Would Like to Hear a Speech by Eldridge' Both Have to Do with the State of the in the United States-Not Excluding the Cleaver
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N tofu Rockwell. who got an ttensive, are prepared to welcome the assassa_ The popular notion is that there is no Ventiiatiott of his views in this magazine. tion of Bobby Kennedy because that' reciprocal obligation by the individual For as long as that kind of thing ltap-t meant one less pig. Their failure to do to the society, that one can accept what- pens. you encourage people to consider that is, in my judgment, a sign of moral ever the patrimony gives us without any as tenable a position that in my judg disintegration. If you have moral disinte- sense of obligation to replenish the meat ought - to be universally rejected as gration, you don't have left a case against common patrimony-that is, without imtenable. The whole idea of civilization Dachau. If you don't have that, what do doing what we can to advance the com- is little by little to discard certain points you have? Make love not war? Why? mon good. This, I think, is what makes of view'as uncivilized; it is impoisible to PLAYBOY: Do you think that a more con-, not only Americans but most Western discover truths without discovering that cetted police attack should be launched I peoples weak. It comforts me that that their opposites are error. In a John against the Panthers? also was the finding of Ortega y Gasset. Stuart Mill-type society-in which any BUCKLEY. I would support a full legal it- PLAYBOY: How does the increasing social view, for so long as it is held by so much tack, with the passage of new laws, if awareness land involvement of young as a single person, is considered as not necessary, as we have clone in other people fit i hto your thesis? yet confuted-you have total intellectual areas. For instance, I don't think we have BUCKLEY: I don't say that somebody who I and social autarchy. enough legal weapons against people! spends the summer in Mississippi trying. PLAYBOY: On the other hand, by publish- who push heroin. People who are prac- to bring rights to black people is prima- ing an interview with a George Lincoln ticed•in the profession of trying to halt rily self-centered, although such, a case Rockwell, one might encourage him to the flow of heroin see themselves as, could be made concerning some young expose the untenability of his views and engaged in a losing fight-primarily people and by using less intricate psycho- thus help discredit both himself and his because by the time the agent can gain logical arguments than, for instance, the philosophy, even, among those who' might liberals fling around to entry to the home or apartment where prove that we are previously have been all sympathizers. he suspects there is a stash of heroin, it racist. I'm talking about the general BUCKLEY: I acknowledge the disease of anomie, A abstract ap- has been flushed down the toilet. The which is the result of peal of the argument, but I remind you so-called no -knock provision of the Presi- people's, by and large, having become that it can be used as an argument for dent's new crime bill was written precise- , deracinated, suspended from any rela- evangelizing people in Nazism, racism or ly to overcome that problem. Now, I tionship to the supernatural and pre- cannibalism, in from the order to fortify one's know-everybody knows-that that pro- historical situation. A opposition to such doctrines. lot of them retreat and think about The trou- vision is capable of abuse . But I think a them- ble is that selves, even exclusively false doctrines do appeal to libertarian ought always to ask himself: about themselves people. In my judgment, -the drug people-the dropouts, it would be a What is the way to maximize liberty? formal others better world where nobody advocated PLAYBOY: In what way does the no-knock and informal. Certain venture utopianism, which, tyranny; better than a world in which law maximize liberty? into as I've said, tyranny necessarily and obviously breeds is advocated as an academic ex- BUCKLEY : Directly . In Manchild in the frustra- tion and despair, conditions ercise intended to fortify the heroic little Promised Land, Claude Brown identifies that some antibodies of them prefer even to drugs. But the to tyranny. heroin as the principal problem in Har- PLAYBOY: lot of them, I think, fail If the evils of a particular doc- lem-not housing, not education, not to come to terms trine are so apparent, what harm is there discrimination not the absence of eco- with the world, fail to come to terms with in the end of life. They have absolutely