Cruising Speed

by Cruising Speed- A Documentary (epub)

  Such a letter reminds me of how infrequently one finds the journalistically relevant opportunity to make a simple profession of faith—of how overbearing fashion is in these matters. Who, for instance, can remember a single utterance, by Robert Kennedy, say, concerning his faith in Christianity? I mention Kennedy without aspersion of any kind—on the contrary; because his foes and his friends agreed that he felt deeply, and it is at least the public understanding that he was not merely a practicing Catholic but a believing Christian. And he was not afraid to avow his passions, his idealisms. But would he have thought it, well, proper, to cite the passage above from Benjamin Franklin, let alone from a more orthodox Christian? The best I have ever done (not counting my book on Yale, which was in part devoted to documenting the studied disparagement of religion in the curriculum), is to be on the prowl for opportunities to notice the existence of Christianity: such an opportunity came for instance a year or so ago...

  The doings of The Beatles (I wrote from London) are minutely recorded here in England and, as a matter of fact, elsewhere, inasmuch as it is true what one of the Beatle gentlemen said in 1966, namely, that they are more popular than Jesus Christ. It is a matter of considerable public interest that all four of The Beatles have gone off to a place called Rishikesh, in India, to commune with one Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

  The reigning chic stipulates that Mysterious India is where one goes in order to Have a Spiritual Experience. Accordingly, The Beatles are there, as also Mia Farrow, who, having left Frank Sinatra, is understandably in need of spiritual therapy; and assorted other types including, the press reports, a space physicist who works for General Motors. It isn’t altogether clear what is the drill at Rishikesh, except that—and this visibly disturbed a couple of business managers of The Beatles—a postulant at the shrine of Mr. Yogi is expected to contribute a week’s salary as an initiation fee. A week’s salary may not be very much for thee and me, but it is a whole lot of sterling for a Beatle, and one gathers from the press that the business managers thought this a bit much and rather wish that The Beatles could find their spiritual experience a little less dearly.

  The wisdom of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi is not rendered in easily communicable tender. It is recorded by one disciple that he aroused himself from a trance sufficiently to divulge the sunburst, ‘Ours is an age of science, not faith,’ a seizure of spiritual exertion which apparently left him speechless with exhaustion. It is reported that The Beatles were especially transfigured when the Maharishi divulged, solemnly, that ‘speech is just the progression of thought.’ One can assume that the apogee of their experience was reached upon learning, from the guru’s own mouth, that ‘anything that comes from direct experience can be called science.’ It is a wonder that the entire population of the world has not gravitated towards the cynosure capable of such insights . . . (And then my pitch—)

  I am not broke, but I think that if I were, I would repair to India, haul up a guru’s flag, and—I guarantee it—I would be the most successful guru of modern times. I would take The Beatles’ weekly salary, and Mia Farrow’s, and the lot of them, and I would come up with things like—listen ...

  “Put on therefore, as the elect of God, holy and beloved, bowels of mercies, kindness, humbleness of mind, meekness, long-suffering; forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any; even as . . . forgave you, so also do ye. And above all these things put on charity, which is the bond of perfectness. And let the peace of God rule in your hearts, to the which also ye are called in one body; and be thankful.” To the especially worldly, I would say: “Walk in wisdom toward them that are without, redeeming the time. Let your speech be always with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may know how ye ought to answer every man.” Can it be imagined that I would be less successful, quoting these lines from a single letter of St. Paul, than Maharishi Mahesh Fakir has been? The truly extraordinary feature of our time isn’t the faithlessness of the Western people; it is their utter, total, ignorance of the Christian religion. They travel to Rishikesh to listen to pallid seventh-hand imitations of thoughts and words they never knew existed. They will go anywhere to experience spiritually— except next door. An Englishman in search of a spiritual experience need go no farther than to hear Evensong at King’s College at Cambridge, or high mass at Chartres Cathedral; or read St. Paul, or John, or the psalmists. Read a volume by Chesterton—The Everlasting Man, Orthodoxy, The Dumb Ox—and the spiritual juices begin to run, but no; Christianity is, well—well what? Well, unknown ...

