CHAPTER I DEBUNKING THE LABELS

“I often think it comical

How nature always does contrive

That every boy and every gal

That’s born into this world alive,

Is either a little Liberal

Or else a little Conservative.”

—W. S. Gilbert, Iolanthe[1]

What a verse that rollicking fun artist could write today! To Liberal and Conservative he would have to add Radical, Reactionary and Progressive. Not that these labels did not exist when this verse was written—they did. But they hardly possessed the wide application or the confusion of meaning they do today. Nor were they so tangled among Democratic, Republican, New Deal, Red, Pink, Communistic, Socialistic and Fascist.

No sober discussion of public questions is possible at this time without first clearing the thinking atmosphere of these politically managed labels.[1] Few thoughts of others are accepted without first comparing colors, labels or isms. If these do not match, then the projector of a thought is obviously steeped in prejudice—he is a tool of the “interests” or of the masses—or he is, as one Washingtonian has said, “just too damn dumb.”

Perhaps if everyone, sporting a particular color, label or ism, had an exact and corresponding political or economic philosophy, we could readily grade the profundity of all utterance. But, alas, that is far from the case. If what Gilbert thought was comical, then what we are experiencing is the extreme of ludicrous burlesque.

By their opponents, New Dealers are called socialistic, red, pink, communistic, radical, and ofttimes reactionary. They call themselves liberal, progressive and, if appealing to business men, conservative. A Democrat may be a New Dealer or he may be a “Jeffersonian,” which has popularly come to mean just the opposite. A Republican may be a New Dealer or just the opposite also. If he is the opposite, he calls himself a conservative, if he wants election to office he is too liberal to be a conservative or, if he wants office badly enough, he may even confess to being a progressive. To a New Dealer, an anti-New Deal Republican is at best a reactionary, shrinking from there on to a Tory, an unreconstructed Tory, an Economic Royalist; or he may be so low as to be termed a “tool of entrenched greed.” It is just one beautiful mess of brotherly love and affection.

What chance has logic against these head-winds of hate? To criticize one’s government is to invite oneself before the firing squads of the literary mercenaries. To sponsor or defend an economic principle to which current passions may be opposed is to ask for the dunce cap of an odious label. Can this be designed to encourage free discussion and individual interest in state matters upon which the success of our form of government is supposed to be predicated?

Labels, however, can be untangled. It might be possible to give some vague meaning to them as they are presently used, but that would be to little avail for their meanings change as regularly as the sun sets. New meanings are given to any label when a change will serve a political purpose. Conclusion: we are the dupes of a politically managed glossary.

Only the literal meanings can be classified. Such classification is useful mainly to understand the reasons for the present distortions. Who likes to be called a Reactionary? And to be dubbed a Conservative has sadly become just a shade less nocuous. But to be called a Liberal is glorious! And why should it not be? Let us examine a few of these terms and see if we can unearth some of the reasons for these word distortions.

Liberalism as a movement was born when the Magna Charta was exacted from King John at Runnymede over seven centuries ago. It was born of an era when governments were characterized by their despotism and economic practices lived under feudalism. This liberal movement, liberal because it was aimed at the liberalization of the individual from government coercion, progressed slowly but surely and, step by step, over a period of five centuries, drew nearer to its ultimate realization—the American form of constitutional government and its relation to and observation of natural economic law. Thus was experienced a complete transition from the philosophy that the individual is the servant of the state to the American philosophy that the state is but the instrument and the servant of the individual. No small wonder then that the title Liberal is so avidly sought by political self-seekers whether they are liberals or not. Because of the centuries-old struggle for individual freedom which was Liberalism and which blossomed into full bloom as America, it is, of course, the smart thing to sail one’s political ship under the liberal banner irrespective of its philosophical cargo. In these United States it is just good vote-getting fly-paper.

A Radical is one who desires to uproot something. If he wants to uproot liberty he is anything but liberal. The liberal movement from the Magna Charta to The Bill of Rights was radical because it was a movement to uproot despotism, centralized political control and coercive economic practices. Therefore, as Liberal became synonymous with desirable political and economic movements, so, to the unanalytical, the term Radical—because of its age-old association with Liberal—has become synonymous with Liberal.

Present-day radicals have wrongly appropriated the word Liberal. Present-day radicals are bent on uprooting liberalism. They seek constitutional amendments so that bureaucracy, centralized governmental and economic control—the very essence of despotism—may be substituted for individual self-management and local self-government—the very essence of liberalism.

Reactionary means ultraconservative. As presently defined, it would mean a return to everything that characterized our practices and ways prior to the 1929 debacle, good and bad. Back in King John’s time it would have meant a return to all the practices of despotism and of feudalism, good and bad. However, it can have a narrower definition: a reaction against a contemporary event or events. Thus, a reactionary could be either a liberal or a conservative or, as pointed out later, both.

A Conservative is one who desires to conserve something. If he wants to conserve liberty he is both a conservative and a liberal. If he wants to conserve a coercive system of government he is both a conservative and a coercionist, the opposite of a liberal. A conservative is one who wants to conserve the best of the old order and who is not in sympathy with radical movements. Like Radicalism its meaning in relation to liberalism has become just the opposite of what it once was. The conservative of King John’s time did not believe in the liberal movement but rather wanted to conserve the best of the coercive monarchical government and the regimented feudal system. The conservative of today does not believe in the trend of the radicals back to centralized control or extreme government interference, which is the modern counterpart for the monarchical government and the feudal system against which our forefathers fought; but rather insists on conserving liberalism and the best of the order which found liberalism at its fullest.

