To the Editor:
What I disliked most about Henry Fairlie’s article [“Johnson & the Intellectuals,” Oct. ’65] was its hypocrisy. After several pages of gratuitous advice to intellectuals to stay out of liberal and radical politics, he concludes by saying that the intellectual “should be using his mind now to inquire . . . into the survival of powerful and independent blocs in a country which is geared more and more to federal activity. . . .”
In other words, the intellectual should get into politics—on Mr. Fairlie’s side. This, as far as I can figure out, means restoring the Republican party, obstructing Mr. Johnson’s domestic program, and developing a new conservative congressional coalition to undo the damage done by “the collapse of the Southern bloc.”
Whatever the validity of Mr. Fairlie’s position, I resent his attempt to pass it off as non-political.
Herbert J. Gans
Center for Urban Education
New York City
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To the Editor:
Mr. Fairlie not only contends that there is a realm reserved for the intellectual which is different from that reserved for the politician, but also that the value of these two realms can be maintained only if they remain absolutely separate and absolutely distinct. Ultimately, his views must be judged on their own merits . . . but I think it useful to point out that they are the outgrowth of a long intellectual tradition. In the long run . . . his essay tells us more about the effect of British intellectual history upon present ideas, than it does about the proper relationship between power and intellect. . . .
. . . Much of British philosophy has been built upon what it has thought to be the necessity and therefore the value of separations. Hobbes’s notion of the separation of man from man has seen its day in the economics of Adam Smith and the politics of John Stuart Mill. Although the concept of separation has drastically changed, I believe that it can still be found in the philosophy of A. J. Ayer . . . as well as in Mr. Fairlie’s political views. (The value of this tradition is, at present, incidental to the fact that its ideas have been adopted uncritically by Mr. Fairlie.)
Quoting one of Britain’s “greatest Prime Ministers,” Mr. Fairlie tells how political decisions are made (or not made):
There is just a build up of big and small events, of big and small factors, and they may not be brought to your notice until the issue has already been decided; and when you eventually have to decide, it may be in response to the smallest of them all. That is not “power” or “decision”; you are too much in the hands of events.
If we are to take this as a statement of fact . . . I am afraid that even Mr. Fairlie would shy away from its inevitable conclusion. For if the Prime Minister were just the creature of events, we would have no basis by which to evaluate either him or his decisions. We could attribute neither greatness nor mediocrity to him—we could only undertake to analyze the direction taken and the events determining it.
Yet, I believe there is some truth to the Prime Minister’s statement. . . . It is probably true that at the moment of any crisis, the alternatives available have been extremely limited if not destroyed. . . . Certainly it is true that small events determine larger ones, just as it is also true that a statesman cannot keep an eye on all these events; it is even likely that a statesman might not become aware of all these events until they culminate in one grand event. However, all this means is that a statesman must be judged partially in terms of the men he has chosen to consider these events and to predict their future course. I would think that if the men on top of the power scale are too busy to make long-range predictions, their advisers are perhaps less so. Yet the intellectual, the man whose job Fairlie believes is to make long-range predictions and to inquire into the meaning of events, is removed by him from any direct influence in the decision-making process. He suggests that the intellectual should be comforted by the knowledge that “any truth which he may happen to discover will, in time, and not necessarily a long time at that, filter down into the bloodstream of the country.” I remember that somewhere John Stuart Mill expressed a similar hope, and we must remember that it is only a hope. . . .
Walter Feinberg
Oakland University
Rochester, Michigan
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To the Editor:
Henry Fairlie berates the intellectuals for being drawn to politics by the late President Kennedy. No doubt, many intellectuals were then induced (Fairlie would say “seduced”) to take a more active part in politics at various levels than they had done since Adlai Stevenson’s campaign of 1952. But this is to be commended, not disdained. If the intellectuals are repelled by politics, then decision-making from the White House down to the precincts will be left solely to hacks (like myself).
