Letters: from Ed Williams, Bob Moffit, Andrew Hopkins, Hon. Henry B. Gonzolas, Nathan
The Alternative January, 1971 19 Letters To the Editor: In a review of Merlo J. Pusey's The Way We (:o to War in Alternative, November, 1970, Mr John L. Kelley refers to the Veterans of Future...
...And maybe this presidential commission should have been less dissembling and provided something more than a circus for the morons It takes no enormous thrust of the imagination to envision our leftish radicals as rightist youth...
...On 9 December the Princeton Undergraduate Assembly overcame their Dean's objections and voted for the reinstatement of the extra-curricular ROTC program which had been suspended after the Cambodian invasion...
...Paul Weaver, the Report's editor, is not the culprit...
...The only people I know of who favor campus unrest are the clinically insane--persons like the Students for a Democratic Society, the editors of The New York Review of Books and Professor Charles Reich Not even the distinguished Mr Scranton approves...
...A few years ago we would have greeted such passages with waves of laughter but now those waves prelude troubled reflections even among the jaunty fellows of the Saturday Evening Club The left-wing radicals are uttering crude sentiments that stir faintly disquieting recollections The fiery obsessions, the anti-intellectualism, the odd cant, the antisemitism the atavism somehow we have heard it all before...
...Where do we go to find that crisis' In all my travels I cannot claim to have encountered this historic division, at least not above sea level There is some ignorance, some benign apathy and much enlightened repugnance, but about campus unrest there is no critical division Even the silent majority finds it distasteful, if they notice it at all...
...It is probably useless to argue the difference between our participation in World War II and the current fiasco, but if being a pacifist means to object to the insane course we are now following in Southeast Asia, I shall be as proud a pacifist as I was a soldier Sincerely, Edward M Williams To the Editor: Climbing out of the sewers of academe after a long day of absorbing the "relevant" pollutants and rapping with the "kids" is quite an ordeal...
...Now of course this passage most certainly accomplishes the fundamental purpose for which every presidential commission is established...
...Unfortunately, some of our contemporaries were no more perceptive than Mr...
...And we certainly do hope Professor Doktor Ronen gets that promotion that seems to be troubling him so...
...With this in mind it seems to us that such a witless statement about violence will only serve to justify the enrages...
...Kelley's whole point of view, therefore, becomes somewhat suspect since one cannot help wondering if his logic and reasoning are no better than his research...
...Actually the author is directing this stentorian twaddle toward the police authorized by law (though not always respectful of it) and a small band of juvenile delinquents authorized by perversity...
...Kelley's "pacifists," however inaccurate, is mild And, of course, we were the men who, a few short years later, enlisted in overwhelming numbers in all branches of the armed services...
...Police and National Guardsmen who needlessly shoot and assault students are criminals All who applaud these evil acts share in their evil...
...Many thanks...
...Why do we tell them that a modern society is a rational society, where our attempts to control and change our environment are not guided by blinding emotions...
...And this is where our presidential commissions depart from their prototype, Marceau For the audience that pays to see Marceau expects to be deceived while in the audience paying for a presidential commission only the shrewdest commissionwatcher anticipates fraud...
...F. Buckle y's best-selling "The Jeweler's Eye" (a $.95 retail value...
...I t l Irvame k l I Address l I City -. ---State -,-_Zip I I l 0 Payment of $6.95 enclosed* 0 bill me later I 0 1 prefer the special rate of $16.95, for 40 issues (20 months of NR)), saving me $7.05 over the newsstand price I (prices include alt Postage and handling], Olt *MANY THANKS...
...The humor, sharp and satirical, is far superior to anything I have seen published by the student Left So, keep sending your irreverent dissent out here to unreconstructed Arizona Keep doing your part to keep the "kids" morally outraged...
...The result has been unendurable boredom, and practically the entire nation is itching with restlessness...
...Think of it, not only does the author of this confused little ditty forthrightly denounce "violence," but he opposes' "needless" assaults and shootings" (Is this to say that what America really needs are indispensable assaults and shootings which the commission would then presumably call "needful...
...He is assisted by Amy Gruberg...
...Have you been there...
...This effect has not been achieved by the advance of invincible logic but by uncompromising idiocy...
...It was the first time I have seen it...
...One group fusses about, hectoring the majority for its "immoral" public policy, while personally adhering to a moral code that would elicit despair from an occasionally principled alley cat And the majority schizophrenically presumes itself morally unassailable, while articulating no moral vision at all...
...For what purpose do they build libraries and buy books...
...At the same time, we do know if Mao is ill or, that the Red Guards killed so and so many peasants in a particular province, for these facts our sources of information can be trusted: the first group of statements does not fit our preconceived notions about "them" and the second group does I do not have anything personal against the writer of the Cuban article, I do not know him and I don't care to...
