard for the rights of sovereign states to make their own decisions on matters of alignment and non-alignment...
...After thirty years of getting in and out of bed with s t u d e n t s , family friends, and chance acquaintances (the poor man can't even drop in to a gay bar without becoming the immediate c e n t e r of a t t r a c t i o n ) , Richter marries his childhood sex partner and romantically retires to 26 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1982...
...Things have changed since then...
...In all, a dubiously digestible ragout of ideological hostility, tender vanities, real needs, intramural rivalries and impulses to haze the new boy...
...Why were lenders willing to accept a negative yield until July, 19807 It is difficult to answer this question (Milton Friedman recently puzzled over it, to no avail, in a Newsweek column) because it is never easy to provide a convincing account of irrational behavior...
...I want you," he said . . . . "I want you badly...
...Like Edmund Burke rejecting the French Revolution in its entirety, the President calmly declined to underwrite massive income transfers or to place the United States in a forum where the Third World would call the tune...
...S P E C T A T O R ' S J O U R N A L REAGANISM MEETS THE THIRD WORLD by Anne C r u t c h e r I n Washington, D.C., people are still shaking their heads and saying Ronald Reagan has no foreign policy...
...Every bit as driveling and even more highly praised is Francine du Ples~ix Gray's new novel, World Without End.~ Gray specializes in fine arts prose...
...A similar preference is at work, one must charitably assume, among admirers of Susan Cheever's fiction...
...But it will help...
...They took it that, where Jimmy Carter had human rights, Camp David, and Andy Young, his successor has only the reflexes of an old redbaiter who likes rich people and is ready to let the poor eat jellybeans...
...I am sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas...
...Courteous a t t e n t i o n had worked equally well for Jeane Kirkpatrick on her summer travels...
...We'll send you the titles from which to select the books I want For each volume I choose, 1 pay only $8 49 (plus shipping) I may return any book for full credit within 21 days and I may cancel my membership at any time (Books shipped in U S A and Canada only ) anti-Communist...
...It also meant seven Westerners with private agendas and often contradictory aims...
...It w o n ' t make anything easy in Central America...
...Every tragedy...
...What Gray has produced is Masterpiece Soap Opera...
...Jane is loomed over by the irresistible Travis...
...American talk about the virtues of the free market sounds a little too glib combined with American reluctance to open "trade doors when somebody at home might get hurt by competition from the underdeveloped countries...
...Over 1300 pages in three matched Classics Club volumes...
...Indeed the world is ruled by little else...
...for we have seen that they are close to zero in real, after-tax terms (by November they had turned decidedly negative...
...These books include Utopia by Thomas More...
...The Classics Club is quite unlike any other book club...
...her wronged Rochester sheds t e a r s of remorse at his failure to "connect with people...
...What do I care about ideas...
...On the one hand, the message went home that the United -States did not have to show up for a prearranged drubbing...
...All three (regularly$25.47) for only $1.00, plus shipping...
...The prosperity of Taiwan, Singapore, and South Korea speak for it...
...Instead, it offers its members a chance to stay young through great books that will never grow old...
...To begin with, following Jimmy Carter was in itself a break...
...We're betting that once you savor the words and thoughts that made Shakespeare the most quoted author of all time, you'll want to stay in the Club so you can meet some of the other great story tellers, philosophers, poets, and historians who, like Shakespeare, have lit our way and helped us to see life more clearly...
...Knowledge does not find its way instantly into prices, despite what "random walk" market theoreticians believe...
...It doesn't look like indifference if, when food stamps are being cut back in the United States, the P r e s i d e n t is willing to keep foreign aid at present levels and even to increase it in certain areas...
...Feeling we are treated with respect, we can do anything," he said...
...Even the final, vague acceptance of f u t u r e " g l o b a l n e g o t i a t i o n s " on Third World problems after resisting "Global Negotiations" had the imp a c t of a p l e a s a n t r y r a t h e r than a capitulation...
...The United States will not let its hope of good relations with India stand in the way of s t r a t e g i c a l l y necessary ties with Pakistan...
...The President could, however, point to a personal victory in the relationship he developed 'with President Lopez-Portillo, in advance of Cancun...
...It won't solve the last dilemma over textile imports or Cubans in Angola...