  That kind of thing is better done, by far, by Malcolm Muggeridge; but notice—have you noticed?—the smiles of condescension when, as so often it does, the Christianization of Muggeridge comes up in conversation? Bringing to mind the awful accuracy of Canon Bernard Iddings Bell’s observation, twenty years ago, that to the extent that Christianity is suffered in the modern world, it is thought of simply as “an innocuous pastime, preferred by a few to golf or canasta.” My guest is here, and I go downstairs to greet Otto von Habsburg.

  I have known him, off and on, for quite a few years, and he has once or twice written for National Review, usually in defense of de Gaulle, whom, he insisted, we diligently misunderstood. He is technically the heir to the thrones of Austria and Hungary, though he had to renounce his claim to the Austrian throne in order to enter Austria, from which he had been exiled. He lives now in Bavaria with his large family, and makes his living as a journalist, author, scholar, and lecturer (in six languages). He is tall and thin, balding and mustachioed, and there is a trace of sadness in his courtly movements. He is a man of startling good manners, rising even when you re-enter the room, declining to sit down until you have yourself done so, yet accomplishing it all without giving off a drillmasterish pall, or appearing in any way unnatural. I sense that he has something concrete on his mind to discuss because at the time we fixed the date, many weeks ago, he prolonged his return to Austria by one day in order to fit in the lunch.

  We chatter along—his grasp of the politics of almost every country in the world is extraordinary—but we do not come to grips with any single subject. Until I mention, over coffee, the estimate given to me last spring in Yugoslavia: that in the event the Russians attempted to overrun the country, Yugoslav guerrillas could, with what the militia now knows, tie down a million Russian soldiers indefinitely; after all hadn’t they, under more straitened circumstances, tied down one-half million Nazi troops during the entire war? He contradicts me sharply. The difference, he points out, is this: the resistance, during the Second World War, harmonized with forces outside Yugoslavia which were determined to conquer the Nazis and had the resources to do so. That is what kept the resistance alive. No, he said, it won’t be that way when, as is probable not long after the death of Tito, the Russians, opportunizing on the inevitable regional strife within Yugoslavia, decide to extend the Brezhnev Doctrine, and overrun Roumania, Yugoslavia, and, while they are at it, Albania. Yes, there would be resistance, but inasmuch as it is predictable that the West would not go to war to help Yugoslavia, and that nothing short of the threat of war would stay the Russians, the prospects for Yugoslavia are gloomy.

  I ask after his flight, since it is now three-thirty, and he rises, telling me that he expects that his car is now waiting for him outside. We go out together, the car isn’t there. He insists that he will wait alone for it outside my door, which is preposterous. So we walk around the block, and find, on returning, an enormous Mercedes limousine, which he busily assures me is not his, but a friend’s who has obligingly put it at his disposal. We shake hands again, warmly, he is a lovely man. I still do not know whether I have been vetted for some specific purpose, but I did receive, a few weeks later, a letter from Otto, asking whether I would join a very small organization that meets two or three times a year, in Europe usually, but sometimes in America, to discuss deeply, and off the record, public policies affecting the future of the West.

  Back to my study. Several months ago two men, on
e of them Pat Moynihan’s brother, approached me asking if I would write directly to Colonel Papadopoulos to intercede in behalf of a Greek editor, cousin to the second of the men who came to my office. He has been sentenced to several years in prison not even for calling for the regime’s overthrow in his newspaper, but for violating what struck me as an insubstantial part of the junta’s censorship law. Why me? Because Colonel Papadopoulos could not suspect that I was a Communist plot. I told them that two years earlier I had been greatly amused, on being presented to Papadopoulos in Athens, at hearing from him, during the fifteen minutes we spent together, a sermon on the evils of Communism. I remember that he seemed smug, yet somehow a little unsettled. The papers that morning reported that in the wake of the general strike in France, President Charles de Gaulle had suddenly left the country for Germany—to resign, it was surmised; in fact, it transpired, he left in order to nail down the French army’s loyalty, which he succeeded in doing at the price of promising amnesty for the generals and colonels still in jail for their revolutionary opposition to de Gaulle’s Algerian policies a few years earlier. Papadopoulos referred contemptuously to the effects of the breakdown of even such a stabilized democracy as Charles de Gaulle had written into the constitution of the Fifth French Republic; but Papadopoulos could not know—nobody could know during those few days—just what it was that was going on in France; and might it—as in 1848—sweep the whole of Europe? Indeed, the world? Four days later Robert Kennedy was shot down.

