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Title: The conscience of a Conservative
Author: Barry Goldwater
Release date: August 27, 2024 [eBook #74319]
Language: English
Original publication: Shepherdsville, KY: Victor Publishing Co, 1960
Credits: Tim Lindell, Craig Kirkwood, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CONSCIENCE OF A CONSERVATIVE ***
Transcriber’s Notes:
Text enclosed by underscores is in italics (_italics_).
Additional Transcriber’s Notes are at the end.
* * * * *
THE CONSCIENCE OF A CONSERVATIVE
_by_
BARRY GOLDWATER
_1960_
VICTOR PUBLISHING COMPANY, INC.
1 4th Avenue, Shepherdsville, Kentucky
* * * * *
Copyright 1960
By
VICTOR PUBLISHING COMPANY, INC.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. No reproduction in any form of
this book, in whole or in part, (except for brief quotation
in critical articles or reviews) may be made without written
authorization from the publisher.
First Printing 10,000 copies March 1960
Second Printing 10,000 copies April 1960
Third Printing 50,000 copies May 1960
Library of Congress Catalog Card Number 60-12269
Printed in the United States of America
FOREWORD
This book is not written with the idea of adding to or improving on the
Conservative philosophy. Or of “bringing it up to date.” The ancient
and tested truths that guided our Republic through its early days
will do equally well for us. The challenge to Conservatives today is
quite simply to demonstrate the bearing of a proven philosophy on the
problems of our own time.
I should explain the considerations that led me to join in this
effort. I am a politician, a United States Senator. As such, I have
had an opportunity to learn something about the political instincts
of the American people, I have crossed the length and breadth of
this great land hundreds of times and talked with tens of thousands
of people, with Democrats and Republicans, with farmers and laborers
and businessmen. I find that America is fundamentally a Conservative
nation. The preponderant judgment of the American people, especially
of the young people, is that the radical, or Liberal, approach has not
worked and is not working. They yearn for a return to Conservative
principles.
At the same time, I have been in a position to observe first hand how
Conservatism is faring in Washington. And it is all too clear that in
spite of a Conservative revival among the people the radical ideas that
were promoted by the New and Fair Deals under the guise of Liberalism
still dominate the councils of our national government.
In a country where it is now generally understood and proclaimed that
the people’s welfare depends on individual self reliance rather than
on state paternalism, Congress annually deliberates over whether the
_increase_ in government welfarism should be small or large.
In a country where it is now generally understood and proclaimed that
the federal government spends too much, Congress annually deliberates
over whether to raise the federal budget by a few billion dollars or by
many billion.
In a country where it is now generally understood and proclaimed that
individual liberty depends on decentralized government, Congress
annually deliberates over whether vigorous or halting steps should be
taken to bring state government into line with federal policy.
In a country where it is now generally understood and proclaimed
that Communism is an enemy bound to destroy us, Congress annually
deliberates over means of “co-existing” with the Soviet Union.
And so the question arises: Why have American people been unable to
translate their views into appropriate political action? Why should the
nation’s underlying allegiance to Conservative principles have failed
to produce corresponding deeds in Washington?
I do not blame my brethren in government, all of whom
work hard and conscientiously at their jobs. I blame
Conservatives--ourselves--myself. Our failure, as one Conservative
writer has put it, is the failure of the Conservative demonstration.
Though we Conservatives are deeply persuaded that our society
is ailing, and know that Conservatism holds the key to national
salvation--and feel sure the country agrees with us--we seem unable
to demonstrate the practical relevance of Conservative principles to
the needs of the day. We sit by impotently while Congress seeks to
improvise solutions to problems that are not the real problems facing
the country, while the government attempts to assuage imagined concerns
and ignores the real concerns and real needs of the people.
Perhaps we suffer from an over-sensitivity to the judgments of those
who rule the mass communications media. We are daily consigned by
“enlightened” commentators to political oblivion: Conservatism, we
are told, is out-of-date. The charge is preposterous and we ought
boldly to say so. The laws of God, and of nature, have no dateline.
The principles on which the Conservative political position is based
have been established by a process that has nothing to do with the
social, economic and political landscape that changes from decade to
decade and from century to century. These principles are derived from
the nature of man, and from the truths that God has revealed about His
creation. Circumstances do change. So do the problems that are shaped
by circumstances. But the principles that govern the solution of the
problems do not. To suggest that the Conservative philosophy is out of
date is akin to saying that the Golden Rule, or the Ten Commandments or
Aristotle’s _Politics_ are out of date. The Conservative approach is
nothing more or less than an attempt to apply the wisdom and experience
and the revealed truths of the past to the problems of today. The
challenge is not to find new or different truths, but to learn how to
apply established truths to the problems of the contemporary world. My
hope is that one more Conservative voice will be helpful in meeting
this challenge.
This book is an attempt to bridge the gap between theory and practice.
I shall draw upon my speeches, the radio and television broadcasts and
the notes I have made over the years in the hope of doing what one is
often unable to do in the course of a harried day’s work on the Senate
floor: to show the connection between Conservative principles so widely
espoused, and Conservative action, so generally neglected.
Table of Contents
PAGE
NUMBER
FOREWORD
THE CONSCIENCE OF A CONSERVATIVE 9
THE PERILS OF POWER 15
STATES’ RIGHTS 24
AND CIVIL RIGHTS 31
FREEDOM FOR THE FARMER 38
FREEDOM FOR LABOR 44
TAXES AND SPENDING 58
THE WELFARE STATE 68
SOME NOTES ON EDUCATION 76
THE SOVIET MENACE 86
CHAPTER ONE The Conscience of a Conservative
I have been much concerned that so many people today with Conservative
instincts feel compelled to apologize for them. Or if not to apologize
directly, to qualify their commitment in a way that amounts to
breast-beating. “Republican candidates,” Vice President Nixon has
said, “should be economic conservatives, but conservatives with a
heart.” President Eisenhower announced during his first term, “I am
conservative when it comes to economic problems but liberal when
it comes to human problems.” Still other Republican leaders have
insisted on calling themselves “progressive” Conservatives.[1] These
formulations are tantamount to an admission that Conservatism is a
narrow, mechanistic _economic_ theory that may work very well as a
bookkeeper’s guide, but cannot be relied upon as a comprehensive
political philosophy.
The same judgment, though in the form of an attack rather than an
admission, is advanced by the radical camp. “We liberals,” they say,
“are interested in _people_. Our concern is with human beings, while
you Conservatives are preoccupied with the preservation of economic
privilege and status.” Take them a step further, and the Liberals will
turn the accusations into a class argument: it is the little people
that concern us, not the “malefactors of great wealth.”
Such statements, from friend and foe alike, do great injustice to the
Conservative point of view. Conservatism is _not_ an economic theory,
though it has economic implications. The shoe is precisely on the other
foot: it is Socialism that subordinates all other considerations to
man’s material well-being. It is Conservatism that puts material things
in their proper place--that has a structured view of the human being
and of human society, in which economics plays only a subsidiary role.
The root difference between the Conservatives and the Liberals of
today is that Conservatives take account of the _whole_ man, while the
Liberals tend to look only at the material side of man’s nature. The
Conservative believes that man is, in part, an economic, an animal
creature; but that he is also a spiritual creature with spiritual needs
and spiritual desires. What is more, these needs and desires reflect
the _superior_ side of man’s nature, and thus take precedence over his
economic wants. Conservatism therefore looks upon the enhancement of
man’s spiritual nature as the primary concern of political philosophy.
Liberals, on the other hand,--in the name of a concern for “human
beings”--regard the satisfaction of economic wants as the dominant
mission of society. They are, moreover, in a hurry. So that their
characteristic approach is to harness the society’s political and
economic forces into a collective effort to _compel_ “progress.” In
this approach, I believe they fight against Nature.
Surely the first obligation of a political thinker is to understand
the nature of man. The Conservative does not claim special powers of
perception on this point, but he does claim a familiarity with the
accumulated wisdom and experience of history, and he is not too proud
to learn from the great minds of the past.
The first thing he has learned about man is that each member of the
species is a unique creature. Man’s most sacred possession is his
individual soul--which has an immortal side, but also a mortal one.
The mortal side establishes his absolute differentness from every
other human being. _Only a philosophy that takes into account the
essential differences between men, and, accordingly, makes provision
for developing the different potentialities of each man can claim to
be in accord with Nature._ We have heard much in our time about “the
common man.” It is a concept that pays little attention to the history
of a nation that grew great through the initiative and ambition of
uncommon men. The Conservative knows that to regard man as part of an
undifferentiated mass is to consign him to ultimate slavery.
Secondly, the Conservative has learned that the economic and spiritual
aspects of man’s nature are inextricably intertwined. He cannot be
economically free, or even economically efficient, if he is enslaved
politically; conversely, man’s political freedom is illusory if he is
dependent for his economic needs on the State.
The Conservative realizes, thirdly, that man’s development, in both its
spiritual and material aspects, is not something that can be directed
by outside forces. Every man, for his individual good and for the good
of his society, is responsible for his _own_ development. The choices
that govern his life are choices that _he_ must make: they cannot be
made by any other human being, or by a collectivity of human beings. If
the Conservative is less anxious than his Liberal brethren to increase
Social Security “benefits,” it is because he is more anxious than his
Liberal brethren that people be free throughout their lives to spend
their earnings when and as they see fit.
So it is that Conservatism, throughout history, has regarded
man neither as a potential pawn of other men, nor as a part of
a general collectivity in which the sacredness and the separate
identity of individual human beings are ignored. Throughout history,
true Conservatism has been at war equally with autocrats and with
“democratic” Jacobins. The true Conservative was sympathetic with the
plight of the hapless peasant under the tyranny of the French monarchy.
And he was equally revolted at the attempt to solve that problem by
a mob tyranny that paraded under the banner of egalitarianism. The
conscience of the Conservative is pricked by _anyone_ who would debase
the dignity of the individual human being. Today, therefore, he is at
odds with dictators who rule by terror, and equally with those gentler
collectivists who ask our permission to play God with the human race.
With this view of the nature of man, it is understandable that
the Conservative looks upon politics as the art of achieving the
maximum amount of freedom for individuals that is consistent with
the maintenance of social order. The Conservative is the first to
understand that the practice of freedom requires the establishment
of order: it is impossible for one man to be free if another is able
to deny him the exercise of his freedom. But the Conservative also
recognizes that the political power on which order is based is a
self-aggrandizing force; that its appetite grows with eating. He knows
that the utmost vigilance and care are required to keep political
power within its proper bounds.
In our day, order is pretty well taken care of. The delicate balance
that ideally exists between freedom and order has long since tipped
against freedom practically everywhere on earth. In some countries,
freedom is altogether down and order holds absolute sway. In our
country the trend is less far advanced, but it is well along and
gathering momentum every day. Thus, for the American Conservative,
there is no difficulty in identifying the day’s overriding political
challenge: it is _to preserve and extend freedom_. As he surveys the
various attitudes and institutions and laws that currently prevail
in America, many questions will occur to him, but the Conservative’s
first concern will always be: _Are we maximizing freedom?_ I suggest we
examine some of the critical issues facing us today with this question
in mind.
FOOTNOTE:
[1] This is a strange label indeed: it implies that “ordinary”
Conservatism is opposed to progress. Have we forgotten that America
made its greatest progress when Conservative principles were honored
and preserved.
CHAPTER TWO The Perils of Power
The New Deal, Dean Acheson wrote approvingly in a book called _A
Democrat Looks At His Party_, “conceived of the federal government as
the whole people organized to do what had to be done.” A year later Mr.
Larson wrote _A Republican Looks At His Party_, and made much the same
claim in his book for Modern Republicans. The “underlying philosophy”
of the New Republicanism, said Mr. Larson, is that “if a job has to be
done to meet the needs of the people, and no one else can do it, then
it is the proper function of the federal government.”
Here we have, by prominent spokesmen of both political parties, an
unqualified repudiation of the principle of limited government. There
is no reference by either of them to the Constitution, or any attempt
to define the legitimate functions of government. The government can
do whatever _needs_ to be done; note, too, the implicit but necessary
assumption that it is the government itself that determines _what_
needs to be done. We must not, I think underrate the importance of
these statements. They reflect the view of a majority of the leaders
of one of our parties, and of a strong minority among the leaders of
the other, and they propound the first principle of totalitarianism:
that the State is competent to do all things and is limited in what it
actually does only by the will of those who control the State.
It is clear that this view is in direct conflict with the Constitution
which is an instrument, above all, for _limiting_ the functions of
government, and which is as binding today as when it was written. But
we are advised to go a step further and ask why the Constitution’s
framers restricted the scope of government. Conservatives are often
charged, and in a sense rightly so, with having an overly mechanistic
view of the Constitution: “It is America’s enabling document; we are
American citizens; therefore,” the Conservatives’ theme runs, “we are
morally and legally obliged to comply with the document.” All true.
But the Constitution has a broader claim on our loyalty than that. The
founding fathers had a _reason_ for endorsing the principle of limited
government; and this reason recommends defense of the constitutional
scheme even to those who take their citizenship obligations lightly.
The reason is simple, and it lies at the heart of the Conservative
philosophy.
Throughout history, government has proved to be the chief instrument
for thwarting man’s liberty. Government represents power in the
hands of some men to control and regulate the lives of other men. And
power, as Lord Acton said, _corrupts_ men. “Absolute power,” he added,
“corrupts absolutely.”
State power, considered in the abstract, need not restrict freedom:
but absolute state power always does. The _legitimate_ functions of
government are actually conducive to freedom. Maintaining internal
order, keeping foreign foes at bay, administering justice, removing
obstacles to the free interchange of goods--the exercise of these
powers makes it possible for men to follow their chosen pursuits with
maximum freedom. But note that the very instrument by which these
desirable ends are achieved _can_ be the instrument for achieving
undesirable ends--that government can, instead of extending freedom,
restrict freedom. And note, secondly, that the “can” quickly becomes
“will” the moment the holders of government power are left to their
own devices. This is because of the corrupting influence of power,
the natural tendency of men who possess _some_ power to take unto
themselves _more_ power. The tendency leads eventually to the
acquisition of _all_ power--whether in the hands of one or many makes
little difference to the freedom of those left on the outside.
Such, then, is history’s lesson, which Messrs. Acheson and Larson
evidently did not read: release the holders of state power from any
restraints other than those they wish to impose upon themselves, and
you are swinging down the well-travelled road to absolutism.
The framers of the Constitution had learned the lesson. They were not
only students of history, but victims of it: they knew from vivid,
personal experience that freedom depends on effective restraints
against the accumulation of power in a single authority. And that is
what the Constitution is: _a system of restraints against the natural
tendency of government to expand in the direction of absolutism_. We
all know the main components of the system. The first is the limitation
of the federal government’s authority to specific, delegated powers.
The second, a corollary of the first, is the reservation to the States
and the people of all power not delegated to the federal government.
The third is a careful division of the federal government’s power among
three separate branches. The fourth is a prohibition against impetuous
alteration of the system--namely, Article V’s tortuous, but wise,
amendment procedures.
Was it then a _Democracy_ the framers created? Hardly. The system of
restraints, on the face of it, was directed not only against individual
tyrants, but also against a tyranny of the masses. The framers were
well aware of the danger posed by self-seeking demagogues--that they
might persuade a majority of the people to confer on government vast
powers in return for deceptive promises of economic gain. And so they
forbade such a transfer of power--first by declaring, in effect, that
certain activities are outside the natural and legitimate scope of the
public authority, and secondly by dispersing public authority among
several levels and branches of government in the hope that each seat
of authority, jealous of its own prerogatives, would have a natural
incentive to resist aggression by the others.
