Cruising Speed

by Cruising Speed- A Documentary (epub)

  ... We moved after the press conference to a reception in the quarters of the Yale Political Union, where so help me God the conversation did not go as reported by Mr. Levine. Then to dinner at Mory’s, to which I had asked that two guests be invited, one of them a faculty member I had never met, but who had been in correspondence with me; the other my nephew Hunt, a freshman who graduated with my son Christopher from Portsmouth Priory last spring.

  The young professor is a conservative! and had written me to ask if I would teach a seminar next fall at Yale, provided he could get the faculty to approve it. I had told him no, sorry, there is no time and he wrote: “About that course: let me say to what extent I am serious and in what extent not. Actually, I would like to get you up here once a week to do something—it’s getting to the point where we can no longer hear the gadflies amid the clatter of falling idols. But I understand your reasons—time, money, etc. OK. That leaves two options: a) The sport of faking the project until it is turned down, hopefully by the Yale Faculty in solemn assembly. Delicious! b) And this is serious—a course in, say, ‘Roots of Conservative Thought’ (or whatever) run by someone (me and/or somebody else) in which you would promise to appear (and do a smattering of homework for on the train— nothing else) say just six times. You would be jointly responsible, officially, but not much actually. Fifteen students. Fall semester of next year. Definitely not to be a gut. And we’d still have the fun—a very serious but un-solemn sort of fun—of liberals being forced to check on their own liberality, in order to O.K. the course. (College [Yale College is composed of a dozen residential “colleges”] seminars are credit courses taught in the colleges and ‘of an experimental or innovative nature.’) Would you think about this?” “At this point,” I replied, “I’m inclined towards a). The trouble with b) is that six times is too many times. Also, it has the disadvantage of not really establishing the formal point you seek to establish, to with my [ideological] disqualification to teach. After all, if I were merely a [classroom] exhibition, anybody would serve; the faculty could hardly object. In this respect, I will now sound a little bit traitorous by suggesting that you ought to consider that in fact I have no formal qualifications to teach. Sure, mine are as advanced as Eldridge Cleaver’s, but he himself is controversial. I do not even have an M.A. So that it is not inconceivable that even conservative-minded professors could object on theoretical grounds to listing me as a member of the faculty. Your thoughts?” At which point the professor sent a note saying that he would like to talk to me about it, so I suggested he join the political chieftains at dinner at our forthcoming meeting at Mory’s.

  . . . After dinner they brought me a birthday cake, an extraordinary act of thoughtfulness, and then we walked to Battell Chapel, an unusual place to hold a political meeting—though maybe not; in recognition of which I began my speech by declaiming, “O Lord, ignore everything you have heard from this pulpit, from the lips of your humble servant, William Sloane Coffin Jr.” And then, The Speech.

  Number 3. Here it is. Beginning with the hated

  Proposition One: The opinion-making community misunderstands the usefulness of repression.

  I mean by this proposition to draw attention to the great success that the recent mentors of American civilization have enjoyed when they suggest that repression is the kind of thing practiced only by storm troopers and rationalized in Mein Kampf; or, in other situations, by such as Lester Maddox in his chicken restaurant, driven by theories of white supremacy.

  There is no evidence in early American history that I know of to suggest that the men who wrote the Constitution believed that all thought was in some way equal, simply because they went on to devise a Bill of Rights that forbade the Congress from enacting any laws abridging the freedom of speech or of the press.

  When Thomas Jefferson spoke about the virtue of tolerating even those who seek to repeal our republican forms of government, it is clear from his other writings, and from the lapidary record of his own activities, that what he meant to say was that the toleration of certain kinds of dissent is a tribute to the good sense of the American people who will always reject the blandishments of the anti-republican minority. So then, why interfere with the minority who wish to practice tyranny? It is, after all, a form of democratic self-confidence to be able to stroll peacefully through Hyde Park and listen to the orators who denounce our free institutions. It summons to mind the cozy child's dream, wherein you wake up suddenly in a jungle surrounded by wild beasts who however are powerless to harm you, because you are protected by an impenetrable bubble of glass which is proof against their aggressions.

  Abraham Lincoln the polemicist pulled a fast one, Professor Harry Jaffa reminds us, when he began his Gettysburg Address by dating the beginning of the American Republic not with the Constitution but with the signing of the Declaration of Independence. His old adversary Stephen Douglas, during the famous debates, based his case on the Constitution alone—with exclusive reference to which it could indeed be argued that the Dred Scott decision was meticulously correct in forbidding the free-soil states from refusing a slave-owner the right to take residence there along with his slaves. Lincoln cited the beginning of the United States as having taken place “four score and seven years” before Gettysburg. That is to say in 1776, with the adoption of the Declaration of Independence. Accordingly-said Lincoln in effect—the metaphysics of the Declaration of Independence animate the Constitution, so that when scholars and statesmen disagreed—as they would do with progressive heat in the years that led to the explosion of civil war—on how to reconcile the postulates of America with the survival of slavery, it was to the Declaration of Independence that the abolitionists ideally repaired for guidance. Because the Declaration of Independence spoke of “self-evident” truths. Among them that men are bom equal.