...20 The Alternative January, 1971 But the fraudulence perpetrated by a presidential commission is not the kind of swindle that we customarily expect from a public servant, for whereas a Bobby Baker or a Senator Dodd attempts to sound plausible the typical presidential commission attempts to sound bewilderingly idiotic...
...Police and National Guardsmen who needlessly shoot and assault students are criminals...
...Cool, refreshing, crisp and clear, one doesn't have to trade an upset stomach for a headache Slightly relieved, I can then return to a behavioural analysis of the fascist brutalities inherent in our capitalist system...
...There must be a national cease-fire...
...But that was in Germany and this is America, and when Mr...
...If not clearcut evidence but rather a conjunction of factors is demonstrated-such as: in the 1920's millions of Chinese died of starvation yearly and additional millions of children with hunger swollen bodies survived in misery, but in contrast there is no evidence of mass starvation in China today--it is rejected out of hand...
...F NATIONAL REV] EW • 150 East 35 St...
...how can anyone else see any positive aspects in anything labeled communist...
...The epigones of Herr Marcuse and Herr Kunstler make pretty good marchers and bombers and burners...
...Would the Scranton Report demand all this soul searching from America's burghers...
...You can save $4.80...
...Thank you...
...Why not take a moment to find out for yourself about today's most exciting young magazine...
...It is the atmosphere I am referring to, an atmosphere of hatred, of unawareness, of lack of intellectual or intelligent curiosity, of unreceptiveness to differing arguments that may or may not be correct...
...Well what about middle-class Germany in 1930...
...A vague uneasiness warms the air...
...It is the tone of the article (and of the paper as a whole I assume) that counts, the attitude...
...If we cannot bring people to question, to search, to think, to read, to be open to different views, understanding may never come...
...A similar effect is conjured by the presidential commission but with grave differences...
...We are republishing it as our editorial on the mental state of the Ritualistic Liberal...
...It snares the widest range of dolts, titillating the jaded, scaring hell out of the Middle Americano and assuring the radical and pop students that their childish tantrums are earthshaking events...
...It gorges the busybodies' appetite for unction and magic by demanding the President exert "moral leadership" and devote several days every week to ministering to Americans much like the village shaman ministered to his cretinous aborigines...
...Wishing to purchase counseling facilities and the necessities of life for American draft-dodgers in Canada the World Council of Churches sought to raise $210,000.23 and compared the plight of these draft-dodgers to the flight of the Jews into Egypt some centuries ago...
...N.Y., N.Y...
...And it soothes the mob by assuring that the idealistic youths who bomb university and government buildings are "criminals...
...Just use the coupon below" .$fteny thanks, Wm...
...They believe that America has lost its sense of human purpose and must renew that purpose by colonizing...
...Andrew Hopkins Ann Arbor, Michigan Editorials (continued from page 2 ) Further I suggest that it be widely distributed as a calculable remedy for insomnia and melancholy, It is that good I Now the presidential commission, though a prodigiously useful device for governing Americans, is not the creation of Yankee ingenuity...
...Kelley, and collegians at campuses all over the country who had joined the organization were branded with epithets among which Mr...
...without any attempt to inquire, to evaluate, to marshal evidence...
...Attempting to Evaluate by Dov Ronen Assistant Professor, Political Science Purdue University Yesterday a "free copy" of The Alternative was placed in my mailbox...
...Now such solicitude for fact would flaw the Report's idiocy and thereby vitiate its usefulness as a device for governing the gullible But we at The Alternative feel there is a consideration of greater moment regarding this particular report...
...Now, for the first time, this great journal of opinion will send a one-year subscription to any student or faculty member for the reasonable price of fifty cents All others unfortunately still must pay four dollars-at least until our CIA grant slips through Name Street City State Zip Student or faculty [1 (50 ) Other O ($4 00) Institution...
...The world doesn't have the slightest chance to survive this madness built on fear and hatred...
...Campus unrest reflects and increases a more profound crisis in the nation as a whole...
...Or exactly how does this great crisis lack a parallel...
...Nixon on 12 December took issue with Scranton's conclusions he was probably out of touch with the "new culture.' George Nathan 13 Editorial II The Alternative Chastized The following article was published in the PURDUE EXPONENT'S "Guest Column...
...We had hoped, through the use of satire, to make the situation so laughable as to create some public sentiment against treasury raids by every pressure group that came along I am sure that Alternative would consider this a commendable aim...
...Why do people of this state support universities...
...SPECIAL OFFER: If you enclose payment with order, we'll send you a FREE copy of the new edition of Wm...