But the framers were not visionaries. They knew that rules of
government, however brilliantly calculated to cope with the imperfect
nature of man, however carefully designed to avoid the pitfalls of
power, would be no match for men who were determined to disregard them.
In the last analysis their system of government would prosper only if
the governed were sufficiently determined that it should. “What have
you given us?” a woman asked Ben Franklin toward the close of the
Constitutional Convention. “A Republic,” he said, “_if you can keep
it_!”
We have not kept it. The Achesons and Larsons have had their way. The
system of restraints has fallen into disrepair. The federal government
has moved into every field in which it believes its services are
needed. The state governments are either excluded from their rightful
functions by federal preemption, or they are allowed to act at the
sufferance of the federal government. Inside the federal government
both the executive and judicial branches have roamed far outside their
constitutional boundary lines. And all of these things have come to
pass without regard to the amendment procedures prescribed by Article
V. The result is a Leviathan, a vast national authority out of touch
with the people, and out of their control. This monolith of power is
bounded only by the will of those who sit in high places.
There are a number of ways in which the power of government can be
measured.
One is the size of its financial operations. Federal spending is now
approaching a hundred billion dollars a year (compared with three and
one-half billion less than three decades ago.)
Another is the scope of its activities. A study recently conducted
by the _Chicago Tribune_ showed that the federal government is now
the “biggest land owner, property manager, renter, mover and hauler,
medical clinician, lender, insurer, mortgage broker, employer, debtor,
taxer and spender in all history.”
Still another is the portion of the peoples’ earnings government
appropriates for its own use: nearly a third of earnings are taken
every year in the form of taxes.
A fourth is the extent of government interference in the daily lives
of individuals. The farmer is told how much wheat he can grow. The
wage earner is at the mercy of national union leaders whose great
power is a direct consequence of federal labor legislation. The
businessman is hampered by a maze of government regulations, and often
by direct government competition. The government takes six per cent of
most payrolls in Social Security Taxes and thus compels millions of
individuals to postpone until later years the enjoyment of wealth they
might otherwise enjoy today. Increasingly, the federal government sets
standards of education, health and safety.
How did it happen? How did our national government grow from a servant
with sharply limited powers into a master with virtually unlimited
power?
In part, we were swindled. There are occasions when we have elevated
men and political parties to power that promised to restore limited
government and then proceeded, after their election, to expand the
activities of government. But let us be honest with ourselves. Broken
promises are not the major causes of our trouble. _Kept_ promises are.
All too often we have put men in office who have suggested spending a
little more on this, a little more on that, who have proposed a new
welfare program, who have thought of another variety of “security.” We
have taken the bait, preferring to put off to another day the recapture
of freedom and the restoration of our constitutional system. We have
gone the way of many a democratic society that has lost its freedom by
persuading itself that if “the people” rule, all is well.
The Frenchman, Alexis de Tocqueville, probably the most clairvoyant
political observer of modern times, saw the danger when he visited this
country in the 1830’s. Even then he foresaw decay for a society that
tended to put more emphasis on its democracy than on its republicanism.
He predicted that America would produce, not tyrants but “guardians.”
And that the American people would “console themselves for being in
tutelage by the reflection that they have chosen their own guardians.
Every man allows himself to be put in lead-strings, because he sees
that it is not a person nor a class of persons, but the people at large
that hold the end of his chain.”
Our tendency to concentrate power in the hands of a few men deeply
concerns me. We can be conquered by bombs or by subversion; but we
can also be conquered by neglect--by ignoring the Constitution and
disregarding the principles of limited government. Our defenses against
the accumulation of unlimited power in Washington are in poorer shape,
I fear, than our defenses against the aggressive designs of Moscow.
Like so many other nations before us, we may succumb through internal
weakness rather than fall before a foreign foe.
I am convinced that most Americans now want to reverse the trend. I
think that concern for our vanishing freedoms is genuine. I think that
the people’s uneasiness in the stifling omnipresence of government has
turned into something approaching alarm. But bemoaning the evil will
not drive it back, and accusing fingers will not shrink government.
_The turn will come when we entrust the conduct of our affairs to men
who understand that their first duty as public officials is to divest
themselves of the power they have been given._ It will come when
Americans, in hundreds of communities throughout the nation, decide
to put the man in office who is pledged to enforce the Constitution
and restore the Republic. Who will proclaim in a campaign speech:
“I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it
more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to
promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass
laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but
to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have
failed in their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted
financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is
‘needed’ before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally
permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my
constituents’ ‘interests,’ I shall reply that I was informed their main
interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I
can.”
CHAPTER THREE States’ Rights
The Governor of New York, in 1930, pointed out that the Constitution
does not empower the Congress to deal with “a great number of ... vital
problems of government, such as the conduct of public utilities, of
banks, of insurance, of business, of agriculture, of education, of
social welfare, and a dozen other important features.” And he added
that “Washington must not be encouraged to interfere” in these areas.
Franklin Roosevelt’s rapid conversion from Constitutionalism to the
doctrine of unlimited government, is an oft-told story. But I am here
concerned not so much by the abandonment of States’ Rights by the
national Democratic Party--an event that occurred some years ago when
that party was captured by the Socialist ideologues in and about the
labor movement--as by the unmistakable tendency of the Republican Party
to adopt the same course. The result is that today _neither_ of our two
parties maintains a meaningful commitment to the principle of States’
Rights. Thus, the cornerstone of the Republic, our chief bulwark
against the encroachment of individual freedom by Big Government, is
fast disappearing under the piling sands of absolutism.
The Republican Party, to be sure, gives lip-service to States’ Rights.
We often _talk_ about “returning to the States their rightful powers”;
the Administration has even gone so far as to sponsor a federal-state
conference on the problem. But deeds are what count, and I regret
to say that in actual practice, the Republican Party, like the
Democratic Party, summons the coercive power of the federal government
whenever national leaders conclude that the States are not performing
satisfactorily.
Let us focus attention on one method of federal interference--one
that tends to be neglected in much of the public discussion of the
problem. In recent years the federal government has continued, and in
many cases has increased, federal “grants-in-aid” to the States in a
number of areas in which the Constitution recognizes the exclusive
jurisdiction of the States. These grants are called “matching funds”
and are designed to “stimulate” state spending in health, education,
welfare, conservation or any other area in which the federal government
decides there is a need for national action. If the States agree to
put up money for these purposes, the federal government undertakes to
match the appropriation according to a ratio prescribed by Congress.
Sometimes the ratio is fifty-fifty; often the federal government
contributes over half the cost.
There are two things to note about these programs. The first is
that they are _federal_ programs--they are conceived by the federal
government both as to purpose and as to extent. The second is that
the “stimulative” grants are, in effect, a mixture of blackmail and
bribery. The States are told to go along with the program “or else.”
Once the federal government has offered matching funds, it is unlikely,
as a practical matter, that a member of a State Legislature will turn
down his State’s fair share of revenue collected from all of the
States. Understandably, many legislators feel that to refuse aid would
be political suicide. This is an indirect form of coercion, but it is
effective nonetheless.
A more direct method of coercion is for the federal government to
_threaten_ to move in unless state governments take action that
Washington deems appropriate. Not so long ago, for example, the
Secretary of Labor gave the States a lecture on the wisdom of enacting
“up-to-date” unemployment compensation laws. He made no effort to
disguise the alternative: if the States failed to act, the federal
government would.
Here are some examples of the “stimulative” approach. Late in 1957
a “Joint Federal-State Action Committee” recommended that certain
matching funds programs be “returned” to the States on the scarcely
disguised grounds that the States, in the view of the Committee, had
learned to live up to their responsibilities. These are the areas
in which the States were learning to behave: “vocational education”
programs in agriculture, home economics, practical nursing, and the
fisheries trade; local sewage projects; slum clearance and urban
renewal; and enforcement of health and safety standards in connection
with the atomic energy program.
Now the point is not that Congress failed to act on these
recommendations, or that the Administration gave them only half-hearted
support; but rather that the federal government had no business
entering these fields in the first place, and thus had no business
taking upon itself the prerogative of judging the States’ performance.
The Republican Party should have said this plainly and forthrightly and
demanded the immediate withdrawal of the federal government.
We can best understand our error, I think, by examining the theory
behind it. I have already alluded to the book, _A Republican Looks
at His Party_, which is an elaborate rationalization of the “Modern
Republican” approach to current problems. (It does the job just as
well, I might add, for the Democrats’ approach.) Mr. Larson devotes
a good deal of space to the question of States’ Rights. He contends
that while there is “a general presumption” in favor of States’
Rights, thanks to the Tenth Amendment, this presumption must give
way whenever it appears to the federal authorities that the States
are not responding satisfactorily to “the needs of the people.” This
is a paraphrase of his position but not, I think, an unjust one. And
if this approach appears to be a high-handed way of dealing with an
explicit constitutional provision, Mr. Larson justifies the argument by
summoning the concept that “for every right there is a corresponding
duty.” “When we speak of States’ Rights,” he writes, “we should never
forget to add that there go with those rights the corresponding States’
responsibilities.” Therefore, he concludes, if the States fail to
do their duty, they have only themselves to blame when the federal
government intervenes.
The trouble with this argument is that it treats the Constitution of
the United States as a kind of handbook in political theory, to be
heeded or ignored depending on how it fits the plans of contemporary
federal officials. The Tenth Amendment is _not_ “a general assumption,”
but a prohibitory rule of law. The Tenth Amendment recognizes the
States’ _jurisdiction_ in certain areas. States’ Rights means that the
States have a right to act or _not to act_, as they see fit, in the
areas reserved to them. The States may have duties corresponding to
these rights, but the duties are owed to the people of the States, not
to the federal government. Therefore, the recourse lies not with the
federal government, which is not sovereign, but with the people who
are, and who have full power to take disciplinary action. If the people
are unhappy with say, their State’s disability insurance program, they
can bring pressure to bear on their state officials and, if that fails,
they can elect a new set of officials. And if, in the unhappy event
they should wish to divest themselves of this responsibility, they can
amend the Constitution. The Constitution, I repeat, draws a sharp and
clear line between federal jurisdiction and state jurisdiction. The
federal government’s failure to recognize that line has been a crushing
blow to the principle of limited government.
But again, I caution against a defensive, or apologetic, appeal to
the Constitution. There is a _reason_ for its reservation of States’
Rights. Not only does it prevent the accumulation of power in a central
government that is remote from the people and relatively immune from
popular restraints; it also recognizes the principle that essentially
local problems are best dealt with by the people most directly
concerned. Who knows better than New Yorkers how much and what kind of
publicly-financed slum clearance in New York City is needed and can be
afforded? Who knows better than Nebraskans whether that State has an
adequate nursing program? Who knows better than Arizonans the kind of
school program that is needed to educate their children? The people
of my own State--and I am confident that I speak for the majority of
them--have long since seen through the spurious suggestion that federal
aid comes “free.” They know that the money comes out of their own
pockets, and that it is returned to them minus a broker’s fee taken by
the federal bureaucracy. They know, too, that the power to decide how
that money shall be spent is withdrawn from them and exercised by some
planning board deep in the caverns of one of the federal agencies. They
understand this represents a great and perhaps irreparable loss--not
only in their wealth, but in their priceless liberty.
Nothing could so far advance the cause of freedom as for state
officials throughout the land to assert their rightful claims to lost
state power; and for the federal government to withdraw promptly and
totally from every jurisdiction which the Constitution reserved to the
states.
CHAPTER FOUR And Civil Rights
An attempt has been made in recent years to disparage the principle of
States’ Rights by equating it with defense of the South’s position on
racial integration. I have already indicated that the reach of States’
Rights is much broader than that--that it affects Northerners as well
as Southerners, and concerns many matters that have nothing to do with
the race question. Still, it is quite true that the integration issue
is affected by the States’ Rights principle, and that the South’s
position on the issue is, today, the most conspicuous expression of
the principle. So much so that the country is now in the grips of a
spirited and sometimes ugly controversy over an imagined conflict
between States’ Rights, on the one hand, and what are called “civil
rights” on the other.
I say an imagined conflict because I deny that there _can_ be a
conflict between States’ Rights, properly defined--and civil rights,
properly defined. If States’ “Rights” are so asserted as to encroach
upon individual rights that are protected by valid federal laws, then
the exercise of state power is a nullity. Conversely, if individual
“rights” are so asserted as to infringe upon valid state power, then
the assertion of those “rights” is a nullity. The rights themselves
do not clash. The conflict arises from a failure to define the two
categories of rights correctly, and to assert them lawfully.
States’ Rights are easy enough to define. The Tenth Amendment does
it succinctly: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the
Constitution nor prohibited by it to the States are reserved to the
States respectively, or to the people.”
Civil rights should be no harder. In fact, however--thanks to
extravagant and shameless misuse by people who ought to know better--it
is one of the most badly understood concepts in modern political
usage. Civil rights is frequently used synonymously with “human
rights”--or with “natural rights.” As often as not, it is simply a
name for describing an activity that someone deems politically or
socially desirable. A sociologist writes a paper proposing to abolish
some inequity, or a politician makes a speech about it--and, behold,
a new “civil right” is born! The Supreme Court has displayed the same
creative powers.
A _civil_ right is a right that is asserted and is therefore protected
by some valid law. It may be asserted by the common law, or by local
or federal statutes, or by the Constitution; _but unless a right
is incorporated in the law, it is not a civil right and is not
enforceable by the instruments of the civil law_. There may be some
rights--“natural,” “human,” or otherwise--that _should_ also be civil
rights. But if we desire to give such rights the protection of the law,
our recourse is to a legislature or to the amendment procedures of the
Constitution. We must not look to politicians, or sociologists--or the
courts--to correct the deficiency.
In the field of racial relations, there are some rights that are
clearly protected by valid laws and are therefore “civil” rights. One
of them is the right to vote. The Fifteenth Amendment provides that no
one shall be denied the franchise on account of race, color or previous
condition of servitude. Similarly with certain legal privileges
enforced by the Fourteenth Amendment. The legislative history of that
amendment makes it clear (I quote from the Civil Rights Act of 1866
which the Amendment was designed to legitimize) that people of all
races shall be equally entitled “to make and enforce contracts, to
sue, be parties, and give evidence, to inherit, to purchase, lease,
sell, hold and convey real and personal property and to full and
equal benefit of all laws and proceedings for the security of persons
and property.” After the passage of that Act and the Amendment, all
persons, Negroes included, had a “civil” right to these protections.
It is otherwise, let us note, with education. For the federal
Constitution does _not_ require the States to maintain racially mixed
schools. Despite the recent holding of the Supreme Court, I am firmly
convinced--not only that integrated schools are not required--but
that the Constitution does not permit any interference whatsoever by
the federal government in the field of education. It may be just or
wise or expedient for negro children to attend the same schools as
white children, but they do not have a civil right to do so which is
protected by the federal constitution, or which is enforceable by the
federal government.
The intentions of the founding fathers in this matter are beyond
any doubt: _no powers regarding education were given the federal
government_. Consequently, under the Tenth Amendment, jurisdiction over
the entire field was reserved to the States. The remaining question is
whether the Fourteenth Amendment--concretely, that amendment’s “equal
protection” clause--modified the original prohibition against federal
intervention.
To my knowledge it has never been seriously argued--the argument
certainly was not made by the Supreme Court--that the authors of the
Fourteenth Amendment intended to alter the Constitutional scheme
with regard to education. Indeed, in the famous school integration
decision, _Brown v. Board of Education_ (1954), the Supreme Court
justices expressly acknowledged that they were not being guided by the
intentions of the amendment’s authors. “_In approaching this problem_,”
Chief Justice Warren said “_we cannot turn the clock back to 1868 when
the amendment was adopted.... We must consider public education in the
light of its full development and in its present place in American life
throughout the nation._” In effect, the Court said that what matters is
not the ideas of the men who wrote the Constitution, but the _Court’s_
ideas. It was only by engrafting its own views onto the established law
of the land that the Court was able to reach the decision it did.
