The Political Setting

Revolt by whom? Against what?

There are many American citizens, perhaps a majority, for whom this pattern is designed. They are genuine liberals—the lovers of liberty. This answers the first question.

Against what would they revolt? Against America’s present reactionary. Old World movement. If given the opportunity, they would revolt against all of those political devices and ideas incidental to government in the role of master.

There is little need for review. Something almost akin to a dynasty began in our country in 1933. A four-term president, heading an administration seeking and obtaining more and more power, and expounding a collectivistic, anti-liberal philosophy, has been succeeded by the heir-apparent. The 15-year old program aimed at the all-responsible, and its concomitant, the all-authoritarian, state marches on its merry way, not only unhampered and unchecked, but aided and abetted by an ever-increasing number of gravy-trained citizens.

The Republican Party, with Wendell Willkie as standard-bearer, was unable to head off the third-term aspirant, even though the American tradition bore heavily in his favor. The same party with Thomas Dewey performed but little better against the same aspirant in his fourth successful attempt.

I believe these failures were to be expected and that they were appropriate to the occasions. Republican success, along the lines attempted in 1940 and 1944, would have been undeserved and disastrous.

Furthermore, I believe that many of the millions who voted for President Roosevelt did so with no firm conviction that they were voting for a representation of their views. The same was true of the millions who voted for Messrs. Willkie and Dewey. Acceptance was not what the American people had for their political leaders. Their attitudes could better be described as an acquiescence in confusion.

However, I am not concerned with the present dynasty or with those who want what it stands for, but with those who would, if they could, vote it and all of its collectivistic policies out of office.

Had Mr. Willkie or, later, Governor Dewey, won the election, this country would have been without a party of opposition. Under our two-party system the responsibility for opposition to our present collectivistic dynasty would seem to lie with the Republican Party. With the political INs pursuing the government-as-master course it should be the duty of the political OUTs to pursue the government-as-servant course. This always has been, is, and likely always will be the fundamental issue as it relates to the organization of society. By the two parties taking opposite stands, individual citizens would thus be given a chance to choose the course they prefer. Having the choice is the thing.

But, what, actually, has been the case? The Republican Party, in the last two campaigns, took the government-as-master course, precisely that which the dynastic group was already and still is pursuing. Therefore, the people had no choice except between power-seeking personalities and groups, each promising a superior administration of government-as-master. Such a choice was and still is no choice at all.

Because it has been kept out of office, the Republican Party is still a potential vehicle for those millions who wish to travel the truly liberal course. Thus far, however, it has demonstrated no signs of hope for these liberals. However, in spite of collectivistic behaviors on the part of nearly every aspirant to its titular headship, the party has not been totally destroyed as an instrument of liberalism. It is possible for it still to direct its course toward freedom under limited government.

The Democratic Party, it is true, contains many genuine liberals, perhaps more than does the Republican Party, but, as everyone knows even if they won’t acknowledge it, control of its national organization has been taken over and successfully retained by the most collectivistic and illiberal elements in the nation. Until the liberals in the Democratic Party are again in control of that party, liberals have no political banner under which to sail except the Republican Party, as dim a hope as that is.

If there is to be any political hope for liberals, if they are to have any banner, if they are to have even a single candidate, such possibilities can be realized only if there be an understanding of how the Republican Party has erred and, understanding, proceed forthwith to the creation of a party of opposition as a replacement for one of only pseudo-opposition.

The error is simply explained. The Republican Party, on the occasion of the last two contests, as well as in the one now under way, listened to the voice of expediency. The party leaders, platform writers and their advisers, when determining a course of action, have in effect asked and are asking today, “What must we say and do to win votes?” The voice of expediency, and the question is addressed only to expediency, answers. “Endorse the Wagner Act. Advocate ‘Social Security.’ Stand for those things of the New Deal which have proved popular.”

The voice of expediency misled and is misleading the Republican leaders. This voice always misleads. Of necessity it must mislead because it represents the rejection of moral principles for the hope of temporary gain.

If we are to regain a two-party system the Republican Party leaders must divorce themselves, totally, from expediency. They must turn to the only other voice, the voice of integrity and moral principle. They must ask, simply and exclusively, “What is right?” They may never receive precisely the correct answer. A discovery of the whole truth, always, is impossible. But the pursuit of truth is the basis of all moral action. To this pursuit we owe our loyalty, to this and nothing more.