  Anyway, Papadopoulos has not replied, as I expected he would not, and the question now is, should we try other approaches? I write to Mr. Moynihan, to ask his advice ... A letter from Corinna Marsh, whom I have never met. She is rumored to be 80 years old, in which case I cannot imagine what she did to her correspondents when she was 20. She is a tireless liberal, but writes always with a wink in her eye that softens her militant indignation. And she will acknowledge trans-ideological decencies, which just every now and then—rarely, but occasionally—she discerns in me, and mine. “Before I say anything else, I must and do congratulate the Buckley family on Brother Jim’s victory, although [she will not even allow herself to end the sentence, and postpone her misgivings until the next one. That would suggest appeasement!] it does sadden me that such a ‘moderate and cultivated man’ owes his election so largely to immoderate and uncultivated members of what I am pleased to call the Stupid Majority. I do wish (as I wished in re Stevenson when he ran against Eisenhower), that the quality of votes could be weighed instead of merely the percentages. However, I suppose the Republic will survive and I do congratulate the Buckleys on what I’m sure you consider a patriotic triumph. (Ah, sincerity, what sins have been committed in thy name!) Ambivalently yours, Corinna” . . . Julie Kenner, daughter of the author and critic Hugh Kenner, will be graduating from college in June, and is interested “in virtually any job in the journalism or publishing fields.” I ask her to be a little more specific, and suggest that if she desires practice in writing, National Review is not a good place to go, because our stuff is, with the exception of the editorial pages, written outside the office, giving little scope to beginners ... A graduate student doing a master’s thesis on Orestes Brownson, whom he obligingly identifies, “(1803-1876), an American political philosopher well recognized by his contemporaries as an outstanding contributor to American intellectual life in the 19th century,” needs financial aid. I write and ask him to answer the questions the Projects Committee of the American Historical Research Foundation, of which I am chairman, will want the answers to ... A kind and literate and witty vice president of a San Francisco advertising firm writes me, in reply to a question about the difficulties Firing Line has in getting commercial sponsors.

  First, by way of responding, an anecdote. Perhaps four years ago, when I occupied a lower position in our corporate hierarchy, I suggested to management that our company underwrite the cost of Firing Line for our local educational station. As I recollect, this cost was $300, which entitled the underwriter to a fair-sized plug both fore and aft of the hour. I argued that such an expenditure made good business sense in light of the quality of the audience and the favorable reaction it would doubtless provoke towards the underwriter. Management, which I would describe as Nixon-moderate with Agnew tendencies, was initially surprised that I, as the company’s resident com-symp better-red-than-dead pinko, would even come forth with such a notion. I explained that a fundamental tenet of my Pinkoism was toleration and encouragement of other points-of-view, etc., etc., thereby unsettling them a bit more. Ultimately, this particular management group decided against the proposal, for the never-articulated reason that “Buckley’s too damn controversial and even though we agree with most of his views, we don’t think it makes good business sense to tell the world of our position.” In other words, never never never take a public position, for fear of alienating a potential customer.

