Liberal CensorshipnEarly in April the famousnmovie director, King Vidor, wasna guest on the late-night talknshow Tomorrow. Few peoplencan combine insomnia with annability to tolerate Tom Snyder,nbut those who can witnessed anninteresting and revealingnincident.nA short scene from Vidor’sn1934 movie. Our Daily Bread,nwas shown. In this scene thenhero urges a crowd of fellownvictims of the depression to joinnin setting up a cooperative. Innpassing, he jokes that at leastnthey’ll be no worse off than thenpioneers, and there aren’t anynIndians around to scalp them.nAfter the film clip ended,nSnyder asked Vidor if he thoughtnthe remark about the Indiansnwould “get past the censors” today.nVidor replied that henthought it wouldn’t.nIs there supposed to be anyn”censorship” in the movies to­nEditor^s Comnieiitncontinued from page 3nday.” Movie makers seem perfectlynfree to use any language theynplease, spill unlimited quantitiesnof fake blood, and turn sex intona simian experience. Aging nazisnstill plot endlessly in Brazil, orneven rise from the dead, but —nwatch!—communists hardly appearnat all. The contemporarynworld between the Elbe and thenPacific vanished long ago. JamesnBond fights a de-ItalianizednMafia these days, not the KGB.nGhosts and vampires flit endlesslynin tales of the supernatural,nbut the work of scientists is hard^nly shown. Nuclear reactors meltndown, but the technologists whonmaintain our civilization willnnever have to worry about beingnshown. Businessmen must bensinister, otherwise they do notnexist. And American pioneersnare greedy villains de rigueur,neven if without them therenwould still be wigwams in Hollywoodninstead of the air-conditionednexecutive suites of thenliberal censors. (AJL) Dnis liberal social morality. The liberals say, and rightly so,nthat what they want is a decent and just society. Those whonwill vote for Mr. Reagan want a decent and just society, too.nHowever, there’s a gap between how the liberal establishment,nespecially the one now ensconced in the DemocraticnParty, sees social decency and justness, and how a largennumber of Americans are beginning to perceive it. The countrynhas tried the liberal-Democratic brand of fairness andnjustice for the last 50 years. It may have been appealingnunder Roosevelt and Truman, but now a belief is gatheringnmomentum that it has brought us to where we are today—nthat is, at a point of not-too-great happiness with ourselves.nWe are slowly breaking down internally, and God knows hownlong we will be able to defend ourselves against other nationsnthat wish us ill. As a nation, we have a common vision ofnwhat and how we should be: it’s not a very clear picture,nbut considering that the liberal media do everything withinntheir formidable power to befoul and bemuddle it, we stillndo all right. The liberals hatefully prosecute any attemptnby the people to pursue their own vision of themselves, freenfrom liberal exegesis and prescription. They have forgottennthat the Pilgrims came to this country because they did notnwant their children to learn untruths about God. An enormousnmass of Americans these days object to their childrennlearning perverted catechisms and self-hatred in the publicnschools. This country has never really ceased to be thencountry of the Pilgrims, and what a lot of people see as television’sncorruption of the human spirit is actually the Puritans’nrebellion against “oppression of conscience.” There isnnow the climate of a holy war against the tyranny over minds,nthe liberal spiritual despotism—and the liberals do not wantnto recognize themselves as its cause. Because they are unablento respond with understanding, they must resort to hatred.nAs ^s intellectually unsophisticated as he is, Mr. Reaganndefends the values he believes in, and he knows how to translatenthis righteous and honest defense into the language ofnpolitics. His honesty is maliciously disregarded: the liberalnpress apply, in a literal sense, the adjective “honest” to Mr.nCarter and Mr. Anderson; the adjective “conservative,”nwhich, as a rule, qualifies Mr. Reagan, stands in their pages,nby unspoken convention, for “ill-intentioned.” The liberalnmedia monopoly know how to conduct such a semantic operation:nthey make killers into “authors” and brothel ownersninto “sexologists”; they have ingrained in the popular consciousnessnthe word “prisoner” as a priori good, and “warden”nas a priori bad. These machinations influence the modernnpolitics of images and signs in the most heinous way, breedingnirredeemable hatred.nIf Mr. Reagan wins the election, it will be because, in spitenof all the mud poured on him, he is perceived as an ideologicalnsymbol of idealism, a carrier of probity (which, naturally,nis not spoken about these days, just as one does not mentionnthat industriousness can make people successful). This idealismnand this probity look, for example, to the liberal NewnRepublic like “the aroma of sunbelt opportunism.” To us,nMr. Carter seemed to be a dishonest, self-serving powerseekernfrom the outset. Long ago, we wrote about Mr. Carternin the Chronicles of Culture: “Since we saw the first flashnof his smile on TV, we have had a clear impression of deceptiveness,ndeviousness, and deftly concealed mediocrity ofnmind.” In the May 24, 1980 issue of The New Republic,nwe could read: “… the country is wrong about Carter . . .nhe’s devious as well as inept …” That’s a quite forthright,nif not brutal, formulation, but no subliminal hatred can bendetected in it. Whereas elegantly shaped phrases like “mindlessnReagan” and “aroma of opportunism” burst with tormentingnhostility: regardless of the refinement of the orator,nthey are spouted from mouths warped by loathsome hatred.nnn—Leopold Tyrmandn•43nJuly August 1080n