Letter from a Whig
Will1, George F.
competRion within particol~r industries. In that case Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes observed for a unanimous Court: "Extraordinary conditions do not create or enlarge constitutional power...
...He can live with them...
...The Kennedy Center is anything but old-fashioned...
...In fact, most Washingtonlans, like most Americans, will never set foot in either the Center or the Potomac River...
...Bob Dyian adumbrated it when he sang, ~'the times they are a changing...
...The next time a senator starts utterhag pieties about the need to "reorder our priorities," ask him how he voted on the various subsidies for the Kennedy Center...
...Recognition of Red China, after all, has been one of the great liberal goals for two decades, and recognition now seems inevitable...
...If we do, we may lose our leverage...
...The idea of an arts center for the nation's capital was sold to President Eisenhower in one of the fine man's weak moments...
...Before the first note was drawn from the first fiddle, the federal government had invested fifty million dollars in the ostensibly private project...
...But we all will pay for the former, and we never will be able to enjoy the latter...
...Boy meets girl, an obstacle occurs, and boy loses girl...
...Equally exuberant are Peter, Paul and Mary who peacefully proclaim, "If I had a song, I'd sing of love between my brothers and my sisters all over this land...
...These pseudoromantic musicians of the 1940s and 1950s, unable to relate to the profane universe, wrought such sophomoric titles as "With My Head in the Clouds," "Swinging on a Star," "Dream, Dream, Dream" and "That Old Black Magic...
...During the 1960s, musical lyrics evolved from shallow platitudes into a new humanism far superior to most of the radical protest also abroad...
...But in no sense is it a "Kennedy Memorial...
...And Richard Nixon, with enemies left and right...
...Thus the government is asked to choose between helping the project, or callously allowing it to expire...
...A smart operator asks the government for a certain sum of money "just to get started...
...A steady flow of raw sewage oozes into the river from a large pipe jutting from the embankment along Washington's posh Georgetown section...
...This senator, whose lust for new priorities is well-known, is on the Senate Appropriations Committee...
...Last December the Center announced that it would have to curtail various activities unless the federal government supplied some more millions...
...And here is the paradox, for our feelings about winning are ambivalent...
...Finally, bubblegum music, repetiThe Alternative May 1972 13...
...John R. Coyne, Jr., is an Associate of this illustrious journal and a contributor to National Review, a New York based magazine...
...He is presently teaching mass communications at Arizona State University and his most recent book is The Impudent Snobs: Agnew vs...
...And, if you apply that old rule of thumb, the * ideological extremes represented by his enemies suggest that Nixon is that rarity among American politicians -- a centrist...
...But why, asks a nonideological observer, can't everyone be friends...
...The pollution of the Potomac is caused by two things...
...A few want to win very much...
...lie's had practice...
...And liberals should be delighted with the new China policy...
...It is important that this pressure be evenly and steadily applied...
...WASHINGTON) - - The following is~a short course on government, liberalism and the new location of an old landmark, Credibility Gap...
...At last, sincere sentiments challenged pseudo-romanticism Armed with this gospel of social m volvement, the new humanists {tied to change a materialistic, lonely and frequently inhumane society...
...Unlike the nlbili.qtic New Left, these humanists can project solutions and hope to mitigate society's problems...
...Liberals believe that all Good Things deserve federal subsidies...
...All Washingtonlans must en12 The Alternative May 1972 dure the most oppressively humid summers in America...
...Both conservatives and liberals believe their constant ideological opposition puts pressure on ~ovemunent from both ends of t h e ideological spectrum...
...When Kennedy was assassinated, the project was named after him...
...But there is little reason to believe that the Kennedy Center cannot use itsblackmail on the House...
...Prior to the socially activist 196#s, musical lyrics were escapist, platonic and absurdly passionate...
...Many others, although .they realize the importance of appearing to desire total victory, would happily settle for much less...
...Liberals are correctr in this regard...
...The Center will go right on serving its predictable clientele, the overwhelmingly white audiences drawn from the upper-income families of the District of Columbia and its wealthy suburbs...
