The Liberal Mind in a Conservative Age
Pells, Richard H.
Ambrose records Eisenhower's "own judgment, which he expressed on innumerable occasions," that his greatest failure as President "was the failure to achieve peace. When he left office,...
...Riding: "The government |has] become a prisoner of the agrarian myth that it invented" land handouts [are] not the answer, they are enormously creative and imaginative yet impossible to organize, they are internally set in their ways and externally anarchic," thoughu significantly, fatefully---the Mexican "also accepts the dictates imposed by an authoritarian ethos...
...The sin that they commit in their souls is that they lie to themselves, until the intellectual dishonesty of the ethos they breathe is no longer discernible by them...
...I did not conceal that the subject of her research was my father, nor that my father had no use for Madero and Carranza and the other revolutionary principals of the time...
...To what extent was this Ike's fault...
...This country of tragic contradictions is comprehensively examined by Alan Riding in his book, Distant Neighbors, for which Mr...
...Ministers of Agriculture come and, when they go, go generally to accusations of graft and peculation...
...An important publication...
...All this coincided with a population explosion among the peasants, further impoverishing them...
...The cacique was the Indian's tribal leader...
...We would do better, instead, to settle for what we now know about him--thanks to the work of Stephen Ambrose, above all, but also William Bragg Ewald, Fred Greenstein, and a few others--that is so strikingly different from what we thought we knew during his presidency: in Murray Kempton's words, written in 1967 in an article entitled "The Underestimation of Dwight D. Eisenhower," that he was "the great tortoise upon whose back the world sat for eight years," never recognizing "the cunning beneath the shell...
...Labor union leaders, or business cartel chiefs, or patriarchs of important clans are every bit as much caciques as the warlords of yore, and filial respect is accorded them...
...In fact, Ambrose's own account of Khrushchev's destruction of the May 1960 Paris summit conference (using the U-2 flights as a trumpery excuse) is the best possible evidence of the Kremlin's intransigence...
...I took sharp exception to some of the evidence and many of the findings in Thomas's The Spanish Civil War...
...After a pleasant chat and an indifferent meal, she left...
...But serious people on both the left and the right continue to raise questions about the long-term consequences of Eisenhower's national security policies...
...t x,.,11, THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR AUGUST 1985 35...
...Not only was the land parceled out in plots so tiny that wretched subsistence was the best that could be squeezed from them, the mammoth total of the expropriations stirred opposition so fierce that by 1947 President Alem~.n amended the Constitution of 1917 in such fashion as virtually to freeze agrarian reform...
...But the book remains open on almost every other major decision of his presidency...
...TAS4 ~ I i i ~ I i I i i ~ I I I i I iim I I i I I I I ~alifornia l-X t'Ui t'~u ..,h,, I , . : k c ' . % d~'~ .i ,( , , r v l n u . a l . , - ~l.,, i, I.,.w~ .L...
...Had Eisenhower been more willing to trust the Russians, it would only have accelerated their overtaking of the U.S in strategic nuclear arms...
...He led his peasant army into Mexico City demanding a return of the land to the poor (mainly Indian) from whom it had been wrested...
...Production has plummeted so desperately over the past half century that the government must import billions of dollars worth of grains and other foodstuffs annually, including sugar, of which Mexico used to be an exporter, which it sells to the public at unrealistically low prices, further weakening the domestic agricultural market...
...Then as now, power, not trust, was the central issue...
...It is broke, internationally a laughingstock, and torn with self-doubt...
...This is the inheritance of the absolutist political authority imposed for centuries by Spain and the Church...
...Eisenhower refused to trust the Russians to even the slightest degree . . . . This was good policy for winning votes, and may even have been good for achieving limited victories in the Cold War, but it was damaging to the cause of world peace...
...Two decades later all of Vietnam fell under Communist rule--and 50,000 Americans and millions of Indochinese were dead and incalculable damage was done to our political and social fabric...
...i- oaTs sT . . . . . . . . . . . . . i I I want to help save the American Republic...
...Riding has been writing since 1971 about Mexico for the Financial Times and the Economist, which he followed as Mexico bureau chief for the New York Times...
