Getting It Right

by William F. Buckley

  “Anyway, you and I know that what General Walker undertook, plain and simple, was to teach the fundamentals of pro-Americanism, the ABCs of anti-Communism to American servicemen. And we’re proud that some of the material he was using was generated by the John Birch Society. Now he’s back home for a while and he’s a national figure, and an important arm of the cause—”

  The phone on the desk rang.

  Woodroe waited, his eyes straying to the framed picture of General Douglas MacArthur shaking hands with Robert Welch, and to another of Senator Joe McCarthy’s coffin, lying in state in the Capitol, surrounded by mourners.

  Andrews, meanwhile, on the phone, was talking to somebody about a rally planned for Los Angeles, where one-quarter of the members of the John Birch Society lived. He pulled out what was apparently a roster of sorts and checked off names as they were dictated to him over the telephone. Woodroe mused on the special difficulty Andrews now had in keeping his cigarette lit while holding the telephone to his ear and taking notes. Jesse frowned with indecision over the three priorities, but then made his election: “Hold on just one minute, Al.” He dropped the pencil and balanced the cigarette on the lid of the ashtray. He took the pencil in hand again and resumed the phone project. “Asworth, yes; here. Blatchford, yes. No, no Blake. . . . This is October’s list, maybe he came in since then....”

  Woodroe waited, his curiosity keen over the reason for the summons to Mr. Andrews’s office.

  Andrews was finally off the phone.

  “Yes. On the matter of General Walker, Woody. We were talking about General Walker’s plan to go to Oxford, Mississippi, to protest the federal troops that are likely to be sent there to reinforce integration. The Warren Court is closing in on our liberties, and the attempt to dictate admissions policy at the University of Mississippi is just one more example of our diminished liberties. Still, Bob—Mr. Welch—thinks we have to guard against precipitate action, technically subversive: the troops, if they’re sent to Oxford, will be there to enforce a court order. Just like in Little Rock! And who was there to enforce the law in Little Rock? General Edwin Walker!”

  “But the general offered to resign, back at Little Rock.”

  “Yes, but that story didn’t come out until later—after the situation in Germany exploded and everybody started talking about General Walker. But never mind that, it’s this simple: Mr. Welch wants you to go down to Texas and to act as liaison between the John Birch Society and General Walker. That way we can keep an eye on what he’s doing and . . . take precautions, if necessary.”

  “Yes. But why me?”

  “We gave that some thought. General Walker is used to young people. He led them in action in France and Korea and he’s trained young men ever since. If we sent someone older, he might, well, not quite understand, he might think we’re interfering. It is a delicate job but we are convinced you are up to it, and the needs of the Society need to take precedence in all matters. If you are willing to take on the assignment, you will be briefed by Mr. Welch.”

  “Sure,” Woodroe said. “General Walker is a great hero. And Texas is—halfway to Utah. I can buzz off and visit my family!”

  14

  WOODROE THOUGHT IT WOULD be interesting, and even entertaining, so he accepted right away Lee’s invitation. (“By the way, Woody, I am now Leonora Pound. Not Goldstein. And I don’t really want to talk about it.”) He had set aside the weekend to spend in New York, en route to Texas. He would take her on Saturday to Princeton to watch the football game, this time with Cornell. A few parties (“By the way, Lee, I now drink spirits. And I don’t really want to talk about it”), then back to New York, a day of city sightseeing, dinner at the restaurant Leonora had twice mentioned in her letters, and then, on Monday morning, the Eastern Airlines DC-7 to Dallas. So Friday afternoon was now reserved: he would hear a lecture by Nathaniel Branden. And, Lee told him, “There is a high probability that Miss Rand will be there, to take questions after Nathaniel’s lecture.”

  He arrived at Grand Central just after noon. She said she would be waiting for him at the Oyster Bar and it wouldn’t matter to her if the train was late. “It receives federal subsidies, so you can’t expect first-rate service.”