  So be it. The point of the anecdote: businessmen in general seem to fear any overt alliance with matters controversial; and ad men in general seem to fear offending clients who have this fear. Hence, it’s not often that an ad man says to his client, “Hey, Joe, I’ve got a great media idea. We’ll sponsor Firing Line. Great ratings. Great cost efficiency. Great viewer involvement. Great. Huh? That’s right. Yeah, Buckley’s show. Gee, do you really think so? Sure. Whatever you say. Listen, Joe, no offense, huh, I mean. What are you doin’ for lunch? I know a great place. Topless. Great.” (Everything in American business is “great”.) Now, this bit of paranoia is certainly hyperbolic, it’s also my personal opinion, prejudice, hunch, whatever. Treat it as such.

  American business. It was never obvious to me, when Firing Line began, why an advertiser who “associated” himself with it should be branded as sympathetic to my views, rather than those of my guests, who are, 95 per cent of the time, men with whom I disagree: but I resolved that the effort to get advertisements for National Review was quite enough to keep lit within me the general contempt I feel for the American businessman’s efforts in the defense of American capitalism. (“The trouble with socialism is socialism,” Willi Schlamm once observed; “the trouble with capitalism is capitalists.”) Although on the whole I find liberals a hardier, more daring breed, there are many among them who are ambushed if you test their theoretical approval of the ventilation of all points of view. I had fun with Arthur Schlesinger Jr. earlier this year: “Dear Arthur: I hope that Mr. Steibel [the producer of Firing Line] inaccurately reported a conversation with you concerning a proposed appearance on Firing Line. He told me that you declined to appear on the program because you do not want to ‘help’ my program, and you do not want to increase my influence, although to be sure you hope that the program survives. It seems to me that the latter desire is by definition vitiated by the initial commitment. If all the liberals who have appeared on Firing Line reasoned similarly, it would necessarily follow that the program would cease to exist—or is it your position that other liberals should appear on the program, but that you should not? And I should have thought it would follow from your general convictions that a public exchange with me would diminish, rather than increase, my influence. And anyway, the general public aside, shouldn’t you search out opportunities to expose yourself to my rhetoric and wit? How else will you fulfill your lifelong dream of emulating them? Yours cordially.”

  The last was a fresh (rancid?) re-exploitation of the most unguarded sentence Schlesinger ever spoke. It was at a public debate with me, ten years ago, at which he spoke the words: “Mr. Buckley has a facility for rhetoric which I envy, as well as a wit which I seek clumsily and vainly to emulate.” A year or so later I scooped them up, and stuck them, unadorned, on the jacket of my new book, and waited for all hell to break loose; which it did, telephone calls, telegrams, threats of a lawsuit. I saw Arthur at a party the next year, and told him that the deadline for the blurb for my next book was April 15, but that if he didn’t have time to compose a fresh one, I’d use the old one, which was after all hard to improve u
pon. Arthur is my Alsop . . . My war against the irrational practices of the airlines is going very well. Three years ago, I got Eastern Airlines to offer wine on flights to Florida (they said the flight wasn’t long enough, but that if I would fly Eastern to El Paso, I could have wine), and that was a tough one. It was war a outrance, with postcards to the president written from aboard National Airlines flights to Miami, while sipping National’s wine. And then one day an enormous basket of delicacies arrived at my office, with the note, “We surrender—Eastern Airlines.” My current war is with BOAC, which decided that the only way to catch hijackers is to prevent passengers from coming aboard with more than a single piece of hand-luggage, no matter that you are willing to check in two hours ahead of time, giving BOAC officials ample time to remove the hand grenades from your briefcases. I have won that one, my correspondent tells me . . .

  The column on BOAC has elicited one of those rare acts of intellectual chivalry so seldom done, in the polemical world. It is from a well-known Harvard sociologist. “This is a long delayed fan letter, specifically occasioned by today’s Boston Globe piece of how you transferred from BOAC to TWA and got your hand luggage on.

  “I originally meant to write this letter maybe a year ago, when you reported Tom Hoving’s blast at Vice President Agnew in the name of an organization of which I was a Board member. Since he never informed me of that press release, and since it seemed to me to disagree completely with the line of the organization, I resigned. This as you may see is rather more influence than most columnists have on their readers.