These, without doubt, are the years of the liberal. Almost everyone now so describes himself. Even the stoutest conservative confesses to flashes of liberal perception. The less stout praise even their imperceptible liberal tendencies. For the rest, a liberal stand on issues is synonymous with a sound and intelligent position. Liberalism, as it has been known in the United States, has no problem of quantity. Perhaps there is a slight continuing problem of quality.

But this is also a good time for reflection on liberal goals. In both domestic and foreign policy, we are by way of completing a chapter. Goals to which liberals have been committed for these last twenty years have ceased to be serviceable. We are making our way, with some uncertainty, into the next chapter. I find myself attracted by this position of strength and equally by the opportunity to supply the missing elements of direction.

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I

In domestic policy, the heart of the liberal program in these last twenty years, in natural reaction to the miseries of the 30's, has been to minimize unemployment and insure the greatest possible growth in economic output. The test of domestic failure or achievement has been the amount of unemployment and the annual increase in the Gross National Product. Liberals have shared this goal with conservatives; to a remarkable extent in these years, liberals and conservatives have pursued the same objectives in both foreign and domestic policy. The only difference in domestic policy is that liberals sought to do by calculated action—by public expenditure, deliberate deficits, tax reduction—what conservatives hoped to accomplish by balanced budgets, incantation, regular prayer and, perhaps, the sense of national dedication instilled by speeches by Richard Nixon.

High production and low unemployment have not become unimportant. It is only that we now have them. It cannot be the highest function of the modern liberal to work avidly to accomplish what has already been done.

And liberals are learning that these seemingly admirable goals can acquire some exceedingly conservative overtones. We achieve full employment and rapid economic growth by insuring a sufficient volume of demand in the economy—a volume of demand that keeps production up to the current capacity of labor force and plant. Under liberal tutelage, conservatives have learned that this can be accomplished by cutting taxes. And without the help of liberals, they have then learned that defense, war, and the ancient hostility to whatever helps the poor are excellent excuses for cutting socially desirable expenditures. Indeed, one of the singular achievements of liberals in these last years has been in showing conservatives, whom most of us had thought safely immune to any modern ideas, how they can have Keynes without liberalism and full employment without Shriver.

Economic growth as an all-embracing goal has a more serious shortcoming. Though it is a condition precedent for solving most social problems, there are many it doesn't solve. And it creates new ones. To be specific, economic growth does not provide the new and improved public services that are required by a higher level of private consumption or which mark our progress toward a more civilized existence. Nor does economic growth solve the problems of environment and especially of urban environment. On the contrary, it makes these problems infinitely more urgent. And, thirdly, economic growth does not help those who, for reasons of race, educational deprivation, early environment, location, health, age, family situation, mental retardation, are unable to participate fully in the economy and in its gains.

These three areas of need define the domestic program of liberals in the years ahead. I wish to say a word about each. But first let me note that on all of these tasks there has been a substantial beginning in the last few years. For this we can all be grateful to the practical liberalism of Lyndon Johnson. We owe much to his sound empiricism. Later in these remarks, I will have something to say about foreign policy. It will not be wholly unfavorable to the President. It will, however, be wholly candid on the over-age and weary ideas and the over-used and tired men on which our foreign policy, as it is known, depends. I hope that all liberals will keep these things in perspective. The humorless misachievements of the men who got us into the jungles of Vietnam must not be allowed to obscure the merits of far more liberal and astute achievements here at home. Our gains under the Johnson administration on civil rights well outweigh our losses on behalf of Marshal Ky.

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II

The first liberal task is to work for necessary and urgent public services. These are still the very center of the liberal program. Increased private living standards must be matched by improved public services unless we are to have an obscene contrast between the two. Schools must be as well financed as television; hospitals should be as well financed as the sales pitch for cigarettes. Efforts to insure a minimal supply of breathable air must be in some relation to the output of automobiles.

And it is most important to remember that public services are highly progressive in their incidence. Almost all—public schools, public colleges and universities, public parks, good and well-paid police, good health services, good public transportation, even clean streets—render their greatest service to the poor. No one who calls for curtailment of public services should suppose the effect is neutral. No liberal should fail to point out that it is the poor who pay.

I might add that it pains me to see liberals resisting taxes, including sales taxes, which would allow of better public services. The income tax is certainly more progressive than the sales tax. But the sales tax, combined with the service it provides, is far more progressive than no tax and no service. One does no favor to a poor family by saving it a few dollars in taxes and denying its children the school and college training that would allow their advance into a wholly new income stratum.

