Capitol Ideas/A Yankophobe's Doubts

...Though he obviously had the talent to spread oceans of vague colors across canvas after the fashion of the great de Kooning, Keating chose to do more...

...Europeans were no doubt better judges of the Soviet threat than we were, I went on...

...C A P I T O L I D E A S A YANKOPHOBE'S DOUBTS I n a recent issue of National Review, Brian Crozier had some interesting things to say about anti-Americanism in Europe, Britain in particular...

...And almost 40 years have elapsed since World War II...

...I wonder if it would have given the old man pleasure in his last days to know that one of America's most brilliant political scientists, Edward Banfield of Harvard, had written a book endorsing the underlying wisdom o f Keating's rationale...

...Recently I wrote to her and told her that I was slowly coming around to her point of view about the American military presence in Western Europe...

...It took the bewildered Van Meegeren's repeated and carefully documented assertions to prove his case, and then only after he publicly painted a splendid Vermeer under court supervision...

...If only we could stop piling unwanted nuclear weapons on Europe...

...This episode, in which President Eisenhower failed to support the famously "wet" British prime minister, Anthony Eden (thus underlining Britain's hitherto unsuspected dependence on the U.S...

...It is a help to realize that such strong feelings of fear and anger are felt by so many others, and are signs of sanity, not insanity...

...How I WISH IT DID...

...All right...

...The West European governments could buy some of our weapons if they wanted to, but that would be the extent of our involvement...

...Get rid of the Americans first...

...We're in a corner and would all like to cop out, but if America can't take the challenge there isn't much hope...

...The subject is well worth exploring in greater detail, and one senses that there is a great book to be written on the topic...

...I would not go so far, but it is manifest that museums could save a lot of money if they had the policy of purchasing only high-grade fakes...

...I enclosed a William Satire column to the same effect...

...Protests and demonstrations...

...This could be summarized as "Get out and let Europe stew in its own juice...

...If the rich wish to purchase originals let them set up their own museums...

...We need to take the first steps toward disarmament--risky and dangerous but there is No ALTERNATIVE...

...to stay on in Europe...

...Indeed, we should pull out of NATO as well...

...Absorbed as we are today with budget deficits, Congress ought to consider the wisdom and work of these men...

...V J t o u r letter came as a great surprise but I did not find it reassuring," she replied...

...AntiAmericanism enables them all to march under the same banner, and to burn the same flag...

...They are weapons designed for a first strike and not revenge, 10 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR APRIL 1984 although both concepts are morally indefensible...

...What principle would unite them...

...to leave, I agreed...

...The first step is for the Americans to get out of Europe...

...Her letter went on: "How can we start de-escalating the nuclear weapons arsenal without a stabilizing conventional force in Europe...

...It is, after all, supposed to be Reagan's harsh, bellicose rhetoric that makes the Russians feel threatened and surrounded...

...Hopefully, we would eventually be able to provide this ourselves as part of the continuous de-escalation process . . . " Notice that there is a glimmer of recognition here that there really may be such a thing as a Soviet threat, not just a "nuclear threat" (as though these weapons tgnd to explode accidentally...

...A collection of 135 superb Keatings went for less than $150,000 at Christie's last year...

...Don't believe that because I seem ungrateful, I am proSoviet and anti-American...

...The art world was heaved into a pother...

...And if he is re-elected, the distinction will completely lack validity...

...I want peace, democracy, and freedom but I don't believe that nuclear blackmail and escalation give me any peace or that the use of military force promotes the cause of democracy...

...Then get rid of Margaret Thatcher--if you can...

...Please allow 4 to 6 weeks for delivery...

...Well let Congress reduce the cost of funding the arts and with no aesthetic loss whatsoever by merely insisting that the National Endowment for the Arts make its grants solely to those museums that henceforth purchase quality fakes...

...Keating was, as I have said, a particularly important artist as modern artists go...

...That way people will be forced to s h a r e . . . I mean, I know we don't want to use force but just in case some people try to get more than their fair share there will have to be a police f o r c e . . , at f i r s t . . . Later on it will wither a w a y . . . " (The visionaries return to the beginning of the vision at this point...

...All orders from outside the United States must be prepaid in US...

