1976 Interview

Studs Terkel (S.T.): My guest this morning is George Anastaplo, one of those rare individuals who belongs to himself. The title of his most recent Swallow Press book, Human Being and Citizen, draws on a quotation from Socrates. Socrates figures very much indeed in the life, thoughts, and psyche of George Anastaplo. George, I first heard of you in a funny way. [Laughter.] You passed the Illinois bar exam. Then there came something we used to call the "Morals Quiz."

George Anastaplo (G.A.): Yes, it was the Committee on Character and Fitness.

S.T.: They asked you a question and you refused to answer it. Will you go into that?

G.A.: That was in 1950, a few days after my twenty-fifth birthday. Some character committee members had then a question they liked to put to applicants for admission to the bar, a question which asked in effect whether one thought that members of the Communist Party should be permitted to practice law. My answer, when this question happened to be asked of me -- it wasn't asked of everybody; it was asked on a hit or miss basis. My answer was that I didn't see why Communists shouldn't be permitted to practice. The response by the two members sitting as a section of the committee was, "Don't Communists believe in revolution?" I indicated that every American believes in revolution in some circumstances. I reminded them of the Declaration of Independence. This got them very concerned, leading them to ask whether I was myself a Communist and whether I was a member of various other suspect organizations. I told them that these were not matters that they should be asking me about. These proved over the years to be our two principal differences of opinion about the Declaration of Independence and the right of revolution, on the one hand, and about what questions they were entitled to ask, on the other hand.²

S.T.: What I find remarkable about this is that you yourself happen to be, as I know from your thoughts and writings [Laughter], very conservative in many matters.

G.A.: Well, you can call my opinions conservative. Or they may be deeply radical. At least they're not conventional.

S.T.: You're a radical conservative. It is time we did drop some of these labels that have no meaning today. Liberal, conservative haven't they lost meaning today as they're used promiscuously?

G.A.: I believe that the issues themselves should be examined one by one on their merits. We have to see what the underlying problems are and what the enduring standards are.

S.T.: How did you come to that day of telling that committee, ironically enough called "Character and Fitness," that it was none of their damned business?

G.A.: Well, Studs, I didn't put it quite that way --

S.T.: -- no, I'm putting it that way.

G.A.: You have to remember that this was at a very rough time during the Korean War. The Chinese were about to enter the war; it was evident that there was trouble up there in North Korea. My character proceedings began in November 1950. I then had to appear before the full committee in January 1951. By that time the Chinese were in North Korea; by that time, also, it was very difficult to reason with people about these matters.

S.T.: Joe McCarthy was around.

G.A.: Senator McCarthy was in business. Other things had also been happening. The Hiss case had come already, the Rosenberg case was coming on. It was very difficult for the character committee, and not just for them but also for people in the legal profession and in the law schools, to behave themselves. Once positions are taken in such matters, people get locked into them. Members of the committee, and their supporters outside of the committee who should have known better, stuck with their hostile position toward me years afterwards whenever there was any reconsideration of my matter.

S.T.: These men are, as far as I'm concerned, a dime a dozen. To me the important person is George Anastaplo. Now how did you get this way? Let's go back to the beginning. Where did you come from?

G.A.: I was born in St. Louis and raised in Southern Illinois, down in Williamson County. Then I went off to the Air Corps during the Second World War for about three years, where I got my wings as a navigator. Then I went to the University of Chicago for college and law school and from there to the Committee on Character and Fitness.

S.T.: What impelled you to refuse to answer when all you had to say was, "Of course, I'm not a Communist"? You wouldn't give them that satisfaction. In a way it's similar to Lillian Hellman's conduct before the House Committee on Un-American Activities. She said she would not cut her thoughts to fit the fashion of the day. But you were far removed from her situation. [Laughter.] What impelled you to say "No" when it was so much easier to say "Yes"?

