The Liberal Crisis-Now

...If the battle at the Democratic Convention was a scene out of the Theater of the Absurd, foreshadowing the possible fate of the national Democratic party in the years ahead (as exemplified by the situation in California for a decade now), then the battle in the streets was an even more revealing omen of the coming conflicts in America between the "provos" and the police, between the kids and the cops...

...One position called for an unconditional bombing halt...

...But to a sector of the Left —the Communists—the enemy was social democracy...

...The extremist Armageddon will be at hand...

...He ran through a half-dozen possible candidates, each of whom could provide more instant votes than Edmund Muskie and all of whom were men of some ability...

...Then the great danger was Hitler...

...The theory called for polarizing politics by provoking police power...

...They are not likely to bother Nixon, Agnew—or even Wallace...

...Nixon's swift turn to the right?not even hinted at in the gop platform—was no doubt hastened by the debacle at the Democratic National Convention...

...Then the Liberals moved on to endorse Humphrey by a vote of 199 for, 11 against, and 11 abstaining...

...The real danger for the future, however, is not what happened in Chicago but failure to learn the lesson of Chicago—to recognize that the provos, by themselves, add up to merely a frenzied few...

...Lincolnesque" in his appearance and in his instinct...

...The end result was a howling success for the new revolutionaries...

...Last October, I outlined the electoral mechanics that might put a conservative Republican into the White House in 1968...

...Hubert did mean it...

...Hence, too, the increasing talk out of the right corner of the mouth by the Republican candidates...

...The liberal community," the article continued, "has not, until recently, been even dimly aware of the dangerous potential...

...In his introduction to the American edition, Edward A. Shils summarized the essence of Sorel's thinking: "Sorel's ethic is the ethic of the political sect living in the midst of a continuous crisis, with all the stress on purity and all the fear of contamination by the affairs of this world which mark the sect...

...on Thursday, he, in turn, chose a man who could be President...

...In this stifling atmosphere, dissent would be treason...

...The second impact would be on the Southern Congressional delegations that would normally vote for the Democratic candidate for President if the contest went to the House...

...And precisely that development was the gloomy forecast of a follow-up article I wrote a month later, "The Liberal Crisis II" (NL, November 20, 1967): "If this dissent over Vietnam is so maneuvered as to split liberal ranks in the election, or to get liberals to say 'anybody but Johnson' [read Humphrey], or to have liberals 'sit-it-out' in '68, Right-wing Republicans can name their most reactionary candidate and count on winning...

...There was evidence last October that the balloting of 1968 would be the prelude to a period of "prolonged reaction," rather than merely another election in which Republicans might come to power...

...Some of the bloodiest battles before and at the convention were fought, not over policy in Southeast Asia, but over convention rules, seating of delegations, credentials—and personalities...

...The most ominous and revealing of these appeals to the Right is Nixon's prescription for crime control: Its emphasis on police power to the neglect of social programs is the age-old return to repression as a substitute for reform...

...Regrettably, there were men on both sides who showed minimum enthusiasm for resolving the Vietnam issue in the platform...

...It would provide the base—standing at arms to repress internal riot and external enemies—for a garrison state...

...As part of their campaign against the McCarthyites, the provos had infiltrated the peace movement to egg it on...

...domestic violence would unite the reactionaries...

...He caught the look...

...First, the office is no longer the place to shelve would-be Presidents: This year two Vice Presidents (Nixon and Humphrey) are running for President...

...only to retract the hapless phrase when advised that the verbiage was a steal from Joe McCarthy...

...I mean it," he insisted grimly, "I want a possible President...

...On the Thursday morning of convention week, Humphrey was reviewing his decision on the Vice Presidency...

...Pressured from the Right by George Wallace on the outside and Senator Strom Thurmond (R.-S.C...

...Co-coordinator Rennie Davis was more specific in forecasting "200, 300 Chicagos...

...In the ensuing struggle, Vietnam was almost forgotten...

...But above all is the fretful feeling since the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King and Robert F. Kennedy, that a statesman's life in these troublous times is more a flicker than a flame...

...campus shutdowns...

...Put plainly, neither liberalism nor radicalism, neither democracy nor civil liberties can survive in a politics dominated by polarization, heading for a showdown based on physical violence...

...But their feeble attempts to isolate the provos were swept aside in the manufactured maelstrom...

...His choice of Spiro Agnew for the Vice Presidency was more than a pay-off to a Nelson Rockefeller deserter: It was an open appeal to the spirit of growing reaction—a fact that becomes clearer with the role assigned to Agnew in the campaign and with each new speech he blares...

