The Nation's Pulse

...Since almost all of the noted conservative leaders have virtually stated they will not jump ship, even when the President engages in the most overt liberal initiatives, the President may assume he has the conservatives in his pocket...

...it can be purchased in all bookstores...

...The Alternative February, 1972 The Bootblack Stand Dr...

...The President's continued assurance that he will have the support of these leaders, no matter what, makes it certain he will move left to absorb the insistent pressures pounding from that quarter...

...A Special Treat for Hoosier Readers of The Alternative...

...Yet, I have no doubt that of all the presidents of this Century, Mr...

...Yet, perhaps .it is all for the best...

...History may indeed judge these policies to have been informed by his wisdom, but if Mr...

...U Thant Ex-Secretary General of the U Nited Nations Dear Mr...

...These excuses and the underlying attitude they represent, however, are an integral part of the problems conservatives face, perhaps even a major part...

...There have been some countervailing efforts here in the House and freshman Sen...

...The cameras inevitably draw the frauds and there was simply no place for the entrepreneuers of revolution at these conferences...

...Instead, the net result of this adminisstration may be to frustrate for years to come the emergence of the conservative majority...

...and Lawrence D. Pratt feakn'es interviews with noted scholars, political leaders and journalists...

...Nixon has lost touch with America's selfConsCious Conservative movement and so, danced away from the political re...

...There is the further fact that the President has to face up to hostile pressure from the media and from marching mobs, and that some of these things must be done to placate these forces...

...He is free to move as far left as he wishes in order to placate the liberals...

...In a long, vividly suggestive speech delivered on the floor of Congress on 15 December, he deposited the Conservatives' Complaint against the administration, averred his remedy, and in the last paragraphs adumbrated the Course Conservatives might follow if Mr...

...The key to this situation, above all else, is the attitude of conservatism's political leadership...

...In a political sense, therefore, this administration has left American conservatives bereft of big-name political leadership...

...Since both Democrats and Republicans are suddenly wedded to liberal assumptions, the phenomenon noted by the National Observer emerges: The liberals win the point of principle by default...

...Nixon has, in his grand policy leaps, left behind many of those loyal and industrious men and women who Compose his natural constituency...

...The performance of the conservative leaders is thus, in itself, a major contribution to the leftward drift of the administration...

...Much of the suburban population explosion involves member~ of unions, and an AFL-CIO survey in the late 1960s disclosed that no less than 50 per cent of the union's members now live in the suburbs, and that as economic status and place of residence have changed so have political attitudes...

...We may note as well the complementary fact that members of labor unions are more and more susceptible to conservative appeal on economic as well as "law and order" grounds...

...Well, none of the students voted to overturn the world, or even to build a new society...

...Nixon does not soon pause to Consult with the Conservatives within his party, historians may be making their ~udgments of him earlier than they had anticipated...

...There is also another curious phenomenon here in the Washington landscape: The pervasive defeatism which afflicts the administration and its congressional Republican supporters...

...Which means that its next move to the left would be a lot slower in coming...

...My own belief is that the maintenance of democratic institutions in America depends upon the strength of the forces of the center, and conferences such as this have a contribution to make in helping the center to hold against the symbiotic onslaughts of the radical left and radical right...

...George Washington Plunkitt, our prize-winning political analyst, has just completed a penetrating study of the last Congolese election...

...On examination, each of these extenuations for the President's policies appears to be mistaken...

...In the spring of 1970, Gallup 21 statesmen in this time of troubles...

...Although no new form of repression was discovered, no bombs thrown and no barricades manned, the three Alternative conferences were considerable successes, in that they brought together thoughtful people from all sorts of backgrounds, encouraged these thoughtful people to continue their defense of the beneficient aspects of the American system, and whenever possible - - t5 take the offensive...

...It is reasonable to suppose that such continued and active opposition would succeed in mounting effective resistance to one or another such liberal policy and of kicking up a storm of public resistance...

...Dear Abzngorooni (M.C...

...Other significant speakers and workshop leaders at the Bloomington conference included Morton Blackwell of the American Enterprise Institute, David Brudnoy, a libertarian professor at Northeastern University and regular contributor to National Review and The Alternative, Marvin Peebles, an attorney for the Philadelphia Model Cities Program, George A. Taylor, an Ohio State law student and Terry Krieger, a Harvard prize fellow and senior editor of The Alternative...

...Joe Duggan, a student in St...

...It is titled Escape...

...A New Demand Response System...

...Published in August, it focuses on the unique position of minority groups in the Congolese electoral process...

...This at least was the goal of the conferences...

...There is plenty of evidence to suggest such defeatism is unjustified...