...You can make a distinction between LlbertyPte Lll r yClass s The Theory of Moral Sentiments By Adam Smith The Glasgow Edition Edited by A. L. Macfie and D. D. Raphael The Theory of Moral Sentiments is now available in the LibertyClassics softcover version of the Glasgow Edition of the Works and Correspondence of Adam Smith...

...Museums are now willing to spend over a million dollars for one painting...

...Therefore, let us leave NATO...

...Congress has done nothing that I have been able to detect about cutting government costs...

...dollars...

...No doubt there would be cries of dismay from some in Europe, just as there are always those who reach maturity but prefer the comforts and shelter of their parents' home to by Tom Bethell the unknown and frightening outside world...

...Was she saying that my suggestion was impracticable, because many Europeans still want the U.S...

...His answer is that a painting's cost does not reflect its aesthetic value but rather its market value and that is determined solely by its rarity...

...My response to this objection would be as follows: The peace movement cannot expect to win everything at once...

...This movement is made up of people, mostly women apparently, who for one reason or another feel strongly alienated from their own society, from their own country, from the West, from capitalism and all its works, from (in some cases) their spouses, who may have abandoned them in accordance with the unprinciples of sexual liberation...

...Vote for the Labour party, with its proposal for unilateral disarmament...

...They have too much invested in its opposite...

...It was time for the U.S...

...sparked a wave of anti-Americanism in the right wing of the Conservative Party, which still endures...

...Why did my sister--and you can be sure, the peace movement in general--want a continued American presence in Europe...

...There was embarrassment and fear...

...Crozier suggests that antiAmericanism in Britain is recent, perhaps only really emerging with the Suez Crisis in 1956...

...I understand the temptations of isolationism--the world has grown too complicated and too dangerous...

...It is precisely this point--the contradiction between their support for socialist principle and their sense of betrayal by socialist practice--that the peace movement people and the coalition of the alienated cannot face up to...

...In 1945 the Dutchman Van Meegeren confessed that a collection of beautiful Vermeers was from his own hand rather than that of Vermeer...

...L102 Indianapolis, IN 46250 the Russian people and the Soviet rulers and their warmongering generals, because the Russian people are ruled by force...

...The critics had not wanted to know...

...But we seemed to be making no headway...

...And that, I am sure, is why my sister fears an American pullout from Western Europe...

...Here were the Americans "spending millions in the West's defense," and what was the response...

...To order, or for a copy of our catalogue, write: LibertyPress/LibertyClassics 7440 North Shadeland, Dept...

...No doubt also the American absence from Western Europe would mollify the Soviets, who would no longer feel threatened, "surrounded," et cetera...

...Thenceforth, everyone in Europe would live in peace and harmony...

...And now we have the Soviet Union, a material embodiment of this vision, and a police state...

...or, in other cases, from their religion...

...but you can't make much of a distinction between Reagan and the American people because they elected him...

...Into the vacuum created by this loss of faith has rushed the age-old "vision," which is experienced in roughly this way: "There, dimly visible on that shining hill, in a new s o c i e t y . . , a society in which people no longer compete with one another, no longer struggle greedily to possess things...

...move out of Europe seemed to be tactical, not practical, and I looked further for a clearer argument...

...If so, I agree that there are difficulties in practice, but in principle we should not be encouraging the natural desire of some to be taken care of by others...

...In the 1930s these people might have marched under a Soviet banner...

...So they have responded by turning away from the problem and by coalescing around a different principle, that of anti-Americanism...

...If so, the removal of the Americans and all of their warmongering paraphernalia from West European soil should sufficiently calm the Kremlin ge0try, and there would no longer be any reason for people like my sister to fear the Soviet army, n'est ce pas...

...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR APRIL 1984 9 " I t is not so simple," she continued...

...We pay book rate postage on prepaid orders...

...This was Smith's first book...

...They really are not--although they do sympathize with the socialist principles that underlie the Soviet state and were responsible for its creation in 1917...

...The man was a reformer...

...At one point my sister wrote: " I find it hard to think of anything else...

...Thus, the Soviet Union is genuinely despised for betraying the vision, for giving it a bad name...