...Oh, yes: Colonial Mexico was exploited by Spain, and for generations after pillaged by the ruling white aristocracy, which ineluded such fascinating patriots as the villainous Santa Anna, who lost the north to the United States yet had an equestrian statue of himself erected in the central plaza of Mexico City, with one hand pointing (as he said) toward Texas, symbolic of his determination to regain the territory, though wags at once noticed that the hand also seemed to be pointing to the national mint...
...She was described to me as very bright, of good family, honest as the day, a hard worker, and a thoroughly professional historian...
...In addition to these manifold attributes, I discovered that she was a knock-out, a brunette with the most delicate of fair complexions and engulfing dark eyes, and I surmised that she was, besides, an emancipated Mexican female, because there had been no difficulty in arranging to meet ~ deux for an introductory supper at the old Ritz Hotel...
...The national shame-the vergiienza---is that the intelligentsia of Mexico have prostituted themselves to the PRI, with only latterly a Carlos Fuentes or an Octavio Paz spouting a few hard realities...
...The problem with such questions is that there is no way of knowing what the consequences of different policies would have been...
...Riding should write, "No amount of tough questioning will elicit admissions of failures of the system...
...Oh, the 34 THE AMERICAN SPEcTATOR AUGUST 1985 rhetoric remained radical and proletarian, but generals like Carranza and ObregtSn were themselves iatifundistas (vast landholders...
...Probably only a John Kenneth Galbraith would still try to make the case--altogether discredited by a quarter-century's further experience with socialism--that the economic good times exacted too high a price from later generations...
...Mexico is a country that should be powerful and prosperous...
...Government purchasing agents demanded bribes, underweighing the crops: the Rural Credit Bank, with its 38,000 employees, "is a bloated and inefficient bureaucracy but officials [dare] not say so . . . . " Whether it is the myth of the existence of democracy in Mexico (it is an authoritarian state), or the myth that it is truly socialist (it is by fits and starts a corporate state, with much capitalist backsliding), nothing is ever what it purports to be, nor, when it comes to such practical matters as running an oil industry, works...
...Ambrose thinks his reputation will continue to rise, and I am inclined to agree...
...It is the government and the people of Mexico both lying to themselvesmabout everythingmthat Reid Buckley is a novelist and has recently founded The Buckle), School of Public Speaking...
...Powerful voices within the administration urged all of those courses of action and Eisenhower said no...
...Following the signing of the lndochina peace agreement in Geneva in July 1954, Eisenhower could choose either to abide by its terms and let all Vietnam fall to the Communists in 1956 or else commit American prestige and wealth to the creation of a permanently independent Republic of South Vietnam...
...Riding notes elsewhere, "in league with local politicians took to occupying and fencing off communal lands owned by Indian communities . . . . There survived or emerged.., caciques who controlled much of production and commerce in their regions...
...How finally shall we judge Eisenhower the President...
...Meanwhile, the curse of endemic Mexican corruption was--is ever--at work, eroding gains...
...It is my impression that she agreed...
...When the demagogic Luis Echeverri'a Alvarez took over the presidency in 1970, he expropriated 11.5 million more hectares, of which he doled out 6.5 million to the peasants...
...Speculation about "the road not taken" makes more sense in connection with those few issues on which the book has, in effect, been closed--most notably, Vietnam...
...Today, "a deep sense of hopelessness runs through the countryside...
...But the major sin is selfdeception...
...Distant Neighbors, nevertheless, is an indispensable study...
...but it has ultimately been Mexico's curse, because the domain exercised by the cacique is not only economic, it is intellectual too...
...It may be natural that of Mexican officials Mr...
...His biographer notes repeated Soviet rebuffs to U.S...
...He assumes, for instance, that what is called "social justice" can only be achieved through redistributionist policies managed by the state...
...Still, there are certain hard facts that Ike partisans can point to in support of the proposition that he was an outstanding President: first, that his rigidly old-fashioned economic policies helped produce eight years of lowinflation prosperity and growth...
...Riding is perceptive about the Mexican character...
...For that reason i think it best to resist the temptation of trying to draw up a balance' sheet on our 34th President...