The problem of environment, and especially that of urban environment, must be the next focus of liberal effort. Liberals have always found the problems of the federal government invested with a peculiar glamor. They have regularly left city government to the hacks with whom, on occasion, they have united to nominate a President. The problems of environment—of air and water pollution; of roadside commerce and billboards; of land development and urban sprawl—have seemed commonplace and sectarian. They involve new and disagreeable controls—we desperately need, for example, effective controls on urban and adjacent land use. Space is now our scarcest resource. An aesthetically tolerable development must be within a general framework of control. But these things involve rows; there are few vested interests so powerful as that in anarchic land use and development. Better save one's energy for the big picture. Questions of beauty and aesthetics can be left to the middle-class conservationist. The soul of the liberal belongs, after all, to the proletariat.

These attitudes can no longer be afforded. This is the age of the urban crisis. Liberalism will now be tested by what it can do in the cities as it was once tested by what it could do about economic performance and unemployment. The day is coming when no one will be considered really ready for higher office until he has been a successful mayor.

Liberals must also work to correct a grave and growing defect in our federal system—a defect which through the income and corporation taxes gives the revenues from increased income and output to the federal government and which gives the resulting tasks—the handling of people, traffic, offal—to the cities. It would be hard to imagine a worse design. The remedy is an arrangement that passes funds from the federal government to the localities. It is axiomatic that we cannot have any more federal tax reduction so long as the cities are as impoverished as now.

The third task for liberalism is to insure that the largest possible number of our people participate in the gains of our economy. This, in substantial measure, is what improved public services and improved environment serve to accomplish. It is what a sound educational system of uniform quality will accomplish. And a good health service. And decent housing. And good community surroundings. And good and fair law enforcement. And sound and well-enforced laws against discrimination. Far more than is realized, the present problem of poverty stems from the past neglect of the public sector of the economy and the special service this sector renders to the poor.

But more immediate efforts to mitigate poverty—the work of the Office of Economic Opportunity—deserve strong support. This work is encountering the fierce criticism of those who, as a matter of principle, rally in opposition to all efforts on behalf of the poor. Liberals must seek ways of strengthening this effort. And we should abandon without apology what does not work—for experiment was intended. But let us not be impressed by the statesman who reacts to instability in Indochina by appropriating a few more billions and to instability in a Job-Corps camp by asking for its abolition.

We must also now consider measures for guaranteeing minimum levels of income for the poor. Most of the men and women who now survive on inadequate income would work if they could. Idleness is less coveted as a career than most well-to-do people imagine. And it may not be all that more damaging to the poor than to the rich. Our present system of means tests is costly and an affront to human dignity. It has the worst of effects on incentives, for a small job means a large loss in welfare payments—the equivalent of a large tax on any income earned by working. Here is the next large item on the liberal agenda. It will be good, in a nostalgic way, to listen once more to those worried warnings from right-wing historians as to what it was that ruined Rome.

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III

On foreign policy we have also had a twenty-year agreement on goals. Since the breakup of the wartime alliance, the goal to a singular degree has been to fight international Communism. Conservatives have strongly applauded this goal. Communists are casual about property rights. The right wing of the Republican party sets these well above human rights, and a moderate Republican is a man who believes them identical. Freedom, in one current of our political thought, means freedom to make money. Communists are clearly opposed to that. The identification of property and profits with personal liberty is sufficiently strong so that quite a few thoughtful right-wingers have been led to suggest that socialists be made honorary Communists.

But liberals long ago accepted simple anti-Communism as a goal of our foreign policy. Some had always doubted that individual liberty was compatible with democratic centralism. Some drew on their experience with the Communists in the unions. More were wounded by Stalin. During the war years they had accepted the current picture of Stalin as an amiable and avuncular figure. They had believed that our association with him would endure. Then came the great disillusionment which was hardly lessened when the Soviets themselves erased Stalin's name from their sacred tablets. The Right gleefully pounced on the error—and the erring. Once burned, American liberals were determined never to let it happen again. Henceforth, quite a few decided, they would be second to none in their war with Communism—only more intelligent.

There were differences on method. In the third world of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, aid and reform have bulked large in the liberal program. As one moved to the Right, one again encountered the old objection to helping the poor. But vastly more important was the effort to divorce Communism from its social context. Were it the result of exploitation or of oppression, it could be countered only by alternative reform. So increasingly it came to be pictured as a problem not in social deprivation but in moral degradation. This manifested itself in an all-powerful, all-embracing conspiracy. Wickedness and conspiracy could then be countered by military means. This, in the 50's, came to be the official view of Communism and the means for combating it. It is still highly influential and Mr. Dulles's disciples still make nostalgic pilgrimages to meetings of the treaty organizations he established. Liberals have been rightly skeptical of this divorce of Communism from social context, and also the associated policy of arming of the indigent. They have doubted that Communism would be effectively suppressed by either 19th-century diplomacy or 20th-century weapons.

