DID YOU THROW YOUR VOTE AWAY?

...The editorial endorsement of Stevenson—that is, of the Democratic Party in the 1956 election—was mostly a keenly reasoned demonstration that the Democrats had been as bad as the Republicans...

...Had he sold out...

...The one peculiar reform that was needed, even in a War-and-Welfare State, is under way, as the result of the unanimous decision, written by a Republican Chief Justice, of a Democratic and Republican Supreme Court, and in support of this reform that deplorable character, Nixon, was (with fewer votes to lose, to be sure) a shade more outspoken than Our Man...

...and to the perpetuation of crisis the Democratic and Republican candidates both committed themselves and us, without fear or favor...

...The Republican chairman of the Atomic Energy Committee was energized...

...Nonconformity is the issue...

...And Stevenson, who spoke heroically to the American Legion in 1952, and got licked, has not spoken heroically since...

...Why should anybody revolt...

...and the War-and-Welfare Democracy defeated the War-and-Still-More-Wel-fare Dictatorship...

...During the transformation of a society which once cultivated independence as a virtue in itself, the task of maintaining that virtue devolves upon an ever dwindling number of men and organizations...

...But it never said die...

...The only disjunction between the Republican and Democratic candidates in 1956—between the candidates, not the parties—appeared suddenly halfway through the campaign when Stevenson proposed an end to hydrogen bomb tests and consideration of ending the draft...

...I do not believe that the editor of The Progressive, hammering out his stint, hammering down the printing bill, and hammering the writers on the head until they got their stuff in, ever had any idea of the greatness of The Progressive, ever believed it was so...

...What did they mean...

...And in the four-year revulsion that followed, 1952-56, nobody revolted...

...I voted against it...

...There is a great deal said, nowadays, about the loneliness of the crowd...

...The Democrats would do nothing to redeem it...

...Both of them had to accept the War-and-Welfare State because a vast majority of their electors were satisfied with it and wanted no other...

...But there was no evidence that the grounds were moral, or that the candidate was dealing morally with war and militarism, with the draft as a moral curse and a moral blight or nuclear (or any other kind) of war as a mosal blasphemy...

...But the loneliness of the solitary abides, and it is very lonely...

...They tell us that we will be listened to inside the Party, as Constructive Critics, but never outside, Sitting Bullhead and sneering and snarling and refusing to Get In There and Work (or Fight...

...not one word of remembrance or remorse...

...We who have fought for independence in America have grown old and, with the precipitate thinning of the ranks in the War-and-Welfare State, lonely...

...Or did he raise the issue on moral grounds...

...That bull-headedness, without The Progressive's intelligence, took some queer turns historically, in, for example, the Populist movement and in Colonel McCormick...

...What difference would it make which of them won in 1956...

...We are not electing a dictator, but an executive of a representative government...

...In the No-Party State, partisanship (except for partisans of the Party) is confined to the six-feet-underground...

...I am one of those thousands now who could say, if they did betray that call before they were old, "I smartened up a decade or two before Norman Thomas did, but, boy," and that moment flames again and dies, "he was wonderful that day...

...We not only look better than we are, but we do better than we are, and in this limited sense we are better than we are...

...and, conversely, whatever it does for you, do not praise me...

...In that case, he was probably wrong, because decisions of military intelligence belong to the militarily intelligent, who have, to put it extremely mildly, Eisenhower's ear...

...The fully developed War-and-Welfare State is also the No-Party State, as we know it in Fascist Italy, Communist Russia, and Nazi Germany, and before that in Augustan Rome and Periclean Athens...

...I know who lost...

...But that was not what was important...

...But it is the purest coincidence that McCarthy, that northern Bilbo, that midwest McCarran, was a Republican...

...I am one of those thousands who would be haunted by that moment, when, as they grew practical, and then old, and then moribund, they betrayed his call...

...Whatever the United States government does to you, my friends, in the next four years, do not blame me...

...In its issue of October, 1952, the editor of The Progressive, under the beautiful title, "Adlai, Warts and All," came out for Stevenson and whoever was running with him...

...Chaos is not democracy and anarchy is not a social order...

...Nor does the No-Party State have to emerge (just because it did once, in Germany) from an unworkable welter of parties...

...And the Roosevelt of 1932 was a conservative Roosevelt, who turned out to be a Traitor To His Class...

...and in time it persuades, and we Swell the Ranks—thinning those whose monotonous volley of No, Nevers, mark them as incurably immature...

...who, in the War-and-Welfare State, wants to get rid of it...

