Nixon, Berman & Garment on National Endowment for the Humanities

2:54:59Well, how are you?
2:55:01It's nice to see you.
2:55:03Let's do a picture of the two of us together.
2:55:09Let's put your character out here.
2:55:19Last time, our next group, these are only intellectuals.
2:55:28We're very fortunate.
2:55:55I don't mean that it's your job, but I think it's our job because we've got to
2:56:18I mean, when we got a good man to do a job, I believe.
2:56:24Why don't you tell me what you think, what we can do to help?
2:56:26What do you think is worthwhile?
2:56:28I don't know.
2:56:29The other thing, and I read some of my more conservative publications and critics, because
2:56:35We had created a post on certain European books.
2:56:37We're sort of in the middle, which is all right.
2:56:40Anyway, if they raise hell about any kind of subsidy of the arts, arts and humanities, et cetera, as you know, and a pretty good case can be made against it if you see what happens to totally subsidized art, as we saw it became.
2:56:56On the other hand, it seems to me that in this instance,
2:57:01if we can avoid going over that brink to a government-controlled activity, then maybe we'll have the best of both worlds.
2:57:13I think we're... How do you feel about it?
2:57:15I think we're on the way to...
2:57:17making the best deal we can.
2:57:20Remember, there really are two kinds of constituency as far as arts and humanities are concerned.
2:57:25I think, frankly, arts support comes from people who are, you know, in a high status, always fired at us.
2:57:33I do it for that reason, sure.
2:57:35Well, all sorts of things.
2:57:36A lot of people do it for that reason.
2:57:39It's true.
2:57:45to prove something, learn something.
2:57:47In other words, how can you get burned a few times by a few fakes and all of a sudden become experts on the arts, huh?
2:57:55I agree with you.
2:57:56That's the biggest of .
2:57:58And that's the kind of supporters of the arts, I guess, are generally people who are kind of visible in the culture.
2:58:04They're well-heeled.
2:58:08the papers report that are going on.
2:58:11But we've uncovered a kind of new constituency for the humanities, which feels, and they've always felt, a little bit hostile toward dilettantes and connoisseurs.
2:58:20I think you could call this the kind of moderate skeleton, the backbone of people in the House of Representatives, for example.
2:58:29A lot of young, very ordinary Republican congressmen who have traditional middle-class attachments, not to art, but to learning, to learning interests.
2:58:38Art is something to do and keep down there.
2:58:41But it's a very American, I think it's a very middle American, I'm here out in the Midwest, that you should really do the show.
2:58:49I'm originally from New York, but I've worked in the Midwest down there for some years.
2:58:55And there's a tremendous constituency based on this old American respect, not to say reverence, for education and what it will do for you.
2:59:04It's not that, and it's really not all pragmatic.
2:59:08I think middle Americans feel the way about education, that the kind of upper-cross people feel about art, which is, it's in itself virtuous, it's a good thing.
2:59:19And so we have a lot of support there, I'm very happy to say.
2:59:21I think in the long run, humanity's support may be, as a matter of fact, more efficacious than art support, because it's not a constituency, it's middle American constituencies.
2:59:32To them, we represent education.
2:59:34We represent, really, the future, whereas Archonet is something, it's hard to understand.
2:59:39It's an entertainment thing.
2:59:41Yeah, yeah, yeah.
2:59:43Ron, I think the President might be interested in some of the program ideas that you've developed to flesh this out.
2:59:48Yeah, there are two audiences for the National Endowment.
2:59:52One has got to be professional, although a lot of people resent this.
2:59:55I think there is congressional opposition, for example.
2:59:58to giving away large carloads of money to professors.
3:00:02I think we have to keep this up, because it's like basic research in science.
3:00:07But we're moving with much more emphasis into public programs now, by any age.
3:00:13And through movies, especially designed for television, I want to get as much of a public audience as possible.
3:00:20If my whole thesis is right about middle class support for education as a good in itself, then I agree with you.
3:00:31Then we have to do something about it.
3:00:35So I'm putting as many millions as I can lay my hands on.
3:00:43series that I think you or I would really like to see, or that anyone would really like to see.
3:00:50For example, you probably know how hard it is to have access to a really good seminal art that says something to you, like .
3:01:01They appear once in America, and they evaporate.
3:01:06Obviously, they're not X-rated pictures.
3:01:11and they put in storage.
3:01:14My idea is to get these things out and put in series, very much like... Do something for me, would you?
3:01:20That's a small thing.
