What Shall We Do about Unamerican?: Un Pour Tous, Tous Pour Un

Abstract

WHAT SHALL WE DO ABOUT UNAMERICAN? UN POUR TOUS, TOUS POUR UN JOHN L. DUSSEAU* Un is a useful and engagingly simple prefix. It means "not." What is not likely is unlikely. Whoever is not disturbed is undisturbed. Robert Lynd tells us in a delightfullong-ago essay ofsome Dutch sailors in Portsmouth who became rollicking drunk and then belligerent, eventually punching and even biting some respectable British subjects. The captain of the Dutch ship came forward at their trial to interpret the evidence given by his men; at his conclusion, the magistrate addressed him gravely: "It is very Unenglish to bite people, and I should like you to impress this on your men." To which the captain replied, with equal gravity: "It is very Undutch, too, your worship." Of course, non also means "not"; but it is less emphatic than un, being merely negative, whereas un is positive, implying an opposite state or quality. A custard pie is not unapple (nothing is); it is nonapple. What is unlikely would like to pass itself off as likely; but a nonferrous metal would not dream of steeling. It is said—who knows on what authority?—that thousands and thousands of Russian editors and proofreaders spent millions and millions ofhours expunging the word "Trotsky" from the immense Russian literature, so that the fiery revolutionist became a nonperson and his raggle-taggle band of followers were reduced to Nietrotskyites. Un before national designations has a limited and chauvinistic use. Lynd asked a Scotchman if he had ever heard anyone use the adjective Unscotch, and he said he could not imagine it except in reference to Irish whiskey. Similarly, one cannot really imagine Vasco da Gama saying that indifference to the fate and faith of Préster John was Unportuguese ; but the word does have that edgy implication that NonPortuguese are to a man guilty of apostasy from the true faith. The Oxford English Dictionary gives "un-American" a fairly ancient lineage. Under the date of 1818 it supplies this example: "Ninety marble capitals have ?Address: 14 Chamond, Arbordeau, Devon, Pennsylvania 19333.© 1980 by The University of Chicago. 0031-5982/80/2303-0133$01.00 386 I John L. Dusseau ¦ About Unamerican been imported at vast cost from Italy, . . . and shew how un-American is the whole plan." Here we see that delicate use of Mn in its connotation that anything not customary to or practiced by one's own people is either wrong or wrongheaded. The tiniest glance at the Congressional Record will disclose that our august legislative body is not given to precision of word. But Congress has indulged in a peculiarly vicious solecism in naming the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, for dissent has an honorable tradition in our society going back beyond Tom Paine. If the committee was supposed to concern itself with the activities of, say, Norman Thomas or Earl Browder, certainly then Unamerican is a misapplied word. What nicer, more typical, middle-class Americans could one find than the former leaders of our Socialist and Communist parties? Indeed, in his earnest, not very bright, honest do-goodism, Browder always seemed more a Henry, or even a Gerald, Ford than a bearded, Bolshevik bomb thrower. Time has cast a merciful pall over the early frenzy of the House committee members; but it may be worth recall that theirs was a deadly serious mission, as Gary Wills tells us in his introduction to Scoundrel Time. The committee in 1947 was especially concerned with the movie, Song ofRussia, which had been made, in fact, at the behest of the United States Office of War Information in order to show our brave ally courageously resisting our common enemy. Ayn Rand, an expert on Soviet hilarity, at once identified the film's Unamerican bias—it showed Russians smiling. "It is," Rand said, "one of the stock propaganda tricks ofthe Communists to show people smiling." Only Representative McDowell seemed to feel some misgiving on the score of the vicious Soviet smile. McDowell: Doesn't anybody smile in Russia any more? Rand: Well, if you ask me literally, pretty much no. McDowell: They don't smile? Rand: Not that way, no. If they do, it is privately...