Liberalism-A Moral Crisis The ADA: Vision and Myopia
Howe, Irving
By one of those neat coincidences that sometimes illuminate political life, former Senator Harry Cain launched a powerful criticism of the government's "security" program at the very moment the...
...As one sat through the sessions, watching these representative American liberals in a painful effort to reconcile their genuine concern for civil liberties with their yearning to prove themselves "responsible," that is to say, respectable, it almost seemed as if Cain had read Murray Kempton's biting comparison (see page 122) between himself and Senator Humphrey, the ADA darling, and had decided again to embarrass official American liberalism by showing how much bolder he, a life-long conservative, could be than the ADA...
...Nor was the leadership superior to the ranks...
...II As soon, however, as even the mildest intellectual standards are brought to bear, the results prove depressing...
...If so, he succeeded...
...But here again one is struck by the dogged and shallow "pragmatism" of the liberal mind...
...The ADA was ready to challenge a good many manifestations of U.S...
...The burden of responsibility they will therefore have to carry is very great—nothing less, at a time when they are beset and tempted by every conformist pressure, than to remain faithful to the best in their own tradition...
...At first I couldn't, but as I grew accustomed to the pulpy and liberal-lawyerish rhetoric which ADAers employ I began to notice that whenever one of them called for a more "sophisticated"—by which he meant a less intransigeant— stand on civil liberties, he was likely to be an ex-radical...
...Since, continued the ingenuous Mr...
...Nothing the ADA did or said had the forthrightness and sharpness of Cain's outburst...
...Why then is the first specified by the name of its author in Congress, while the second is given its formal and, as it were, anonymous title...
...policy of supporting Chiang Kai-shek, even if such an inquiry did involve the embarrassment of having to question the foreign policies of both the Roosevelt and Truman administrations...
...I am not engaged in the game of berating the liberals for not being socialists...
...The youth affiliate, Students for Democratic Action, worked hard for the above-quoted proposal...
...Senator Morse, who also spoke, struck one by the extent of his intellectual limitations, but he is obviously a sincere man...
...But one would think that at least a few of the ADA delegates might have troubled to relate the present debacle to the whole U.S...
...Most of the delegates were extremely well-informed about daily political life...
...But the sad truth is that within the next few years the problem of civil liberties, if it is to be met at all, will have to be met primarily by the liberals, for it is they rather than the socialists who will be in a position to take decisive action against the gradual erosion of freedom in this country...
...The praise heaped on him at the banquet was lavish...
...from its impossible position in Asia and of avoiding the danger of war, this is about as good a proposal as anyone is likely to offer...
...During its main afternoon session, the convention had voted to urge repeal of those sections of "the Smith Act and the Communist Control Act of 1954" which "limit the right of free speech, free association and free political expression...
...Numerous delegates would qualify their remarks on civil liberties with the reminder that the ADA was a "responsible" organization—to the point where one found oneself wishing that someone had gotten up and, with gay "irresponsibility," made a speech in behalf of civil liberties, period...
...But only when the convention reached the problem of academic freedom, and particularly a proposal by a delegate that "refusal to testify under the Fifth or First Amendment, or membership in any organization should not be automatic grounds to disqualify a teacher," did the latent disagreements in the ADA come to sharp expression...
...So it went, one item after another: resounding general statements 111 in behalf of civil liberties, with little qualifying clauses that emascu lated them...
...It needs only be added that no support whatever was found in the convention for a resolution introduced by one lonely young delegate urging that the ADA, in the name of preserving humanity, advocate the immediate cessation of hydrogen bomb tests...
...he emerged as little less than a hero...
...The result was a dizzying rhythm, one step forward, one step backward...
...The impression Humphrey makes—I had never seen him before—is thoroughly disagreeable...
...Yet they felt that, as "responsible" liberals, they had to be moderate, they had to consider problems of "security...
...Well, every political movement has a skeleton rattling in some closet, but not many care to display it at the very center of the dais.* III The main discussions of the convention were divided into three groups: "political, foreign and domestic policy...
...but if so, at some peril to themselves...
...The resolution urges only the repeal of certain sections in these laws, but fails to specify which, if any, sections do not limit free speech, free association, etc...
...Most revealing of all was the tragi-comedy of ADA with respect to Senator Humphrey...
...Intellectuals impatient with such "small" matters or radicals grown accustomed to their isolation may condescend to such people...
...The joker in this formulation I shall discuss later...
...Having followed for some years a course of alliance with the Democrats and having helped undercut six or seven years ago the possibilities for a new party, the ADA is now frozen in its familiar political course...
...And while I do not generally favor the use of psychological terms for political matters, it is hard not to describe the behavior of the convention with regard to civil liberties as profoundly schizoid...
...Schlesinger reserves his ideas for other occasions...
...If the discussions seldom rose to precision or coherence, there was, by way of compensation, little of that corrosive cynicism, that absence of passion with regard to anything but anti-Stalinism, which has become characteristic of certain sections of the more "advanced" intellectual world...