...I I Enclosed is my check for $15...
...Successive governments have.., used corruption, coercion and repression to prevent the emergence of any truly representative independent peasant organizations," says Mr...
...The cacique system of social organization can be a strength, a protection in a hostile environment...
...Riding...
...Describing the terms of her honorarium, I gave her a $I00 advance, which she told me was satisfactory...
...When he left office, the tensions and dangers and costs of the Cold War were higher than they had ever been...
...Leaving aside the slur about winning votes--it's hard to think of any President less likely to subordinate national security to politics-the question remains whether the Soviets in the 1950s were any more willing to sacrifice military advantage to "the cause of world peace" than they are today...
...Riding demonstrates, no sooner was Zapata murdered (at the instance of General Carranza) than the "reforms" that took place did so mostly to the enrichment of warlords...
...Piling example upon example, Mr...
...This largesse was a typical sham, satisfying socialist sentiment, but bringing to the wretched Indians bitter disillusion, because fully 85 percent of the land distributed between 1952 and 1982 was unarable...
...initiatives such as Atoms for Peace and Open Skies, but argues that the President's "own deeply rooted antiCommunism was certainly a contributing factor to the failure...
...A close friend, herself half-Spanish, half-Mexican, recommended a certain young matron to be my research assistant...
...Riding's conclusions, which are sometimes impaired by his liberal mindset...
...But even more to the point is the biographer's reminder that, as with other such exercises, "any attempt to assess Eisenhower's eight years as President inevitably reveals more about the person doing the assessing than it does about Eisenhower [and] tends to be little more than a declaration of the current politics and prejudices of the author...
...He chose to do the latter...
...If you can't imagine, then consult the nearest Mexican...
...In 1930 President Calles declared, "Agrarianism is a failure...
...He is a skilled journalist who has thoroughly absorbed the anthropology of the Mexican people and who has intelligently applied this knowledge to the anguish of the present...
...Peasant leaders who raise a cry shrill enough to pierce the hypocrisy in the capital are routinely murdered...
...and second, that despite ample opportunity to do otherwise he kept the nation out of war...
...Take the agrarian reforms that were the burning issue of Emiliano Zapata...
...How so...
...The book, as I say, is closed and Eisenhower's choice turns out to have been an appalling mistake...
...And, true: The Carranzas, Obreg6ns, Calleses, Ca"l leses, and Ca"r denases, not to mention such bandits of the more recent past as Presidents Echevern'a and l_~pez Portillo---the caciques and the politicians, along with their tens of thousands of minions in the bureaucracies--have feasted on this poor suffering country as though it were carrion...
...No understanding of the Mexican is possible without appreciating this cultural impediment...
...El California e iew "Not since Aristotle put down his pen has there been such cohsistently penetrating writing...
...Everything is run through the cacique system, including the structure of government, where favors are granted in return for loyalty...
...Concludes Mr...
...The Russians because of Hungary...
...The results were catastrophic...
...I had not asked her for a value judgment, mind: I had asked her only for the discovery of certain facts--for a historical piece of research, whatever those facts turned out to be...
...Should we have nuked the Viet Minh at Dien Bien Phu...
...In 1934, however, under C~rdenas, the restive peasants were placated with the distribution of 18 million hectares (over 46 million acres...
...The Chinese because of Quemoy and Matsu...
...We talked about the project: She was to look up certain records about an American oilman in the period 1903-1923 who had ultimately been expelled from Mexico...
...Do we know for sure how the world Would look today if he had said yes on any of them...
...George Will "Lively, literate, and fun to read...
...He became in colonial and post-colonial times the political and economic overlord...
...F. Buckley Jr...
...but it is native to Mexico as well in the Indian's subservience to the cacique...
...I take exception to several of Mr...
...Indeed, this combustible people is withal a docile people...
...But what he goes on to say is damning: "Even Mexican historians, political scientists, and sociologists are reluctant to be frank in public . . . . " In public...
...Everything is always going wrong, though this is never, ever admitted, the omniscience of Mexico's leaders being one other sacred, though patently, absurdly false, tenet...
