Conversation 683-007

TapeTape 683StartMonday, March 13, 1972 at 12:18 PMEndMonday, March 13, 1972 at 1:07 PMTape start time02:54:00Tape end time03:44:22ParticipantsNixon, Richard M. (President);  Berman, Ronald S.;  Garment, Leonard;  Powell, William J.;  Sanchez, ManoloRecording deviceOval Office

On March 13, 1972, President Richard M. Nixon, Ronald S. Berman, Leonard Garment, William J. Powell, and Manolo Sanchez met in the Oval Office of the White House from 12:18 pm to 1:07 pm. The Oval Office taping system captured this recording, which is known as Conversation 683-007 of the White House Tapes.

Conversation No. 683-7

Date: March 13, 1972
Time: 12:18 pm - 1:07 pm
Location: Oval Office

The President met with Ronald S. Berman and Leonard Garment; the White House photographer
was present at the beginning of the meeting.

     Photographs
          -The President and Berman

     Garment
         -Public relations

     National Endowment for the Humanities [NEH]
          -Berman
          -Conservative publications
          -Subsidized art
               -Peking
          -Government control
          -Constituency
               -Status conscious compared to moderate individuals
                     -Example of House of Representatives
                          -Middle class attachments
                          -Midwest
                          -Respect for education
                                -Art compared to humanities
          -Programs
               -Professionals
               -Public
                     -Television

                             (rev. Aug-01)

     -Good cinema art
           -Example of Laurence Olivier
                -Henry V
                -Hamlet
           -The President’s view
                -Biographical
                -Historical
                -Midnight Cowboy
           -Olivier
                -William Shakespeare
                      -Elizabethan England
                            -Example of Elizabeth Regina
                                  -British Broadcasting Corporation [BBC]
           -Movies in the White House
           -Definition of humanities
                -Movies
                -Radio
                -History
                -Literature
                -Biography
           -Comedies
                -Shakespeare
           -Drama in the US
                -Ideological bias
           -Biographies
                -Documentaries
                      -Orville and Wilbur Wright
                            -Portrayal of US spirit
                      -Lorraine Hansberry
                            -A Raisin in the Sun
                            -The Young, the Gifted, and the Black
           -Sports
                -Brian’s Song
                      -American Broadcasting Company [ABC]
                      -Brian Piccolo
                      -Gale Sayers
                      -H. R. (“Bob”) Haldeman
                      -Race relations
-Audiences
     -Novels
     -Biographies
-Education

                            (rev. Aug-01)

      -H.G. Wells
            -Writings on the French Revolution
                 -Thomas Carlyle
                 -Jean Paul Marat
                 -Georges Danton
                 -Maximilien Robespierre
                 -Marat
                       -Benjamin Franklin
                       -Charlotte Corday
                 -Characteristics of revolutionary leaders
      -American-British history
      -Russian Revolution
      -French Revolution
            -Napoleon Bonaparte
                 -Waterloo
-Motion pictures
      -Patton
            -George S. Patton
            -Dwight D. Eisenhower
            -Bernard L. Montgomery
            -Omar N. Bradley
      -French Revolution
            -Edmund Burke
            -Carlyle
            -Marat, Danton, Robespierre
            -American Revolution compared to French Revolution
            -Danton
            -Robespierre
            -Present revolutionary practices
            -Wells
      -Musicals
      -Government sponsored
            -Freedom and diversity
      -Commercial
-Intellectuals
-Movies
      -French Revolution
-Writers
      -Burke
      -Carlyle
      -Wells
            -French Revolution compared to World War I

                                         (rev. Aug-01)

                            -Battle of the Somme, 1916
                            -World War I compared to World War II
                            -Deaths
                                  -Bastille
                -Revisionist historians
                      -French Revolution
                            -Intellectuals
                -The President’s talk with Georges J.R. Pompidou
                      -Indira Gandhi’s previous trip to France
                      -Golda Meir compared to Gandhi
          -Intellectuals
                -Plato’s Republic
                      -Shoemakers compared to professors
                -Universities
                -Academic freedom

Manolo Sanchez entered at an unknown time after 12:18 pm.

