Editorials: Dunce Dershowitz / Foreign Policy Flop
Tyrrell, R. Emmett Jr.
EDITORIALS by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr. Dunce Dershowitz I should like to congratulate a Mr. Phil Boyce, the program director of New York's talk radio station, WABC. The other day he eliminated from...
...Bravo, Boyce...
...Delivering the B.C...
...One of the consequences of this gutting of the curriculum is that many American universities are merely youth ghettos...
...Those of us who remember say that Flip Wilson is the greatest since Amos and Andy...
...A Dershowitz would have been unthinkable a generation ago...
...Once again empty rhetoric replaces substance...
...What has happened to American universities...
...Boyce denied the charges and elegantly heaved Dershowitz from the air...
...ing, and it betrays little learning and even less orderly thought...
...On the faculty where the likes of Felix Frankfurter once taught, Harvard Law now has a real hot dog, Alan Dershowitz — counsel to O.J...
...In other words, avert your gaze from his failure to make good on those campaign promises of a middle-class tax cut, a balanced budget, health-care reform, and the end of "welfare as we know it"—or whatever his weirdly repeated line was...
...President Bill Clinton, the If you share my view that our big lovable lug of a president is a total flop as a policy-maker, you might share my amusement that he now claims his real achievements are in foreign policy...
...We live in amazing times...
...Actually, the National Association of Scholars has just come out with a study, "The Dissolution of General Education: 1914-1993," demonstrating the dreadful decline of university education in the post—World War II period...
...Since the middle 1960's general course requirements and rigorous standards have "largely vanished" from American universities, the study asserts...
...Dershowitz "can say anything he wants," declares Boyce, "but it's just not going to be done on my radio station...
...But does this mean that Dershowitz will have more time to inflict himself on his students back at Harvard Law School...
...On March 9, in Fulton, Missouri, to mark the fiftieth anniversary of Winston Churchill's Iron Curtain speech, former Alan Dershowitz of national politics, vows ceaselessly to secure ever more funding for student loans and for other so-called improvements in higher education...
...He called for support of Taiwan...
...1 25 YEARS AGO IN The American Spectator When one views Flip, the first thing seen, apart from the boyish grin, is his "hustler" haircut of the early fifties, which apparently means a lot to him...
...She explains why the Clinton policy is so weak...
...The study shows that requirements in history, literature, and philosophy are "vanishing," as is thesis writing...
...black, white, or plaid...
...Instead, look to Clinton's Kissingerian mastery of the globe...
...But there you have it: the most prodigious liar ever to be president passing himself off as a foreign policy president and adducing as evidence three obvious failures...
...Now the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Senator Jesse Helms, has issued a warning to the President about his foreign policy of "flailing around in the world, rushing from disaster to disaster...
...or the White House aide who had Marine guards serving drinks...
...There on campus, amid expensive facilities, thousands of students mill about with little to do of a scholarly nature...
...Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick...
...Another alarmed witness to Clinton's shapeless foreign policy was sitting in the audience, former U.N...
...Yes, I suppose he can with some justification claim that, compared to the above-mentioned domestic initiatives, where he has gotten absolutely nothing done, he can point to Ireland, Bosnia, and Haiti—three tiny plots of land where he has gotten something broken daily, and in Ireland and Bosnia at a considerable cost in lives and property...
...Provoked by one of Grant's sallies, Dershowitz has been known to call in his protest to the talk show host while Grant was on the air...
...The Harvard prof called Grant a racist and a bigot, adding, "Bob Grant is a despicable talk show host...
...Two voices have been heard this month warning of the dangerous turf onto which the Clinton administration is sleepwalking...
...The speech was big news in Europe...
...Recent threats and maneuvers from Peking may soon put his invulnerability to the test...
...According to the National Association of Scholars study, since the 1960's most universities have been requiring less course work in English composition, math, science, and foreign language...
...Clinton will not bring along her White House aide who, in the early days of the administration, informed General Barry McCaffrey that uniforms were now out of favor...
...His feud with Grant is apparently long-standing...
...But the money is mostly wasted at universities where less and less serious study is demanded...
...Of course, improving education is one of the most popular sham pieties in the Republic...
...Foreign policy is the one area where an American president's hot air and ineptitude can be very dangerous...
...She attributes it to the boy president's stupendous arrogance...