...And if liberal democrats allow the clash between the provocators and the police to drive responsible progressives from the political arena, the anarchists will w:n their war...

...first Democratic Senator from Maine in generations...

...The outcome would have to be a vigilante victory...

...A week after the Democratic debacle, the Liberal party, meeting in New York, passed a resolution calling for an end to the bombing in North Vietnam "as a prelude toward productive negotiations...

...Second, by involving the "innocents" they had "radicalized" a larger segment of the youth...

...In contrast with the sober, stuffy Republican Convention, the con-clash in Chicago looked like the Dead End Kids gone political...

...The television montage blended the excitement in the Amphitheater and the explosions in the streets into one clash of "new" versus "old," or Left versus Right, or beatniks versus brutes...

...The mass appeal of such a regime would be directed to white against black America, to chauvinism against internationalism...

...Maybe Nixon had this in mind, too, when he chose Agnew...

...He declared that he is for a nuclear non-proliferation treaty, but that it should not be ratified now...

...A year ago I warned that in the debate over Vietnam, liberals should distinguish between dialogue and diatribe, between difference and division...

...an Electoral College deadlock followed by deals and demonstrations...

...It's not too late...

...A year ago, this notion was viewed as bizarre and described by one bemused observer as "science fiction...

...David Dellinger of the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam looked ahead to November, explaining that his group would disrupt the elections by "sitting in the booths all day" until removed by the police...

...Whoever was to blame, the whole party came out looking like a sure loser—sure enough to allow the real Nixon to stand up...

...He came out for school desegregation, but against withholding Federal funds from schools that fail to obey the law...

...another for a bombing halt if troops were not thereby endangered...

...In 1968, they might do otherwise...

...For the nonce, those intent upon disrupting the Democratic party found encouragement from those intent upon destroying the democratic process...

...The coalition that might have halted Hitler was torn with fratricide...

...I looked at Humphrey with the kind of look that means to say, "I don't need a campaign speech...

...The great preoccupation has been with Vietnam—pro and con—almost exclusively...

...Liberal party Chairman Donald Harrington—for several decades an acknowledged leader in peace movements and an outspoken critic of the Administration —stated that if he had been a delegate to the Democratic Convention he would have voted for Humphrey...

...If not, the battlefield belongs to them—and the rest of us are victims of a struggle we never wanted...

...The South may now lead America down the path to reaction...

...In that case the Senate would choose the Vice President, who in turn would become President...

...In the month before the election, and especially in the months before the Inauguration, unforeseen events could still turn all political tables topsy-turvy...

...For the television news broadcasters, the embroglio was a welcome, if repulsive, moment: They were delighted with the kind of drama that gives them high ratings against their rivals, the morbidly violent gun, gang, and gore shows...

...Indeed, the knowledgeable pundits of the country's leading newspaper could not distinguish between the amateur peace protesters and the professional anarchists either, sentimentally lumping them together as "our children...

...The liberals who surrender 1968 are also surrendering 1972 and, perhaps, our last best hope for the survival and growth of a free society...

...The Democratic split simply encouraged the gop to unite around Nixon...

...For the millions of American progressives who sit-out 1968, there would be little solace...

...Third, the damage done to the Democratic party would wipe out the liberal middle ground and hasten the day of confrontation between the extremes...

...The drama of the 1968 election," I wrote then, "will be played against a double backdrop: violence and Vietnam...

...they welcomed Hitler to power with the to accomplish...

...In their view, they succeeded because their actions seemed to accomplish exactly what they wanted torical analogies for 1968, it is less in the America of the 1940s and 1950s than in the Germany of the 1930s...

...The plank was passed unanimously —as a similar plank might have been in Chicago...

...But there is one key decision that can be made by thinking leaders of American liberalism: to win the election of 1968 in order to preserve a democratic middle ground and operating mass base for the years ahead...

...If McCarthy had been nominated, the provos would not have relented...

...to use its body of mass emotion—to "radicalize" by involvement in violence...

...The praxis was to apply the theory to the symbol of the world Establishment: the Democratic party of the U.S.A...

...This confrontation was also adumbrated in my article last October: "If one must look for hisproclamation, 'Nach Hitler, Kom-men Wir.'" This is not to suggest that sds and the Youth International Party (Yippies), are Communists in the accepted sense: Neither Josef Stalin nor Aleksei Kosygin are among their heroes...