     Books
         -Residence
              -Wells
         -Library
              -Russell A. Kirk

Sanchez left at an unknown time before 1:07 pm.

     Intellectuals
           -Berman’s book
                 -Berkeley revolution
                      -Vietnam War
                      -Takeover of universities
                      -Unrest on campuses
                            -Cambodia
                            -Kent State
                            -Separate dorms
                      -Tear down traditional institutions
                            -Family
                            -Community
                            -Corporation
           -The President’s view
                 -Marxists compared to radicals
           -Education

                                        (rev. Aug-01)

                -Chinese compared to Americans
                     -Parents dedication
                -US
                     -Desire for education
                          -Blacks
                                 -Busing
                                      -Inferior education
                          -Trade groups
                          -Virtue

Sanchez entered and left at an unknown time between 12:18 pm and 1:07 pm.

                     -American attitude compared to British and Soviet attitudes
                         -Winston S. Churchill
                     -Middle class
                         -American ideal

     Writers
          -The President reading from a book
               -Carlyle on Marat
          -Painting
          -Books
               -List of ten best suggested by Berman
                     -History
                           -British
                           -Revolution
                           -Men
          -Writers
               -Carlyle
                     -The President reading from a book
                           -French Revolution
               -French Revolution
                     -Robespierre
               -The President reading from a book
               -Burke

     NEH
           -Berman
                 -Recommendations to the President
                       -Books
           -Movies
           -Intellectuals

                                            (rev. Aug-01)

                   -Sidney Hook
                   -Vietnam War
             -Individuals requesting employment
             -The administration
                   -Henry A. Kissinger
                        -Daniel P. Moynihan
             -Berman
                   -San Diego
                        -University of California
                              -Herbert Marcuse
                              -Production of intellectuals
             -Education
                   -Vietnam
                   -West Germany
                        -Garment’s recent visit
                        -University system
                              -Berlin
                              -Professors and students
                   -Japanese system
                        -Chinese
                        -Foreign policy ramifications
                   -US domestic stability
                   -Germany
                   -Japanese studies
                        -Possible efforts by NEH

     Gifts
             -Cufflinks

     Garment

     Lawyers

Berman and Garment left at 1:07 pm.

This transcript was generated automatically by AI and has not been reviewed for accuracy. Do not cite this transcript as authoritative. Consult the Finding Aid above for verified information.

