THE CONTINUING CRISIS
2 THE ALTERNATIVE : W TO BARE THE ITNESS AND THE TRUTH I Published remarkably without regard to race, color, creed, or (most redundantly of all) national origin . Editor-in-Chief, R . Emmett...
...The next rank of nonconformist is the advanced nonconformist whose raiment does not differ significantly from that of his more common brethren...
...The most distinctive rank of nonconformist is also the most entertaining, and we shall categorize him as the ultraadvanced nonconformist...
...Nonetheless, no thoughtful observer is very surprised that the dons carried off their hoax so masterfully...
...But whereas the common nonconformist generally just slouches around parks and public restrooms, the more energetic, advanced nonconformist busies himself with the bombing of buildings, beating professors, and threatening politics...
...At any rate, .to paraphrase Lord Keynes, contemporary men who believe themselves free from the ideas of the past are usually slaves of some defunct ideogogue...
...All this demanded some pretty high-toned salesmanship, for both images are moronic and the latter is dangerous...
...Hence rather than anxiously heave their bosoms over youth's slavish conformity to society, the dons now sweat over society's failure to conform to youth...
...Our story begins around 1955 when some luminary by the name of Robert Lindner briefly burst from obscurity to publish a very profitable book: Must You Conform.':' in which he magisterially declared amid gusts of oohs and ahhs "No, because there is an alternate way of life available to us here and now...
...From the middle fifties to the middle sixties, conformity served as the professors' most reliable motif in a ceaseless cacophony of twaddle...
...Hook said the threat to universities comes from within and is traceable "to one fundamental poisoned premise"--that unless social and foreign policy problems are solved, campus disruption and violence will continue...
...ooh) It is the way natural to man, the way he must and will take to achieve the values he aspires to just because he is human.(ahh)" These were palmy times...
...The New York Times called Mr...
...The serene Mr...
...had been chased off, and now the courageous professors--like an assemblage of aroused bull frogs--dramatically poked their snouts from their murky subaqueous covering and let out a chorus of highfalutin croakings about academic freedom, the sacred mission of the university and their own sacred mission, that of mulcting the citizenry of every loose dime . The ensuing clamor was as moronic as it was amusing, and not surprisingly its most witless theme resounded most incessantly . It seems the pedagogues were invariably fascinated by the conformity of their pollywogs and gaped for practically an entire decade while the wind whistled the horror of The Continuing Crisis Smitten by campus violence M1, Nixon convoked the Presidential Commission on the Causes of Campus Unrest under the intrepid Mr . Scranton . Mr . Rhodes, the only student on the Commission, blamed Governor Reagan for "murder" and President Nixon for making speeches which were "killing people ." The irrepressible Mr . Agnew suggested Mr . Rhodes retire in favor, of a replacement evincing more maturity, objectivity and "judgment ." The Washington Pest found Mr...
...Mouthing the elliptical language of what in more primitive times were adjudged mental defectives, he yammers, "ya know," "like I mean," "dig it," and expletives too racy for reproduction in this family magazine...
...Allow me to reveal to your just three...
...On 4 August Senator Allott of Colorado suggested on the Senate floor that "we disband the President's Commission on Campus Unrest and all read the Wall Street Journal...
...The editors of Commonweal remarked: "Probably never before were so many young people urged by their elders to revolt...
...Lindner in the scholarly pages of McCalrs playfully urged that mothers "Raise Your Children to Rebel...
...And for the best of reasons--today America's new conformists are their conformists, and all those chafing apprehensions about a generation of robots have been soothed by the clatter of regiments of students goosestepping into the dawn of a brave new world--the very same world that the dons have spent the last half century concocting...
...Mr...
...Agnew again guilty" of intemperance and lacking "judgment ." Senator Kennedy testified that "this war must end," and Charles S . Palmer, president of an organization calling itself the National Student Association asserted that Mr . Nixon's two - month incursion into Cambodia was the cause of campus riotousness because "the straight, middle -, class students .. .reacted with their guts ." The president of San Francisco State University stated that those students who have been "unresting" the campuses are "bored" and "immature...
...What is remarkable is how the truth hawkers managed to reverse themselves so ignominiously...
...We are in trouble as a species, and the unrest of this country's young people and Of their peers around the planet is perhaps the healthiest development for which one might have dared to hope...
...They have been peddling moonshine for years...