...assassination...

...the forces of the "old" politics resisted, with Vietnam as just another issue...

...ghetto uprisings...

...on the inside, Nixon nominated Agnew...

...Separating the professional provos from those they manipulated would have required a sophistication far beyond the ken of any Chicago mayor...

...The only cheer would be among the provos, who helped realize a self-fulfilling prophecy about the coming police state in America...

...Since then, the idea has been plagiarized and popularized...

...They will achieve their proven purpose, which is to destroy the Democratic party as the first step toward destroying American liberalism...

...Within two weeks after the Democratic Convention, Nixon announced that he is for the oil depletion allowance (a hand-out to a few millionaires) and for retaining Section 14B of Taft-Hartley (the back of his hand to a few million workers...

...Then he ran down Mus-kie's qualifications: Phi Beta Kappa...

...The "polarizers" must be isolated, whether they are sadists on a police force or provocators in a revolutionary sect...

...Should they win the nomination for Ted, Jess, George, Gene, Rennie, or Tom in 1972, they would still lose the election...

...Today's anarcho-intellectuals prefer the contemporary adaptors of the Frenchman's views on violence: Fanon, Mao, Guevara, and Debray are studied, debated, revered—and put into praxis...

...Both assumptions are highly questionable...

...Viewed objectively—if that is possible—the Democratic debate on Vietnam became a discussion over ever narrower alternatives to a single item...

...At the convention there were placards reading "Ted and Jess in '72...

...they turned their main fire against those closest to them...

...They chose the Democratic Convention to wed praxis?to use an old-fashioned Leninist word—to theory...

...By Gus Tyler In the intervening year events have closely followed the script as written, though at a more rapid rate than expected...

...His promise to end the war would have been stigmatized as the supreme hypocrisy, a peace gesture to camouflage the inherent bellicosity of an imperial America...

...The Communists termed the Social Democrats 'social fascists...

...As the forces of light debated what should be done over there, the forces of darkness would take power over here...

...In this atmosphere, it is doubtful that the liberals in the Democratic party could name their candidate in 1972...

...Third, the possibility of a deadlock in the House (as unlikely as it may be) has made the Vice Presidential nomination more important...

...In that same piece a year ago, I suggested the outside possibility that no one of the top three Presidential candidates would receive a majority in the House...

...They were dedicated to perpetuating the division as an instrument of inner-Party struggle, or—at the emotional rather than political level—for purposes of "vindication and recrimination...

...The Democratic party itself would become polarized, with liberals caught again in a hopeless middle...

...The idea is to wipe out the middle ground, as in pre-Hitler Germany...

...Agnew continued the theme by charging Humphrey was "soft on Communism...

...The crux of the matter to him, a coalition government in South Vietnam, was somehow obscured by the bomb smoke...

...When the convention was over, the neo-Sorelists proudly proclaimed victory...

...The days of Joe McCarthy provide only a hint of the depth of distrust that would face anyone who dared speak up for the cause of peace at home and abroad...

...The traditional element in the party would move further right to accommodate to the new mood, particularly where they find their constituents (whether in the South or in the blue-collar North) thinking more about race than class...

...The "new politics" wing of the party would find itself torn with sectarian strife as the "purists" seek to purify the party...

...First, their provocations had unmasked the Establishment, revealing the ugly face of fascism behind the bourgeois democracy...

...Although they talk about "little Chicagos everywhere the candidates appear," the main thrust of the provos will be directed against the Democratic party nominee, against the core of American liberalism...

...In short, a President...

...Said Tom Hayden, top demonstration coordinator: "We are going to create little Chicagos everywhere the candidates appear...

...It is the ethic of crisis, and it is of a piece with the expectation of an ever-deepening crisis which is resolved ultimately only by an apocalyptic transformation in which everything is totally changed...

...hardworking, solid thinking man...

...While liberals prepared for an internal Armageddon, Richard Nixon conscientiously gathered his delegates and quietly composed a Republican show of unity...

...In the struggle within the Left, the anti-political provos used the confrontation to war against a pro-political peace movement that looked upon the Democratic party as its proper instrument for social reform...

...This significant action by the New York Liberal party received minimal coverage: It lacked conflict...

...The far greater danger arising from the political crisis within the country has gone almost unnoticed...

...Sorel is not widely quoted by the Yippies, largely because he is not one of the NOW generation...

...To participate—except for purposes of infiltration and disruption—would have been a violation of their anti-parliamentarian principles...