Well, how are you?
It's nice to see you.
Let's do a picture of the two of us together.
Let's put your character out here.
Last time, our next group, these are only intellectuals.
We're very fortunate.
I don't mean that it's your job, but I think it's our job because we've got to
I mean, when we got a good man to do a job, I believe.
Why don't you tell me what you think, what we can do to help?
What do you think is worthwhile?
I don't know.
The other thing, and I read some of my more conservative publications and critics, because
We had created a post on certain European books.
We're sort of in the middle, which is all right.
Anyway, 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.
On the other hand, it seems to me that in this instance,
if we can avoid going over that brink to a government-controlled activity, then maybe we'll have the best of both worlds.
I think we're... How do you feel about it?
I think we're on the way to...
making the best deal we can.
Remember, there really are two kinds of constituency as far as arts and humanities are concerned.
I think, frankly, arts support comes from people who are, you know, in a high status, always fired at us.
I do it for that reason, sure.
Well, all sorts of things.
A lot of people do it for that reason.
It's true.
A lot of people do it for that reason.
A lot of people do it for that reason.
to prove something, learn something.
In 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?
I agree with you.
That's the biggest of .
And that's the kind of supporters of the arts, I guess, are generally people who are kind of visible in the culture.
They're well-heeled.
the papers report that are going on.
But 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.
I think you could call this the kind of moderate skeleton, the backbone of people in the House of Representatives, for example.
A lot of young, very ordinary Republican congressmen who have traditional middle-class attachments, not to art, but to learning, to learning interests.
Art is something to do and keep down there.
But 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.
I'm originally from New York, but I've worked in the Midwest down there for some years.
And there's a tremendous constituency based on this old American respect, not to say reverence, for education and what it will do for you.
It's not that, and it's really not all pragmatic.
I 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.
And so we have a lot of support there, I'm very happy to say.
I 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.
To them, we represent education.
We represent, really, the future, whereas Archonet is something, it's hard to understand.
It's an entertainment thing.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ron, I think the President might be interested in some of the program ideas that you've developed to flesh this out.
Yeah, there are two audiences for the National Endowment.
One has got to be professional, although a lot of people resent this.
I think there is congressional opposition, for example.
to giving away large carloads of money to professors.
I think we have to keep this up, because it's like basic research in science.
But we're moving with much more emphasis into public programs now, by any age.
And through movies, especially designed for television, I want to get as much of a public audience as possible.
If my whole thesis is right about middle class support for education as a good in itself, then I agree with you.
Then we have to do something about it.
So I'm putting as many millions as I can lay my hands on.
series that I think you or I would really like to see, or that anyone would really like to see.
For example, you probably know how hard it is to have access to a really good seminal art that says something to you, like .
They appear once in America, and they evaporate.
Obviously, they're not X-rated pictures.
and they put in storage.
My idea is to get these things out and put in series, very much like... Do something for me, would you?
That's a small thing.
One very personal.
I don't...
I've never seen all this.
It's a terrible thing.
The other day, I mean, now let's see if we can get by with him.
the most worth seeing.
You mentioned those passing on.
10 or 15.
That's exactly what we're planning.
I 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.
I couldn't agree more.
And someone that had really tremendous performance just doesn't sell.
And we want to risk it.
But our idea is, in a way, is focused.
I mean, that's an advantage.
You see, we're going to put these out in a series like that.
A hand-dozen Olympiad pictures on Shakespeare.
We'll go on a program that brings the American, in some sense, to Elizabethan England.
Now, 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.
It's amazing, huh?
It's enjoying just tremendous people.
And it really is.
Yes, that's true.
Because I think the issues, but finally, the issues in Shakespearean play are the issues of Elizabeth Regina.
Of the BBC.
Oh, of the BBC.
Yes.
So you're going to put that in a white house so we can see it in a white house.
Yes.
We had such lousy movies that they could pick from.
But does that mean when you talk about the .
You do .
You do .
Well, we have to stick to the humanities themselves.
So it has to be something dealing with history or literature.
My idea, for example, is to also put on some of the great comedies.
They're easily put on film, they're easily put on TV.
I think we want to see some great Shakespearean comedies and other things.
But the drama in this country suffers from the same kind of ideological bias as a lot of the other media, I'm sure.
I'll say, sometimes even more.
But now, apart from the drama, what, for example, do you do in the field?
People who write the narrative, I think.