The intentions of the Fourteenth Amendment’s authors are perfectly
clear. Consider these facts. 1. During the entire congressional
debate on the Fourteenth Amendment it was never once suggested by any
proponent of the amendment that it would outlaw segregated schools. 2.
At the same time that it approved the Fourteenth Amendment, Congress
established schools in Washington in Georgetown “for the sole use of
... colored children.” 3. In all the debates on the amendment by the
State Legislatures there was only one legislator, a man in Indiana, who
thought the amendment would affect schools. 4. The great majority of
the States that approved the amendment permitted or required segregated
schools at the very time they approved the amendment. There is not
room here for exhaustive treatment of this evidence, but the facts are
well documented, and they are all we have to know about the Fourteenth
Amendment’s bearing on this problem. The amendment was not intended
to, and therefore it did not outlaw racially separate schools. It was
not intended to, and therefore it did not, authorize _any_ federal
intervention in the field of education.
I am therefore not impressed by the claim that the Supreme Court’s
decision on school integration is the law of the land. _The
Constitution, and the laws “made in pursuance thereof,” are the
“supreme law of the land”_. The Constitution is what its authors
intended it to be and said it was--not what the Supreme Court says
it is. If we condone the practice of substituting our own intentions
for those of the Constitution’s framers, we reject, in effect, the
principle of Constitutional Government: we endorse a rule of men, not
of laws.
I have great respect for the Supreme Court as an institution, but I
cannot believe that I display that respect by submitting abjectly to
abuses of power by the Court, and by condoning its unconstitutional
trespass into the legislative sphere of government. The Congress and
the States, equally with the Supreme Court, are obliged to interpret
and comply with the Constitution according to their own lights. I
therefore support all efforts by the States, excluding violence of
course, to preserve their rightful powers over education.
As for the Congress, I would hope that the national legislature would
help clarify the problem by proposing to the States a Constitutional
amendment that would reaffirm the States’ exclusive jurisdiction in the
field of education. This amendment would, in my judgment, assert what
is already provided unmistakably by the Constitution; but it would put
the matter beyond any further question.
It so happens that I am in agreement with the _objectives_ of the
Supreme Court as stated in the _Brown_ decision. I believe that it is
both wise and just for negro children to attend the same schools as
whites, and that to deny them this opportunity carries with it strong
implications of inferiority. I am not prepared, however, to impose
that judgment of mine on the people of Mississippi or South Carolina,
or to tell them what methods should be adopted and what pace should be
kept in striving toward that goal. That is their business, not mine.
I believe that the problem of race relations, like all social and
cultural problems, is best handled by the people directly concerned.
Social and cultural change, however desirable, should not be effected
by the engines of national power. Let us, through persuasion and
education, seek to improve institutions we deem defective. But let us,
in doing so, respect the orderly processes of the law. Any other course
enthrones tyrants and dooms freedom.
CHAPTER FIVE Freedom For The Farmer
_“... supervision of agriculture and other concerns of a similar
nature ... which are proper to be provided for by local legislation,
can never be desirable cares of a general jurisdiction. It is
therefore improbable that there should exist a disposition in the
federal councils to usurp the powers with which they are connected;
because the attempt to exercise those powers would be as troublesome
as they were nugatory.”_ Alexander Hamilton in the Federalist Papers,
No. 17.
Hamilton was wrong in his prediction as to what men would do, but
quite right in foreseeing the consequences of their foolhardiness.
Federal intervention in agriculture has, indeed, proved “troublesome.”
Disregard of the Constitution in this field has brought about the
inevitable loss of personal freedom; and it has created economic chaos.
Unmanageable surpluses, an immense tax burden, high consumer prices,
vexatious controls--I doubt if the folly of ignoring the principle of
limited government has ever been more convincingly demonstrated.
We have blundered on so grand a scale that even our critical faculties
seem to have been damaged in the process. No man who is familiar with
the subject will deny that the policy of price supports and production
controls has been a colossal failure. Yet, today, some of our best
minds have no better solution to the problem than to raise the supports
and increase the controls!
The teaching of the Constitution on this matter is perfectly clear.
_No power over agriculture was given to any branch of the national
government._ The sponsors of the first Agriculture Adjustment Act,
passed in 1933, tried to justify the law under the so-called general
welfare clause of the Constitution. The Supreme Court promptly struck
down that legislation on the grounds that the phrase, “general
welfare,” was simply a qualification of the taxing power and did not
give Congress the power to _control_ anything. “The regulation (of
agricultural production),” the Court said in United States v. Butler
(1936) “is not in fact voluntary. The farmer, of course, may refuse to
comply [a privilege not given him under present legislation], but the
price of such refusal is loss of benefits ... the power to confer or
withhold unlimited benefits is the power to coerce or destroy....”
The New Deal Congress replied by enacting substantially identical
legislation, the second AAA, and now sought to justify the program
as a “regulation of interstate commerce.” This was a transparent
evasion of the Butler case; but the Supreme Court, which by this time
was under heavy political fire for having thwarted the “Roosevelt
Revolution,” made one of its celebrated about-faces and upheld the new
act. The federal government has usurped many powers under the guise
of “regulating commerce,” but this instance of distorting the plain
meaning of the Constitution’s language is perhaps the most flagrant on
record.
In the case that upheld the second AAA, _Wickard_ v. _Filburn_, (1942),
a farmer had been fined for planting 23 acres of wheat, instead of the
eleven acres the government had allotted him--notwithstanding that the
“excess” wheat had been consumed _on his own farm_. Now how in the
world, the farmer wanted to know, can it be said that the wheat I feed
my own stock is in interstate commerce? That’s easy, the Court said. If
you had _not_ used your own wheat for feed, you might have bought feed
from someone else, and that purchase might have affected the price of
wheat that _was_ transported in interstate commerce! By this bizarre
reasoning the Court made the commerce clause as wide as the world
and nullified the Constitution’s clear reservation to the States of
jurisdiction over agriculture.
The tragedy, of course, is that the federal government’s
unconstitutional intrusion into Agriculture has not brought us any
closer to a solution of the “farm problem.” The problem, when federal
intervention began, was declining farm incomes. Today, many farm
incomes are still low. But now we have additional problems--production
controls that restrict freedom, high consumer prices, huge crop
surpluses and a gigantic tax bill that is running close to six billion
dollars a year. No matter what variant of the price support-production
control approach we adopt, the solution to these problems continues to
elude us.
The reason government intervention has created more problems than it
has solved is quite simple. _Farm production, like any other production
is best controlled by the natural operation of the free market._ If the
nation’s farmers are permitted to sell their produce freely, at price
consumers are willing to pay, they will, under the law of supply and
demand, end up producing roughly what can be consumed in national and
world markets. And if farmers, in general, find they are not getting
high enough prices for their produce, some of them will move into other
kinds of economic activity. The result will be reduced agricultural
production and higher incomes for those who remain on the farms. If,
however, the government interferes with this natural economic process,
and pegs prices higher than the consumer is willing to pay, the result
will be, in Hamilton’s phrase, “troublesome.” The nation will pay
exorbitant prices for work that is not needed and for produce that
cannot be consumed.
In recent years, the government has sought to alleviate the problem
of over-production by the soil bank and acreage retirement programs.
Actually, these programs are simply a modern version of the hog-killing
and potato-burning schemes promoted by Henry Wallace during the New
Deal. And they have been no more successful in reducing surpluses
than their predecessors. But there is also a positive evil in these
programs: in effect, they reward people for _not producing_. For a
nation that is expressing great concern over its “economic growth,” I
cannot conceive of a more absurd and self-defeating policy than one
which subsidizes non-production.
The problem of surpluses will not be solved until we recognize that
technological progress and other factors have made it possible for
the needs of America, and those of accessible world markets, to be
satisfied by a far fewer number of farmers than now till the soil. I
cannot believe that any serious student of the farm problems fails to
appreciate this fact. What has been lacking is not an understanding of
a problem that is really quite impossible not to understand, but the
political courage to do something about it.
Doing something about it means--and there can be no equivocation
here--_prompt and final termination of the farm subsidy program_. The
only way to persuade farmers to enter other fields of endeavor is to
stop paying inefficient farmers for produce that cannot be sold at free
market prices. Is this a cruel solution? Is it heartless to permit
the natural laws of economics to determine how many farmers there
shall be in the same way that those laws determine how many bankers,
or druggists, or watchmakers there shall be? It was never considered
so before the subsidy program began. Let us remember that the movement
_from_ the farm _to_ other fields of endeavor has been proceeding in
this country since its beginning--and with good effects, not ill.
I cannot believe that this course will lose politicians as many votes
as some of them seem to fear. Most farmers want to stand on their own
feet. They are prepared to take their chances in the free market. They
have a more intimate knowledge than most of us of the consequences of
unlimited government power, and so, it would seem, a greater interest
than most in returning agriculture to freedom and economic sanity.
CHAPTER SIX Freedom For Labor
If I had to select the vote I regard as the most important of my Senate
career it would be the one I cast on the Kennedy-Ervin “Labor Reform”
Bill of 1959. The Senate passed the measure 90-1; the dissenting vote
was mine. The measure had been advertised as a cure-all for the evils
uncovered by the McClellan Committee investigation. I opposed it
because I felt certain that legislation which pretended to respond to
the popular demand for safeguards against union power, but actually did
not do so, would preclude the possibility of meaningful legislation for
some time to come.
That opinion was vindicated later on. The House of Representatives
rejected Kennedy-Ervin, and substituted in its place a much better
measure, the Landrum-Griffin bill. The ensuing conference between
representatives of the two houses made only minor changes in the House
version; I would guess that 90% of the original Landrum-Griffin bill
survived in the conferees’ report. The Senate adopted the report with
only two dissenting votes--proof to me that my initial protest had
been wise.
But the protest still holds: though the Landrum-Griffin Bill was an
improvement over the Kennedy measure, Congress has still to come to
grips with the real evil in the Labor field. Graft and corruption are
symptoms of the illness that besets the labor movement, not the cause
of it. _The cause is the enormous economic and political power now
concentrated in the hands of union leaders._
Such power hurts the nation’s economy by forcing on employers
contract terms that encourage inefficiency, lower production and high
prices--all of which result in a lower standard of living for the
American people.
It corrupts the nation’s political life by exerting undue influence on
the selection of public officials.
It gravely compromises the freedom of millions of individual workers
who are able to register a dissent against the practice of union
leaders only at the risk of losing their jobs.
All of us have heard the charge that to thus criticize the power of
Big Labor is to be anti-labor and anti-union. This is an argument that
serves the interest of union leaders, but it does not usually fit the
facts, and it certainly does not do justice to my views. I believe that
unionism, kept within its proper and natural bounds, accomplishes
a positive good for the country. Unions _can_ be an instrument for
achieving economic justice for the working man. Moreover, they are an
alternative to, and thus discourage State Socialism. Most important
of all, they are an expression of freedom. Trade unions properly
conceived, are an expression of man’s inalienable right to associate
with other men for the achievement of legitimate objectives.
_The natural function of a trade union and the one for which it was
historically conceived is to represent those employees who want
collective representation in bargaining with their employers over
terms of employment._ But note that this function is perverted the
moment a union claims the right to represent employees who do not want
representation, _or_ conducts activities that have nothing to do with
terms of employment (e.g. political activities), _or_ tries to deal
with an industry as a whole instead of with individual employers.
As America turned increasingly, in the latter half of the nineteenth
century, from an agricultural nation into an industrial one, and as the
size of business enterprises expanded, individual wage earners found
themselves at a distinct disadvantage in dealing with their employers
over terms of employment. The economic power of the large enterprises,
as compared with that of the individual employee, was such that wages
and conditions of employment were pretty much what the employer decided
they would be. Under these conditions, as a means of increasing their
economic power, many employees chose to band together and create a
common agent for negotiating with their employers.
As time went on, we found that the working man’s right to bargain
through a collective agent needed legal protection; accordingly
Congress enacted laws--notably certain provisions of the Clayton
Act, the Norris LaGuardia Act and the Wagner Act--to make sure that
employees would be able to bargain collectively.
This is not the place to examine those laws in detail. It is clear,
however, that they have _over_-accomplished their purpose. Thanks to
some unwise provisions and to the absence of others that should have
been included, the delicate balance of power we sought to achieve
between labor and management has shifted, in avalanche proportions,
to labor’s advantage. Or, more correctly to the advantage of union
leaders. This mammoth concentration of power in the hands of a few men
is, I repeat, a grave threat to the nation’s economic stability, and to
the nation’s political processes. More important, it has taken from the
individual wage earner a large portion of his freedom.
The time has come, not to abolish unions or deprive them of deserved
gains; but to redress the balance--to restore unions to their proper
role in a free society.
We have seen that unions perform their natural function when three
conditions are observed: association with the union is voluntary; the
union confines its activities to collective bargaining; the bargaining
is conducted with the employer of the workers concerned. Let us briefly
treat with each of these conditions, noting the extent to which they
are violated today, and the remedial action we are called upon to take.
_Freedom of Association._ Here the argument is so plain that I wonder
why elaboration is necessary. What could be more fundamental than the
freedom to associate with other men, or not to associate, as each
man’s conscience and reason dictates? Yet compulsory unionism is
the rule rather than the exception today in the ranks of organized
labor. Millions of laboring men are required to join the union that
is the recognized bargaining agent at the place they work. Union
shop agreements deny to these laboring men the right to decide for
themselves what union they will join, or indeed, whether they will join
at all. The exercise of freedom for many of these citizens, means the
loss of their jobs.
Here is the kind of thing that can happen as the result of compulsory
unionism. X, a family man in Pennsylvania had been a union member in
good standing for over twenty years. When the United Electrical Workers
became the recognized bargaining agent at his plant, he refused to
join on the grounds the UEW was Communist dominated--a judgment that
had been made by the CIO itself when it expelled the UEW in 1950. The
result, since his employer had a union shop agreement with the UEW, was
that X lost his job.
_The remedy here is to give freedom of association legal protection._
And that is why I strongly favor enactment of State right-to-work
laws which forbid contracts that make union membership a condition of
employment. These laws are aimed at removing a great blight on the
contemporary American scene, and I am at a loss to understand why so
many people who so often profess concern for “civil rights” and “civil
liberties” are vehemently opposed to them. Freedom of association is
one of the natural rights of man. Clearly, therefore, it should also
be a “civil” right. Right-to-work laws derive from the natural law:
they are simply an attempt to give freedom of association the added
protection of civil law.
I am well aware of the “free loader” argument, so often advanced by
union leaders in defense of compulsory unionism. The contention is that
a man ought not to enjoy the benefits of an organization’s activities
unless he contributes his fair share of their cost. I am unaware,
however, of any other organization or institution that seeks to enforce
this theory by compulsion. The Red Cross benefits all of us, directly
or indirectly, but _no one suggests that Red Cross donations be
compulsory_. It is one thing to say that a man _should_ contribute to
an association that is purportedly acting in his interest; it is quite
another thing to say that he _must_ do so. I believe that a man ought
to join a union if it is a good union that is serving the interests of
its members. I believe, moreover, that most men _will_ give support to
a union _provided it is deserving of that support_. There will always
be some men, of course, who will try to sponge off others; but let us
not express our contempt for _some_ men by denying freedom of choice to
_all_ men.
