Correspondence
To the Editor: I certainly concur with Governor Reagan's welfare reforms. More money should go to needy persons and the gulls should be cut off. One shortcoming of Mr. A. Lawrence Chickenng's...
...Needy persons are the social part of social science...
...And the problem with grade inflation will not be changed for the better until students, teachers and parents begin to understand that education is worked for and won...
...Unfortunately, however, he drew the same mistaken conclusion other right-of-center publicist-thinkers have drawn, namely, that "our own liberal capitalism, our bourgeois state, are inimical to intellectuals...
...Jerry Woodruff Dearbom, Michigan 28 The Alternative February 1974...
...he is the rationalist par excellence who tells newspaper readers what to believe and what to ridicule...
...If only people would stop treating people who differ as if they were lepers, we might get on with the legitimate business of society, which is to expand the realm of individual freedom...
...J. Parnell Thomas of New Jersey, a member of the House Un-American Activities Committea, was jailed for finagling with the payroll of his offica staff...
...Gerard F. Yates, in the December issue...
...I'm only suggesting that Mr...
...Please try to tighten up on your writing...
...In any case, keep up the good work...
...The prose was slovenly (take note of all the instances in which the learned professor takes to task the poor quality of college teachers: then note the number of sentences begun with the words "This is . . . . "surely one of the weakest and misleading ways to begin any statement...
...Nothing is more bourgeois than Gore Vidal, after negotiating a fat contract with his publisher, flying to his villa in Rome...
...But the mark of the true bourgeois is his love of comfort and luxury: and this the intellectual of the modern age will not voluntarily surrender...
...He does not mention that 90 percent of welfare cost goes to administration...
...I wish you, yours, your progeny, your staff, your flora and fauna, and your friends the very warmest yuletide greeting...
...they get the money...
...As for that issue, it is not so clear-cut as Miss Efron's letter indicates, and as she realizes too...
...Steven Finer Needham, Massachusetts To the Editor: Edith Efron's letter in the December "Correspondenca" section was a welcome sight, and a relief from the frequent hysteria which letters-to-the-editor often reveal...
...Phillip A. Hoon San Francisco, California To the Editor: Your magazine is witty, intelligent, and a slap on the back for "McSodey's old ale house...
...Norman Stowe Vancouver, British Columbia To the Editor: Responding to your tragi-comic solicitation for Christmas subscriptions, let me request first a Christmas subscription for myself...
...The fact is, liberal democracy was the product of bourgeois intellectuals, and it remains the single most important factor for the care and feeding of that species...
...Consider: In 1947 Pep...
...But enough on that for now...
...Being no professor, I don't propose an ideal method to work out my notions...
...Secondly, permit me to request a Christmas subscription for my esteemed brother and unsuccessful candidate as Republican for the Municipal Judgeship of ~ Brother Cy can use a subscription to The Alternative since ha is apparently making prodigious amounts of money practicing law and did not intend to do so...
...And the best example of this journalistic shortcoming alp peered in that very issue...
...BUt when an LBJ aide, who might have been blackmailed, was discovered in October 1969 as a homosexual the matter was glossed over...
...David Brudnoy Boston, Massachusetts To the Editor: R. Emmett Tyrrell's overview of the intellectuals' relationship to bourgeois America was a refreshing treatment of a subject too often ignored by the rightist press...
...The main point is this: h,~,-pAh to The A/ternal'/ve for publishing the sanest letter-to-the-editor it has received, and published, in years...
...And I could go on and on...
...A. Lawrence Chickenng's article strikes me...
...And on the CBS affiliate in Boston at which I work as a commentator, I called on the air for a chastisement of that station for not airing the two pro-abortion "Maude" programs, even though I heartily oppose abortion...
...A sociologist, employed by the federal government, told me that the best cost ratio in his experience was 75 percent...
...Hence, his former occasions for dipping into issues of The Altemaf/ve have given way to dipping into escrow accounts and perhaps the till in general...
...The tenor of her letter is perfect, and her call at the end for decency does in a few words what I took pages trying (probably unsuccessfully, if I judge things rightly) to do...
