STILL ANOTHER INTERVIEW
Rusher, William A.
Ptych. 393-3 William A. Rusher Of Professor William A. Rusher we may say he: a) possesses unending resources of energy as manifest by the twelve years he has devoted to publishing our...
...But that it should believe in itself...
...I think Mencken said at one time, speaking of Presidents of the United States and of Coolidge in particular, "It is not poppy and mandragora, but strychnine and digitalis which is the worst medicine for presidents...
...In dress, in modes of dress, in modes of speech, even in the type of beer you drink...
...And this has had the consequence that the values of Western society and civilization have lost their religious sanction and thus we are vulnerable in one of two directions: we can find other sanctions, such as Marx proposed to find in the laws of history, and which are just as imperative as God's commandments for a person who believes in Marx — you do this because history dictates it, because the necessities of the proletariat require it...
...A thorough examination of the art of capitulation, acquiescence and submission to campus Visigoths, along with exhaustive study of Nathan Pusey's formula for success, and interpretations of S. I. Hayakawa's failure...
...R U S H E R : Modem conservatism today is simply an attempt to reinterpret for our time and for use in respect of our problems, the wisdom which has accumulated in the two thousand year history of the weste m civilization of which we are a part and product...
...Succinctily put, most of liberaldumb's helots cannot "cold turkey" coUectivist ideology and sentimental drivel...
...Tyrrell: Would it be correct to say, as does George Nathan, that liberalism shouldn't reign as the predominant point of view in a country...
...They are fed up to the teeth, I a m convinced, with what has gone on, and the backing that Professor Hayakawa has gotten out at San Francisco State is an excellent example of the feelings of the people of California and, I think, of the feelings of the people generally...
...As part of the field laboratory each administrator will be expected to hand over at least one school building to members of S D S , S W I N E (Students Wildly Indignant about Nearly Everything), Y S A or S N C C . S O C I O L O G Y 649-SOCIAL E N G I N E E R I N G. This seminar type course will feature guest ghetto rebels discussing their highly successful slum clearance projects at Newark, Watts, Chicago and Detroit...
...I guess it answers, as well as I can, your question why people feel this way today...
...I do not understand this mechanism...
...Everybody is polticalizing, and everybody therefore feels they have to have some position, more than they used to...
...R U S H E R : That's a very Menckenian point of view...
...Liberalism, as I said before, is merely that frame of mind into which the Western intellectuals in general have wandered at this moment...
...There is nothing sadder than seeing some super-annuated liberal of the F D R era trying to look relevant to the acid-head goingson of the late 1960's...
...Further study of appropriate remedies including strong doses of Al Capp, Willa Gather and Old Crow...
...What is there about a society that has lost its value sanctions — as ours has, at least for many people and for a great section of the intelligensia — why should such a society stimulate by that very fact young people particularly to lash out at it...
...The reporter believes in his obligation to shape the American society...
...THEATER 112-CONTEMPORARY POLITICAL COMEDY...
...Prospective students at F U T I L E may object that these couses offer little information on Western Civilization, a void which The Establishment readly acknowledges...
...I think that one of the finest analyses I have ever read of student disturbances is by Professor Daniel Boorstin of the University of Chicago, an old-time liberal, in the Esquire Aimiversary Issue — October, I think it was — called "The N e w Barbarians...
...D. Peyton McQuillen complains that every time a reporter interviews him he is banqueted to the reporter's story — never mind that it is McQuillen who is supposedly being interviewed...
...The finer points of rumormongering, looting and firebombing will receive treatment, with field work conducted nightly at the Free University of Ellettsville...
...R U S H E R : The citizens are in no position, legally, to do a great deal about the disturbances in the colleges...
...The idea that it is merely some local problem — for instance, at the University of Chicago the firing of the lady instructor, or at Berkeley the desire for more space at Sproul Hall for political activities, or San Francisco State wanting the black studies department — seems false...
...The necessity for news every day generates its own news...
...In 1955 he became Special Counsel to the Finance Committee of the N e w York State Senate and the following year assisted the U. S. Senate's investigations of domestic communism...
...Tyrrell: You people at National Review often talk about how the press is so ideologized — how can you tell that ifs ideologized with liberalism...
...Consequently the Free University offers this Summer Session Schedule as a transistion...
