Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR AMERICAN ENTERPRISE I was impressed by the beginning words of Irving Kristol's article. "The Metaphysics of Journalism," in your issue of June 22: "All of us rely upon the...
...And there is more of the worst than of the best...
...This procedure is followed by the Brookings Institution, the Twentieth Century Fund, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and many other foundations...
...Naturally, not I nor any other author of that list would find Gilder's remarks decent or true...
...The prolonged ovation turned into unison clapping, and then into a chant of 'We want Humphrey, we want Humphrey' as the senator left the jammed auditorium...
...Squaresville and Harlem may be closer than Boroff supposes...
...That is one more reason why Gilder's few reckless shots at the AEI are unfortunate and why I am writing this letter for publication in your magazine...
...It becomes annoying from time to time to see the preponderance of "Left" over "Right," but no more than among intellectuals in general, who supply the clientele after all...
...and there can be no healing in words of mitigation—"a place where copybook maxims worked"—that, in themselves, contain a septic taint...
...THE DANGEROUS DIVIDE I doubt that the unsquare David Boroff did much to narrow "The Dangerous Divide" he talks about in his review of the HumphreyBaldwin television show (NL, June 22...
...I do find it unpleasant when unconventional thought is labelled as "Right" or "Illiberal," for it shuts off a foundation from its most precious function, that of moving out into new areas of science and ideas...
...it is the contribution he makes to sensationalism in the discussion of race...
...at worst it falsifies...
...Another is already 100 per cent integrated...
...Earl Latham Joseph B. Eastman Professor of Political Science, Amherst College...
...Boroff must surely know that every "walking delegate from Squaresville" feels cropped, and lumpen and cloddish and looks with envy, across the spaces, at the fun world of Winston Moseley and Catherine Genovese...
...who is presumably not one of the Humphreys of America, has already made...
...Peter O'Donnell...
...I am sorry to say that Kristol's proposition correctly applies to Gilder's article: "At best it simplifies: at worst it falsifies...
...If it were, we might get a better balance between Humphrey and Baldwin in the use of quotations...
...The Metaphysics of Journalism," in your issue of June 22: "All of us rely upon the newspapers to tell us 'what is happening in the world.' Yet all of us have had the identical experience: Whenever a newspaper reports on an event or a subject of which we have intimate first-hand knowledge, we rarely find the report satisfactory...
...later they published it in paperback form (Praeger Publishers, Inc...
...Mel Laird is a nice guy, like Barry Goldwater, with whom he shares—discreetly and deceptively—a far Right political philosophy, much of which found its way into the Republican platform, as I predicted in my article...
...At best it simplifies...
...Let Gilder be a little more responsible...
...None are Birchers, so far as I know, but then I have no strong desire to know what several dozen distinguished trustees may be doing in their spare time...
...None of its published authors and none of the AEI'S leadership, so far as I know, has expressed segregationist views...
...I can help Gilder with his endeavors to make the AEI a Goldwater organ...
...Walter Hamischfeger...
...Draft Goldwater Chairman, is on the board of trustees...
...to name more than one...
...Boroff says that Humphrey is "Squaresville incarnate, the real thing," and he further says that it will take a great "imaginative leap" for the "Humphreys of America" to "grasp the experience of the Baldwins"—a leap that Boroff...
...It will scarcely abate hatred for articulate egotists to insist upon their loathing, whether they are Negro writers or white magazine editors, or Kleagles...
...The American Enterprise Institute counts me among its authors...
...This fiction is made to support a ponderous conclusion...
...Pew for much of its financial support (a total of $245,000 last year...
...Boroff seems to find Humphrey's boyhood boring and a little contemptible whereas that of Baldwin fascinates him, and he gives it the big treatment, with great stress on meanness, ugliness, fear and hatred...
...says that some of its leaders are "assorted Borchers and segregationists...
...even unlovely...
...Baldwin did not tell the story of his childhood...
...Nor do they know that I have advised "X" politicians of both parties and "X" foundation executives and "X" international groups...
...Among other established extremists associated with...
...Karl Hess...
...Gilder may be still in a state of California primary shock...
...He is remarkable in this regard...
...But such is the case...
...Its influence...
...I remember when Bob Merriam lost the mayoralty election in Chicago in 1955 despite my brother Victor's heroic efforts...
