As a Scot Sees Us

...He does not limit himself to a special problem or two, and the re- sult is a field survey too superficial to do justice to any one area...

...Campbell of- fers no programs or proposals for re- form (except to suggest learning from history, unlearning worn-out myths, and so on...

...Still a British citizen, Campbell is a Scot who left his posts as Time-Life bureau chief (first in Johannesburg, then in New Delhi) for four years in Tokyo before becoming managing ed- itor of The New Republic...

...When they cry that history is bunk they are not even aware they are quoting Henry Ford...

...That other kind of progress—more skyscrapers, more expressways, and more dishwash- ers—can only confirm our fears of an escalating spiral of Troubles...

...That most of Campbell's criticisms are generally appropriate does not, however, make them worth reading...

...In fact, there is not an ounce of flattery in the book...

...But the dis- claimer doesn't wash...

...Neither their truth nor their author*s virtue of a vivid style can save an otherwise undistinguished book whose contents appear every night on the newscasts...

...But Campbell does not turn to "that question...

...He provides an 1888 quotation from Lord Bryce and a one-page re- hash of his jaunt through Manhattan with an Edinburgh friend, but that is the closest he comes to giving the for- eigner's view of America that could have made his book distinctive...

...That background qualifies him to stand with such observers of the Amer- ican scene and character as Crevecoeur and D. W. Brogan...

...Reviewed by Charles Whitman Only one thing will make Alexan- der Campbell's book obsolete: progress in social justice...

...Campbell has sketched an America so shockingly mired in complacent decadence that he himself confesses only limited hopes for reform...

...There are no new statis- tics, appraisals, or criticisms here, and there is little new analysis...

...For their criticism will probably con- tinue in print whether or not they say something new, because nothing seems to be done about our Troubles...

...All those who put forward suggestions for improving America are attacked by Agnew as troglodyte Leftists...

...On the other hand, the book's very existence is a paradigm of American society, suggesting that our ills will persist so long as social critics —whoever they are—are not heeded...

...Agnew dismisses all questioners as 'nattering nabobs of neg- ativism.' Nothing could be more neg- ative than this, however positive it seems to sound...

...As a Scot Sees Us The Trouble with Americans, by Alexander Campbell...

...Campbell's lack of a specialty limits him to a regurgita- tion of what we have already read nu- merous times...

...A terse and vivid stylist, Campbell mingles statistics with pun- gent turns of phrase, coinages like "pig- mentocracies," and words that even the sophisticated will have to look up: "benison," "pifflicated," "inspissated...

...And they are all here, in The Trouble with Americans, a rat-a-tat-tat of ills re- capped in a staccato reminiscent of telegraphy...

...Yet social critics these days have to "try harder" if they are to make a distinctive con- tribution...

...The Trouble with Americans lacks distinction in other ways...

...Thus, it is all the more disappointing that he does not write explicitly as a Scot or as a man with benefit of world travel...

...For example, although he is sympa- thetic to the Troubles of the Silent Ma- jority, Campbell does not have much use for Spiro Agnew as its self-pro- claimed spokesman...

...With the disclaimer in his preface that his book's "premise is that Amer- icans have no right to have Troubles" because they are so well-endowed for problem-solving, Campbell calls his ef- fort "an essay in flattery...

...The "answers" Campbell gives apply to a different question: How is it possible that every product of the system isn't a rebel...

...Yet he imitates Agnew by his own fulsome fulmina- tions against youth...

...To that question we now turn...

...They know little of their own nation's his- tory, and nothing about other people's...

...What is worse, the more analytical portions of the book are flippant to the point of apparent self-contradiction...

...Campbell does furnish varied insights into Amer- ican social culture—especially on televi- sion, executives, and the Presidency— and he does give satisfactory vignettes of individual cities—Boston, Newark, Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, and a few others...

...On Agnew he writes: "At a time when many people desperately seek reassurance, Agnew confidently asserts that this is the best of all possible worlds...

...Even granting "ignora- muses" as an apt term (it is not), we can only conclude from Campbell's en- suing glib discussion of American ed- ucation that the system has worked well indeed in yielding corporation fodder far outnumbering a rebellious faction that might wish to "make rev- olution" while ignorant of history...

...But he has not begun to ex- ploit the possibilities for an interna- tional comparison of foibles or of sys- tems of government, though the cur- rent mess in America suggests that we have much to learn from the way other nations govern and conduct them- selves...

...Our last decade of indig- enous social critics ranges from Michael Harrington on poverty, Ram- sey Clark on crime, and Eldridge Clea- ver on racism to Stewart Udall on the environment, Paul Goodman on grow- ing up absurd, and Senator J. W. Ful- bright on the military...

...After nine years in Washington, D.C., he left America in early 1971 to join the ed- itorial board of the Toronto Star...

...In the context of his own critique of youth, particularly campus rebels and those who would make revolution, Campbell "attacks" like Agnew—in truculent exaggeration: "The prod- ucts of the contemporary American education system are for the most part as ignorant as Washington and Jeffer- son and Franklin were wise...

...The Trouble with Agnew is that he encourages the dangerous delusion that the United States is a place that requires no im- provements...

...How has an enor- mously costly and complex educational system produced such ignoramuses...