Labels vs. Policies

November 30, 1964

The Republican defeat is causing considerable soul-searching within the party. What went wrong? How can the party be put together again? So far the leading conciliator is Richard M. Nixon, who doesn’t want either the “conservatives” or the “liberals” purged from the party. Each “deserves a party voice, but neither can dominate or dictate—the center must lead.”

It all sounds very reassuring. But what does it mean in terms of specific policies? Just where is the “center”? Why is it superior to either the “right” or the “left”? Why is a “moderate” admirable and an “extremist” dreadful? By what criteria do you identify either? What, in brief, do the terms mean?

What Nixon seems to be looking for is the winning catchwords rather than the right policies. In politics, unfortunately, catchwords and slogans are tremendously important. A large part of the explanation of Goldwater’s defeat was that he got pinned on him, and even embraced, the wrong catchwords. The Rockefeller wing smeared him as an “extremist,” and with calm effrontery called themselves “moderates.” Goldwater’s cue was to insist that he was the moderate and they the extremists. But he made the fatal mistake of defiantly accepting both labels as pinned.

‘EXTREMISM’ UNDEFINED

By far the best analysis of this whole battle of the catchwords was made by Ayn Rand in her Objectivist Newsletter of September. The “moderates” were demanding a repudiation of “extremism,” as she pointed out, without any definition of that term. Extremely what? Moderately what? Is moderate honesty preferable to extreme honesty?

This confusion of labels did not begin in the last campaign; it was merely intensified. For more than a generation now we have been abusing and misapplying the terms “conservative” and “liberal.” In the best sense a conservative means one who wishes to conserve what is best in our heritage. In its origin as a political label in Britain in 1830, “conservative” was opposed to “subversive.” But historically the name has come to indicate opposition to all change, good or bad. Ironically, it is chiefly applied in the United States today to the unapologetic defenders of capitalism, of free private enterprise, free trade, and free markets. But capitalism is a progressive and even a revolutionary philosophy and set of institutions. In the last two centuries, it has changed the face of the earth and the lot of man. It has been doing so at an accelerative rate. The defenders of free enterprise, from Adam Smith on, have been the true liberals.

‘LIBERALISM’ STOLEN

But the noble term liberalism, from the same root as liberty, has been appropriated by the collectivists, the socialists, the New Dealers, the paternalists, the welfare-statists, the controllists. The idea has been propagated that true progress consists not in more freedom but in bigger and bigger government and more and more state coercion and control.

I cannot believe that the vote for President Johnson and the Democrats and against Goldwater and the Republicans was a conscious rejection of the philosophy of free enterprise. The vote against Goldwater was mainly the result of misgivings, however unjustified, about his own judgment and temperament. He never adequately stated the case for free enterprise. Above all, he never adequately analyzed the specific economic policies that the Johnson Administration was supporting.

And so we will have Mr. Johnson pushing economic policies that can only in the long run have the most harmful results—more tax reduction in the face of unparalleled spending, more deficits, more welfare programs, medicare, more controls, more “guidelines” for prices and wages, more power for unions, more monetary inflation, more threats to the integrity and stability of the dollar. It will be a tragedy if the Republicans—and far-sighted Democrats too—do not oppose all these programs with intelligent analysis.

The Republicans, in brief, should not ask what is the most fashionable stance to take or slogan to embrace, but what policies are best for the country. In the long run this will also serve best their own interests.