Kerry Thornley - The Dreadlock Recollections

Brother-in-law seemed attracted to any idea that smacked of clandestine administration. Once he said: "Hitler was a clown. He never should have gone public. He should have lived as an ordinary citizen, ruling from behind the scenes."

Another example of how Brother-in-law paid attention to ideas that fascinated me occurred when he once warned: "There will come a time in your life when one of your friends will begin to behave exactly like Francisco d'Anconia in Atlas Shrugged , inexplicably seeming to abandon ideals both of you shared. Can you keep that in mind? His motives will be similar to Francisco's in Ayn Rand's novel, infiltrating the opposition."

I assured him that I could, although in fact I was not endeavoring to remember anything this weird, repetitive man said. Slim could think Brother-in-law was brilliant and competent if he wanted; I was certain the man was just a bullshitter, though possibly a dangerous one.

"And if there was a Nazi takeover in this country, a fascist takeover, don't you think it would be better just to torment one man, instead of a whole minority, like the Jews?"

"Yes, but how much would this one man be tormented?"

Slim chuckled.

Brother-in-law smirked and said, "Not very much," waving his hand in a depreciating gesture.

Sometimes Brother-in-law could appear competent enough to give me pause. Briefly, I would worry that I was underestimating him. An isolated visual memory sticks in my mind of Gary standing next to his car in sunglasses, chewing the stem of his pipe, looking like a most efficient Nazi general. In that instant he seemed to be contemplating me as if I represented to him a valuable prize, someone who would be useful in his plans.

Once he asked me what I thought of creating numerous factional conspiracies, consisting of secret societies, small countries and so forth, like pieces of a puzzle, then, at an appointed time, drawing them together in a powerful organization large enough to conquer the world. I think one of the examples he mentioned was Poland. In any case, references to Poland were frequent in his talks with me, the Polish Corridor in World War II, Hitler's contempt for the Poles, etc. Brother-in-law seemed to mention Poland as often as he spoke of Germany.

All in all, he seemed as conscious of Europe as of the United States, mentioning often the poem about Flanders Field, for instance, and the sinking of the Titanic. Once, in fact, he posed the theory that the Titanic was wrecked deliberately in order to get rid of some important person or other.

Contemporary European affairs were also much in his mind. We shared an admiration for a French rabble-rouser who was at that time stirring up a revolt among small shop keepers in Paris with the slogan, "Hang the tax collectors!"

Perhaps that explained why his opposition to Communism was more qualified than that of the average American anti-Communist patriot of that day.

"Kerry, do you agree with the Marxist-Leninist theory of historical responsibility, that people should be held responsible for the results of their actions, regardless of their intentions?"

"Yes," I barked. "Nothing is truer than the saying that the highway to hell is paved with good intentions. If nearly half the world is not to continue starving to death, then ethics has to be geared to what will actually change the present situation. What will work, what will feed people has to be the standard of morality, not what seems fair in the eyes of spoiled intellectuals who've never been outside the United States. Like the poet Robinson Jeffers says, this country has a national introversion complex. So does Japan. Neither country really believes the outside world exists. People watch a newsreel or read something in the papers, but subconsciously it is only entertainment to them."

That Brother-in-law just loved to hear me talk like this was evident from the look in his eyes. "And these Liberal professors, these intellectuals you speak of, did you ever notice how they talk? They say, 'I feel' this and 'I feel' that. Not, 'I think,' but, 'I feel.' I believe that's what's wrong with them, don't you? They don't think, they feel. Don't you agree that reason should prevail over emotion at all times?"

"Yes, that's just what Ayn Rand says."

That this alleged Nazi's politics were riddled with contradictions was something I found puzzling, but not very interesting. In my all-American way, I figured he was just some kind of nut.

Humanity's actions were replete with examples of illogical behavior. Ayn Rand said that the only free will consisted of the decision either to think or not to think. To me it was obvious that most people thought only when immediate, everyday problems confronted them. When it came to philosophy and politics, faith and wishful thinking took over. Nothing else could explain to me why, for example, there were so many otherwise intelligent people who believed in God.

That I was often as contradictory as he was never dawned on me. I would sit there asserting that when there is a contradiction in anyone's thinking, they ought to check their premises. Then, unconsciously, I would answer a question by contradicting something else I had just said. Not only was I, an author, simply humoring this man in order to gather background material for a book, I was also young and brash. Rationality appealed to me as much because Ayn Rand's novel romanticized it as for any other reason.

One of Gary's favorite war stories was about how the Germans had once tricked Stalin into purging all his best generals. "During the Hitler-Stalin Pact, when the Nazis were making preparations to break with Stalin and attack Russia, they took him a list of all his most brilliant generals and told him they were plotting treason against him. Not only did Stalin believe them, he said, 'How much do you want for this information?' The damned fool actually paid them for it!" Gary must have told that story nearly a dozen times.

"You see, the Russians knew Hitler thought Jews were inferior. That was no problem to them because Russians themselves have been traditionally anti-Semitic. In Czarist times they used to round 'em up and kill 'em in what were called pogroms . What they didn't understand about Hitler, though, heh, heh, was that he considered Slavs a subhuman race. Heh, heh, he hated them! In fact, Rosenberg used to measure the skulls of Slavic execution victims to try to prove they had smaller heads, and therefore smaller brains, than Germans."

My policy during such discussions was usually to maintain a tactful, frightened silence. Something about the way he laughed awakened the possibility that he was not sincerely a racist, that it was all part of his swaggering, 'bad guy' image. I didn't want to take my chances by provoking unnecessary arguments, though.

I was more comfortable when he spoke in terms of American Conservatism, a philosophy with which I disagreed but was in sympathy in that it opposed socialism.

"Have you ever heard of the Hoover Institution for the Study of War, Peace and Revolution?"

"As a matter of fact, yes. I was reading an article about it recently."

That article probably appeared in The National Observer , to which I subscribed. Although he didn't say so, Karl Hess was obviously an admirer of Ayn Rand. As publisher and editor of that publication, he always took the proper Objectivist position in relation to every issue.

"What do you think of that organization, Kerry? Do you approve of the Hoover Institution?"

"Yes. I like the things I read about it."

Brother-in-law seemed enormously pleased, as if my favorable response here were crucial.

That was a question he only asked once. Another such inquiry was, "What do you think of developing nuclear power for peaceful purposes? The Atoms for Peace Program?"