...Here, among "images from JamesJoyce and Yeats and O'Casey by John Muggeridge float[ing] past the car windows in the light rain," lust conquers all...
...For the first six months of 1981, only the expectatitm of incompetence mitigated anxiety over the prospect of such an American loose in the world community...
...Every comedy...
...A fair example of what these three newspapers have in mind is the following dialogue which forms the climax of Cheever's latest novel, A Handsome Man, * and takes place in a ruined castle between the hero's mistress and his son...
...The Reagan luck went a long way...
...One of the chief bones of contention between Travis and his family is the fact that he keeps dropping out of school.][ He was unbuttoning the top of her shirt now...
...For many Africans, Asians, and Latin Americans, the first suspicion that the President of the United States might indeed have a foreign policy came with a doomsday thud...
...He leant tovcards her, forcing her over onto her side on the grass...
...Everything Shakespeare ever wrote...
...John Muggeridge is a free-lance writer who has appeared in the American Spectator, National Review, and the Human Life Review...
...In the Washington visit that preceded Cancdn, he appeared to feel he had it from President Reagan...
...Reeling from the brickbats encouraged by Andy Young's willingness to consider black African dictatorships overseas branches of CORE and SNCC, he dismissed any such meeting as one more arena for beating up on Uncle Sam...
...Socalled 'historic standards' are irrelevant in the face of a permanent change in the consciousness of savers, who will not soon again accept negative returns, any more than workers will again be fooled into ignoring taxes and accepting inflation instead of higher wages," Gilder recently noted in the Wall Street Journal...
...Yet, all the while, t h e r e was the convincing evidence of good will and the sensitivity to others' sensitivities...
...The President could not claim credit for the oil glut that made the Mexicans approvr the petroleum stockpiling purchases the OPEC nations banned--a development that weakened the OPEC nations' ability to threaten and demand...
...But perhaps we do begin to see the answer, nevertheless, when the whole problem is couched in these terms...
...It takes more now than a random charge of imperialism to inhibit defense of American strategic interests...
...the Iraqi nuclear reactor and later exercised his formidable powers in Congress to push through the AWACS for Saudi Arabia...
...Touch~ with a vengeance...
...To force you to buy a classic would be barbaric...
...Volume I, containing all his Comedies...
...Every finely-chiseled sonnet...
...The same message was encapsuled 24 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1952 in an exchange last summer between UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick and a questioner at a press conference in Nepal...
...In Canct~n, the President smiled more but was equally definite about not going along with absurdities...
...Non-alignment, the Administration makes clear, is a game any number can play...
...Every historical drama...
...The New York Times calls her a born writer, the Washington Star an inventive and graceful one with a wry style of her own, while the Chicago Tribune thinks of her prose as graceful and spare, "the kind . . . that sounds e f f o r t l e s s but is bonebreaking to write...
...Don't send any money flow...
...and other fresh, spontaneous Please enroll me as a member and send me at once the complete works of Shakespeare l enclose.0 money nou~ After a weeks examination, l will either keep my books and pay~l (plus shipping) or return them...
...So do the moves, open and covert, of countries as disparate as Peru and China to change directions away from socialist regulation and toward free market practices...
...and not merely an age of inflation, but one in which the ghost of Lord Keynes still roams the halls of Congress...
...The President's winning manner takes away some of the shock effect of his r e f u s a l to make decisions on the basis of other people's either/ors...
...These were Presidential acts seen from a distance...
...That meant 14 Third Worlders with grievances, individualized and general...
...Establishing firmness where there was wobble and simultaneously reducing the guff content of international debate is a considerable achievement...
...The United States cordiality toward China will continue, but so will the time-honored American links with Taiwan...
...On the other, many of the underdeveloped countries were genuinely ready to welcome signs of respect and understanding from the industrialized powers...
...Volume III, the Tragedies and Poems...
...The face-to-face test did not come until Canct~n, where Ronald Reagan in person met with the leaders of 21 pivotal countries...
...It opened f l o o d g a t e s for j o u r n a l i s t s e a g e r to portray the Administration as actively hostile to human rights...
...Cancun, bf course, was projected in terms of a New Economic Order, an occasion for redistributing world resources between rich and poor nations and other utopian concepts dear to enemies of imperialism, neocolonialism, and the rest...