3:01:23One very personal.
3:01:25I don't...
3:01:26I've never seen all this.
3:01:29It's a terrible thing.
3:01:36The other day, I mean, now let's see if we can get by with him.
3:01:48the most worth seeing.
3:01:53You mentioned those passing on.
3:01:5410 or 15.
3:01:55That's exactly what we're planning.
3:01:56I bet that where I can tell them I can speak on the column and I can see those movies, I particularly like the biographical, the historical, the rather than Midnight Cowboy and some of the other stuff.
3:02:14I couldn't agree more.
3:02:17And someone that had really tremendous performance just doesn't sell.
3:02:25And we want to risk it.
3:02:26But our idea is, in a way, is focused.
3:02:28I mean, that's an advantage.
3:02:29You see, we're going to put these out in a series like that.
3:02:32A hand-dozen Olympiad pictures on Shakespeare.
3:02:35We'll go on a program that brings the American, in some sense, to Elizabethan England.
3:02:38Now, this doesn't seem to be a red-hot seller until you look at Elizabeth Regina on what it's doing on TV to American audiences.
3:02:45It's amazing, huh?
3:02:47It's enjoying just tremendous people.
3:02:49And it really is.
3:02:50Yes, that's true.
3:02:51Because I think the issues, but finally, the issues in Shakespearean play are the issues of Elizabeth Regina.
3:02:57Of the BBC.
3:02:59Oh, of the BBC.
3:03:00Yes.
3:03:00So you're going to put that in a white house so we can see it in a white house.
3:03:07Yes.
3:03:07We had such lousy movies that they could pick from.
3:03:11But does that mean when you talk about the .
3:03:18You do .
3:03:18You do .
3:03:25Well, we have to stick to the humanities themselves.
3:03:29So it has to be something dealing with history or literature.
3:03:35My idea, for example, is to also put on some of the great comedies.
3:03:44They're easily put on film, they're easily put on TV.
3:03:46I think we want to see some great Shakespearean comedies and other things.
3:03:52But the drama in this country suffers from the same kind of ideological bias as a lot of the other media, I'm sure.
3:04:00I'll say, sometimes even more.
3:04:07But now, apart from the drama, what, for example, do you do in the field?
3:04:13People who write the narrative, I think.
3:04:25Speaking of good biographies, good history, et cetera.
3:04:31I have to brag a little about this, because this month we've received a tremendous load of reviews of two things exactly in that line.
3:04:40One is what they say is about the year's best documentary produced by the Wright Brothers.
3:04:45which is not just about flying, but about how around 1900, there's kind of something in the universe of national education television that's funded by us.
3:04:55See, we've done this.
3:04:57And it's a story of how there were certain qualities in American life at the turn of the century, kind of optimism, a kind of conviction that you could master the material world.
3:05:09But that's really come across in this film.
3:05:11So the Orville and Wilbur Wright are put across as philosophers who kind of sum up the dominant American spirit around this time.
3:05:21A second is on writers themselves.
3:05:23Lorraine Hansberry, who was the author of A Raisin in the Sun, kind of middle-class Negro lady, not very great intellectual pretensions, but good, good, solid playwright.
3:05:35I think she's enjoyable.
3:05:37We wrote a movie of her called To the Young Gifted in Black, which is just super, and it's got a whole book full of writers.
3:05:45I think you might enjoy seeing some of these.
3:05:49We are precisely in a biopsy ranking good as part of our mandate.
3:05:55You know, the field of sports is in person, so we are very moving, and it relates to the time, so we're going to have to get rid of it.
3:06:08We're going to have to get rid of it.
3:06:12But I thought of the motion picture that was on ABC,
3:06:19Brian's song.
3:06:22Did you see that?
3:06:23Yes.
3:06:24I read that.
3:06:26It's probably called Piccolo.
3:06:28It's a character.
3:06:31It's a well.
3:06:32Did you see it?
3:06:34My son saw it and was so moved by it.
3:06:37There's a lot of really great music.
3:06:39I think they're a great piece.
3:06:40I'd like you to, you can get it over here.
3:06:42Yes, sir.
3:06:43I'll tell you what you do.
3:06:44Get it, I feel told to do it, but get it.
3:06:46Sure.
3:06:46It's good.
3:06:47It's good.
3:06:47It's practically, it's good television.
3:06:51I mean, it's good entertainment.
3:06:52It's good to read wonderful stories.
3:06:56And perhaps in terms of race relations, it's the most subtle.
