Cruising Speed

by Cruising Speed- A Documentary (epub)

  At exactly 10 p.m., which is not on Dr. Frank Stanton’s clock to be confused with 10:05 p.m., his CBS jet will leave the Marine Terminal, with or without Pat and me aboard. Tomorrow Frank Stanton will preside over the monthly meeting of the United States Advisory Commission on Information, and Pat is joining me on this trip because tomorrow night Frank Shakespeare, the director of USIA, will give a formal (a very formal) dinner party at the State Department’s dressy quarters, in honor of Stanton and me, who are the surviving members of the old Commission (to which Mr. Nixon will, after meeting with us at noon, announce the appointment of three new members), and the ladies in Frank’s party are invited.

  We eat, and whisk up the luggage—an inadequate way of describing what one does to accommodate Pat when she is poised to move from one city to another—and then, without Rowley, who is restrained in the hall, we step into the car, having said good night to Peter, who is off to Rome to vet the arrangements for Man of La Mancha, the movie version of which he has tentatively agreed to direct; and we slide out towards LaGuardia. Frank Stanton is there—courtly, authoritative, warm— and the two pilots. Frank fetches us up a drink even before we take off in the luxurious Gulfstream, with the wide, wide windows that give us a view of New York on an eye-stopping night, clear as the Arctic air, with here and there sheepish little aggregations of clouds hovering above the ground at a few thousand feet, as if furnished by CBS to give verisimilitude to the flight, which would otherwise be like one of those hygienic fancies one passes through at a New York World’s Fair, at the General Motors exhibit. Pat is greatly taken by the plane, advising Frank that his hospitality would be complete if he could manage to devise a formula by which such an airplane might be put permanently at my disposal whenever I travel—or, in any case, whenever I travel with Pat. I begin to shake loose from them when Pat is demanding that Frank instruct her in the use of the telephone she spots at the side of the mini-lounge where she and he are seated, and Frank undertakes gallantly to engineer a call to whatever person she designates. I attempt to restrain her, arguing that the short trip will be utterly consumed with do-you-read-me’s? over-and-out’s. Then I impulsively abandon my role as Frank’s protector against the dizzy-blonde who wants to press every stop in the brand-new organ, and go to an easy-chair, forward, to read again Herbert’s letter, which I had not coped with the other day.

  Herbert’s reaction to the speech in Maryland, from his position on the left, is strangely harmonious with that of the young historian. He begins by thanking me for the lunch and apologizing for the few days’ delay in writing, but says he is grateful that he did wait because he now has seen last Sunday’s Firing Line, which was taped in London, the day before the debate with Galbraith, with three correspondents from the Manchester Guardian . . . “Your speech at Maryland, even though it was probably not the best that you ever gave, was the most brilliant I have ever heard, employing numerous logical and psychological devices to utter perfection. I came away very frustrated that evening; not because I had to stand downstairs and listen over the intercom, but because I knew you were wrong but couldn’t quite discover how, at least not until after considerable thought.

  “When you mentioned that you take your morality from the Catholic Church and that that was why, principally, you were opposed to abortion, I could not reply, within the confines of my thoughts, and find what precisely was wrong with that statement. Now I know. Certainly all people go through the same process as you. Dr. Wallace Culver, one of my mentors and an expert on the authoritarian personality and its relationship to religion, told me long ago that all people search for and accept or reject outside sources for their moral code. Some people accept a single source, this is one of the prime characteristics of authoritarianism, and others compile many varied experiences and sources. The process [you employ] is very much the same [as mine] except you defer to the judgment and supposed revelations of the Catholic Church and its thinkers, while I go to other sources, Thomas Paine, Ingersoll, etc.

  “You have a bad habit of combining one non sequitur after another, in such a rapid manner that they often go unnoticed. At Maryland I heard several non sequiturs that I do not recall at present . . . [Herbert nonetheless recalls one, in which the Black Panthers are the beneficiary], In closing I would simply like to say that I deeply envy your superb talent. I hope that some day I shall possess similar abilities. Unlike you, I shall use those abilities for the good of people. Non sequitur.”