...From time to time she camps on Greenham Common, for those who have come late to this saga, and more recently appears to have been touring Britain in search of protests and demonstrations...

...In the art world as elsewhere many fear and hate the truth...

...Of course, there would still be a problem, from the point of view of the peace movement, because such European leaders as Margaret Thatcher and Francois Mitterrand might opt to retain nuclear weapons...

...Contains a general introduction and schedules of textual variations between editions as well as extensive editorial notes...

...Today, as Crozier rightly points out, they march under an anti-American one...

...For that reason people like my sister become genuinely indignant when they are called Soviet sympathizers, or whatever...

...Still, the rogic of the European peace movement contradicts this notion...

...Some Americans might regard Europeans as "ungrateful," she could see...

...But we should not encourage this dependence...

...You will notice that my sister did not really manage to explain why she is, on her own Reagan-the-Warmonger terms, so uneasy about the prospect of American withdrawal...

...I was curious to see how she would react to this perfectly sincere conversion...

...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR APRIL 1984 11...

...Furthermore, my impression is that anti-Americanism is now quite a bit stronger than it was when I left England in 1962...

...This is surely the case if my sister's letters are anything to go by...

...The Tom Bethell is The American Spectator's Washington correspondent...

...They even tend to look a l i k e . . . Everything is shared, and the best way to achieve this of course is to abolish the right to own things, the right to property...

...But her objection to a U.S...

...I doubt if my sister feels threatened by French bombs, the ancient enmity' between France and Britain notwithstanding...

...Quite the contrary...

...If only Reagan would stop his vitriolic outbursts against the Russians...

...One of my friends in the women's peace group said: 'It's the first thing I think of when I wake up in the morning.' There are many of us who feel like this...

...Everything about our age suggests it...

...Then came the following paragraph, and it intrigued me...

...It spells CONTRADICTION and CONFLICT and it is painful even to think about...

...We need to learn to live in peace with them...

...It is important to realize first that we are dealing here with "reasoning" that is less than fully conscious, involving as it does a highly emotional, collective movement...

...I hate to interrupt, but I didn't quite get this point, which was not further explained...

...This was not the first time that the eminent of the art world had spurned the confession of an art faker...

...In a 1976 letter to the London Times he announced that he had "flooded the market" with his fakes "as a protest against merchants who make capital out of those I am proud to call my brother artists, both living and dead...

...finger at one of the enormously expensive canvases hanging from the wall of some gallery or museum and the thing's value could plunge along with the reputations of all the establishment art experts who had conspired in its purchase...

...Although the Peace Movement is a strong and growing force--strong enough for enormous propaganda efforts to be made against it--it still does not speak for all Europeans...

...Of course, people like my sister just cannot see that the Soviet Union is the absolutely necessary, absolutely logical working out of such a vision in practice...

...She continued: "Also, the protests should not be seen as anti-American but anti-Reagan and his warmongering generals...

...With Reagan gone, Bellicose Rhetoric Warmonger Reagan, what would the common enemy be...

...And notice that such weapons would tend to be trained on the Soviet Union--not on each other...

...Everyone lives together in peace and harmony and c o o p e r a t i o n . . . Why, there are not even any important differences between those people on that shining hill...

...Banfield questions all government spending on the arts...

...My guess is thatart lovers will flock to see the fakes in greater numbers by far than those who go to see the originals...

...Think of the savings...

...And it is very hard to explain why she is, although one senses that there is an important kernel of truth hidden here, some key insight not yet clarified...

...The Europeans were big boys and girls now, and surely should be able to make it on their own...

...In The Democratic Muse: Visual Arts and the Public Interest to be published this month, Banfield asks why original paintings sell for such enormous prices given the fact that geniuses like Keating can copy them so accurately that not even the experts can always detect a fake...

...So now, it seemed, the latest response was the point of view expressed in my letter, which she discerned as " a trend of thought current but I hope not prevalent in America...

...It was called by Edmund Burke, "one of the most beautiful fabrics of moral theory...

...So there you have it...

...Who says men thirst for truth...

...He argues against public money going to support such inflated and questionable costs...

...Softcover only-S5.50 Prepayment is required on all orders not for resale...