Editorial

...Now how many "reforms" in reent years have comported with that efinition...

...Does Your Favorite Library Carry The Alternative...

...The same instinct that informs me that mountain lions make unloving house pets, though I have never owned one, informs me that all this is moonshine—especially that sempiternal exaggeration regarding his abiding fondness for the poor...

...The Democrats have had the working man's company for years and even now they are quietly designing ways to lay George Meany low...

...What is reform...

...Political scientists note that reform is generally used against mossbacks...

...It is a preemptive strike against toughtful analysis...

...Rarely have men been able to resist t alone debate a policy once it is clasfied as a reform...

...I may have a right to know, but, verily, if it is all the same to you, I would rather not—indeed, I believe most thoughtful persons would rather not...

...Election day is always about as far removed from income tax day as the calendar will allow...

...As the .minent James Q. Wilson asserted in the day number of this family magazine, reorm "means to improve by alteration, to .bolish abuse or malpractice...

...If so, it is an infant desire, for at no point in his public life has Mr...

...When the politician says he wants wider participation he means he wants more votes...

...The FBI would have sunk even lower in the New York Times' esteem...

...Recently the new Harding intoned exactly this theme, and no sooner had he unburdened himself of the hope that all Americans would swarm into the empty halls of the Republican Party than he was met by a chorus of fury from conservatives who felt a political party should be something other than an assembly of joiners...

...Hypocrisy and arrant deceits practiced pro forma in political life are one thing...

...According to Professor Nozick, while Senator Kennedy is off anesthetizing the media with his grand schemes for justice and income redistribution he should donate to charitythat percentage of his swag that his scheme would demand were it already law...

...It is all just another area of political behavior about which I would rather not know...

...I therefore propose that federal taxes be paid on the first Tuesday after the first Monday of every November...

...Therefore I believe the people ought not to know...

...It is a palpable lie...

...for though my reform is eminently practical, useful, and democratic, I guarantee that it will not attract a sniff from Capitol Hill...

...Consider the Rt...

...Rockefeller encouraged competition...

...Beyond a hearty guffaw there is little good the average American can realize from his knowledge of politics as practiced in this Republic...

...Such private philanthropy may mean that he will have to sell one or two of his vacation retreats, cut down on those skiing and yachting jaunts, and perhaps even send his children to public schools...

...Nonetheless to me it is gibberish and embarrassing gibberish at that...

...Television should be barred from broadcasting the political diatribes and whines of our would-be Daniel Websters...

...a reform' s a change for the better, an improvement in social, moral, or political condiions...

...How could any political grandee maintain his sinecure if the majority of intelligent Americans were to compete earnestly in the political system...

...I have perceived no serious effort from the Republican hierarchy to bring new people or ideas into the Great Hall of the Pachyderm...

...If he was unserious, I would rather be spared his histrionics...

...We should adjudge interviews with them as outrages to public decency, unfit for polite society, and injurious to innocent children and to maidens...

...America would be better off if it were ignorant of their doings—especially in light of the fact that Americans seem to have little or no control over said doings...

...They have degraded Shakespeare's tongue to the point that it is now no more communicative than the patter of jungle drums...

...For years Americans of all races have opposed the shipment of their children to the farthest reaches of the land merely to fulfill racial quotas, but the busing goes on...

...Years ago when an average citizen by the name of James Buckley became interested in New York's political process, politicians like Governor Rockefeller and Senator Javits treated the matter as though it were a scandal and an indiscretion...

...and if laughter is what we are after we can always do graduate work at one of the great universities...

...Nor do I wish to hear of the pols' noble desire to have increased numbers of Americans participate in political life...

...In my opinion, the electorate should proscribe newspapers from publishing the texts of Presidential bulls...

...It is the kind of statement that makes every prehensile pol's mind turn to visions of incense and blessed oils...

...Are not reformers behind the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, the Interstate Commerce Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Civil Aeronautics Board, the Federal Trade Commission, and various minimum wage and rent commissions throughout the land of the free...

...Then there are the campaign reforms," at least one of which is so obiously unconstitutional that men as dif:rent as James Buckley and Eugene Mcarthy joined forces to contest it, and the epartment of Justice hesitates to defend Yet during its nonsensical gestation on ie floor of Congress it was bandied )out both by politicians and by journalts as a notable improvement if not an :.tual panacea...

...I merely feel that the polity and the civilization would be much improved —much freer—were it free from the incessant gusts of imbecilities and deceits that regularly issue from our elected and appointed government panjandrums...

...The Congressional Record should be expurgated, probably by old-line Jesuits...

...I yield to no man in my love of liberty...

...Better yet, talk to your librarian yourself...

...It is a word exuding ich connotative bliss that it sanctifies alost any deed no matter how low or holw...

...Are the Republican pols really serious about encouraging the working man to join their ranks...

...Nonetheless, he will have gone a long way in dispelling the suspicion that he is more serious about helping himself to publicity and to votes than in helping the poor...

...As a rule the American pol's locutions are either so blatantly dishonest as to be corrosive to the public virtue or so ignorant as to be embarrassing to intelligent citizens...

...Was he really serious about redeeming the military situation...

...How else to describe the marplots who have turned the American automobile into a vehicle approximating the efficiency, the cost, and, of course, the safety, of a bulldozer...

...By continually publicizing politicians we may be encouraging the frail in our midst to stray from the paths of virtue, a dangerous business to say the least...

...Such a list could run for many pages, and the documentation would be voluminous, but there is no reason to bore knowledgeable readers with the obvious...

...Too often those news stories and broadcasts attempting to illumine the behavior of our contemporary J effersons and Madisons are mere embarrassments...