3:07:00They're not being a message.
3:07:01They're possibly, you know, it's good to come to investing.
3:07:04And I don't know who produced it, but apparently this is true.
3:07:08Maybe ABC played the production, but it was on television, as I recall.
3:07:13It was on television, but it was an ABCN show.
3:07:15It was playing in Chicago, and it was picked up.
3:07:17And I just happened to see it, so somebody called me and showed up there, and I went to see it, and so on and so on.
3:07:28But if you heard, they were encouraging young talent writers and so forth to do better than they can.
3:07:35And that's what I said to the president.
3:07:38Actually, what we're trying to do is not really encourage the creation of things so much as a little wider audience.
3:07:52I mean, somebody writes a great novel or a great biography or something of that sort, and nobody cares, then it doesn't matter.
3:08:04I'm begging the audience.
3:08:05In other words, I don't know if I started a good thing to put him up.
3:08:08I couldn't agree more.
3:08:10It'd be hard for me to stimulate a great novel, but I can tell the American public about how great novels come about.
3:08:15You know, I see.
3:08:17I see.
3:08:17You couldn't stand it.
3:08:17You should come to the house.
3:08:24I was just glad to be here.
3:08:25Read me one slide.
3:08:37You know, Wells' outline, if it has one central theme, is that education is the answer to problems.
3:08:50That is, if societies become better educated, that's good.
3:08:55They will not have war, they will have more prosperity, et cetera.
3:09:00to be more rational and so forth.
3:09:03Perhaps looking at the line, perhaps the educator society is just finding ways to kill each other.
3:09:14But nevertheless, I was reading a section in the beginning of the French Revolution, and his vivid descriptions, I must say, borrow Carlisle to a certain extent,
3:09:28You see, if you can just sit here.
3:09:51He had a terrible skin disease, and he had to sit in a hot bath in order to be able to concentrate and write.
3:10:08He was sitting in his bath, writing.
3:10:14And of course, his speeches.
3:10:16That's Pierre.
3:10:21The whole story, the fighting point about all three, we talked about the, the most important one is that Mike, that Mike looked very well with the spankings, so these were handled in the lower half of the box, and not part of the, certainly the broilers, but each of them was in its way a, maybe he wouldn't have called them intellectual giants, but they had,
3:10:50rather outstanding intellectual capabilities.
3:10:53They were also people who were extremists, they were fanatics, they were jurists, and of course, eventually, they discouraged one another.
3:11:07But I was thinking, I read about those three, that you wanted to have another, we do so much, you know, the various great, our own background in the British system,
3:11:20Now, of course, it's quite common that we see a lot about the Russian Revolution and so forth and so on.
3:11:33But I don't know anything that's been done recently on the French Revolution.
3:11:38Up to the time of Napoleon, I mean, stuff has been done on Napoleon.
3:11:42And I saw something recently that was very
3:11:46or Waterloo or something, but it just didn't get enough.
3:11:53But a great motion picture, in my opinion, this is what made Patton a great movie.
3:11:59It wasn't the war that made the movie, it was the man.
3:12:02You could see Patton with allies in our area coming on stage, and what kind of a man he was.
3:12:08You could see Montgomery, and you could also see Bradley, and it was the, just as the book was a description of the man, it was effective.
3:12:21take that and take some of the men, take those three men,
3:12:40It'd be bloody, but a lot of people want blood.
3:12:45How do you see it grow?
3:12:48But on the other hand, it was an event that had more effect.
3:12:56And it's hard for us as Americans to realize this in the American Revolution because of its effect on the whole of the crown.
3:13:05That's a very good reference.
3:13:06It would make a very good reference.
3:13:09It's so interesting.
3:13:10It's so different.
3:13:11Yeah, from that, Dan Ponson did a strong figure in the great order.
3:13:16That's a great little guy.
3:13:19It's a deadly little name.
3:13:20Yeah.
3:13:21But on the other hand, totally honest.
3:13:25And of course, it's totally crazy.
3:13:28But what a fascinating subject it is.
3:13:30Particularly, it will then relate to present revolutionary activities such as, when is the revolution good, when is the revolution bad?
3:13:39And it's already been determined that Wells thought it was good, which on balance, on balance, even though it
3:13:50But it's that, when I think of the kind of drill we have to see on television, and I think of the lousy movies that are coming out, honestly, I don't, I mean, I like a good racist movie or this or that or the other things, maybe a nice musical and the rest, but everything should be deadly serious and gory and the rest, but Cotter is a place for something that really is the message so much.