...Before coming to Washington I had wondered whether it would be possible to distinguish between the pure-and-simple liberals in ADA and those who are ex-radicals of one or another sort...
...This seems excellent on the face of it, but read the sentence again and you will see that it is not a forthright proposal to repeal these two pieces of obnoxious legislation...
...It was remarkable that the delegates could deplore so many specific violations of freedom in America without asking themselves whether these formed part of some larger trend—a trend, say, toward a bureaucraticgarrison state...
...Two examples: • "We propose," said the convention resolution, "repealing statutory provisions which limit the right of free speech, free association and free political expression, such as are contained in the Smith Act and the Communist Control Act of 1954...
...Apparently overawed by his isolation on this issue, or perhaps by the argument that "we must preserve our flexibility in foreign policy," the delegate accepted an amendment urging the creation of an international commission to study the genetic hazards of the hydrogen bomb tests...
...they knew, for example, as I shamefacedly confess I did not, that the Butler bill was a proposal to extend "loyalty" checks to large areas of American industry...
...This desire was inchoate and very poorly articulated, but it was unquestionably there—and it represents a hope within the organization...
...ONE THING SHOULD BE CLEAR...
...Yet it would be misleading to suggest that any significant number of delegates was indifferent to the problem of civil liberties...
...The formal positions they adopted often suffered from ambiguity and double-tracking, but the delegates were better than the resolutions...
...By "left wing" I don't at all mean any sharply formulated tendency, but rather an impulse to desire a more militant expression of ADA policy within the boundaries of liberalism...
...or they fretted minor points...
...c) even so notable an ADA leader as Francis Biddle, when he was Attorney General, had permitted its use and had, indeed, been the first to employ it on a large scale...
...Splendid...
...At this point it may be useful to recall an old Hasidic story: "Before his death, Rabbi Zusya said, 'In the coming world, they will not ask 112 me, 'Why were you not Moses?' They will ask me, 'Why were you not Zusya?' " In its demands upon the liberals, we may assume, heaven will be similarly modest...
...Thus, in an utterly empty gesture, was everyone's conscience appeased, and without the painful necessity of saying anything...
...In the area of foreign policy, many of the specific suggestions and criticisms made by the convention make good sense...
...To be sure, one could not realistically expect profundities at a convention of this sort, but some effort at historical perspective, some readiness to stand back from the kitchen-midden of daily politics and engage in theoretical inquiry, was surely possible...
...Most of the delegates clearly wanted to take a strong stand in favor of civil liberties...
...Perhaps, however, Mr...
...It would be tedious to report these in detail, since most of them consisted merely of formal reiterations...
...Numerous economic proposals were discussed, yet the fundamental question of the relationship between our prosperity and the war economy was never investigated...
...Except for Humphrey himself, who passed it all off with a wise-crack, no one seemed even faintly troubled by the fact that only a few hours earlier the ADA had directed 109 what was, after all, a fundamental criticism of his Congressional behavior...
...Over each of these items, however, there were disagreements and sometimes disputes...
...IV It was only in the discussion of domestic policy, and particularly of civil liberties, that one began to sense the inner strains of the ADA, its actual impulses as distinct from its formal policies...
...As it was, the convention, like the ADA itself, came to seem a prime example of how fanatical the anti-fanaticism, how ideological the anti-ideology of real politik can become...
...He has all the natural equipment of a demagogue, and it astonishes me that the leaders of ADA, at least some of whom are intelligent and sensitive men, do not feel or express their discomfort at his being taken for their major spokesman in Congress...
...suffice it here to notice that the convention did criticize these two laws in terms of essential equivalence...
...Between those ADAers trying to live down their radical pasts and those playing it safe for a possible future as Washington brain-trusters—not to mention the largest group of all, those liberals caught in a sincere dilemma between what they call "freedom" and "security"—not much boldness or militancy is forthcoming...
...110 A mild controversy developed over the problem of admitting the Mao regime into the UN...
...But it is a modesty that is also profoundly exacting...
...But then the convention accepted an amendment eliminating the phrase, "including communist ideas"—which simply meant to take the teeth out of the sentence...
...Throughout the discussion of this matter not one delegate rose to mention the simple but explosive fact known to everyone in the room: that "the Communist Control Act of 1954" was the shame of the liberals in Congress...
...In this sense, people like Senator Humphrey have the ADA over a barrel: they know they can do or say almost anything and still be sure of its support...
...Humphrey, by contrast, rings false...
...In the main, the ADA delegates struck me as good people...
...The proposal was defeated, but by so narrow a margin (131 votes to 117) that it represented a moral victory for the youth and for what I would call, rather hesitantly and imprecisely, the "left wing" in the convention...
...Even more troubling than the absence of general ideas was the kind of willed "collective amnesia" with which the ADA tried to cover its embarrassments...
...foreign policy, but never so much as to question its underlying assumptions...
...Senator Humphrey...
...As a way of extricating the U.S...