The union leaders’ further argument that right to work legislation is a
“union-busting” device is simply not borne out by the facts. A recent
survey disclosed that _in all of the nineteen States which have enacted
right-to-work laws union membership increased after the right-to-work
laws were passed_. It is also well to remember that the union movement
throughout the world has prospered when it has been put on a voluntary
basis. Contrary to popular belief compulsory unionism is not typical
of the labor movement in the free world. It prevails in the United
States and England, but in the other countries of Western Europe and in
Australia, union membership is generally on a voluntary basis. Indeed
the greatest percentage of unionized workers are found in countries
that prohibit compulsion by law. The unions in those countries operate
on the principle that a union is stronger and better if its members
give their adherence of their own free will.
Here, it seems to me, is the sensible way to combat graft and
corruption in the labor movement. As long as union leaders can
_force_ workers to join their organization, they have no incentive
to act responsibly. But if workers could choose to belong or not to
belong depending on how the union performed, the pressure to stamp
out malpractice would become irresistible. If unions had to earn the
adherence of their members the result would be--not only more freedom
for the working man--but much less dishonesty and high handedness in
the management of the union affairs.
_Political Freedom._ One way we exercise political freedom is to vote
for the candidate of our choice. Another way is to use our money to
try to persuade other voters to make a similar choice--that is, to
contribute to our candidate’s campaign. If either of these freedoms is
violated, the consequences are very grave not only for the individual
voter and contributor, but for the society whose free political
processes depend on a wide distribution of political power.
It is in the second of these areas, that of political contributions,
that labor unions seriously compromise American freedom. They do this
by spending the money of union members without prior consultation for
purposes the individual members may or may not approve of, purposes
that are decided upon by a relatively small number of union leaders.
Probably the greatest spender in the labor movement is the powerful
AFL/CIO Committee on Political Education (COPE) which is supported in
its “educational” work entirely by union general funds.
It is impossible to say just how much unions spend on political
campaigns; certainly one can’t tell from the amounts officially
reported, which invariably present a grossly distorted picture. In
1956, for example, Labor officially acknowledged expenditures of
$941,271. According to that official report, $79,939 of the total
was spent in the State of Michigan. However, a Senate investigating
committee obtained evidence that in that year each of Michigan’s
700,000 union members had been assessed $1.20 as a contribution to
a “citizenship fund,” and that this money was made available for
political activities. This suggests that labor spent, from that one
source alone, almost a million dollars in Michigan instead of $79,000.
By projecting the difference on a nation-wide scale we get a more
realistic idea of the size of Labor’s political contributions.
Union political activity is not confined, of course, to direct
financial contributions. In fact, this is one of its smallest
endeavors. Unions provide manpower for election day chores--for making
phone calls, driving cars, manning the polls and so on. Often the union
members who perform these chores are reimbursed for their time-off
out of union funds. Unions also sponsor radio and television programs
and distribute a huge volume of printed material designed to support
the candidate of the union’s choice. In short, they perform all the
functions of a regular party organization.
Now the evil here is twofold. For one thing, the union’s decision
whether to support candidate X or candidate Y--whether to help the
Republican Party or the Democratic Party--is not reached by a poll of
the union membership. It is made by a handful of top union officers.
These few men are thus able to wield tremendous political power in
virtue of their ability to spend other people’s money. No one else in
America is so privileged.
The other evil is more serious. Individual union members are denied the
right to decide for themselves how to spend their money. Certainly a
moral issue is at stake here. _Is it morally permissible to take the
money of a Republican union member, for example, and spend it on behalf
of a Democrat?_ The travesty is deeper, of course, when the money takes
the form of compulsory union dues. Under union shop conditions, the
only way an individual can avoid contributing to the political campaign
of a candidate whom he may not approve is to give up his job.
The passage of right-to-work laws will help the situation. But putting
unionism on a voluntary basis is only part of the answer. For even
though a man can leave or refuse to join a union that spends money for
purposes that he does not approve, there may be other factors that
would dissuade him from doing so. In many communities strong economic
and social pressures are exerted on behalf of joining a union--quite
aside from the threat of loss of employment. As a result, a man may
decide to join a union notwithstanding his disapproval of its political
activities. And the question remains: Should that man’s union dues
be used for political purposes? The answer is clearly, no. Unions
exist, presumably to confer economic advantages on their members, not
to perform political services for them. Unions should therefore be
forbidden to engage in any kind of political activity. I believe that
the Federal Corrupt Practices Act _does_ forbid such activity. That
legislation has been circumvented by the “education” approach and other
devices; and Congress and the courts, in effect, have looked the other
way. The only remedy, it appears, is new legislation.
_In order to achieve the widest possible distribution of political
power, financial contributions to political campaigns should be made
by individuals and individuals alone._ I see no reason for labor
unions--or corporations--to participate in politics. Both were created
for economic purposes and their activities should be restricted
accordingly.
_Economic Freedom._ Americans have been much disturbed in recent
years by the apparent power of Big Labor to impose its will on the
nation’s economic life whenever the impulse strikes. The recent
steel controversy, and the terms of its settlement, are the latest
illustration of Labor’s ability to get its way notwithstanding
the cost to the rest of society. When the strike began, neutral
observers--including government economists normally friendly to the
unions--agreed that the Steel Workers’ wage demands were exorbitant and
would inevitably cause further inflation; and that the steel companies
were quite right in insisting that certain “work rules” promoted
inefficiency and retarded production. Nevertheless, the steel companies
were forced to accept a settlement that postponed indefinitely revision
of work rules and granted a large portion of the union’s wage demands.
The reason the union won is quite simple: it posed to the country the
choice of tolerating stoppages in steel production that would imperil
national security, or of consenting to an abandonment of the collective
bargaining process. Since neither the steel companies nor the country
at large wanted to resort to compulsory arbitration, the alternative
was to give the unions what they asked. In this situation, the only
power superior to union power was government power, and the government
chose to yield.
One way to check the unions’ power is for the government to dictate
through compulsory arbitration, the terms of employment throughout
an entire industry. I am opposed to this course because it simply
transfers economic power from the unions to the government, and
encourages State Socialism. The other way is to disperse union power
and thus extend freedom in labor-management relations.
Eighty years ago the nation was faced with a comparable concentration
of economic power. Large corporations, by gaining monopoly control
over entire industries, had nullified the laws of competition that
are conducive to freedom. We responded to that challenge by outlawing
monopolies through the Sherman Act and other anti-trust legislation.
_These laws, however, have never been applied to labor unions._ And I
am at a loss to understand why. If it is wrong for a single corporation
to dictate prices throughout an entire industry, it is also wrong for
a single union--or, as is the actual case, a small number of union
leaders--to dictate wages and terms of employment throughout an entire
industry.
_The evil to be eliminated is the power of unions to enforce
industry-wide bargaining._ Employees have a right, as we have seen, to
select a common agent for bargaining with _their_ employer but they
do not have a right to select a national agent to bargain with all
employers in the industry. If a union has the power to enforce uniform
conditions of employment throughout the nation its power is comparable
to that of a Socialist government.
Employers are forbidden to act collusively for sound reasons. The same
reasons apply to unions. Industry-wide price-fixing causes economic
dislocations. So does industry-wide wage-fixing. A wage that is
appropriate in one part of the country may not be in another area where
economic conditions are very different. Corporate monopolies impair the
operation of the free market, and thus injure the consuming public. So
do union monopolies. When the United Automobile Workers demand a wage
increase from the auto industry, a single monolith is pitted against
a number of separate, competing companies. The contest is an unequal
one, for the union is able to play off one company against another.
The result is that individual companies are unable to resist excessive
wage demands and must, in turn, raise their prices. The consumer
ultimately suffers for he pays prices that are fixed not by free
market competition--the law of supply and demand--but by the arbitrary
decision of national union leaders. Far better if the employees of Ford
were required to deal with Ford, and those of Chrysler with Chrysler
and so on. The collective bargaining process will work for the common
good in all industries if it is confined to the employers and employees
directly concerned.
Let us henceforth make war on all monopolies--whether corporate or
union. The enemy of freedom is unrestrained power, and the champions
of freedom will fight against the concentration of power wherever they
find it.
CHAPTER SEVEN Taxes and Spending
We all have heard much throughout our lifetimes, and seen little
happen, on the subject of high taxes. Where is the politician who has
not promised his constituents a fight to the death for lower taxes--and
who has not proceeded to vote for the very spending projects that
make tax cuts impossible? There are some the shoe does not fit, but
I am afraid not many. Talk of tax reduction has thus come to have a
hollow ring. The people listen, but do not believe. And worse: as the
public grows more and more cynical, the politician feels less and less
compelled to take his promises seriously.
I suspect that this vicious circle of cynicism and failure to perform
is primarily the result of the Liberals’ success in reading out of the
discussion the moral principles with which the subject of taxation
is so intimately connected. We have been led to look upon taxation
as merely a problem of public financing: How much money does the
government need? We have been led to discount, and often to forget
altogether, the bearing of taxation on the problem of individual
freedom. We have been persuaded that the government has an unlimited
claim on the wealth of the people, and that the only pertinent question
is what portion of its claim the government should exercise. The
American taxpayer, I think, has lost confidence in _his_ claim to his
money. He has been handicapped in resisting high taxes by the feeling
that he is, in the nature of things, obliged to accommodate whatever
need for his wealth government chooses to assert.
The “nature of things,” I submit, is quite different. Government does
_not_ have an unlimited claim on the earnings of individuals. One
of the foremost precepts of the natural law is man’s right to the
possession and the use of his property. And a man’s earnings are his
property as much as his land and the house in which he lives. Indeed,
in the industrial age, earnings are probably the most prevalent form
of property. It has been the fashion in recent years to disparage
“property rights”--to associate them with greed and materialism. This
attack on property rights is actually an attack on freedom. It is
another instance of the modern failure to take into account the _whole_
man. How can a man be truly free if he is denied the means to exercise
freedom? How can he be free if the fruits of his labor are not his
to dispose of, but are treated, instead, as part of a common pool of
public wealth? Property and freedom are inseparable: to the extent
government takes the one in the form of taxes, it intrudes on the
other.
Here is an indication of how taxation currently infringes on our
freedom. A family man earning $4,500 a year works, on the average,
twenty-two days a month. Taxes, visible and invisible, take
approximately 32% of his earnings. This means that one-third, or seven
whole days, of his monthly labor goes for taxes. The average American
is therefore working one-third of the time for government: a third of
what he produces is not available for his own use but is confiscated
and used by others who have not earned it. Let us note that by this
measure the United States is already one-third “socialized.” The late
Senator Taft made the point often. “You can socialize,” he said “just
as well by a steady increase in the burden of taxation beyond the 30%
we have already reached as you can by government seizure. The very
imposition of heavy taxes is a limit on a man’s freedom.”
But having said that each man has an inalienable right to his property,
it also must be said that every citizen has an obligation to contribute
his fair share to the legitimate functions of government. Government,
in other words, has _some_ claim on our wealth, and the problem is to
define that claim in a way that gives due consideration to the property
rights of the individual.
The size of the government’s rightful claim--that is, the total
amount it may take in taxes--will be determined by how we define the
“legitimate functions of government.” With regard to the federal
government, the _Constitution_ is the proper standard of legitimacy:
its “legitimate” powers, as we have seen are those the Constitution
has delegated to it. Therefore, if we adhere to the Constitution, the
federal government’s total tax bill will be the cost of exercising such
of its _delegated_ powers as our representatives deem necessary in the
national interest. But conversely, when the federal government enacts
programs that are _not_ authorized by its delegated powers, the taxes
needed to pay for such programs _exceed_ the government’s rightful
claim on our wealth.
The distribution of the government’s claim is the next part of the
definition. What is a “fair share?” I believe that the requirements of
justice here are perfectly clear: _government has a right to claim an
equal percentage of each man’s wealth, and no more_. Property taxes are
typically levied on this basis. Excise and sales taxes are based on the
same principle--though the tax is levied on a transaction rather than
on property. _The principle is equally valid with regard to incomes,
inheritances and gifts._ The idea that a man who makes $100,000 a year
should be forced to contribute ninety per cent of his income to the
cost of government, while the man who makes $10,000 is made to pay
twenty per cent is repugnant to my notions of justice. I do not believe
in punishing success. To put it more broadly, I believe it is contrary
to the natural right to property to which we have just alluded--and is
therefore immoral--to deny to the man whose labor has produced more
abundant fruit than that of his neighbor the opportunity of enjoying
the abundance he has created. As for the claim that the government
_needs_ the graduated tax for revenue purposes, the facts are to the
contrary. The total revenue collected from income taxes beyond the
twenty per cent level amounts to less than $5 billion--less than the
federal government now spends on the one item of agriculture.
The graduated tax is a _confiscatory_ tax. Its effect, and to a large
extent its aim, is to bring down all men to a common level. Many
of the leading proponents of the graduated tax frankly admit that
their purpose is to redistribute the nation’s wealth. Their aim is
an egalitarian society--an objective that does violence both to the
charter of the Republic and the laws of Nature. We are all equal in the
eyes of God but we are equal _in no other respect_. Artificial devices
for enforcing equality among unequal men must be rejected if we would
restore that charter and honor those laws.
One problem with regard to taxes, then, is to enforce justice--to
abolish the graduated features of our tax laws; and the sooner we get
at the job, the better.
The other, and the one that has the greatest impact on our daily lives,
is to reduce the volume of taxes. And this takes us to the question
of government spending. While there is something to be said for the
proposition that spending will never be reduced so long as there is
money in the federal treasury, I believe that as a practical matter
spending cuts must come before tax cuts. If we reduce taxes before
firm, principled decisions are made about expenditures, we will court
deficit spending and the inflationary effects that invariably follow.
It is in the area of spending that the Republican Party’s performance,
in its seven years of power, has been most disappointing.
In the Summer of 1952, shortly after the Republican Convention, the two
men who had battled for the Presidential nomination met at Morningside
Heights, New York, to discuss the problem of taxes and spending.
After the conference, Senator Taft announced: “General Eisenhower
emphatically agrees with me in the proposal to reduce drastically
overall expenses. Our goal is about $70 billion in fiscal 1954
(President Truman had proposed $81 billion) and $60 billion in fiscal
1955.... Of course, I hope we may do better than that and that the
reduction can steadily continue.” Thereafter, the idea of a $60 billion
budget in 1955, plus the promise of further reductions later on, became
an integral part of the Republican campaign.
Now it would be bad enough if we had simply failed to redeem our
promise to reduce spending; the fact, however, is that federal spending
has greatly _increased_ during the Republican years. Instead of a
$60 billion budget, we are confronted, in fiscal 1961, with a budget
of approximately $80 billion. If we add to the formal budget figure
disbursements from the so-called trust funds for Social Security and
the Federal Highway Program--as we must if we are to obtain a realistic
picture of federal expenditures--total federal spending will be in the
neighborhood of _$95 billion_.
We are often told that increased federal spending is simply a
reflection of the increased cost of national defense. This is untrue.
In the last ten years purely _domestic_ expenditures have increased
from $15.2 billion, in fiscal 1951, to a proposed $37.0 billion in
fiscal 1961[2]--_an increase_ of 143%! Here are the figures measured
by a slightly different yardstick: during the last five years of the
Truman Administration the average annual federal expenditure for
domestic purposes was $17.7 billion; during the last five years of the
Eisenhower Administration it was $33.6 billion, an increase of 89%.
Some allowance must be made, of course, for the increase in population;
obviously the same welfare program will cost more if there are more
people to be cared for. But the increase in population does not begin
to account for the increase in spending. During the ten-year period
in which federal spending will have increased by 143%, our population
will have increased by roughly 18%. Nor does inflation account for the
difference. In the past ten years the value of the dollar has decreased
less than 20%. Finally, we are often told that the government’s _share_
of total spending in the country is what is important and consequently
we must take into account the increase in gross national product.
Again, however, the increase in GNP, which was roughly 40% over the
past ten years, is not comparable to a 143% increase in federal
spending. The conclusion here is inescapable--that far from arresting
federal spending and the trend toward Statism we Republicans have kept
the trend moving forward.