G.A.: It's hard to know for sure. One way of putting it is to say that my Greek heritage came to the fore, a heritage very much shaped in recent centuries by responses to challenges. But it may all have been accidental in some respects. There was something about the way this was being done that offended me. I had, less than four years before, finished serving with credit (or so it seemed) as a commissioned officer in the Air Corps. I did not believe that these people were entitled to proceed as they were proceeding. Nor did I believe it good for the country or for the profession for them to act this way. They were bullying one law school graduate after another, bullying people who were in a particularly vulnerable condition. By the time you have been through law school, whatever material resources you had accumulated are likely to be exhausted, your credit is about gone. Those lawyers should have known better. Maybe in other circumstances I would have gone along with them. On this particular occasion, for some reason, I didn't.

S.T.: One of the members of the Character and Fitness Committee said, speaking of you, "The whole pattern of the applicant's behavior seems to border on the psychopathic and if he were approved on other grounds by the Committee I would seriously recommend that the Committee obtain the report of a competent psychiatrist . . ." So the fact is you've got to be nuts to say that Communists have a right to be here and that one doesn't have to answer the sort of questions asked by the committee. You've got to be nuts?

G.A: That man was disturbed about what was happening. Perhaps it was disturbing in the sense that there was before them somebody who was making trouble in circumstances where perhaps he need not have -- and perhaps even should not have -- and this lawyer resented it. It was obvious that he was very disturbed about the whole business.

S.T.: A psychiatric investigation of him might have been in order, too. If someone accepts things without question, he becomes a zombie. That might be a psychiatric case, too.

G.A.: But he's not a zombie, Studs. He is a competent lawyer who has gone on to become a federal judge. He is well thought of by his associates. The interesting thing is that these were people who were in many respects good men.

S.T.: But they can still be zombies.

G.A.: It was hard for them to understand why anybody was doing what I was doing. It was even hard for many of my friends to understand and, if you pushed me very far, I might have to admit that it was hard for me to understand. This lawyer had, in a way, a natural response to what I was doing. He only said out loud what others were thinking. However, the most interesting thing is not the initial response to me in 1950-1951. I think that that can be understood and explained away. It's the continuing response on the part of men who were ultimately good men in some ways but also small men. They never could back away from what they had done. This man is one of those.

S.T.: There is something they said in turning you down that to me is perhaps most significant of all: that you, in a way, handled it all as though you were superior to them. They spoke of your egotism. Now that is very revealing: "as though you were superior to them."

G.A.: I was quite a bit younger than I am now, Studs, so I'm sure that I said things in a way which assumed they didn't understand them.

S.T.: They didn't.

G.A.: They probably could have done with some instruction but I might not have been the right one to give it to them. I may even have come across to them as arrogant. I think that what is truly significant here, however, is not the response of these men but rather the response of the community which permitted them to proceed as they did. These were not big men who would have stood up alone. They were not battling against the current of public opinion. If the opinion of the profession, say, and of the law schools, which have an important role in such matters -- if that opinion had been decisively against them, they certainly would have backed off.

S.T.: You attended the University of Chicago Law School, as did I some years before you did, graduating in 1934. What about the members of the faculty, and the Dean of the University of Chicago Law School? Did they stick up for you?

G.A.: By and large they behaved the way other law schools were behaving at the time: they simply ran for cover and, again, not necessarily for bad reasons. They saw this controversy as something that was not going to do the law school any good. Also, probably, it was not going to do me any good. So, again, you can understand their response, at least their initial response in 1950-1951. You see, Studs, there were several stages to this controversy. It ran for ten years as a case, up to 1961. Of course, there were exceptions among the law school faculty: Malcolm Sharp, obviously, and Harry Kalven.

S.T.: You named two men.

G.A.: There were two or three others as well. Roscoe Steffen was another one and so was Hans Zeisel. Mr. Kalven and Mr. Steffen even prepared amicus briefs on my behalf when litigation began. Earlier, Wilber Katz had been helpful; later on, Stanley Kaplan was helpful.

S.T.: What about the others, the Dean and the administration of the law school?

