Books in Brief: Manifesto Addressed to the President of the United States from the Youth of America

Manifesto Addressed to the President of the United States from the Youth of America, edited by Alan Rinzler (Macmillan, 228 pp., $5.95). He won’t read this. The President, that is. Or, for that matter, anyone who has progressed beyond the Senior Scholastic level. Bob Tyrrell, one of the 29 under-thirty contributors, sums it up: “It seems to me snortingly presumptuous for a 24-year old to send off to all the world his manifesto … to whom is my manifesto heading, and if it is whooshing toward anyone who matters, why in God’s name would he read it?” The ideological orientation of the writers is broad, ranging from YAFism to Greening-of-Americaism. On the Left are militant Negroes, Chicanos, Indians, middle-class girls with social-worker mentalities and silly academic revolutionaries. On the Right stand academic utopian libertarians, such as David Friedman who wants society to provide free food (and try to sell an Iowa farmer on the beauty of that scheme), and solid conservatives such as Jameson Campaigne, whose essay is the book’s most thoughtful, and Bob Tyrrell, who writes with his usual pungent wit. (And here a comment on the quality of the editing: Tyrrell’s name is misspelled throughout the text.) But the few good essays are wasted, for most of the leftist writers, with the unconsciously plagiaristic fervor of their type, simply restate all those cliches New Leftists have been spouting for the past half decade.

JC

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J. R. Coyne Jr.

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Manifesto Addressed to the President of the United States from the Youth of America, edited by Alan Rinzler (Macmillan, 228 pp., $5.95). He won’t read this. The President, that is. Or, for that matter, anyone who has progressed beyond the Senior Scholastic level. Bob Tyrrell, one of the 29 under-thirty contributors, sums it up: “It seems to me snortingly presumptuous for a 24-year old to send off to all the world his manifesto … to whom is my manifesto heading, and if it is whooshing toward anyone who matters, why in God’s name would he read it?” The ideological orientation of the writers is broad, ranging from YAFism to Greening-of-Americaism. On the Left are militant Negroes, Chicanos, Indians, middle-class girls with social-worker mentalities and silly academic revolutionaries. On the Right stand academic utopian libertarians, such as David Friedman who wants society to provide free food (and try to sell an Iowa farmer on the beauty of that scheme), and solid conservatives such as Jameson Campaigne, whose essay is the book’s most thoughtful, and Bob Tyrrell, who writes with his usual pungent wit. (And here a comment on the quality of the editing: Tyrrell’s name is misspelled throughout the text.) But the few good essays are wasted, for most of the leftist writers, with the unconsciously plagiaristic fervor of their type, simply restate all those cliches New Leftists have been spouting for the past half decade.