...crc!, Art, Eric Lohnaas 0 Sharon L. ~_b Sandy Weeder mc--rnv Murton The Alternative was founded in 1924 by George Nathan and Truman Newberry over a cheap domestic beer in McSorley's Old Ale House . Originally published on restroom walls, only since 1967 has it come under purview of the Saturday Evening Club which publishes it from September through June . Subscriptions cost $4 .00, and all correspondence (manuscripts, subscriptions, threatening letters, federal grants, etc .) should be sent to The Alternative, C/b The Establishment, R .R . 11, Box 360, Bloomington, Indiana 47401, Continental U .S .A . Editorial Do you remember America's Dark Ages back before the enlightened era of Camelot when the Supermarket Republic's cerebral mountebanks began creeping back to their campus clip joints, feeling the tender flesh below their ears, testing for rope burns and thanking their Unitarian Gods that they were again free to set up shop amongst their coerced congregations of pinheaded pupils...
...Denis Hayes placed the whole issue in its cosmic perspective by saying...
...2 THE ALTERNATIVE : W TO BARE THE ITNESS AND THE TRUTH I Published remarkably without regard to race, color, creed, or (most redundantly of all) national origin . Editor-in-Chief, R . Emmett Tyrrell, Jr . Publisher, Anthony L . Campaigne of the Saturday Evening Club Managing Editor, Baron Von Kannon Circulation Manager, Ronald E . Burr Senior Editors, William Kristol John Kelley 0 Rev...
...Their coercive life style has created a barbaric underworld but one step removed from the monkeys in the zoo...
...The predators, McCarthy, Jenner, et . al...
...0 Richard Butkus '/P_ . . _ D :11 ~', . Itl,rl¢ht Czcvl c 11 r...
...History has produced some other idealistic nonconformists in the image of our advanced nonconformist, but never did they embellish their nonconformity with the coruscating moral razzle dazzle, intoned by, say, David Dellinger...
...Supposedly the education mills of the land were grinding American youth into bland conformity, pulverizing them to adjust to society, smothering their creativity and putting all our nascent Beethovens to flight...
...John R. Coyne, Jr . 0 Jefferson Davis C. H. Simonds 0 Roger D . Tyrrell Contributors, John Avey 0 Paul Bernstein Bonnie Bird 0 David Friedman o Jerry Gerde Mary Beth Haag 0 Terry Kreiger John Moscow 0 Gary North 0 Arnold Steinberg John Marcuse Sundt [:]Sir Arthur Wellesley Timothy Wheeler 0 George F . Will Alien Contributors, Kevin Berry [:]Miss Mathews Alan Somers, M.D...
...It restores one's faith in the level of literacy that prevails on our college and university campuses at a time when the actions of a noisy few have called into question the viability of higher education...
...Adopting a cunningly tailored peasant dress, he earnestly slouches about various loafing spotsnever before dreamed of like street corners, front porches, and parks, where he serious!y discusses such senseless curiosities as Western civilization...
...So assiduous is the common nonconformist in his conviction that the world would be vastly more intelligent were Congress to enact compulsory sensitivity training or the President to raise the rock festival to cabinet level that he will even abandon his loafing grounds to take part in a spirited rampage on behalf of peace or some other worthy cause...
...Lindner's next manifesto...
...These creatures embalm their marvelous minds with wonderful new drugs and drift about en...
...Though a student's appearance is as distinct and discernible as that of a month-old corpse at an Irish wake, none of the sages are repining over this conformity...
...Some are even given to ambushing police and butchering judges...
...All are motivated by the loftiest ideals...
...Herr Himmler and Herr Eichmann made admirable efforts, but without the forensic savoir faire of a Kunstler, their chances were slim and none...
...Later in the decade Mr...
...Yet today as commentators blubber about "youth's idealism," "the priorities of youth," "the life-style of the young," and "youth culture," the dons seem peculiarly unconcerned about conformity...
...Rhodes "inquired of Professor Hook if he "hated students...
