Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR NO DELIVERY I have recently taken a one-year subscription to The New Leader., and so far I find it a provocative and informative publication; it treats on matters of importance and...
...Governor Peabody and Edward McCormack are known in Boston for their civil rights activities...
...Neal Wilgus One may applaud Professor Hook's generosity of spirit in denying the demonstrated senility of Bertrand Russell without feeling obligated to agree with him...
...According to the New Republic index, Senator Edward M. Kennedy voted liberal 92 per cent of the time, Senator Leverett Saltonstall only 17 per cent...
...Would it be possible to receive a copy of this issue, as I hate to miss any of them...
...It propounds a liberal Republican ideology clearly distinguishable from that espoused by most liberal Democrats...
...The above is one of an increasing number of letters we have been receiving concerning the haphazard delivery of the magazine by the U.S...
...There are five Republican Congressmen from Massachusetts, with only two, Conte and Morse, disassociating themselves from Senator Goldwater in 1964...
...Not only has the Democratic party been responsible for most of the state's pervasive corruption and bureaucratic boondoggling...
...We should all thank Hook for his masterpiece of self-congratulation, if he really wrote it...
...Cambridge, Mass...
...The obvious solution to this dilemma is a realignment of the American political structure which will move Dixiecrats into the Republican sector (Strom Thurmond has been quite cooperative here) and liberal Republicans into the Democratic section (following Senator Morse's example...
...Moreover, my contention that the Republican party in Massachusetts is more liberal was based not on past Congressional voting but on the overall role of the party in the Commonwealth...
...George Lodge was certainly a more coherent and consistent liberal than the Harvard football veteran the Massachusetts Democrats produced in 1962, and Edward McCormack can find little to criticize in Governor Volpe, who is decidedly more liberal on his record than Democratic predecessors like Foster Furcolo and Paul Dever, who were liberal primarily toward corruption...
...it treats on matters of importance and goes below the surface to the real heart of many problems...
...The Boston elections are non-partisan, and although candidates may run with party backing, they do not appear on the ballot as party representatives...
...The list of world figures to whom Hook can feel superior also includes Lazaro Cardenas, Jose de Castro, Isaac Deutscher, Danilo Dolci, Jean Paul Sarte, Simone de Beauvoir, Lelio Basso and Peter Weiss, who will serve on the tribunal, plus such persons as Norman Thomas, U Thant, Charles de Gaulle and Wayne Morris [sic], who also oppose the Vietnam war...
...REPUBLICAN LIBERALISM I was intrigued by George F. Gilder's article on "Reviving Republican Liberalism" (NL, October 24), specially the remarks on the Republican party of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts...
...so also in the gubernatorial race, Edward Mc-Cormack's record on civil rights as attorney general of the Commonwealth contrasts markedly with Governor Volpe's passiveness...
...not only has it produced a group of state legislators who rival Texas' in venality and ineptitude...
...Without a substantial programmatic difference between parties, party lines are insignificant and the voters are impotent, lacking a real choice...
...Woodbridge, Conn...
...Unfortunately, what both Gilder and the voters fail to appreciate is that the existence of a spirited and meaningful two-party system precludes the existence of a John Lindsay or a Mark Hatfield...
...3. The fact that Johnson failed to receive a full Democratic vote in Boston against Barry Goldwater only corroborates my estimation of the conservatism of Boston Democrats...
...Philip T. Zaleski George Gilder replies: To begin with Mr...
...In the House, the six Democratic representatives averaged 82 per cent favorable votes on the NR index, the five Republican representatives voted liberal less than half as often (38 per cent...
...Did the Massachusetts voter have a true choice between Brooke and Peabody...
...Contrary to his assertion, such a realignment is neither feasible (where are you going to put Senator Fulbright, Senator Symington, Governor Romney, or for that matter, Governor Wallace with his promiscuous welfarism...
...I have now received four issues of The New Leader (starting with September 12), but in this time I have not received the issue of October 10...
...Yet the only three votes from the Massachusetts delegation for the Collier effort to weaken the voting rights bill were cast by Republicans...
...Gilder alleges specifically that the Republicans are more liberal than the Democrats on civil rights and foreign aid...
...Here I would suggest that the last word on liberalism is not necessarily found in the Congressional voting tabulations of the New Republic...
...I develop these ideas much more fully in my book, The Party that Lost its Head (Knopf, 1966), which I humbly recommend to Mr...
...Moreover, Peabody's jingoistic attempt to exploit Brooke's moderate reservations on the Vietnam war confirms again my contention that the ideological positions of the two parties are undergoing significant changes in Massachusetts...
...Still, one would have been happy to see Lord Russell act as politely as Professor Hook has done...