...W h y is the media full of them...
...Truly creative minds are not likely to be found on the political reporting staffs of daily newspapers — or television stations, for that matter...
...Considering the condition of the Free University's academic plant, it is doubtful that this course will continue beyond the first night...
...There are establishment liberals today, and many of them are appalled by what is going on on the campuses and are resisting it...
...It is just an attempt, as I said, to have the best of several worlds...
...Tyrrell: Don't you agree the press has electrified this hypersensitivity to the political...
...N o w why the difference if not ideology...
...O n the other hand, I would be very sorry to find the American people sink into an apolitical apathy, because what happens then is that your minorities, the pressure groups, the people who otherwise wouldn't amount to anything, become the dominant political factions...
...12 As time and finances allow, the Free University hopes to add to its curriculum the following courses: BIOLOGY 329-ORIGINS A N D TREATMENT OF ACUTE GASTRIC DISTRESS...
...however, I think it is true that we, even in those terms, are in kind of a down dip, just at the moment...
...They've found political nuances in everything that shakes in America, including Joe Namath...
...In 1957 he became publisher to the newly founded National Review where his articles political and otherwise have brilliantly complimented those of his more specialized colleagues...
...and 3.) a jaunt to Gotham City to observe Gore "Goil" Vidal, America's foremost conceiver of fairy tales, in his natural habitat...
...Now, this was although the Liberals got, I think, somewhere in the neighborhood of one-half the votes the Conservatives got in the last election...
...Professor Rusher, viewed from any side of the generation gap, is assuredly a man of his time, and we are enormously grateful to him for embellishing our pages with his thoughtful commentary...
...But in the West, as I said before, the liberals like to have the best of both worlds...
...It is highly eclectic...
...And in that sense I think that Nathan's remark is correct: that no healthy society can have a liberal point of view...
...I'm sure that if the intellectual fashion were otherwise the press would reflect it...
...Baron Von Kannon, triple winner of the Blue Max, long time associate of Revilo P. Oliver and noted xenophobe, will discuss his speciality "How to W i n Friends and Influence People...
...Whafs happening to the establishment liberal — the man who supported F D R , and whose kids are now supporting Paul Boutelle...
...It seems to m e that the press today has become astonishingly ideologized in objective reporting...
...I've been appalled at what appears to be the assumption of the N e w York Times that any of its reporters abroad must bring down a government —just, you know, in order to get his next assignment...
...Finally, Professor J. L. Kelley, famed Kinetographer, aspiring pseudo-intellectual and former sinologist, will address himself to the central issue of our time, "The Performance Analysis of the Propulsive Force of the Flutter Kick...
...Register early...
...That is where we have arrived...
...I think that at the bottom of this is an instinctive lashing-out at the society by a purely nihilistic and destructive type...
...To his conclusions on coeval American life Professor Rusher brings a philosophical mind and the practical knowledge of a diligent m a n of affairs, making his conclusions something more than ethereally academic and something other than narrowly practical...
...A penetrating analysis of the effects of Norman Mailer's writing on the lower tract...
...Fire Island...
...R U S H E R : Well, liberalism is a rather thin excuse for a political point of view...
...And I predict that Governor Reagan will be found, when he runs for re-election in 1970, to have done himself nothing but good by taking the firm stand he has...
...He just doesn't seem like a very interested spectator...
...Tyrrell: Lefs see, what is the future of liberalism...
...They toss out the concept of God when it no longer seems necessary, but they stand shy of the determinisms of Marx, and the other determinisms — the scientific and the materialistic determinisms...
...Recently each of them came forth with a platform of proposals for this session of the N e w York State Legislature...
...The citizenry seems woefully ill-equipped to solve the problems of the universities and yet it seems manifest that university problems have mercilessly devolved onto them...
...Now we are the children of what Toynbee and others have called Western civilization, the value system of which was based upon and sanctioned by a concept of God —• a religious sanction for our values...
...N o w I notice Father Hesburgh at Notre D a m e has begun to get some calcium in his back about this matter and has gotten a lot of enthusiastic support for doing so...
...Tyrrell: The Alternative has always adjudged political apathy as healthy—perhaps it is the salvation of democracy...
...W e believe that this knowledge is valuable, that is applicable, and indeed that unless we apply it, we are going to suffer the consequences just as much as the man who attempts to navigate a ship with an innaccurate m a p is going to suffer the consequences...
