The Purpose of this Book

The Purpose of This Bo~k The people of this nation are today presented with a choice between two forms of political and economic life. One form is that of our traditions, in which individual lib erty prevails and is guarded by "the long, still grasp of law." The other is the dominance of the state in human affairs. With· us the intrusion of the state i~ not a frightening threat. but a seemingly benign alternative to the perplexities, the anxieties, and the labors that must attend the possession of true liberty. My purpose is to describe this alternative and, for those who prefer liberty, to offer the means for its preser vation. Merely t<> bewail a trend is not to correct it. The American wants to know what to do about it. "Abstract liberty," said Edmund Burke, "like other mere abstractions is not to be found. Liberty inheres in some sensi ble object;. and every nation has formed to itself some favor ite point, which by way of eminence becomes the criterion of their happiness." Our concept of liberty has enveloped and permeated our complex structure of associated living. Like oxygen in a physical organism, it is the means for burning away waste and decay and for the liberation of living forces.

Its presence explains our material and spiritual achieve ments. In those very achievements, however, there lurks a threat vii The Purpose of This Book to the liberty that made them possible. For we have a mate rial' abundance that seems to have no limit. And we have forms of government so excellent that our trust in them is ardent and complete. It is. the very excellence of the fruit which may induce us to neglect the tree. We are not and never have been threatened by authority in any of its more obvious or repellent forms-no armed master,. no tyrannous mob, no foreign conqueror. We know nothing of what the peoples of Asia and Europe have seen and felt. The danger we may encounter is quite unlike theirs. In a sense, our enemy is ourselves. It is clothed in the benign habiliments of men of good wilL It phrases its appeal in terms that we have learned to love and trust welfare, security, democracy, justice, and humanitarianism.

More than a century ago, Alexis, de Tocqueville warned us that we need fear not "tyrants" but "guardians." "I have always thought," said that unrivaled commentator on our institutions, "that servitude of the regular, quiet and gentle kind . . . might be combined more easily with some of the outward forms of freedom, and that it might even es tablish itself under the wing of the sovereignty of the people..," Since gentleness is not always equipped with superlative capacity of mind, those who would thus lead us are generally unable to comprehend the inexorable facts of life. Nor are they able to comprehend what may come of their ministra tions. The warm-hearted, God bless them, are sometimes the soft-minded, God keep them. Their charity may and gener ally does cover a multitude of errors and delusions. These errors and delusions may through seductive appeals be trans mitted to most of us. And most of us will ultimately have to make the fatal decisions.

Not all who use these appeals are guileless. There are many among our leaders who have no illusions about what viii The Purpose of This Book they are promoting. ·There are many who have no faith in the permanence of liberty and who would gain by its decline. We have seen the meek armed with visionary purpose possess other lands. And we have seen them fail. Such. dis illusioned British socialists as Ivor Thomas are already pubh.·Shi.. ng their confes.sions. We m.IYwell consider those failures abroad. "Whenever our neigh or's house is on fire," said Burke, "it cannot be amiss for he engines to playa little on our own." The philosophy of statism a]ready has sharp emphasis in the acts, plans, and policies of those who exercise predomi nant influence in our Federal Administration, .in the pres ently dominan national political party, in several of our state governme ts, in an influential part of our press, in un official organiz tions, and in immense organized special in terests.

The impair ent of constitutional protections and our party system, t e immense growth of Federal power, the in creasing depen ence of millions of people upon government bounties, and te insidious attack of alien philosophies-all these are evidences of a threat to·those republican institutions which collectively have been the shield of our liberty. The intervention of government in our economic and social life proceeds in what we may roughly call geometric progression. With each new encroachment upon the area of liberty, government grows more potent ,and liberty weaker. Ultimately, an unseen lin,e is crossed, and resistance becomes impossible. The individual cannot regain his liberty" because his capacity for self-determination is exhausted. Asa nation, we reach a point of no return. This book is not an essay in pessimism. The means and the vitality remain in the United States to check this power ful trend, to save our liberty, and to enjoy through that lib erty a .luminous d~stiny. I believe that, as the problem is bet ter understood by those who have the most to lose, and as ix The Purpose of This Book those people create the organized force to resist, the reality of liberty can be assured for generations to come. I hope I can make a small contribution to that end.

The plan of this book can be stated simply. There are presented first, as essential background, the traditional prin ciples of liberty and the institutions in which they are em bodied in our republic. I next consider what I call the "middle interests" of Am~r ica. The immense stakes, material concerns, and potential power of those who share these interests are described in some detail. Next there are presented in· detail the. theories, manifesta tions, and policies that are impairing our capacity to pre serve our essential liberty. The consequences of this impair ment, both in the present and the future, are then considered. The challenge of statism-that there be given a "bet ter way" to achieve the goal of a progressively better life-is then met by a series of alternative policies, which I have called "a road away from socialism." The second half of the book is a consideration of how political means can be used for the preservation of liberty.

Traditionally, such responsibility rests in the two-party sys tem. But that system has fallen into decay. It is now an inade quate means of registering national decisions by the people. Finally, I suggest how' political ,action by people most con cerned with liberty can preserve not only their own interests but the essential integrity of the republic. The pages that follow are addressed to all Americans who share my sense of the danger of government ascendancy and who want to do something to minimize that threat. The mail that comes to me as a journalist, my contacts with people in my travels through the states, my professional experience in measuring the nature and effects of government policies, and a feeling for public sentiment acquired in, forty years of pox The Purposeof This Book liticalobservation, teaching, 'VfltIng, and practice all give me positive evidence that the public is a"vareof the danger of statism.