...Governor Volpe did support Senator Goldwater...
...At the top the differences between the leading figures of the two parties were spectacular...
...Russell's extraordinary statements and vacillations are surely a symptom of advancing age...
...Zaleski's letter reflects a rigid and straited view of political ideology...
...So also, the two votes from Massachusetts in favor of the Bow amendment to cut economic assistance came from Republicans (and were decisively important, since the amendment carried, 186 to 183...
...Boston, with its 801,000 persons represents about 15 per cent of the population, which is about the same percentage of Massachusetts votes that President Johnson received from the City of Boston, although Boston does have a higher percentage of registered Democrats...
...To portray Governor Volpe and Edward Brooke as liberal is fantasy, not fact...
...I think defeat of Brooke, an 800,000 vote winner in 1964, by an uninspiring Democratic candidate like Peabody who had to undergo a tough primary campaign, would have been tragic evidence of the strength of the backlash and would have contributed further to that Negro demoralization which constitutes the nation's most serious domestic problem...
...4. Collins attempted to exploit the white backlash in his Senatorial primary campaign against Peabody, as Peabody, with his demagogic alarms about "terror in the streets," attempted to exploit the backlash against Brooke...
...The Democratic candidate for Governor, Edward McCormack, served on the Kiernan Commission that recommended much of the progressive civil rights legislation on education to this session of the Legislature...
...Liberal and conservative, in fact, are scarcely more definite terms than Democrat and Republican...
...The noble Englishman might have been polite enough to be senile privately rather than indulge in public display...
...Wilmington, Del...
...Perhaps Barry Goldwater was not in "the mainstream" of American thought, but a tweedledee-tweedledum race positively dams that stream...
...Since the source of difficulty is very often the locai receiving station, we urge subscribers with similar complaints to lei their local post offices know about them.-Ed...
...thus it would seem to be logical that they as well as the Republicans could suffer from the backlash...
...Valdis A. Augstkalns...
...Consider the records in the last Congress...
...The Boston mayoralty race is in 1967, not 1968, and a coalition similar to the coalition that elected Mayor Lindsay has elected Mayor Collins...
...The prescription of a "choice not an echo" is more unusual and more ingenuous, but no less noxious coming from a liberal than from a rightist...
...I take it that this number was either lost in the mail or fouled up somewhere along the line...
...This year, Ronald Reagan notwithstanding, Gilder's cry has been rapturously answered by the election returns...
...All the Republicans refused to associate themselves with the Goldwater campaign...
...The article claims that Republican votes were necessary to pass the law against de facto segregation when in fact, like the U.S...
...Throughout history, "liberal Republicanism," with few exceptions, has been oxymoronic...
...nor desirable (why permit a destructive and bigoted minority to control one of the nation's two major political parties and gain a possibility of controlling the country if the majority party is discredited...
...Nor was the alleged liberalism of Massachusetts Republicans evident in the latest campaign...
...But beyond that, I think Brooke's election-after he produced a book that stands as a detailed and intelligent liberal affirmation, and after he opposed escalation of the Vietnam war-is far more significant than the retiring Salton-stall's 17 per cent NR index...
...Another area where Hook may feel justifiably proud is his correction of Russell on simple terminology...
...Russell has made the vain announcement that the War Crimes Tribunal is not a trial...
...Louis, Mo...
...he stands corrected however by Hook's objectivity in choice of a title...
...Samuel P. Huntington Professor of Government Harvard University George F. Gilden who seems to have become the self-ordained guardian angel of liberal Republicanism, has delivered up yet another cry for the seraphic order of the Republican Progressive...
...Leaving Professor Huntington to contemplate that pulcritudinous embodiment of Democratic liberalism in Boston-though perhaps he would prefer to gaze on the monstrous freeways that have rendered the city an accessory to a cloverleaf-I will turn to the equally unpalatable liberal exposition provided by Philip Zaleski...
...Post Office-a problem which is plaguing virtually all other publications, too...
...While there are still pockets of Republican liberalism such as Congressmen Conte's and Morse's districts, the State Democratic party, on the basis of legislation and administration in the last 30 years, has been more liberal...
...5. Although Brooke did not choose to immolate his political career in emotional protests and exclamations, his book-which Niebuhr evidently dismisses as fantasy-is more uncompromising a liberal document than any written by an incumbent Democratic Senator...
...The answer, of course, is no...
...There is no reason for a liberal to have supported Peabody except a monotrematous Democratic partisanship, from which I hope my correspondent, whose letter is knowledgeable, stands exempt...
...Middletown, Conn...
...This letter is not a complaint, but rather a request...