I do not mean to suggest, of course, that things would have been
different under a Democratic Administration. Every year the Democratic
national leadership demands that the federal government spend _more_
than it is spending, and that Republicans propose to spend. _And this
year, several weeks before President Eisenhower submitted his 1961
budget, The Democratic National Advisory Council issued a manifesto
calling for profligate spending increases in nearly every department of
the federal government; the demands for increases in domestic spending
alone could hardly cost less than $20 billion a year._
I do mean to say, however, that _neither_ of our political parties
has seriously faced up to the problem of government spending. The
recommendations of the Hoover Commission which could save the taxpayer
in the neighborhood of $7 billion a year have been largely ignored. Yet
even these recommendations, dealing as they do for the most part with
extravagance and waste, do not go to the heart of the problem. The root
evil is that the government is engaged in activities in which it has no
legitimate business. As long as the federal government acknowledges
responsibility in a given social or economic field, its spending in
that field cannot be substantially reduced. As long as the federal
government acknowledges responsibility for education, for example,
the amount of federal aid is bound to increase, at the very least,
in direct proportion to the cost of supporting the nation’s schools.
_The only way to curtail spending substantially, is to eliminate the
programs on which excess spending is consumed._
The government must begin to _withdraw_ from a whole series of programs
that are outside its constitutional mandate--from social welfare
programs, education, public power, agriculture, public housing, urban
renewal and all the other activities that can be better performed
by lower levels of government or by private institutions or by
individuals. I do not suggest that the federal government drop all
of these programs overnight. But I do suggest that we establish, by
law, a rigid timetable for a staged withdrawal. We might provide, for
example, for a 10% spending reduction each year in all of the fields
in which federal participation is undesirable. It is only through this
kind of determined assault on the principle of unlimited government
that American people will obtain relief from high taxes, and will start
making progress toward regaining their freedom.
And let us, by all means, remember the _nation’s_ interest in reducing
taxes and spending. The need for “economic growth” that we hear so much
about these days will be achieved, not by the government harnessing
the nation’s economic forces, but by emancipating them. By reducing
taxes and spending we will not only return to the individual the means
with which he can assert his freedom and dignity, but also guarantee
to the nation the economic strength that will always be its ultimate
defense against foreign foes.
FOOTNOTE:
[2] These figures do not include interest payments on the national
debt.
CHAPTER EIGHT The Welfare State
Washington--The President estimated that the expenditures of the
Department of Health, Education and Welfare in the fiscal year 1961
(including Social Security payments) would exceed $15,000,000,000.
Thus the current results of New Deal legislation are Federal
disbursements for human welfare in this country second only to
national defense.
The _New York Times_, January 18, 1960, p. 1.
For many years it appeared that the principal domestic threat
to our freedom was contained in the doctrines of Karl Marx. The
collectivists--non-Communists as well as Communists--had adopted the
Marxist objective of “socializing the means of production.” And so it
seemed that if collectivization were imposed, it would take the form of
a State owned and operated economy. I doubt whether this is the main
threat any longer.
The collectivists have found, both in this country and in other
industrialized nations of the West, that free enterprise has removed
the economic and social conditions that might have made a class
struggle possible. Mammoth productivity, wide distribution of wealth,
high standards of living, the trade union movement--these and other
factors have eliminated whatever incentive there might have been for
the “proletariat” to rise up, peaceably or otherwise, and assume direct
ownership of productive property. Significantly, the bankruptcy of
doctrinaire Marxism has been expressly acknowledged by the Socialist
Party of West Germany, and by the dominant faction of the Socialist
Party of Great Britain. In this country the abandonment of the Marxist
approach (outside the Communist Party, of course) is attested to by the
negligible strength of the Socialist Party, and more tellingly perhaps,
by the content of left wing literature and by the programs of left wing
political organizations such as the Americans For Democratic Action.
The currently favored instrument of collectivization is the Welfare
State. The collectivists have not abandoned their ultimate goal--to
subordinate the individual to the State--but their strategy has
changed. They have learned that Socialism can be achieved through
Welfarism quite as well as through Nationalization. They understand
that private property can be confiscated as effectively by taxation as
by expropriating it. They understand that the individual can be put at
the mercy of the State--not only by making the State his employer--but
by divesting him of the means to provide for his personal needs and
by giving the State the responsibility of caring for those needs
from cradle to grave. Moreover, they have discovered--and here is
the critical point--that _Welfarism is much more compatible with the
political processes of a democratic society_. Nationalization ran into
popular opposition, but the collectivists feel sure the Welfare State
can be erected by the simple expedient of buying votes with promises
of “free” federal benefits--“free” housing, “free” school aid, “free”
hospitalization, “free” retirement pay and so on.... The correctness
of this estimate can be seen from the portion of the federal budget
that is now allocated to welfare, an amount second only to the cost of
national defense.[3]
I do not welcome this shift of strategy. Socialism-through-Welfarism
poses a far greater danger to freedom than
Socialism-through-Nationalization precisely because it is more
difficult to combat. The evils of Nationalization are self-evident and
immediate. Those of Welfarism are veiled and tend to be postponed.
People can understand the consequences of turning over ownership of the
steel industry, say, to the State; and they can be counted on to oppose
such a proposal. But let the government increase its contribution to
the “Public Assistance” program and we will, at most, grumble about
excessive government spending. The effect of Welfarism on freedom will
be felt later on--after its beneficiaries have become its victims,
after dependence on government has turned into bondage and it is too
late to unlock the jail.
But a far more important factor is Welfarism’s strong emotional appeal
to many voters, and the consequent temptations it presents the average
politician. It is hard, as we have seen, to make out a case for State
ownership. It is very different with the rhetoric of humanitarianism.
How easy it is to reach the voters with earnest importunities for
helping the needy. And how difficult for Conservatives to resist these
demands without appearing to be callous and contemptuous of the plight
of less fortunate citizens. Here, perhaps, is the best illustration of
the failure of the Conservative demonstration.
I know, for I have heard the questions often. Have you no sense of
social obligation? the Liberals ask. Have you no concern for people who
are out of work? for sick people who lack medical care? for children in
overcrowded schools? Are you unmoved by the problems of the aged and
disabled? Are you _against_ human welfare?
The answer to all of these questions is, of course, no. But a simple
“no” is not enough. I feel certain that Conservatism is through unless
Conservatives can demonstrate and communicate the difference between
being concerned with these problems and believing that the federal
government is the proper agent for their solution.
The long range political consequences of Welfarism are plain enough:
as we have seen, the State that is able to deal with its citizens as
wards and dependents has gathered unto itself unlimited political and
economic power and is thus able to rule as absolutely as any oriental
despot.
Let us, however, weigh the consequences of Welfarism on the individual
citizen.
Consider, first, the effect of Welfarism on the donors of government
welfare--not only those who pay for it but also the voters and
their elected representatives who decide that the benefits shall be
conferred. Does some credit redound on them for trying to care for the
needs of their fellow citizens? Are they to be commended and rewarded,
at some moment in eternity, for their “charity?” I think not. Suppose I
should vote for a measure providing for free medical care: I am unaware
of any moral virtue that is attached to my decision to confiscate the
earnings of X and give them to Y.
Suppose, however, that X approves of the program--that he has voted
for welfarist politicians with the idea of helping his fellow man.
Surely the wholesomeness of his act is diluted by the fact that he is
voting not only to have his own money taken but also that of his fellow
citizens who may have different ideas about their social obligations.
Why does not such a man, instead, contribute what he regards as his
just share of human welfare to a private charity?
Consider the consequences to the recipient of welfarism. For one
thing, he mortgages himself to the federal government. In return for
benefits--which, in the majority of cases, he pays for--he concedes to
the government the ultimate in political power--the power to grant or
withhold from him the necessities of life as the government sees fit.
Even more important, however, is the effect on him--the elimination
of any feeling of responsibility for his own welfare and that of his
family and neighbors. A man may not immediately, or ever, comprehend
the harm thus done to his character. Indeed, this is one of the great
evils of Welfarism--that it transforms the individual from a dignified,
industrious, self-reliant _spiritual_ being into a dependent animal
creature without his knowing it. There is no avoiding this damage to
character under the Welfare State. Welfare programs cannot help but
promote the idea that the government _owes_ the benefits it confers
on the individual, and that the individual is entitled, by right, to
receive them. Such programs are sold to the country precisely on the
argument that government has an _obligation_ to care for the needs of
its citizens. Is it possible that the message will reach those who vote
for the benefits, but not those who receive them? How different it is
with private charity where both the giver and the receiver understand
that charity is the product of the humanitarian impulses of the giver,
not the due of the receiver.
Let us, then, not blunt the noble impulses of mankind by reducing
charity to a mechanical operation of the federal government. Let
us, by all means, encourage those who are fortunate and able to care
for the needs of those who are unfortunate and disabled. But let us
do this in a way that is conducive to the spiritual as well as the
material well-being of our citizens--and in a way that will preserve
their freedom. Let welfare be a private concern. Let it be promoted by
individuals and families, by churches, private hospitals, religious
service organizations, community charities and other institutions that
have been established for this purpose. If the objection is raised that
private institutions lack sufficient funds, let us remember that every
penny the federal government does _not_ appropriate for welfare is
potentially available for private use--and without the overhead charge
for processing the money through the federal bureaucracy. Indeed, high
taxes, for which government Welfarism is so largely responsible, is the
biggest obstacle to fund raising by private charities.
Finally, if we deem public intervention necessary, let the job be done
by local and state authorities that are incapable of accumulating the
vast political power that is so inimical to our liberties.
The Welfare State is _not_ inevitable, as its proponents are so
fond of telling us. There is nothing inherent in an industrialized
economy, or in democratic processes of government that _must_ produce
de Tocqueville’s “guardian society.” Our future, like our past, will
be what we make it. And we can shatter the collectivists’ designs
on individual freedom if we will impress upon the men who conduct
our affairs this one truth: that the material and spiritual sides of
man are intertwined; that it is impossible for the State to assume
responsibility for one without intruding on the essential nature of
the other; that if we take from a man the personal responsibility for
caring for his material needs, we take from him also the will and the
opportunity to be free.
FOOTNOTE:
[3] The total figure is substantially higher than the $15,000,000,000
noted above if we take into account welfare expenditures outside the
Department of Health, Education and Welfare--for federal housing
projects, for example.
CHAPTER NINE Some Notes On Education
I agree with lobbyists for federal school aid that education is one of
the great problems of our day. I am afraid, however, that their views
and mine regarding the nature of the problem are many miles apart. They
tend to see the problem in _quantitative_ terms--not enough schools,
not enough teachers, not enough equipment. I think it has to do with
_quality_: How good are the schools we have? Their solution is to
spend more money. Mine is to raise standards. Their recourse is to
the federal government. Mine is to the local public school board, the
private school, the individual citizen--as far away from the federal
government as one can possibly go. And I suspect that if we knew which
of these two views on education will eventually prevail, we would know
also whether Western civilization is due to survive, or will pass away.
To put this somewhat differently, I believe that our ability to cope
with the great crises that lie ahead will be enhanced in direct ratio
as we recapture the lost art of learning, and will diminish in direct
ratio as we give responsibility for training our children’s minds to
the federal bureaucracy.
But let us put these differences aside for the moment and note four
reasons why federal aid to education is objectionable even if we grant
that the problem is primarily quantitative.
The first is that federal intervention in education is
unconstitutional. It is the fashion these days to say that
responsibility for education “traditionally” rests with the local
community--as a prelude to proposing an exception to the tradition in
the form of federal aid. This “tradition,” let us remember, is also
the _law_. It is sanctioned by the Constitution of the United States,
for education is one of the powers reserved to the States by the Tenth
Amendment. Therefore, any federal aid program, however desirable it
might appear, must be regarded as illegal until such time as the
Constitution is amended.
The second objection is that the alleged need for federal funds has
never been convincingly demonstrated. It all depends, of course, on
how the question is put. If you ask, Does State X need additional
educational facilities? the answer may be yes. But if you ask, Does
State X require additional facilities that are beyond the reach of
its own financial means? the answer is invariably no. The White House
Conference on Education in 1955 was, most of us will remember, an
elaborate effort to demonstrate popular support for federal aid. As
expected, the “consensus” of the conference was that more federal aid
was needed. However, the conferees reached another conclusion that was
hardly noticed by the press. “No state represented,” the Conference
report stated, “has a demonstrated financial incapacity to build the
schools they will need during the next five years.” What is lacking,
the report went on, _is not money, but a “political determination
powerful enough to overcome all the obstacles”_.
Through the succeeding five years, congressional committees have
listened to hundreds of hours of testimony in favor of federal aid, but
they have never heard that 1955 finding successfully contradicted. What
the White House conferees were saying in 1955, and what proponents of
federal aid to education have been saying ever since, is that because
a few States have not seen fit to take care of their school needs,
it is incumbent upon the federal government to take up the slack. My
view is that if State X possesses the wealth to educate its children
adequately, but has failed to utilize its wealth for that purpose, it
is up to the people of State X to take remedial action through their
local and state governments. The federal government has neither the
right nor the duty to intervene.
Let us, moreover, keep the problem in proper perspective. The national
school system is _not_ in distress. Shortly before the Senate debate
this year on increased federal aid, I asked Mr. Arthur Flemming the
Secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, how many of the Nation’s
school districts were in actual trouble--how many, that is, had reached
their bonded limit. His answer was approximately 230. Now there are
roughly 42,000 school districts in America. Thus, proponents of federal
aid are talking about a problem that affects only one-half of one
per cent of our school districts! I cannot believe that the state
governments responsible for those areas are incapable of making up
whatever deficiencies exist. It so happens that the same deficiency
figure--one-half of one per cent--applies to my own state of Arizona.
And Arizona proudly turned down federal funds under the 1958 National
Defense Education Act on the grounds that Arizonans, themselves, were
quite capable of closing the gap.
This may be the place, while we are speaking of need, to lay to rest
the notion that the American people have been niggardly in support of
their schools. Since the end of World War II, Americans have built
550,000 classrooms at a cost of approximately $19 billion--almost
all of which was raised at the local level. This new construction
provided space for over 15 million pupils during a period when the
school population increased by only 10 million pupils. It is evident,
therefore, that increased school expenditures have more than kept pace
with increased school needs.
Here are some of the figures. In the school year 1949-50 there were
25 million students enrolled in various education institutions in
the United States. In the year 1959-60 there were 34.7 million--an
increase of 38%. During the same period revenues for school use,
raised largely at the local level, increased from 5.4 billion to 12.1
billion--an increase of 124%. When school expenditures increase three
and a half times as fast as the school population, I do not think that
the adequacy of America’s “traditional” approach to education is open
to serious question.
The third objection to federal aid is that it promotes the idea that
federal school money is “free” money, and thus gives the people a
distorted picture of the cost of education. I was distressed to find
that five out of six high school and junior college students recently
interviewed in Phoenix said they favored federal aid because it would
mean more money for local schools and ease the financial burden on
Arizona taxpayers.
The truth, of course, is that the federal government has no funds
except those it extracts from the taxpayers who reside in the various
States. The money that the federal government pays to State X for
education has been taken from the citizens of State X in federal taxes
and comes back to them, minus the Washington brokerage fee. The less
wealthy States, to be sure, receive slightly more than they give, just
as the more wealthy States receive somewhat less. But the differences
are negligible. For the most part, federal aid simply substitutes the
tax-collecting facilities of the federal government for those of local
governments. This fact cannot be stressed often enough; for stripped
of the idea that federal money is free money, federal aid to education
is exposed as an act of naked compulsion--a decision by the federal
government to force the people of the States to spend more money than
they choose to spend for this purpose voluntarily.