While many of my conclusions and suggestions are the product of years of experience and reflection, this book em bodies a number of conclusions reached in the three years since the great Republican debacle in Ig48. During that period I have also had an opportunity to study directly the British political scene, during the 1950 Parliamentary cam paign. Millions of Americans are willing to meet the danger of statism with positive political action, but they lack organiza tion, information, and direction. Of course, many would delegate the task to a political party or to some heaven-sent leader. That is a vain course. The parties will act only as citizens compel them to act. There is no savior but the citi zen himself. He must first in his community, his Congres sional district, his state, and finally at the national level, create the sinews of political organization to oppose the forces that would lead us down the road to socialism.

At this moment our parties are not truly national. In many states there is no real Republican Party. And the national machinery of the Democratic Party has been captured by virulent minorities. Those citizens who would preserve Amer ican institutions by political action must .use the state and local· machinery of whatever party is best able to elect candi dates who think and believe as· they do. My insistence upon citizen action is not meant to minimize the value of political parties. Two strong parties are indis pensable to republican government. But a party is only a ,vehicle for citizen action. The party, with its legal machin ery, should be used to further the purposes of politically con scious citizens. Above all, this book considers what I have called the "midxi The Purpose of This Book dIe interests" of America. These interests are vital to a free society. Those who share them have both an immense stake and a niassive potential power. Their action can be decisive.

In England it was the middle class that decisively checked socialism in the elections of 1950 and 1951. They should realize that it is a firm dogma of Marxism that "the middle class" must and will be destroyed. The people in America who correspond to that class are divided between the parties or are without party ties. They are pay;. ing the costs of statism, with little to say about the policies of their government. Some will call this book a conservative manifesto. It does propose to conserve a faith and tradition through which Americ'a has emerged as the hope of a free world. It insists that the assurance of the future rests upon the experience of the past. If that be conservatism, let. my critics make the most of it. The reactionary is the person who tells us that progress is possible only through more and more government. That is a real retreat to the past. Anglo-Americans once lived under an omnipotent government, and paid with blood to escape from it. Before the rights of Anglo-Americans were estab lished, the state was supreme; it failed to satisfy the material needs, the aspirations, and the dreams of men. Individual freedom finally seized the torch of progress. Individual free dom is still the authentic means of a better life.

While this book only incidentally touches foreign affairs, I amwell aware that war vitally influences domestic policies. A war, of course, enlarges the power of government over private life and property. A withdrawal of liberty in the face of foreign peril must never be more than temporary. If, beyond the bare necessity of national survival, there is any reason for fighting, that reason must be the preservation of the domestic institutions under which we have lived. We xii The ,Purposeof This Book must not, in opposing the ultimate in Marxism, surrender our cause at home. The present emergency, occasioned by the cold war and vast rearmament, provides greater rather than less signifi cance fOl:JI,e lesson that I am seeking to present in this book. And since the emergency may be of many years' duration, the need is still more important to stress the dangers of narrow ingour sphere of liberty. For such vast military prepara tions bring into increasing prominence a military psychology among our people. Since that attitude of mind has to do with an e!TIergent crisis, it is concerned with the expenditure and protection, rather than the production, of national wealth.

It stresses discipline, authority, and uniformity. Moreover, tremendous expenditures for military purposes sharpen problems of taxation and inflation. The· production of immense quantities of military materiel also has a debili tating effect on business enterprise. Controls, cost-plus con tracts, and other wartime factors in production weaken the business psychology that makes for vital competition. Whole some control by Congress over expenditures is impaired by constant limitations, because of military secrets, on discussion. There is also the fear on the part of members of Congress' to question military expenditures because of the danger that they will be charged with impairing essential national secu rity. In short, a considerable part of the econorpy is enclosed in a sort of military sanctuary. All this is due to neither the ambitions of military men nor a deliberate acceptance of gov ernment dominance. It is inherent in the world situation.

But it is a factor in the current growth of state power which must be appraised. I have inflicted upon many patient and able friends the 'task of looking over sections of this book. Their suggestions have been of inestimable help. But since the sin and the sen tence of any shortcomings must rest with me and me alone, I xiii The Purposeof This Book shall not evade my responsibility by naming these friends. My gratitude, however, is here acknowledged. In this task I have had the competent advice and editorial help of my assistant, Marjorie Wilson. A very important debt is due Frances Moley for patience, encouragement, and counsel. ---RAYMOND MOLEY December, 1951 xiv A Note on Terminology One of the most difficult problems 1 have faced in writing this •book· was that of choosing a specific name to describe the trend of state intervention by which our personal liberties are progressively usurped. The problem of terminology is especially difficult in writing of politics, especially con temporary politics. Politicians habitually follow the un scrupulous practice of seizing words of positive and pleasant connotation to describe what they advocate, and of using unpleasant words to describe what they oppose. The result is a steady deterioration in the value of words that once had specific meaning. A "liberal," for example, was once a per son who opposed the intervention of the state in the life and affairs of the individual. Now the word is used as self-descrip tion by those who favor such intervention. A similar fate has overcome such words as "welfare,"democracy,"and "plan ning."