Book Reviews

before he became Hitler's minis ter of propaganda and public en lightenment, had enough intelli gence to know that he was dealing in evil put-ons, which is a left handed compliment that we need not extend to some of the "intel lectuals" placed on exhibition by Mr. Beichma:n. Many of them know not what they do. But it is the effect of the "big lie" that is important, not the motivating intent. Constant repetition of Goebbel sian stuff has people believing (1) 1972 LIES 571 that America is a Fascist country, (2) that America means genocide, (3) tha t "the Bomber Left is a moral force," (4) that the American worker is a "honky," (5) that our political system is a fraud, (6) that our values .are materialistic, (7) that America usually spelled Amerika - is in sane, (8) that the American peo ple are "guilty," and (9) that what our country needs is "a vio lent revolution." Of course, the ave,rage Dayton, Ohio, housewife who is the unassuming heroine of Richard Scammons's and Ben Wattenberg's The Real Majority wouldn't believe even the least of the nine big lies, nor would her machinist husband. But the so called intellectual betters of the Dayton housewife swallow the Goebbelsian bait whole, which is one good reason for withholding Federal assistance from our insti tutions of higher learning. Why, indeed, should the taxpayers be called upon to subsidize the lynch ers?

Attention-Getters Speaking of the intellectuals who .justify bombing and arson as necessary attention-getters, Mr. Beichman calls it a "terrifying logic" as "we move from the old literary explosions of small intel lectual coteries to the infatuation of a new young avant-garde with the power that comes out of the barrel of a gun." Mr. Beichman says it is "small wonder" that a weary European visitor was moved "to make the bitter joke, 'When I hear the word gun, I .reach for my culture.' " But culture, in this era of the "counter-culture," is a weak shield. Editors who should be defending our cultural heritage sell out merely to be "with it." Anything and anyone can make the cover of our mass magazines. It's women's lib (the female chauvinistic kind) one week, gay lib the next, and Yippie Jerry Rubin or Abbie Hoffman the. week after. "Ideas," says Mr. Beichman, "no longer 'trickle down' over a period of time." Instead, they are gobbled up uncritically by pub lishers who, "obeying some edi torial tropism," accord the crazi est notion "the most respectful hearing with color photographs as well." Says Mr. Beichman, our "literary avant-gardists in Amer ica are in permanent danger of being overrun by their own eager middle-class followers."

Raceless Genocide The lies, however, remain lies. How can you call America a Fascist country when anyone in it can say anything, no matter how outrageous? How can our de fense of the right of individuals 572 THE FREEMAN in South Vietnam to live without being overrun by their neighbors to the north be called "genocide"? After all, the South Vietnamese and the North Vietnamese are Orientals together, and our par tiality for the Orientals who pre fer liberty to slavery has nothing whatsoever to do with race. The distinction is moral and intellec tual. The stories of police "genocide" against the Black Panthers were repeated uncritically in our best newspapers. But when one inquir ing reporter, Edward Epstein of the N ew Yorker, tracked the lurid tales of "twenty-eight murdered Black Panthers" down, the num ber shriveled to six incidents in which Panthers were killed by police, and in four of these inci dents fourteen police were shot or killed by the Panthers.

Ends and Means Did this constitute a "national scheme . . . to destroy the Pan thers"? Or was the Panthers' law yer Charles Garry, who first float ed the twenty-eight figure, guilty of indulging in a "numbers game" entirely comparable to Senator Joe McCarthy's waving of a "list of Communists in the State De partment" that came to 146 or thereabouts and was never sub stantiated? To say, with the Bomber Left, that violence is necessary to make ideological and political points is to say that the end justifies the means. Some professors (Cornell and Harvard have had their trou bles with them) have made ex cuses for this notion, but it is hardly a universal axiom even among pragmatists. Mr. Beich man quotes a covey of academics who rationalize the work of the bombers by indulging in "fog banks of nauseating verbiage" that abound in such phrases as "America has spawned the radi calism it deserves." The "kids"

are absolved because the "System" is "bad." But our Bomber Left violence has lacked "the important ingredient of modern revolution an apparat." Mr. Beichman says the "days of rage" of the New Left are little more than Blanquist putschism, the crise de nerfs of "gesture children." The "gesture children" get the headlines, but they are not America. If our political system is a "fraud," how does it happen that a Lyndon Johnson, when Presi den t, can lose control of his party machinery? How can a Nixon come back after two disastrous defeats? How can a McGovern, moving up from nowhere, suddenly win ten primaries? For better or worse, our party "system" certainly ac commodates change. As for our "materialistic" values, Mr. Beich1972 LIES 573 man quotes Alfred North White head on Prometheus, who "did not bring to mankind freedom of the press. He procured fire, which obediently to human purposes cooks and gives warmth. In fact freedom of action is a primary human need."

Not Peculiarly American The final triad of "lies" - that America is "insane," "guilty" and in need of "violent revolution" is too surrealistic to demand much refutation. It was one man, not a multitude, that pulled the trigger on John Kennedy, and it was the one man, not the city of Dallas, that was mad. And, looking at Soviet Russia, Red China, Cuba and North Vietnam, what does violent revolution get you? Com pared to the new tyrants, the Kaiser and Czar were liberals, as Max Nomad once pointed out. The "honky" American worker may not have traveled, but he knows with Mr. Beichman that "racism, tribalism, communalism, religious hate" are less troublesome in Michigan towns than they are in "India, Pakistan, Nigeria, Sudan, Japan, Ceylon ... the Soviet Un ion and China," all of which have repressed minorities. What distinguishes America, says Mr. Beichman in summing up, is that "Americans happen to be ashamed of their prejudices, while almost everybody else .is busy explaining the rationale of racial and religious discrimina tion, and why it is impossible to end them overnight." The very fact that we are an apologetic people proves that we are not fascists, not genocides, not hon kies, not insane. More than others, we are still seekers, looking for a perfection that nobody will ever find.

~ HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH by Marvin H. Edwards (New Rochelle, N. Y.: Arlington House, 1972, 318 pp., $9.95) Reviewer: Allan C. Brownfeld AMERICANSpresent a curious spec tacle to the world: Citizens of the freest and most prosperous nation on earth engage in ritual hand wringing over the alleged "crises" they find everywhere in their so ciety. Nothing is right, and of the things that are wrong none has come under sharper attack lately than the private practice of med icine. The near unanimity within the body politic about the existence of 574 THE FREEMAN September a health-care "crisis" is frighten ing. President Nixon has pro claimed it, and the only point at issue in the present debate is "which plan" should· be enacted to alleviate it. A presidential candi date has proposed a total sociali zation plan, and even the Ameri can· Medical Association has a plan in which doctors receive govern ment money but avoid government controls. The sickness of Ameri can medicine is the common as sumption.