The Freeman 1972 - The Ludwig von Mises Institute

572 THE FREEMANin South Vietnam to live withoutbeing overrun by their neighborsto the north be called "genocide"?After all, the South Vietnameseand the North Vietnamese areOrientals together, and our partialityfor the Orientals who preferliberty to slavery has nothingwhatsoever to do with race. Thedistinction is moral and intellectual.The stories of police "genocide"against the Black Panthers wererepeated uncritically in our bestnewspapers. But when one inquiringreporter, Edward Epstein ofthe N ew Yorker, tracked the luridtales of "twenty-eight murderedBlack Panthers" down, the numbershriveled to six incidents inwhich Panthers were killed bypolice, and in four of these incidentsfourteen police were shot orkilled by the Panthers.Ends and MeansDid this constitute a "nationalscheme . . . to destroy the Panthers"?Or was the Panthers' lawyerCharles Garry, who first floatedthe twenty-eight figure, guiltyof indulging in a "numbers game"entirely comparable to SenatorJoe McCarthy's waving of a "listof Communists in the State Department"that came to 146 orthereabouts and was never substantiated?To say, with the Bomber Left,that violence is necessary to makeideological and political points isto say that the end justifies themeans. Some professors (Cornelland Harvard have had their troubleswith them) have made excusesfor this notion, but it ishardly a universal axiom evenamong pragmatists. Mr. Beichmanquotes a covey of academicswho rationalize the work of thebombers by indulging in "fogbanksof nauseating verbiage"that abound in such phrases as"America has spawned the radicalismit deserves." The "kids"are absolved because the "System"is "bad." But our Bomber Leftviolence has lacked "the importantingredient of modern revolutionanapparat." Mr. Beichman saysthe "days of rage" of the NewLeft are little more than Blanquistputschism, the crise de nerfs of"gesture children." The "gesturechildren" get the headlines, butthey are not America.If our political system is a"fraud," how does it happen thata Lyndon Johnson, when President,can lose control of his partymachinery? How can a Nixon comeback after two disastrous defeats?How can a McGovern, moving upfrom nowhere, suddenly win tenprimaries? For better or worse,our party "system" certainly accommodateschange. As for our"materialistic" values, Mr. Beich-