3:14:14It's the fact that it really is great theater and
3:14:21And the greatest really is not really taking, is not making, as so often we do, is to take Spaceman 19 or 2040, something that is unreal, take something out of our total experience.
3:14:40You have potential subjects there that
3:14:45It's a very ironic thing that, in this case, the government will be moving more and more toward freedom and diversity, whereas the commercial movies are moving more and more toward a kind of clique, coterie type of...
3:14:58Satisfying other people.
3:14:59Yes, it's one kind of same thing after another.
3:15:02I know.
3:15:02They get to the rocks a little bit.
3:15:07They say, oh God, this is the thing this year.
3:15:10And...
3:15:11And then it just goes over and over and over again.
3:15:17President's comments on the French Revolution put me in mind of what we were discussing in my office just before you came over, Ron.
3:15:23The problem now of the intellectuals and the expectation of actuality is in the very... What current...
3:15:30I'll pick up the...
3:15:43As I said, if I were a writer, or if I were to do a project, and I wanted to make a great movie, it would have to be one of those long ones.
3:15:59What a movie it could make, I don't know whether it could be done.
3:16:03I mean, a character in a translation.
3:16:04I would follow John Deere around, particularly if it's a man, maybe one man.
3:16:08How would you do it?
3:16:09I would follow your first kind of intuitive insight into the fact that there's Burke on the one side and Carlisle on the other.
3:16:16Hasn't it weighed in on the left?
3:16:17Where else will it?
3:16:18The progressivist is seen in a blessed event commensurate, let's say, with the Immaculate Conception.
3:16:24And you have to go all the way through this whole gamut of responses and see exactly how many times you've used this revolution in your life.
3:16:31One interesting thing is that Burke saw it so often against one side of humanity.
3:16:36It talks about how everything went down.
3:16:40I think the other side, you see Wells making the point that, well, during the period of the terror, so there were 4,000, 4,500, like that many of which were innocent.
3:16:55And he said that, and yet, and this is, of course, I think it's a very valid point.
3:17:08He said we have to remember that, well, that was a terrible thing, that more were killed in the first day of the Battle of Islam on the British side in 1916
3:17:24So that proves something.
3:17:25I can't be persuaded, but I can understand it all.
3:17:27See, that's the way it is now.
3:17:30You can't reverse it, so the battle is on its turn.
3:17:33But it's going to be in the casualties.
3:17:41We talked about 3,400,000 to 3,000,000.
3:17:51When he talks about 4,000 or 5,000 people, one would have liked to have been around and said, Mr. Wells, how many people have died in the best seal in order to bring about this revolution?
3:18:00The answer would, of course, would have been practically none.
3:18:03One of the things we're going to have, the damn best seal, the...
3:18:09The so-called revisionist historians, the ones who rewrite history of the last generation, very, very good.
3:18:23And their whole point has been that the French Revolution has exacerbated and exaggerated
3:18:32has been exaggerated by modern intellectuals for a very important reason.
3:18:35Modern intellectuals like to look back to the French Revolution, because at that time, men of the sort you described, like Benjamin, got power.
3:18:45So it's a crucial thing for modern intellectuals.
3:18:50And one of the hardest things it is for us to try and cope with, I think myself, is being in the university.
3:18:56One of the hardest things to do is to cope with the willpower of intellectuals that they have.
3:19:01Well, they have it as a matter of fact, when you consider what really motivates most people to breathe down.
3:19:13And it's the hypocrisy that turns me on.
3:19:16And I don't want anybody to be in favor of the violence.
3:19:21Just be slowly.
3:19:32This is an historical book.
3:19:35When I was talking to him, right after this, he said,
3:20:00But he was comparing the two women, Mrs. Condie and Mrs. Meyer, both of whom he both knew.
3:20:08And I had seen both of them in the last month.
3:20:12And as he had, which was at one of the greats, and he said, look, there's another lady that I want to see.
3:20:20Mrs. Mayer.
3:20:22She's tough, she's ruthless, and she's not that apologetic about it, not that sanctimonious about it.
3:20:28But this is kind of, she's tough, she's ruthless, and she's like everybody else in the world about it.
3:20:35She's not that ruthless.
3:20:36That would have been intellectual on that.
3:20:39That would have been shameful.
3:20:46both very vulnerable women and both very vulnerable people, part of the faculty women.
3:20:53But lately, I prefer to have my college school system encased in a whole lot of hypocrisy.