...Yes, I think that harks back to the remark I made earlier about the eclecticism of liberalism...
...I don't think it is important, sadly enough, whether what a society believes in is true or false or, as we would see it, good or bad...
...R U S H E R : I disagree with most explanations you get for their attitudes these days...
...The press has been the absolute making of any number of political careers on the part of idiots who could not get a soapbox on their own, let alone a minute on T V . But the necessity, I guess, to publish a paper every day, to go on the air every night from 6:30 to 7:00 with political news when there just m a y be no political news, or at least none that you know about, means that if somebody is in fact slumped down in front of the White House or giving their blood to the Viet Cong or setting themselves on fire or something like that, that you're down there covering it, you see...
...D o you have any ideas on this...
...His conclusions also bear an unerring prescience as the student will note keeping mind that this course was prepared in late February...
...Why do the universities crawl with liberals...
...RUSHER:Well, there's a spectrum of behavior — they aren't all going one way or another...
...393-3 William A. Rusher Of Professor William A. Rusher we may say he: a) possesses unending resources of energy as manifest by the twelve years he has devoted to publishing our competitor...
...As an example, as you know, here in N e w York State we have in addition to the Republican and Democratic parties the Conservative and Liberal parties — the Conservatives at the moment being considerably the larger of the two...
...I disagree with your friend who says there are no longer any such things as establishment liberals...
...I expect the press has always been a little on the venal side...
...Is it not unnatural for liberalism to reign if a nation is to be healthy...
...Those students who master their fear of simple truths this summer, may advance to an examination next year of the greater...
...I think the American people will support officials who resist these riots, but the people themselves are not in a good position to do much about them...
...393-3 Professor Rusher consistent amalgams of serious points of view through all future time...
...Tyrrell: And the greatest problem of our time...
...And that didn't use to be the case...
...and therefore, like the mule, it has neither pride of ancestry nor hope of prosperity — it is a mutant...
...Beginning, well, very far back, but at least for present purposes as far back as the Enlightment of the eighteenth century, those sanctions of the value system, and to some degree inferentially the values themselves, have been under attack, and the tremendous upsurge of technological knowledge and scientific knowledge has of course given many people the perhaps inevitable idea that they could dispense with this (previously supposed necessary) concept of God...
...Field trips will include: 1.) a journey to America's greatest circus, J. W . Halfbright's Senate Foreign Relations Committee...
...Well that's partly, I guess almost entirely, the result of faster communications —television, radio, and to some degree the deliberate politicalization of today's youth...
...n ELLETTSVILLE (Continued from Page 2) lege Administration Buildings...
...It is an attempt to make a bouquet out of a posy of Christianity, and a little daffodil of Marxism, and so on...
...It is fundamentally an attempt to have the best of about half a dozen different worlds...
...A n d the result is that, yes, every seventeen-year-old thinks that he has to have a position on Vietnam, or the Greek "dictatorship" as he calls it, or something of that sort...
...R U S H E R : By adding "if a nation is to be healthy" you have added a great deal...
...Born in Chicago, educated at Princeton, and now living in N e w York City, Professor Rusher served in the Air Force during World W a r II, earned a Harvard Law degree and went to work for a Wall Street law firm...
...H e wanted quiet presidents, and you're asking for a quiet polulace...
...Whafs happened to the type of person thafs in newspapers today...
...R U S H E R : The greatest problem of our time, harking back to the answer I gave to you earlier in another question, is to provide somehow moral reinforcements for the values of Western society...
...Is that true...
...Tyrrell: Let me ask you about liberalism...
...And now I a m not at all sure — rather, I a m perfectly sure that I do not see why this should be so...
...R U S H E R : I doubt there has ever been a time when the press consisted of great men who were out after the truth and could not be deflected from it...
...Tyrrell: Well, are you not chary of the dictatorship of the N e w York Times...
...Thus it can't protect itself against anything but conservatism...
...It would be people who pick up the vibrations of what goes on around them, but who don't do anything notable to add to them or alter them...
...R U S H E R : Well, you can tell by the way it behaves...
...So the Republicans are now represented, and so is Young Americans for Freedom...