...Simpson, tormentor of Bob Grant, self-promoter par excellence...
...Equally important, she urged development of defensive weaponry to ward off hostile attacks from such bellicose powers...
...Yet Helms was not optimistic about the direction of Clinton's foreign policy...
...Dershowitz's big mouth had gotten him into another rancorous row with that far more gifted WABC talk show host, Bob Grant...
...I have read his writAdapted from RET's weekly Washington Times column syndicated by Creators Syndicate...
...It was a warning to China to live by its agreements and to give up its designs on Taiwan...
...So let me adjust my estimate to two generations ago...
...because the Clinton administration has failed to set priorities...
...The lazy profs are perfectly pleased with this condition, teaching being demanding work, far less amusing than being a dilettante prof or a gadabout a la Dershowitz...
...Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher attempted to sober things up...
...There he whines about a properly critical review of another of his shabbily written, badly argued, third-rate books...
...He warned of the vast North Korean army, its truculence, and the idiocy as"the United States props up North Korea's failing economy...
...Flip means a lot to all Americans—young or old...
...He shows up at celebrity trials, on television shows, in syndicated columns, on radio, of course, and even in the correspondence page of the New York Times Book Review...
...Most of the campuses in the country have their Dershowitzes...
...Dresswise, Flip did not go the route of the Nehru suit and the Mao jacket like so many others...
...Unfortunately, neither speech has gotten much attention in Washington, where the only draft dodger ever to be elected president is still capable of evoking wonder and admiration before his every pratfall...
...In Washington a bigger story was Hillary and Chelsea's peregrination to cheer up our troops...
...The other day he eliminated from his programming the syndicated show of Alan Dershowitz, the Harvard Law School gasbag...
...Well, come to think of it, a generation ago we had Professor Timothy Leary at Harvard, and the appalling Professor Charles Reich at Yale...
...What does he teach them...
...Alas, Dershowitz is not the only frenetic humbug using his faculty position to become a public nuisance...
...But, most pointedly of all, Helms called on the administration to end technology transfers to China that strengthen its military and to insist that China desist from illegally exporting nuclear technology...
...And it provides persuasive data arguing that there has been a "purging...of many of the required basic survey courses that used to familiarize students with the historical, cul -tural, political, and scientific foundations of their society...
...Everything, from Burundi to Bosnia, is equally important—and therefore equally unimportant...
...Jay Parker, "Flip Wilson the Traditionalist" MAY 1971 Foreign Policy Flop The American Spectator • May 1996 17...
...Presumably Mrs...
...Again the intellectual foundation that makes us a community and, on a larger scale, a nation, is eroding...
...I am almost certain that he has no time at all for scholarly work...
...But he spoke most omi- C nously of China and that other k Asian state, Russia...
...In fact, many have scores of Dershowitzes, though only Harvard has this world-record holder in the sport of faculty charlatan...
...He called on Russia "to overcome the legacy of military competition in the East" and "build cooperative relations with its Asian neighbors...
...The direction of his talk was clear...
...If it did not mean a lot surely he would have succumbed to the pressure of the fads, which is so enormous on public figures...
...In his arrogance, "he believes he is invulnerable...
...From my readings of the man, all he knows well is the art of self-promotion...
...16 May 1996 • The American Spectator The authors of this depressing study argue that students are losing their common base of knowledge...
...When does the prof find time to teach...
...Helms warned of the hostile relations between India and Pakistan that are leading to the spread of nuclear weaponry and repeated illegal arms shipments from China...
...Particularly with regard to U.S.-Asia relations, it reminds him "of Alice in Wonderland—if you don't know where you're going, any road will get you there...
...Consider the new look of "peace" cheerleader Sammy Davis, Jr., who abandoned his lacquered-looking process for the "fro...
...Lee Lecture to the guests of the Heritage Foundation on March 26, Helms attempted to direct Washington's gaze to strategic realities as America—a Pacific nation—enters "the Pacific Century...
...Instead of basing their education on a core curriculum of history, literature, philosophy, and science, today's college students saunter past a buffet table of courses, some serious, some preposterous, others merely low-cal...
...Pointing to the spread of nuclear and particularly chemical weapons of mass destruction into the hands of such gangster states as Iraq and Iran, she urged the renewal and expansion of NATO...
Vol. 29 • May 1996 • No. 5