...Anyhow, Goldwater doesn't have "organs," "machines," etc...
...This bit of critical arrogance may be laid alongside the Associated Press dispatch of June 24, 1964...
...and William L. McGrath—all trustees...
...Congressman Laird is one of the best members of the House...
...Other foundations find different clienteles...
...I suppose the AEI must feel the same way...
...I needed research help for my book on Apportionment and Representative Government and they gave it to me...
...It seems that Baldwin and his father were both "abstract figures in some searing morality tale," and it was this fiction that really grabbed Boroff...
...I have known the AEI people for a long time, just as I have known officers of the foundations I have just named and several others as well...
...I suppose the ones I mentioned above would be 90 per cent from "Center" to "Left...
...And he ended up a friend of Mayor Daley...
...Among the other favorite projects of Bradley and Pew is American Opinion magazine, edited by Robert Welch himself...
...One, of whom I happen to have personal knowledge, could be classified as a strong integrationist...
...in which he makes the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research an enlistee of Congressman Melvin Laird (Chairman of the Republican National Convention Resolutions Committee...
...and says it is headquarters of much of the Goldwater staff and "in effect a Goldwater organ...
...so let's put it this way: about twothirds of the AEl's officers, staff, advisory board and board of trustees have publicly identified themselves with Goldwater or causes even farther Right...
...The column is not just a piece of reporting about a television presentation...
...The statement expressed perfectly my own sensation in reading a few pages earlier George F. Gilder's article "The Goldwater Emetic...
...I have heard favorable remarks about the Senator on the premises and Karl Hess, who was making some of them, is now to be found on the Goldwater staff...
...reporting the convention of the NAACP in Washington, where the delegates "with an ear-splitting roar" acclaimed Humphrey as a Vice Presidential candidate on the Democratic ticket...
...I don't know of any staff members who worked for Governor Rockefeller, but I know of an author who has...
...Dick Murphy, who left the AEI a little before Hess, works for Senator Scott and...
...Over the last few years he has spent most of his time assuring the world that he loves God and opposes Communism, even writing a book to that effect, and has not had much time for legislation...
...Most requests, 90 per cent, "reportedly," to use Gilder's word, come from "Center" to "Right," as those terms are loosely used...
...publishes it in cloth), and I was pleased to join a series that includes numerous first-rate economists and publicists...
...To name one name at least would reduce falsity to simplism...
...After sharing with the reader his sense of horrified excitement over Baldwin's childhood...
...But my chief objection to the piece is not the author's preference for metropolitan provincialism over the smaller sizes...
...At that, one name out of a hundred would not be as impressive as a sweeping generality, without any documentation...
...New York City Alfred de Grazia Professor of Government, New York University George F, Gilder replies: I think it's unfortunate that a conservative organization like the American Enterprise Institute, which publishes much useful material—such as its legislative studies, and Professor de Grazia's Essay on Apportoinment and Representative Government—has to turn to radical Rightist "Birchers and segregationists" like Harry L. Bradley and J. Howard The New Leader welcomes comment and criticism on any of its features, but letters should not exceed 300 words...
...Fred F. Looch...
...according to Gilder, "reportedly great, will be entirely toward the Right...
...or disciplines of Julius Streicher...
...Gold water's chief speechwriter and reputed author of the Republican platform, is listed as Director of Special Projects...
...or the gaping gap between his conception of Humphrey's America and the reality...
...One of their forthcoming authors, from MIT, advises Scranton...
...Especially hatred...
...It is enough to irritate the hell out of the gentle reader from a small town to be told that it is "constricted, perhaps, hopelessly provincial...
...As it is...
...I suppose we could engage in a semantic argument over what constitutes a "Goldwater organ...
...Boroff then says that, "Actually...
...The AEI supplies research reports to a great many Congressmen of all persuasions and will do special reports on request...
...I suspect, for Scranton...
...He is one of the first whom I would rise to assist, as a political scientist...
...Amherst, Mass...
...The report concluded...
...I am sure that few of them know that I am an idealist, phenomenologist, operationalist, pluralist, behavioral social theorist with some radical ideas and some reactionary ones...
...Vic played and listened to all the Beethoven symphonies hours on end...
...are Charles R. Cook...
Vol. 47 • July 1964 • No. 64
