It is also clear what sort of unity (of consensus) that game requires: the unity of a tacit agreement that anything goes, anything is for sale (or for “negotiation”), and the rest is up to the free-for-all of pressuring, lobbying, manipulating, favor-swapping, public-relation’ing, give-and-taking, double-crossing, begging, bribing, betraying—and chance, the blind chance of a war in which the prize is the privilege of using legal armed force against legally disarmed victims.
Observe that this type of prize establishes one basic interest held in common by all the players: the desire to have a strong government—a government of unlimited power, strong enough to let the winners and would-be winners get away with whatever they’re seeking; a government uncommitted to any policy, unrestrained by any ideology, a government that hoards an ever-growing power, power for power’s sake—which means: for the sake and use of any “major” gang who might seize it momentarily to ram their particular
piece of legislation down the country’s throat. Observe, therefore, that the doctrine of “compromise” and “moderation” applies to everything except one issue: any suggestion to limit the power of the government.
Observe the torrents of vilification, abuse, and hysterical hatred unleashed by the “moderates” against any advocate of freedom, i.e., of capitalism. Observe that such designations as “extreme middle” or “militant middle” are being used by people seriously and self-righteously. Observe the inordinately vicious intensity of the smear-campaign against Senator Goldwater, which had the overtones of panic: the panic of the “moderates,” the “vital-centrists,” the “middle-of-the-roaders” in the face of the possibility that a real, pro-capitalism movement might put an end to their game. A movement, incidentally, which does not exist, as yet, since Senator Goldwater was not an advocate of capitalism—and since his meaningless, unphilosophical, unintellectual campaign has contributed to the entrenchment of the consensus-advocates. But what is significant here is the nature of their panic: it gave us a glimpse of their vaunted “moderation,” their “democratic” respect for the people’s choices and their tolerance of disagreements or opposition.
In a letter to The New York Times (June 23, 1964), an assistant professor of political science, fearing Goldwater’s nomination, wrote as follows:
The real danger lies in the divisive campaign which his nomination would provoke…. The result of a Goldwater candidacy would be a divided and embittered electorate. … To be effective, American government requires a high degree of consensus and bipartisanship on basic issues. …
When and by whom has statism been accepted as the basic principle of America—and as a principle which should now be placed beyond debate or dissension, so that no basic issues are to be raised any longer? Isn’t that the formula of a one-party government? The professor did not specify.
Another letter-writer in The New York Times (June 24, 1964), identified in print as a “Liberal Democrat,” went a little farther.
Let the American people choose in November. If they choose overwhelmingly for Lyndon Johnson and the Democrats, then once and for all the Federal Government can get on, with no excuses, with the job millions of Negroes, unemployed, aged, sick and otherwise hand-
icapped persons expect it to do—to say nothing of our overseas commitments.
If the people choose Goldwater, then it would seem the nation was hardly worth saving after all.
Woodrow Wilson once said that there is such a thing as being too proud to fight; then he had to go to war. Once and for all let us have it out, while the battle yet can be fought with ballots instead of bullets.
Does this gentleman mean that if we don’t vote his way, he will resort to bullets? Your guess is as good as mine.
The New York Times, which had been a conspicuous advocate of “Government by Consensus,” said some curious things in its comment on President Johnson’s victory. Its editorial of November 8, 1964, stated:
No matter how massive the electoral victory—and it was massive—the Administration cannot merely ride the crest of the popular wave rolling along on a sea of platitudinous generalizations and euphoric promises . . . now that it has a broad popular mandate, it has the moral as well as the political obligation not to try to be all things to all men but to settle down to a hard, concrete, purposeful course of action.
What kind of purposeful action? If the voters were offered nothing but “platitudinous generalizations and euphoric promises,” how can their vote be taken as a “broad popular mandate”? A mandate for an unnamed purpose? A political blank check? And if Mr. Johnson did win a massive victory by trying “to be all things to all men,” then which things is he now expected to be, which voters is he to disappoint or betray—and what becomes of the broad popular consensus?