3:21:03Of course, it has to be something
3:21:09In order to be proud of this business.
3:21:13And our intellectual friends, how they've been so arrogant about others seeking power.
3:21:22If you get that, what are they?
3:21:24They're quite terrible.
3:21:26On both extremes, I think they would like to take away the franchise from ordinary people.
3:21:30And you know, one has to understand that ordinary people should go.
3:21:34Well, they think they should go, but they don't think they should come.
3:21:38So Plato had a great point in the Republic where he points out that shoemakers, he uses the example of shoemakers, so you know something, shoemakers are really more sensible than professors, whatever the Greek equivalent for professor was at that time.
3:21:54And he's getting quite right after all.
3:21:57But the intellectuals at the university today are very sinister people.
3:22:02When the Troubles began a few years ago, nothing was more common than to suddenly meet academics who came out of the wall somewhere saying, after the Revolution, you're going to be up against the wall, or after the Revolution, you're not going to be able to talk this way.
3:22:19And I was just really astounded to see that finally, all the other issues were kind of, they just weren't fake.
3:22:29They were invidious issues.
3:22:30They didn't care about academic freedom.
3:22:33They didn't care about the curriculum on campus.
3:22:35They didn't care about .
3:22:38When I look over to my bench stand and bring the book that's on the top, it's Wells.
3:22:43It's called Wells, you know.
3:22:47And then when I look over in the library in the city, you'll see a book by Kirk, K-R-K, small book, which is on there you bring in.
3:22:57It's a book by Wells, Willis there, and Dick Davidson did it, and he's done a little series.
3:23:05In fact, I wrote a book, and every author likes to, I suppose, say something about himself to the president.
3:23:18I really do so.
3:23:19But in this book, I looked over the Berkeley Revolution, for example.
3:23:24And I point out that the year before this, before it happened,
3:23:31These people on the intellectual left had been arguing that we should take over the universities as a base of power.
3:23:41So when all the movements happened on the university campus, the claim was made that it happened because of Camp Bolivia, because of Kent State, because girls weren't allowed in dorms after 10 o'clock.
3:23:52But there are literally papers in existence, which I've identified quote from a catalog, who showed that in spite of the issues,
3:24:00They want a university in Indiana.
3:24:03There's a suitable staging area.
3:24:05Well, they want to start out with the universities, which are very vulnerable places, and feel that over a generation or two, they can educate the American public through succeeding classes of graduates to come around to their viewpoint.
3:24:21Which is?
3:24:24Not reform the country, but to tear it down.
3:24:28The way they plan on doing it is through the social structure.
3:24:31Tear down all the existing institutions.
3:24:33The institutions are bad.
3:24:35The family, the relationship between the woman, the generation.
3:24:41Yes, especially the community.
3:24:43Through new relationships.
3:24:44Exactly.
3:24:45Through new relationships.
3:24:46They'll tear down the corporation by so-called... And they replace it with what?
3:24:50Replace it with...
3:24:53Well, everything from huddling and bundling.
3:24:55You see, the difference, where I have much greater respect for Marx is that, basically, I have that respect for Marx.
3:25:10From what I have seen of all the university radicals, they want to carry on everything.
3:25:15But none of them thought through what they would replace it with.
3:25:19Whereas our Marxist friends, whatever we say, they got a plan.
3:25:23They want to carry it out, and they're going to replace it with something else.
3:25:27And what they want to replace it with is terrible.
3:25:29They want to go hidden.
3:25:31But it's much better to want to replace it with something than with nothing, because certainly,
3:25:38something that is organized is that I'm sure university people would not agree with that, that the chaotic, anarchic situation is better than one that you have to cherish.
3:25:51I think that's precisely the point.
3:25:52So they would agree, they disagree with their Marxist view.
3:25:55Yes, and let me say one thing that's not about education.
3:26:00This is not new.
3:26:07But needless to say, we have very great differences as a people versus philosophies and all the rest.
3:26:13It's interesting to note that they read both Chinese and Japanese history and traditions and so forth.
3:26:21And particularly the Chinese and Americans, we have a common word,
3:26:27both peoples, as peoples, and are totally dedicated to the idea of education.
3:26:35Now the Chinese, the Chinese in, this goes way back past Confucius,
3:26:41The parents were star in learning the kid educations.
3:26:46And we in this country, you know, the mama out in a little miserable town in Texas to save up money to have the kid take piano lessons, soccer stages, or any of that sort of thing.