Speaking of good biographies, good history, et cetera.
I 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.
One is what they say is about the year's best documentary produced by the Wright Brothers.
which 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.
See, we've done this.
And 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.
But that's really come across in this film.
So the Orville and Wilbur Wright are put across as philosophers who kind of sum up the dominant American spirit around this time.
A second is on writers themselves.
Lorraine 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.
I think she's enjoyable.
We 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.
I think you might enjoy seeing some of these.
We are precisely in a biopsy ranking good as part of our mandate.
You 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.
We're going to have to get rid of it.
But I thought of the motion picture that was on ABC,
Brian's song.
Did you see that?
Yes.
I read that.
It's probably called Piccolo.
It's a character.
It's a well.
Did you see it?
My son saw it and was so moved by it.
There's a lot of really great music.
I think they're a great piece.
I'd like you to, you can get it over here.
Yes, sir.
I'll tell you what you do.
Get it, I feel told to do it, but get it.
Sure.
It's good.
It's good.
It's practically, it's good television.
I mean, it's good entertainment.
It's good to read wonderful stories.
And perhaps in terms of race relations, it's the most subtle.
They're not being a message.
They're possibly, you know, it's good to come to investing.
And I don't know who produced it, but apparently this is true.
Maybe ABC played the production, but it was on television, as I recall.
It was on television, but it was an ABCN show.
It was playing in Chicago, and it was picked up.
And 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.
But if you heard, they were encouraging young talent writers and so forth to do better than they can.
And that's what I said to the president.
Actually, what we're trying to do is not really encourage the creation of things so much as a little wider audience.
I mean, somebody writes a great novel or a great biography or something of that sort, and nobody cares, then it doesn't matter.
I'm begging the audience.
In other words, I don't know if I started a good thing to put him up.
I couldn't agree more.
It'd be hard for me to stimulate a great novel, but I can tell the American public about how great novels come about.
You know, I see.
I see.
You couldn't stand it.
You should come to the house.
I was just glad to be here.
Read me one slide.
You know, Wells' outline, if it has one central theme, is that education is the answer to problems.
That is, if societies become better educated, that's good.
They will not have war, they will have more prosperity, et cetera.
to be more rational and so forth.
Perhaps looking at the line, perhaps the educator society is just finding ways to kill each other.
But 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,
You see, if you can just sit here.
He had a terrible skin disease, and he had to sit in a hot bath in order to be able to concentrate and write.
He was sitting in his bath, writing.
And of course, his speeches.
That's Pierre.
The 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,
rather outstanding intellectual capabilities.
They were also people who were extremists, they were fanatics, they were jurists, and of course, eventually, they discouraged one another.
But 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,
Now, of course, it's quite common that we see a lot about the Russian Revolution and so forth and so on.
But I don't know anything that's been done recently on the French Revolution.
Up to the time of Napoleon, I mean, stuff has been done on Napoleon.
And I saw something recently that was very
or Waterloo or something, but it just didn't get enough.
But a great motion picture, in my opinion, this is what made Patton a great movie.
It wasn't the war that made the movie, it was the man.
You could see Patton with allies in our area coming on stage, and what kind of a man he was.
You 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.
take that and take some of the men, take those three men,
It'd be bloody, but a lot of people want blood.
How do you see it grow?
But on the other hand, it was an event that had more effect.
And it's hard for us as Americans to realize this in the American Revolution because of its effect on the whole of the crown.
That's a very good reference.
It would make a very good reference.
It's so interesting.
It's so different.
Yeah, from that, Dan Ponson did a strong figure in the great order.
That's a great little guy.
It's a deadly little name.
Yeah.
But on the other hand, totally honest.
And of course, it's totally crazy.
But what a fascinating subject it is.
Particularly, it will then relate to present revolutionary activities such as, when is the revolution good, when is the revolution bad?
And it's already been determined that Wells thought it was good, which on balance, on balance, even though it
But 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.
It's the fact that it really is great theater and
And 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.
You have potential subjects there that
It'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...
Satisfying other people.
Yes, it's one kind of same thing after another.
I know.
They get to the rocks a little bit.
They say, oh God, this is the thing this year.
And...
And then it just goes over and over and over again.
President's comments on the French Revolution put me in mind of what we were discussing in my office just before you came over, Ron.
The problem now of the intellectuals and the expectation of actuality is in the very... What current...
