Editorial II
Ronen, Dov
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...
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...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...
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...But that was in Germany and this is America, and when Mr...
...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...
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...This crisis has roots in divisions of American society as deep as any since the Civil War...
...Learn firsthand what people are talking about...
...There must be a national cease-fire...
...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...
...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...
...F. Buckley Jr...
...without any attempt to inquire, to evaluate, to marshal evidence...
...If evidence is presented, statistics for example, to support the positive argument, they are judged a lie...
...If they described themselves as young idealistic Nazis would the New York Times refer to them as "the kids" or "the youngsters...
...Thank you...
...Continuing Crisis (continued from page 2) arrested six SDS Weathermen for plotting to bomb a bank Dr...
...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...
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...Is all this a ghastly flight of imagina tion, utterly unthinkable in middle class America...
...Interpretations of available evidence vary...
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...Is he addressing two sovereign nations...
...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...
...I am not ready to stand up for Cuba in this case: whether Cuba is a good place or a bad place is secondary...
...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...
...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...
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...Just because of the physical distances between "East" and "West," ways of communication other than through ideas are difficult to develop...
...All who applaud these evil acts share in their evil...
...If we cannot bring people to question, to search, to think, to read, to be open to different views, understanding may never come...
...In fact I am not sure who he could have found to write this portion of the Report...
...On 12 December President Nixon disputed the conclusions of the Scranton Commission Report in a letter to Mr...
...There must be a national cease-fire...
...Why do we stand in class teaching our students to question, to doubt, to inquire...
...Or exactly how does this great crisis lack a parallel...
...The world doesn't have the slightest chance to survive this madness built on fear and hatred...
...How do you know...
...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...
...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...
...It is the tone of the article (and of the paper as a whole I assume) that counts, the attitude...
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...To deny him tenure would be to deny future generations of Purdue students buckets full of condign hilarity...
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...Surely Mr...
...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...
...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...
...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 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...
...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...
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...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...
...What a waste...
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...we refuse to believe...
...Police and National Guardsmen who needlessly shoot and assault students are criminals All who applaud these evil acts share in their evil...
...Scranton (see Continued on Page 22 I I "National Review is my kind of magazine...
...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...
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...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...
...Paul Weaver, the Report's editor, is not the culprit...
...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...
...Why do people of this state support universities...
...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...
...He is assisted by Amy Gruberg...
...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...
...Why do we tell them that this society is a modern society...
...nobody listens...
...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...
...With this in mind it seems to us that such a witless statement about violence will only serve to justify the enrages...
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...This effect has not been achieved by the advance of invincible logic but by uncompromising idiocy...
...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...
...Why do we write books about them that nobody reads and lecture on them when...
...Campus unrest reflects and increases a more profound crisis in the nation as a whole...
...And he courageously stands above the roar of artillery demanding a "cease-fire " Who does he imagine himself to be, U Thant...
...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...
...It was the first time I have seen it...
...But to write an article about my country without any reference to sources...
...How can it...
...And we certainly do hope Professor Doktor Ronen gets that promotion that seems to be troubling him so...
...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...
...Last year America was visited by over 4,500 bombings and bomb threats...
...For what purpose do they build libraries and buy books...
...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...
...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...
...how can anyone else see any positive aspects in anything labeled communist...
...Students who bomb and burn libraries and synagogues are criminals...
...The divisions are reflected in violent acts and harsh rhetoric, and in the enmity of those Americans who see themselves as occupying opposing camps...
...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...
...Students who bomb and burn are criminals...
...Well what about middle-class Germany in 1930...
...We do not know...
...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...
...Police and National Guardsmen who needlessly shoot and assault students are criminals...
...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...
...Attempting to Evaluate by Dov Ronen Assistant Professor, Political Science Purdue University Yesterday a "free copy" of The Alternative was placed in my mailbox...
...Would the Scranton Report demand all this soul searching from America's burghers...
...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...
...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...
...10016 ~ ^ 1 I Gentlemen: I want to find out about National Review for I myself...
...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...
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...Now of course this passage most certainly accomplishes the fundamental purpose for which every presidential commission is established...
...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...
...We are republishing it as our editorial on the mental state of the Ritualistic Liberal...
...They believe that America has lost its sense of human purpose and must renew that purpose by colonizing...
...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...
...I have my own doubts about some aspects of the Cuban experiment, of which I know little more than the average person...
...Today the American intellectual class would brand such a report, shall we say, pusillanimous...
...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. Buckle y's best-selling "The Jeweler's Eye" (a $.95 retail value...
...And does campus unrest really reflect and increase "a more profound crisis in the nation as a whole...
...The epigones of Herr Marcuse and Herr Kunstler make pretty good marchers and bombers and burners...
...to write to provoke hatred, hatred and fear...
Vol. 4 • January 1971 • No. 3
