The Nation's Pulse
Jay, Marshall
"The Nation's Pulse" The Right Time for the "Wrong Kind" of Conservative Marshall Jay (WASHINGTON)--The latest news out of Washington touching the pending appointments to the...
...At one point, Senator Kennedy was so perplexed that he asked the nominee what kinds of questions they ought to be asking -- to which Rehnquist replied, naturally, that it was hardly his place to suggest what the Senate ought to be doing...
...Abortion, they correctly point out is tomorrow's remedy for today's mistakes, and eliminates the need for prudence and self-discipline...
...Their original battle-plan, formed in response to the prospect of Richard Poff and, subsequently, in response to the prospect of the "ABA Six," committed them to a position of "balancing" -- one seat for the conservatives, one seat for the liberals...
...The sanitation officials would .never put up with it, and in an ecologically minded world such littering of the countryside would be intolerable...
...We must regretfully dismiss this method too...
...The poor and unwanted generally got the worst of it, thus eliminating much hunger and poverty...
...They argue that contraception takes forethought, a characteristic rather lacking in today's society where one buys now and pays later, indulges tonight and takes headache pills tomorrow...
...As a result, the population of Rome increased to unmanageable proportions, and you know what happened to Rome...
...Furthermore, war today has lost its general appeal and color...
...It is a grisly, messy business at best...
...Clearly the world must take issue with the problem of overpopulation and do so now before it is too late...
...With the first baby out of the way, the mother could work...
...Rehnquist, while perhaps not so formidable on paper, had nonetheless managed to graduate first in his law school class at Stanford (having picked up a Phi Beta Kappa key beforehand), following that with a clerkship for Mr...
...Taxes levied on the self-supporting to care for the indigent would be high indeed...
...His introductory appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee provides a glimpse of what the liberals were up against...
...This method certainly had its merits, but in today's world it would have to be rejected without serious consideration...
...For one, it isn't cheap...
...It is First Revelation and Last Gospel and in between, as every schoolboy used to know, is contained a multitude of sins...
...Whenever things began to get out of hand they would manage to have a great cholera epidemic or similar.catastrophe...
...The Times contains everything that any self-respecting liberal needs to know in order to attain terrestrial salvation -- which is, since the day when the Times obituary page took note of the demise of God, the only kind of salvation one can get these days...
...When, therefore, the Times announced in reaction to Poff and the ABA Six that it was not opposing them because they were conservatives but rather because they were the • "wrong kind" of conservatives, its rhetorical generosity committed the entire liberal establishment to a position that subsequent events proved to be exceedingly vulnerable...
...It does seem a shame...
...Although it may not be apparent in the outlands, in the East the New York Times is Holy Writ...
...it requires also that the attack appear to be motivated by principle rather than by ideology -- an equally difficult task inasmuch as Rehnquist has made it abundantly clear that his allegiance as a Justice will begin and end at the Constitution...
...The liberals on the Judiciary Committee (chiefly Bayh, Kennedy, Tunney and Hart) tried every trick in the book to wrest from Rehnquist some indication of partisan or ideological commitment that would exclude him from sitting on the high court...
...Powell was accompanied by the entire Virginia congressional delegation (two Senators and ten Representatives, including five Democrats), the Attorney General of Virginia, the President of Washingtonand-Lee University, a brace of law school deans, four former Presidents of the American Bar Association, and a partridge in a pear tree...
...Another Modest Proposal Johnatluln Quick A lmost every thinker on the subject agrees that the greatest problem facing the world today is the population explosion, which is more than apparent now and promises to be an ever increasing difficulty in the future...
...One of the methods for population control thai would seem to hold the greatest promise is, of course, birth control...
...and, with respect to his alleged harrassment of black voters, he produced affadavits from unimpeachable sources which demonstrated beyond the peradventure of a doubt that the allegations were totally false and very likely malicious...
...The prospects are good-toexcellent that both Powell and Rehnquist will be confirmed...
...It is not recorded whether a choir of angels actually made an appearance on Powell's behalf, but one seasoned Senator was heard to mumble under his breath, "Hell, he don't wanna be confirmed, he wants to be canonized...
...Here, it is necessary to do some backtracking and, in turn, to comment on the role played by the New York Times within the liberal establishment...
...In the past, India always maintained a controllable population...
...These people, the Phoenicians, solved the problem by sacrificing all of their first-born children to their deity, Moloch...
...In or out of wedlock, young people could indulge themselves sexually with all the freedom that is encouraged and...
...The predictions are for more wars, famines, social unrest, crime, poverty and the total destruction of the ecology of this planet...
...as the battle switches to the Senate floor, the liberals are hardpressed...
...Secondly, sacrificing the first-born would largely solve the problems of the pregnant unmarried girl...
...Thirdly, the plan would enable young married couples to get off to a better start in life...
...I humbly propose that we consider their remarkable example...
...They are stuck 'with a battleplan which proved useless in Committee but which cannot now be abandoned without revealing partisan or idological motivation...
...We no longer charge into battle on horses with banners flying, and seldom have the opportunities of directly hacking down our enemies with battle axes...
...of all time, for seeking lo create a 'poisonous atmosphere...
...Indeed, the greatest of joys known to the liberal heart is to have arrived more or less independently at an opinion that is subsequently certified by a Times editorial as The Word...
...Asked whether he was a "'judicial conservative," he stated that he would say what HE thought he was, leaving it to the Committee to decide if that was the same thing as judicial conservatism...
...In the end, after the smoke had cleared, the liberal banner was a thing of shreds and patches...
...The satisfaction is all gone...