I'll pick up the...
As 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.
What a movie it could make, I don't know whether it could be done.
I mean, a character in a translation.
I would follow John Deere around, particularly if it's a man, maybe one man.
How would you do it?
I would follow your first kind of intuitive insight into the fact that there's Burke on the one side and Carlisle on the other.
Hasn't it weighed in on the left?
Where else will it?
The progressivist is seen in a blessed event commensurate, let's say, with the Immaculate Conception.
And 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.
One interesting thing is that Burke saw it so often against one side of humanity.
It talks about how everything went down.
I 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.
And he said that, and yet, and this is, of course, I think it's a very valid point.
He 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
So that proves something.
I can't be persuaded, but I can understand it all.
See, that's the way it is now.
You can't reverse it, so the battle is on its turn.
But it's going to be in the casualties.
We talked about 3,400,000 to 3,000,000.
When 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?
The answer would, of course, would have been practically none.
One of the things we're going to have, the damn best seal, the...
The so-called revisionist historians, the ones who rewrite history of the last generation, very, very good.
And their whole point has been that the French Revolution has exacerbated and exaggerated
has been exaggerated by modern intellectuals for a very important reason.
Modern intellectuals like to look back to the French Revolution, because at that time, men of the sort you described, like Benjamin, got power.
So it's a crucial thing for modern intellectuals.
And one of the hardest things it is for us to try and cope with, I think myself, is being in the university.
One of the hardest things to do is to cope with the willpower of intellectuals that they have.
Well, they have it as a matter of fact, when you consider what really motivates most people to breathe down.
And it's the hypocrisy that turns me on.
And I don't want anybody to be in favor of the violence.
Just be slowly.
This is an historical book.
When I was talking to him, right after this, he said,
But he was comparing the two women, Mrs. Condie and Mrs. Meyer, both of whom he both knew.
And I had seen both of them in the last month.
And as he had, which was at one of the greats, and he said, look, there's another lady that I want to see.
Mrs. Mayer.
She's tough, she's ruthless, and she's not that apologetic about it, not that sanctimonious about it.
But this is kind of, she's tough, she's ruthless, and she's like everybody else in the world about it.
She's not that ruthless.
That would have been intellectual on that.
That would have been shameful.
both very vulnerable women and both very vulnerable people, part of the faculty women.
But lately, I prefer to have my college school system encased in a whole lot of hypocrisy.
Of course, it has to be something
In order to be proud of this business.
And our intellectual friends, how they've been so arrogant about others seeking power.
If you get that, what are they?
They're quite terrible.
On both extremes, I think they would like to take away the franchise from ordinary people.
And you know, one has to understand that ordinary people should go.
Well, they think they should go, but they don't think they should come.
So 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.
And he's getting quite right after all.
But the intellectuals at the university today are very sinister people.
When 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.
And I was just really astounded to see that finally, all the other issues were kind of, they just weren't fake.
They were invidious issues.
They didn't care about academic freedom.
They didn't care about the curriculum on campus.
They didn't care about .
When I look over to my bench stand and bring the book that's on the top, it's Wells.
It's called Wells, you know.
And 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.
It's a book by Wells, Willis there, and Dick Davidson did it, and he's done a little series.
In fact, I wrote a book, and every author likes to, I suppose, say something about himself to the president.
I really do so.
But in this book, I looked over the Berkeley Revolution, for example.
And I point out that the year before this, before it happened,
These people on the intellectual left had been arguing that we should take over the universities as a base of power.
So 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.
But there are literally papers in existence, which I've identified quote from a catalog, who showed that in spite of the issues,
They want a university in Indiana.
There's a suitable staging area.
Well, 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.
Which is?
Not reform the country, but to tear it down.
The way they plan on doing it is through the social structure.
Tear down all the existing institutions.
The institutions are bad.
The family, the relationship between the woman, the generation.
Yes, especially the community.
Through new relationships.
Exactly.
Through new relationships.
They'll tear down the corporation by so-called... And they replace it with what?
Replace it with...
Well, everything from huddling and bundling.
You see, the difference, where I have much greater respect for Marx is that, basically, I have that respect for Marx.
From what I have seen of all the university radicals, they want to carry on everything.
But none of them thought through what they would replace it with.
Whereas our Marxist friends, whatever we say, they got a plan.
