Correspondence: Letters from Zigla, Benedict, Santucci, Tiesberg, Auspitz and Levy
To the Editor: It has been my unwontedly macabre experience to unsolicitedly receive copies of your journalistic pronounciamenti. Although the monetary inducement necessary to facilitate such...
...It would be nice if I could say that the Ripon Society's position is unambiguously anti-subsidy, anti-interventionist, libertarian and decentralizing, though this has been the general tendency...
...that my hatred for well grammar and improper misuseousness is not captivated by your grosstesque coinages...
...their ponderous mass suspended in a thick ooze...
...In other words, to appropriate shibboleths from both camps, I tend to value "liberty and justice" at the expense of "law and order...
...Since Mr...
...At times, when Philip's and phenolphthalein fail our hallway, excerpts from your opus will appear scotch-taped to the wall of our water-closet, for the betterment of those who sit dovelike brooding on the blissful seat, if you will forgive the use of an outworn cliche, and Miltonic...
...You seem to be youthful without being inane so keep it up only get a more serious typesetter...
...I occasionally show characteristics of what your October, 1971, editorial called a "ritualistic leftist" (usually when goaded into it by ritualistic rightists, who unfortunately are not confined to Mississippi...
...Nixon's election the group's major proposals have included a plan for phasing out farm subsidies, a campaign against the Burke-Hartke bill, a plan for no-fault auto insurance, a series of articles on the over-concentration of political and economic power in America, opposition to the SST, ABM, subsidies for Lockheed and the Penn Central, self-determination for Biafra and Bangladesh, and a proposal for decriminalization of crimes without victims...
...Although the monetary inducement necessary to facilitate such occurrences appears to have originated in the person of some mad sadist bent on causing my parakeet to die of laughter, do not think that I, or my neighbors, am-are entirely unappreciative of the milliards of man-picoseconds of disconcerted apathy which you expend on the publication of the aforementioned male bovine excretory solids...
...Moreover, Kristol is not the only neo-conserva-tive among Liberal intellectuals, but is indicative of a steadily growing number of conservatized Liberals, and even radicals, who represent the most significant intellectual shift in this country since the secular socialism of the New Deal captured the minds of the Academic elite...
...And it has, in a much publicized instance, opposed a conservative" appointment to the Supreme Court, Carswell...
...But there have been lapses, for Ripon is more programmatic than purist...
...Your articles on Irving Kristol are great, but conspicuously late in coming Irving Kristol has been "making sense" for years...
...Sincerely, Josiah Lee Auspitz To the Editor: Comes the dawn...
...and, commas, while buried far beneath lies firm bedrock of fact, as unnoticed in both cases as the cantus firmus in St...
...Witonski's position is conservative" and Ripon's is liberal," the two labels merely disguise an underlying agreement which ought to be emphasized at a time when every voice is needed to reverse a headlong lurch into statist government which has been slowed but hardly reversed by the Nixon administration...
...I repeat a redundant reiteration: do not think, however, that my sense of the outrageous fails to be titilated by your splended proof of Mencken's Law...
...Thank you for the complimentary copy...
...asserted: "The great duality of the day is not Left and Right, but totalitarianism and democracy...
...But since Ripon itself has not been personality-oriented but rather has emphasized programs, its influence has been directly opposite to the inter-ventionism which Mr...
...Ripon's major policy white papers were: federal-state revenue sharing (1965, issued jointly with the Republican Governor's Association), the all-volunteer army (1966), normalization of relations with China (1966), the negative income tax (1967), a de-escalatory strategy in Vietnam (1967...
...Sometimes this worries me, but I think I can put up with it...
...If Mr...
...of semicolons...
...Do you get the feeling we are dealing here with something ultimately more important to conservatism than Nixon vs...
...Yours sincerely, Roger N Levy Washington, DC...
...It has also en'dorsed Republican leaders...Nixon, Agnew, Rockefeller, Percy, Brooke, Holten, Goodell, Javits, Mathias, Baker...whose positions are, like those of any viable politician in America today, heavily tinged with statism...
...It combines both wit and intelligence and somehow manages to bring together sound liberals and sensible conservatives in a journal that has a point...
...The major policy proposals of the group prior to Mr...
...His title, A Memo to the Ripon Society on the Death of American Liberalism," implies that the statist government of the New Deal is somehow the responsibility of the Ripon Society and represents a philosophy congenial to that group...
...One Waste of Time to Another, Unu Zigla Claremont, California (in the 48 conterminous states, Got wot...
...However, despite your self-claimed "conservative" label, I find in your magazine a refreshingly pragmatic view of the world, in sharp contrast to the comfortable, liberal views with which I am generally bombarded, and to the inflamatory statements of the vocal right...
...One might, if thinking along such lines were one's wont, think that my own speaking and writing have been corruptulated by your splendiferous mani-coupage...
...A shift, incidentally, conservatives have been oddly reluctant to acknowledge or endorse...
...Martial organum...
...I submit this is just as unfair as taking at face value designations of conservatism as racist...
...Nixon's election reflected this theme...
...Sincerely, Robert R Teisberg Minneapolis, Minnesota To the Editor: As a former President of the Ripon Society who is also a sometime reader of The Alternative, I found the article by Peter P. Witonski in your April issue cogent in its critique of New Deal liberalism but misdirected in addressing its strictures to the Ripon Society...
...To the Editor: Your magazine never ceases to amaze me...
...Afore my loftifying verbositure and putrefying carrieth me far beneath such winsome linotypographical tactii as are your wont to use, allow all of us to bid you-all of thee a fond farewell...
...For myself, I revel in the rich prose and pungent which brings to mind nothing less-more-other than a Cretaceous landscape, replete with wallowing dinosaurs, devoid of intellect...
...He seems to have taken the press' designation of Ripon as liberal" as sufficient evidence to neglect the group's publications and record on this matter...
...Though on points of ideology (when ideology does creep into your magazine) I find myself tempted at times to chuck the whole rag in the wastebasket and read the Times, it appears that you are disgustingly often right (i.e., correct...
...Regards, John Santucci Los Angeles, California To the Editor: As a matter of general self-opinion, I consider myself a liberal...
...Witonski rightly deplores...
...Ashbrook...
...Yours truly, Alf Benedict New York, New York To the Editor: You are an idiot...
...The fact is that a consistent theme of the Ripon Society since its founding in 1962 has been the need for an alternative to New Deal interventionist policies...
...In fact...
...You have won a reader...
...Ripon has come out, for instance, to save the Fulbright Scholarship program a federal subsidy) and to favor enforcement of civil rights legislation (pro intervention...
...Writing in National Review a few months ago, Samuel McCracken (another one...
...I did not know that there was an intelligent underground publication of the right...
Vol. 6 • October 1972 • No. 1
