Principles and Heresies

A great deal of nonsense has been written in this century; but for nonsense, and obnoxious nonsense at that, it would be hard to equal the acres of verbiage spread over our press on the contemporary student “revolt.” With the exception of a few sharp and clear remarks from people like Vice President Agnew and Professors Hook and Hayakawa, there is little to choose between high political functionaries like Humphrey and Finch, college presidents of the order of Cornell’s Perkins and CCNY’s Gallagher, the run-of-themill product of the New York Times and the networks, the labored outpouring of the liberal and radical journals, and the incendiary bombast of a Cohn-Bendit, a Tom Hayden or a Mark Rudd.

What is so obnoxious in these consanguineous lucubrations is not merely, or perhaps even primarily, the political outlook—a mating of liberal masochism with the sheer overweening insolence of the intellectually unwashed radical. That, Heaven knows, is bad enough. But worse, much worse, is the philosophical and moral concept of the duties and responsibilities of men—even, and especially young men—to other men and to themselves. In the place of those images of excellence of Western civilization, the hero and the saint, the image of this generation of pseudo-revolutionaries and cheap pot mystics (presented for their own emulation and admiration by the radical and hippie segment of the youth and cooingly endorsed by their liberal elders) derives straight from early vintage Spock—the baby that is fed and cuddled every time he howls. In a word, the politics, the sociology, the ethics boil down to a single proposition: the West must sacrifice everything civilization has achieved of wisdom, beauty, the ordered hierarchy of values, to make the morally uncouth and intellectually lazy spawn of SDS and Haight-Ashbury feel happy, wanted and secure. Fiat infantia, ruat coelum.

FS

About the Author

Frank S. Meyer

Frank S. Meyer was a senior editor of National Review.

Featured Tags

A great deal of nonsense has been written in this century; but for nonsense, and obnoxious nonsense at that, it would be hard to equal the acres of verbiage spread over our press on the contemporary student “revolt.” With the exception of a few sharp and clear remarks from people like Vice President Agnew and Professors Hook and Hayakawa, there is little to choose between high political functionaries like Humphrey and Finch, college presidents of the order of Cornell’s Perkins and CCNY’s Gallagher, the run-of-themill product of the New York Times and the networks, the labored outpouring of the liberal and radical journals, and the incendiary bombast of a Cohn-Bendit, a Tom Hayden or a Mark Rudd.

What is so obnoxious in these consanguineous lucubrations is not merely, or perhaps even primarily, the political outlook—a mating of liberal masochism with the sheer overweening insolence of the intellectually unwashed radical. That, Heaven knows, is bad enough. But worse, much worse, is the philosophical and moral concept of the duties and responsibilities of men—even, and especially young men—to other men and to themselves. In the place of those images of excellence of Western civilization, the hero and the saint, the image of this generation of pseudo-revolutionaries and cheap pot mystics (presented for their own emulation and admiration by the radical and hippie segment of the youth and cooingly endorsed by their liberal elders) derives straight from early vintage Spock—the baby that is fed and cuddled every time he howls. In a word, the politics, the sociology, the ethics boil down to a single proposition: the West must sacrifice everything civilization has achieved of wisdom, beauty, the ordered hierarchy of values, to make the morally uncouth and intellectually lazy spawn of SDS and Haight-Ashbury feel happy, wanted and secure. Fiat infantia, ruat coelum.