...While I normally dislike men in public life who reveal political intimacies, I feel entitled to one small revelation in the interest of public understanding...

...The handful (literally) of Old Leftists who were delegates to the Democratic Convention had no more use for the provos than the French Communists had for Danny Cohn-Bendit, and vice versa...

...still another for a halt as a first step toward de-escalation and a mutual cease-fire...

...The most sophisticated in the streets were the members of Students for a Democratic Society (sds) and their assorted allies, who had come to Chicago for a confrontation...

...In Chicago, the anarchists won the battle...

...But," he said, "I want a man who can be President...

...Today the forecast is more than likely, unless the land tips so far to the Right that Nixon wins in a landslide...

...No doubt because I was the only one on hand, he used me as a sounding board...

...The forces of the "new" politics were reaching out for control of the party, with Vietnam as the major issue...

...In the background stood Senator Eugene McCarthy, who had been insisting that the bombing halt was not the key question at all...

...The division among the Democrats over Vietnam did not encourage the Republicans to go dovish, as some had hoped (even Rockefeller's program was indistinguishable from Lyndon Johnson's...

...The first impact of such disturbances would be to swell the Wallace vote —both North and South...

...Inside the convention hall, the provos were virtually without representation...

...A few of those directly involved knew the score—mostly old political hands in the McCarthy movement...

...Humphrey's war on poverty...

...Second, the choice of Agnew focused public attention on the nomination of the Vice Presidents in both parties...

...Nixon also decried Hubert Humphrey's efforts to combat crime by warring on poverty: "I say that doubling the conviction rate in this country would do far more to cure crime in America than quadrupling the funds for Mr...

...Today I return to the subject, not to boast of oracular powers but to appeal to the actors to rewrite a tragic script...

...This '72 timetable makes a double assumption: that Nixon will be beatable then, and that the Democratic party will look to its liberal wing for a candidate...

...If anything, they are closer to the great French anarchist, Georges Sorel, whose Reflections on Violence (1906) still provides the most convincing rationale for the politics of polarization through provocation...

...Crediting George Wallace with enough electoral votes to throw the Presidential election into the House of Representatives, I wrote that "Southern strategy in this situation must be envisioned against the background of riots in the summer of 1968...

...It is in the continuance of this un-probed concordat in the days before November and in the years beyond the election...

...Again, the real danger lies not in the passing emotional identification between dissenters in the hall and demonstrators on the streets (as inevitable as it was unplanned...

...Vietnam would split the liberals...

...No man in this generation, Harrington said, "has done more for the peace movement," and the Vice President is the man who could be best trusted to put together "the pieces of the puzzle of peace...

...Then to protect his Left flank, he had the liberal youth-appealing Mayor of New York, John Lindsay, second the nomination...

...They have only one great skill: the ability to initiate negative actions based on mass emotions and the mass movements of others...

...And he spoke that early, quiet Thursday morning—after the hate at the Hilton—with the intensity and insight of a man who knew that for some, at this hour, life is as volatile as the times...

...The good Kennedy and McCarthy and antiwar kids were just cannon fodder for the anarcho-intellectuals...

...The other alternative is to sit-it-out (or work for defeat) in '68, hoping to make a clean comeback with the "new" politics four years later...

...A Nixon regime—postponing action on school desegregation, building jails instead of homes, repressing labor, protecting the tax evaders, retreating from the nascent entente with the Soviets—can only heighten tensions here and around the world...

...On Wednesday, the Democratic Convention chose a man who could be President...

...first Democratic Governor of Maine in several decades, served two good terms...

...Yet for that handful—some of whom, a tiny fraction, came to Chicago to lay the foundation for a fourth party ticket in 1968 (or to crucify the Democratic party this year in hopes of resurrecting it in 1972)—the mini-riot was like manna from Michigan Avenue...

...I am not privy to know...

...It was a miniature preview of the nation's fate should the polarization of politics proceed in the U.S...

...Many of these events may be beyond immediate control: war in Eastern Europe or the Middle East...

...In 1968, the Vice Presidential nominees have taken on a special significance...

...Actually, there was a wide variety of differences among the factions on both sides, and a majority of the participants—including the extremely active and articulate—displayed minimal sophistication...

...The provos have a special distaste for the McCarthy movement, which de-radicalized so many young rebels by moving them from anti-politics into politics...

...By the time the convention met, Vietnam—the original point of difference—was only one item in an ever widening controversy between the "new" versus the "old" politics...