  The initial toleration of slavery, in the understanding of Lincoln, was a historical accommodation. The accommodation of a great weight on America's neck: a birthmark. To be recognized by its leaders as such; so that step by step they might direct public policy towards emancipation by attrition. Professor Jaffa reminds us that “no American statesman ever violated the ordinary maxims of civil liberties more than did Abraham Lincoln, and few seem to have been more careful of them than Jefferson Davis.” And then he adds the point which is so striking in the contemporary situation, “Yet the cause for the sake of which the one slighted these maxims was human freedom} while the other, claiming to defend the forms of constitutional government, found in those forms a ground for defending and preserving human slavery.”

  It is instructive to meditate on this apparent paradox at a moment when so much of the liberal community is disposed to denounce such modest little efforts as are nowadays being made to enhance the public order.

  Proposition Two: The absolutizers, in their struggle against what they call repression, are doing their best to make the Constitution of the United States incoherent.

  It ought to be obvious that it is impossible to absolutize any single freedom without moving it into the way of another absolutized freedom. How can you simultaneously have an absolute right to compel testimony in your own behalf (Amendment VI), while others have the absolute right (Amendment V) to refuse to testify lest they incriminate themselves? How can you have absolute freedom of the press (Amendment I) alongside the absolute right to a fair trial (Amendment VI)? How can you have absolute freedom of speech (Amendment I) alongside other people's absolute right (Amendment XIV) to their property, including their good name?

  Oliver Wendell Holmes, asked to define a fanatic, said something to this effect. Look, everyone will agree as a matter of common sense that a houseowner owns the space above his roof, such that, for example, he can legally prevent his neighbor from constructing a lateral extension reaching out over his own house. The fanatic, by contrast, will carry the argument forward absolutely. He will reason from his ownership of the space above his roof to ownership of a shaft of air that projects straight out into the heavenly sp
heres, such that no child's kite or supersonic transport can overfly him, without written permission. It is ironic that it is to a famous dissent of Oliver Wendell Holmes that the absolutizers (which is to say the fanatics) turn, when insisting that all ideas are to be treated with absolute impartiality. It was Justice Holmes who said that “the best test of truth is the power of the thought to get itself accepted in the competition of the market.” If that maxim were accepted, white superiority would long since have been accepted as truth in parts of this and other countries. In any event, the statement is hard to reconcile with the notion that some truths are “self-evident.” Certainly it is hard to reconcile with the attitudes of the men who urged the adoption of the Constitution.

  After all, the Federalist Papers stressed among other things the usefulness of a federal government in guaranteeing freedom within the individual states. Concerning the problem of indigenous threats to the republic, Alexander Hamilton wrote most directly. His plea for the proposed Constitution was not merely a plea against the anarchy that every schoolboy knows he abhorred. He warned also of the dangers of despotism. “It is impossible to read the history of the petty republics of Greece and Italy” he wrote, “without feeling sensations of horror and disgust at the distractions with which they were kept in a state of perpetual vibration between the extremes of tyranny and anarchy ” But he went on to argue that historical advances in the science of government now permitted the granting of powers sufficient to avoid anarchy, yet insufficient to promote tyranny.

  Hamilton insisted that the government dispose of such power as is necessary to make its laws obeyed. Such power, it might be argued, the exercise of which the contemporary revolutionists, and their fellow travelers, are quick to criticize, invoking an absolutized version of the Bill of Rights.

  Hamilton wrote in criticism of the Articles of Confederation that the government as then composed had “no powers to exact obedience or punish disobedience to [ifo] resolutions, either by pecuniary mulcts, by a suspension or divestiture of privileges, or by any other constitutional mode” Unless that situation were remedied, he warned, the United States would "afford the extraordinary spectacle of a government destitute even of the shadow of constitutional power to enforce the execution of its own laws.”

  So the Constitution that Hamilton and the others advocated was adopted; and inasmuch as it expressly guarantees republican government to each constituent state, we get a little historical focus on Thomas Jefferson's vainglorious boast about the nation's toleration of those who would tear down our republican forms of government. Hamilton went on—in his analysis—to commit the same sin of civic pride that Jefferson was to commit more flamboyantly a few years later; that John Stuart Mill would elevate to democratic dogma in a generation; and that Oliver Wendell Holmes took to the final extreme in 1919. Hamilton simply assumed that as a general rule a republican form of government would more or less predictably commend itself to the people, so as to make it obviously futile for a numerical minority to have any hope of repealing or frustrating it. He ambled along contentedly—up to a point—with the great syllogism that modern revolutionists are now bent on challenging, namely, that if the government is of the majority, there is no reason to suppose that there will be much latent support for revolutionary disruption. “Where the whole power of the government is in the hands of the people ” he said, “there is the less pretence for the use of violent remedies in partial or occasional distempers of the State. The natural cure for all ill-administration .. .is a change of men.”