The fourth objection is that federal aid _to_ education inevitably
means federal control _of_ education. For many years, advocates of
federal aid denied that aid implies control, but in the light of
the National Defense Education Act of 1958 they cannot very well
maintain their position. Federal aid under the act is conditioned
upon compliance by the States and local educational institutions with
various standards and specifications laid down by the Department of
Health, Education and Welfare. _There are no less than twelve direct
controls of this kind in the act._ Moreover, the acknowledged purpose
of the act is to persuade local educational institutions to put greater
emphasis on the physical sciences and other subjects directly related
to national defense. I do not question the desirability of encouraging
increased proficiency in the physical sciences, but when the federal
government does the encouraging through the withholding and granting of
funds, I do not see how it can be denied that the federal government
is helping to determine the _content_ of education; and influencing
content is the last, not the first, stage of control.
Nobody should be surprised that aid has led to controls. It could, and
_should not_ be otherwise. Congress cannot be expected to appropriate
the people’s money and make no provision for how it will be spent.
Congress would be shirking its responsibilities to the taxpayer if
it distributed his money willy-nilly, without regard to its use.
Should Congress permit the use of federal funds to subsidize Communist
schools and thus promote the cause of our enemies? Of course not. But
a prohibition of such use is clearly an exercise of federal control.
Congress will always feel impelled to establish conditions under which
people’s money is to be spent, and while some controls may be wise
we are not guaranteed against unwise controls any more than we are
guaranteed against unwise Congressmen. The mistake is not the controls
but appropriating the money that requires controls.
So much for the evils and dangers of federal aid. Note that I have
not denied that many of our children are being inadequately educated,
or that the problem is nation-wide. I have only denied that it is the
kind of problem that requires a solution at the national level. To
the extent the problem is quantitative--to the extent we have too few
classrooms and pay some of our teachers too little money--the shortages
can be taken care of by the localities concerned. But more: to the
extent the problem is qualitative--which in my opinion it mainly is--it
is manifestly one that lends itself to correction at the local level.
There is no place where deficiencies in the _content_ of an educational
system can be better understood than locally where a community has the
opportunity to view and judge the product of its own school system.
In the main, the trouble with American education is that we have put
into practice the educational philosophy expounded by John Dewey and
his disciples. In varying degrees we have adopted what has been called
“progressive education.”
Subscribing to the egalitarian notion that every child must have the
same education, we have neglected to provide an educational system
which will tax the talents and stir the ambitions of our best students
and which will thus insure us the kind of leaders we will need in the
future.
In our desire to make sure that our children learn to “adjust” to their
environment, we have given them insufficient opportunity to acquire the
knowledge that will enable them to _master_ their environment.
In our attempt to make education “fun,” we have neglected the academic
disciplines that develop sound minds and are conducive to sound
characters.
Responding to the Deweyite attack on methods of teaching, we have
encouraged the teaching profession to be more concerned with _how_ a
subject is taught than with _what_ is taught. Most important of all:
in our anxiety to “improve” the world and insure “progress” we have
permitted our schools to become laboratories for social and economic
change according to the predilections of the professional educators. We
have forgotten that the proper function of the school is to transmit
the cultural heritage of one generation to the next generation, and to
so train the minds of the new generation as to make them capable of
absorbing ancient learning and applying it to the problem of its own
day.
The fundamental explanation of this distortion of values is that we
have forgotten that purpose of education. Or better: we have forgotten
for _whom_ education is intended. The function of our schools is not
to educate, or elevate, _society_; but rather to educate _individuals_
and to equip them with the knowledge that will enable them to take
care of society’s needs. We have forgotten that a society progresses
only to the extent that it produces leaders that are capable of
guiding and inspiring progress. And we cannot develop such leaders
unless our standards of education are geared to excellence instead
of mediocrity. We must give full rein to individual talents, and we
must encourage our schools to enforce the academic disciplines--to put
preponderant emphasis on English, mathematics, history, literature,
foreign languages and the natural sciences. We should look upon our
schools--not as a place to train the “whole character” of the child--a
responsibility that properly belongs to his family and church--but to
train his _mind_.
Our country’s past progress has been the result, not of the mass mind
applying average intelligence to the problems of the day, but of
the brilliance and dedication of wise individuals who applied their
wisdom to advance the freedom and the material well-being of all of our
people. And so if we would improve education in America--and advance
the fortunes of freedom--we will not rush to the federal treasury with
requests for money. We will focus attention on our local community, and
make sure that our schools, private and public, are performing the job
the Nation has the right to expect of them.
CHAPTER TEN The Soviet Menace
And still the awful truth remains: We can establish the domestic
conditions for maximizing freedom, along the lines I have indicated,
and yet become slaves. We can do this by losing the Cold War to the
Soviet Union.
American freedom has always depended, to an extent, on what is
happening beyond our shores. Even in Ben Franklin’s day, Americans had
to reckon with foreign threats. Our forebearers knew that “keeping a
Republic” meant, above all, keeping it safe from foreign transgressors;
they knew that a people cannot live and work freely, and develop
national institutions conducive to freedom, except in peace and with
independence. In those early days the threat to peace and independence
was very real. We were a fledgling-nation and the slightest misstep--or
faint hearts--would have laid us open to the ravages of predatory
European powers. It was only because wise and courageous men understood
that defense of freedom required risks and sacrifice, as well as
their belief in it, that we survived the crisis of national infancy.
As we grew stronger, and as the oceans continued to interpose a
physical barrier between ourselves and European militarism, the
foreign danger gradually receded. Though we always had to keep a
weather eye on would-be conquerors, our independence was acknowledged
and peace, unless we chose otherwise, was established. Indeed, after
the Second World War, we were not only master of our own destiny; we
were master of the world. With a monopoly of atomic weapons, and with
a conventional military establishment superior to any in the world,
America was--in relative and absolute terms--the most powerful nation
the world had ever known. American freedom was as secure as at any time
in our history.
Now, a decade and half later, we have come full circle and our national
existence is once again threatened as it was in the early days of
the Republic. Though we are still strong physically, we are in clear
and imminent danger of being overwhelmed by alien forces. We are
confronted by a revolutionary world movement that possesses not only
the will to dominate absolutely every square mile of the globe, but
increasingly the capacity to do so: a military power that rivals our
own, political warfare and propaganda skills that are superior to ours,
an international fifth column that operates conspiratorially in the
heart of our defenses, an ideology that imbues its adherents with a
sense of historical mission; and all of these resources controlled by
a ruthless despotism that brooks no deviation from the revolutionary
course. This threat, moreover, is growing day by day. And it has
now reached the point where American leaders, both political and
intellectual, are searching desperately for means of “appeasing” or
“accommodating” the Soviet Union as the price of national survival. The
American people are being told that, however valuable their freedom
may be, it is even more important to live. A craven fear of death is
entering the American consciousness; so much so that many recently felt
that honoring the chief despot himself was the price we had to pay to
avoid nuclear destruction.
The temptation is strong to blame the deterioration of America’s
fortunes on the Soviet Union’s acquisition of nuclear weapons. But this
is self-delusion. The rot had set in, the crumbling of our position
was already observable, long before the Communists detonated their
first Atom Bomb. Even in the early 1950s, when America still held
unquestioned nuclear superiority, it was clear that we were losing the
Cold War. Time and again in my campaign speeches of 1952 I warned my
fellow Arizonans that “American Foreign Policy has brought us from a
position of undisputed power, in seven short years, to the brink of
possible disaster.” And in the succeeding seven years, that trend,
because its cause remains, has continued.
The real cause of the deterioration can be simply stated. Our enemies
have understood the nature of the conflict, and we have not. They are
determined to win the conflict, and we are not.
I hesitate to restate the obvious--to say again what has been said so
many times before by so many others: that the Communists’ aim is to
conquer the world. I repeat it because it is the beginning and the end
of our knowledge about the conflict between East and West. I repeat it
because I fear that however often we have given lip-service to this
central political fact of our time, very few of us have _believed_ it.
If we had, our entire approach to foreign policy over the past fourteen
years would have been radically different, and the course of world
events radically changed.
If an enemy power is bent on conquering you, and proposes to turn all
of his resources to that end, he is at war with you; and you--unless
you contemplate surrender--are at war with him. Moreover--unless you
contemplate treason--your objective, like his, will be victory. Not
“peace,” but victory. Now, while traitors (and perhaps cowards) have at
times occupied key positions in our government, it is clear that our
national leadership over the past fourteen years has favored neither
surrender nor treason. It is equally clear, however, that our leaders
have not made _victory_ the goal of American policy. And the reason
that they have not done so, I am saying, is that they have never
believed deeply that the Communists are in earnest.
Our avowed national objective is “peace.” We have, with great
sincerity, “waged” peace, while the Communists wage war. We have sought
“settlements,” while the Communists seek victories. We have tried
to pacify the world. The Communists mean to own it. Here is why the
contest has been an unequal one, and why, essentially, we are losing it.
Peace, to be sure, is a proper goal for American policy--as long as it
is understood that peace is not all we seek. For we do not want the
peace of surrender. We want a peace in which freedom and justice will
prevail, and that--given the nature of Communism--is a peace in which
Soviet power will no longer be in a position to threaten us and the
rest of the world. A tolerable peace, in other words, must _follow_
victory over Communism. We have been fourteen years trying to bury
that unpleasant fact. It cannot be buried and any foreign policy that
ignores it will lead to our extinction as a nation.
We do not, of course, want to achieve victory by force of arms. If
possible, overt hostilities should always be avoided; especially is
this so when a shooting war may cause the death of many millions of
people, including our own. But we cannot, for that reason, make the
avoidance of a shooting war our chief objective. If we do that--if we
tell ourselves that it is more important to avoid shooting than to keep
our freedom--we are committed to a course that has only one terminal
point: surrender. We cannot, by proclamation, make war “unthinkable.”
For it is not unthinkable to the Communists: naturally, they would
prefer to avoid war, but they are prepared to risk it, in the last
analysis, to achieve their objectives. We must, in our hearts, be
equally dedicated to our objectives. If war is unthinkable to us but
not to them, the famous “balance of terror” is not a balance at all,
but an instrument of blackmail. U. S.-Soviet power may be in balance;
but if we, and not they, rule out the possibility of using that power,
the Kremlin can create crisis after crisis, and force the U. S.,
because of our greater fear of war, to back down every time. And it
cannot be long before a universal Communist Empire sits astride the
globe.
The rallying cry of an appeasement organization, portrayed in a recent
novel on American politics, was “I would rather crawl on my knees
to Moscow than die under an Atom bomb.” This sentiment, of course,
repudiates everything that is courageous and honorable and dignified
in the human being. We must--as the first step toward saving American
freedom--affirm the contrary view and make it the cornerstone of our
foreign policy: that we would rather die than lose our freedom. There
are ways which I will suggest later on--not easy ways, to be sure--in
which we may save both our freedom _and_ our lives; but all such
suggestions are meaningless and vain unless we first understand what
the objective is. We want to stay alive, of course; but more than that
we want to be free. We want to have peace; but before that we want to
establish the conditions that will make peace tolerable. “Like it or
not,” Eugene Lyons has written, “the great and inescapable task of our
epoch is not to end the Cold War but to win it.”
I suggest that we look at America’s present foreign policy, and ask
whether it is conducive to victory. There are several aspects of this
policy. Let us measure each of them by the test: Does it help defeat
the enemy?
DEFENSIVE ALLIANCES
Through NATO, SEATO and the Central Treaty Organization in mid-Asia,
we have served notice on the Kremlin that overt Communist aggression
in certain areas of the world will be opposed by American arms. It is
likely that the existence of these alliances has helped discourage
military adventurism by the Communists.
Still, we should not overestimate the value of the alliances. Though
they play a significant role in safeguarding American freedom, there
are a number of reasons why it is a limited role.
First, the alliance system is not co-extensive with the line that
must be held if enemy expansion is to be prevented. There are huge
areas of the non-Communist world that the alliances do not touch.
Nor--even assuming America is strong enough to guard a world-wide
defense perimeter--is there any prospect of bringing these areas
into the system. The so-called neutral countries of the Middle East,
Africa and Southern Asia have refused to align themselves with the
anti-Communist cause, and it is in those areas, as we might expect,
that the Communists are making significant strides. This is a critical
weakness. If all of those areas should fall under Communist rule, the
alliances would be outflanked everywhere: the system would be reduced
to a series of outposts, and probably indefensible ones at that, in a
wholly hostile world.
Secondly, the alliance system does not protect even its members against
the most prevalent kind of Communist aggression: political penetration
and internal subversion. Iraq is a case in point. We had pledged
ourselves to support the Iraqi against overt Soviet aggression--not
only under the Baghdad Pact of which Iraq was the cornerstone, but also
under the Eisenhower Doctrine. Iraq fell victim to a pro-Communist
coup without an American or Russian shot being fired. Cuba is another
example. If the Red Army had landed in Havana, we would have come to
Cuba’s aid. Castro’s forces, however, were native Cubans; as a result,
a pro-Communist regime has become entrenched on our very doorstep
through the technique of internal subversion. And so it will always be
with an enemy that lays even more emphasis on political warfare than on
military warfare. So it will be until we learn to meet the enemy on his
own grounds.
But thirdly, the alliance system cannot adequately protect its members
even against _overt_ aggression. In the past, the Communists have been
kept in check by America’s strategic air arm. Indeed, in the light of
the weakness of the allied nations’ conventional military forces, our
nuclear superiority has been the alliances’ only real weapon. But as
the Soviet Union draws abreast of us in nuclear strength, that weakness
could prove our undoing. In a nuclear stalemate, where neither side is
prepared to go “all out” over local issues, the side with the superior
conventional forces has an obvious advantage. Moreover, it is clear
that we cannot hope to match the Communist world man for man, nor are
we capable of furnishing the guns and tanks necessary to defend thirty
nations scattered over the face of the globe. The long-overdue answer,
as we will see later on, lies in the development of a nuclear capacity
for limited wars.
Finally--and I consider this the most serious defect of all--the
alliance system is completely defensive in nature and outlook. This
fact, in the light of the Communists’ dynamic, offensive strategy,
ultimately dooms it to failure. No nation at war, employing an
exclusively defensive strategy, can hope to survive for long. Like the
boxer who refuses to throw a punch, the defense-bound nation will be
cut down sooner or later. As long as every encounter with the enemy is
fought on his initiative, on grounds of his choosing and with weapons
of his choosing, we shall keep on losing the Cold War.
FOREIGN AID
Another aspect of our policy is the Foreign Aid program. To it, in the
last fourteen years, we have committed over eighty billions of American
treasure--in grants, loans, material, and technical assistance. I
will not develop here what every thinking American knows about this
Gargantuan expenditure--that it has had dire consequences, not only
for the American taxpayer, but for the American economy; that it has
been characterized by waste and extravagance both overseas and in the
agencies that administer it; and that it has created a vast reservoir
of anti-Americanism among proud peoples who, however irrationally,
resent dependence on a foreign dole. I would rather put the question,
Has the Foreign Aid program, for all of its drawbacks, made a
compensating contribution toward winning the Cold War?
And this test, let me say parenthetically, is the only one under which
the Foreign Aid program can be justified. It cannot, that is to say, be
defended as a charity. The American government does not have the right,
much less the obligation, to try to promote the economic and social
welfare of foreign peoples. Of course, all of us are interested in
combating poverty and disease wherever it exists. _But the Constitution
does not empower our government to undertake that job in foreign
countries_, no matter how worthwhile it might be. Therefore, except as
it can be shown to promote America’s national interests, the Foreign
Aid program is unconstitutional.