...They tell us that they need us—and they do—to Liberalize the Party, or to Preserve the New Deal Gains...

...The second cause of conformity, and the consequence of the first, is militarism and war...

...The Republican Physicists were summoned to contradict the Democratic Physicists' claim that detection of a detonation anywhere was possible...

...It was not that Socialism—or the Socialist Party—was what the dwindling ranks of the opponents of the No-Party State were fighting for or voting for...

...And how they pour it on, on the editor of The Progressive, on Norman Thomas, on me...

...In the issue of October, 1956, the editor of The Progressive came out, far from gladly, for Adlai again...

...This much, I think, we can say for sure: They presented an issue, the first and only issue of the campaign, and an issue that stood a good chance of ringing the national bell...

...but I don't know...

...Bipartisanship is the half-way marker to the No-Party State...

...The two platforms were interchangeable...

...No half-way intelligent man, and the editor of The Progressiive is one, ever, in the midst of the small, sordid business of life, judges himself well enough...

...What difference did it make which of them won in 1952...

...Was it James J. Garfield who dropped the first little secret hell-bomb on Hiroshima...

...He is still our man," less gladly, less madly even than a month earlier, but still ours...

...The last discernible divisions between the two big parties, divisions on slavery, tariffs, and taxes, have disappeared completely...

...and it should have urged its readers to fight for independence with their votes...

...This country is half way to the No-Party State...

...Obviously the Republican pulse-fingerers had reported to the high command that the issue was a vote-getter for Stevenson...

...Conformist dictatorship is the last, not the first, manifestation of the emerging War-and-Welfare No-Party State, and there is no reason why voluntary, or grassroots, conformity, where everyone is rich and at war, should not be, at least for a long time, enough...

...Eisenhower's reaction was anger...

...Up until 1952 The Progressive was one of the lonely few left...

...In twenty years, 1933-52, we transformed the civilian dog-eat-dog America of our recent youth into the War-and-Wel-fare State...

...he can not be...

...It wasn't Eisenhower, but Truman, who said, "I put my Communists in jail," and who invented the loyalty-security process, nor was it Nixon, but Hubert Humphrey, who sponsored the law to put the Communists in jail and capped McCarthy-ism by making its violation a crime...

...And the revolt against continuous hot-and-cold running War was confined to the traitors...

...There is no greater moment in the memory of thousands of college men and women of my generation than the moment when Norman, lank and long, high-pitched, fiery, and full-humored, stood in the college auditorium, the symbol of the independent man in America, and called upon youth to stay youthful and live up its life-loving rejection of war, all war, and oppression, all oppression, and conformity, all conformity...

...not one word to suggest that it was possible in America, for an independent man, fighting only for the preservation of independence, to choose to vote Socialist, Communist, Socialist Worker, Socialist Labor, Single Tax, Prohibition, or if, like several fighters for independence, he wanted to fight the whole frame-up, not vote at all...

...The warts were plainer...

...And as every fool—but only every fool— knows, you have to have power to get things done...

...and to those who told us not to take the speeches seriously, the reply can be made that the two men, if either was to have a chance of winning, had to be interchangable, give or take a kidney or a spelling test here or there...

...the little ones, in the armaments plants, vote Democratic...

...What we do is assess the total situation in terms of what we want to get done and adopt whatever means appear to us, in our Clouded judgment, to be likeliest to get it done...

...War has done wonders for Welfare...

...I am one of those thousands whom that moment enthralled in a time when idealism was not misdirected, as now, but was not directed at all...

...The No-Party State is coming our way...

...not one word to characterize the absolutely unprincipled character of major party political denominations in America...

...with the H-bomb and draft issue Stevenson smoked him out...

...But he was forced to have something more to say in the succeeding weeks...

...he had to answer a civilian on military questions...

...Nonconformity is not good per se...

...The commitment—be it only psychological—that he has had to make to the former National Commander of the American Legion, who serves as the Democratic Veterans Campaign Committee chairman, and who calls the Fund for the Republic a Communist front, is a heavier commitment than any he could make to us...

...The only crisis in the War-and-Welfare State is the moral crisis of War and of Welfare produced by War...

...So fully, in the four intervening years, had the editor accepted the pernicious fallacy, "There is no choice," that this time the fallacy was not even presented...

...As Roosevelt's enemies taunted him with Never Having Met a Payroll, our friends taunt us with Never Having Rung a Doorbell...

...We all know how rapidly this number has shrunk, and how few men and organizations there are today who have not found painful, but compelling, reasons for becoming Democrats or Republicans...