  But what about those situations in which republican government is threatened—whether by an assertive minority, or a passive majority, or a combination of the two? How much power should a government have in order to protect the republic against insurrection? A very important question, which is being fought out today in Congress, in the courts, and among the opinion-makers.

  On this matter the absolutists—for instance, the American Civil Liberties Union—feel perfectly at home with all the old rigidities. But they are not winning all the constitutional debates. It is currently being tested, for instance, whether the government may punish those who, in the opinion of the court, conspired to go to Chicago for the purpose of abridging the freedom of others to transact their business at the Democratic Convention. Never mind, for the purpose of this analysis, the inflamed question: whether the trial judge behaved as inexcusably as the defendants. The question arises: Is the 1968 Act, under which the Chicago 7 were tried and convicted, constitutional? “The idea of restraining the legislative authority, in the means of providing for the national defense’’ Hamilton ventured, “is the one of those refinements which owe their origin to a zeal for liberty more ardent than enlightened.” He argued that, after all, “confidence must be placed somewhere ” and that “it is better to hazard the abuse of that confidence than to embarrass the government and endanger the public safety by impolitic restrictions on the legislative authority.”

  So then, was Hamilton encouraging something which nowadays would go by the name of “repression”? Precisely. “The hope of impunity is a strong incitement to sedition; the dread of punishment, a proportionably strong discouragement to it” Over and over again Hamilton leans on the assumption that the general majority are as a practical matter going to be content with laws which are after all o£ their own devising. Nevertheless, Hamilton implicitly acknowledged that irrationality could now and again raise its ugly head. To assume that the government in a democratic society will not ever have to use force to assert its laws is naive. . . the idea of governing at all times by the simple force of law (which we have been told is the only admissible principle of republican government),” he writes acidulously, “has no place but in the reveries of those political doctors whose sagacity disdains the admonitions of experimental instruction”

  Very well then, if we concede that the right to attempt to bring down the republican forms of government is not absolute, either in theory or in the historical experience of America, does it follow that we are bound to indulge, let alone applaud, such expressions of public impatience as for instance are embodied in the 1968 Act—which was the basis for the prosecutions in Chicago during last winter? We come to

  Proposition Three: Such self-proclaimed revolutionists as Messrs. Hoffman, Rubin, Dellinger and Seale, and such others as, for instance, Tom Hayden and William Kunstler, do not appear to understand the historical, let alone the theoretical, rights of counter-revolutionists.

  In the beginning—for our contemporary revolutionists—was the American Revolution. It is their charter, the touchstone of their thought, their polemic and their action. It is argumentatively as important to the defense of their dogma and to their behavior, as Prohibition is to the defense of the young pot-smoker who says if the older generation could drink unconstitutional booze, why can't we smoke illegal grass. The revolutionists insist that this country was after all baptized in revolution, that revolution is genetically a part of the American way.

  I do not find anywhere in the informed literature of that period any suggestion that it was other than the accepted right of the British throne to resist the American Revolution. Edmund Burke, whose sympathies were plainly with America, never suggested that King George was violating any known canon of civilization by sending a large army to America to say No to the army of George Washington. And if Washington had been caught and hanged, Burke would no doubt have deplored royal punctilio; but there was no higher law around to appeal to than had been available to Vercingetorix to use against Julius Caesar. By the same token, the United States is entitled by all conventional standards—to hang its revolutionists.

  I should not think that the time to do this has come, but certainly the time has come to remind the revolutionists what are the possible consequences of their activity. As Dr. Johnson told us, “The knowledge that you are going to be hanged in two weeks concentrates the mind wonderfully.” If then, the contemporary revolutionists can find no historical right to revolt against our soc
iety under immunity from repression, can they find any abstract “right” to commend their enterprise? The wording of the Declaration of Independence clearly shows the mark of the social-contract theorists. “Governments are instituted among men” in order “to secure” certain “rights ” said the Declaration. These governments derive “their just powers from the consent of the governed ”

  Here is an interesting distinction—obviously done in passing—between “just” and “unjust” powers; a tacit acknowledgment that even those governments that are licensed by the governed typically exercise both powers that are just and powers that are unjust. The contemporary revolutionist argues that those unjust powers the government exercises are not in fact intelligently sanctioned by the majority (Marcuse goes in for that kind of thing, in a tortured sort of way), but, rather, are institutional accretions. What is to be done about them?

  Mr. Jefferson's Declaration of Independence acknowledges the “right of the people to alter or abolish” their government and “to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness ”