Editorials
Editorial I Anti-Semitism in the 1970s Anti-Semitism in America is not a fashionable concern. So why discuss it? When a society loses confidence in its principles, it often loses sight of its...
...For the march of the lemmings appears to most conscious thinking' persons as inconsiderate, obnoxious, mindless, justified only on the most morally imaginative premises and probably counterproductive...
...For conservatives, moderates, or just plain average persons uninterested in cultural or political revolution (Joe Frazier was the most recent to suffer this judgment), he maintains a rigorous standard of conduct in contrast with which the behavioral standard of his predecessors shows Zeus to have been a slacker and Yahweh to be hopelessly permissive...
...When such a nation allows itself to drift from constitutional moorings, it is vulnerable to blustering winds...
...When a society loses confidence in its principles, it often loses sight of its virtues...
...Some consider him an inherent malcontent...
...I cannot think of a single scientist who-upon viewing the perverse behavior of lemmings during the sixties- was moved to applaud their actions or even to admire their motives...
...Peace does not return until enormous swarms of these most pitiful of God's creatures repose belly-up in the oceans-which seem their ultimate destination...
...And their suggestions for Israeli demarche are as inventive as they are disingenuous, (continued on page 20)Editorial II Where the Lemmings Are For centuries the behavior of the Scandinavian lemming (species, Lem-mus) has baffled the most eminent scientists...
...The scientist rests his case on facts...
...They trotted out the usual transmogrified claims of racism, and after little debate an apprehensive ad- ministration changed the offending symbol...
...This demonstration would be termed "hawkish" or "patriotic" or "pro-administration", and the epithet "peace" would remain safely reserved for those demonstrators that the pundits feel are really interested in peace...
...So what is the real point of one more demonstration...
...the pundit's is emotionalism...
...How different are the men who produce scientific monographs about the march of the lemmings from the pundits who produce hot air about the march of the "anti-war" demonstrators...
...Only a ninny sympathizes with a rodent...
...For these massive demonstrations accomplish no palpable purpose aside from attracting seasonal headlines and fleeting recognition for the singular lemming who manages to get himself photographed in the Oslo Times, com-miting a hideous indiscretion at a public sauna or floundering into the King's soup...
...Further, it removed all pictures of...
...revolution by lemmings...
...But the lemmings are sensing a distant pulse...
...Others, adherents to behavioral analysis, lay his fate to ecological depredations, generation conflicts and possibly technological imprudence-for instance, exposure to DDT...
...The anti-Semitism of many Jewish radicals seems to be a manifestation of Jewish self-hatred...
...Their distraction will increase, and soon they will cease to breed and frolic in the meadows...
...Anyone who views foreign policy differently from Senator McGovern is ipso facto not interested in peace...
...And of course the march would never be called a peace march because according to the pundits' standards only leftists are "peace" marchers...
...A new form of anti-Semitism has grown on the fringes of the intellectual class along with the American intellectuals' increased anti-intellectualism, intolerance and justification of violence...
...Parroting Soviet propagandists, they characterize Israel as an expression of "bourgeois reactionary nationalism" that stands in the way of "revolutionary internationalism," i.e., Arab nationalism...
...Many intellectuals have provided ideological justification and political support for this anti-Semitism...
...Nixon's strategy for peace in Vietnam...
...And if anyone would write such a book no one would read (continued on page 21)(Continued from page 21) it...
...Unfortunately by election day 1970 the peace demonstrators were all floating belly-up in the security of their dormitories or perhaps on park benches...
...Imagine the response of the pundits if a group led by, say, Bob Hope, Billy Graham, Senator Goldwater and the Grand Shaman of the Ku Klux Klan planned an April march on Washington supporting Mr...
...Indians from university buildings...
...It flourishes in the brutal rhetoric of black nationalists and often creeps into the utterances of white new leftists...
...Despite such ingenious proposals as the Princeton Plan the peace students were really not very prominent at the polls and not even the pundits could find them active at the precinct level (the only student groups that noticeably participated in campaigns were Young Americans for Freedom and Young Republicans, as the New York Times dolefully admitted...
...They congregate into dense masses and stream down from the mountains, abandoning themselves to the tender mercies of the snowy owl, drowning by the bushelful in ponds and streams, and leaving their brethren in splats of matted goo on city streets...
...The Department of Defense might well envy their seemingly inexhaustible arsenal of apologies for the intimidation of and assaults on Jews working, teaching or living in predominantly black slums...
...And imagine that this was about their third march for this purpose...
...Their criticism of America's imperfections has been transformed into disregard and finally distaste for their country...
...Indeed, so dissipated has he become that today the American intellectual is-at his best-a first-rate juggler of second-rate ideas, and-at his worst-a religious fanatic mindlessly intoning a litany of buncombe...