It can be argued, but not proved, that American aid helped prevent
Western Europe from going Communist after the Second World War. It is
true, for example, that the Communist parties in France and Italy were
somewhat weaker after economic recovery than before it. But it does
not follow that recovery _caused_ the reduction in Communist strength,
or that American aid caused the recovery. It is also true, let us
remember, that West Germany recovered economically at a far faster rate
than France or Italy, and received comparatively little American aid.
It also can be argued that American military aid has made the
difference between friendly countries having the power to fight off
or discourage Communist aggression, and not having that power. Here,
however, we must distinguish between friendly countries that were
_not_ able to build their own military forces, and those that were.
Greece, Turkey, Free China, South Korea and South Vietnam needed our
help. Other countries, England and France, for example, were able to
maintain military forces with their own resources. For many years now,
our allies in Western Europe have devoted smaller portions of their
national budgets to military forces than we have. The result is that
the American people, in the name of _military_ aid, have been giving an
_economic_ handout to these nations; we have permitted them to transfer
to their domestic economy funds which, in justice, should have been
used in the common defense effort.
Now let us note a significant fact. In each of the situations we have
mentioned so far--situations where some evidence exists that Foreign
Aid has promoted American interests--there is a common denominator:
_in every case, the recipient government was already committed to our
side_. We _may_ have made these nations, on balance, stronger and more
constant allies, though even that is debatable. But we did not cause
them to alter their basic political commitments. This brings us to
the rest of the Foreign Aid program--and to the great fallacy that
underlies it.
Increasingly, our foreign aid goes not to our friends, but to professed
neutrals--and even to professed enemies. We furnish this aid under the
theory that we can buy the allegiance of foreign peoples--or at least
discourage them from “going Communist”--by making them economically
prosperous. This has been called the “stomach theory of Communism,” and
it implies that a man’s politics are determined by the amount of food
in his belly.
Everything we have learned from experience, and from our observation
of the nature of man, refutes this theory. A man’s politics are,
primarily, the product of his mind. Material wealth can help him
further his political goals, but it will not change them. The fact that
some poor, illiterate people have “gone Communist” does not prove that
poverty caused them to do so any more than the fact that Alfred K. and
Martha D. Stern are Communists proves that great wealth and a good
education make people go Communist. Let us remember that Communism is
a political movement, and that its weapons are primarily political.
The movement’s effectiveness depends on small cadres of political
activists, and these cadres are, typically, composed of literate
and well-fed people. We are not going to change the minds of such
political activists, or impede their agitation of the masses by a “war
on poverty,” however worthy such an effort might be on humanitarian
grounds.
It thus makes little sense to try to promote anti-Communism by giving
money to governments that are not anti-Communist, that are, indeed, far
more inclined to the Soviet-type society than to a free one. And let
us remember that the foreign policies of many of the allegedly neutral
nations that receive our aid are not “neutral” at all. Is Sukarno’s
Indonesia neutral when it encourages Red Chinese aggression? Or Nehru’s
India when it censures the Western effort to recover Suez but refuses
to censure the Soviet invasion of Hungary? Or Nasser’s United Arab
Republic which equips its armed forces with Communist weapons and
Communist personnel? Is American aid likely to make these nations less
pro-Communist? Has it?
But let us, for the moment, concede the validity of the “stomach
theory,” and ask a further question: Is our foreign aid program the
kind that will bring prosperity to underdeveloped countries? We
Americans believe--and we can cite one hundred and fifty years of
experience to support the belief--that the way to build a strong
economy is to encourage the free play of economic forces: free capital,
free labor, a free market. Yet every one of the “neutral” countries we
are aiding is committed to a system of State Socialism. Our present
policy of government-to-government aid strengthens Socialism in those
countries. We are not only perpetuating the inefficiency and waste that
always attends government-controlled economies; by strengthening the
hand of those governments, we are making it more difficult for free
enterprise to take hold. For this reason alone, we should eliminate
all government-to-government capital assistance and encourage the
substitution of American private investment.
Our present Foreign Aid program, in sum, is not only ill-administered,
but ill-conceived. It has not, in the majority of cases, made the free
world stronger; it has made America weaker; and it has created in minds
the world over an image of a nation that puts prime reliance, not on
spiritual and human values, but on the material things that are the
stock-in-trade of Communist propaganda. To this extent we have adopted
Communist doctrine.
In the future, if our methods are to be in tune with our true
objectives, we will confine foreign aid to military and technical
assistance to those nations that need it and that are committed to a
common goal of defeating world Communism.
NEGOTIATIONS
As I write, the world is waiting for another round of diplomatic
conferences between East and West. A full scale summit meeting is
scheduled for Spring; later on, President Eisenhower and Premier
Khrushchev will have further talks in the Soviet Union. And we are told
that this is only the beginning of a long-range American policy to try
to settle world problems by “negotiation.”
As the preparations for the Spring meetings go forward, I am struck by
a singular fact: no one on our side claims--let alone believes--that
the West will be stronger after these new negotiations than it is
today. The same was true last Summer. We agreed to “negotiate” about
Berlin--not because we hoped to gain anything by such talks--but
because the Communists had created a “crisis,” and we could think of
nothing better to do about it than go to the conference table. After
all, we assured ourselves, there is no harm in talking.
I maintain there _is_ harm in talking under present conditions. There
are several reasons why this is so. First of all, Communists do not
look upon negotiations, as we do, as an effort to reach an agreement.
For them, negotiations are simply an _instrument_ of political
warfare. For them, a summit meeting is another battle in the struggle
for the world. A diplomatic conference, in Communist language, is a
“propaganda forum from which to speak to the masses over the heads of
their leaders.”
Of course, if the Communists can obtain a formal agreement beneficial
to them, so much the better. But if not the negotiations themselves
will provide victory enough. For example, when the Soviets challenged
our rights in West Berlin, we handed them a victory by the mere
act of sitting down at the conference table. By agreeing to
negotiate on that subject, we agreed that our rights in Berlin were
“negotiable”--something they never were before. Thus we acknowledged,
in effect, the inadequacy of our position, and the world now expects
us to adjust it as proof of our good faith. Our answer to Khrushchev’s
ultimatum should have been that the status of West Berlin concerns only
West Berliners and the occupying powers, and is therefore not a matter
that we are prepared to discuss with the Soviet Union. That would have
been the end of the Berlin “crisis.”
The Berlin situation illustrates another reason why the West is at an
inherent disadvantage in negotiating with the Communists. The central
strategic fact of the Cold War, as it is presently fought, is that
the Communists are on the offensive and we are on the defensive. The
Soviet Union is always moving ahead, always trying to get something
from the free world; the West endeavors, at best, to hold what it has.
Therefore, the focal point of negotiations is invariably somewhere
in the non-Communist world. Every conference between East and West
deals with some territory or right belonging to the free world which
the Communists covet. Conversely, since the free world does not seek
the liberation of Communist territory, the possibility of Communist
concessions never arises. Once the West did attempt to use the
conference table for positive gain. At Geneva, in 1955, President
Eisenhower told the Soviets he wanted to discuss the status of the
satellite nations of Eastern Europe. He was promptly advised that the
Soviet Union did not consider the matter a legitimate subject for
negotiation, and that was that. Now since we are not permitted to talk
about what _we_ can get, the only interesting question at an East-West
conference is what the Communists can get. Under such conditions, we
can never win. At best we can hope for a stalemate that will place us
exactly where we started.
There is still another reason for questioning the value of
negotiations. Assume that somehow we achieve an agreement we think
advances our interests. Is there any reason for supposing the
Communists will keep it one moment longer than suits their purpose? We,
and they, are different in this respect. We keep our word. The long and
perfidious Communist record of breaking agreements and treaties proves
that the Soviet Union will not keep any agreement that is not to its
advantage to keep. It follows that the only agreement worth making with
the Soviets is one that will be self-enforceable--which means one that
is in the Kremlin’s interest to keep. But if that is the case, why
bother to “negotiate” about it? If an action is in the interest of the
Soviet Union, the Kremlin will go ahead and perform it without feeling
any need to make it the subject of a formal treaty.
The next time we are urged to rush to the conference table in order to
“relax world tensions,” let our reaction be determined by this simple
fact: the only “tensions” that exist between East and West have been
created, and deliberately so, by the Communists. They can therefore
be “relaxed” by the Kremlin’s unilateral act. The moment we decide to
relax tensions by a “negotiated compromise” we have decided to yield
something of value to the West.
THE “EXCHANGE” PROGRAM
In recent months, the so-called exchange program has become an
increasingly prominent feature of American foreign policy. The program
began modestly enough in 1955 at the Geneva Summit Meeting, when we
agreed with the Soviets to promote “cultural exchanges” between the two
countries. Since then we have exchanged everything from opera companies
and basketball teams to trade exhibitions and heads of governments. We
are told that these exchanges are our best hope of peace--that if only
the American and Russian peoples can learn to “understand” each other,
they will be able to reconcile their differences.
The claim that the conflict between the Soviets and ourselves stems
from a “lack of understanding” is one of the great political fables of
our time. _Whose_ lack of understanding?
Are the American people ill-informed as to the nature of Communism
and of the Soviet state? True, some Americans fail to grasp how evil
the Soviet system really is. But a performance by the Bolshoi Ballet,
or a tour of the United States by Nikita Khrushchev, is certainly not
calculated to correct _that_ deficiency.
What of the Soviet leaders? Are _they_ misled? All of the evidence is
that the men in the Kremlin have a greater knowledge of America than
many of our own leaders. They know about our political system, our
industrial capacity, our way of life--and would like to destroy it all.
What about the Russian people? We are repeatedly told that the Russian
man-on-the-street is woefully ignorant of the American way, and that
our trade exhibition in Moscow, for example, contributed vastly to his
knowledge and thus to his appreciation of America. Assume this is true.
Is it relevant? As long as the Russian people do not control their
government, it makes little difference whether they think well of us
or ill. It is high time that our leaders stopped treating the Russian
people and the Soviet government as one and the same thing. The Russian
people, we may safely assume, are basically on our side (whether or not
they have the opportunity to listen to American musicians); but their
sympathy will not help us win the Cold War as long as all power is
held firmly in the hands of the Communist ruling class.
The exchange program, in Soviet eyes, is simply another operation in
Communist political warfare. The people the Kremlin sends over here
are, to a man, trained agents of Soviet policy. Some of them are spies,
seeking information; all of them are trusted carriers of Communist
propaganda. Their mission is not cultural, but political. Their aim is
not to inform, but to mislead. Their assignment is not to convey a true
image of the Soviet Union, but a false image. The Kremlin’s hope is
that they will persuade the American people to forget the ugly aspects
of Soviet life, and the danger that the Soviet system poses to American
freedom.
It is a mistake to measure the success of this Communist operation
by the extent to which it converts Americans to Communism. By that
test, of course, the operation is almost a complete failure. But the
Kremlin’s aim is not to make Americans _approve_ of Communism, much as
they would like that; it is to make us _tolerant_ of Communism. The
Kremlin knows that our willingness to make sacrifices to halt Communist
expansion varies in direct ratio as we are _hostile_ to Communism.
They know that if Americans regard the Soviet Union as a dangerous,
implacable enemy, Communism will not be able to conquer the world. The
Communists’ purpose, then, is to show that Khrushchev does not have
horns,--that he is fundamentally a nice fellow; that the Soviet people
are--“ordinary people” just like ourselves; that Communism is just
another political system.
It would not have made sense, midway in the Second World War, to
promote a Nazi-American exchange program or to invite Hitler to
make a state visit to the United States. Unless we cherish victory
less today than we did then, we will be equally reluctant to treat
Communist agents as friends and welcome guests. The exchange program
is a Communist confidence game. Let us not be taken in by it. Let us
remember that American confidence in the Soviet government is the very
last thing we want.
Many people contend that a “normalization” of Soviet-American
relations, as envisaged by the exchange program, is only a logical
extension of granting diplomatic recognition to Communist governments.
I agree. Accordingly, I think it would be wise for the United
States to re-examine the question of its diplomatic relations with
Communist regimes. We often hear that recognition permits us to
gather information in Communist countries. I am unaware, however, of
any advantage that our diplomatic mission in Moscow confers along
these lines that does not doubly accrue to the Soviet Union from its
diplomatic spy corps in Washington and other American cities. Espionage
possibilities aside, I am quite certain that our entire approach to
the Cold War would change for the better the moment we announced that
the United States does not regard Mr. Khrushchev’s murderous claque
as the legitimate rulers of the Russian people or of any other people.
Not only would withdrawal of recognition stiffen the American people’s
attitude toward Communism; it would also give heart to the enslaved
peoples and help them to overthrow their captors. Our present policy
of not recognizing Red China is eminently right, and the reasons
behind that policy apply equally to the Soviet Union and its European
satellites. If our objective is to win the Cold War, we will start now
by denying our moral support to the very regimes we mean to defeat.
DISARMAMENT
For many years, our policy-makers have paid lip-service to the idea of
disarmament. This seems to be one of the ways, in modern diplomacy,
of proving your virtue. Recently, however--under strong Communist
propaganda pressure--we have acted as though we mean this talk to be
taken seriously. I cite our government’s momentous decision to suspend
nuclear tests.
Students of history have always recognized that armament races are a
symptom of international friction--not a cause of it. Peace has never
been achieved, and it will not in our time, by rival nations suddenly
deciding to turn their swords into plowshares. No nation in its right
mind will give up the means of defending itself without first making
sure that hostile powers are no longer in a position to threaten it.
The Communist leaders are, of course, in their right minds. They would
not dream of adopting a policy that would leave them, on balance,
relatively weaker than before they adopted such a policy. They might
preach general disarmament for propaganda purposes. They also might
seriously promote mutual disarmament in certain weapons in the
knowledge that their superior strength in other weapons would leave
them, on balance, decisively stronger than the West. Thus, in the light
of the West’s weakness in conventional weapons, it might make sense for
the Communists to seek disarmament in the nuclear field; if all nuclear
weapons suddenly ceased to exist, much of the world would immediately
be laid open to conquest by the masses of Russian and Chinese manpower.
American leaders have not shown a comparable solicitude for our
security needs. After the Second World War, the United States had a
conventional military establishment rivaling the Soviet Union’s, and an
absolute monopoly in nuclear power. The former weapon we hastily and
irresponsibly dismantled. The latter we failed to exploit politically,
and then we proceeded to fritter away our lead by belated entry into
the hydrogen bomb and guided missile fields. The result is that we
are out-classed in the conventional means for waging land warfare;
regarding nuclear weapons, we are approaching the point, if it has not
already been reached, where Communist power is equal to our own.
To the impending physical parity in nuclear weapons must be added a
psychological factor assiduously cultivated by Communist propaganda.
The horrors of all-out warfare are said to be so great that no nation
would consider resorting to nuclear weapons unless under direct attack
by those same weapons. Now the moment our leaders really accept this,
strategic nuclear weapons will be neutralized and Communist armies
will be able to launch limited wars without fear of retaliation by our
Strategic Air Command. I fear they are coming to accept it, and thus
that a military and psychological situation is fast developing in which
aggressive Communist forces will be free to maneuver under the umbrella
of nuclear terror.
It is in this context that we must view the Communist propaganda
drive for a permanent ban on the testing of nuclear weapons, and the
inclination of our own leaders to go along with the proposal. There are
two preliminary reasons why such proposals ought to be firmly rejected.
First, there is no reliable means of preventing the Communists from
secretly breaking such an agreement. Our most recent tests demonstrated
that underground atomic explosions can be set off without detection.
