Myths and Demands of Liberal Politics

(Following are excerpts from a speech given last Saturday by Daniel P. Moynihan, professor of Education and Urban Politics, at the Americans for Democratic Action national board meeting in Washington, D.C.)

President Johnson is said to be fond of relating the experience of an out-of-work school teacher who applied for a position in a small town on the Texas plains at the very depths of the depression. After a series of questions one puckered rancher on the school board looked at him and asked, did he teach that the world was round or that the world was flat. Finding no clues in the faces of the other members of the board, the teacher swallowed hard and allowed he could teach it either way.

That is the position of just about anyone who would assay the state of the American republic at this moment from that middling vantage point known generally as liberalism. Two views are possible. On the one hand it may be argued that the nation is entering a period of political instability from which it will not emerge intact. The opposite view is that we are entering--have entered--a time of troubles which, however, we will not only survive, but from which we will emerge having learned something from it all, and having demonstrated anew the deep sources of stability in American life.

I cannot imagine what would constitute evidence as to the correctness of either view, and assume that persons will adopt one or the other (assuming that the subject even interests them) according to matters of personal taste and condition. The apocalyptic view has, of course, many supporters, most notably those of the newly emergent left who foresee a period of right wing oppression and excess, followed by the triumph of a new ideology. This will seem absurd to anyone who has never visited East Berlin. The more sanguine view will commend itself to those who would like to think it so, and this, as I say, is largely a matter of taste and condition. Such would include, almost without exception, the condition of anyone who in this day is a member of Americans for Democratic Action. If there are exceptions, I do not know of them: to be a member of ADA is to be a person who has shared considerably in the "rewards" of American life, and who can look forward to continued sharing and, if anything, on more favorable terms. There are doubtless those among us so ungrateful, or so idealistic, as to wish or to be willing to give it all up in favor of a regime yet more generous in its distribution of worldly and psychic goods, but there is none of us, I repeat, who would not in fact have something considerable of both to lose in the exchange...

...The violence abroad and the violence at home: all agree that these are the problems, that they are somehow interconnected, and that in combination they have the potential for polarizing then fracturing American society. These would be acknowledged as problems by any group, regardless of its political views or its power to further them. But is is an essential problem of American liberals because more than anyone else it is they who have been in office, in power at the time of, and in large measure presided over the onset both of the war in Vietnam and the violence in American cities. These things may not be our fault, but in a world not overmuch given to nice distinctions in such matters, they most surely must be judged our doing.

The war in Vietnam was thought up and is being managed by the men John F. Kennedy brought to Washington to conduct American foreign and defense policy. Most of us in this room know some at least of these men. Many here know them all. And we know them to be persons of immutable conviction on almost all matters we would regard as central to liberal belief, and further to be men of personal honor and the highest intellectual attainment. There are, further, not a few of us present who contributed something considerable to persuade the American public that we were entirely right to be setting out on that course that has brought us waist deep in the big muddy. It is this knowledge, this complicity if you will, that requires of many of us restraint in a situation that gives to others the utmost play to the powers of invective and contempt, the plain fact being that if these men got us into the present situation, who are we to say we would have done better?

This is even more the case with respect to the violence at home. The summer of 1967 came in the aftermath of one of the most extraordinary periods of liberal legislation, liberal electoral victories, and the liberal dominance of the media of public opinion that we have ever experienced. This was moreover accompanied by the greatest economic expansion in human history. And to top it all, some of the worst violence of all occurred in Detroit, a city with one of the most liberal and successful administrations in the nation; a city further, in which it might generally be agreed that the social and economic position of the Negro was far and away the best in the nation. Who are we, then, to be pointing fingers.

This is a question addressed as much to the future as to the past, inasmuch as all the probabilities are that the present situation will persist for some time, and will continue to demand of us responses which obviously, however, must be somewhat different from those of the immediate past. By this I mean that President Johnson will almost certainly be re-elected in 1968 and that with some modifications, the national government will remain in the hands of persons we would readily identify as the same kind of liberal who has been much in evidence for the past seven years. Moreover the war in Asia is likely to go on many more years, although possibly in different forms. And most importantly, the violence in our cities, tensions between racial and ethnic groups, is just as likely to go on, and if anything get worse. (As indeed the war could get worse.) What, as someone once said, is to be done?