...GWP Dear Mr...

...By promoting its own variant of liberal proposals and foreclosing Republican opposition, this administration has gone far to stifle ideological debate...

...Nixon in the New Hampshire primary...

...To state the problem is to point the way toward at least a partial solution...

...Harris and Gallup surveys likewise reveal a steady increase in explicitly conservative sentiment in the country...

...Nixon were to neglect his warning...

...Alexander Bickel, a contributing editor for The New Republic and a professor from the Yale law school, talked about repression in America, while Professor Robert Nisbet, sociologist at the University of Califonia, and a contributor to Commentary, Encounter, and the Intercollegiate Review, discussed his most recent book, Degradation of the Academ/2 Dogma...

...Discussion groups dealt with topics concerning both the theories and tactics on implementing the open society and fighting opponents of democracy on campus...

...In the wake of the 1968 election, Harris found his respondents choosing the designation "conservativ.e" to describe themselves by a 2,to-1 margin over the designation "liberal" - - 3 8 to 17 per cent...

...Thus rather than the President being pushed left by political pressures, the procedure has been exactly the opposite...

...The President has often refused to use his own legitimate weapons in contest with liberal initiatives by the Congress...

...James Buckley of New York has made a notable effort to speak out on some Qf the principle issues on which the White House has veered left, but at this point such efforts can hardly overcome the almost unanimous silence of other conservative leaders...

...This is particularly true on foreign policy and defense questions where information levels are low, issues complex, and the whole business remote from the man in the street...

...There is to begin with the fact that Richard Nixon and George Wallace in 1968, both running on emphatically antiliberal platforms, secured between them no Iess than 57 per cent of the vote...

...He is a man whose basic good sense has been Cultured by year s of grim experience and animated by a sharp and assiduous intelligeruJe...

...Whipping up an extravaganza which would do credit to the feats of Barnum, they brought forth a dazzling list of speakers and, after Saturday evening's lectures, held one of the most memorable meetings in the history of the Saturday Evening Club, featuring a string quartet and a reasonably priced bar...

...John M. Ashbrook I T IS ARGUED by his spokesmen that while President Nixon shares conservative concerns on the issues, he is faced with intractable conditions...

...Tibor Machan, who is associated with the objectivist-libertarian journal Reason also spoke...

...To the extent that the American people had any settled notions on the issue, they were decidedly the reverse...

...Louis offers another typical remark, this one of the Bloomington conference, "I was greatly impressed by the lecutres and discussion...

...It's too bad the media's concern for sideshows distracts them from the legitimate student activities that endure in spite of the diminished fanfare...

...4 The Alternative F e b r u a r y , 1972 The " " Conservahves Revolt WASHINGTON - - Dinned as we are by the instinctively objurgative, frequently malevolent, ~ournal~sm of a thinly intellectualized news media, few AmeriCans are given to thinking of that man in the White House as a wise man...

...Reviewing your legislative career is found for the first time in 30 years that the self-designated conservatives in his poll results far outdistanced the self-designated liberals...

...The emerging perception i s something different: That, whatever the reason for his performance, and whatever the affirmations of his heart of hearts, he clearly does not share conservative convictions - - or what I would call traditional Republican convictions - - on a day-to-day operational basis...

...The invariable clincher is that any imaginable alternative to what the President is doing would be infinitely worse, so conservatives should back the President even as he is heading to the left...

...Most of the people involved, both students and lecturers, were exlremely pleased with the conferences, despite the fact that they were not rewarded with film coverage on NBC news...

...Equally to the point, Nixon has repeatedly failed to use the considerable leverage of his office in other ways...

...We have edited this historic statement and reprint it below that our readers might gain a better understanding of the natu~:e of what might one day be reCorded as the Conservatives" revolt...

...The resulting compromise with the legislature would fall somewhere between the President's views and that of Congress...

...Now, through this column, the distinguished Dr...

...At any rate, having established your existence, I still can only make a stab at answering your question, being unsure as I am of what you consider to be "our country...

...While that approach may be useful in getting occasional appointments for political friends, where larger policy questions are concerned it would on the record seem to be almost completely mistaken...

...This, I fear, is one of the basic reasons why the public places us in such collective low esteem...

...Similarities exist even in your behaviors...

...They speak out against these policies in Congress and before the media, and raise a storm of criticism in Republican and conservative circles...

...Agreement was reached by students of widely divergent perspectives to work together to defend democratic process and the tactics of that defense were not neglected...

...In Gallup's inquiry, the conservatives outstripped the liberals by a margin of 52 to 34...

...He has gone left, and created pressures on public opinion to follow him...