But it was long common ground that our own military power must be great; that Communist ambition is unremitting; that it is always probing for weak points and will be dangerously encouraged by any success; and that any non-Communist leader, however repugnant, would, as a matter of expediency, have to be supported against the Communist conspiracy.

With some dissent from the extreme Right, it was also agreed during these years that foreign policy should be entrusted to the permanent diplomatic and military establishment under the general chairmanship of the New York foreign policy syndics. The latter—the Dulles-McCloy-Lovett communion with which, I am sure, Secretary Rusk would wish to be associated and of which Dean Acheson is a latter-day associate—has now provided the grace notes for American foreign policy for twenty years. It has credited itself with a uniquely perceptive view of, as it has always called it, the international Communist conspiracy. With the permanent establishment, it has now guided our foreign policy for so long that many Americans unquestionably imagine it to have permanent tenure. Liberals have turned up, on occasion, in the aid program and at the United Nations. Elsewhere, when in high office, they have considered it their principal function to bless with their liberal reputation whatever the State Department wished to do.

For a long while, the country went along. Foreign policy, until very recent times, had no strong clientele group in the United States. The actions of the Department of Agriculture or the National Labor Relations Board are closely scrutinized by people with a strong pecuniary interest in what goes on. Not so the State Department. This gave great power to the permanent establishment and the presiding archons. Truth tended to be what they proclaimed. If there seemed to be dissent, it was sufficient to warn of the risks of another Munich or to call for national unity. Silence then ensued.

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IV

Now this chapter has also come to an end. The old coalescence on the old and simple goal of anti-Communism is past. And, I venture to think, that the old leaders are not far short of honorable retirement. Their policies can no longer be afforded.

The first factor making for change has been the arrival of a new generation. It has, I would judge, an adequately sophisticated view of Communism. But it is unscarred by the memories of Joseph Stalin and Joe McCarthy, and perhaps less impressed than an earlier generation by the magic name of Jack McCloy. It is not subject to the scarring fears which caused an older generation to be equally fearful of Communism and of seeming to be soft on Communism. Reflecting the great expansion of the educated and educational community, it is also a client group on foreign policy of no small size. And it does not accept the official truth on foreign policy with the acquiescence that so many would like to associate with sound Americanism. It has been taught to be skeptical. It will be, henceforth, a powerful force influencing foreign policy.

The growing pluralism of the Communist world has also done great damage to the old coalescence. It requires a policy as between Communist powers. No longer can it proclaim a holy war against all. It is not surprising that more determined or nostalgic members of the old guard still speak rather doggedly of a Sino-Soviet bloc.

The old policy and policy-makers have been greatly weakened by the number of initiatives they have launched against the Communists in these last years which—when the realities were faced—have had to be reversed.

They launched the great drive to expel the Soviets from the UN under Article 19 of the Charter. And they had to reverse course because the reality was that we wanted the Soviets to remain.

They took action on behalf of Generals Wessin y Wessin and Imbert in the Dominican Republic. And they were reversed because the reality was that right-wing dictatorships promised to be more damaging than the risk, such as it was, of Communism.

They launched the MLF, committed the country deathlessly to this concept, and then reversed course because the reality was that our allies feared the proposal more than they feared the Soviets.

The archons of the old coalition are now busy disciplining de Gaulle and saving NATO. We can only hope that the alliance will survive its salvation.

The reality is that the country has long accepted and adapted a policy of getting along, in one way or another, with the Soviets. Having lived on the same planet with the Russians without coming to blows for fifty years, the country also has a disposition to keep on trying. This means that it is interested not in how to promote conflict but in how to reconcile diverse interests without conflict. But the liturgy of our foreign policy held, and still holds, this to be heresy. Peaceful coexistence is a snare and delusion. Conflict is the reality. One must not traffic, much less compromise, with evil. On occasion, usually under White House pressure, the State Department responds to suggestions for keeping peace with cautious approval. But not for years has it been imagined that a Secretary of State could be the source of any such suggestion.

Let me look at some affirmative steps for escaping from this outworn legacy. Inevitably I must conclude with some references to the crowning accomplishment of the old policy. That is our defense of that bastion of freedom, as an anarchist would define it, in Vietnam.