G.A.: The Dean was dead against me.

S.T.: Against you?

G.A.: Oh, yes. Dead against what I was doing. He was himself a very intelligent, competent, and conscientious man.

S.T.: Who was the Dean then?

G.A.: Edward Levi.

S.T.: Ah, l see, he went on to become Attorney General?

G.A.: Yes, he is the present Attorney General of the United States.³

S.T.: And he didn't stand up for you?

G.A.: No, he was in fact opposed.

S.T.: Opposed to your stand?

G.A.: Yes, very much so.

S.T.: Well, that figures, that figures.

G.A.: What also figures is why he was opposed to it.

S.T.: Why was he opposed to it?

G.A.: Let's give the best possible statement of Mr. Levi's case: Here is a young graduate who has gone off on some odd tangent --

S.T.: -- like saying that we should take the First Amendment seriously --

G.A.: -- he would grant that the law student is taking the amendment seriously and that he is sincere but he would also say that that student is not going to do himself any good by persisting in what he has done. He is going to ruin his career and, not incidentally -- because after all Mr. Levi was the Dean of the Law School and later the President of the University of Chicago -- he is not going to do the Law School or the University any good, either. You see?

S.T.: You're very kind. You know that? You are a very kind and understanding and tolerant man. This is the part that makes George Anastaplo so astonishing to me. It's your understanding others so well.

G.A.: I do believe I know Mr. Levi fairly well. The polestar guiding his career, at least up to the time he went to Washington, was his dedication to the University of Chicago. That was quite clear.

S.T.: What about dedication to truth and the Bill of Rights?

G.A.: The answer would be that what the community needs is a great university.

S.T.: And a good five-cent cigar.

G.A.: You could throw that in, too, but certainly a great university is needed, and there are tough decisions which have to be made by people who want to stand for, or who have the duty to protect, institutions. And notice, Studs, in assessing Mr. Levi, we are talking about a leader who cannot foresee what's going to happen for the next twenty-five years. He didn't understand what my position really was or what I was likely to do. He couldn't predict that, but he could easily see my career degenerating into something dismal. Twenty-five years later you and I can look back and see it all quite differently. But could we have predicted in 1950-1951 what has and has not happened to me?

S.T.: Twenty-five years later he is Attorney General and he looks at a Supreme Court decision involving busing and speaks of it exactly as Gerald Ford and Ronald Reagan speak.

G.A.: Well, l don't know that.

S.T.: I wonder if he's not more consistent than you think.

G.A.: There are certain things that are consistent about him. He is a very intelligent man; he is in some sense a thoughtful man. He is also a timid man, a curiously timid man, and at the same time an ambitious man. There are some fine things he is very much dedicated to. Besides, as I notice in my Human Being and Citizen, timid men in power can be counted upon to advance (or, at least, not to resist) reforms if the time should be obviously ripe for them.⁴

S.T.: Let's talk about intelligence by looking at the essay on Socrates in your book. Let's lead into Socrates by going to Greece during Junta times. You are leading a group of visitors there?

G.A.: From Chicago -- as a matter of fact, from the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations.

S.T.: There you are and again you say something that is not fashionable. Would you mind setting the scene for that? Then we'll come to Socrates and intelligence.

G.A.: The occasion was a dinner that was given for us in 1968 by the Prime Minister's office. Our hosts knew that I had, before returning to Greece that summer, published articles in the United States critical of what the Colonels were doing in Greece. I had made some dire predictions about what would happen to Greece and to American-Greek relations and called for a return to a civilian government in Athens. In fact, I was among the first to identify Constantine Karamanlis, a conservative politician, as the best way out of what did turn into a terrible situation. So that evening, after a lovely dinner -- one of the best dinners I've ever had -- there were speeches by government spokesmen, telling us what was good about the situation in Greece. I had asked them to tell us what they thought was good. They kept after me, however, to say what I thought as well. I kept saying I didn't want to speak on that occasion, that it was their night. But they kept pressing me, even taunting me, saying that I seemed to be afraid to say there what I had said back home and that sort of nonsense. So finally, around midnight, I did speak. That talk is the first thing in my Human Being and Citizen book.