...What about those proposals...

...Our friends among them, instead of dismissing us, have urged responsibility, influence, and effectiveness on us...

...True, a happy concatenation of world events lifted the United States from economic depression during the Democratic regime, in the year 1938 (not 1933...

...But there was (as the editor of The Progressive would say) no choice...

...Independence is not good per se...

...It all sounded sincere...

...Stevenson was fighting from 'way behind...

...I was one of them, and it gives me great pleasure, on this inauspicious occasion, to use the future perfect in the interest of future perfection and say that, by the time these perishable words are published, I shall have voted for Darlington Hoopes and Samuel Friedman, the Socialist ticket...

...Was it Calvin Coolidge who, single-handed and despotically, plunged the United States into war in Korea...

...It was rough on the Old Soldier...

...Remember when it didn't make any difference who ran for Vice-President...

...The big question is, did Stevenson raise the issue in order to get votes and, if not, why hadn't he raised it before...

...What had happened to the editor of The Progressive...

...they made sense, he said, but they did not compensate for the absence, in both candidates' campaigns, of a bold and imaginative analysis and program...

...not one word to indicate that a minority party existed or ever had existed...

...he must, as a man of honor in a democracy, be the man of the vast majority of those who want him, work for him, pay for him, and pray for him...

...We were assured, rather, that we could still deter the Russians by our superior strength without the draft, and that we had enough bombs now to blow up the world...

...There is no greater tribute to the greatness of Norman Thomas than to blame him for the collapse of independence in America...

...it is always half persuasive...

...and so it was with the Populists, the Bull-Moosists, and the Progressives of yore...

...Men like him, and like Norman Thomas, and like Stevenson and Eisenhower, and like me, do not sell out...

...It should have fought the trend toward the No-Party State...

...and to those who maintained, confidentially, that the platforms should not be taken seriously, the reply can now be made that the two speaking campaigns (except for Stevenson's H-bomb and draft proposals, of which more below) were in-terchangable...

...The task of fighting for independence, devolving as it has upon a shrinking body of men and organizations, devolved very, very heavily upon the few, always fewer, who were left...

...Is it Eisenhower who fastened militarism upon the American people...

...But he is not our man...

...It was the lonely old men, still fighting, however feebly, for independence in America who lost...

...Not, "we are still his man...

...When we say No, Never, to War and War's Welfare, we Cut Ourselves Off from the Mainstream, which our friends say we have got to Swim With and which we say will sink us...

...What should The Progressive have done in the 1956 campaign...

...And power is not in minority party or protest politics, but in being elected, or in having power over someone who is...

...Anti-Communism is the first...

...So distressed was he in doing so, in 1952, that he devoted almost half of that editorial, and the important half (the beginning and the end) to explaining why The Progressive was going over to the Democratic-Republican camp...

...The revolt against Welfare was confined to the principled few among the rich, since the unprincipled rich along with all of the poor were made richer by War...

...Many ardent peace people, on the other hand, seized upon the Stevenson proposals as bold and imaginative...

...The Nation and The New Republic had long, long since gone over, always, of course, for painful, but compelling, reasons...

...so many people were there in America who opposed, only in the name of independence, the first appearance of the No-Party State which, in the full flower of the New Freedom, did not even offer Welfare with its War...

...it should have fought to get them on...

...something less than moral postures...

...But the big Merchants of Death owe what they are today to the Roosevelt and Truman regimes, no less than to Eisenhower...

...The campaign recently ended will be remembered for its recognition of bipartisanship's seizure of domestic issues, foreign issues having disappeared with Willkie and Vanden-berg...

...The big ones, in the executive suite, vote Republican...

...But we didn't...

...fantasy suggests that the liberal Stevenson might do the same thing...

...to which we had to reply that we were left wondering which part of the campaign was oratory and which part truth...

...Of course not...

...The Progressive, of Madison, Wisconsin, was, on the national scene, the last significant journal of bull-headed independence, coming out of the prairies and reporting the bull-headed prairie conviction that America was still promises...

...The assessment may be wrong because our faculties are afflicted, and therefore the means wrong...

...I was never a Socialist, and I never voted anything but Socialist...

...The War-and-Welfare State appears to be here to stay...

...For twenty, thirty, forty, it seems like a hundred, years the people who at birth abdicated their responsibility to independence have called us "irresponsible...

...Or, while his raising it might, willy-nilly, attract the votes of the fond parents of future babies who are going to be born looking like fried eggs and brought up in a bottle of vinegar, did he raise the issue because he thought it was militarily intelligent...

