THE DEMOCRATS DROP THEIR CONSCIENCE
Rubin, Morris H.
The Democrats Drop Their Conscience By Morris H. Rubin Chicago "IT DON'T mean nothing." A sandy-haired delegate from New Jersey, sitting in the front row of the great convention hall, shouted...
...The adoption of this plank, perhaps more than any other development in Chicago except fcyr the abandonment of Wallace, underscored the Party's betrayal of progressive principles...
...I guess I must have looked impressed, for the man from New Jersey, noticing my press badge, shouted the friendly tip at me not to be taken in by the noise and the numbers...
...A cheering throng was shouting, dancing, and parading its approval...
...Roosevelt has shown less inclination to pave the way for a genuinely progressive successor—or any successor, for that matter—than at any time since he took office...
...He confirmed with great emphasis the gloomy conclusion of many of his long-time supporters that as far as he was concerned, the fight against the political bosses and the economic royalists, had ended...
...He knew, even if the wide-eyed" liberals shouting for Roosevelt and Wallace didn't know, that the squeeze was on and the fix was in...
...That's why the plank on foreign policy reads so much like the resolutions adopted by the NAM or the U. S. Chamber of Commerce...
...But Mr...
...to bind up the nation's wounds...
...Roosevelt's address: "* * * With firmness in the right, as God...
...FOR political bosses and economic royalists, Mr...
...The omission is significant...
...The fact is that the Democratic Party is less a liberal party today than at any time in the past 12 years, and that Mr...
...It illustrates in a way that words can't why Mr...
...He confirmed, too, the conclusion that he preferred from now on to act on a global stage, that he did not want to have to listen to the mocking voice of his conscience about the unfinished job at home...
...Here, I am convinced, is the most dangerous thinking and the most reactionary twaddle imaginable...
...In a recent statement he asserted that "it is not our mission to underwrite other people's declarations of continued empire...
...The Vice President's name had just been placed in nomination...
...This kind of shallow thinking is possible, of course, only among those who believe in the "cops 'n robbers" theory of world politics and think that the world's organic ills will disappear if we can only kill off the "criminals" and "outlaws...
...A Significant Omission PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT chose to quote from a Republican President, "the greatest wartime President in our history"—Abraham Lincoln—in his speech last week accepting the Democratic nomination for a fourth term...
...gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in...
...with charity for all...
...But there is nothing to indicate that the Democratic Party believes the United States should insist on adherence to such principles in peacemaking, nothing to indicate that the Democratic Party proposes to use our country's vast bargaining power to exact democratic, anti-imperialist terms from our allies, and nothing to indicate that the Democratic Party would oppose signing a peace settlement that violated every principle of the Atlantic Charter and the Four Freedoms...
...They were stunned by the coolness of Mr...
...Ignored entirely is any declaration in favor of getting at the causes of war...
...Roosevelt, who loves to play the game with a fistful of jokers, had decided to stand pat...
...For if there is nothing wrong with the world except "international outlaws and criminals," why there is nothing that needs to be done except to capture and kill the "bad guys" and have a worldwide posse stand guard forever after...
...True, as an afterthought, there is a sentence pledging support of the Atlantic Charter (which has been pretty largely torn to shreds now) and the Four Freedoms, and their application to "the United Nations and other peace-loving nations, large and small...
...This is the quotation as it appeared in Mr...
...Henry Wallace is one of those who knows differently...
...It's as easy—and as perilously reactionary—as all that in the Democratic platform...
...Roosevelt was burying the last of the Democratic Party's progressivism...
...He warned that the conflict between European masters and Asiatic subjects contains the "seeds of future wars...
...Roosevelt's blue-pencil were these: "With malice toward none...
...Roosevelt and his associates have now substituted "international outlaws and criminals"—the language of the foreign policy plank adopted by the Democrats last week...
...They think of the world in terms of "bad guys" and "good guys," or, in the words of the platform, "international outlaws and criminals" on the one hand and "peace-loving nations" on the other...
...Ickes Sounds A Warning HENRY WALLACE has never struck me as a particularly great man or able leader, but he did emerge in recent months as a symbol of what was left of the domestic New Deal and home-front progressiv-ism in Washington...
...Roosevelt's letter "supporting" Wallace, and then they couldn't believe their eyes when they saw the President's second letter saying what he would not say about Wallace—that either Harry Truman or Bill Douglas "would bring real strength to the ticket...
...to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves, and all nations...
...He was right of course, dead right—this man from Boss Hague's barony...
...Hague and all the other bosses had their instructions from their boss— Franklin D. Roosevelt...
...The Blank-Check Theory RATHER, there is obvious adherence to the blank-check theory of peacemaking, under which we commit ourselves in advance to join an organization whose principal job it would be to maintain and enforce the peace settlement, no matter how anti-democratic, imperialistic, hate-provoking, and revenge-creating that peace settlement might be...
...A sandy-haired delegate from New Jersey, sitting in the front row of the great convention hall, shouted the words at me above the din of the wild demonstration for Henry A. Wallace...
...Originally reputed to be an anti-Wallace man, he came to Chicago, sized up the situation, and shot a telegram to his Chief warning him that he was making "the greatest political error" of his 12 years in office by allowing the Party bosses to ditch Wallace...
...Roosevelt falls short of being the great man that Lincoln was...
...Nowhere in the plank is there the slightest indication that the framers of the platform have anything but a "cops 'n robbers" theory of world politics...
...This delegate from New Jersey had his instructions from his Boss, Mayor Frank Hague, and Mr...
...The eight words cut out by Mr...
...The entire emphasis is on organization and force...
...But Henry Wallace was thrown to the sharks, and with him went just about the last vestige of international as well as national conscience in the higher councils of the Roosevelt Administration...
...Nowhere in the entire plank on foreign policy is there the slightest indication that the Administration understands that wars are caused by imperialism, competitive armaments, social and economic maladjustments, power politics, territorial aggrandizement, discrimination against races and peoples, and hate-creating indemnities...
...He had become, symbolically, the conscience of the Administration—the man whose presence and principles seemed like a whiff of fresh air in a stuffy room...
...Even the most incorrigible of Roosevelt admirers among the press corps conceded that their hero had put the axe to his friend and aide, Henry Wallace, in the interest of a political deal for a few more votes...
...In quoting from this, one of the noblest passages in all of Lincoln's immortal utterances, Mr...
...Wallace's kindly comments about the gang that cut his throat and his pious affirmation that "what has happened is that there has been a real start toward a final liberalism in the Democratic Party," hardly add to his stature as a statesman...
...Secretary of the Interior Harold Ickes must have sensed that Mr...
...Roosevelt chose to eliminate the first eight words in the paragraph and to substitute three asterisks...
...It don't mean nothing," he repeated...
Vol. 8 • July 1944 • No. 31