Thus today, a conservative is a liberal and what a radical once was; that is, he is fighting to conserve what the radical once fought to achieve. A radical today is no longer a liberal but what a conservative once was. He is fighting to achieve what the conservatives of old were trying then to conserve. If the contemporary radical is attempting to revive the best in dictatorships or centralized authoritarian governments, then we may well let him off with the not too complimentary title of a “horse and chariot” conservative; that is, if “horse and chariot” properly implies a conservative of seven hundred years ago.

Those confusions, however much they may be caused from a misunderstanding of definitions, have their base in something deeper, perhaps in mass emotions, kindled, fired and fanned into devastating flames by the honeyed words, the cherubic smiles, the fantastic romanticism and the soul-stirring oratory of politicians whose behavior is too far removed from statesmanship.

These intriguing demagogues, by the subtle device of basking under self-made halos of liberalism and humanism, have been largely responsible for the popular and false assumption that righteousness and radicalism belong one to the other, that radical thought has a monopoly on virtue. That devilish device is still useful simply because the public mind, as yet, has not erased the indelible impression gained by a five-century association of the terms Radical and Liberal with humanism and everything else that was directed toward the public interest. The public mind has not yet dissociated Radical and Liberal. It has not yet perceived that these once synonymous terms are now antithetical terms.

A radical states his social objectives and, because they smack of righteousness and are generally acceptable, the masses too often leap to the indefensible conclusion that the methods proposed are equally efficacious. As a result of all this, i. e., the false association of Radical and Liberal and the false association of Liberal and Righteousness, the term Liberal has popularly lost much of its true meaning. There has developed the peculiar notion that Liberal, as today misapplied, is a synonym of virtue, moral rectitude, nobleness of intention and purity of character, and that Conservative is synonymous with an evil course, immoral intent, inhuman practices and economic privilege. The radicals and the demagogues have done a good job of foisting their designs on the gullible public, of perverting the English language to their own ends.

It is not considered merely conservative but actually reactionary to favor a balanced budget, to argue for tax reduction, to urge thrift, to defend individual liberty, to protect the fundamentals of the Constitution, to demand the sanctity of contracts or to insist on a stable currency. To support the Constitution was once considered patriotic—it is now partisan.

It is not considered radical but rather liberal to seek inflation, to abrogate individual rights, to usurp federally the prerogatives of local self-government, to spend beyond our capacity to pay, to peg prices artificially, to build bureaucracy, to stimulate class prejudices, and it is simply extremely liberal to advocate a Townsend Plan or a Share-the-Wealth scheme.

This misconception and mal-association of terms has developed many evils, not the least of which has been a serious destruction of faith in our responsible and competent leadership. The mere opposition of any measure which has been radical-labeled Liberal is of itself sufficient to nullify, in the public mind, experienced views of an opposer. Must not this oppositionist be a reactionary and therefore his aims inconsistent with the goal of the “new order”? Without reasoning through the separate measures, superficial conclusions are hastily accepted. Such an oppositionist, so it is thought, cannot possibly be thinking of the human side, cannot be thinking of society in general. Have his opponents not stated or at least implied publicly and oratorically that they are the sole possessors of such Christian qualities and ideals? Have his opponents not called him dishonest and earmarked him as among the “money changers to be driven from the temple”? Has he not been publicly and officially generalized as a culprit? He has no sympathy except for himself, why should his advice be heeded?

So runs the argument and on its face it is correct if the ministrations of some of our public officials are considered impeccable. But are they? Let us diagnose this person who dares not claim the liberal label and who by the radicals and self-styled liberals is called a reactionary in a voice that breathes of blasphemy.

In the first place this person may be a conservative because he wishes to conserve liberalism and the best of that order. He may be a conservative because he is opposed to the radicals who would uproot liberalism and take us once again to centralized, coercive and despotic governmental and economic control. He is not of necessity a reactionary because he may not wish to preserve the bad practices that grew up under liberalism. Is it not conceivable that he may want those eliminated? More likely than not, he is not among that small fractional per cent whose livelihood is gained by the “vulturizing” of others. No doubt he is the first to want the elimination of vicious, immoral and unethical practices, but he would not burn down the stately mansion to kill the rats. He is properly a liberal for precisely the same reason he is a conservative.

As stated in the preface, the writer has confessed to being a reactionary on one matter, a radical on another. Certainly, he believes himself to be a liberal and there are aspects of our former economy he wishes to conserve, thus giving him the tag of conservative. He wants a new deal from what we are now getting but he looks in vain through the whole roster of party politics for an enunciation of principles he can wholeheartedly support.

The throwing off of these political fetters clears the atmosphere. There is room to think—to approach our problem objectively and without an inherited prejudice. The discussion, however, must not be dispassionate. It would hardly be decent for an American to be calm when he speaks of his country and thinks of the times.

---

[1] See Preface.