The Squares vs. the Yahoos

...These ways may be identified as the way of the Liberal...

...Since I had wagered, before the very first primary, that the Senator would win the Republican nomination, I do not think I am indulging in wishful thinking...

...2. The Yahoo, in contrast to the Liberal, rejects the new realities of American and international life, and engages in a mindless and mutinous protest against them...

...They approve of the welfare state, but are also suspicious of its pretensions...

...In the foreseeable future, the Republican party is going to be the party of conservatism—whatever that may mean...

...But they will never endorse the Yahoo interpretation of foreign affairs, for this interpretation is not merely "extreme," it is downright paranoid—and all forms of mental illness make Squares uncomfortable...

...But above all American conservatism is loyal to what can be called, without paradox, a tradition of change...

...And if this means, as I think it does, that democracy is not the most interesting or remarkable of regimes—well, it has its compensations, not the least of which is a disinclination toward calamitous adventures...

...It is surely no accident that the bible of the Goldwater enthusiasts —Phyllis Schlafly's pamphlet, A Choice Not An Echo (first printing, 600,000)—is concerned far less with domestic than with foreign affairs, and especially with such "revelations'" as that Prince Bernhard's biennial off-the-record conclaves of Big Names is a secret, conspiratorial machination whose purpose is to work out a grand design for the "appeasement" of Communism...

...Marines as the equivalent of a slur on one's paternity...

...It is intensely patriotic, is thrilled to salute the flag, and regards a nasty word about the U.S...

...He is, quite literally, a reactionary—though without benefit of any elegant reactionary ideology, such as his European counterpart can fall back on...

...Though some commentators are under the impression that Eisenhower's two terms were some kind of conservative interregnum, it would be far more accurate to say that he presided over the dissolution of liberal Republicanism as a national force and program...

...It is, for instance, reverential toward the American past, glorifies the Constitution and the Founding Fathers, and is immune to all muckraking, scholarly or otherwise...

...They detest bureaucracy and red tape, and can never be made to understand why the U.S...

...We have, of course, had many "do-nothing" Presidents...

...1. The Liberal is pleased with the increasing concentration of power in the national government, because he sees in it an opportunity to translate his ideals into reality...

...That the Liberal is aware of this fact may be deduced from his reaction to Senator Goldwater's candidacy...

...To most Americans—and not so long ago to all Americans—this was the very essence and only true definition of free government...

...the way of the Square...

...For many years, it has been a standard Liberal argument—and the American Political Science Association officially endorsed it—that our party system should be reorganized on ideological fines, so as to give the people a choice, not an echo...

...and the American people are possibly the least conservative, the most open to novelty and self-transformation the world has ever seen...

...This habit of mind prescribes that such change should, wherever possible, be inaugurated, sustained and completed by the free activities of the citizens, rather than by the coercive activity of the government...

...And it can, indeed, mean many different things...

...Of anything like a genuine counterpart to European conservatism, with its appeal (however muted) to prescriptive privilege and hierarchical order, there can be no question...

...If the political authorities of this country do nothing, it merely means that they are allowing or encouraging everyone else to do everything...

...One wonders what they thought to expect...

...On the other hand, to have said all this is not to have said very much...

...For foreign affairs requires a foreign policy...

...A substantial measure of Senator Goldwater's support comes from the Yahoo sector of American opinion— and it is this fact that will cost him certainly the election, and possibly even the opportunity to obtain a decent percentage of the vote...

...He is convinced—not always by evidence, often by self-righteousness—that he knows how to plan our economy, design our cities, defeat our enemies, assuage our allies, uplift our poor, and, all in all, insure the greatest happiness of the greatest number...

...We have never really known such a conservatism...

...and, despite the best efforts of Russell Kirk, we are unlikely to...

...You cannot have a conservative regime, in the strict sense of the term, without a conservative people...

...The American people have had, and largely still have, a fixed habit of mind as to how social change should come about...

...it would surprise me if he were to get more than 36 per cent of the popular vote...

...That the defeat of Senator Goldwater will be a victory for the Squares is not a consoling idea to many, for whom the "square" is too restrictive and too regular a shape...

...and it is a very difficult thing to reconcile this dominion with the degree of individual liberty Americans have been used to...

...To begin with, it does not differ in all respects from the European variety, for it shares some of its most general features...

...in America, the rules are those of social dynamics...

...Things, after all—the sheer brute force of things—have been going its way...

...3. The Squares are those whose most conspicuous trait is a distrust—instinctive, unreasoned, but by no means irrational—of the Liberals and the Yahoos...

...In matters of this kind, they are mildly susceptible to the call of the Yahoo...

...But in his eagerness to see them realized, the Liberal is almost always managerial in his approach to power, sometimes downright technocratic...

...The American people have reacted in three different ways to the changing circumstances in which its free government has to operate...

...and a foreign policy demands that a government devise a plan and execute measures (most notably, though not exclusively, in its expenditures on armaments) that will affect the daily lives and ultimate destinies of all its citizens...

...Department of Labor should give courses in cleaning to household help...

...More important, the older conception of free government was only viable in its entirety so long as foreign affairs played a peripheral role in the nation's life...

...The coming election, then, will be a fight between the Squares and the Yahoos—the first such in American politics since 1896 (when Yahooism was on the "Left...

...For there is no question that there exists an American attitude and frame of mind which, though quite different in some respects from European conservatism, still merits being called American conservatism...

...The nomination was available to him because he was, in effect, the only "conservative" candidate, and it was fairly obvious that "progressive Republicanism" had, after two decades and as the consequence of its own ineptness, lost whatever significance and glamor it may once have possessed...

...Ours has always been a society committed to technological innovation, social mobility and popular sovereignty...

...the way of the Yahoo...

...Now it is quite obvious that this conception of free government has in recent times been less and less confluent with reality...

...In recent decades, the Liberal view has had considerable influence...

...It is also in favor of religion, both as a convenient ritual and as an ethical discipline, and is loath to entrust its affairs to the hands of freethinkers...

...We are now a nation composed not only of citizens but of powerful collectivities, and only the government can mediate between them, control their aggressions, regulate their appetites...

...But doing nothing is a form of conservatism only where society is governed by social statics...

...For myself, I believe that a healthy democracy is one that most closely approaches the form of a perfect square...

...Now that this reorganization has taken place, the Liberals are vexed, and deplore the prospect of our political fife being debased by ideological recriminations...

...This is but another way of saying that, as between individual freedom and his plans for the common good, the Liberal will automatically opt for the latter...

...It is in the area of foreign policy that they can unburden themselves of their free-floating resentment...

...These ideals are, in themselves, unexceptionable for the most part...

...Since most Yahoos are themselves beneficiaries and legatees of the welfare state, their opposition to its size and complexity is highly vague and rhetorical...

...Nevertheless, it remains a distinctly minority opinion...

...The words have actually been used...

...And for this knowledge to be effectual, he needs more power over the citizen than Americans have traditionally thought it desirable for a government to have...

...Most of foreign affairs falls under the dominion of necessity...

...Even our two traditional heroes—Washington and Lincoln, the fathers of our nation—took leading roles in the transformation of our political and social institutions...