S.T.: You said you could safely express your opinion, because you were an American visitor, but that you knew scores, and you had heard of thousands, of Greeks who were in prison because of their opposition to the Junta.

G.A.: There was no question that I was in a somewhat privileged position. One result of my frank talk was that I was declared persona non grata shortly thereafter. So the Colonels proved my point.

S.T.: Again, what impelled you to do these things? Why aren't you nice?

G.A.: Well, I am, Studs. It isn't that I go around making trouble for people. I do have to be pushed. If you push me far enough, I have to say "No" sometimes. But I also cave in now and then in a prudent fashion.

S.T.: You don't cave in on vital matters, that's it. You may cave in on things about which I know nothing.

G.A.: That's right. You can't be sure of how much I've caved in. Besides, unless one caves in now and then, one isn't being sensible.

S.T.: So we have Socrates.

G.A.: Now we move into the big leagues.

S.T.: Well, you're big league.

G.A.: Oh, no, let's not fool ourselves, Studs. I'm not in the lowest league but I'm far from the highest, very far.

S.T.: Well, I would say that in a time when such minor leaguers are in charge of our psyche and our fate, I'd say you're big league. Now we come to a real major leaguer. You have a marvelous essay on Socrates at his trial.

G.A.: Yes, I think it's a rather good essay myself. It's a discussion of Plato's Apology. It's a careful analysis of that dialogue.

S.T.: Whether it's a democratic society or an oligarchy, he has to take his stand, this guy.

G.A.: But notice how he took his stand. He didn't go looking for trouble. I think that's important. He indicates that on several occasions in his life there were things demanded of him -- challenges which required him to do things which would have been grossly unjust to do -- and he simply refused to do them. He wasn't trying to change things so much as he was trying to act as he should.

S.T.: He uses the phrase here, "human being." Socrates had the big problem, which is seen in the title of your book, of how to be both a human being and a citizen.

G.A.: To be both to the fullest extent is very difficult, if not impossible. The requirements of citizenship -- dedication, loyalty, a steady expenditure of considerable political energy, and so forth -- can get in the way of one's full development as a human being.

S.T.: There is the individual—the person with his individual rights. When you speak of the citizen, on the other hand, you speak of someone connected with the community. So it's the problem of maintaining uniqueness while at the same time not living in a vacuum?

G.A.: Take a simple problem. Here is a man who is highly talented and well-trained. In order to develop fully as a human being, one might say, he should be a man who devotes himself completely to his studies. Now a man who devotes himself completely to his studies is a man who neglects all kinds of civic, as well as family, duties that he might have. There is obviously some tension here. Sometimes it's clear neglect on his part. Socrates is a good case in point. He was, in some ways, not a good father or a good husband. He was, in some ways, not a good citizen. He did do various things required of him: he went to war; he served in the assembly when he was chosen by lot to do so; he did things like that. But he preferred to inquire, study, think.

S.T.: So they killed him because he started to think.

G.A.: They killed him because -- well, it's complicated why they killed him. In some ways, it was bad luck. After all, he was seventy years old which was an advanced age in those days as it still is among us. If he had died a few years earlier he never would have had this happen to him. If the Peloponnesian War had come out differently, he would not have had this happen to him. His wasn't necessarily the fate that was going to come to him, no matter what happened. This is to be distinguished, for instance, from the fate of Jesus, about which, as you know I will be talking out at Rosary College on the first of April.

S.T.: By the way, you teach philosophy and political science at Rosary?