3:26:57My God, the kid's gotta learn to play the piano.
3:27:00or to send them off to college.
3:27:02Some guy that's earned $30,000 as a bricklayer says, well, my son ain't gonna lay bricks.
3:27:07I'm gonna see that he goes to the University of Northwestern so he can earn $20,000 as an assistant instructor.
3:27:16We are that way, though.
3:27:17It's an interesting act of the passion for education that runs through this country.
3:27:25Because I think it motivates a lot of our Negro friends
3:27:28Yes, they are.
3:27:30They are really, they're a real concern.
3:27:32At the present time, there's, you know, look at this terrible problem with busing in this authoritarian country, partly.
3:27:43But they don't want those rights implemented at the cost of inferior education for their child, if it's inferior education.
3:28:01Because they want that black child.
3:28:04And it's a great opportunity to set up a child, preferably in an integrated school, but it's not possible in this area.
3:28:16You can see why.
3:28:19They see that's where people get places.
3:28:24I'm not sure they're right.
3:28:25I'm not sure they're right.
3:28:26I see what a plumber does.
3:28:28Why the hell is a plumber a good educator?
3:28:29Depends what you want in life.
3:28:32I think even plumbers have this kind of sympathy for their education because of the second thing I mentioned before.
3:28:39In fact, it's a good incentive.
3:28:41Right.
3:28:41Like virtue.
3:28:42It's good for .
3:28:44Like virtue.
3:28:46Let's see if I can get this described.
3:28:58Of course, one of the interesting things is this idea is associated very particularly with American culture.
3:29:04You don't have in Europe, for example, this passion for education.
3:29:07Not the British.
3:29:08We don't understand.
3:29:09We strictly always talk about the British attitude toward education.
3:29:13It's a leading business.
3:29:14Exactly.
3:29:15And let's look at our work in Russia, for instance.
3:29:18I think that's maybe the final important reason why education is valued by our mid-class, which is that it leads right into the heart of the American idea.
3:29:44It is not about education, in other words.
3:29:46It's about the American concept of what a man is.
3:30:30What a road he has traveled.
3:30:36Here's Carlisle, Carlisle on the run.
3:30:42What a road he has traveled.
3:30:43Sits now about half past seven o'clock, stooling in Svigernheim, sorrowful, ill of revolution fever, excessively sick and worn, poor man.
3:30:53Precisely eleven months have many rained on him, paperless Svigernheim.
3:30:58a strong, free-footed stool, the right, the bottom, a squalid washerwoman for his sole household.
3:31:04That is a civic establishment, medical school street.
3:31:08Dither and un-elspurred, as if you were a medic, heart-grabbing at me, a visible woman's voice, refusing to be rejected as a citizen.
3:31:16who would be friends of service, were not recognizing her when they arrived at Minner, a young hero, offered to give him some necessary information about the counter-revolution plan.
3:31:25And as he was occupying the building, he noted the fact that she sat in a large,
3:31:32It's good, right?
3:31:33Yeah.
3:31:34Do you know, sir, there's a famous painting?
3:31:36Have you seen this painting?
3:31:38No, I haven't seen these things.
3:31:41I'll try and get a copy of it sent over.
3:31:43It's quite a piece.
3:31:43It's almost like a biblical subject.
3:31:45You said there were some good books in the last... Give me a list of the 10 best.
3:31:51Historic history.
3:31:52Oh, and Revolution.
3:31:53Well, no, I...
3:31:55well, British revolution this, or any of that sort, revolution so forth, but more where it's about men rather than about that, excuse me, I'm more interested in the men than I am in some really, well, yeah, you know, what makes revolutions true.
3:32:10I guess it's very interesting.
3:32:13Now, let's see, there's a very beautiful piece going here.
3:32:24that no weakness was a problem.
3:32:31The grotesque thing here in this care was that he was undoubtedly honest, far more honest than any of the group of men who succeeded.
3:32:39They say he was inspired by consuming passion for an order of human life.
3:32:43Here's where he differed from them.
3:32:45He did have some ideas of what he wanted to replace them with.
3:32:50As far as he could contrive of the Committee of Public Safety and the Emergency Government Control, which now has decided to imagine a constructive scale, we should start to construct these two panels.
3:33:02All of them have problems.
3:33:03We should construct them today.
3:33:06We're backed by certain general solutions.
3:33:08Attempting to de-equalize property.
3:33:10And Bob, now you know.
3:33:13He talks about his panel disorder and so forth, but, uh, maybe the average is probably crazy.