...Secondly, no CBS correspondent would ever appear on the evening news standing incongruously before a gas station in desolate Valdez, New Mexico and reporting how the citizens of Valdez have collected their nickels to send Johnny Pruit to represent Valdez at Bob Hope's Peace March...
...the pundit stands on myths...
...Obviously, the paradigmatic American intellectual is no intellectual at all...
...Consider the following: Not long ago at Marquette University, six Indian students objected to the school's symbol "The Warriors...
...among the latter it issues from their tendentious critique of American foreign policy...
...The pundit applies his most fastidious standard to Presidents, Vice Presidents and in fact any individual achiever possessed of talent and quality...
...The pundits will be justifiably concerned by this tragic emigration but do they really have to condone it...
...Yet the men who observe the peace lemmings will offer diverse explanations for this peculiar behavior, and-unlike the scientist-they will, in their concern, condone the actions of the peace lemmings...
...They will close shop and begin to rumble down toward Washington...
...Now much has been written about this perplexing phenomenon, but no one seems to understand the lemming...
...Black militants claim that Jewish landlords and shopkeepers exploit and oppress slum dwellers...
...An (continued on page 19)Editorial I (continued from page 2) imbecilic episode, of course, but not uninstructive...
...Last spring they massed on Washington with(continued from page 21) such force that the New Republic proclaimed the November elections would bring the dawn of a new politics...
...Their officious scam-perings through American cities manifest little awareness of the toughness of statecraft...
...For it is typical of our nation, while attempting to realize ethnic justice for its disparate groups, to fall prey to demagogues...
...Much of this has come-most paradoxically-from the intellectuals hot on the trail of justice...
...The peace students make their migrations in the spring and like the lemmings their march is generally obnoxious, mindless, justified only on the most mysterious suppositions and probably counterproductive...
...Within the contemporary screeds denouncing American racialism and war has come a contempt for lawfulness and reason, a confusion over violence and the use of illicit force...
...As startling as it is for a nation to, in less than a decade, silently reverse its sanctions (some a century old) against pornography, drugs and abortions, it is more startling still to reflect on the absence of debate that these abrogations have caused among intellectuals, religious leaders and statesmen...
...Still others consider the lemming a victim of mass hysteria or just plain stupid...
...As winter's sobering winds fade before spring's balmy breezes, we again hear the rustlings of the peace demonstrators...
...And where the scientist judges every creature's behavior against a single standard, the pundit has a whole deck of standards...
...Finally some editorialists would have to remind us that participants in Mr...
...It is cool and secure out on the campuses now...
...George Natban...
...Hope's last demonstration were "provocative" or violent and anyway this is Hope's third time around on this stunt, "which neither seems to represent the will of the majority of citizens nor to be terribly effective in ending the war...
...Among the former it rides tandem with their anti-capitalism...
...Today, America is culturally adrift...
...Many will arrive on 24 April...
...When its history is viewed as a succession of errors and evils its past successes will go unrecognized and its contemporary realities misperceived...
...All are concerned about the lemmings' self-destructive travels, but certainly none condones them...
...As in so many other instances, white radicals follow the lead of the black militants and add their own slanders...
...First of course, Hope, Graham and Goldwater would be reviled by the New York Times for associating with known racists, and the demonstration would be described as racist-inspired or as a racist front...
...The American intellectual has grown weary of debating principles and discriminating vices and virtues...
...And his actions show that he is no lover of democracy...
...Hysteria seizes Nordic civilization as vast armies of lemmings scurry through the cities and on...
...They attack (at times, physically) Jewish school teachers for practicing "cultural genocide" on black school-children...
...Further, imagine that violence and destruction had always attended their demonstrations and that the war continued unaffected by their displays...
...if its leaders do not anchor themselves in reason and 'intelligence, the humane values of American civilization will quietly fall away along with the discredited vices of yesteryear...
...Certainly no man with a ray of light in his cranium would call this "the most idealistic generation ever" or write a book prophesying a peaceful, irresistible...
...Our past has embraced prejudice and inequality, but it has also respected tolerance, lawfulness and more recently- reason and non-violence...
...The scientist's method is reason...
...American Jews are vigorous advocates of the liberal democracy the radicals despise, and participants in the capitalist system they want to destroy...
...The Nation assured us that their force would endure even beyong the November elections, and how different the Ninety-Second Congress would be...
...These tiny rodents bedenizen all Scandinavia and after breeding in the cool mountain reaches, transacting their business in lightly wooded areas and indulging their muses in the delightful meadows of the upcountry, they suddenly pack their bags and enter upon a most tragic journey...
...The black militants also condemn Israel as a white, racist, colonial state that is an enemy of the anti-imperialists' "Third World" with which they identify...
...But for the peace demonstrator and cultural or political revolutionaries he reserves a standard that is admirably tempered, reasonable and understanding-indeed, his heart skips a beat at the merest thought of them...
Vol. 4 • April 1971 • No. 5