...This came across as something more than accepting the inevitable...
...Her book, in fact, reaches such a pitch of cultural exquisiteness that many critics refuse to believe that it was written at all, p r e f e r r i n g to think of it as having been painted ("her canvas is vast, her brushstroke sure"), cultivated (' 'a mandarin garden of a book' '), ~Simon & Schuster, $13.95...
...she forgives him, and they fall into each other's arms as the sun sets over the Western Isles and "one white horse walk[s] slowly across the silent landscape to the sea...
...Bone-breaking to read would be closer to the mark...
...Travis...
...the wisdom of Plato, Aristotle and Marcus Aurelius...
...A combination of luck and skill had laid the groundwork for a Reagan # success at Cancun...
...Cutting through guff to realities has been c h a r a c t e r i s t i c of J e a n e Kirkpatrick in her UN role...
...images from Barbara Cartland and Gloria Steinem float p a s t his car wigdows in the heavy drivel...
...Keynes himself would have recognized the problem instantly, On the very last page of his famous book, The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, in perhaps his most famous passage, he wrote: The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood...
...The $57 billion given by the United States over the last decade will have to attest to the quality of American intentions...
...There were also positive gestures such as enlisting the Mexican president's contributions in talking about American immigration policy...
...A Handsome Man is corner-store bookrack stuff spiced up with a spoonful or two of feminist Weltschmerz, neo-Gothic romance for the English Lit...
...Indira Gandhi's annoyance at hearing all the successes of the Indian economy a t t r i b u t e d to the private sector in a very mixed congeries of public and private initiatives is understandable...
...Madmen in authority, who hear voices in the air, are distilling their frenzy from some academic scribbler of a few years back...
...Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist...
...Latin American leaders of democratic inelination told her that widespread belief in American liking for strongman government had made l~onest native critics of oligarchic rule feel more alone than ever...
...At eighteen he has already sufficiently mastered graduate school back-slang to be able thus to berate a roomful of summer vacationers: "Your contentment with well-being, to use William James's astute insight, protects you like a carapace from the t h i r s t for transcendence...
...Only four lines 'earlier his hand on her shoulder had "sent tingling little electric shocks across her chest and down her legs...
...Reagan has also demonstrated a capacity for creative myopia in relation to Mexico...
...What simple movie actor would be capable of implementing his benighted views...
...It also underscores the Reagan Administration's understanding of where the relevance of ideology leaves off...
...It will not even let the U.S...
...11'f76 THE r r 'B, RONL}N, ~'.Y...
...And, at any time, you may cancel your membership, without penalty or hurt feelings...
...It takes time to sort all these things out, but by now most lenders have sorted them out, and have within the past year moved to offset (by demanding higher interest rates) the various penalties imposed on savers in an age of inflation...
...HOT TO TROT, SO WHAT...
...Every epic and romantic poem...
...The boys and girls lap it up...
...Doctor Johnson said of Congreve's novel that he would rather praise it than read it...
...They're hard-bound in matched wheat-colored buckram, worked and stamped in crimson, black, and gold...
...The President's response to anklebiting by Muammar Qaddafi was not his only show of coolness and decision in dealing with the Third World...
...They're carefully printed on expensive paper stock...
...Rochester, complete with white Alfa-Romeo convertible and silverhandled shaving b r u s h e s , not to mention a healthily p l e b e i a n J a n e Eyre raised under "the big Illinois sky with the d i s t a n t glow from the lights of Chicago offbehind the water towers...
...With a predecessor who managed to affront the national pride of any number of countries while virtually inviting insults to American dignity around the world, President Reagan could do wonders on mere decency and common sense...
...Take only those books you really want to own...
...There was also a display of evenhandedness in the Middle East where he accepted United Nations condemnation of the Israeli strike against Anne Crutcher is a former editorial writer with the Washington Star...
...Her voice sounded as surprised as she felt...
...The last time the New Economic Order came up, poor Jimmy Carter refused to go...
...There was no comment out of Washington when the Mexican government recognized the Salvadoran guerrillas...
...The P r e s i d e n t and those who speak for him have gone far toward dispelling the myth that the Reagan Administration means to turn its back on the developing countries...
...Walden by Thoreau...