...Given the ADA rejection of any third party perspective and the very dim possibility of such a perspective becoming important in American politics during the next several years, the liberals really have no alternative to their frequently disillusioning relationship with the Democratic Party...
...What struck one most of all in listening to the ADA people was their utter lack of self-reflectiveness...
...I In some important ways the ADA convention was impressive...
...The irony was irresistible...
...In a banquet speech, the ADA leader Telford Taylor argued that wire-tapping, while extremely distasteful, should not be unconditionally outlawed, since a) it sometimes might be put to good purposes...
...One apparently important change took place with regard to political policy, where the ADA, stung by the charge that it is nothing more than an auxiliary to the Democrats, adopted language to suggest a greater independence from both parties...
...the only ADA leader who tried to rise to a level of articulate generalization was the economist Robert Nathan, who made some interesting though preliminary remarks on the problems of Asia...
...The atmosphere of the ADA might best have been described as one of worried complacence, with many of its members downright impatient before the prospect of intellectual reflection...
...almost every criticism that has been made of the ADA is a criticism within the possibilities of liberalism...
...and an excited discussion broke out...
...but they did not seem aware that the very idea of liberalism, like the idea of conservatism or of radicalism, might be in crisis...
...Time after time it denounced elements of present-day political life—e.g., the use of the Attorney-General's "subversive list" without the right to hearings or review...
...By one of those neat coincidences that sometimes illuminate political life, former Senator Harry Cain launched a powerful criticism of the government's "security" program at the very moment the Americans for Democratic Action (ADA) was opening its recent convention in Washington...
...it proposed a UN trusteeship for Formosa, to be followed by a plebiscite as a step toward Formosan self-determination...
...Taylor, even a liberal like Biddle had used wire-tapping, it was clearly impractical to abolish it...
...By comparison, the ordinary home-grown liberals often seemed fresh and trustworthy...
...So far as I could tell, there was considerable subterranean sentiment for immediate admission, but the anxiety, shared by both leaders and delegates, that such a stand would open the ADA to a smear led the convention to the meaningless gesture of propos ing that China be admitted to the UN after it had shown its readiness to live up to the provisions of the UN charter—as if membership in the UN implied any sort of moral sanction...
...The convention atmosphere was notable for a tolerance and decency of manner...
...After all, there are some impetuosities to which American liberalism simply cannot be forced...
...We oppose," said the convention resolution, "limiting the right to advocate unpopular political proposals, including communist ideas...
...One could only hold one's head and wonder whether some alert member of ADA might not go so far as to reverse the argument: if wire-tapping is objectionable and Francis Biddle had been the first to employ it, might that not cast a shadow on Biddle's liberalism...
...He is slick, cheaply clever, patently opportunistic...
...For surely it is "communist ideas," and not vegetarian or Swedenborgian ones, that are presently at stake...
...The need for economic aid to Asia was constantly stressed, but whether such aid would be meaningful in 108 the present context of U. S. alignment with the reactionary Asian governments no one thought to ask...
...But in practice this will not come to very much...
...Nor does it particularly matter that this relationship causes discomfort to some ADA leaders...
...Communism was denounced with ritual regularity, but what this monstrous danger in Asia or Europe is, how it gathers strength and why it wins the loyalty of millions, no one tried to say...
...Rather is the point to be made that the impulse to liberalism is today increasingly entangled with an impulse to "responsibility...
...They were people who had worked in their localities for better schools and houses, and had worked to some effect...
...Earnest though not very sophisticated, they had a saving touch of the idealism many of the more knowing ex-radicals have lost...
...Either they indulged in woolly rhetoric (and anyone who thinks that socialists are prone to grand cliches should listen to the liberals...
...but given these limits, people spoke freely and were heard out attentively...
...yet it failed to notice that these practices of the Eisenhower administration had actually begun under the New and Fair Deals for which it expressed so deep a nostalgia...
...They were so lost in an endless labyrinth of political items, so absorbed in drawing up planks on every theme from tariff reform to Alaskan statehood, so entirely focused on legislative particularities, that they never troubled to ask themselves any fundamental questions regarding their political identity...
...The convention called for a withdrawal from the commitment to "defend" Matsu and Quemoy...
...113...
...One might criticize a procedure that gave excessive weight to panels of prechosen "experts" who tended to overawe the ranks with "the inside dope...
...Because Smith was a Southern Democrat, with regard to whom the ADA is positively fearless, while "the Communist Control Act of 1954" was introduced by Senator Humphrey, the ADA's own beamish boy...
...107 Best of all, most ADA people seemed genuinely concerned and disturbed about the problem of civil liberties...
...b) no one seemed interested in enforcing the present law prohibiting it...
...There are, to be sure, differences of a fundamental kind between liberals and socialists, differences which cannot be skimmed over and which are likely to become more, rather than less, significant with the passage of time...
...That very evening the ADA held its convention banquet, and the toastmaster was...
Vol. 2 • April 1955 • No. 2