G.A.: I am also in the Basic Program of Liberal Education for Adults at the University of Chicago, which your listeners should be told is probably the best such program in the country. The Christian view of Jesus is that his fate was necessary, that it was inevitable. This was not true in the case of Socrates, at least not in the same way. That is, it was not inevitable that he be killed, however much of an "outsider" he was bound to be. Another thing one has to say about Socrates is that he lived in a remarkable community. Athens did kill him but, on the other hand and perhaps even more important, it was a community which permitted, perhaps even helped, him to flower. Similarly, one can say that whenever you praise certain people who dare to be dissenters in the United States, you are to some extent praising a country which has somehow shaped them to be what they are. There is a lot to be said for a country which has certain kinds of dissenters.

S.T.: A lot is to be said for vigilance too, isn't there?

G.A.: Oh, yes. I am not saying that the government should not be called to task by a vigilant people, but there are many governments which routinely call their peoples to task instead.

S.T.: Of course, you're right -- in contrast to other places this is indeed a free country. But sometimes it is like the man on the bridge who sees someone barely managing to keep his head above water in the Chicago River and crying, "Help, help!" The man on the bridge asks, "What's the matter?" The man in the water says, "Help, help, I'm drowning!" The man on the bridge then says, "What the hell are you complaining about? Look at the guy in the River Volga: the water there is way over his head." That may be true but it won't stop this guy from drowning unless someone helps him.

G.A.: But unless one is clear about the massive differences between the Chicago River and the River Volga, one might not recommend the proper remedies.

S.T.: I think there isn't the slightest doubt that it has been made clear to most citizens in this country, by headlines and editorials, that there are differences. There is no danger of our not being clear about that. What is not clear is that "Help, help, we're drowning" may be coming from the Chicago River. We're back to dissent again, aren't we?

G.A.: Still, I think that it is important not to imagine things worse than they are because that can lead to acts of desperation, which in turn can lead to reactions which make things worse than they need have been. One needs to meet these matters in a coolheaded way and to have an awareness as well that one may be wrong. That is very important, as is a sense of humor. This also means that with all the drawbacks to the conduct of leading citizens and others in this country in recent decades, things are not as bad as they are often painted to be by those who tend to concentrate too much on things that are wrong. When I say this, I don't mean to say that the things that are wrong should not be noticed. The question is, again, that of prudence: how much and in what way should they be paid attention to?

S.T.: So we come to the question of this man of dissent. We come tack to Socrates. He spoke of silence as disobedience to God.

G.A.: He indicated that a certain kind of silence might be, in his case, self-destructive. He's a man who must inquire and teach. But Socrates, you have to remember, was in many ways a very conservative fellow.

S.T.: As Anastaplo?

G.A.: Well, perhaps. One simply has to examine case-by-case what is happening and think about it. For instance, Studs, I'm sure that one of the essays we probably differ very much about in my book, and most of your listeners would differ from me about, is with respect to our experience with the impeachment of President Nixon. That was an instance where I thought that people of our persuasion -- people of a general liberal inclination, who had followed Mr. Nixon's career for some twenty-five years and who had serious reservations about him -- I'm inclined to think that liberals overreacted to the alleged and real misdeeds of the man. I believe they were probably self-righteous to the extent of being unfair, if not even harmful to the country. The reason I mention this is because it's useful to see what something similar to what was called "McCarthyism" looks like when one is among the pursuers as distinguished from what it looks like when one is among the pursued. That helps one appreciate the problem. Not that there were not impeachable offenses committed by Mr. Nixon, but I never thought the particular offenses talked about should have been considered impeachable.

S.T.: You're making a pertinent point: McCarthyism could be in reverse. It has been said that Judge Sirica was at times very rough indeed, that there was some Julius Hoffman-like behavior on his part.⁵ There was one offense that was hardly mentioned, by the way, that I feel was impeachable. The secret bombing of Cambodia was not really mentioned. The Cambodians knew about it. The secret was kept only from the American people. Don't you think that was an impeachable offense?