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V

The test of policy henceforth must be not the negative one of what fights Communism but the affirmative one of what serves the interests of the United States—and the larger human concerns. As occasion and good judgment require, this will mean that we will oppose what the Communist nations seek. And as circumstances and good judgment require, it means that we pursue policies that reflect a common interest in improved well-being and survival.

Liberals must affirm, what we long ago learned, that the only good foreign policy is a liberal foreign policy, and that liberalism does not stop at the water's edge. This is no matter of empty oratory; it is a highly practical business. A liberal policy identifies us with the hopes and aspirations of the people. This is a durable association. A conservative policy identifies us with privileged groups and with governments that are the servants and protectors of privilege. And we pay the penalty for such association when, as it must, the day of the people arrives.

The notion that foreigners in their simple, good-natured way will make do with dictators and despots, competent or more often incompetent, and with the resulting indignity, has been and remains the major error of the older archons of our foreign policy and of the permanent establishment. Because they are not offensive to well-mannered Americans who are not subject to their rule, it is still believed that these light opera tyrants should be equally acceptable to their own people.

I soberly and unhappily predict that the present military regime in Brazil, now the subject of such unstinted praise, will in retrospect look like the rest. Let someone keep score on those who disagree. That latter-day democrat and humanitarian, Marshal Ky, seems already to be a source of doubt to almost everyone but the Secretary of State. Historians of our age will be astonished, incidentally, at how little these men seem to be helped by having their pictures on the cover of Time.

Liberals are also committed, in international affairs, to the rule of law. This is a principle and not a tactic. We support the United Nations as an instrument of law and not as a forum for cold-war polemics or as a last resort in error.

Liberals cannot believe that difficult or controversial questions can best be resolved by putting them in deep freeze or pretending they do not exist. Such has been our policy on China. Nor, at this stage, can liberals be impressed by infinitesimal gestures that could have been made ten years ago. We should make it wholly clear that when China is willing to recognize the separate existence of Formosa and accept the charter of the United Nations, we, in turn, will support her admission to the United Nations and will accord her recognition.

I see no reason, finally, why liberals should regret their past commitment to the aid program and to the principle of helping the poor to help themselves. That policy has served us well. We are, despite all misfortune, well regarded in the poor lands. The reason is not the power of our arms, the subtlety of our propaganda, or the acuity of our intelligence organizations. It is not even the eloquence of our past ambassadors. The reason is the aid program.

All of the foregoing means that we cannot have a good foreign policy that is run by conservatives—however venerable their service or however estimable their motives. This is a contradiction in terms. It is also denied by all recent experience.

Let us also note moreover that liberalism, in the United States, is not exactly a minority position. It is an odd concept of democracy that leads us to work hard to elect liberal governments in order to put our foreign policy under those who couldn't care less. Let us note well that the reputation of what would have been counted the most successful liberal administration since Roosevelt is well on the way to being ruined by the foreign policy of men who have never raised their hands on behalf of any liberal cause in their life.

Liberals long ago learned that liberal domestic policies are safe only in the hands of liberals. The same rule must now be applied to the field of foreign affairs. And it is my impression that, among those who will most welcome the change, will be the younger members of our foreign-policy establishment. They, too, are unaffected by the fear and rigidity of the older generation; the oversimplifications and failures of the old policy have not escaped their attention. They would respond gladly to liberal leadership and, indeed, they deserve it.

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VI

Let me now say a word about the most annoying, though not I venture the most important, of our problems—that of Vietnam. Vietnam will be the graveyard of the old policy. It is worth hoping that the policy is all that gets buried.

Let me also be clear that my primary intention is not to offer criticism of the President of the United States. The President is rightly held responsible for his administration. But he cannot be held responsible for his inheritance. President Johnson inherited a good part of the Vietnam involvement. And he inherited, in the old policy, the attitudes which have led to our present misfortunes. I am among those who believe the President has been a force for restraint—and for change in the old policy. I do confess to believing that he could do with more and better help.

Our Vietnam involvement was a textbook manifestation of the old policy. The elements were all there:

. . . The reaction was automatic. We did not need to consider whether we defended viable institutions or fought on favorable terrain. No one, I believe, suggests that the Vietnamese are a Teutonic and warrior race that for reasons of survival we must have on our side.

. . . It was assumed that we faced a unified conspiracy directed, according to changing preference, by Hanoi, Peking, or international Communism in general.

