Correspondence
To the Editor: Here is a true story for your reading pleasure. While on a hiking trip on the Appalachian Trail, I shared a campsite with a Midwestern family, very typical saccharine liberals...
...Gerard F. Yates Georgetown University Washington, D.C...
...Veal that individual psychologies are very complex, consist of much more than sexual attitudes, that each individual must be judged scrupulously by a whole battery of standards--and that he should leave simplistic moral assessments of huge groups to liberal collectivists and frantic fundamentalists...
...and the quickest alleviation or remedy is NOT to squander more billions of dollars to trap and put away a handful of criminals who are immediately replaced--but by Congress investing in adequate training and jobs for every American's unique abilities, "from digger to musician, tradesman or physician...
...Down the bar a bit, there was C.H...
...If "Randolph" now cancels his subscription on the grounds that a voice has spoken up in these pages for "Bestial Lib," send it to me Edith Efron Los Angeles, California To the Editor: R. Emmett Tyrrell's likening of the Great Nixon to the Great Gatsby was no exaggeration...
...All, I believe, were heterosexuals...
...Please try to tighten up on your (plural) writing...
...He even has a right to compare it to the bond between Heloise and Abelard--under the First Amendment...
...To E.T...
...Idleness and disastrous mal-distribution of our fabulous wealth are the cancers killing Americans and "metastesizing" presidents, and unless Congress quickly does more than throw a few more buggers in jail or even impeach the President, America is in for far more personal and collective agonies...
...What we have today are concentric circles of intellectuals...
...I would also tell E.T...
...There was "Randolph," adopting a pseudonym to air the classic-hostile view that homosexuals are evil, have an unholy seductive power, thus must be deprived of certain rights...
...The problem of co-existence with unpleasing people of any category is not particularly difficult of resolution...
...Their ancestor never had t h a t kind of experience to broaden his horizon...
...Indeed they have some good reasons for the way they feel...
...Sincerely, Karen Stephens Kirkwood, Missouri intellectual's criticism must be annoying, and the more annoying he is, the more effective he is and the more opulently he can live...
...After all they have probably identified with a t least one 24-carat intellectual as he induced sleep while on a television t a l k show...
...In the course of our interview, they mentioned that their home was in Bloomington, Indiana...
...It seems t h a t criticism is the f r u i t of his labor, and the criticism need not be especially prudent or thoughtful--though it must always be brilliant...
...They do indeed seem to be a bit more like intellectuals...
...Three bully boys and one constitutionalist...
...When Nixon acknowledged the fall of Spiro Agnew and announced his substitution of Jerry Ford, the All-American center from Michigan, he chose the setting of a carnival soiree Such was the grossness of the President's lack of tact and subtlety that the television spectator was made to feel like a young Baptist minister who had strayed into an Irish wake...
...Jameson Campaigne Chicago, Illinois To the Editor: Many thanks for your marvelous editorial on "Gatsby and Nixon" that merited the Chicago Daily News and my quotes...
...He is quite simply the best financial writer in the world, and while talent of this kind seems somewhat out of place in your zany journal, I am sure it wilt be to good purpose if your readers come to enjoy his graceful, intelligent commentary as much as I have (in the Wall Street Journal) over the past several years...
...In fact it is best t h a t they have no firsthand knowledge of their material...
...They are apt to be more cosmopolitan than their ancestors...
...Simonds blaring out the frantic warning--that if the evil ones are allowed freedom, they inevitably end up committing mass murders...
...The Ervin Committee must quickly expose and the Courts punish every Watergater...
...At least the major source is from the 20-30 million desperate people in the families of our jobless and bankrupt small businesses...
...Now from the above taxidermic rendition of the qualities of the intellectual it becomes manifest why it is so difficult to lay down a satisfactory description of intellectuals...
...Newspaper reporters, who a generation ago might have had no less knowledge or talent, today consider themselves vaguely intellectual merely because at college they were told to read Sartre or Eldridge Cleaver, or because they have an enthusiasm for French wines or because they harbor deep within their besoms a gnawing conviction t h a t something good or beatific goes on inside Orchestra Hall...