Jordan Rossen
Detroit, Michigan
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To the Editor:
. . . I expect that the idea of “social responsibility” will be offered to oppose Mr. Fairlie’s views on the lack of “fitness” in the intellectual’s attempts to engage in politics as an intellectual.
In a society at least nominally democratic, it is fitting for any and for all citizens to participate on any and on all sides of every political struggle. Each person who does so, does so as a citizen and some do so professionally, as politicians. . . . We must acknowledge with respect—sometimes with admiration—the call of social conscience, the awakening of political self-interest, the acceptance of his “true” vocation in any man. . . .
Nonetheless, it was an unusual pleasure to read Mr. Fairlie’s article.
Paul Cornyetz
New York City
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To the Editor:
. . . Mr. Fairlie’s article is full of glaring inconsistencies. For example, he confuses at several points the political practitioner (an elected official) with the political theoretician or policy-maker. By the same token, his statement that “the intellectual is seldom able to understand the nature of a political decision” offers a shocking example of linguistic opacity. If by “understand,” he means “to condone on rational grounds,” then, of course, he may have a point—however, it seems far more likely that “understand,” in Mr. Fairlie’s lexicon, also equals “participate in or act out”; therefore any action which may be inimical to one’s habit or training . . . eludes one’s power of reasoning and comprehension. . . .
Again, his statement that “temperamentally, the intellectual cannot bear a problem that is incapable of solution” smacks . . . of that phony authoritarianism which is far more consonant with the illusory world . . . of the politician out for votes than with the skeptical frame of reference usually associated with the intellectual. . . .
But the most serious contradiction in Mr. Fairlie’s article is his assumption that political decision-making is wholly capricious and irrational (vide Attlee and the Turks), its success dependent less upon the nature of the initial decision than upon the workings of historical determinism or sheer luck, . . . its vision limited to the exigencies of the present moment. Yet he goes on to concede in the nicely wrapped consolation prize of his last paragraph that the intellectuals’ play with political ideas . . . can “in time . . . filter down into the bloodstream of the country.” But if politics is a priori irrational and dependent upon accident and/ or whim, then how in the world can any of the intellectuals’ “inquiries” make any difference? . . .
(Mrs.) Barbara Lefcowitz
Chevy Chase, Maryland
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To the Editor:
Henry Fairlie’s article represents—in a rather urbane voice, to be sure—the glorification of ignorance in dealing with politics: . . . He contents himself with ridiculing, rather than examining, the argument that political power can be wielded for desirable ends.
To leap, as he does, from the recognition that politicians usually operate from day to day, to the judgment that they ought to scorn longer perspectives, is ingenuous. It is harder, braver, more political . . . for us to stick it out in Vietnam, ignoring the costs to ourselves and to the Vietnamese people. The French fought for eight years before the future became the present for them. No point in our trying to figure out what’s going to happen there in the long run or, indeed, even what our interest there is. . . .
And Mr. Fairlie argues that it is the intellectuals who are being ideologicall His worship of Realpolitik is an echo from 32 years ago.
Mitchell Zimmerman
Forrest City, Arkansas
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To the Editor:
One can agree that Lyndon B. Johnson has frequently been accorded unjust treatment at the hands of intellectuals and still find much of Henry Fairlie’s argument absurd. The obvious differences between the talents of politicians and those of intellectuals hardly justify the conclusion that intellectuals can play no productive role in public service. Can “high” politics consist merely of tactical skill, logrolling, and short-range practicality? Are these the sole requisites of progressive government? I think not, and so apparently does Lyndon Johnson. Though his relationship with the intellectual community lacks the romance of the Kennedy years, he nonetheless continues to draw upon that community for ideas and idealism. . . .
Whatever frustrations political involvement inflicts upon the scholar, he is surely not to be condemned for seeking to infuse ideas and ideals into politics. Does Mr. Fairlie really believe that the greatest political service intellectuals could have rendered in the recent past was to support Gold-water Republicanism against the Democratic “Colossus”?
Thomas N. Guinsburg
Department of History
Hunter College
New York City
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To the Editor:
Henry Fairlie’s article was a journalistic high point. . . . Few things I’ve read have ordered and expressed so artfully my intuitions and impressions of a current phenomenon in American politics.
