Unreasonable Doubt

New York—The small bespectacled man in the Los Angeles waiting room was explaining how most of America’s problems could be solved by more accurate measurement of the Great Pyramid. Then he leaned forward as if about to unleash some deeper insight into the occult and whispered: “You know, I believe in everything that these great United States stand for.” On television earlier this spring Hubert Humphrey evinced a similar but less furtive patriotism. When asked by a bunch of students whether he would mind if Bobby Kennedy replaced him on the 1968 Presidential ticket, he replied with the story of how he had risen from being a humble chemist to being mayor of Minneapolis, a United States senator and finally Vice President. There could not, he reasoned, be much wrong with a country which provided such opportunities for a poor boy from the sticks and he would remain grateful even if his progress ended there. The students at first listened in puzzlement at this version of the American dream which seemed positively prehistoric to them. Then wide pitying grins spread over their faces. The poor old guy had to be crazy. I mean, only nuts believe in stuff like that.

Nuttiness is increasingly the explanation resorted to by the young or pseudo-young for any display of satisfaction with any aspect of American life. Fashionable dissent abounds in such slogans as—”The power structure is paranoid” and “Never trust anyone over thirty.” In Britain we are accustomed to a modicum of national self-deprecation, but with typical thoroughness, the Americans have far outstripped our feeble complaints about British rails or British apathy. In the controversy over medicare Americans were told that their health care programs were “a national failure.” This is of course rubbish. Standards of public health in the U.S. have never been increasing faster. A middle-income urban mother will typically be employing a small army of professional staff— G.P., gynecologist, dentist, periodontist, pediatrician and of course a ruinously exigent psychotherapist. Six per cent of the national income goes on health, as against 4 per cent in Britain. To claim that this represents a national failure because it is so expensive, as politicians are doing, is merely to attack the high priority Americans allocate to health.

FM

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Ferdinand Mount

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New York—The small bespectacled man in the Los Angeles waiting room was explaining how most of America’s problems could be solved by more accurate measurement of the Great Pyramid. Then he leaned forward as if about to unleash some deeper insight into the occult and whispered: “You know, I believe in everything that these great United States stand for.” On television earlier this spring Hubert Humphrey evinced a similar but less furtive patriotism. When asked by a bunch of students whether he would mind if Bobby Kennedy replaced him on the 1968 Presidential ticket, he replied with the story of how he had risen from being a humble chemist to being mayor of Minneapolis, a United States senator and finally Vice President. There could not, he reasoned, be much wrong with a country which provided such opportunities for a poor boy from the sticks and he would remain grateful even if his progress ended there. The students at first listened in puzzlement at this version of the American dream which seemed positively prehistoric to them. Then wide pitying grins spread over their faces. The poor old guy had to be crazy. I mean, only nuts believe in stuff like that.

Nuttiness is increasingly the explanation resorted to by the young or pseudo-young for any display of satisfaction with any aspect of American life. Fashionable dissent abounds in such slogans as—”The power structure is paranoid” and “Never trust anyone over thirty.” In Britain we are accustomed to a modicum of national self-deprecation, but with typical thoroughness, the Americans have far outstripped our feeble complaints about British rails or British apathy. In the controversy over medicare Americans were told that their health care programs were “a national failure.” This is of course rubbish. Standards of public health in the U.S. have never been increasing faster. A middle-income urban mother will typically be employing a small army of professional staff— G.P., gynecologist, dentist, periodontist, pediatrician and of course a ruinously exigent psychotherapist. Six per cent of the national income goes on health, as against 4 per cent in Britain. To claim that this represents a national failure because it is so expensive, as politicians are doing, is merely to attack the high priority Americans allocate to health.