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The attached letter to the editor was
written 37 years ago in response to an article regarding prospects for
revolution. LETTER TO THE EDITOR, University of Chicago Magazine, Nov/Dec 1971:
To The Editor: Has the rebellion of youth
really been revolutionary in nature? My question is not meant to
discredit Ralph W. Conant, whose article [“The Prospects for Revolution,”
May/June ‘71] appears to be a competent and rational summary of events from
the prevailing academic viewpoint. I aim to challenge the rationale,
which my colleagues have made conventional. Their interpretation of youth’s
rebellion is, I contend, narrow, self-serving, and inadequate. Among
other things, calling the rebellion revolutionary suggests that it moves with
the current of history. Does it? May it not be
counterrevolutionary? The counter posing of youthful protesters and
the greater part of America’s institutional leadership need not imply that
youth is free of parochial attitudes. When Conant refers to what “youth
saw” he seems to imply that the vision of youth was especially clear, but the
youths in question were much too old to be untouched by social
affectations. Thus it may have been the specific nature of their
biases, which distinguished them. Since rebellion has been centered in
our most prestigious institutions and departments of higher learning, it is
convenient for academics to believe that the rebels have been especially
perceptive. A contrary view would almost certainly raise questions
about the quality of higher education. Are protesting students speaking with incisive
candor, or do they mouth the cant of a divergent subculture? Do they
speak primarily for a movement of their own, or as “nouveaux savants” anxious
to proclaim their membership in a privileged class whose mature members are
more discrete? Are they actually opposing conspicuous consumption, or
is their education itself a socially accepted waste? Is the depth of
their concern for the rights of disadvantaged minorities to be measured by
their own testimony, or by their inclination to mix defense of those rights
with such trivia as long hair and pot? Does the appeal of the McCarthy
and Lindsay type of leader rest upon records of service, or upon reasonable
anticipation of performance, or is it chiefly a matter of style? Questions about student life styles and
curriculum requirements, as well as those about Communists on campus, strike
me as being peripheral in significance. The key questions have to do
with the nature and role of liberal education in a society where leisure and
information are abundant. Should we anticipate that thinking of the
most creative and humane sort will “trickle down” only from a few cultivated
minds, or have the numerous and varied people who occupy the remainder of
society major contributions to make? Generation gaps and alienation are commonly used to describe the division
between youths, especially those educated in the liberal arts departments of
our leading colleges and universities, and the political leaders and private
citizens who are sometimes identified as the silent majority. It is a
crucial part of my case that, while the latter group have made numerous
concessions to reconcile protesting youth, the protesters have utilized
everything from outlandish dress and obnoxious language to planned insults
and acts of destruction to assure that the gap remained, a gap they view as
the result of an intellectual and moral lag in the rest of society. To
compromise would therefore be degrading. In March of 1968, Senator Fulbright interrupted
Secretary of State Rusk with the admonition that the senators needed no
lectures on patriotism but that they were concerned about the “pigheadedness”
which seemed to guide American policy. Usually, men of Fulbright’s
standing manage, as befits their advanced achievements in intellectual style,
to be more circumspect. The Senator’s outburst was significant.
From the protest viewpoint, the division in America has been between the pig
heads who react to conventional symbols of patriotism and piety and those
discerning individuals who perceive and pursue humane values. That
estimate of America’s social division is now dramatized in the CBS program
“All in the Family.” Television deserves far more attention in
explanations of the youth rebellion than Conant gave to it in his
article. How else could a burgeoning youth movement have learned so
quickly to identify its leaders, its issues, and its most effective
tactics? Where else have persons of liberal learning expressed
themselves so freely to such wide audiences as they have in the news and
public affairs programs of television? Freedom, especially freedom of verbal expression, has been a major issue
of the rebellion. Is a laissez faire approach to verbal expression
inherently more valid than a similar approach to business enterprise?