John J. Mccartney, Jr.
Chicago, Illinois
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To the Editor:
. . . The participation of intellectuals in political life is a longstanding tradition in this country which goes back to Thomas Jefferson. Yet before the Kennedy era, politics here was so base (perhaps unlike Mr. Fairlie’s native England) that most intelligent Americans at once laughed at it and were ashamed of it. When some of our nation’s finest minds finally entered politics, their very presence brightened America’s political image throughout the world. Since 1963, that image has begun to fade.
Mr. Fairlie demands that intellectuals stay out of politics because they do not understand its intricacies, especially the complex process of political decision. He therefore chides Hans Morgenthau for taking a stand on Vietnam. Would he also rebuke the ministers who leave their pulpits . . . to enter politics by marching in Selma. or by protesting U.S. bombings of civilians in Vietnam? Should only politicians—but never professors of political science—take a public stand on moral issues? . . .
(Mrs.) Margaret J. Meyer
Los Angeles, California
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To the Editor:
. . . Is variety so important to COMMENTARY as to necessitate this kind of nihilistic dribble?
Charles Singer
Bronx, New York
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To the Editor:
. . . Henry Fairlie’s article has the unmistakable stench of what public relations men call “the plant.” If it wasn’t, in fact, written by the C.I.A., the Pentagon, or the State Department, they certainly cast a long shadow over the author’s typewriter.
There is little need for me to blast away at the article’s specious thesis. Those among your readership who have been more directly attacked will surely do a good job of exposing the article’s flimsy pretense. But I did want to express my personal disgust and disappointment that a magazine I have read all my adult life—and considered one of the nation’s premier journals—allowed itself such a lapse of editorial taste. . . .
Stephen Wertheimer
Maplewood, New Jersey
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To the Editor:
. . . Mr. Fairlie’s recommendation of a separation between the intellectual and political spheres can only further the disillusionment which most intellectuals harbor about politics. . . . Is it too naïve to believe that politicians and intellectuals can work together? . . .
The late President Kennedy was not, to my mind, an “intellectual” either (whatever the term means), yet intellectuals flocked to him. Why? No doubt it did have something to do with his youth, his verve, his “style”—yet I don’t think the intellectuals were duped into thinking he was less of a wheeler-dealer than Johnson. . . . The difference between the Kennedy and Johnson administrations is perhaps best expressed by the difference between the terms “New Frontier” and “Great Society.” Johnson wants the intellectuals behind him as merely another expression of support, another glorious accomplishment. . . . But the “New Frontier,” I think, did really signify to intellectuals the possibility of a reconciliation between the intellectual and the political spheres. . . .
B. Deborah Betron
Cornell University
Ithaca, New York
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To the Editor:
Henry Fairlie’s analysis seems to me inadequate as a realistic appraisal. . . . He asserts, for example, that the politician cannot be concerned with “real” national interests, because this is a grand concept which is impractical in everyday politics. He then supports this thesis with the erroneous assumption that had Churchill been guided by the national interest in 1940, Britain would have immediately sued for peace with Germany. In fact, however, Churchill’s decision to continue the war against Germany did reflect Britain’s national interest. . . .
Edwin K. Winer
Washington, D.C.
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To the Editor:
. . . For all that he may be a “fish out of water,” the contributions of the intellectual to American public life, in positions below the level of the Presidency, have been not inconsiderable. One thinks of James Forrestal, . . . Adlai Stevenson, Henry L. Stimson. . . .
Surely it does not require a Pentagon major general to assess the choices inherent in our policy in the event of a Chinese or North Vietnamese invasion of South Vietnam; it does not require a saint to recognize the brutalities inherent in the methodical bombing and murder of “innocent” and poor Vietnamese; and it does not necessarily require a Secretary of State to visualize the deleterious effects overseas of an American policy which others may consider to be radical and/or extreme. . . .
Jack L. Baumgras
Atlanta, Georgia