The following remarks were delivered at a celebration of Mr.
Evans’ distinguished career held at the National Press Club in
Washington, D.C. on July 12:
I have known Stan Evans for a long time, approximately ten years
longer than he has known me.
When I arrived on campus as a college freshman, Stan’s
aura was very much present, even though he had graduated some years
earlier. Just as it was assumed by us impressionable youth that a
lanky prepster named George H.W. Bush might one day play a
prominent role in public life, it was assumed, as well, that M.
Stanton Evans would leave his mark on American journalism. And so
it came to pass.
Stan will have forgotten this historic occasion, but I met
him at an all-day meeting convened in Newark, New Jersey to
contemplate the future of the Girl Scouts of America. In those
hand-to-mouth days for us token conservatives, we would go almost
anywhere for two hundred bucks. I was late in arriving and took my
seat at the long table of conferees, with the audience rising
around us in serried ranks to the top of a modernistic
amphitheatre. The ritual introductions were already in progress.
They went something like this:
“Hello, I’m William Bigelow from the Committee for Racial
Equality. If we do nothing else today, we must confront the racial
oppression under which millions of Girl Scouts of color are
suffering each and every day.”
Murmurs of warm approval rippled through the
audience.
Then: “Hello, I’m J. Somersworth Farnsby, co-founder of
the Coalition for a Nuke-free America. I hope that we can all agree
that the failure of the Girl Scouts to confront the overriding
moral issue of our time — our government’s stockpiling of nuclear
weapons — is a national disgrace. That disgrace should end right
here, right now.”
There followed a sitting ovation for J.
Somersworth.
And then: “Aloha. I’m Rev. Cindy Cistern from the Church
for a Better Tomorrow! I’d certainly agree with Somersworth that we
ought to rid the Girl Scouts of the badges, the uniforms and all
the terrifying emblems of US militarism. And, as William says,
racial injustice is clearly omnipresent in contemporary America.
But the larger challenge for us is to throw open the doors for all
young women to the full range of sexual possibility.”
Thunderous applause for Sister Cistern.
Along about this point in the program, the calculation was
hardening that I should have held out for three hundred
bucks.
And then … rolling out of the American heartland, came
a rich, reassuring baritone voice saying, “Good morning. I’m M.
Stanton Evans, a nonpartisan observer of the public policy
process.”
Tentative applause, much confusion, as a couple of hundred
nervous Girl Scout officials strained to get a glimpse of the
nonpartisan observer in their midst.
You will remember those Gahan Wilson cartoons in The
New Yorker. Scenes of a movie audience watching a horror
flick. People writhing in their seats, screaming, covering their
eyes with their fingers. In the middle of the audience sits one
weird, pudgy little kid, grinning wildly from ear to ear. That was
me. With M. Stanton Evans in the house, I knew that we had them
outnumbered. And so it came to pass. That conference proved to be a
long day for the forces of peace and sexual possibility.
I learned that day about one of Stan’s signal
contributions to the public conversation: by the rigor of his
thought, the clarity of his expression and the sheer weight of his
argument, he has leveled every playing field on which he has chosen
to compete.
Another contribution — familiar to most of you here
tonight — has been his rare gifts as a teacher. The first book I
ever edited was a book written by Stan. In the front matter to that
volume, Stan did the necessary, thanking his professional
associates before making the conventional stipulation that any
shortcomings were solely the responsibility of the author. That was
a rare journalistic lapse on Stan’s part and it should be
corrected. For the next edition of his book, I have suggested the
following language for the acknowledgment page: “I am grateful for
any trace of wit, insight or erudition that managed to survive the
clumsy interventions of my so-called editor, who if justice had
prevailed would have been honing his dull editorial blade on some
far distant whetstone.”
It will come as no surprise to those of you who have
benefited from his tutelage that Stan has been a pivotal
professional influence for an entire generation of conservative
writers and editors. He has been patient and nurturing in the early
going, and then proud and puffing as we achieved some minor
success.
In recent years, Stan has taken on yet another role. In
his magisterial book, Blacklisted by History, and in books
still to come, he has kept the files, sorted the data and inscribed
the lists of those who betrayed the United States during the Cold
War. It is lonely, widely unappreciated work and in doing it Stan
has become the Simon Wiesenthal of the anti-Communist cause, the
man who remembers everything.
Stan’s influence now reaches deeply into the generations
behind him. My own grandson Harry, aged five, found his admission
to pre-school slowed a bit when he was asked to identify his most
enjoyable activity. The approved answer at this progressive
institution is some form of “helping the disadvantaged.” Instead,
Harry announced his enthusiasm for “hunting rats.” After an
unnerving delay, Harry was finally accepted and began in his
diligent way to prepare for his kindergarten interview a few months
hence. I have suggested that — in tribute to his Uncle Stan —
Harry should particularize his answer by announcing that he now
enjoys “hunting Commie rats.”
One of the most telling things ever said about Stan Evans
was said by our dear friend Bill Rusher, who died this spring after
serving for a half-century as the central gyroscope of the
conservative movement. Bill said to me and, I’m sure, to others:
“If anybody ever wants to know what ol’ Rusher would have thought
about something, and Rusher’s not around, ask Evans.” Well, some of
us do want to know and we ask and we are never disappointed. Stan
has become the indispensable man of our common enterprise, the
wisest among us.
Let me give you just one example of that wisdom. Stan and
I recently collaborated in an effort to reinvigorate a nonprofit
institution. During the course of those deliberations, Stan gave me
some advice that will henceforward guide all of my bureaucratic
activity. Said Stan: “It’s amazing how much credit you can take, if
you don’t care about accomplishing anything.”
My remarks tonight have most assuredly not been a
testimonial to Stan Evans. Such raw sentimentality would have no
place in an occasion of this kind. It’s merely an acknowledgement
of my gratitude to Stan for being my mentor, my friend and our
central gyroscope.