...When the sunlight shines again upon Washington after this tempestuous time, perhaps the more fitting metaphor from the literature of the Twenties will be "The Nixon Administration as The Waste Land...
...When they do, when they fall in with a bad crowd of government bureaucrats, statesmen, politicians, and the like, as Arthur Schlesinger did some twelve years ago, they sully their credentials as intellectuals...
...tf one understands the concept of rights, one applies them to all people whether their values (sexual or otherwise) are congenial or displeasing...
...obviously has a right to his relationship with a consenting billy goat...
...Finally the very best of the intellectuals are independent and have no responsibility for their ideas whatsoever...
...Then there was the anxious-civilized ET...
...While on a hiking trip on the Appalachian Trail, I shared a campsite with a Midwestern family, very typical saccharine liberals (even the grammar schoolers...
...Simonds, I would say that if mass murder is the "logical extreme" of Gay Lib, he's going to have his hands full explaining mass murders by Hitler, Stalin, Mao...
...But, on the basis of reading him in other publications, I'd like to suggest that the time has come for him to adopt a little Libertarian consistency...
...I would suggest to "Randolph" that rights are inalienable, and that he handle his fear of the seductive powers of homosexuals in some other fashion...
...Ed Dupree Chapel Hill, North Carolina To the Editor: The article by Richard Wheeler is the best ever...
...Chicago, Illinois To the Editor: Your barroom brawl, last issue, was interesting...
...As for D. Brudnoy, I'm on his side...
...He can't advocate the censorship of "Maude," drag the State into the abortion area, and simultaneously advocate sexual freedom...
...Take the extreme case so dreaded by "Randolph"--that of a Bestial Libber...
...My new friends must have been acquainted with ya'll, for their countenances became exceeding wroth, and they avoided me thereafter as if t were a deadly pox And to think, I owe it to ya'll Cum grano salis...
...Obviously, many people possess the intellectuals' qualities only by degrees...
...but meanwhile every American, the media and Representative dare not hush-hush but must shout from their rooftops and demonstrate that Congress' first priority is to immediately get at the root causes and remedies for our spiralling burglaries and murders...
...The B.L...
...They live for words and ideas, they are very The Alternative December 1973 23...
...It is not self-evident that a homosexual James Baldwin is more sick-immoral than heterosexual rapist Eldridge Cleaver . . . that homosexual Michael Angelo is more sickimmoral than heterosexual Richard Nixon . . . that homosexual Noel Coward is more sick-immoral than the heterosexuals who love "Sticks and Bones...
...John Woodrift Somerset, Virginia To the Editor: I like your paper and I applaud it...
...To your indictments may I add that Watergate culminates but at the same time smokescreens the fires and greater crimes beneath--the mounting horrors in our own streets, homes, and lives day by day...
...To C.H...
...We have the core species, unmongrelized by outside pressures or responsibilities, and they are surrounded by more and more concentric circles of persons who approximate them in varying degrees, depending on propinquity to the core...
...And finally, there was Brudnoy, ducking the punches and low blows, and yelling: They're people, they're people, so they have a right to existence, to self-expression, and to the pursuit of happiness...
...To the Editor: You are to be congratulated for luring Lindley Clark into your magazine...
...I think this is true today, and I t h i n k this is true because our society has, for better or for worse, become intellectualized...
...Either the State must be kicked out of the entire area, or it mustn't...
...Carping the diem in my usual fashion, I began to sing the praises of The Alternative...
...But "Randolph" has a right to a lock on his door, to an unlisted phone number, to a "No Trespassers" sign on his private property, as well as the right to evaluate others as he pleases...
...Rev...
...They find themselves pecked a t in the unreadable pages of the New York Review of Books, and they have to scramble if they are ever to get back in the good graces of intellectuals...
...Veal, I would point out that the world is full of neurotics, that all have volitional components in their neuroses, and that, even assuming that homosexuality is a volitionally induced neurosis, he still has to face the chore of individual judgment...
...A pretty odd performance in a sophisticated libertarian publication...
...Veal saying: Oh, to be sure, we must allow them their rights, but is homosexuality a volitional neurosis, hence immoral...
...Sincerely, Sidney Blackstone President of Sidney Blackstone & Co...
Vol. 7 • December 1973 • No. 3