...Powerful lati-occasionally also violent and cruel, fundistas," Mr...
...in which political assassinations are the order of the day...
...I let slip also my amazement that Pancho Villakquite simply a monster by any civilized reckoning--should have been recently elevated to the Pantheon of Heroes, his name writ in gold on the rotunda...
...Ambrose notes that shortly after Ike left the White House "a poll of American historians placed him nearly at the bottom of the list of Presidents...
...Charlton Heston If you'd like to read an outrageous journal that features interviews with the likes of Milton Friedman, Thomas Sowell, Marva Collins, and Arthur Laffer, that showcases the best in iconoclastic conservative collegiate journalism, and which elicits enthusiastic huzzahs from Alexander Haig, Midge Decter, and Milton Friedman, then you should subscribe to California Review...
...Well, as Mr...
...Brazilian-born, Mr...
...in which the ruling myth is historically a tissue of lies...
...Sure, Porfirio Diaz's long dictatorship fermented the sanguinary decade of revolution that began in 1910, and which implanted the neo-Marxist dogmas that have done so much to distort history and mortgage the future...
...That fabulous country has been ruined by its intellectual dishonesty...
...Whew...
...He was similar to the ephori of ancient SlSarta, to the decurion of the Incas...
...It is beyond the comprehension of Mexicans that it is here where corruption begins, because to them it is in the natural order of things that a father should look after his children...
...Most . . . are meditative and philosophical, they are discreet, evasive and distrustful, they are proud and consumed by questions of honor, they are forced to work hard but dream of a life of leisure, they are warm, humorous and sentimental and racked by corruption...
...What is the matter with these people...
...he evidences little comprehension of, or sympathy for, the Cristeros, who were pitted against the Jacobin fanaticism of a revolution that burned churches, raped nuns, and tortured and killed humble priests...
...Do these apparent triumphs mask deeper failures sub specie aeternitatis...
...This political extension of the family applies throughout Mexican society...
...Box 12286 | I La Jolla, CA 92037 I i All contributions are tax-deductible...
...Riding may likely be called the Hugh Thomas of Mexico...
...A generation earlier no young married woman of good repute would have accededto the most innocent appointment with a strange male, not to mention a foreigner, without bringing along a due~a packing all the charm in her mustachioed countenance of Two Ton Tony Galento...
...Please send 1 I me six issues of California Review so I may have the |l I necessary ammunition to defend my spouse, family, and I country from the barbarians (liberals) who surround us...
...One month later, in Madrid, i received a check in dollars to the amount of my advance, along with a note telling me curtly that she could have nothing to do with aiding in the investigation of the activities in Mexico of "an enemy of the Revolution...
...in which almost all public servants are crooked, from the lowest to the highest...
...There is a crippling distortion of all reality when even scholars are reared to be the shills of the state...
...By the early 1980s, a new poll placed him ninth...
...The pervasiveness of this practice of self-deception is hard to believe...
...For the most part, pens are for sale...
...In the winter of 1971 I had gone to Mexico on a research project...
...Which is a shame...
...in which absolutely everyone knows that everything that one is told is (a) false, or (b) sheerest rodomontade, yet in which scholars, journalists, artists, and all other members of the intelligentsia cover the deceptions, paper over the sins, and extol the virtue of what is transparent to everyone as being a system of total moral and intellectual corruption...
...they continue, as Ambrose rightly says, "to divide the nation's political parties and people in the decades that [have] followed...
...makes Mexico an economic basket case and a sociological nightmare...
...Riding shows how reforms are ever sacrificed to political stability, how economic imperatives are frustrated by the official socialist ideology of the ruling Partido Revolucionario Institucional--the PRi---and how everything is drowned in corruption...
...2 DISTANT NEIGHBORS Alan Riding/Alfred A. Knopf/$18.95 Reid Buckley Imagine growing up in a country whose founding fathers are without exception morally blemished...
...in fact, without her husband skulking behind the potted palms, loaded pistol in hand...
...I ll Name --, " I I Address I I City ___ ~- State....._.__ Zip | t i I Clip and send to California Review t I P.O...
Vol. 18 • July 1985 • No. 7