G.A.: I agree with you that if the Congress had wanted to face up to its duties, it would have had to deal with that war -- with our getting into that war the way we did and with the conduct of that war. I had a difference of opinion with Gore Vidal the other day on Kup's Show on this very issue. He expressed the intellectually fashionable attitude in condemning Mr. Nixon. I suggested that the actions by Mr. Nixon which were advanced as the basis for his impeachment were far less serious than many of the known or at least knowable (whether or not impeachable) actions by some of the Presidents admired by the very people who had chased down Mr. Nixon. For example, we should notice that Mr. Truman, with his loyalty and security programs and with several disastrous appointments to the Supreme Court, was in large part responsible for the McCarthy period. All this has to be kept in mind in thinking about Mr. Nixon and why he was pursued. I think it is important that those who arouse public opinion be aware of the extent to which their own passions drive them.⁶

S.T.: The "beauty part" of your book is your sense of -- I hate to use these words because they have been used carelessly but they do fit here - your sense of compassion and understanding for the person who disagrees with you, indeed for the one who has hurt you. I find this astonishing and rare. But this is what the book is really about, it's a study of you. When you went back to your home town in Southern IIlinois, after you were turned down by the bar, what was your home town's reaction?

G.A.: Quiet. They didn't like what I was doing, but at the same time they had known me enough from childhood not to go on the offensive against me. I was left alone. With the exception of two men, no one in my home town outside of my family said anything publicly.⁷ The two who did say something publicly spoke on my behalf. One of them was my high school principal, Elbert Fulkerson; the other was the local publisher, Frank Ledbetter. Those two men did take what I thought was an honorable position. The others at least were not dishonorable: they didn't join any pack against me; they just didn't do anything, so far as I know. You can be grateful in these matters that people don't do anything against you.

S.T.: But isn't the not doing something just as harmful? You know the phrase we hear so often, that obscene phrase, "the silent majority." Isn't that as horrible as doing something?

G.A.: No, it's not usually as bad as doing something. There was in my home town at least a concern about what was happening. To that extent, you see, the people there were not unhelpful. It would have been better, of course, if they had said publicly what should have been said. On the other hand, one can't always expect that, especially when passions are running high. You remember that period, Studs. You were far more alert to what was happening than I was because you are a few years older and you were more in touch than I was with people who were being personally affected by these things. It was very difficult to get anybody to do anything. You must have seen many cases where you would have settled for certain people not doing anything at all. If they had simply not said anything it would have been much better.

S.T.: [Laughter.] I specifically remember a man named Clamage, of the Americanism Committee of the American Legion. I would have been happy if he had done less. That's true. But back to George Anastaplo. You passed the bar and you graduated law school with honors. You have an essay here on lawyers. You ask whether lawyers ever study great minds.

G.A.: Lawyers don't study much of anything except the immediate case that they are concerned with. This very much affects their general understanding of things. The better they are as lawyers the busier they are, and consequently the less thoughtful they become. Some lawyers are aware of the fact that they probably knew a good deal more when they had just graduated from law school -- more about the most important things -- than they do later when they have been immersed for years in their day-to-day duties. This can be demoralizing.

S.T.: Socrates spoke of the unexamined life as not worth living.

G.A.: Of course, the examined life may not be worth much either at times.

S.T.: [Laughter.] We come back to the right to examine public servants. Socrates was questioning the "wise men" of the community. He was questioning authority, was he not?

G.A.: He was and he wasn't. He was trying to find out some things and this led in effect to some questioning of authority. It was conceived by those in authority to be a threat to them. This is one of the critical problems that people of an intellectual bent have to face up to. This goes back to what I have just said about the Nixon impeachment campaign. People who influence opinions -- especially in a country such as ours where public opinion is very volatile but also very important— have a serious responsibility. They have to recognize that they are far more used to extreme positions being taken in argument than are most of their fellow citizens. Ordinary people can be undermined, disillusioned, and otherwise disturbed by the uninhibited questioning that intellectuals take for granted. I think that all too often intellectuals are not restrained enough in how they talk about the most important things.

S.T.: I have said that liberal and conservative are used promiscuously. I think the word intellectual is another. I have the strong feeling that our vocabulary has been perverted.