May not both have acquired their aura of sanctity as political objectives of
privileged groups? Does unlimited freedom for intellectuals to attack
the symbols by means of which less articulate people communicate contribute
to knowledge and communication, or does it amount to a unilateral privilege
of aggression? I suggest that the readiness with which the more
articulate professions deny that social harm and personal injuries result
from unbridled use of language is as crass a bit of hypocrisy as any elite
has ever advanced in rationalizing its own privileges…. |
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©Ivan W. Parkins 2010, All articles, text, web pages property of
Ivan W. Parkins. Use of any material
requires permission of the author
and can be obtained by contacting,
info@americanpoliticalcommentary.com |
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WHAT IS HAPPENING TO AMERICA? By Ivan W. Parkins
America is facing a revolution, by mostly legal and peaceful
means. By revolution I mean a
replacement of the old elite by a new one.
To accomplish that, the old elite must be discredited and driven from
power.
Actually, America’s old industrial/financial elite, powerful in the
late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, has been yielding ground for a
century. The New Deal weakened it
substantially at first, but WWII and the successes of our huge armament
production won it a reprieve. That was
followed by the rebuilding of most of our former allies and enemies. Several decades of success in competition
with the Soviet Union, plus our own growing prosperity, further inoculated
the old elite against change.
Meanwhile however, an old element of American society was benefiting
from huge investments of both public and private money. Communication, once a hireling and servant
of larger social organs, was gaining vast influence in its own right. Tens of thousands of prosperous writers,
broadcasters, professors, and actors, plus even greater numbers of college
students and new grads were increasingly able to communicate with one
another. Added to unionized public school teachers and government
bureaucrats, they were becoming a political phalanx to which industry and
finance related more as client or tenant than as master.
Only the American Presidency retained enough of its traditional
popular following and vigor to defy the new elite, an elite with more legal
immunities than the old one ever had.
And, the Presidents who have recently won by the largest popular
margins have had to face particularly bitter and damaging mass media assaults
upon their persons and their powers. If
the intellectual elite can now capture this nation’s chief executive office
with a candidate little encumbered by past public commitments, America’s
future may indeed take a new turn—to what? |
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THE REPUBLIC IN DANGER Can the “Media
Elite” succeed in it’s disinformation plan? |
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OUR MOST LIBERAL AND GENEROUS CRISIS? By Ivan W. Parkins A
large part of Senator Obama’s campaign is above reproach; it is not aimed at
any real person. The President Bush
that we all know is mainly a media construction. Like most recent Presidents late in their
terms, the present occupant of the White House has a very poor media image.
Media images are one large part of the present credit crisis. That began long ago when “more sensitive”
politicians, mainly liberal Democrats, began pressuring banks to lend to
persons who had poor credit ratings.
Years of rising housing prices, especially in more crowded areas, made
almost any loan based upon current value a safe loan, and stimulated such
things as ARMs (adjustable rate mortgages).
Coincidentally, about one half a trillion dollars ($500,000,000,000)
of ARMs were scheduled for readjustment in the first half of 2008.
Meanwhile, primary lenders traded their mortgages to larger banks for
more cash to lend. The larger banks
and financial institutions packaged various loans into “derivatives” and sold
those widely. Groups such as ACORN
encouraged and aided people, who had previously been unable to qualify, to
obtain mortgages. And with all of that
our TVs carried numerous ads to “Buy this house and flip it.”
Recently, some economic slowdown and declines of home prices in local
areas, plus demands of regulators regarding the capital of lending
institutions, initiated a collapse of that house-of-cards, and major problems
for the World’s economies followed. It
is a crisis in which the foolish or guilty are almost as numerous as the
victims. If special culprits are to be
singled out, politicians who promoted the easier lending rules, who
encouraged unlikely individuals to seek loans, and who promoted the lending
excesses of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are prime candidates. They include former President Clinton,
Finance Committee Chairmen Dodd and Frank, and former ACORN Trainer Obama,
none of them a friend of either the real or the media-image Bush. Can
such people now buy the White House?
If so, to whom will they flip it?
I.W.Parkins-1008 |
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How much
of YOUR tax money paid for Election Registration Fraud by ACORN? Considering ACORN'S acts of
corrupting the election roles, substantial already, with much more likely, is
it now possible to have election results in which most Americans or most
friendly observers will have any confidence? |