...By behaving in that fashion, that is, exactly contrary to the way they are behaving now - - conservative political teaders could begin to salvage the conservative cause...

...Eugene Methvin, associate editor of Reader's Digest, spoke about the new revolution, not a violent radical revolution, but a revolution entailing a return to democratic principles...

...NATION'S PULSE continued from page 4 alarm' under President Johnson they now seem willing to point with pride to under a Republican President...

...Plunkitt: If George Washington was the father of our country, who was the mother of our country...

...SUNDAYS AT 12:00 NOON WTTV-CHANNEL 4...

...But in fact we have much more...

...The excuses for this administration's performance offered by conservative Republican leaders would be bad enough if they were simply a species of mistaken commentary...

...Ashbrook seemed to be expressing the opinion that Mr...

...These are, I think, instructive episodes...

...Feelings the President has which do not issue in public policy are regrettably beside the point...

...What a groove to receive a letter from you...

...I still believe it is in the best American tradition to speak out, even when it is in criticism of your own party's actions...

...It is not true, for example, that many of the Chief Executive's leftward initiatives are forced on him by a hostile Congress...

...While on certah~ matters such as taxation and rising prices public attitudes seem relatively stable, on others they are responsive to cues provided by the White House...

...In addition to Professor Diamond the east coast featured Professor Paul Weaver of Harvard's department of government discussing the role and responsibility of the press in a democratic society...

...And, of course, on the defense philosophy professed by the President and outlined in detail by Deputy Defense Secretary Packard, there would be massive consternation among the American people if they clearly understood that their leaders were leaving them exposed to potential attack in order to "reassure" the Soviets...

...Dear Mr...

...All Abbie Hoffman would have attracted would have been spitballs...

...With the evidence we have concerning the decisionmaking process i n the White House, such an approach amounts indeed to a virtual suicide pact for conservatives...

...One is on surer ground to state that Mr...

...What were the results of the three conferences...

...It is far too harsh and too early to Criticize Mr...

...Norman Podhoretz, for example, writes, "I enjoyed speaking a t your conference in Cambridge, and I agree with you about the importance of bringing moderates of the left and moderates of the right together to discuss public affairs...

...Such data, taken together, present a major opportunity to the Republican Party and the conservative cause...

...I never truly believed you existed, for the name sounds so much like that of a now extinct cousin of the speckled rhinoceros of Java...

...I have not and will not shirk from that role, regardless of the consequences...

...When a Republican president proposes FAP, or a form of national health insurance, or a softening stance toward Communist China, the fundamental point the liberals want to make is removed from the realm of controversy...

...Even if such opposition did not succeed in defeating the measure in question, it would certainly make its acceptance difficult and generate problems for the administration...

...Incidentally, have you ever served in the Congolese Parhament...

...The result of effective leadership could well have been a period of conservative and Republican ascendancy to match the Democratic era that followed upon the victory of Franklin Roosevelt...

...The wisest bit of counsel I can offer to you is to stop breaking the law...

...In terms of public debate and articulate leadership, the Nixon administration has nearly decapitated American conservatism...

...The eastern conference, held in Cambridge, was organized by John Moscow, a contributor to The Alternative and Bill Kristol, a senior editor...

...What many conservatives viewed with continued on page 20 20 The A l t e r n a t i v e F e b r u a r y , 1972 CONFERENCES continued from page 10 sights into democratic traditions of the American Republic...

...Address all correspondence to The Bootblack Stand, The Establishment, R.R...

...In large measure the President has been behaving the way he has because conservative leaders have assumed such a passive public attitude toward his leftward initiatives...

...The problem with a statesman of Cunning, then, is not that he is shrewd but that he might be unprincipled or that he might, in his genius, spin off from that rnass of slower moving particles that form his constituency...

...If we had nothing but that statistic to go on, we would have reason to believe that Washington's assumption of inevitable liberal victory is mistaken...

...He is also one of the most cunning presidents of this Century, a CharaCteristic that is in itself undersirable only when uninformed by principle...

...President Nixon's own course of action, however, has perceptibly softened U.S...

...Well then, the mother of your country is Gore Vidal and it is not at all sexist, conventionally understood...

...Plunkitt has agreed to advise American i Spokesmen for the administration repeatedly talk as though the liberal-left were in the ascendant, and say that conservatives can do little more than fight a timid rear-guard action...

...Ashbrook had expressed these sentiments...

...11, Box 360, Bloomington, Indiana 47401, Continental U.S.A...

...What is my legal remedy...

...alities of AmeriCa at this point in history...