  But he is by no means through with me. “I thought your program Sunday night was the best you have ever done and I would greatly like to see many more with similar format [the guests questioning me]. You handled yourself magnificently, so much so that you made one error after another and got away with it. This should be no reflection upon your three opponents as you move so quickly that it is only after careful deliberation that one realizes one has been snookered. A case in point ... [in which the English, by contrast with the Americans, are the beneficiaries]. America wished to see the preservation of England from German rule only insofar as it would serve America’s intentions.

  “You also mentioned America’s role in keeping the ‘barbarians’ at bay. One supposes that this must include the barbarian savages with which this continent was infested when Europeans first set foot upon it and the numerous barbarians of Africa that were later to populate the continent. Another one of your non sequiturs emerges, to wit, that barbarianism is a quality ‘subsumed into the genus’ Soviet or socialist—and certainly never American or capitalist—a very ingenuous assumption. A question arises: is it ‘barbarian’ to sit about weaving baskets and hunting with arrows—or would a more precise definition of the term include what occurred at Sand Creek, during the Chivington-Black Kettle massacre? [I confess that I am, until I reach the encyclopaedia, unfamiliar with the event.] To be sure, barbarianism no longer means, or is equated with, primitive technology, but rather with cruel and inhuman behavior of which we, as Americans, are equally as guilty as the Soviets. There is nothing in our historical experience, that I have ever run across, that would suggest that capitalism has any more restraining an influence upon human excess than socialism or communism. [A lengthy passage follows, in which the architects of our Vietnam policies are the victims.]

  “Another error I believe you committed was when you implied strongly that everyone has equal freedom of expression in this country when indeed they do not. To be sure, all varieties of thought are present; but it becomes a question of degree. Allow me to expand that concept. Whether or not a Panther can go out on the corner and sell his newspaper is not disputed. However, you will not disagree, your philosophy has a wider distribution than does Robert De Pugh’s [Robert De Pugh is the chief figure in the crazy-right Minuteman movement], not due to any inborn truth in your ideas, for ideas are not born true but rather proven, but due to [your ideas’] greater degree of respectability. So, extreme opinions can be found in America, but if you are respectable, or at least acceptable to large numbers of Americans, you will naturally have, do I dare say so, more freedom of expression. To be sure, among the general population Hubert Humphrey has greater exposure than, say, the late George Lincoln Rockwell. Also, there are occasions when freedom of expression for extreme ideologies is absent. A case in point is police harassment of radical groups, particularly the Black Panthers and, I suppose it can be argued, Panther harassment of police. To the extent that such harassment does occur, there is a proportional decrease in the harassed groups’ freedom. I recently witnessed police officers in Silver Spring, Md., arrest a Black Panther who was distributing the Panther newspaper on the corner of Colesville and Fenton Streets. It so happened that I went to school with one of the officers (I never use the term ‘pig’ as it sets fire to reason and has the same characteristics as the term ‘nigger,’ which is probably the single most destructive word in the English language), and played in a band with the other. Some days later I had occasion to speak with them about the arrest and I conducted myself in such a way as to
lead them to believe that I was in complete agreement with their treatment of the Panther. It came out that they were told to arrest the ‘fucking nigger’ under any pretext just so long as he was off the sidewalk, ‘not causing any trouble.’ Now, of course, it does not matter one jot whether you agree or disagree with a man; you must, in a free society, accord him the same rights and freedoms that you accord yourself. To do otherwise is, to paraphrase Thomas Paine, to make a slave of yourself to your present opinion because you preclude yourself the right to change it. A society that allows freedom only to those individuals and ideas which it already accepts as truth is not a free society. The real proof of a free society is that society which not only tolerates diverse opinions and the expression of them, but is genuinely appreciative of their existence. As Walter Lippmann once said, we all have an obligation not merely to begrudgingly tolerate other opinions but to accept them with open arms and gratefulness, for it is these opinions that should be a free country’s showcase. I will make no speculation as to the extent of police harassment of radical groups. I deem it sufficient to simply say, to the extent that it exists, there is a corresponding diminution of freedom in America. Point having been made, I won’t bore you any longer.”