G.A.: What I mean by intellectuals are the people who read books the people who trade in some ways in ideas.

S.T.: The ones you talk about in your book are separated from a community. That very separation leads to an ignorance of what the feelings are or what the conditions are of people in general. Perhaps both citizen and human being are needed. That's what this amounts to. One or the other isn't enough, is it?

G.A.: You can say that there ought to be, if not an alliance between the two, at least a truce. I think it takes a certain kind of thoughtfulness to recognize how far one's own private pursuit of the truth should go, what one should and should not say publicly.

S.T.: This leads to more of your Human Being and Citizen, which does discuss what should and should not be said. You have an essay on obscenity with which I might possibly disagree somewhat.⁸

G.A.: You and I probably agree that it is imprudent to talk much about our using legal sanctions to suppress obscenity today. I think that is likely to be self-defeating, perhaps making matters worse. But what is even more imprudent is the assumption that the community has no duty and no right to try to shape the vital opinions of the community at this time and for subsequent generations, those opinions which can be decisive for how we feel, think, and act. The result is to leave the shaping of such opinions to chance -- to leave it to anybody who has a peculiar bent or inclination and oftentimes the most crassly commercial purposes. The issue of how much and what form of obscenity is to be permitted should itself be completely open to discussion. Unfettered political discussion is necessary for a self-governing people. But I think that we ought not to take for granted the notion that the community as community has no right to shape opinions. Of course, it is evident that such shaping is done all the time by schools and by other institutions. But should not the community act more directly as well? That's one key issue today.

S.T.: I would not differ from you too much. But I do believe that perhaps the whole approach to obscenity is much too narrow. We think of sex. We equate obscenity with man, woman, and bed.

G.A.: Well, that is a critical part of it because --

S.T.: -- there is another aspect of obscenity: violence. No one ever calls the gratuitous violence on television obscene.

G.A.: There is a serious problem with the violence, just as there is a problem with obscenity in the old-fashioned sense. To go even further, I would say that there is a serious problem in this country with television itself. In fact, I've developed elsewhere the proposal that it would be in the general interest simply to shut down the television industry altogether.⁹

S.T.: Well, I'm not sure I agree with that.

G.A.: I know you probably don't agree with me.

S.T.: But I'm not disagreeing as much as you may think. The discussion of obscenity is really irrelevant today, unless it is considered in the context of all aspects of our life. Not to discuss the commercial programs in which a deodorant is sold as the next good, or the programs in which the hero shoots another guy twenty times, or the fact that the Pentagon makes bombs, not needed, to kill millions -- if these things are not discussed as obscenity, then the other discussion of obscenity is wholly irrelevant and meaningless.

G.A.: I do not believe the Pentagon illustration raises an obscenity problem. It is a very serious problem of public policy and perhaps a problem of justice, as well as --

S.T.: -- yes, but you see, it's obscene. If something is anti-human, puts humans down -- what is obscenity? Something that makes us less than what we are.

G.A.: Obscenity ultimately refers to things which should not be shown publicly. That's what it comes down to. It should be distinguished from such other questionable things as, say, incivility, desecration, and racial prejudice. A concern about obscenity is a concern about public morals, personal tastes, and hence the shaping of a community's character. I think it's better in these cases to try to keep words in the channels to which we have been long accustomed.

S.T.: I think the time has come to question the very concept of obscenity.

G.A.: The importance of language is reflected in one of my essays, you recall, the one on race, law, and civilization. I question there the sorts of things that pass for education these days. Thus, Black Studies programs have probably been disastrous. A lot is to be said for an emphasis upon the best English in schools and upon the use of very good poetry to teach children how to read and how to think -- how to read carefully. That discipline, I think, is necessary.

S.T.: I see your point. Your essay deals with the misuse of language in the name of Black English or of Black Culture without the classics. You mention, of course, the great Black writers like W. E. B. DuBois and Frederick Douglass.