. . . There being no serious social foundation for the insurgency, those who do the fighting are the servants of the external authority. They have no personal stake in the insurrection and can be ignored as a factor in any settlement.

. . . No social issue was involved; military measures, it was long felt, would suffice for solution.

. . . Until the moment of their collapse, governments on our side have been bastions of liberty and their leaders have been honorary pillars of freedom and democracy which their people would well support.

. . . Americans could be counted on to believe what they were told, particularly about the power and integrity of the people on our side and the menace with which we deal. If they seemed to waver, one could always mention Munich.

Not one of these propositions has survived the experience. And I think it well that we should reflect on this experience, for those who do not learn their history are doomed to repeat it. And I would judge that few Americans yearn to repeat this experience. But liberalism is a practical faith. We must always start from where we are. How do we escape from this entrapment?

We must, first of all, escape from the entrapment of our own propaganda. Vietnam is not important to us. Nor is it a bastion of freedom. Nor is it a testing place for democracy. It is none of these things. Had it been lost in 1954, no one would now be thinking of it. Far too many of our officials have been so persuaded because, much in the manner of a man shouting down a well, they have heard their own voices. Let us resolve to stop talking this nonsense.

We must abandon the notion—as I am sure most sensible people have in Washington—that we are going to roll the Vietcong back from vast areas that they have controlled now for up to ten years. We must not invest lives, even those of other people, in an enterprise of such dubious and temporary value to the Vietnamese who might survive.

Our immediate policy must be to remain on the defensive in whatever area we can hold with the present force. This may well be rather small. But it will provide a refuge for those who have joined our enterprise. This will also sufficiently establish the one valid way in which resistance serves our policy, which is to show that whatever our error in getting in, we cannot easily be shoved out. Conceivably, this might then present some future probe. However, we may remind ourselves that the world did not lose respect for the Russians because they retreated in Cuba.

There can be no real doubt as to the military feasibility of this policy. Military men always describe as unfeasible what they do not wish to do. If we can clear and hold all of South Vietnam with a large force, we can hold a very limited area with a smaller force.

We should, and this is a vital step beyond present policy, now permanently suspend air attacks on the North. This is not for humane reasons, although I am not opposed to humanity. Nor is it because air power is both indiscriminate and ineffective, although this is also true. (We are congenitally over-impressed by air power. To realize this, we need only compare the promises of the last year with the performance.) We should stop because these attacks, and the temptation to extend them, involve the one major and intolerable risk, which is war with China or conceivably Russia. The temptation to extend these attacks is especially strong when things go wrong politically in the South.

It will be no comfort, if we find ourselves involved with the Chinese on the Asian mainland, that it resulted from a miscalculation. We must all remember that the phrase “calculated risk” is a military euphemism for total ignorance as to the outcome of a particular action.

Next we must face seriously the likelihood that there will not again be a government in Saigon which is seriously capable of prosecuting the war along with us. A government that reflects the interest of the people will reflect their suspicion of foreigners, their struggle for a national identity, and their terrible war-weariness. It will not fight. A government that works with us and fights the war will not have the support of the people. It will not last. This is not a defeatist assessment. All it does is accept the developing evidence of these last months and years.

Under these circumstances, the purpose of the holding action is to assist the striking of the best possible bargain between the non-Communist groups in Vietnam and the Vietcong. There is now no longer doubt as to whether negotiations are desirable or not; there is more doubt as to whether they will be conducted by us. The ultimate bargain will not be brilliant.

In that part of the world, the writ of a central government often runs only to the airport. What counts is local control of the countryside. What we should welcome, should we be so fortunate as to get it, is a regional settlement, as in Laos. The central government will, at best, be only a loose federalism of areas under different control. But that is about all Indochinese governments ever have been.

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Let me stress again the present importance of restraint. Some will certainly suggest covering their disappointments in the South with more muscular action elsewhere. The purpose of this, like the demand for manpower to pacify the whole country, is now, however subjectively, to bale out the reputations of those who for so long have been committed to this ill-starred enterprise. Let us resolve to save their reputations and reward them most handsomely, but in some other way.

We have paid heavily for the myth of the old policy in Vietnam. But fortunately the cost in money has so far been larger than that in lives. And fortunately, also, the lessons—the dangers of unlimited commitment, the dangers in supporting governments that are unsupported by their people, the limits of military solutions, the healthy skepticism of our own people where official truth is involved—are all brilliantly clear. Perhaps these inhospitable jungles were well designed to stimulate a more liberal, more rational, more discriminating, more collectively motivated and somewhat less paranoiac view of our mission in the world.