...On 29 December Congressman John Ashbrook, an ex-chairman of the Amer ican Conservative Union, announced his intention to Challenge Mr...

...There could be an entirely,different scenario...

...GWP i i cal situation, the conservative leaders treated the President's initiatives to the left exactly as they would treat the same initiatives from a Democratic President...

...Even New York has stringent laws against panhandlers...

...The hard line turned to soft line overnight, only to wander back to hard line again when the immediate pressures eased...

...The net effect of these observations is to deny the assertion of administration spokesmen who attempt to justify the President's policies to conservatives by saying that the President shares conservative principles and is doing the best he can amidst difficulties to put them into practice...

...But let us assume you are talking about America in a very special way...

...feeling toward Red China...

...And isn't it pretty &?**Sing sexist to distinguish between the two...

...One such experience - - just one - - would be sufficient to make the White House conscious of the fact that it could not take conservative political leaders for granted...

...Right on, Bella Abzug, M.C...

...Nixon is one of those most Capable of offering the average American wise Counsel...

...Nixon for being an unprincipled statesman...

...Rep...

...If this happens and no therapeutic aCtion is taken, it is only a matter of time before he spins quite beyond the u~er confines of reality and so into the coffin of history...

...What has happened here in the House - - and in the other body - - has happened on a broader front to the conservative movement...

...Nor were favorable comments limited to conference speakers...

...But many did walk away with a better understanding of American society's validity, its shortcomings, the way it functions and how it can be improved...

...Guests for the coming weeks include M. Stanton Evans, Prof...

...Norman Podhoretz, the editor of Commentary., led a thoughtful and lively discussion of the moral and political climate among intellectuals and Garrett Scaleria spoke about common sense and the common man...

...The western conference was held in Carmel, California and featured three speakers from previous conferences, Professor Diamond, Marvin Peebles and Morton Blackwell...

...Assuming a continuing tension between the White House and Congress, the obvious course for a president seeking maximum conservative results would be to make vigorous demands - - a total end to OEO, deep slashes in federal spending, a "thick" ABM, and so on...

...This was not the first time Mr...

...We may note, for one thing, the explosive growth of the suburbs and their army of homeowning, taxpaying voters who do not want handouts from government, but who do want restraint on government spending...

...If the acknowledged conservative spokesmen persist in defending the President's every move, placating the rank and file and defusing conservative opposition, then a further leftward drift by the administration seems assured~ The repeated assertion that conservatives must support the President no matter what, is a method of binding them to the administration as it plunges ever further to the left to placate the ever clamorous left...

...And for every realistic purpose, that unfortunately is the perception which counts...

...On issues such as these strong presidential advocacy can shape and alter public opinion...

...Try working for a living...

...The assumption of the congressional and other leaders who tell conservative rank and filers to support the President appears to be that, by staying close to the administration, withholding criticism, and not breaking party ranks, they can maximize their influence and help steer the White House on a conservative course...

...U Thant: I am not sure you have a legal remedy...

...He must confront, in the first place, a hostile Congress which wants to go much further in the liberal left direction than does the administration, and the administration's halfmeasures are intended to prevent even worse things from occurring...

...If the things he is doing are what the American people want, and if these are imperative steps for a Presidential politician - - why did he not campaign on them...

...On several occasions, indeed, as my colleagues are well aware, there have been indications that Congress was quite willing to take a conservative stand on some issue and representatives of the administration have stepped in to prevent Such an outcome...

...In his press conference Mr...

...Martin Diamond, Tom Huston, Senator Henry M. Jackson and Mayor Richard Lugar...

...What if, in this hypothetilike studying the career of a legislator from the Republic of the Congo...

...Instead of accepting or actively defending such things as wage and price controls of the President's accommodation with Red China, they stir up a vigorous opposition...

...There are many other indices which show liberalism to be a declining political force, but a few examples will have to suffice...

...Plunkitt: Ever since I left the hospital, the New York police have been harassing me every time I step onto the street...

...The argument that the President must head left for political reasons is even less persuasive...

...ILl BUR TIME This exciting television program, hosted by R. Emmett Tyrrell, Jr...

...The excuses offered for this administration's performance leave out yet another factor, perhaps the most important of all--the factor of presidential leadership...

...In the case of Red China, to take the obvious instance, there was little or no pressure of public opinion on this administration to pursue a course of appeasement...

...They tell us, for one thing, that the "don't-make-waves" approach of conservative political leaders is precisely wrong...

...That outcome was universally and correctly interpreted as a stinging repudiation of the liberal way of doing things in Washington and a mandate for moving the country back to the right...

...In addition, there is the' fact that certain things must be done for political reasons even though President Nixon himself may not like them...