...Continuing Crisis (continued from page 2) arrested six SDS Weathermen for plotting to bomb a bank Dr...
...The Alternative January, 1971 19 Letters To the Editor: In a review of Merlo J. Pusey's The Way We (:o to War in Alternative, November, 1970, Mr John L. Kelley refers to the Veterans of Future Wars as "an organization of the 1920's founded by a group of Princeton pacifists...
...Why do we stand in class teaching our students to question, to doubt, to inquire...
...Derived from the French version of government, the prototype for the American presidential commission was brought to these shores by the gifted Monsier Marcel Marceau--a French mime, who, before adoring audiences on specially prepared stages, creates from shadows and gesticulations the most wonderful world of fantasy...
...Unresponsive" souls, such as I, after a reflection upon the day's idiocies will most often succumb to a nausea sure to disturb a night of studious endeavors Well, I used to rely on Pepto Bismal But that doesn't work anymore So, upon returning to my humble abode, financed by poor but honest me, I reach for the antacids on my shelf and sinfully indulge id the heresies of the latest Alternative...
...Please send me the next 18 issues (36 weeks a $10.80 newsstand value-you save $3.85) at the spe- I cial introductory rate of just $6.95, postpaid...
...Discover just how exciting Buckley's National Review ca li be...
...Last year America was visited by over 4,500 bombings and bomb threats...
...For while M. Marceau's masterful bamboozlements originate from an aesthetic heart endeavoring to entertain, the typical campus commissioner has the spirit of a Machiavellian endeavoring to yoke Lamentably the American people, who possess unparalleled wealth and live in unapproachable freedom, have divested themselves of any satisfying conception of virtue...
...There is a vague uneasiness warm ing the air, unemployment and confronta tion as a "new culture" confronts the police, and let us imagine that Heinrich Bruning's liberal republic issues a report: We utterly denounce violence...
...How can it...
...to write to provoke hatred, hatred and fear...
...If they described themselves as young idealistic Nazis would the New York Times refer to them as "the kids" or "the youngsters...
...See for yourself what so many other intelligent Americans are finding regularly in NR-.good writing, sharp reporting-the news you can't find anywhere else!--plus special features and hard-hitting articles...
...F. Buckley's exciting book, "The Jeweler's Eye...
...Thus all the idiots who believe in the authority of presidential reports have come away from the Scranton Report smacking their chops, satisfied that the federal government cares for them...
...Consider this preposterous concatenation of shiftiness lifted from the Report's very first paragraph: The crisis on American campuses has no parallel in the history of the nation...
...Kelley's information, the Veterans of Future Wars was founded as a protest against the bad habit that the Veterans of World War I had contracted of mounting campaigns for more and larger bonuses...
...I have my own doubts about some An aspects of the Cuban experiment, of which I know little more than the average person...
...Is he addressing two sovereign nations...
...And what is there to do if liberal - radical - leftist - socialist - communist - Marxist - Leninist - Maoist -lunatics (many words for the same "thing") confront moderate conservatives on the "respectable" side...
...I am sure that we members of the Class of 1936 at Princeton, many of whom were charter members of the organization, would be somewhat surprised to hear that we were pacifists For Mr...
...This crisis has roots in divisions of American society as deep as any since the Civil War...
...Students who bomb and burn are criminals...
...I IWe'll send you a FREE copy of Wm...
...If the "crisis on American campuses has no parallel in the history of the nation, "how is it the roots of the crisis are "as deep as any since the Civil War...
...The divisions are reflected in violent acts and harsh rhetoric, and in the enmity of those Americans who see themselves as occupying opposing camps...
...I am not ready to stand up for Cuba in this case: whether Cuba is a good place or a bad place is secondary...
...Today the American intellectual class would brand such a report, shall we say, pusillanimous...
...Yes, don't miss this opportunity to try National Review (see below for details of our special $-saving introductory rate...
...Their decision still needs approbation from the If we penetrate the existing gap between "them" and "us" on preconceived notions and emotionalism and do not resort to our intellectual capacities for any other purpose than improving and maximizing the machinery to defend "us" from "them"--we are not better than animals with the natural instinct of self-defense...
...the society is bored, its culture jejune and its politics in need of engaging the citizenry's antsy attentions or anaesthetizing its longings Viewed from this perspective the Scranton Commission is an unforgettable performance...
...According to the evidence of my research staff, the Report was mostly written by its commissioners and a team of retired cigarette advertisers who had spent much of their professional careers writing Salem and Marlboro ads and experimenting with lysergic acid diethylamide...
...nobody listens...
...Had the author understood the meaning of the word violence, he would have realized that police charged to deal with riots are rarely guilty of violence simply because of the definition of the word, but students who bomb and burn are always guilty of violence...