...Tyrrell: W h y is it that it seems so many papers, with the present exception of the Indianapolis News, the Indianapolis Star, and the Chicago Tribune — are ideologized with liberalism...
...Tyrrell: W h y does the press reflect the ideological vogues of the times...
...An introductory study of some great political buffoons of our age, J. W. Halfbright, Lester "Chicken Little" Maddox and Gore "Goil" Vidal...
...Research has shown, however that too rapid an exposure of emaciated eggheads to cultural enrichment may result in traumatic shock...
...I think that was a golden age that never really existed...
...R U S H E R : I think you're on to something there, and although I would not put it quite the way you have, I think that a lot of people including, but not limited to young people, are giving a lot more attention to public affairs today than they used to...
...When I was in Harvard law school immediately after the second world war, the Republican Party was just making up its mind then to found Young Republican clubs in the colleges...
...Socially...
...W h y is it that there are so many liberals in the press...
...I founded one of the first, at Harvard...
...National Review, b) has shown unswerving allegiance to the American political system by loyally ministering at the bedside of the chronically sick N e w York Republican Party and chairing the Political Action Committee of the American Conservative Union, c) humanely pursues a perceptive interest in international affairs as shown in his co-chairmanship of the American-African Affairs Association and d) does not allow the contemporary indignities of American public life to douse his humor — though he has taken part in a marathon of late-night T V and radio appearances opposite things like mark rudd...
...R U S H E R : It can't even protect itself against conservatism, as I hope National Review has demonstrated...
...R U S H E R : Yes, no question...
...W h y is it that the vogue of the times is liberalism...
...It seems that everything has a political overtone today like it never had in the twenties...
...Herbert Matthews got Cuba, and David Halberstan got Diem and Juan de Onis did his best to topple the Brazilian government and failed, and Joseph Lelyveld failed in South Africa, but to have a government under your belt is a sign of prestige over there and I'm afraid the free world is running out of governments to feed this hungry newspaper, the N e w York Times...
...It seems to m e that liberalism is pretty much in demise...
...Liberalism as a serious point of view has no great future, I think, although I have no doubt that there will continue to be people making superficial and inPsych...
...N o w some others, being I guess by nature damned fools, have attempted to join it, rather like the ungainly animal in the cartoon who is forever trying to get into the ducks' baseball game and play a part...
...The Liberal party's proposals received, on an inside page, a three-column headline...
...it doesn't have the staying-power of either conservatism or radicalism...
...They don't know the answer themselves but there is a kind of a homicidal contempt, it seems to me, in their attitude towards the society, and the society masochistically invites it too...
...A friend of mine — an establishment liberal professor — said there's no such thing as an establishment liberal today...
...2.) a pilgrimage to Lester Maddox's Atlanta Chicken Emporium, the South's only chophouse which consistently served only white meat...
...I think that such establishment liberals are critical, and intelligently critical, of the disturbances...
...But some of them are trying...
...So they have shifted into an ethical relativism, which is the identifying intellectual characteristic of our age...
...I do not believe it is necessary, as I said, for every seventeen-year-old to have a firm opinion on every subject now before the Congress...
...I'd say that there really can be too much in both directions...
...EDUCATION 431-SCHOOL L A W AND THE ADMINISTRATOR...
...Tyrrell: What is modern conservatism today...
...Yes, I think that that's perhaps the only thing I have ever independently perceived—that the conservative movement has some notion of the importance to a society, if it is going to be healthy, of a belief in itself...
...Tyrrell: What will be the fate of the universities...
...R U S H E R : Well, you are asking here for a short paragraph on the intellectual history of the western world...
...Not necessarily in that order...
...10 Tyrrell: Is America not becoming more and more ideological...
...We're getting into a field that's perilously close to mass psycho-analysis now, and that is something that is dangerous and the conservatives have rightly been very cautious about it...
...R U S H E R : Well, I think that the press is simply reflecting the intellectual fashion...
...And such intellectually lightweight products will not last...
...The Conservative proposals were not mentioned in the Times at all, except that one of them was referred to in the carry-over page of an article about Governor Rockefeller — twelve lines were given to one of the Conservative proposals...
...Tyrrell: Nathan also said it was a cycle of accommodations...
...Tyrrell: But what causes the Yapping Left to fuss 11 around as they do...
Vol. 3 • August 1969 • No. 1
