ON THE RIGHT by William F. Buckley, Jr. The ident's sage on state 01 the union was pleasing to Mr. James Reston, a datum which no doubt will send the Dow Jones average up ten points. Much that Mr. Nixon said was, of course, predictable: one hardly expects a message on the state of the union at which a presidentexpresses the hope that the years to crime will usher in war, poverty, and hunger. The meaty sections of the address were a rhetorical flirtation with the notion that the government can do something substantial about the quality of our lives, and the passages concerning our obligations to nature. It is widely accepted that Mr. Nixon has promised to do Something about the quality of our lives, and it is important to examine the question whether he did so, and if so, what he meant by it. Important because there are those of us who believe that the principal mistake made by Lyndon Johnson is enunciating his dream of a great society was precisely in suggesting that the government could utopianize the human condition: that essential human relations and spiritual needs can be looked after by government. It is as obvious that this is not the case as it is obvious that there are people in this country with no material worries of any kind who nevertheless harbor foxes in their bosoms Which drive them to drink, to psychiatrist, or to utter, desperate boredom. Mr. Johnson‘s celebrated speech concerning the shape of the great society seemed to be saying that under Johnson such maladies, which are of the spirit, could be made to go away, presumably elevating them to Cabinet rank. What happened, as they say, is history. is it to improve the “quality" of human life, to do something about pollution 7 the concretely phrased objective of Mr. Nixon’s speech? Perhaps, though it is to stretch the meaning of “quality.” I take it as axiomatic that no one has the right to pollute the Pres- mes- the air I breathe, or the water I drink, and that the latitudinarian habits of a society whose frontier was always bigger than any of us, have finally caught up with us, generating a common revulsion. It is overdue for government to assert its responsibility in these matters. Whoever said it was the responsibility of free enterprise to clean the water or purify the air? Mayor Allotn recently took a shot at Governor Reagan by alluding to the million pounds or whatever of sulphur in the air over Los Angeles every day by private users. To which governor Reagan replied deploring the 70 million pounds of human offal dumped every day into the San Francisco by municipal sewers. An unprofitable dispute, Adam Smith himself, by the extension of his notion that the government is uniquely responsible for public monuments, would surely have accepted the notion that it is governments responsibility to see to it that the people do not despoil the land, depriving future generations of their birthright, What we need to worry about now is the nature of the great bureaucracy which is inevitable going to build up around the ten billion dollar national anti- pollution project. As my friend Mr. William Rusher so adroitly puts it, how much, after the bureaucrats have taken their share, Will actually be left over for the chipmunks? Here is where one hopes that there will be an observable difference between a Republican and a Democratic administration of a project which concededly belongs to the government. The trick, of course, is to lay down the general laws, im- partially, gradually, and let the enforcement oi them be done by the use of private mechanisms, and mechanisms of the lowest feasible unit of government. Mr. Nixon has promised us an elaboration. One looks forward to it eagerly, hoping to find in it accents on local responsibility, and as little as possible of such rhetoric as suggests that natural hygiene will elevate the human condition. Natural hygiene is good because It is good. but it does not follow from it that people SWEDE'S Grinnell Laundry 812 Commercial Welcome Back For Second Seme’rer Remember us for your laundry needs Serving both North and South Campus Agencies Letters . . . sceilc 7 but you wouldn’t know who he was writing about since the son couldn’t print their name, Mother (See you don‘t know who rm talking about, do you?) Yes; you quote the A.A.U,P, which sounds very liberal and all, but, let's face it, Grinncll College has a nasty habit of using “pro- tection of legal interest” for maintaining its status quo. LE, Editors must promise “fairness” to this institution (no criticism?) And what about the othcr nine or so pages of guidelines Grinnell editors are expected to agree to even before application? Who writes these? 