Fair Game

...I hope that is so, that we can somehow catch fire from those brave men, be touched with the inspiration needed to reconcile the old liberal values of personal freedom with the newer group demands for greater economic equity...

...Perhaps liberals have been late in rethinking their somewhat automatic enthusiasm for certain social programs, but a rethinking is evidently going on...

...It was, we all understood, not the first such inquest in recent American history...

...There is a further problem with Bartley's attack...

...But theirs is an extreme situation, difficult for most Americans to identify with...

...His readiness to lump together certain programs under the rubric "liberal creed" may have its uses in debate, but it obscures what is actually going on among liberals today...

...Indeed, many blacks have begun to recognize the fundamental condescension implicit in the Warren rule, and some of them have reached the point of wanting their schools, as other ethnic groups have in the past...

...Fair Game BY WALTER GOODMAN Inquest into Liberalism A few weeks ago, I attended a "Conference on the Relevance of Liberalism," organized by Columbia University's Research Institute on International Change...

...For I am sure he would cry "Amen" to Robert Nis-bet's observation: "Of all the heresies afloat in modern democracy, none is greater, more steeped in intellectual confusion, and potentially more destructive of proper governmental function than that which declares the legitimacy of government to be directly proportional to its roots in public opinion—or, more accurately, in what the daily polls and surveys assure us is public opinion...

...No radicals or New Leftists were present, since a conference on radicalism, reportedly more rowdy than ours, had been held some months earlier...

...But whatever the impulses that gave rise to affirmative action and court-ordered busing, these programs no longer have the unquestioning support of the liberal community...

...But, one understands, the opinions of blacks in fact have little to do with his real objections, and it is a pity that he should feel compelled to pretend they do for our benefit...

...A helpful first step might be to stop defending or attacking a concept or tool like affirmative action as if it were all of a piece, and to sort out where it can be useful and where it must be invidious...

...The Liberal Creed In his effort to hoist liberals on their own petard, Bartley not only resorted to a dubious line of argument but went directly counter to what, as a good conservative, he probably believes regarding public opinion polls...

...Though Socialists may regret the fact, I don't have much trouble fitting into the role of Social Democrat as represented by Professor Howe's magazine, Dissent, and I don't think he would have any trouble fitting into most people's notions of what a liberal now is...

...There were critics, remember—but they were not to be found on the Right, unless you count the people who complained that we were not nukeing the enemy...

...Thus does America blur once sacred definitions...

...If we could rouse ourselves to work together with the spirit liberals brought to the fight for industrial unions in the '30s, to the War effort, to civil rights in the '60s, that would at least be a show of life...

...Has any other political movement ever been declared dead so many times...

...Well, when somebody from the Wall Street Journal has a good word for an allegedly liberal establishment, early warning antennae begin to quiver...

...Charles Frankel, the official liberal for the occasion, told us that he personally had attended a half dozen such meetings since reaching his majority...

...Perhaps it is time conservatives explained to the rest of us what lessons, in their view, are to be drawn from the Vietnam catastrophe, and how they are to be applied...

...In fact, the consensus seemed to be that it runs directly counter to such cherished liberal principles as freedom from the impositions of the state and a high regard for the worth of the individual...

...But the conservatives' record in opening up this society to blacks and minorities is not so impressive that they can now find fault with the liberals and let it go at that...

...Two of their most strenuous opponents, for example, Norman Pod-horetz and Midge Decter, both present at the conference, are now associated with the Coalition for a Democratic Majority, a group attempting to bring together (possibly in the service of Henry Jackson) persons who think of themselves as New Deal liberals but don't like many of the notions currently associated with liberalism...

...He was especally hard on what he sees as a liberal affection for such programs as court-ordered busing and affirmative action...

...His remarks, characteristically intelligent and decent, persuaded me that it is much more fruitful today to talk about the divisions among liberals than about those between Socialism and liberalism...

...Where were all the conservatives while the war was building up...

...Robert L. Bartley, editor of the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal, sighed a bit over the passing of what he likes to think of as the old liberal establishment...

...The disappointments of nominally liberal policies have left liberalism stunned, wearied, floundering...

...The criticism of liberalism from the Right was more stern, though always gentlemanly...

...The critique from the Left was entrusted to Irving Howe, professed Social Democrat...

...Nevertheless, it was not easy to take seriously this conservative's chiding of liberals for getting us into Vietnam...

...You have to have a very high opinion of corporation lawyers and a certain reverence for the clubs where they performed their wonders to feel much regret at their passing...

...One of the odd features of the conference was that everyone seemed agreed that affirmative action, for example, was a product of the liberal mentality, yet only one of the assembled liberals—Congressman Donald Fraser of Minnesota—found a good word to say for it...

...he misses it and believes the nation misses it...

...It seems to me, too, that The Lesson of Vietnam cannot be as simple as some liberal Congressmen are making out and, in any case, guilt over the past has never been a trusty guide for the future...

...1 think we are going to have to find ways of tapping our regenerative sources here at home...

...The most fervent and effective proponent of affirmative action, even at its beginnings as it happens, was the Nixon Administration—that President's way, perhaps, of annoying the faculties of elite colleges where he found so little support...

...At any rate, some 40 participants, mainly from academe and mainly well disposed toward liberalism, though not in complete agreement on what precisely they are well disposed toward, were again paying their respects...

...As to busing and affirmative action, these are, to be sure, "liberal" programs put forward, despite the best intentions, with a certain disinclination to face some of their inescapable consequences...

...Having mastered his grief, Bartley proceeded to chide present-day liberals for first leading the country into Vietnam and then bathing in guilt over the outcome...

...Note the way this paragraph fades away, from "a majority of black parents" to "many blacks" to "some of them," ending up in the altogether arbitrary and misleading conclusion that busing and quotas are being used to help blacks "whether they want it or not...

...As for phrases like "affirmative action" and "court-ordered busing," they assuredly have been used by liberals to conceal rather than investigate, and some of the merchandise concealed is less than top grade...

...Yet the inner logic of Brown and of today's liberal creed requires busing and quotas to help the blacks whether they want it or not...

...Beware of conservatives bearing compliments...

...These reproaches stirred a sympathetic chord in a number of breasts...

...Moreover, the debate over the issues involved is not always conducted on a plane worthy of the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal—and Bartley, discussing the Brown decision, provided us with an example of the sort of disingenuous attack even the high-minded are sometimes given to: public opinion polls typically find that busing is opposed by a majority of black parents as well as white...

...Several speakers at the conference suggested, by way of peroration, that the example of the Russian dissidents might stir liberals in this country, renew our confidence in the value of the liberties which have historically been associated with our cause and are now under assault throughout most of the world...

...Still, one can appreciate the lumps in the throats down at the Journal over the loss of some power by a bunch of privileged wasps...

...Yet they seemed to buy Bartley's charges against all liberals in toto...

...Bartley can have no doubts about what black voters would choose if they were given the choice between such programs and nothing beyond words of encouragement on his editorial page?what conservatives have generally offered minorities in this country...

...Unless one is prepared to label them New Conservatives as some label-appliers already have, their group's existence is surely evidence that liberals are by no means united as to what constitutes liberalism these days...

...The Liberal Languor If, in fact, liberals were foursquare behind some overmastering cause today, our condition would in a sense be more promising...