Secondly, we cannot hope to maintain even an effective _strategic_
deterrent unless we keep our present nuclear arsenal up to date; this
requires testing. But the main point I want to make is that tests
are needed to develop _tactical_ nuclear weapons for possible use
in limited wars. Our military experts have long recognized that for
limited warfare purposes we must have a weapons superiority to offset
the Communists’ manpower superiority. This means we must develop
and perfect a variety of small, clean nuclear weapons; and this in
turn means: testing. The development of such a weapons system is the
only way in which America will be able to fight itself out of the
dilemma--one horn of which is superior Communist manpower, the other,
the impending neutralization of strategic nuclear weapons.
Our government was originally pushed into suspending tests by
Communist-induced hysteria on the subject of radio-active fallout.
However one may rate that danger, it simply has no bearing on the
problem at hand. The facts are that there is practically no fallout
from tests conducted above the earth’s atmosphere, and none at all
from underground tests. Therefore, the only excuse for suspending
tests is that our forbearance somehow contributes to peace. And my
answer is that I am unable to see how peace is brought any nearer by a
policy that may reduce our relative military strength. Such a policy
makes sense only under the assumption that Communist leaders have
given up their plan for world revolution and will settle for peaceful
coexistence--an assumption we make at the risk of losing our national
life.
If our objective is victory over Communism, we must achieve
superiority in all of the weapons--military, as well as political and
economic--that may be useful in reaching that goal. Such a program
costs money, but so long as the money is spent wisely and efficiently,
I would spend it. I am not in favor of “economizing” on the nation’s
safety. As a Conservative, I deplore the huge tax levy that is needed
to finance the world’s number-one military establishment. But even more
do I deplore the prospect of a foreign conquest, which the absence of
that establishment would quickly accomplish.
UNITED NATIONS
Support of the United Nations, our leaders earnestly proclaim, is one
of the cornerstones of American foreign policy. I confess to being more
interested in whether American foreign policy has the support of the
United Nations.
Here, again, it seems to me that our approach to foreign affairs
suffers from a confusion in objectives. Is the perpetuation of an
international debating forum, for its own sake, the primary objective
of American policy? If so, there is much to be said for our past record
of subordinating our national interest to that of the United Nations.
If, on the other hand, our primary objective is victory over Communism,
we will, as a matter of course, view such organizations as the UN
as a possible _means_ to that end. Once the question is asked--Does
America’s participation in the United Nations help or hinder her
struggle against world Communism?--it becomes clear that our present
commitment to the UN deserves re-examination.
The United Nations, we must remember, is in part a Communist
organization. The Communists always have at least one seat in its
major policy-making body, the Security Council; and the Soviet Union’s
permanent veto power in that body allows the Kremlin to block any
action, on a substantial issue, that is contrary to its interests.
The Communists also have a sizeable membership in the UN’s other
policy-making body, the General Assembly. Moreover, the UN’s working
staff, the Secretariat, is manned by hundreds of Communist agents
who are frequently in a position to sabotage those few UN policies
that _are_ contrary to Communist interests. Finally, a great number of
non-Communist United Nations are sympathetic to Soviet aims--or, at
best, are unsympathetic to ours.
We therefore should not be surprised that many of the policies that
emerge from the deliberations of the United Nations are not policies
that are in the best interest of the United States. United Nations
policy is, necessarily, the product of many different views--some of
them friendly, some of them indifferent to our interests, some of them
mortally hostile. And the result is that our national interests usually
suffer when we subordinate our own policy to the UN’s. In nearly every
case in which we have called upon the United Nations to do our thinking
for us, and to make our policy for us--whether during the Korean War,
or in the Suez crisis, or following the revolution in Iraq--we have
been a less effective foe of Communism than we otherwise might have
been.
Unlike America, the Communists do not respect the UN and do not permit
their policies to be affected by it. If the “opinion of mankind,” as
reflected by a UN resolution, goes against them, they--in effect--tell
mankind to go fly a kite. Not so with us; we would rather be approved
than succeed, and so are likely to adjust our own views to conform with
a United Nations majority. This is not the way to win the Cold War. I
repeat: Communism will not be beaten by a policy that is the common
denominator of the foreign policies of 80-odd nations, some of which
are our enemies, nearly all of which are less determined than we to
save the world from Communist domination. Let us, then, have done with
submitting major policy decisions to a forum where the opinions of the
Sultan of Yeman count equally with ours; where the vote of the United
States can be cancelled out by the likes of “Byelorussia.”
I am troubled by several other aspects of our UN commitment. First--and
here again our Cold War interests are damaged--the United Nations
provides a unique forum for Communist propaganda. We too, of course,
can voice our views at the UN; but the Communists’ special advantage
is that their lies and misrepresentations are elevated to the level of
serious international debate. By recognizing the right of Communist
regimes to participate in the UN as equals, and by officially
acknowledging them as “peace-loving,” we grant Communist propaganda a
presumption of reasonableness and plausibility it otherwise would not
have.
Second, the UN places an unwarranted financial burden on the American
taxpayer. The Marxist formula, “from each according to his ability
...”--under which contributions to the UN and its specialized agencies
are determined--does not tally with the American concept of justice.
The United States is currently defraying roughly a third of all United
Nations expenses. That assessment should be drastically reduced. The UN
should not operate as a charity. Assessments should take into account
the benefits received by the contributor-nation.
Finally, I fear that our involvement in the United Nations may be
leading to an unconstitutional surrender of American sovereignty. Many
UN activities have already made strong inroads against the sovereign
powers of Member Nations. This is neither the time nor place to
discuss the merits of yielding sovereign American rights--other than
to record my unequivocal opposition to the idea. It is both the time
and place, however, to insist that any such discussion take place
within the framework of a proposed constitutional amendment--and not,
clandestinely, in the headquarters of some UN agency.
Withdrawal from the United Nations is probably not the answer to
these problems. For a number of reasons that course is unfeasible.
We should make sure, however, that the nature of our commitment is
such as to advance American interests; and that will involve changes
in some of our present attitudes and policies toward the UN. Let
the UN firsters--of whom there are many in this country--put their
enthusiasm for “international cooperation” in proper perspective. Let
them understand that victory over Communism must come _before_ the
achievement of lasting peace. Let them, in a word, keep their eyes on
the target.
AID TO COMMUNIST GOVERNMENTS
There is one aspect of our policy that _is_ offensive-minded--in the
minds of its authors, anyway. Its effect, unfortunately, is exactly
opposite to the one intended.
Some time ago our leaders advanced the theory that Communist satellite
regimes would, with our help, gradually break their ties with the
Soviet Union and “evolve” political systems more in keeping with our
notions of freedom and justice. Accordingly, America adopted the policy
of giving aid to Communist governments whose relations with Moscow
seemed to be strained. And that policy gave birth to a slogan: “America
seeks the liberation of enslaved peoples--not by revolution--but
through evolution.” Under the aegis of this slogan, we are sending
hundreds of millions of dollars to the Communist government of Poland,
having already given more than a billion dollars to the Communist
government of Yugoslavia.
In my view, this money has not only been wasted; it has positively
promoted the Communist cause. It has _not_ made Communist governments
less Communist. It has _not_ caused Communist governments to
change sides in the Cold War. It _has_ made it easier for Communist
governments to keep their subjects enslaved. And none of these results
should have come as a surprise.
One does not have to take the view that a Communist regime will never
“evolve” into a non-Communist one (though I tend to it) in order to
see that this is practically impossible as long as the Soviet Union
possesses the military and political power to prevent it. The Kremlin
may, for its own purposes, permit certain “liberalization” tendencies
in satellite countries; it may even permit small deviations from the
approved Soviet foreign policy line. It will do so sometimes to confuse
the West, sometimes as a prudent means of relieving internal pressures.
But it will never let things go too far. Hungary proved that. The
moment a Communist government threatens to become a non-Communist one,
or threatens to align itself with the West against the Soviet Union,
the Kremlin will take steps to bring the defecting government into line.
Hungary proved this truth, and Poland has proved that dissident
Communists learned it. Western leaders, unfortunately, were much
less perceptive. In the Fall of 1956, there appeared to be a breach
between Gomulka’s government and the Kremlin. Many Westerners joyfully
proclaimed that Poland was pulling away from Communism, and hoping
to hasten this movement, our government began to send the Gomulka
regime American aid. The succeeding years witnessed two facts: 1. Our
money made it easier for Gomulka’s regime to deal with its economic
problems; 2. Gomulka moved into an even closer relationship with the
Soviet government. Gomulka knew, as American policy-makers ought to
have known, that the price of abandoning Communism is a Budapest-type
blood bath. This, of course, need not be the case were America prepared
to come to the aid of people who want to strike out for freedom. But as
long as we give Soviet military forces a free hand in Eastern Europe,
it is the height of folly to try to bribe Communist governments into
becoming our friends.
We must realize that the captive _peoples_ are our friends and
potential allies--not their rulers. A truly offensive-minded strategy
would recognize that the captive peoples are our strongest weapon in
the war against Communism, and would encourage them to overthrow their
captors. A policy of strengthening their captors can only postpone that
upheaval within the Communist Empire that is our best hope of defeating
Communism without resorting to nuclear war.
TOWARD VICTORY
By measuring each aspect of our foreign policy against the standard--Is
it helpful in defeating the enemy?--we can understand why the past
fourteen years have been marked by frustration and failure. We have not
gotten ahead because we have been travelling the wrong road.
It is less easy to stake out the right road. For in terms of our own
experience it is a new road we seek, and one therefore that will hold
challenges and perils that are different (though hardly graver) from
those with which we are now familiar. Actually, the “new” road is as
old as human history: it is the one that successful political and
military leaders, having arrived at a dispassionate “estimate of the
situation,” always follow when they are in a war they mean to win. From
our own estimate of the situation, we know the _direction_ we must
take; and our standard--Is it helpful in defeating Communism?--will
provide guideposts all along the way. There are some that can be
observed even now:
1. The key guidepost is the Objective, and we must never lose sight of
it. It is not to wage a struggle against Communism, but to win it.
OUR GOAL MUST BE VICTORY
2. Our strategy must be primarily offensive in nature. Given the
dynamic, revolutionary character of the enemy’s challenge, we cannot
win merely by trying to hold our own. In addition to parrying his
blows, we must strike our own. In addition to guarding our frontiers,
we must try to puncture his. In addition to keeping the free world
free, we must try to make the Communist world free. To these ends,
we must always try to engage the enemy at times and places, and with
weapons, of our own choosing.
3. We must strive to achieve and maintain military superiority.
Mere parity will not do. Since we can never match the Communists
in manpower, our equipment and weapons must more than offset his
advantage in numbers. We must also develop a limited war capacity. For
this latter purpose, we should make every effort to achieve decisive
superiority in small, clean nuclear weapons.
4. We must make America economically strong. We have already seen why
economic energy must be released from government strangulation if
individual freedom is to survive. Economic emancipation is equally
imperative if the nation is to survive. America’s maximum economic
power will be forged, not under bureaucratic direction, but in freedom.
5. In all of our dealings with foreign nations, we must behave like a
great power. Our national posture must reflect strength and confidence
and purpose, as well as good will. We need not be bellicose, but
neither should we encourage others to believe that American rights
can be violated with impunity. We must protect American nationals and
American property and American honor--everywhere. We may not make
foreign peoples love us--no nation has ever succeeded in that--but
we can make _them respect us_. And _respect_ is the stuff of which
enduring friendships and firm alliances are made.
6. We should adopt a discriminating foreign aid policy. American aid
should be furnished only to friendly, anti-Communist nations that are
willing to join with us in the struggle for freedom. Moreover, our aid
should take the form of loans or technical assistance, not gifts. And
we should insist, moreover, that such nations contribute their fair
share to the common cause.
7. We should declare the world Communist movement an outlaw in the
community of civilized nations. Accordingly, we should withdraw
diplomatic recognition from all Communist governments including that of
the Soviet Union, thereby serving notice on the world that we regard
such governments as neither legitimate nor permanent.
8. We should encourage the captive peoples to revolt against their
Communist rulers. This policy must be pursued with caution and
prudence, as well as courage. For while our enslaved friends must
be told we are anxious to help them, we should discourage premature
uprisings that have no chance of success. The freedom fighters must
understand that the time and place and method of such uprisings will
be dictated by the needs of an overall world strategy. To this end we
should establish close liaison with underground leaders behind the
Iron Curtain, furnishing them with printing presses, radios, weapons,
instructors: the paraphernalia of a full-fledged Resistance.
9. We should encourage friendly peoples that have the means and desire
to do so to undertake offensive operations for the recovery of their
homelands. For example, should a revolt occur inside Red China, we
should encourage and support guerrilla operations on the mainland by
the Free Chinese. Should the situation develop favorably, we should
encourage the South Koreans and the South Vietnamese to join Free
Chinese forces in a combined effort to liberate the enslaved peoples of
Asia.
10. We must--ourselves--be prepared to undertake military operations
against vulnerable Communist regimes. Assume we have developed nuclear
weapons that can be used in land warfare, and that we have equipped our
European divisions accordingly. Assume also a major uprising in Eastern
Europe, such as occurred in Budapest in 1956. In such a situation,
we ought to present the Kremlin with an ultimatum forbidding Soviet
intervention, and be prepared, if the ultimatum is rejected, to move a
highly mobile task force equipped with appropriate nuclear weapons to
the scene of the revolt. Our objective would be to confront the Soviet
Union with superior force in the immediate vicinity of the uprising and
to compel a Soviet withdrawal. An actual clash between American and
Soviet armies would be unlikely; the mere threat of American action,
coupled with the Kremlin’s knowledge that the fighting would occur amid
a hostile population and could easily spread to other areas, would
probably result in Soviet acceptance of the ultimatum. The Kremlin
would also be put on notice, of course, that resort to long-range
bombers and missiles would prompt automatic retaliation in kind. On
this level, we would invite the Communist leaders to choose between
total destruction of the Soviet Union, and accepting a local defeat....
Had we the will and the means for it in 1956, such a policy would have
saved the Hungarian Revolution.
This is hard counsel. But it is hard, I think, not for what it says,
but for saying it openly. Such a policy involves the risk of war? Of
course; but any policy, short of surrender, does that. Any policy that
successfully frustrates the Communists’ aim of world domination runs
the risk that the Kremlin will choose to lose in a kamikaze-finish. It
is hard counsel because it frankly acknowledges that war may be the
price of freedom, and thus intrudes on our national complacency. But is
it really so hard when it goes on to search for the most likely means
of safeguarding both our lives _and_ our freedom? Is it so hard when
we think of the risks that were taken to create our country?--risks on
which our ancestors openly and proudly staked their “lives, fortunes,
and sacred honor.” Will we do less to _save_ our country?
The risks I speak of are risks on our terms, instead of on Communist
terms. _We_, not they, would select the time and place for a test
of wills. _We_, not they, would have the opportunity to bring
maximum strength to bear on that test. _They_, not we, would have to
decide between fighting for limited objectives under unfavorable
circumstances, or backing down. And these are immense advantages.
The future, as I see it, will unfold along one of two paths. Either
the Communists will retain the offensive; will lay down one challenge
after another; will invite us in local crisis after local crisis to
choose between all-out war and limited retreat; and will force us,
ultimately, to surrender or accept war under the most disadvantageous
circumstances. Or _we_ will summon the will and the means for taking
the initiative, and wage a war of attrition against them--and hope,
thereby, to bring about the internal disintegration of the Communist
empire. One course runs the risk of war, and leads, in any case, to
probable defeat. The other runs the risk of war, and holds forth the
promise of victory. For Americans who cherish their lives, but their
freedom more, the choice cannot be difficult.
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Transcriber’s Notes:
Footnotes have been moved to the end of each chapter and relabeled
consecutively through the document.
Punctuation has been made consistent.
Variations in spelling and hyphenation were retained as they appear in
the original publication, except that obvious typographical errors have
been corrected.
The following changes were made:
p. 46: is changed to are (conceived, are an)
p. 118: paring changed to parrying (to parrying his)
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