...Only a tiny portion of the American population will attend a concert there...
...or "Does your chewing gum lose its flavor on the bedpost overnight...
...For example, in "Fakin' It" Simon and Garfunkel beseech their listeners to "take time to treat your friendly neighbors honestly...
...In 1962...
...So, you always fight to win...
...Is it not a shame that the government cannot find money to invest in a clean Potomac...
...But wait...
...the Intellectual Establishment (Arlington House, 1972...
...America is neither a rightist, nor a leftist nation, and most Americans are ideologically eclectic ,picking and choosing among liberal and conservative positions...
...Would I, for instance, really enjoy living in a completely conservative society...
...There have been enemies on the left since the early 1950s, when Nixon helped to prove that Alger Hiss, a charter member of the liberal establishment, was moonlighting as a Russian spy...
...They Called Him "'Tricky" Centrist Nixon, Centrist Nation John R. Coyne, Jr...
...Some mountebanks, incapable of transcending this orgy of emotion, satiated occur fantasies via such nonsense lyrics as "ooh eeh oh ah all ting tang walla walla bing bang," "Zip-a-de-do-de" or "Film flam floogle...
...Easy to be cold...
...So, why all the griping...
...In other words, just because you favor seating Red China in the United Nations, you don't necessarily oppose Relmquist...
...Existing antipeUution laws are not enforced...
...It may be too much to hope that Mr...
...For example, since 1962 Bobby Vinton has produced perennial chartclimbers with a revised Tristan-Iseult myth as his theme...
...He drew up the required legislation and pushed it through the Senate in the confused closing hours of the session...
...It is not equivalent to the Lincoln Memorial...
...Now the flow of public funds will never end...
...This was a familiar form of blackmail...
...The Potomac River, once one of our most scenic natural treasures and a splendid setting for the nation's Capitol, is polluted...
...And so, traditional enemies on the left...
...And the federal government says it cannot find the money to build sewage treatment plants for the District of Columbia...
...Many are voor...
...Now Nixon has enemies to the right as well as left...
...Liberals such as this senato~ think "the arts" are Good Things...
...Simon and Garfunkel wince at an impersonal and materialistic society when they sing: And the peop/e bowed and prayed TO the neon god they made...
...Is it just for the moment we live?...Are we meant to take more than we give...
...A centrist president in a country whose unique greatness depends upon a strong center may not really be a bad thing...
...This is nonsense...
...It has not yet cleared the House of Representatives...
...Whild Honeyfoggling Edology...
...Thus, it is never surprising when the liberal left opens up, as it did for instance during the hearings on the Supreme Court nomination of William Rehnquist, a nomination seen by Birch Bayh as proof that rightist Nixon intended to pack the court with Birchers (of the Robert Welch, rather than the Bayh, variety...
...Suddenly there are enemies on the right, most of them supporting conservative Congressman John Ashbrook in the presidential primaries...
...It subscribes to the new principle: those who provide a service should get the taxpayers to foot at least part of the bill...
...The course concerns a river, a subsidy and this year's political catchphrase -- "reordering priorities...
...and if we lose our leverage, the country, we fear, cannot remain centrist...
...As a result, Washingtonians are deprived of a desperately needed recreational resource...
...Nixon's own "strict constructionist" Supreme Court will administer unto Phase II a similarly welldeserved death blow...
...But that would have involved fidelity to the old,4 Dilemma for t h e Seventies fashioned principle that people who use a service should pay for it...
...This senator heard the Kennedy Center's cry of distress...
...the new humanists of the middle 1960s queried esoterically, "What's it all about Alfie...
...And Richard Nixon has made plenty...
...This article will investigate several forms of contemporary music as they emerged in the last generation...
...In the musical "Hair" an impersonal and apathetic world is depicted with the lines "How can people have no feelings...
...And the sign flashed out its warning In the words that it was lorming...
...And so, among the ideologically committed, an odd ambivalence exists...
...Whereas in the 1950s and early 1960s curious romantics inquired, "Who put the bomp she bomp she bomp she bomp...