Morally and philosophically, that editorial is highly dubious and contradictory. But it becomes clear and consistent in the context of a mixed economy’s anti-ideology. The president of a mixed economy is not expected to have a specific program or policy. A blank check on power is all that he asks the voters to give him. Thereafter, it’s up to the pressure-group game, which everybody is supposed to understand and endorse, but never mention. Which things he will be to which men depends on the chances of the game—and on the “major segments of the population.” His job is only to hold the power—and to dispense the favors.
In the 1930’s, the “liberals” had a program of broad social reforms and a crusading spirit, they advocated a planned society, they talked in terms of abstract principles, they
propounded theories of a predominantly socialistic nature— and most of them were touchy about the accusation that they were enlarging the government’s power; most of them were assuring their opponents that government power was only a temporary means to an end—a “noble end,” the liberation of the individual from his bondage to material needs.
Today, nobody talks of a planned society in the “liberal” camp; long-range programs, theories, principles, abstractions, and “noble ends” are not fashionable any longer. Modern “liberals” deride any political concern with such large-scale matters as an entire society or an economy as a whole; they concern themselves with single, concrete-bound, range-of-the-moment projects and demands, without regard to cost, context, or consequences. “Pragmatic”—not “idealistic*’—is their favorite adjective when they are called upon to justify their “stance,” as they call it, not “stand.” They are militantly opposed to political philosophy; they denounce political concepts as “tags,” “labels,” “myths,” “illusions”—and resist any attempt to “label”—i.e., to identify—their own views. They are belligerently anti-theoretical and—with a faded mantle of intellectuality still clinging to their shoulders—they are anti-intellectual. The only remnant of their former “idealism” is a tired, cynical, ritualistic quoting of shopworn “humanitarian” slogans, when the occasion demands it.
Cynicism, uncertainty, and fear are the insignia of the culture which they are still dominating by default. And the only thing that has not rusted in their ideological equipment, but has grown savagely brighter and clearer through the years, is their lust for power—for an autocratic, statist, totalitarian government power. It is not a crusading brightness, it is not the lust of a fanatic with a mission—it is more like the glassy-eyed brightness of a somnambulist whose stu-porous despair has long since swallowed the memory of his purpose, but who still clings to his mystic weapon in the stubborn belief that “there ought to be a law,” that everything will be all right if only somebody will pass a law, that every problem can be solved by the magic power of brute force….
Such is the present intellectual state and ideological trend of our culture.
Now I shall ask you to consider the question I raised at (he beginning of this discussion: Which of these two variants of statism are we moving toward: socialism or fascism?
Let me submit in evidence, as part of the answer, a quotation from an editorial that appeared in the Washington Star (October 1964). It is an eloquent mixture of truth and
misinformation, and a typical example of the state of today’s political knowledge:
Socialism is quite simply the state ownership of the means of production. This has never been proposed by a major party candidate for the Presidency and is not now proposed by Lyndon Johnson. [True.]
There is, however, a whole series of American legislative acts that increase either government regulation of private business or government responsibility for individual welfare. [True.] It is to such legislation that warning cries of “socialism!” refer.
Besides the Constitutional provision for Federal regulation of interstate commerce, such “intrusion” of government into the market-place begins with the antitrust laws. [Very true.] To them we owe the continued existence of competitive capitalism and the non-arrival of cartel capitalism. [Untrue.] Inasmuch as socialism is the product, one way or another, of cartel capitalism [untrue], it may reasonably be said that such government interference with business has in fact prevented socialism. [Worse than untrue.]
As to welfare legislation, it is still light years away from the “cradle to grave” security sponsored by contemporary socialism. [Not quite true.] It seems much more like ordinary human concern for human distress than like an ideological program of any kind. [The last part of this sentence is true: it is not an ideological program. As to the first part, ordinary human concern for human distress does not manifest itself ordinarily in the form of a gun aimed at the wallets and earnings of one’s neighbors.]