...J. Otis Cochran, chairman of the CONTENTS Editorial : THE NEW CONFORMITY by George Nathan 2 THE CONTINUING CRISIS 2 TOWARD A LIFE OF SERVICE by Courtland G . Newton, Jr 3 "OUR GENERATION" AFTER CAMBODIA by Paul Bernstein 4 AND THE NIGHT LORD JOHN CLEANED OUT McSORLEY' S by John R. Coyne, Jr s AN EROSION OF TRUST by Daniel P . Moynihan 6 A CONVERSATION WITH BILGEWATER by John L. Kelley TEDDY : HIS TROUBLES AND OURS by John Avey 9 PROFESSOR X AND EMENDING THE CAUSES OF CAMPUS UN k1•..S'f by Roger D . Tyrrell 10 REVOLUTION AND THE SECULAR ETHIC OF LOVE by Gary North 11 IN PRAISE OF YOUTHFUL IDEALISM by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr 12 SEDUCED AND ABANDONED AT COLUMBIA by R . L . Crossland . . . and David B . Carpenter 16 BETWEEN ENDS Reviews by Gary North, John Kelley and William Kristol 18 THE BOOTBLACK S1 .,\\1) Pluukut from Sent Harrl- ~.-i 'i - nator Kennedy L : l 1 Lk .-) by Congressman Philip Crane 21 BRAYINGS FROM THE LEFT . by Assorted jackasses 23 20 Association, said : "The truly guilty party is the Nixon-Agnew Administration, whose crude attacks on dissenters have created the climate of intolerance and repression that some people interpreted as a license to kill ." No testimony from the chairman of the White American Law Students, Association was forthcoming . A Miss Jefferson, student body president of Northwestern University, took the lotig,-range, historical view of campus unrest and found that the only way to rest it was by impeaching Mr . Nixon . Mr...
...We have moved from an age in which supposedly everyone was a conformist to our present age in which supposedly everyone is a dissenter or nonconformist, and public spokesmen had better not disagree with the Zeitgeist of dissent, for to do so--we are admonished--is to polarize society--i.e, to introduce diverse opinion into society--which of course leaves the precious nonconformist no choice than to turn his governmentally endowed wonderland into a war zone...
...I will look forward eagerly to the opportunity to get acquainted with some of the fine minds that, despite so much of a corrosive nature attending the university experience today, have still managed to learn, to inquire, and to express themselves with lucidity...
...Time even published "Rules of Nonconformity"" -sort of a beatitudinal blueprint for the Lee Harvey Oswalds of the "quiet generation...
...David Keene, chairman of the conservative Young Americans for Freedom, dismissed this statement as "nonsense" and took issue with Senator Kennedy's"claim that the Vietnam war "unrests" the campus by stating that campus unrest is a worlr1 wide phenomenon, threatening "the - intellectual heritage and politir •of Western Civilization ." Professor Sidney P Department of University, facui l The Alternative November, 1970 21 To the Editor" Let me congratulate you, Bob Tyrrell, Tony C~mpaigne, and the rest of the staff of The Alternative for a truly superb publication that meets a real need on the campus today...
...George Nathan Associates, Jameson G . Campaigne, Jr...
...We shall read it at a more reflective pace and in our next issue analyze it with our typical cool detachment...
...First we shall discuss the common nonconformist...
...EDITORIAL Continued from Page 2 conformity through their empty crania...
...What renders conformity wrong is what the saps conform to, and today large numbers of students--always mistakenly characterized by the gross generalization, "American Youth,"--are conforming to a n t i - i n t e l l e c t u a l i s m , solipsism, and treacherous totalitarianism...
...And just as there are archangels, seraphim and cherubim, there are many different ranks of nonconformists...
...So it is that healthy nonconformity has literally blasted its way into the American conscience, and The Alternative's Jolly Boys gleefully await Mr...
...certainly it should not have surprised the fifties' great minds that gregarious creatures like the Homo saps conform...
...The McCarthyite Terror had passed...
...Our present age is a glorious one teeming with nonconformity...
...As we go to press the three hundred page report has been out for twenty - four hours, but the speed readers at CBS, ABC, and the New York Times have all editorialized prolixly on it...
...Many of them are walking epidemics...
...At The Alternative we believe that there is nothing inherently wrong or unusual about conformity...
...However certain of these advanced nonconformists have been known to camouflage themselves in the style of "the Middle Americano" when applying for Ford Foundation grants, employment at Health, Education and Welfare, or purchasing explosives...
...Still many idiotic Liberals see these beasts as the culmination of all their bedazzled hopes and abstractions, so they have darlingized them replacing as a national idol the image of the All-American Boy with the image of the idealistic young bomber...
...Rhodes "a complex, altruistic youth...endowed with an extraordinary faculty to come up with inspiring new ideas and get other people to carry them out...
...Best Regards, Philip M. Crane Member of Congress THE CONTINUING CRISIS Continued From Page 2 with delinquent students and identified their activities not as instances of "academic unrest" but of "academic disruption and violence...
...Even more heartening is the realization that your circulation has expanded from 5,000 to over 30,000...
Vol. 4 • November 1970 • No. 1
