View From the Right: Goldwater Defended

It seems to me that American liberals have failed to answer the intellectual challenge posed by Senator Goldwater's candidacy. Instead of learning to understand conservative views and refute them, they have chosen to argue from ignorance. It is not surprising, therefore, that the liberal reaction to Goldwater ranges from "I don't understand him" to "He's crazy."

Let me give a few examples. Liberal intellectuals attack Goldwater as a mad warmonger; consequently, they fail to understand, or to attack, his real views on foreign policy. Thus the CRIMSON quotes a professor quoting Goldwater as saying that nuclear war is inevitable. Goldwater in fact said that it would be inevitable if we continued our present foreign policy.

Goldwater's view is not, as is so often charged, that all communists are identical. His view is, rather, that the communists share a common goal--the replacement of our "free" society by communism--and that the way to make the communists renounce that goal is by making it prohibitively expensive for them to attain or approach it. This is done by being hostile to communists until they have shown by actions as well as words, that they have renounced this goal. In Goldwater's view, the communist threat is our main problem. Thus the U.N., which cannot deal with that problem, may be useful, but cannot be the chief instrument of our foreign policy.

Goldwater's policy does, of course, pose some danger of war. One may argue, however, that appeasement may ultimately be more dangerous. One is frequently reminded, this year, of the London Times editorial, thirty years ago, saying that the only thing which made the existence of such a warmonger as Winston Churchill tolerable was the certainty that he could never come into power.

It is possible to argue intelligently, from certain assumptions about Soviet goals, that Goldwater's policy is unwise. My complaint is that most liberal columnists, and students, are not doing so. Instead, they are talking of running away to Australia if "that madman" gets elected.

I will now consider two of Goldwater's alleged inconsistencies. First, Goldwater wants to cut government spending but to maintain a strong military. Obviously, he intends to cut non-military spending. What most liberals have completely ignored is that, given the conservative fear of government power, a large military establishment makes large non-military spending more undesirable than it would otherwise be, since it adds power to a government already too powerful.

The second alleged inconsistency, referred to ad nauseam by Walter Lippmann, is that Goldwater wants to "restore law and order" while reducing federal power. Lippmann fails to realize that, in Goldwater's opinion, the federal government and liberal ideology are largely responsible for the problem. The idea that "society is responsible" and the downgrading of property rights encourage irresponsibility, while regulations of vast complexity and questionable equity allow people to break the law without feeling guilty.

Ignorance Not Absurdity

I think I have shown that the reaction of liberal intellectuals to Goldwater's views comes from the intellectuals' ignorance, and not from the absurdity of Goldwater's views. It might be argued that this ignorance is as much the fault of Goldwater as of the intellectuals. I do not think this is fair. It is necessary for a politician to assume an ideological background to which he refers, and it is inevitable that someone unfamiliar with that background will find his speeches meaningless.

I hope the time will come when a student can support a conservative candidate at Harvard, without having his friends ask him if he is serious. More important, I hope the time will come when the nation's leading columnists know as much about conservatism as a conservative Harvard student. This will happen only when liberal intellectuals decide to spend some time trying to understand the views they are opposing.