  The Boston Globe he had read en route gave disturbing news. He noticed especially the statement by Dr. Edward Teller, made at a San Francisco meeting of UPI editors and publishers. In his judgment, the Soviet Union was now “ahead of the United States in the nuclear race.” And then on the next page notice that Soviet official Leonid Brezhnev had journeyed to Belgrade to visit with Tito, an obvious attempt to reintegrate Yugoslavia into the Soviet orbit. On the other hand, Robert Welch preached that Tito’s break with Stalin was not genuine—Welch judged it one more attempt by the Communists at strategic deception.

  Woodroe carried the two bags and briefcase with difficulty, but he got them to the checking station and then eagerly went down the stairs to the Oyster Bar.

  My, but Leonora . . . Pound was ravishing. “You know, you look like Barbara Stanwyck,” Dick Cowan had said to her at cocktail time two years ago at Sharon. Woodroe, standing by, had sort of nodded agreement. He’d have nodded enthusiastically today, looking at her bright face framed by the blue cotton suit and the wood paneling of the venerable eating spot.

  They sat down. He waved at the waiter to bring the menu, and Lee gave him some background.

  The Nathaniel Branden Institute (NBI) lectures were held at the Sheraton Russell Hotel at Thirty-seventh Street and Park, a mere five blocks from where they were having lunch. For that reason she had reserved him a room in the hotel. “If you want a success story, hear this. Nathaniel Branden—he is like God Junior at our place—came up in 1958 with the idea of a lecture course on objectivism—”

  “Did he begin his lectures on December 8?”

  “Why?”

  Woodroe broke into a wide smile. “That’s the day—December 8, 1958—that Bob Welch launched the John Birch Society.”

  “Oh, come on. I mean, objectivism is serious stuff.”

  “So is the Communist threat.”

  “I know, I know. But listen. I don’t remember the exact date, but it was in the fall of 1958. The idea was to initiate a lecture course called ‘Basic Principles of Objectivism.’ It would amount to a systematic presentation of Miss Rand’s philosophy. How to launch something like that?

  “Well, what he did was write letters to a hundred people who had written to Ayn Rand complimenting her on Atlas Shrugged. He and Barbara—you’ll meet her. They married in 1953. She’s beautiful. But Nathaniel is even more beautiful—”

  Woodroe gave off an exaggerated wince of jealousy.

  “That’s all right. You’re beautiful too.”

  “I was voted the most beautiful boy in Princeton at graduation.”

  “Oh, come on. Anyway, so he wrote letters to the fans announcing the course, and twenty-eight people subscribed to it.”

  “You mean, actually paid to hear the lectures?”

  “Absolutely. Objectivism doesn’t believe that anything should be free. And that was clear up front. The dollar sign, remember, was John Galt’s symbol for free exchange—for freedom, really. Eat your oysters. Anyway, that was 1958. The class we’ll be going to now has 160 subscribers. They pay seventy dollars for twenty lectures.”

  “Which is the one I’m coming in for?”

  “He’s lately been going in the direction of ‘Critical Analysis of Contemporary Psychology.’ There are other lecture series. Barbara is offering a course called ‘Basic Principles of Efficient Thinking.’”

  Lee pulled a printed NBI card from her purse to remind herself of all that was going on within the Rand world. “Leonard Peikoff—he’s our brilliant young philosophy student—is teaching ‘A Critical History of Philosophy.’ Mary Ann—that’s Mary Ann Rukavina—is doing ‘The Aesthetics of the Visual Arts,’ and Alan Greenspan, of course, is doing ‘The Economics of a Free Society.’”

  “So what will happen when we
show up? I’ll have to pay to get in, I take it.”

  “Actually, you won’t. I’m staff, and staff can bring people in—a maximum of two free lecture invitations for any one guest—who might be interested in subscribing for the next series. Nathaniel does two sets of lectures every year.”

  “So all I have to do is sit and listen?”

  “Yes. And try to learn something. You know, objectivism tells you how to reason and how to acquire knowledge, including knowledge of yourself. If you learn the nature of your power, you also learn about your possibilities.”

  Woodroe was tempted to make a wisecrack but wisely didn’t. Instead he said, “Well, let’s wait and see. The lecture’s at four, right? So we have plenty of time. Lee, maybe we shouldn’t discuss world affairs.”