...It must be said that the liberals did not happen upon their strategy wholly by choice...
...there would be no question about adoption,, and no difficulty about a forced marriage to give the child a name...
...There are, however, obstacles and objections to the dependence of our societies on abortion as the answer to the population explosion...
...Some of the less well known civilizations of the past have even tried chastity and continence as a means to prevent unwanted children...
...such old-fashioned ideas would be laughed at by our sophisticated leaders today...
...The liberals then sought to smear him as an extremist, implying (without actually saying so themselves) that he was a member of the John Birch Society -- an allegation that Rehnquist categorically denied...
...Indeed, even the ordeal-byslander got to be a little too much for Kennedy, who publicly chastized The Alternative J a n u a r y , 1972 11 Joseph Rauh, the A-NumberO~e BlueRibbon Fully Certified Libera...
...even with government sponsored free abortion clinics, the cost per operation and for the proper preoperative and post-operative care would, it is estimated, be at least two hundred dollars...
...All this is accepted and the facts are well documented but still in dispute are the methods of controlling this population growth...
...Many societies of the past, most notably the Romans, kept population growth in line by the expedience of frequent wars...
...The Times not only tells the liberals what to think, it tells them how and when to think it...
...Powell himself had been President of both the ABA and the American College of Trial Lawyers...
...It is the method discovered and practiced bY an eminently successful civilization which lived and prospered for fifteen hundred years, a lot longer than the Romasn...
...So formidable are the obstacles confronting the liberal strategy that merely to describe them is tantamount to admitting their insurmountabflity...
...Justice Robert Jackson...
...In fact, a great many doctors abhor the idea and will refuse to perform abortions...
...For another thing, abortion is distasteful to the conservative elements of society and it is unlikely that the Catholic Church will ever agree to' it...
...Before dismissing this proposal out of hand, let us analyze its benefits...
...First they tried to establish that opinions expressed by Rehnquist in his capacity as head of the Office of Legal Counsel were also his personal opinions, seeking to draw him into an ideological debate -- to which Rehnquist replied either a) that he would not want to prejudge certain matters on which he may be called to render an opinion as a member of the Court or b} that too detailed an inqury might cause him to violate the sanctity of the attorney-client privilege, which must surely apply no less, he said, to his relationship with the Attorney General and the President than to other lawyers' relationships with private clients...
...They say this is desirable and realistic...
...This plan is so appealing to some of today's parents that it should get some prompt attention in Congress...
...the American Medical Association would be against it and would successfully oppose it with their powerful lobby in Washington...
...Besides there are no convenient mountains near our great population centers such as New York, Chicago and Houston...
...This strategy of selective indignation will, it is widely predicted, come to nought, but not before the good name of William Rehnquist is dragged through the mud: Indeed, the vicious, open and notorious campaign of character assassination now being directed against Rehnquist is the surest proof one might adduce of the desperation which now hovers like a brooding omnipresence over the liberal camp...
...First, the method is democratic...
...Newer methods, notably the pill and other contraceptive devices, have proven to be quite effective...
...The liberal strategy requires not only that Rehnquist be attacked on grounds that do not also apply to Powell -- a difficult task inasmuch as their views on almost every issue are virtually indistinguishable...
...Event Number One was Lewis Powell and Event Number Two was William Rehnquist...
...And I am afraid that this ancient and honorable method of population control would be effectively blocked by our vocal pacifistic organizations...
...He proved to be even more formidable in person...
...I mention them only for the sake of historical completeness...
...They undertook to suggest that he was anti-black, citing his opposition to public accomodations laws in the early sixties and floating rumors that he had interfered with blacks at polling places -- to which Rehnquist replied that he had changed his mind with respect to public accomodations laws, now regarding them as both beneficial and constitutional...
...The rich, as well as the poor, would make their contribution to the well-being of scoeity...
...In short, Rehnquist's was a virtuoso performance, one that left the liberals reeling...
...Opposition to Powell was doomed from the outset...
...10 The Alternative January, 1972 The Right Time for the "Wrong Kind" of Conservative Marshall Jay (WASHINGTON)--The latest news out of Washington touching the pending appointments to the Supreme Court is that the liberals are by-passing Lewis Powell and loading up for William Rehnquist...
...However, Senator Walter Stitch has already warned me that it would likely be opposed by the Women's Liberation movement...
...The Chinese used to have splendid epidemics too, but they also worked out a convenient plan that could be applied on an individual family basis according to need...
...We should review what other societies in other times have done to curb their population problems...
...And now...
...Rehnquist was not only unbloodied and unbowed, but virtually untouched...
...Let us consider the ancient Greeks who exposed their defective and unwanted infants on the mountain tops...
...They sold their daughters into slavery, at once providing for their offsprings' futures while relieving the economic problem at home...
...the alternative of abortion would fall more heavily upon the poor or disadvantaged...
...This became less effective, however, when in later years most ot the fighting was done by the foreign mercenaries and allies...
...Many of us would place our faith in them as the hope for the future, but more and more we are hearing that we must do more, namely legalize abortion at the will or whim of any pregnant girl or woman...
...To cap it all off, Powell had served for nearly three years as a combat intelligence officer in World War II, receiving the Legion of Merit, the Bronze Star and the Croix de Guerre (with Palm...
...There is one ancient custom, however, which to my knowledge has not been discussed by any of our sociologists, theologians or welfare experts, and before abandoning our search for a better way, we should look into it...
...Therefore, before all legal restraints be discarded...
...ought we not to consider all other forms of population control...
Vol. 5 • January 1972 • No. 4