They want to carry it out, and they're going to replace it with something else.
And what they want to replace it with is terrible.
They want to go hidden.
But it's much better to want to replace it with something than with nothing, because certainly,
something 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.
I think that's precisely the point.
So they would agree, they disagree with their Marxist view.
Yes, and let me say one thing that's not about education.
This is not new.
But needless to say, we have very great differences as a people versus philosophies and all the rest.
It's interesting to note that they read both Chinese and Japanese history and traditions and so forth.
And particularly the Chinese and Americans, we have a common word,
both peoples, as peoples, and are totally dedicated to the idea of education.
Now the Chinese, the Chinese in, this goes way back past Confucius,
The parents were star in learning the kid educations.
And 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.
My God, the kid's gotta learn to play the piano.
or to send them off to college.
Some guy that's earned $30,000 as a bricklayer says, well, my son ain't gonna lay bricks.
I'm gonna see that he goes to the University of Northwestern so he can earn $20,000 as an assistant instructor.
We are that way, though.
It's an interesting act of the passion for education that runs through this country.
Because I think it motivates a lot of our Negro friends
Yes, they are.
They are really, they're a real concern.
At the present time, there's, you know, look at this terrible problem with busing in this authoritarian country, partly.
But they don't want those rights implemented at the cost of inferior education for their child, if it's inferior education.
Because they want that black child.
And it's a great opportunity to set up a child, preferably in an integrated school, but it's not possible in this area.
You can see why.
They see that's where people get places.
I'm not sure they're right.
I'm not sure they're right.
I see what a plumber does.
Why the hell is a plumber a good educator?
Depends what you want in life.
I think even plumbers have this kind of sympathy for their education because of the second thing I mentioned before.
In fact, it's a good incentive.
Right.
Like virtue.
It's good for .
Like virtue.
Let's see if I can get this described.
Of course, one of the interesting things is this idea is associated very particularly with American culture.
You don't have in Europe, for example, this passion for education.
Not the British.
We don't understand.
We strictly always talk about the British attitude toward education.
It's a leading business.
Exactly.
And let's look at our work in Russia, for instance.
I 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.
It is not about education, in other words.
It's about the American concept of what a man is.
What a road he has traveled.
Here's Carlisle, Carlisle on the run.
What a road he has traveled.
Sits now about half past seven o'clock, stooling in Svigernheim, sorrowful, ill of revolution fever, excessively sick and worn, poor man.
Precisely eleven months have many rained on him, paperless Svigernheim.
a strong, free-footed stool, the right, the bottom, a squalid washerwoman for his sole household.
That is a civic establishment, medical school street.
Dither 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.
who 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.
And as he was occupying the building, he noted the fact that she sat in a large,
It's good, right?
Yeah.
Do you know, sir, there's a famous painting?
Have you seen this painting?
No, I haven't seen these things.
I'll try and get a copy of it sent over.
It's quite a piece.
It's almost like a biblical subject.
You said there were some good books in the last... Give me a list of the 10 best.
Historic history.
Oh, and Revolution.
Well, no, I...
well, 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.
I guess it's very interesting.
Now, let's see, there's a very beautiful piece going here.
that no weakness was a problem.
The grotesque thing here in this care was that he was undoubtedly honest, far more honest than any of the group of men who succeeded.
They say he was inspired by consuming passion for an order of human life.
Here's where he differed from them.
He did have some ideas of what he wanted to replace them with.
As 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.
All of them have problems.
We should construct them today.
We're backed by certain general solutions.
Attempting to de-equalize property.
And Bob, now you know.
He talks about his panel disorder and so forth, but, uh, maybe the average is probably crazy.
Here it is.
More lives were waged by the British generals alone on the opening day of what was known as the Somme offensive in July of 1816.
I hope I'm sure it was for a certain nation.
How about that?
How does that prove?
You can't get on that without acting against it.
You know what I mean?
If you could say...
That's terrible.
Then 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.
Of course, they were very common people indeed, but in their rough way, they suffered.
Now that's miserable, too.
Next stop, I think, for treason against the state.
This is good.
He had the worst of both possible worlds.
A lot of people were killed when he says they weren't important enough to worry about.
One of the interesting things, Mr. President, about the men who led the revolution, have you noticed they didn't have dangerous appetites?
They're puritanical, very confined.
And in a way, that's one of the things that, as we've been repeating this story, they're puritanical.
They don't really have large appetites for golden epaulettes, for wine, women, and so on.
They're very restrained individuals.
Their real appetite isn't material.