...The intellectuals' seduction by anticapitalist ideology indicates decadence, not antibourgeois sentiment...
...In short, his anti-capitalist prattle is simply the means by which he may emulate the capitalists through socially acceptable channels...
...It is my hope that the discipline of a regular arrival of an issue of The Alternative can restore him to his former disdain for giant amounts of money---a disdain that members of our family have cherished greatly since 1929...
...van den Haag's article on college grade inflation...
...The logic escaped me as I am sure it did others (it's just a bit too cute to state that the fact that teachers in general do not fail the majority of students in a class somehow tends to discount the argument for open admissions based on the projected dropping out of incapable students...
...First of all let me state than I am a conservative, pro-American, and young...
...van den Haag is far too simplistic about the very real problem he claims to scrutinize...
...The point of all this (and it would make a good outline for an article for someone) is that conservatives must be perfect, or they will be discovered (and maybe Barry Goldweter must be perfect, ethics-wise...
...It hasn't been too lenient with Agnew either with perhaps some justification, but, perhaps there is another side to ethics questions when they involve conservatives...
...Miss Efron errs in remembering calls on my part for the censoring of "Maude...
...Why are these facts never expounded...
...Indeed...
...Anyone who has either taught or been taught in college'in the past five years has some realization of the widespread problem of grade inflation...
...If American intellectuals were truly anti-bourgeois, they would burn their European villas, give their wardrobes to the poor, and forswear champagne and caviar...
...He is at once hypocrite and scoundrel, but never, never, anti-bourgsois` He is in fact the very soul of the modern big-city elites, for the media is his handmaiden: he writes the books, plays, and movies that titillate urban man...
...Speaking of LBJ: he was never brought to trial for the Baker and Estes cases nor were there cries for impeachment, and he certainly must have made a lot of money in politics, more than Agnew made on any land deal...
...Randolph" and Veal, and the, I fervently hope, momentary lapse of good sense on the part of my good friend Chris Simonds, as the yelpings of "bully boys," Miss Effort hit the issue squarely...
...same seems appropriate, since you suggest bringing " . . . a little cheer into someone's l i f e . . . ' , and since there is no one for whom I regard cheer as more important then for me...
...His "socialism" is mere claptrap, a device to make money, sell books, and win prestige...
...I have youth's impatience with the errors of the old--especially with those in government who have caused the present debacle of scandals...
...Drew Pearson stated that he dismissed two of his aides because they were hornosexuals...
...Ronald Reagan must be nearly ail-perfectl I remember only someone on television mentioning that he had once been brought in to a police station as a teenager with no record...
...Briefly, my position on abortion: it is wrong, it is the killing of human life, it is the proper function of govemmant to protect innocents against unsought physical aggression, including murder, in this case fetus-murder, that is: feticide...
...Jerry W. Gerde Panama City, Florida To the Editor: I note of late that The Alternative of late has compared the great Nixon to the Great Gatsby with perhaps some justification...
...I did call, though, for the networks to give some hard thought to broadcasting the opposite side of such touchy issues as "Maude" and her pro-abortion stance...
...I refer to Mr...
...But there seems to be a relatively high percentage of "scandals" involving anti-Communists...
...In typifying the asinine "rejoinders" of Messrs...
...Nor does that degree tend in any significant way to cultivate a more civil, more virtuous populace...
...One small point, however...
...But the fault here is not entirely to he placed on the colleges themselves for the same reason that the shortcomings of the public schools ought not to be placed exclusively with the elementary and secondary educator~ Education involves the whole country, for better or worse...
...sociologists are the science part...
...In fact, I wrote in my newspaper column and elsewhere for exactly the reverse, which is the continued freedom of the broadcast media to explore a variety of issues...
...And lately many people are beginning to realize that an undergraduate degree has little practical relation to the occupation youth gradually aspires to...
...Dodd, 100 percent anti-Communist, was censured by the Senate for using money raised in testimonial dinners for personal purposes, even though the contributors intended that he could use it for personal reasons...
...N. James Russell Newark, New Jersay To the Editor: I take as my point of departure your correspondence from the Rev...
...Sen...
Vol. 7 • February 1974 • No. 5