...We fight for definite causes, but don't always desire to see those causes triumph completely, And what does all this have to do with Richard Nixon...
...The enemies he makes tend to be committed to some strong ideological viewpoint, both left and right...
...As the Beetles commented, "All the lonely people, where do they all belong...
...Seventy-two per cent of all Washingtonlans are black...
...Conspicuous on the hank of this fetid river is the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, a large, ungainly monument to the government's solicitude on behalf of the upper middle classes...
...of course the Kennedy Center could have tried to meet its money crisis by raising the price of its tickets...
...During the 1960s, however, the social temper of the country was transformed from the pseudo-romanticism of the 1950s to a new humanism...
...Most of us can live quite nicely in a centrist country...
...How can they ignore their friends?...Easy to be hard...
...He is also a member of the Kennedy Center's Board of Trustees...
...But this liberal senator and kindred spirits will go on pouring public money into the hopelessly dependent Center for as long as, well, for as long as raw sewage pours into the Potomac less than a mile downstream...
...Conservatives, after all, should be ecstatic about the Supreme Court appointments, such appointments being among the most s~gnificant a president can wake...
...This will be made possible by the use of general revenues, drawn from the pockets of taxpayers in Boise and Albuquerque and Harlem...
...In fact, public health officials here warn everyone to wash ins if any river water so much as touches the skin...
...The ideologically committed believe they Cannot express gratitude for what they consider half measures...
...But if I were pressed, I suppose I'dput it this way...
...Unlike us red-bloeded males, Vinton's rejected men are mystically happy and always lbrgiving after losing girls to whom they have pledged their entire lives...
...And the sign said: The words oF the prophets are Written on the subway walls, And tenement halls, And ufnispered in the sounds of silence...
...But you won't find those of us who are ideologically committed admitting that, of course...
...Once started, the operator discovers that "unexpected contingencies" have raised the cost of survival...
...But then comes a'related question: Do we really want to win...
...Unromantic questions were posed such as "Will you believe me will you still feed me 'when I'm sixty-four...
...Admittedly, even at its pinnacle (in 1969), the new humanism was challonged by other musical forms...
...If one side lets up, the other side suddenly becomes dominant, and the result is one-sided ideological hegemony, as during, for instance, the New Deal -Fair Deal -- New Frontier Great Society years...
...Also there were fingering vestiges of the pseudo-romanticism of the 1940s and 1950s...
...Liberal legislators will see to that...
...Just recently a well-known liberal Republican senator from a significant Middle Western state gave us a glimpse of the future...
...China lights a fire under conservatives already sizzling over the administration's proposed fandly assistance plan and what they regard as America's deteriorating defense posture...
...It's dangerous to relax, dangerous to content yourself with half measures...
...For the truth is that very few nonfascist, nonMarxist Americans want a true believer in the White House...
...The loneliness theme is symbolized by the Beetles' Elinor Rigby, whose menial task in life was to "pick up the rice at the church where the wedding has been...
...The Desultory State of Contemporary Music Bud Folsom I T'S BEEN ALMOST three years now since the Woodstock rock festlvat culmmatea a decade of lyrical advancement iq contemporary music...
...In that case Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes observed for a unanimous Court: "Extraordinary conditions do not create or enlarge constitutional power Congress cannot delegate legislative power to the President to exercise an unfettered discretion to make whatever laws he thinks may be needed or advisable for the rehabilitation and expansion of trade or industry...
...Nixon's sympathies, then, lie to the right...
...I F YOU WANT to know how a politician stands ideologically, runs one oM rule'of thumb, look at the enemies he makes...
...A tough question to a n ~ , especially if you're ideologically committed, as I am...
...Contemporary innovations incl~led drug oriented songs (although several of these, such as "White Rabbit" and '~he Pusher" can be interpreted as antidrug~satires...
...That is what the aforementioned liberal Republican senator from the Middle West wants to happen...
...Originally, the project was to be private...
...Or "How many years must a people exist before they're allowed to be free...
...This new breed w telling it as it was and stressed social involvement, individual freedom and sincere human relationships...
Vol. 5 • May 1972 • No. 8