...I will not suggest that such a mass migration is probable, but it is both feasible and desirable...
...Massachusetts Republicans may be liberal in comparison to Indiana Republicans or Texas Republicans...
...A man past 90 can readily be excused for not always thinking clearly...
...6. Except for Saltonstall and Volpe, Brooke led the GOP ticket in 1960 against a popular Democrat incumbent, White, who being far better known, benefitted from the Democratic registration advantage...
...I would be interested to know how the author explains Edward Brooke's defeat in 1960 by Kevin White, especially as the Negro areas of the state preferred White to Brooke...
...New York City Christopher Niebuhr Much of what my friend George Gilder had to say about Republican liberalism was perceptive and some of it was encouraging...
...By contrast the spending of state and local governments, with its emphasis on education and welfare, and by small private enterprise, with its high level of employment per dollar of investment, is proportionately far more beneficial to liberal values...
...civil rights law, both parties voted, and more Democrats than Republicans voted for enactment...
...The Republican party in Massachusetts until 1928 was known for its liberalism...
...In view of the fact that Republican Congressmen are subjected to persistent pressure to oppose a Democratic Administration, I think it is noteworthy that Morse and Conte have emerged as creative leaders of the House liberal bloc on several key issues while Massachusetts Democrats sit inertly and vote reflexively with the Administration...
...but it has projected into political power that creature from the black lagoon of the Boston Irish subconscious: Louise Day Hicks...
...John L. Maher...
...Anyone may be lucky enough to live long enough to become senile, and there is nothing pejorative in the fact of senility just as there is none about the orbit of Mercury...
...But on economic issues, civil rights, or foreign policy, they can't stand up to Massachusetts Democrats...
...Meanwhile American bombs continue to fall...
...Niebuhr: 1. The Massachusetts ADA affirms the superior liberalism of Republican state legislators on a wide range of issues, including the law against racial imbalance which got 100 per cent Senate GOP support...
...2. I chose the word disassociate carefully...
...As a liberal, I find these candidates uniformly appealing, but as a democrat, I find this uniformity appalling...
...But I cannot let him repeat unchallenged the myth that in Massachusetts the Republican party "is decisively more liberal than the Democratic...
...and I used the word "liberal" in my article with some misgivings, since in general it is associated with aggrandizement of the Federal government, at a time when Federal spending, with its emphasis on police, space and military activities, has rapidly diminishing liberal returns...
...After all, present senility should not reflect upon the value of Lord Russell's past accomplishments...
...Although I am a registered Republican, I would have supported Brooke eagerly even if he were a Democrat...
...Alamogordo, N.M...
...Or the Illinois voter between Percy and Douglas...
...The bad taste Lord Russell has shown in this matter opens him to public censure...
...Zaleski...
...It is peculiarly tragic that he should be taken seriously by followers he would most certainly have repudiated in his prime...
...Frederick E. Lowell The implications of Sidney Hook's article on Bertrand Russell are clear: Although Russell is an indisputably great figure in the world of philosophy, he has occasionally admitted mistakes and changed his position while Hook has remained unaffected by the events of the past 50 years and is therefore superior to Russell...
...On civil rights, Endicott Peabody took a far stronger position than Edward Brooke and has done far more in the past to push civil rights than Brooke has...
...These are simply facts which must be taken into account...
...I suggest we keep it that way...
...Thank you very much for your time and effort...
...Even the most liberal Republican representative, Morse, cast fewer liberal votes than any Democratic representative...
...LORD RUSSELL Sidney Hook is mistaken when he ("Lord Russell and the War Crimes Trial," NL, October 24) insists that Bertrand Russell is responsible for what he says merely because he records portions of his writings for Radio Hanoi...
...Of course, Peabody's civil rights activities, which he did not emphasize, are less well known than Brooke's race...
...Gilder is probably correct in asserting that a more conservative Republican party must be relegated to a permanent minority position, but it will surely have a more vital, unique and valuable role than it now holds...
...Democratic theory demands that political parties must not be all-encompassing, nearly congruent forces, but rather distinct units with distinct ideologies...
...The Massachusetts Democrats, in contrast voted unanimously against these efforts to weaken civil rights and foreign aid...
...This simply has no basis in fact, and the evidence which Gilder himself uses, i.e., congressional voting, runs directly counter to his conclusion...
...Professor Huntington's excellent letter continues my education at his hands which was initiated at Harvard, where he also found me somewhat more sweeping in the expression of my opinions than thorough in my research and annotation-but where, unhappily, I was not often given the last word...
...Politeness in the light of remembered friendships is a virtue, but the overlooking of the likeliest and most probable hypothesis is poor thinking...
Vol. 49 • November 1966 • No. 23