If the Republican Party had been a truly liberal party, the platform writers and the titular heads would have been asking, “How can we liberate the individual from the tyranny of the State?” The voice of conscience would answer, “Repudiate the New Deal farm program of government subsidies, loans, parity payments and crop controls. Advocate the repeal of all price-maintenance laws, including the Federal Wage-Hour Law. Repudiate the idea that national prosperity may be promoted by protective tariffs. Denounce the Wagner Act and the racketeering and restriction of output by labor unions or by any other type of organization. Show the fallacy of the Federal ‘social security’ program. Stand for the right of every adult citizen to make his own bargain, if he wishes, with anyone who wants to buy his goods or services. Tell the people what is honestly believed to be true. Disregard votes. Pay no attention to popularity. ‘To thine own self be true.’”

The voice of expediency, through the mouths of well-wishers, would whisper, “Heed the voice of conscience and you will lose five million votes on that Wagner Act statement. You will lose other millions if you do not embrace Federal ‘social security’.”

But remember, the voice of expediency is a cheat.

Nothing better affirms this reasoning than the political history of Mr. Willkie. He started out with a perfectly horrible political cross to bear. He was the president of a big utility! Yet, as he went about the country stating his economic and political convictions, he impressed people with his honesty and forthrightness. He gave the appearance of being unequivocal. The American people so admired what they believed to be his qualities that they nominated him by popular acclaim.

Then, something seemed to happen to his demeanor. For the first time it became obvious that he was thinking in terms of winning the election. It became clear that he was thinking of methods for capturing votes. He seemed to think less and less of being right. The voice of expediency persuaded him to say in his speech of acceptance that he believed in the Fair Labor Standards Act, a position at complete odds with liberal tenets. He went more and more down the New Deal path, as did Governor Dewey after him, not because either one necessarily believed in that course but because they must have thought it was the way to defeat the Roosevelt Party and to secure the office for themselves and their party. They acted from motives of expediency rather than from moral convictions. Yet this action proved to be not even expedient. By it they did not succeed.

The mere changing of parties or personalities is not important. The transfer of power from one party to the other is important only if the ascending party has principles which it is important to substitute for the principles of the party in power. Nothing else matters.

Governor Dewey spoke in the Los Angeles Coliseum before 95,000 people. Millions were listening on the radio. He espoused “social security,” a New Deal item, but a “vote-catching” plank in the Republican platform. Competent authorities say that he chose Los Angeles for this wholly anti-liberal presentation because that city was the birthplace of pension schemes such as the Townsend Plan and Ham & Eggs. The response was unenthusiastic. He had listened to the voice of expediency.

Had he and the Republican policymakers listened to the voice of conscience, he would have chosen Los Angeles as the place to expose the fallacies of “social security.” He would have done as Theodore Roosevelt once did, when speaking in Denver in 1900. The big issue of that campaign was the gold versus silver standard. Colorado was a silver state. Political advisers joined his Denver-bound train at Omaha and urged him to avoid the subject. Teddy faced his audience in what seemed minutes of silence. His legs were spread, his jaw set. His first words were, and he yelled them, “Ladies and Gentlemen, I am for the gold standard!” The place was a bedlam of applause, not because the people of Colorado had changed their position on the silver question but because there stood before them an honest and a courageous man, a man devoted to what he thought to be right. He was unequivocal in his position, a trait in character that Americans love.

But back to Governor Dewey and Los Angeles. He lost the election. He might have lost it anyway. That isn’t the question. What did he and the Republican Party do for liberalism? They gave away the case! He testified before millions of radio listeners to the rightness of the New Deal. If he honestly believed in the rightness of the New Deal, he was the wrong man to lead the liberal movement, which the Republicans should have sponsored.

Think what might have happened. Citizens listen to candidates contending for high office. Statements have influence entirely out of proportion to their wisdom. That night in Los Angeles Governor Dewey could have so thoroughly exposed the fraud of “social security” that further extensions of it, even with the New Deal Party in power, would have been improbable. One more vicious trend toward totalitarianism could have been halted. And, in victory or in defeat, Governor Dewey would have become the champion of the liberals. As it is, he is neither the champion of the liberals nor of the New Dealers. Nor is he President.

I do not know when the next real election will be held. Most persons think it is scheduled for November, 1948. But in my book there will be no election unless there is at least one truly liberal candidate. Choosing among numerous aspirants to office who vie with each other as sponsors of public housing, socialized medicine, the nationalization of education and a host of other socialistic items is like choosing between Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum. That is not an election in any significant sense, that is, not in any ideal sense, but only in an unimportant, personality sense.