3:33:21Here it is.
3:33:21More lives were waged by the British generals alone on the opening day of what was known as the Somme offensive in July of 1816.
3:33:26I hope I'm sure it was for a certain nation.
3:33:28How about that?
3:33:30How does that prove?
3:33:32You can't get on that without acting against it.
3:33:35You know what I mean?
3:33:35If you could say...
3:33:38That's terrible.
3:33:39Then he goes on, in Britain and America, all the territories in France, far more people were slaughtered for offenses, very often quite trivial offenses, against property that were condemned with revolutionary tribunal for treason against the state.
3:33:53Of course, they were very common people indeed, but in their rough way, they suffered.
3:33:59Now that's miserable, too.
3:34:00Next stop, I think, for treason against the state.
3:34:04This is good.
3:34:06He had the worst of both possible worlds.
3:34:08A lot of people were killed when he says they weren't important enough to worry about.
3:34:16One of the interesting things, Mr. President, about the men who led the revolution, have you noticed they didn't have dangerous appetites?
3:34:27They're puritanical, very confined.
3:34:29And in a way, that's one of the things that, as we've been repeating this story, they're puritanical.
3:34:34They don't really have large appetites for golden epaulettes, for wine, women, and so on.
3:34:43They're very restrained individuals.
3:34:45Their real appetite isn't material.
3:34:48And so you tend to pass over their importance.
3:34:50In a way, it seems to me it's very much like the intellectual sense of the French Revolution.
3:34:56The academic intellectual is a man who doesn't have wild material ambitions.
3:35:01True.
3:35:01That's why they say materialism doesn't matter.
3:35:04Yes.
3:35:04And of course part of their attack on the environment is about materialism.
3:35:07I mean, although there's a legitimate issue with the environment, a lot of them attack the whole thing about the hell with all the bills.
3:35:19Sure.
3:35:19They're very oblivious of the material world that the rest of us have to live in.
3:35:29and I'm playing for this.
3:35:30When a man is both a professor and an intellectual, he just rolls.
3:35:34When he's a professor, an intellectual, an ideologist, roll into one, he is unbearable.
3:35:38Wow, I can't get that taste right for this guy.
3:35:45Yeah, I got some good ideas.
3:36:04Talk to them anytime.
3:36:09It's an awful lesson.
3:36:33Well, there's always a chance to look at the index.
3:36:35Most indexes aren't worth a damn, though.
3:36:52I'm sure people who like to look at Spanish, they spend very little time on the index.
3:37:05Probably another book.
3:37:08Well, anyway, you, uh...
3:37:10I think you'll have an interesting...
3:37:14I hope.
3:37:17Maybe stir up the animals a little.
3:37:24Give me some recommendations.
3:37:26I will promise to read the books.
3:37:27I might look at them.
3:37:29I might look at the movies.
3:37:31Speaking of intellectuals, thank God they aren't old men.
3:37:35A number of them.
3:37:36A number of them are going to catch that dog.
3:37:44terms, I think, with the realities in American culture, which is to say, with your administration, and on a very, very money-mongered scale, money-mongering, 10-hour effect of humanities, and we're getting awfully good at delivering people who are coming in as panelists, consultants, members of our council.
3:38:01I think you're familiar with the name of Sidney Hook.
3:38:04He's a person.
3:38:06He's a person.
3:38:07back in the second generation.
3:38:09He's quite a follow-up.
3:38:10We're strengthening this organization by bringing these students and supplements and the members of the National Council.
3:38:16So I just wouldn't like it.
3:38:17Well, also, if they can all feel that they don't have to be, they don't have to be, we don't need to listen to, I don't know, the parties and shit for the rest.
3:38:25And that they can get the war out of their minds all the time.
3:38:29Everybody all, intellectuals, so we, but because they don't understand,
3:38:41BX and A, to get some of these things up and maybe they can concentrate on them.
3:38:48Yes, things are looking up.
3:38:49There's no question.
3:38:50I think they are very much conscious now of reality in New York.
3:38:54And part of this is to do something.
3:38:55And how good it is that we have done something, considering the difficulty I've been approached by a great many moderate people who want to work with me.
3:39:04By the way, incidentally, nothing but kind things to say to non-administration.
3:39:08That's beginning to develop into an interesting movement.
3:39:12Well, I've been terribly cheered on this.
3:39:14Well, I hope so.
3:39:16I hope he said anybody that comes with us who happens to be in electoral communities, he can't go home again.