G.A.: Douglass's writings are marvelous. None of his successors today can write like that. The question is, "Why not?"

S.T.: I'm being the moderate one now. I'm asking for a fusion of two ways. Take the language of Sacco and Vanzetti in their letters. It was bad English; they were two Italian immigrants. And yet, wasn't that literature ?

G.A.: Which one was it that was the more expressive?

S.T.: It was Vanzetti. Even so, the language was bad, the grammar was bad, but it flowed out of a person's dreams.

G.A.: If Vanzetti is the more literate one, the letters of his that I've read are those of a man who clearly believed that one should always make an effort, even while on Death Row, to improve oneself. (There is something Socratic about this.) The question is, then, "According to what standard is one improving oneself?" Does not someone striving to improve himself as a writer have to look to the very best of the English language for guidance?

S.T.: We know that rhetoric is the lifeblood of politics. In the Declaration of Independence, the style and the substance were related. Compare the pedestrian use of language all around us, which makes for pedestrian thoughts. This, I think, is your point.

G.A.: I believe, to go back to my related television point, that the underlying problem is with the very nature of that medium, to say nothing of what has happened to it. The only sensible solution is simply to get rid of it.

S.T.: [Laughter.] You're kind of like a Luddite

G.A.: We are deceiving ourselves if we believe that a few good programs here and there can make up for the disastrous effects --

S.T.: -- unless there is something else to be done with it. We know that television is primarily a sales medium.

G.A.: It is not the commercial element in television that poses the most serious problem; it is the very nature of the medium. What we have here is what has happened elsewhere also and will happen inevitably

S.T.: My disagreement with you is a very deep one here.

G.A.: I know it is. That's why I'm pressing it.

S.T.: The medium itself is not innately evil. This discovery could be fantastic and great. The manner in which it is being used, as a commercial sales medium and nothing else, is important. That is where the problem lies, not with the medium itself.

G.A.: I believe we are getting down to what is bedrock for the position of most intellectuals today, a position which goes back to the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. In some respects, Studs, you are truly a child of the Enlightenment. [Laughter.] Does not the very size of the audiences necessarily sought by television, because of its expense if for no other reason, require lowering the level of discourse?

S.T.: This calls for another discussion by George Anastaplo. There is so much to talk about, and our hour is almost up. We have barely touched upon George Anastaplo's quite beautiful book, Human Being and Citizen. There is a quote here from C. Herman Pritchett in the 1972 volume of the California Law Review which introduces an address that George made to law students at the University of Illinois. (The title of this particular essay is, "What's Really Wrong with George Anastaplo?") The Pritchett quotation is,

On April 24, 1961, the Supreme Court of the United States by a vote of five to four, affirmed the action of the Illinois Supreme Court, which, by a vote of four to three, had upheld the decision of the Committee on Character and Fitness of the Illinois bar, which, by a vote of eleven to six, decided that George Anastaplo was unfit for admission to the Illinois bar. This was not Anastaplo's only such experience with power structures. In 1960 he was expelled from Soviet Russia for protesting harassment of another American, and in 1970 from the Greece of the Colonels. As W. C. Fields might have said, "Any man who is kicked out of Russia, Greece, and the Illinois Bar can't be all bad."

That's George Anastaplo. Leon Despres, the former Chicago alderman who was dean of the few independents in a city council of trained seals, sang of George Anastaplo's book in the Chicago Daily News, "The book deserves several readings. It will leave many impressions on the reader. Above all, it will leave the abiding impression of the correctness of what a footnote tells us Anastaplo said to the misguided Committee on Character and Fitness, 'The American bar needs me more than I need the American bar.' " (To which I say, "Amen.") "We lost a great lawyer," says Despres, "but Chicago gained a great neo-Socrates.''¹⁰ Well, that's George Anastaplo. George, you called me a child of the Enlightenment. I will call you what Leon Despres did, a neo-Socrates. [Laughter.] Thank you very much.