  Thus far what has Herbert given us? A sincere and moving effort to put forward a very familiar philosophical position. Notwithstanding the manifest callousness of the presentation, it is by no means naive; sure, William Douglas could do it better, but he would be saying essentially the same thing, in the enduring effort to harness America to the epistemological skepticism of Mill, and Holmes, and Dewey—and Ramsey Clark. Here is an exquisite demonstration, in fact, of where the implacable logic of relativism can take you: Herbert finds no grounds for significantly distinguishing between the historical performance of the United States and that of the Soviet Union. No more can Noam Chomsky. So much for Robert Conquest. So much for the crushing historical rebuttal of the defecated rationalism of Mill. But then, having flapped his wings in the sludge of a century’s ideological effronteries, Herbert rises, to speak out in flute-tones, achieving a pure innocence, and authority; and from the heights he attains, he spots me, a speck on the landscape, and I am his victim, defenseless.

  “I have written this lengthy diatribe in the hope that I might set some long-forgotten principle ringing in your mind. I feel that you are probably facing a problem that I am just beginning to face to a lesser degree; to wit, mental stagnation. I once knew a golden period when I believed that the greatest of all possible virtues that could be conferred upon a person was an open mind. I still believe that, but I am beginning to practice it less and less. I entered the educational experience with many deeply held misconceptions and it took me long to shake them off and it was not always a pleasant experience. Now I am again resisting change as I once did. I think you do much the same thing. Having expressed your beliefs so articulately and so strenuously for such a long time, you have become intellectually as rigid and inanimate [inanimate!] as those Soviet impolicy-makers you constantly inveigh against. You are a symbol, and, so the legend goes, symbols never change. Conservatism in America, in my opinion, owes everything to your efforts alone. If ever a movement depended for its continued growth upon the energy and boundless dynamism of one [inanimate?] man, constructive conservatism’s dependence upon you is it. But meditate upon this: what will be your thoughts if when you come to your deathbed you look back and realize that all your life amounted to no more than one big highly successful game of power and self-glorification? I would never mention this or be so bold as to suppose that I, Mr. Ordinary, could offer you, William F. Buckley, any usable advice; but I have perceived the tendency in myself to play at games and have observed many of the same characteristics in you, and, since it can make a life so meaningless, I thought I might just offer my thoughts, with the best of intentions, that you may nod in agreement and maybe get something out of them. My biggest fear is that you will not read this letter, or dismiss it as cute. I hope not.”

  One wishes for the powers of John Henry Newman. But assuming that one possessed them, are the certitudes worthy? The certitudes of a middle-aged mid-twentieth-century American conservative? John Kenneth Galbraith, who is my friend, has approached me—Forgive my presumption, he begins, and I forswear the equal-and-opposite-reaction that the laws of mechanics and of debate prescribe—and I listen . . . Give it up, he says, seated next to me in the Volkswagen, as we head out from Gstaad towards the Rinderberg, which is where I like most to ski. The whole thing. National Review, journalism, television, radio, lecturing. Come to the academy, and write books. It is only books that count. I did it. I left Fortune, and went to Harvard. The break must be absolute. You will need the trauma. Then—only then—you will discover the means to give a theoretical depth to your ideological positions.

  But—I answer, in hindsight—the theoretical depth is there, and if I have not myself dug deeper the foundations of American conservatism, at least I have advertised their profundity. How can I hope to do better against positivism than Voegelin has done? Improve on Oakeshott’s analysis of rationalism? (How does one illuminate a sunburst?) Rediscover orthodoxy more engrossingly than Chesterton did? What does it take to satisfy, to satisfy truly, wholly? More than Herbert’s open mind, much more. More than Galbraith’s theoretical depth. A sense of social usefulness . . . Herbert is hauntingly right— c’est que la verite qui blesse—what are my reserves? How will I satisfy them, who listen to me today, tomorrow? Hell, how will I satisfy myself tomorrow, satisfying myself so imperfectly, which is not to say insufficiently, today; at cruising speed?

  Frank Stanton’s car is there, and the bags (of course) materialize, and he drops us by at the Hay-Adams, where Pat’s sister is waiting for us, in from Pasadena for a Red Cross meeting, always for me and others a source of joy and stability. We chat noisily, for an hour, and then I retreat to a corner of the living room, to write my column on Altamont, which is due in New York in the morning, so I’ll have to ask Miss Fahl, at the Commission, to phone it in tomorrow; early, so Harry won’t be nervous.