CONVERVATISM AND THE CAMPUS
Kristol, Bill
I know that when the senator heroically delivered his emotive television statement you all wondered with him what black Nemesis haimted his name. Its identity at Chappaquiddick is n ow known,...
...And why has Senator Keimedy not revealed his predicament...
...The conservative has no such problem, and thus the more true conservatives (not reactionaries or nuts like Nathan) one has on a campus, the less politics will tend to corrupt the academy...
...And the alleged laboratory was in truth a remodeled Standard Oil gas station...
...as the allegation that he was once suspended from Harvard...
...309...
...The super patriots!!!, in the words of Miss X, "got Senator Kennedy all marshmallowed up," and one of them (code named Daisy Buchanan) exploited his famous humanitarianism, persuading him to drive her to a specially constructed bridge where she claimed a California grape picker was protesting dangerous working conditions in his California sweat vineyard...
...The classical liberal education depends on letting both students and professors search for truths unhampered by current political pressures and ideologies...
...The conservative tends to honor and respect the past and the present more than the liberal, and far more than the radical...
...A conservative, with his reverence for works of the past, cannot sensibly call for all readings to be "relevant," or any such rubbish...
...I know that when the senator heroically delivered his emotive television statement you all wondered with him what black Nemesis haimted his name...
...A right wing cabal is victimizing this great m a n to assure the Republic's continued immunity to progress...
...So there you have it...
...Ted Sorensen has asserted that "Senator Kermedy is too noble," and I believe him...
...These fiends fabricated the entire evening...
...Its identity at Chappaquiddick is n ow known, and it is m y duty to tell you that the events of 18 July were manipulated by a conspiracy of right wing extremists (mostly members of the John Birch Society and the Massachusetts Chamber of Commerce) intent on destroying the senator's presidential hopes as surely as fluoridation is Bolshevizing America...
...there simply is no girl to exhume...
...Let us shed no tears...
...Obviously, one can never totally isolate the campus from the "community," to use current S D S terminology...
...The conservative realizes that these works must be respected and reflected upon, and that they are important in their own right...
...At the time Wiesner was not even in the United States but on a snake hunt in N e w York City...
...If this were not true, if the current political atmosphere were allowed to influence thought and learning, Locke could never have inveighed against the Divine Right of Kings in a country still governed by a monarchy, Paine could not have called for independence in a colonial America, and Marcuse could not now call for "repressive tolerance" (sic) in a free and non-repressive United States...
...H o w then does the fact that political beliefs should not affect and/or infect the educational atmosphere of the time tend to support m y suggestion that, of all political ideologies, conservatism is the one most amicable to the campus...
...The liberal, for instance, seeking to apply Locke to the race issue, often lets present political problems and considerations interfere with his scholarly pursuits...
...this being the case, the presence of conservatism in the educational community is less damaging than the presence of any other ideology...
...Conservatism stands essentially for slow and cautious change, accompanied always by a reverence for existing and past institutions and for the processes that built these institutions (unfortunately, often too much reverence...
...Obviously, any sane person (a rather small group at present) would prefer that all scholars not let current political issues affect their work and teaching...
...The rumor that a girl drowned in the senator's car when a hidden direction light signaled him to turn right from the middle of the bridge is as xmfounded...
...Powerful right wing forces throughout the nation, members of the military-industrial-complex, the Grape Trust, the smog magnates, moon speculators and the Alaskan aristocracy, are marshalling their forces to keep the lid on the bogus grave...
...It would, however, drive S D S members into frenzies...
...If, however, one can encourage the presence of intelligent conservatives in college faculties, there can be no question that there would be quite a bit more scholarship on our campuses and quite a bit less propagandizing and politicizing, and this would be a very good thing for the universities and for those of us interested in learning and scholarship...
...This explains the juridical imbroglio over disinterment...
...In fact, if any mode of political thought is amicable to the pursuance and acquisition of a good education (and that is doubtful), conservatism is that mode...
...Both professor and student must be allowed to study and come to conclusions independently of the political or cultural climate...
...But this is asking too much...
...The single most important prerequisite for attaining a good liberal arts education is detachment of the university from what occurs daily in the "outside world...
...The reason for this lies in conservatism's very nature...
...n Qanije/UAcdlitn A * u l 7<4e QcLmp444> by Bill Kristol Mark Rudd, Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., and J. K. Galbraith notwithstanding, there is no contradiction between conservatism and education...
Vol. 3 • September 1969 • No. 2