...The only reforms left, in the War-and-Welfare State, are radical reforms...

...We are a handful, but he is ours, and he will do what we want him to do, and not what Dixie and Arvey want him to do...

...And the surrender of Socialism meant the abandonment of the last tenable foxhole from which the opponents of the No-Party State could poke their poor muskets...

...As if there had been any more of a choice—than that between the Democrats and the Republicans —in 1948, 1944, 1940, or theretofore...

...I did not vote for it...

...He will betray them (although they number millions in a democratic election) and not us (although we number thousands or, likelier, hundreds...

...the one thing the poor fellow knows he knows something about is war, and here was Stevenson, who (for all Ike knows) knows a lot about everything else, attacking him militarily...

...Has Stevenson denounced the militarism or repudiated the wars, hot or cold...

...And the important non-distinction between the two parties is that we are all Merchants of Death now...

...When Gene Debs conducted his front-cell campaign for President on the Socialist ticket, he polled 915,302 Socialist votes in a country that didn't have 25,000 Socialists...

...The causes of dependence and conformity in America today are two...

...Who that wanted to would dare to say so or to try...

...These nobody wants, and neither candidate promised or threatened them...

...He is," said the editor, in the November, 1956, issue, just before the battle, mother, "still our man...

...Not, "he is Still our man, and Dixie's and Arvey's...

...If he raised it to get votes, it was (to use a redundancy) cheap politics...

...the concatenation was Hitler...

...the prosperity was war...

...In The Progressive's November, 1956, editorial, plaguing both houses for dodging basic issues (but renewing his lease on one of them), the editor of The Progressive brushed these proposals aside...

...But, because we want to get something—anything—done before we die, we are his man...

...I suppose that the breaking point—or the heart-breaking point—was the surrender of Norman Thomas to war...

...Are the Republicans the war party...

...The Republican Party could once have been branded, half truthfully, the war party because its ranks included the Merchants of Death...

...On the two causes of conformity in America, the Democrats had no quarrel with the Republicans, in the Eisenhower regime or in the Roosevelt-Truman...

...It should have investigated the current history of the displacement of all minority parties from the several ballots...

...It was, rather, a gathering-ground, where those who wanted to preserve independence until they could find something better, could rally at election time, when the pressure upon them was heaviest, cast their vote against No-Partyism, and disperse on their separate forays for independence...

...the editor of The Progressive was not the only Stevenson man whose passion of four years ago had cooled a little...

...What it has to do with, I think, is old age, Norman Thomas", the editor's, and my own...

...The War-and-Welfare State is a straitjacket...

...The Republicans did not ruin the country...

...Only on such grounds would peace people be properly moved by what otherwise must have been cheap politics or military stupidity...

...If we had agreed, all of us, on what we wanted independence for, we might still have been a crowd, without being big enough to be a lonely crowd...

...I suppose that some of these people were looking up from the well of loneliness for an excuse to vote for him...

...Between the Democrats and the Republicans there is no quarrel here...

...The pressure is relentless...

...In the No-Party State, what is called the Party is simply another name for the government apparatus...

...The President said, in effect, that Stevenson was potty and that he would have nothing more to say on the subject...

...And all the beaters of all the tom-toms knew, somewhere deep in their bowels, that this was so...

...That surrender meant the surrender of Socialism, because war and Socialism, as was demonstrated in central Europe in the summer of 1914, can not live together...

...this I can say without knowing (as I do not know while I write, just before the election) who won...

...Kefauver quarreled heroically with his fellow-Democrat, Humphrey, on the Humphrey-Dies Act, but that quarrel was intestine...

...Each of us, with a decreasing handful of associates, was a splinter of a splinter of a splinter...

...Beset by loneliness, having fought for so long that it seemed that we had fought forever, we grew old before our time, and, growing old, we did not want to leave the world no better than we found it, or, as appeared probable, worse than we found it...

...What was important was the fact that in October, 1956, there was not one word to indicate that an independent American could do anything about it...

...But this has nothing to do with selling out...

...But in America in 1956 (and in 1952) independence is the issue...

...At the end of his honest agony, he wrote the fatal words, the fatal words of all men, of all parties, of all publications, and of all peoples: "There is no other choice...

...They have come, always in the name of realism, always as practical men, to persuade us that if we can't lick 'em we should join 'em...

...Our Democratic Party friends assured us that his persistent attack on the Republicans for reducing the military establishment, "weakening our defenses against the Communist menace," was only campaign oratory which we might safely ignore...

...We wanted to do something, get something done, before we died...