...In fact I am not sure who he could have found to write this portion of the Report...
...How do you know...
...But to write an article about my country without any reference to sources...
...Now this last bit of information might shock some readers but only those who have not read the report which abounds with enormities such as the following quotation which so successfully fulfilled the political function of the Report that the New York Times was duped into publishing it in the Times' editorial: We utterly condemn violence...
...If evidence is presented, statistics for example, to support the positive argument, they are judged a lie...
...We do not know...
...Scranton (see Continued on Page 22 I I "National Review is my kind of magazine...
...Students who bomb and burn libraries and synagogues are criminals...
...To deny him tenure would be to deny future generations of Purdue students buckets full of condign hilarity...
...Just because of the physical distances between "East" and "West," ways of communication other than through ideas are difficult to develop...
...And does campus unrest really reflect and increase "a more profound crisis in the nation as a whole...
...That means you save a total of $4.80 with this ofer...
...Actually, as is customary with presidential commissions, the politicians imposed upon this man's sense of patriotism to come to Washington, assist them in writing the two intelligent chapters of the Report ("Student Protest in the f960's" and "The Causes of Student Protest") and correct the commissioners' misspellings...
...It may even be yours- why not give it a try...
...Why waste money and energy and research time when their minds may in any case be set on the unalterable image of totalitarian, dictatorial, oppressive, militant, warmongering or what-have-you Cuba...
...A counterargument, on the situation in Cuba or elsewhere in the "East," could not and would not be brought forward they will say, except by a communist sympathizer...
...What a waste...
...Although I haven't read all through it--my temperament does not fit the forbearance such an enterprise would demand--I have read the article on Cuba...
...F. Buckley Jr...
...p faculty-dominated University Council and faces rough-going The Narragansett Boy Scout Council of Rhode Island unanimously approved James Clark's Eagle Scout award which had previously been denied on the grounds that he was an atheist...
...Weaver is renowned for his knowledge and intelligence, and I have it on the best of testimony that he is a fellow of the most civilized sensibility...
...Louis N. D'Ascoli, principal of Eastchester High School in New York, announced a national campaign for changing the last words of the Pledge of Allegiance to read "seeking liberty and justice for all...
...Learn firsthand what people are talking about...
...Seriously, Bob, I would venture to say that you have pieced together the finest journal of student opinion found anywhere within the confines of this imperfect, yea redeemable, natural order...
...There must be a national cease-fire...
...Use the coupon below right this minute to subscribe to National Review...
...Surely Mr...
...And he courageously stands above the roar of artillery demanding a "cease-fire " Who does he imagine himself to be, U Thant...
...we refuse to believe...
...On 12 December President Nixon disputed the conclusions of the Scranton Commission Report in a letter to Mr...
...Why do we tell them that this society is a modern society...
...Clip and mail the coupon today (pay later, if your checkbook isn't handy the important thing is to do it now...
...The prevailing economic system demands discipline and self-denial from a man during his productive hours and wanton materialism when he leaves the office or plant at night...
...Yours in Heresy, Bob Moffit To the Editor: I just read your November issue and want to thank you for the splendid job you seem to be doing Your point of view is little heralded in America today (for it seems the press is more eager to write about violence), but if calm is to return and progress to continue it is people who think as you who will prove crucial...
...Would the com missioners speak as they do in the present report of a "new youth kultur" emerging amongst students Its members love this country, but they are scornful of the traditional values and outdated social structures held by their elders They are idealistic and they are fearful of what they consider the unnatural Jewish elite which governs this country...
...It did indeed become a little more dangerous to inhabit our Liberal empire--though not so dangerous as the imaginative pundits would have us believe...
...Why have we been trying to define and refine concepts and terms, to distinguish political aims and means and practices and ideas, ideologies and programs...
...The McGill Manufacturing Company Supports The Alternative Approach to a Better America Valparaiso, Indiana SPECIAL INTRODUCTORY OFFER "...but Greta...for my ancient title, my 10,000 serfs, and my subscription to The Alternative...
...Yet this is not to imply that society should punish these "criminals" Surely that is no answer Rather society should understand them...
...10016 ~ ^ 1 I Gentlemen: I want to find out about National Review for I myself...
...All who applaud these evil acts share in their evil...
...Featuring a narrative that is the most arresting since Rabelais, it advocates a squirt of ether for every sort of lame brain...
...Why do we write books about them that nobody reads and lecture on them when...
...Is all this a ghastly flight of imagina tion, utterly unthinkable in middle class America...
...Interpretations of available evidence vary...
Vol. 4 • January 1971 • No. 3
