Think Left, Doing Right, and being Galbraith
Wellesley, Sir Arthur
THINKING LEFT, DOING RIGHT, AND BEING GALBRAITH by Sir Arthur Wellesley Who are the barbarians pounding the gates of civilized, free society? The new left would have us believe that the...
...Tragically, their acolytes are not...
...To consider them as anything beyond disgusting is to exaggerate...
...But the leftist agitation for control of the campus continues despite the students' rebuke...
...I. U.'s ersatz Gestapo obviously was not aware that Rusk was a member of the Institute of Pacific Relations during the period when its advice to the State Department helped pave the road to power for Mao, that youthful new left idol...
...Even if the power is employed with the best intentions, it can produce results opposite those intended — minimum-wage laws are an example...
...Like the Nazis and Communists who battled for power in pre-Hitler Germany, the campus left feels comfortable only when it is in the streets hounding the opposition...
...Anyone familiar with the residue surrounding county court houses recognizes them for what they are — loafers...
...The I. U. student body said "no" last spring by turning out the hippie party at the polls...
...While opposition to the war in Vietnam is still the new left's first passion, it still waxes hot on civil rights, professing passionate interest in the rights of minorities...
...While the new left expresses angry opposition toward our distressing trend in which the individuals, as cogs, lose their identities in the vast and growing machinery of the Liberal Corporation, the irony is that the new left's policies assuredly make the Power Structure even more omnipotent...
...Now, suddenly, surprisingly, and refreshingly, Galbraith and a host of other intellectual Daniel Boones from the New Frontier are concerned over the growth of Federal power because of President Johnson's using the power to resist the Communist onslaught in South Vietnam...
...They are confident (since they learned it from their professors of the old left) that they will benefit from centralized power...
...John Kenneth Galbraith has preached this for years, arguing that the state must increase its power, and that Federal control of the economy is, in a modern, technological society, desirable and inevitable...
...A glance into their watery eyes reveals them innocent of the least embolus of thought . . . their immaculate minds unsullied by any blemish of cultivation...
...According to statistics of the U. S. Labor Department, every time the minimum wage goes up, so does the rate of unemployment among Negroes, particularly teenagers who have the least experience and fewest skills (see: The Alternative, Vol...
...For years Galbraith used his considerable prestige within the inner chambers of government to increase the power of the executive over that of Congress...
...Incidentally, the term is a redundancy, but redundancy is one of the most-used weapons in the left's arsenal — repetition takes the place of thoughtful comment...
...for what is democracy but a direct vote by the people on public issues...
...Unlike the new left, the new right does not consider some people more equal than others...
...Ironically, however, the left operates in a manner calculated to destroy the rights of Negroes and Whites alike...
...In college towns they slouch about libraries and the naive identify them as intellectuals...
...Those shuffling, stammering, Meganthropi squatting about the newly opened Kirkwood Zoo are merely revolting...
...They are not worthy of more than the most casual contempt, they are too insignificant...
...1, No...
...A remarkable example was the treatment accorded Secretary of State Dean Rusk at Indiana University last fall...
...While Rusk's ideological compatriots were trying to keep him off campus, the new right rallied to protect the secretary's right to speak...
...Behind a smokescreen of free-speech propaganda, the new left crushes even the mildest opposition whenever possible...
...For agitators of the left, there can be only a monologue of their effete left-wing cliches, dragged out from the 'thirties and recoated for the 'sixties — or nothing at all...
...In contrast, the new right, abiding by its purpose of expanding American freedoms, was perfectly willing for the super-spies to recruit — even though the CIA has heavily subsidized the ultra-left National Student Association whose only virtue is that it is less anti-American than the Progressive Labor Party...
...In summary, the new left mouths the slogans of freedom, but the new right protects freedom...
...A minimum-wage law is supposed to raise the wages of those earning the least — generally meaning the Negro...
...They shout slogans about freedom of speech, civil rights, and participatory democracy, but their actions are totalitarian in effect if not purpose...
...A person not worth the minimum Federal rate will not be hired or kept on...
...The crucial point is, that the new left does not want its opponents to have a voice in decisions...
