Triumph of Primitivism

...His extremism is especially dangerous because the great Negro revolution, in which the whole nation has become involved, now must confront this Goldwater revolution, in which racism is appropriating States' Rights theory of Jeffersonianism...

...Even liberals might well long for Senator Taft's conservatism as against Senator Goldwater's...

...perhaps we should only give thanks that we survived the eight Eisenhower years...

...The question is how this Rightwing radical revolt was possible...

...Here was an ex-President, who had failed as President to reorganize his party, who had been very non-political (and incidentally, non-partisan) as a President, but who now suddenly became obsessed with party regularity and party unity even though he did not really know the nature of the forces he was dealing with...

...But the real prize for futility in this political drama must go to ex-President Ike...

...These social factors are apparent enough, but what remains mysterious is the emergence of those angry old men who have added a note of hysteria and extremism to our political life under the leadership of a curious demagogue who never raises his voice...

...Only when the triumph of Goldwater seemed to be complete did Ike boggle at the Senator's acceptance speech, in which he announced the curious and dangerous doctrine that in defense of liberty extremism is not a vice, and in defense of justice moderation is not a virtue...

...Incidentally, the weakness of the moderate forces was further reflected in the fact that they never used a device which Henry Cabot Lodge used in achieving the Eisenhower victory in 1952—that is, challenging the conservative Texas delegation...

...Here was the man who had been the instrument of moderate Republicanism in defeating Senator Taft in 1952...

...But surely the most dangerous aspect of the Goldwater revolution lies in the realm of foreign affairs...

...More exactly, it was also the triumph of Main Street over Wall Street, of the countryside over the big city...

...Purely in terms of social factors, this triumph reflected the demands of Western business interests over those of the Eastern seaboard...

...He is against big government, for individual rights, for States' Rights and against all the delicate balances of justice and liberty which modern civilization has elaborated...

...One could point, of course, to the so-called objective forces...

...Meanwhile we have got to go through a horrible campaign in which all the frustrated and angry people, including those most obsessed with the racial issue, will come out of their hiding places, while at the same time there will be a great reckoning between responsible citizenship and irresponsible private interests...

...Lyndon Johnson may not be an angel of light, yet by contrast his emergence from Southern quasiliberalism to the mainstream of American politics is certainly reassuring as his prospective election will be emancipating...

...THE GOLDWATER REVOLUTION Triumph of Primitivism By Reinhold Niebuhr Now that the dust has settled on the Republican convention, everyone is aware that something more was involved than the triumph of the Right-wing over the Left-wing in the Grand Old Party...

...The nation has not faced a comparably serious test since the Civil War a century ago...

...No one could have believed that this radical revolution could be possible after all the decades in which we Americans have accustomed ourselves to the tense responsibilities, perils and possibilities of imperial power...

...It was left for Ike's brother Milton, who made the nominating speech for Scranton, to be praised for having given the most significant address of the Republican convention (even though that address did not include an indictment of Goldwaterism...

...That extremism and hysteria seems to be most ominously expressed in the substitution of simple solutions for complex domestic and foreign policies—policies to which the nation had long since accustomed itself, so that it appeared to be widely understood that there are no simple answers...

...Here a primitive anti-Communism cuts across all the realities of the international arena, including the tacit partnership that obtains between Russia and the United States for the sake of avoiding nuclear catastrophe...

...Commentators have many notions about the prospects of this election, but one thing is clear: Even if Goldwater loses, we still face terrible difficulties in the election campaign because the Goldwater revolution imposes itself at the very moment when we are facing the Negro revolution head-on...

...Governor Scranton's mild resistence was clearly too little and too late...

...The Goldwater threat is nothing less than a threat to the imperial power and responsibility of a great nation which bears, not out of virtue but out of necessity, the burdens of the so-called free world...

...Perhaps it would be a mistake to place too much emphasis on Ike's performance, however...

...At least he put up a real fight...

...But his insight came too late...

...The Goldwater primitivism plays into the hands of China, the Stalinists in Russia, and, of course, the de Gaulle-type of pre-nuclear nationalism...

...Belatedly, Ike realized that this curious doctrine violated all the political instincts of moderation by which democratic civilizations have achieved both justice and liberty...

...Goldwater is, after all, a pure Lockean...

...For here we face a situation in which the involvement of the so-called moderate Republicans actually contributed to the Goldwater victory because of their futilities, their inconsistencies and their sheer failure to understand the nature of the revolution confronting them...

...Perhaps the most vivid revelation of the Goldwater revolution is the fact that American conservatism is simply 19th-century liberalism in its moribund form...

...Needless to say, this partnership cannot be fully acknowledged by either side...

...But let us analyze, rather, the "subjective forces," and look at the drama of the Republican party in terms of its dramatis personae...

...But his futilities, his confusions, and his equivocations give us nevertheless a tragic picture of the capitulation of a once great party to the forces of primitivism...

...Ike first encouraged all the Republican candidates to get into the act...

...Under the urging of his former Secretary of the Treasury, George Humphrey, Eisenhower then cautioned Governor Scranton, whom he had previously encouraged, not to do or say anything that would alienate Goldwater...

...There was a curious pathos in the whole Eisenhower performance...

...Under the urging of his brother Milton, he finally put out a description of an ideal Republican which the Goldwater forces promptly appropriated...

...Governor Rockefeller comes off best despite his embarrassment over his marital status...