3:39:27Because if he does, we're entering finances.
3:39:34So we've got two people with harder little streets on them.
3:39:36I spoke to Pat the other day.
3:39:37He sounded pretty cheerful.
3:39:39And he's tough.
3:39:39Very tough.
3:39:40He's tough.
3:39:41He's very tough.
3:39:42Very straight.
3:39:44And he's sending money.
3:39:46You know, President, Ron was at San Diego and the whole student
3:39:52Yes, sir.
3:39:52It's the same place we're here from Albuquerque.
3:39:55Where are you from?
3:39:56San Diego City?
3:39:58No, the University of California in San Diego.
3:40:01Oh, you're both in the town.
3:40:03Yeah, yeah.
3:40:04The new university.
3:40:04That's right.
3:40:05Yeah, yes.
3:40:06Well, California, we have many, many states where we're going for producing elections.
3:40:13Yes, and they're very politicized, too.
3:40:15I've been here for a couple of years before coming here.
3:40:17This is vacation.
3:40:20You had a what kind of beard?
3:40:21Pretty colorful.
3:40:22A few years before coming here.
3:40:27You know, I've heard the president talk about the fact that student and promotion will exist without reference to the war in Vietnam.
3:40:35And I had, on this recent trip to Germany, in Berlin, seeing what's transpiring for the University of Berlin.
3:40:42The whole German educational system is in an uproar.
3:40:45He's tearing himself apart.
3:40:48What's the reason for that?
3:40:49Well, in Berlin in particular, I think it's because of the nature of Berlin.
3:40:53They have a lot of fellows who
3:40:55avoiding conscription, going to Berlin.
3:40:57The Russians from East Berlin are able to benefit.
3:41:00The money can get over to the other side.
3:41:05And they built into the law a system of participatory involvement of the students and the assistance to the professors who were students, so that the voters waited on the side of the... What other side?
3:41:21You mean it's hitting them just a little later than us.
3:41:24And with the same kind of ferocity.
3:41:28And because there's not an inherent kind of stabilizing influence in their life, as there is, I think, in Maryland.
3:41:33You know what I mean?
3:41:34Yeah.
3:41:35Because it has a schizophrenic problem anyway.
3:41:39Sure.
3:41:39Poor damn Germans.
3:41:42There's no action.
3:41:43Torn between guilt and ambition.
3:41:45Torn between guilt and ambition.
3:41:46The other thing is that I wonder what's going to happen to Japan, because it's the same thing that happened there, too.
3:41:53You look at the Japanese, and the actual Chinese trying to say, we just got out of the Pacific, or it's going to be fine.
3:42:04The most unreal approach toward a policy is to say that Japan will be neutral and unarmed.
3:42:11Huh.
3:42:13And if Japan doesn't have the internet security guarantee, Japan either is going to be armed or it's going to be able to soak us because no people who are
3:42:21with all their potential, with all their background, with all their frustration that they've gone through, and all their pride and their arrogance are damn well going to sit there and be a great big economic giant, a little big.
3:42:36So I hope to see some problems there always.
3:42:40We need to have more stability.
3:42:42We can survive a lot of, you know, very few folks work at the bank in Santa Barbara and the rest of it.
3:42:49But they can't.
3:42:50Isn't that the difference?
3:42:51I think so.
3:42:51Yeah.
3:42:52The German way is a real problem.
3:42:55So it sounds to me as if we, in my little outfit, ought to invest some money in Japanese studies.
3:42:59We've been debating how to do that.
3:43:00I think we're going to be able to do that.
3:43:02It would be very interesting.
3:43:04Very interesting.
3:43:17Well, anyway, if we can't do it, we won't, sir.
3:43:22You've got presidential companies where all you need to do is to feel politically unpoliticized.
3:43:29Well, anyway, don't let that lead you straight.
3:43:36He's also a little liberal.
3:43:38But he's not too liberal.
3:43:43If he's not a liberal, he doesn't seem to get us out of here.
3:43:47That's a lawyer.
3:43:48The trouble with the lawyers, they never see anything straight.
3:43:52They always see two sides.
3:43:53They leave it to me to make up.
3:43:54Make up.
3:43:55It must seem to be the lawyers.
3:43:56It seems to be the liberals.
3:43:57I don't know quite why.
3:43:57All right.
3:43:59Goodbye.

Nixon, Berman & Garment on National Endowment for the Humanities

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Nixon Library Finding Aid

Also recorded on March 13, 1972

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