7 not the students, but the faculty, Yes, there is facility and administration domi- nation. Here, and with the faculty “professional advisor" who has extra powers about the student: faculty committee — to recom- mend editors and to initiate their dismissal. And if the committee is dead-locked, guess who casts Cont. on P. 5 ARNOLD'S SHOES Home of Boots, Boots, Boots . . . Justin Boots Texas Boots Red Wing Boots Dingle Strap Boots Crepe Soled Boats Western Dress Boats —_ will become happy, any more than it follows from the conJition of a hospital that its inhabitants, carried away by the quality of a local condition, will die happy. I. That Ahrv It" the only Pixu mgiitit A WORD EDGEWISE by John P. Roche The conserr vative case for an essentially isolationist for eign policy is on its lace very strong. It rests on the - proposition that remarkably few things mid happen in this World which would vitally affect our national inter ests. We Should therefore disengage behind, in Walter Lipp- mann's phrase, ”blue water.” A few solid commitments would remain: the Monroe Doctrine is usually taken for granted, and we Would retain alliances with insular powers such as Japan, Britain, Australia, etc. Outside of Latin America, we would View with friendly disinterest events in the developing world. What concern of ours is it whether the black tribe or the white prevails in Rhodesia? Whether Com- munists or non»Communists in Vietnam? Arabs or Jews in Israel? If one extracts moralism as a basic component of foreign policy, the conservatives are impregnable. 0ur continental fortress is only vulnerable to the Soviet Union, but for 25 years the U.S.S.R. has been hoping that the us. would agree to a spheres-of- influence division of the world. If We settled for the Western Hemisphere, Britain and Western Europe, Japan and Australia, and abandoned moralism (that is, the Cold War) the sources of conflict with Russia would presumably vanish. In short, the two super powers would go about their bus- iness in their own baliwicks. (If the New Left historians are correct in asserting that the Cold War arose from American pro- vocations, this should bring detente in short order; here, as elsewhere. the New Left provides conservative advance men .) The high priest of this view of national interest is the dis- tinguished historian and diplomat, George F. Kennan. Back in 1951, Kennan presented the essence of his position in a little book that was a tour de force, “American Diplomacy.” With a surgeon’s scalpel, Kennan opened up American 20th century Did You Know: bio on Tuud-y x. Thai Ahrv specinIixox in win, piping—list delivery w.dii.id.y through Monday. 3 That Ahrv trio: :1 hard as ho cln to get than on time on Tuudayx, ton. BUT SOMETIMES WE GET BEHIND. ISN'T IT WORTH WAITING FOR US JUST A LITTLE 0N TUESDAYS? YOU KNOW IT IS! Ahrvuno’s Pizza TOM l- IETI'E GAIIISON 136-5111 diplomacy and found it to be sufr iering from a pervasive malig nancy: Moralism 7 or, in his precise formulation, “the legal- isticrmoralistic approach to international problems.” With regard to Japan for ex— ample, Kennan‘s tightly argued thesis was that an intelligent approach might have avoided Pearl Harbor. But failing to appreciate the forces that drove the Japanese to expand, and carried away by sentimental attachment for China, we “hacked away, year after year, decade after decade" at the Japanese encroachment on the Asian mainland. “Had we been over a long period of time more circumspect in our attitudes towards the Japanese, more conv siderate of the requirements of their position," he wrote, “there was a possibility that the course of events might have been altered.” When we disregarded “power realities in the Orient,” we bought unnecessary trouble. Kennan’s central argument is proloundly pessimistic. Most of our interventions, he suggests, have created problems greater than those they were designed to meet. This was inevitable, per- haps, because they are founded on moralism, the crusading fervor, rather than on rational calculation of real interests. In fact, we cannot shape the world to our ideals, we cannot alter history; thus he observed that “the great misfortune of the West, i suspect, was not Hitler but the weakness of German society which n. "é possible his triumph.” This leads one to assume a spectator role in the world 7 except where vital interests are at stake, say in Latin America. (Lippmann, for example, sup- ported our action in the‘Domini- can Republic in 1965, while con- demning Vietnam, because the Western Hemisphere is vital and Southeast Asia trivial.) It is an argument with great intrinsic appeal to the American people — who, after all, did not go to war with Nazi Germany until Adolf Hitler declared war on us 7 but for the last 25 years the moralists have held the initiative. Then came Vietnam and the desertion of the liberal in- tellectuals, which will be examined in a later column. College Names Kurt Vonnegut us Commencement Speaker President Leggett announced Wednesday that Kurt Vonnegut has accepted an invitation to speak at commencement this year. Vonnegut, formerly the director of the Writer‘s Workshop at me University of Iowa, presently resides in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. Though he has written a number of short stories and magazine articles, he is most widely known for his novels. Perhaps his most famous work is Cat's Cradle. Among his other works are: Slaughterhouse Five. The Sirens of “(an and God Bless Yo“. Mr. Rosewater.