  “Okay. We can discuss Atlas Shrugged.”

  They both laughed.

  A few hours later Woodroe was seated at one side of the hall. Fifteen rows of ten folding chairs had been set up, all but a few of them now occupied by the students of objectivism. They ranged in age, Woodroe estimated, from eighteen to seventy. At four exactly, dressed in a dark blue suit, thirty-two-year-old Nathaniel Branden walked out from a side door to the lectern. There was a hint of applause. But when, a moment later from the door opposite, Ayn Rand herself emerged, the applause was sustained. She too wore a suit, gray wool, a white shirt with wide collars, her hair set in the legendary pageboy style. She sat down with pencil, pad, and ashtray on a special, upholstered chair to the speaker’s right, an upright bookstand next to it. She did not smile, but slightly nodded her head in acknowledgment of the applause.

  Branden spoke from notes. The thoughts were orderly, the presentation systematic. His voice was sure, his scholarly enthusiasm beguiling. Almost everyone took notes. After his hour, the great moment arrived.

  When Ayn Rand was present, questions from the floor were automatically directed to her. Woodroe had been warned that “Ayn’s manner is . . . direct.” Lee’s point was quickly demonstrated. The young woman whose hand had shot up was acknowledged. “It is obvious from Mr. Branden’s talk that moral judgments must be passed, but aren’t there any circumstances in which you might advise discretion?”

  Ayn Rand answered: “No.”

  There was silence. But she continued seated, taking a puff from her cigarette. Nathaniel Branden knew to act quickly, not to divert attention from her rebuff. He called for the next question.

  “Miss Rand, what in society today do you personally find most threatening to the idea of objectivism?”

  To that question she devoted more than merely a single word. “All things threatening should be pointed out, but it is the pervasive collectivist thought which is most dangerous. This failure of men to realize the necessity of self-interest, and the freedom that flows from it, is quite frightening and at times downright depressing—” Lee leaned over and whispered into Woodroe’s ear, “She herself has been depressed a long time. I’ll tell you about it.”

  The questioner persisted. “Then you advocate complete self-interest at any cost?”

  Rand: “If you practice complete self-interest, there will be no cost. The greater danger is altruism at any cost. I don’t know how much more clearly I can state this.”

  A young man asked, “Miss Rand, I’ve read various interviews with you, and as a philosophy major it seems to me that perhaps you are being too hard on Plato. He was, after all, Aristotle’s mentor and—”

  Rand cut him off. “Am I to suppose that my kindergarten teacher deserves high praise for my successes?” Laughter. “I think not. Plato was anything but honest, and everything but rational. We should be thankful that Aristotle didn’t fall into that mystical hole in which Plato resided.”

  There was a titter of applause.

  Another questioner said, “Miss Rand, I stumbled upon Atlas Shrugged in a reading list I was given for a class at school and was greatly taken with it. Is it safe to assume you have another novel in the works?”

  “She doesn’t like talk of future work,” Lee whispered.

  “My books are not written merely for enjoyment.” Miss Rand adopted a professorial tone. “They are catalysts for societal change. What is safe to say is that if you do not feel called to action by Atlas Shrugged, I do not think that another book will be of any service to you.”

  Societal change? So what to do, of a practical sort—the next questioner wanted to know—in order to help bring about this change?

  Her answer: “You must think. Actually use your head. That thing on top of your shoulders is not a bowling ball, it is your greatest asset. Use it. Use all of it. Fearlessly strive for success, and, in turn, encourage others to do so as well.”

  Nathaniel Branden thanked her and the students applauded. Branden then said that looking forward to the month of December, he noted that the sixteenth scheduled lecture would happen to fall on Christmas Day, and although the Nathaniel Branden Institute hardly felt any obligation to pay special attention to Christmas, except to smile at its presumptions, considerations of staff and hotel and transport and vacations argued the case for postponing that particular session for two weeks, to one week after New Year’s Day.

  It was almost six o’clock. Lee had told Woodroe she would need to do postlecture catch-up at the NBI office, one block away. She retrieved her scarf from the hook in the lecture hall and they walked together to the lobby. She would come back to meet him at the hotel at 7:30.