...Participatory democracy, as it works in the new left, is a camouflage for power grabs by a minority of anarchists...
...Instead, it throws them out of work...
...Do the majority of students at any campus, I. U. for example, want the leftists to run the school...
...Only because of bigger counter-rallies organized by Young Americans for Freedom and the Student Committee for Victory in Vietnam did the new left fail in denying Rusk his freedom of speech...
...The truth is that, despite their rhetoric, it is the activists of the youthful left who are steadily at work corroding those values of individualism unique to Western Civilization...
...The totalitarian leaders of the new left are aware of this truth...
...Judging by its conduct, one can only conclude that, having no ideas of its own, the new left fears the ideas of others...
...Yet it is all but inevitable that once economic planning is started, it can not be stopped, since one measure of planning calls for another to counterbalance the reverberating effects of the first...
...Unlike his campus comrades, Galbraith has learned that the left does not always have a friend in power...
...Neither yet sees, as the right has observed since the days of Edmund Burke, that a government powerful enough to "give" people their rights has the power to destroy them also...
...As with freedom of speech, the new left talks of participatory democracy but practices something else...
...Despite the fact that Rusk was a guest of the new left's intellectual godfather, the Liberal Establishment, I. U.'s neophyte totalitarians tried to drive from the podium this man who was busy corrupting the cause of freedom long before the new leftists were old enough not to bathe...
...While the new right calls for serious discussion of the issues, the new left tries to shout down any dialogue...
...The new left would have us believe that the modern Vandals are members of the right...
...The new left successfully banned the CIA from recruiting on the I. U. campus...
...New leftists act on the unreasoned faith that increasing Federal intervention in the individual's life will somehow make him freer...
...For a time it seemed that Rusk, a longtime member of the old left, would not be able to appear on campus as a result of new left belligerency...
...It is apparent that there can be no democracy if the public does not participate...
...The right opposes this type of Federal manipulation of the economy for two reasons: It places too much power in the hands of government and it is counterproductive...
...The new rightists welcomed the secretary of state not because they agreed with Rusk's banal defense of the administration's war of attrition (they did not and do not), but because they believed that Rusk, whatever his views, should have the same rights accorded herbert aptheker...
...Any increase in governmental power restricts the freedom of the individual, a political maxim the new right knows almost intuitively...
...That democracy loses efficiency in groups much larger than a fraternity chapter should be obvious...
...The speaker Benito Mussolini...
...New leftists berate the government, not because it wields too much power but too little...
...They waltz about Kirkwood some swatting flies, some drooling on curb stones, others dreamily toying with their filthy fur, their muzzles shoved deep in runny ice cream cones...
...To world problems they prescribe dilated freedom, but are themselves perfervidly enthralled by the least — Continued on Page 12 4...
...Freedom can only survive and prosper if the coercive power of government, whether intended for good or evil, is minimized to a point consistent with maintaining internal order and external security...
...To be successful, planning must be total, bringing with it more suffocating restriction of the individual...
...ON HATING . . Continued from Page 2 primates of the new left...
...In this case, the new left is no worse than the old left...
...The lessons of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia go unheeded...
...For example, the leftists make demands for student power without consulting the students, even though the new left represents only a paltry minority, an estimated 20,000 activists out of some six million university students...
...Are they willing for a mob of agitators, who want to gut the curriculum, to establish academic standards...
...They then earn nothing which is considerably less than something — a point the new left does not consider, but which those unemployed because of the law know through bitter experience...
...As a Socialist himself, Galbraith could only agree with what an earlier Socialist once said: "We were the first to assert that the more com— Continued on Page 4 3 THINKING LEFT Continued from Page 3 plicated the forms assumed by civilization, the more restricted the freedom of the individual must become...
...Minimumwage laws, in fact, are grossly discriminatory since they work the greatest hardship on minorities and youth...
...Galbraith probably does not contemplate the thorough-going restrictions Mussolini had in mind...
...A Ross Barnett, for instance, might use the power of the presidency to resegregate...
Vol. 2 • September 1968 • No. 1