allowing someone to preach that doc- nomic opportuInity. Heroin. If the heroin trine. no eschatological vision, except a ° 'traffic in Harlem were brought under rhe- BUCKLEY. torical sort of secular utopianism. A re- What is apparent to one man is control, we would see-in his judgment not necessarily apparent to the majority. lated phenomenon: When I was last -a dramatic drop in crime and a lessen- Hider came to power democratically. It's on the Johnny Carson show, he an- ing of those restrictions on freedom that a 19th Century myth to confide totally in nounced to his mass audience, "Well, accompany a high crime rztte. the notion that the licople won't be after all, the reason the Soviet Union PLAYBOY. Would you disagree with for- attracted to the wrong guy. George W,l-' arms is because we arm," the implicit lace, not Nixon or Humphrey, got the mer Attorney General Ramsey Clark's axiom being that there is obviously no highest TV ratings. Take, once more, contention that eliminating poverty is difference between them and us. What the Panthers. There are, I am sure, hurt- the key to redtieing crime? makes it possible for the man who has cireds of thousands of Americans who BUCKLEY: I would. Drug' abuse and crime the largest regular audience of anybody would like to hear a speech by Eldridge' both have to do with the state of the in the United States-not excluding the Cleaver. One reason they would like to ethos; and the ethos is not a function of President-to say blandly something like do so is because they like the excitement, poverty. Consider Portugal or Ireland: that is wave after wave in the intellec- Another is that they like to show off. Poor people don't necessarily commit tual offensive against epistemological I'Voj h: likt• to show 11ieir andadly, their crimes. optiinism, against. tlu: notion that. some cavaIki- toleration of iconoclasts -•-- in.'s PLAYBOY: A few missies af;o, you 1'e- thiligs ;n•c better titan otiit•ts ,tncl that the stnte kind of thing , in a Way, as ferred to the moral disintegration of some we can know what those things are. shouting, " F- Mayor Daley" in a loud Americans. Would you make that a gen- PLAYBOY: Do you think this moral relativ- voice in the middle of a park in Chicago. eral indictment-applicable not only to 1 ism is at least partially a consequence of Moreover, the views expressed by El- those who tolerate the Panthers but to the decline in religious belief? dridge Cleaver , et al., have not been pro- most Americans? BUCKLEY- Yes. In orthodox religious belief. scribed by settled intellectual opinion, BUC,<LEY: Yes. The most conspicuous attri- It's a commonplace that there is no such because, thank God, we have not experi- bute of the 20th Century American is thing as an irreligious society. The need enced in America the kind of holocaust his self-indulgence. In a marvelous book for religion being a part of the nature of that Caucasians visited against the Jews called The Odyssey of the Self-Centered man, people will continue to seek reli- in Germany . I contend that it is a re- Self, Robert Fitch traces the principal gion. You see the Beatles rushing off t sponsibility of the intellectual communi- concerns of civilization through the past listen to the platitudinous homilies o ty to anticipate Dachau rather than to 200 or 300 years; our concerns were, he that Indian quack, Maharishi•what'shi. deplore it . The primary responsibility of says, first predominantly religious, then name, but they'd rather be cauglit deg people who fancy themselves morally predominantly scientific, then humanis- than reading Saint Paul. Young peop sophisticated is to do what they can to tic----and today are essentially egocentric, who have active minds tend to be dissa exhibit their impatience with those who I think that ours is an egocentric ck:iy. isfied with the ersatz religions_tlhey__pi- 11 Y up, oust yet sn formal is the c mporary of a chemical that will prevent ^p• the last catcgnry, he %aid. It will no 0 commitmcsit to agnosticism-or even tion. that will be generally dispcn,cc7.- longer do to attack 1'rntestaul1ism, be- to aihcistll -fhat they absolutely refuse perhaps in the water supply-annd can causc: Protestantism has become 'so ctio- to plumb Christianity's extraordinary res- be readily neutralized by any woman lated is to have no potential for tihock, ervoirs of rationality. I doubt if you who desires to do so. You can't ,hock anybody by making full could get. one of these kids, however PLAYBOY: Should the U. S. volunteer birth of the dogma of the bishop of Wool- desperately in search of religion---who control information and clevices to such wich.