  Woodroe was glad for the respite. The whole thing was creepy. Or was it that he just didn’t get it? But he had read Atlas Shrugged. And he shared her opposition to the growth of the state; after all, no one was more opposed to the growing state than Bob Welch. Was his background as a Mormon a structural block?

  Then there was the exposure to Herself. That primal source of ideas. That brilliant, resourceful, imaginative novelist. Creepy.

  Leonora had begged off the expedition to Princeton for the football game, not having enjoyed the Princeton-Harvard game which Woodroe had taken her to in Boston. “I don’t much like football, and it’s part of my objectivist training not to do anything I don’t much like.”

  “Have you left off defecating?”

  “Don’t be vulgar. I’ll see you Sunday. Go ahead and root for the Tigers.”

  Woodroe did that, though not bracingly enough to lift the Princeton team to victory. He found, some tedious minutes after halftime, that what he was really looking forward to postgame was not so much the serial cocktail parties as the visit to Theo Romney. He’d go to Nassau Street right after the game, and carouse later.

  It was all just as the last time Woodroe had visited, in May. There was only Mount Timpanogos to go on his ceiling canvas, and the eight peaks completed now lit up the entire lofty room. Romney greeted Woodroe warmly, sat him down, and went off for the sherry (“Rather special. Harvested during the civil war, 1935. Amazing there was anybody left in Spain who could do the vineyards. Probably grandparents and little girls”).

  It was as if Woodroe were once again there on his weekly visits as a student, though there was a perceptible difference in tone from the undergraduate days. Woody didn’t know whether this was because he had graduated or because he was doing front-line patriotic duty with the John Birch Society. He caught his old professor up on his new assignment to Dallas, doing a nice imitation of Robert Welch giving him his orders to keep an eye on Edwin Walker.

  “Interesting,” Romney said. “I have great sympathy for General Walker, and of course you know about his war record. But I heard him answering questions on television a few months ago, and I have to admit to having had some difficulty in following him. Following him exactly. He was of course right on the main points.

  “Still, General Walker is an imposing figure. He turned his aggressive instincts against the Communists. Which means we’ll have to be careful. So will you, Woodroe.”

  “I promise I will be,” Woody said, nodding his head.

  Careful of what? he asked himself. But before he co
uld dwell on the question, the professor had moved on to talk of the upcoming congressional elections. They also spoke of threatening developments in Cuba, where Fidel Castro continued to get shiploads of aid from the Soviet Union.

  Woodroe kept his eye on his watch, having promised to meet up with his old roommate at his club. “I wanted to tell you something about the Objectivist clan. I was there yesterday for a seminar by Nathaniel Branden. He’s Number Two in the order.”

  “Was she there?”

  “Oh yes. Sitting on the stage. Smoking. She was turned on after the lecture, to answer questions from the students.”

  “What did she say? Anything I should know?”

  Woodroe laughed. “She said lots of things, but nothing you need to know. That you don’t already know.”

  “The Objectivists pose a special challenge. Because if they succeed in implanting their creed on the Republican Party, it becomes a vessel for... a kind of misanthropic anarchy. The GOP has to beat a path to a wholesome conservatism, and that isn’t helped by anything I’ve read by Ayn Rand.”

  “Have you read Atlas Shrugged, Theo?”

  “Well, no. If by reading it I could help liberate the captive nations, I’d do it. As a matter of fact, I’d do it if I thought I could talk to somebody in the Kennedy administration about sound economic policy.”

  Romney noticed the empty glass and filled it.

  “The Kennedy people are getting it wrong on all fronts. Those people at the White House are so concerned to look peaceful and affable to Europe and the Third World, they’re even arguing for the demilitarization of space. They’ll go for demilitarizing the Pentagon, at this pace. And now Mr. Kennedy has his trade bill. They call it a free trade bill.” Romney’s face brightened. He walked over to the magazine rack. “The current issue of National Review has great sport with the items that the government can, under the new law, find some means of protecting from foreign competition.” He laughed mischievously. “Want to hear the list?”