THE WEEK

• Such are the tides in the affairs of men that some inevitably drown. It was our first impulse to write off the hardy crew of the good ship Alert as Rockefeller Republicans seeking a new life. We watched with a wry wonder as the hopefuls piloted, an ancient refrigerator ship out of Seattle’s harbor and south on the Pacific. Destination: the Galapagos Islands, 600 miles west of Ecuador, a tropical paradise chiefly renowned for its bananas, its tuna fish, its 400-pound tortoises and its historic tradition as a buccaneering Mecca. But we recalled that the Galapagos also provided much of the initial source material for Charles Darwin. Seen by such a ghostly light, the Alert’s new colonists—families determined to cut an American settlement out of the raw land of San Cristobal—took on a far more serious aspect. In the age of the atom, they had chosen to devolve. In flight from the Affluent Society they had elected to return to the roots, to wrest their living from land and sea, to begin again. To be sure, applicant families for the Great Experiment were obliged by the organizers to submit to psychological tests to establish their compatibility. But after all, unnatural selection can hardly afford to be wayward.

• Congress is in session, and we hasten to wish the legislators well. What wouldn’t we give for their opportunity! Here they have a chance to pass a good labor law that will forever prevent a single man in charge of an industry-wide union from tying up a whole basic industry for months on end. Here they have an opportunity to vote the sinews of defense and to announce to Khrushchev: “This is our real view-from-the-Summit.’’ There are all the Hoover Commission reports Congress has yet to act on. There is the tottering budget and our adverse trade balance . . . Whoa! All we started to say was, Happy legislating, boys, and please ask yourselves, every time before you vote, Does this measure maximize our personal freedom or fortify our national independence?

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• Such are the tides in the affairs of men that some inevitably drown. It was our first impulse to write off the hardy crew of the good ship Alert as Rockefeller Republicans seeking a new life. We watched with a wry wonder as the hopefuls piloted, an ancient refrigerator ship out of Seattle’s harbor and south on the Pacific. Destination: the Galapagos Islands, 600 miles west of Ecuador, a tropical paradise chiefly renowned for its bananas, its tuna fish, its 400-pound tortoises and its historic tradition as a buccaneering Mecca. But we recalled that the Galapagos also provided much of the initial source material for Charles Darwin. Seen by such a ghostly light, the Alert’s new colonists—families determined to cut an American settlement out of the raw land of San Cristobal—took on a far more serious aspect. In the age of the atom, they had chosen to devolve. In flight from the Affluent Society they had elected to return to the roots, to wrest their living from land and sea, to begin again. To be sure, applicant families for the Great Experiment were obliged by the organizers to submit to psychological tests to establish their compatibility. But after all, unnatural selection can hardly afford to be wayward.

• Congress is in session, and we hasten to wish the legislators well. What wouldn’t we give for their opportunity! Here they have a chance to pass a good labor law that will forever prevent a single man in charge of an industry-wide union from tying up a whole basic industry for months on end. Here they have an opportunity to vote the sinews of defense and to announce to Khrushchev: “This is our real view-from-the-Summit.’’ There are all the Hoover Commission reports Congress has yet to act on. There is the tottering budget and our adverse trade balance . . . Whoa! All we started to say was, Happy legislating, boys, and please ask yourselves, every time before you vote, Does this measure maximize our personal freedom or fortify our national independence?