The way to begin is to begin! The time to begin is now, whether for November, 1948 or November, 1952. In any event, there are several things liberals should do:

1) Gain a widespread acceptance of the theory that it is not the label of the Party in office nor the name of the President which concerns us. We care only that liberal principles be re-affirmed and practiced.

2) Show that the responsibility of the Republican Party is to carry the standard of the opposition; that the espousal of liberal doctrines is its present and proper role. That and nothing else.

3) Begin a movement for the Party nomination of an informed liberal who loves liberty better than power and who does not want office.

The last point needs clarification. John Stuart Mill was a great British liberal. He did not want public office. Least of all did he want to be a Member of Parliament. But his friends were persuasive and solely out of a sense of duty he consented to become a candidate. Mr. Mill, not wanting the office, thought he would lose the election if he spoke his own liberal views, honestly and frankly. He avoided catch phrases and all of the devices supposed to be vote-getters. He made his first speech at a labor meeting. He berated the ideas they were sponsoring. At the conclusion of his talk a leader in the audience asked if he had not made such-and-such a derogatory remark about one of labor’s plans. Mill saw in the acknowledgment of the truth a chance not to be elected. He admitted the charge with some vigor. He was roundly cheered. Why? Because here was not a politician in the usual vote-seeking sense of the term but a man whose manifestation of honesty warranted the confidence of labor. Mill was elected to Parliament, and re-elected.

It was Jefferson who said, “Whenever a man has cast a longing eye on offices, a rottenness begins in his conduct.”

The rottenness to which Mr. Jefferson referred was, no doubt, an abandonment of moral principle as a basis of action or, an acceptance of expediency, which is the same thing.

It may be argued that this rottenness ought not to set in. There are some cases in which men have desperately wanted public office and have been strong enough in character to hold fast to moral principles. But these cases are rare exceptions. For the most part, when once decided to seek public office, men undergo something as effective as a chemical change. Something does, indeed, set in. All experience attests to it.

However, there is another reason for securing a candidate who does not want the office. It relates to the axiom: the office should seek the man, not the man the office. This is a sound axiom though we rarely seem to observe it.

If the Republican Party nominates the man who demonstrates the most enterprise in getting himself nominated, and it more than likely will, the party will have made a mistake from which there is no recovery. Not only will this office-seeker resort to expediency to attain office but, once in office, his very enterprise will prove a handicap to the nation.

The point is explained thus: When man seeks the office he follows his natural expansionist inclinations. Man normally, and quite properly, tries to expand his wealth, his influence and the approval of himself by others. He not only tries to extend himself but, as well, those properties or offices he identifies as his. He measures his success by the degree of these expansions. A man who seeks and secures public office, in most instances, will try to make it a bigger and more powerful office.

Government should not be so expanded. If all of us were perfect we should need no government. While perfection is not possible on this earth it is, nevertheless, an appropriate objective. Men in government, therefore, should be those who aim at making government as unnecessary as possible. Contraction, not expansion, should be the aim.

Only those men who must be sought after for office are likely to be capable of wisely reducing the domain which they have been chosen to administer.

Find this man. He can be any one of a thousand, maybe of several thousand, American citizens. Persuade him that he should accept the nomination. Choose him for his ideas, not for the State from whence he comes. Select him for his principles and his abilities, not for the job he holds. If he turns out to be a Democrat, what of that? To hell with expediency! If courage for the right is not demonstrated in the nomination it will not be manifested in the nominee. Don’t confine the search to the well-known, it may be that he will not be found there. He, like a multitude of great Americans, has, in all probability, never been heard of, except by a few friends.

What kind of a man should he be? What ideas ought he to have? How should he regard himself in relation to the Presidency? In short, what kind of a man ought liberals to look for?

The following chapters, a few imagined speeches delivered following the summer conventions of 1948 or, perhaps more realistically, during the same period in 952, assume that a true, honest, courageous and unequivocal liberal has been found and nominated.

Does this political allegory, being but a sampling of what such a man might say, please you? Does this straightforwardness appeal to you as a necessary ingredient in political life? Is there a substantial minority left in our country who would give support to such a platform?

If so, then liberalism in America can be regained. If so, then honesty and frankness—actions on the basis of moral convictions—are a part of the pattern for revolt. Add as much wisdom as can be found and the pattern is complete.

A final thought: It is somewhat saddening that anyone should think a piece of this kind at all necessary, especially in a nation so brilliantly founded, so ably begun, so incomparably better than anything revealed by history, and yet so early in its youth.

L.E.R.

Bronxville, N. Y.

May, 1948