...Not all the anxiety and disaffection over human rights were disingenuous, e i t h e r . More than one Latin American expressed misgivings over the supposed Reagan preference for military autocrats as long as they are even outspoken works t h a t s t r e t c h y o u r mind and sweep away the mental cobwebs that hold back most men...
...If the present level of interest rates can be explained as a simple matter of lenders demanding a real, after-tax return on the use of their capital, then the question before the house ceases to be puzzling, though a new teaser does arise: We must ask, not "why are interest rates so high...
...It was not only a matter of not making Carteresque gaffes--no remarks about Montezuma's revenge and no proposals for giant fences along the Rio Grande...
...He was looming over her now, cradling her head in his hands and looking at her with love "Simon & Schuster, $12.95...
...She tried to pull away from him, but her resistance thawed in the hot force of his desire . . . . There was no ambivalence or doubt about Travis...
...No, the United States won't promise one percent of the gross national product for development aid...
...Moreover, "bracket creep" (movement up the tax brackets through inflation) was not as advanced in 1979 as it is today...
...The selections themselves are remarkable values...
...And there was more than cantankerousness in J u l i u s N y e r e r e ' s remarks about the e l a b o r a t e s t r u c t u r e of subsidization t h a t , in p r e s e n t - d a y real life, supports the sturdy, independent farmer of American tradition...
...The truth is that it takes people time to learn what is rational and what is not, especially when such arcane matters as inflation, interest rates, taxation, and the interaction between all three are at issue...
...He was right...
...Asked why a democracy such as the United States should be closer to Pakistan, a dictatorship, than to India, a fellow democracy, the ambassador r e p l i e d with a n o t h e r question: "Why does India, a democracy, have closer relations with the Soviet Union, a dictatorship, than with a fellow democracy such as the United States...
...I want you and you want me...
...He has made his point about the superior viability of free .market approaches to development at a time when the conspicuous evidence is on his side...
...Volume II, the Historical Dramas...
...but "why were they so low until so recently...
...Omar Khayyam's Rubaiyat...
...Benjamin P/'ahklin's Autobiography...
...But perhaps the medium to which World Without End most properly belongs is public television...
...You never have to buy any of these books...
...The p r e s i d e n t of Ecuador actually asked Ambassador Kirkpatrick if P r e s i d e n t Reagan wanted to bring dictatorship back to his country...
...Can Keynes have foreseen how much of these words would apply to himself, 45 years after they were written...
...Come on, don't do that...
...The mere fact of a cabinet member's coming to visit and showing informed concern for their problems went over powerfully in such ordinarily neglected countries as Ecuador and Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and P a k i s t a n . Even in the s o u t h e r n cone of South America, respectful attentiveness undid some of the a l i e n a t i n g e f f e c t s of p a s t policies...
...They're yours in three handsome volumes for only $1.00, as your introduction to The Classics Club...
...Public scoldings about human r i g h t s had been hard on Latin p r i d e and p r o p o r t i o n a t e l y h a r d on any American hopes of constructive collaboration with the major Latin American powers...
...President Reagan benefited from both the positive and the negative aspects of Carter's gesture...
...exhibited ("an unapologetic display of l i t e r a r y opulence' '), or even, as Harrison Salisbury implies with his comment that "the evolution of its human relationships is like a manyfaceted stone," mined...
...Like Goethe on his deathbed your reviewer can no more...
...S t i l l , in less than a year, the Reagan Administration has changed its image in the Third World...
...THE CLASSICS CLUB ROSLYN, N.Y...
...In Third World capitals, they're not so sure...
...Hardly a page goes by without an italicized reference to the quattrocento...
...Hypocrite...
...It even f e a t u r e s an u p p e r - c r u s t New York Mr...
...11576 2 -W Q Mt r~lr, A], St,e*t CO 1D4M I ~ty 5t,*le Z~p Nutv Membvr~ ar162 m U'q A and CanadaunLv oMer,hgbtIy dlflerent m ( anada THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1982 25 points that remain between the United States and the Third World...
...And through direct-to-the-public distribution, we are able to offer our members these deluxe editions for only $8 49each, plus s h i p p i n g . Interested...
...We'll bill you later...
...bond with Israel p r e v e n t strong ties with the Arab states...
...The plot unfolds in mystic Ireland...
Vol. 15 • January 1982 • No. 1