And so you tend to pass over their importance.
In a way, it seems to me it's very much like the intellectual sense of the French Revolution.
The academic intellectual is a man who doesn't have wild material ambitions.
True.
That's why they say materialism doesn't matter.
Yes.
And of course part of their attack on the environment is about materialism.
I 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.
Sure.
They're very oblivious of the material world that the rest of us have to live in.
and I'm playing for this.
When a man is both a professor and an intellectual, he just rolls.
When he's a professor, an intellectual, an ideologist, roll into one, he is unbearable.
Wow, I can't get that taste right for this guy.
Yeah, I got some good ideas.
Talk to them anytime.
It's an awful lesson.
Well, there's always a chance to look at the index.
Most indexes aren't worth a damn, though.
I'm sure people who like to look at Spanish, they spend very little time on the index.
Probably another book.
Well, anyway, you, uh...
I think you'll have an interesting...
I hope.
Maybe stir up the animals a little.
Give me some recommendations.
I will promise to read the books.
I might look at them.
I might look at the movies.
Speaking of intellectuals, thank God they aren't old men.
A number of them.
A number of them are going to catch that dog.
terms, 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.
I think you're familiar with the name of Sidney Hook.
He's a person.
He's a person.
back in the second generation.
He's quite a follow-up.
We're strengthening this organization by bringing these students and supplements and the members of the National Council.
So I just wouldn't like it.
Well, 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.
And that they can get the war out of their minds all the time.
Everybody all, intellectuals, so we, but because they don't understand,
BX and A, to get some of these things up and maybe they can concentrate on them.
Yes, things are looking up.
There's no question.
I think they are very much conscious now of reality in New York.
And part of this is to do something.
And 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.
By the way, incidentally, nothing but kind things to say to non-administration.
That's beginning to develop into an interesting movement.
Well, I've been terribly cheered on this.
Well, I hope so.
I hope he said anybody that comes with us who happens to be in electoral communities, he can't go home again.
Because if he does, we're entering finances.
So we've got two people with harder little streets on them.
I spoke to Pat the other day.
He sounded pretty cheerful.
And he's tough.
Very tough.
He's tough.
He's very tough.
Very straight.
And he's sending money.
You know, President, Ron was at San Diego and the whole student
Yes, sir.
It's the same place we're here from Albuquerque.
Where are you from?
San Diego City?
No, the University of California in San Diego.
Oh, you're both in the town.
Yeah, yeah.
The new university.
That's right.
Yeah, yes.
Well, California, we have many, many states where we're going for producing elections.
Yes, and they're very politicized, too.
I've been here for a couple of years before coming here.
This is vacation.
You had a what kind of beard?
Pretty colorful.
A few years before coming here.
You know, I've heard the president talk about the fact that student and promotion will exist without reference to the war in Vietnam.
And I had, on this recent trip to Germany, in Berlin, seeing what's transpiring for the University of Berlin.
The whole German educational system is in an uproar.
He's tearing himself apart.
What's the reason for that?
Well, in Berlin in particular, I think it's because of the nature of Berlin.
They have a lot of fellows who
avoiding conscription, going to Berlin.
The Russians from East Berlin are able to benefit.
The money can get over to the other side.
And 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?
You mean it's hitting them just a little later than us.
And with the same kind of ferocity.
And because there's not an inherent kind of stabilizing influence in their life, as there is, I think, in Maryland.
You know what I mean?
Yeah.
Because it has a schizophrenic problem anyway.
Sure.
Poor damn Germans.
There's no action.
Torn between guilt and ambition.
Torn between guilt and ambition.
The other thing is that I wonder what's going to happen to Japan, because it's the same thing that happened there, too.
You 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.
The most unreal approach toward a policy is to say that Japan will be neutral and unarmed.
Huh.
And 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
with 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.
So I hope to see some problems there always.
We need to have more stability.
We can survive a lot of, you know, very few folks work at the bank in Santa Barbara and the rest of it.
But they can't.
Isn't that the difference?
I think so.
Yeah.
The German way is a real problem.
So it sounds to me as if we, in my little outfit, ought to invest some money in Japanese studies.
We've been debating how to do that.
I think we're going to be able to do that.
It would be very interesting.
Very interesting.
Well, anyway, if we can't do it, we won't, sir.
You've got presidential companies where all you need to do is to feel politically unpoliticized.
Well, anyway, don't let that lead you straight.
He's also a little liberal.
But he's not too liberal.
If he's not a liberal, he doesn't seem to get us out of here.
That's a lawyer.
The trouble with the lawyers, they never see anything straight.
They always see two sides.
They leave it to me to make up.
Make up.
It must seem to be the lawyers.
It seems to be the liberals.
I don't know quite why.
All right.
Goodbye.