I repeat, it must be something sufficiently different to suggest that we are aware of some of our apparent shortcomings, and that the conditions in which these shortcomings first became painfully evident will persist, despite the fact that they are an embarrassment to us. I offer then, three propositions.

First, that liberals see more clearly that their essential interest is in the stability of the social order, and that given the present threats to that stability, it is necessary to seek out and make much more effective alliances with political conservatives who share that concern, and who recognize that unyielding rigidity is just as much a threat to the continuity of things as is an anarchic desire for change.

Second, liberals must divest themselves of the notion that the nation, especially in the cities of the nation, can be run from agencies in Washington.

Third, liberals must somehow overcome the curious condescension which takes the form of sticking up for and explaining away anything, howsoever outrageous, which Negroes, individually or collectively might do.

With respect to the first point, we have been too long prisoners of the rhetoric that Republicans don't know anything about the social problems of the nation, or in any event don't really care...

It is interesting that in the area of foreign affairs, the idea that Republican congressmen and senators are sources of essentially support for moderate courses is much more read-

"American liberals... presided over the onset both of the war in Vietnam and the violence in American cities. These things may not be our fault, but... they most surely must be judged our doing." ily accepted. It is time the idea became more familiar in domestic matters. It is pleasant to hear the New Left declare that the white liberal is the true enemy because it is he who keeps the present system going by limiting its excesses, but it is more the informed conservatives who perform that function--the Robert Tafts of the nation--and at the present juncture they are needed.

With respect to proposition two, Potomac fever became a liberal disease under the New Deal, of course, and it has turned out not only to be catching, but to be congenital, having somehow worked into the gene structure itself. The syndrome derives from one fact and two theories. I shall argue that the fact is correct but irrelevant, and that the theories are wrong.

It is indeed a fact that it is so much more pleasant to be able to stroll across Lafayette Park to endorse or to veto a public works program than it is to have to go through the misery of persuading fifty state legislatures. But that has to do with the personal comfort of middle-aged liberals, not with the quality of the government action that results, and in a time of some trouble, comfort cannot be the sole consideration.

The first theory involved is that the national government and national politics is the primary source of liberal social innovation, especially with respect to problems of urbanization and industrialization. I do not believe history will support this notion. The fact of the matter is that it has been from the cities and to a lesser extent the State governments that something like a preponderance of social programs have come in the twentieth century, for the most part, of course, cities and states of the North. There are many reasons for this, of which probably the most important is that until recently these have been the areas where such problems first appeared, and where the wealth and intellect--and political will--existed to experiment with solutions. There is another reason which we tend to be reluctant to talk about, but whose discussion is perhaps admissible in a time of trouble. In the spectrum of regional politics, the South has for a century been far the most socially and politically conservative part of the nation. In the spectrum of American religious groups, American Protestants have more or less consistently been more conservative than American Catholics, and Catholics in turn more so than American Jews. It happens that Washington is, for practical purposes, a Southern protestant city, and in that respect combines conservative tendencies of a pervasive nature, or at least has done so. Vide Congressman Broyhill, the Federal civil servant's concept of a forward looking legislator...

The second theory that I have labelled false is that you can run the nation from Washington. I believe that you cannot, at least with respect to the kind of social change liberals would generally seek to bring about. In the field of legislating social attitudes and practices, it is pretty clear that the old time Tories had something when they said, you can't change human nature, at least not with a bill signing ceremony in the Rose Garden....

....But the biggest problem of running the nation from Washington is that the real business of Washington in our age is pretty much to run the world. That is a thought that may give none of us any great pleasure, but my impression is that it is a fact and we had as well learn to live with it. Martin Luther King, Jr., and many other liberals, are no doubt correct in holding that the war in