Unradic-Lib

When Ramparts magazine seemed dead of financial anemia last year, Philanthropist Edgar Lockwood was one of four benefactors who scraped up $200,000 to save the radical left's muckraking monthly. Lockwood's name then appeared on the Ramparts masthead as a member of the board of directors. Last week his name showed up elsewhere in the magazine: at the end of a public letter of resignation. The editors printed a rebuttal. Spiro Agnew castigates "radical-liberals," but as the Ramparts-Lockwood exchange demonstrates, the terms are in most ways mutually exclusive.

Lockwood objected particularly to a July editorial in which Ramparts said that the system "cannot be revitalized [but] must be overthrown. As humanely as possible, but by whatever means necessary." Lockwood's thesis: "It is true that we live in revolutionary times and that profound change is needed . . . but I am not about to throw out the electoral process mindlessly for that reason." Ramparts' antithesis: "To strike fear into the hearts of the system's guardians has by now proved itself to be the only way of forcing politicians to minimal constitutional response."