...All of this I can say without any fear for my libertarian credentials, credentials that I maintain with a solicitude that is practically religious in its devotion...

...In most cases all they have accomplished is increased travail for the plain folk while establishing a profitable alliance between the reformer and the reformed...

...The average American longs for the day when we can again roast cold-blooded murderers, rapists, and other such scoundrels, yet reinstatement of an economical and expeditious form of capital punishment remains but an idealistic phantasma, inspiring the personal Utopias of all the decent and enlightened citizens of the Republic...

...Reform is a tactic re)rted to by misologists to preclude de-ate...

...And how could they...

...It is one of those tenets that is supposed to inspire goose pimples in all decent Americanoes...

...In democratic societies is a kind of sacred seal, which—once .corded to a group or a proposalakes them admirable and almost unassailable...

...The more we know the more we are degraded...

...Until Senator Kennedy learns that charity begins at home, I would rather not know of his lifelong emulation of the Good Samaritan or even of his orgies amongst the great books of the Western World...

...Surely nothing would bring the politician's behavior more closely under the scrutiny of the electorate and therefore make him more responsible to the electorate than to make election day and income tax day one and the same...

...what they generally neglect to note is that it is often used by petty tyrants...

...It is hoodwinked or thwarted at every turn, and we would all be immeasurably improved if we simply did not know what they are up to...

...There you have it, a reform worthy of John Gardner at his best, a reform brilliant in its democratic allure, and a reform that will excite about as much enthusiasm in the mind of the average Congressman as a plan to administer breathalizer tests on the solons before they wobble into the Capitol...

...If the pols were serious about improving our condition, there are myriads of improvements they might hammer into policy...

...Tell him or her that The Alternative is "highly recommended" by the Library Journal, which calls us "a fascinating, intelligent, and totally readable approach to current affairs...

...Regarding those in-depth portrayals of a politician's life, I would rather not hear how Senator Teddy Kennedy loves children, pines away for the poor, is possessed of a leprechaun's waggishness, and reads the classics...

...continued on page 37) 4 The Alternative: An American Spectator August/September 1975 EDITORIAL (continued from page 4) Of all the wonders that the pols work, he ones that I especially do not want to :now about are those that they work ender the rubric of reform...

...Americans are opposed to higher taxes and to increased government expenditures, yet they are nipped steadily...

...Politicians: Rhapsodies on a Theme • • "The People's Right to Know" is one of the trendy sonorities of the 1970s that has hung on long enough to sprout whiskers and be welcomed into that assemblage of dubious notions that we so hastily transmute into American dogma...

...Jerry Ford's widely publicized debate with Congress during those sad weeks when South Vietnam and Cambodia slipped further into the dark ages...

...They are congenital liars...

...Latin translations of it will soon be engraved on coins of the realm and chiseled over the doorways of government buildings, newspaper establishments, libraries, university auditoria, gymnasia, and those Washington massage parlors frequented by Congressmen and educators...

...The Capone era would be eulogized as an auspicious precursor to the New Deal, The Godfather would be produced by the American Bicentennial Administration, and many a pol would be sweating after the endorsement of his local Black Hand chapter...

...Had the Mafiosi, rather than the League of Women Voters, arranged to have themselves described as a reform movement, I have no doubt that the Brotherhood would now hold an honored place in American life...

...And lest the reader think I ampurely negative in my commentary I shall mention one of my favorite reforms by way of ending this scholarly critique and by way of nailing down my point that pols are rascals...

...were they to spread and be emulated in other areas of society, life would be intolerable...

...They are ill-mannered...

...The American citizenry has little control over its legislators...

...He is at one with those gurus who have recently disembarked from the exotic Orient proclaiming their intention to refurbish American spirits even as they empty American pockets...

...Much of the civil rights legisation of the middle 1960s was admirable eform to be sure, but as the years have Torn on the reforms have degenerated lto quotas, coercive busing, and a foul olicy of "affirmative action" that threatns to return this democracy to the !blies of feudalism and an ascriptive Dciety...

...I simply cannot fathom how the general dissemination of such utterances benefits us...

...If the chairman of the board of General Motors publicly proclaimed his desire to see more Japanese automobiles imported, I would find him more credible than the blowzy pol who rises up to massage us with his reverie that more and more Americans enter politics...

...Would Nelson Rockefeller really want, say, Daniel Patrick Moynihan to compete for his laurels...

...Professor Robert Nozick has written eloquently (in Anarchy, State and Utopia, Basic Books, 1974) about how the left-wing rich can convincingly manifest their thirst for "social justice" while persuading the less rich to share income with the poor...

...Every politician in the land agrees that politicians should be responsible to the people and each politician is forever attempting to one-up his fellow in testifying to his slavish adherence to the people's will, yet I have never heard a politician condemn the curious chronological gulf between the date on which the politician seeks the electorate's approval and the date on which the electorate is presented with the bill for the politician's highjinks...

...All of these reformers promised to better the lot of the plain folk and scotch villainy...

...Americans in large numbers oppose the noblesse ()Mae approach to miscreants, yet our most vicious criminals are still treated as though they were an endangered species and our government spends more to comfort them than itspends to educate our astrophysicists or brain surgeons...

...e Alternative: An American Spectator August/ September 1975 37...

...How else does one describe the reformers who breathed life into Prohibition, the Mann Act, the Selective Service System, and the income tax...

...We'd like to know if it doesn't, and we'd be grateful if you'd send us its name and address, so that we can mail your librarian subscription information about The Alternative...

...If so, that plea for $722 million was as futile a tactic as a plea for a million slingshots...

...The conservatives need not have worried...