Dos Passos, sometime socialist, had mingled with great contemporary U.S. literary figures, here and abroad—Pound, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Steinbeck. He had lived in their company in Paris and had traveled with George Orwell to Spain during the civil war. Gradually, late in the 1930s, skepticism set in and his critical attention turned to America’s burgeoning centralized government, to the expansionism of the Soviet Union, and to the arrant and mischievous claims of the fellow travelers. The Communists, standing by the Marxist-Leninist canon, spoke through official channels in Moscow and Peking, Prague and Bucharest, Warsaw and Budapest, encouraging in Europe and America visionaries and nihilists, ideological swashbucklers and housebound sectarians. They kept aflame in many in the West a fugitive hope for the fruition of the Communist ideal. And then there was the blend of fear of world war and fatigue with the apparent endlessness of the Cold War. Dos Passos, a distillate of native American idealism and Yankee common sense, would no longer have any part of it.
“I read U.S.A. last year,” Alicia Ellsworth said to him, a smile from ear to ear. “I can’t believe it, going back and telling my professor—American Studies at Wellesley, Mr. Dos Passos—tell her I actually talked to John Dos Passos!”
“Tell her thanks for getting my book around, and tell her I’ve just finished another.”
“What’s it called?”
“It’s called Midcentury. It’s about . . . Well—” He smiled, and yielded the floor to National Review senior editor Frank Meyer, his crew-cut hair gray, his left hand gripping his scotch on the rocks, two fingers clutching the lit cigarette.
“How’re you doing, Dos?” Meyer’s hoarse voice told the story of a lifetime with cigarettes. “This is a great development here, don’t you think? A conservative political youth organization!”
“Yes, Frank.” Dos smiled his shy smile, his face slightly tilted to turn his good eye to Frank. “We know a lot about young political organizations. Well, that’s not quite right. I wrote about them, you organized them.”
Frank Meyer, when a young Communist studying in London, had become a prominent Party organizer. Soon after the 1945 Potsdam Conference, which effectively ceded great European territories to Moscow, he rejected the Communist faith. Meyer immersed himself in the conservative canon, which he was soon undertaking to refine. He served now as book editor of National Review, a portfolio he discharged from his country home, a hundred miles north of New York City in Catskill country, and as unofficial ideologue-in-chief of the conservative movement.
He lived with his wife and two boys, rose from his bed in midafternoon, drew deep on his first cigarette, drank coffee, read the New York Times, and began then his scheduled reading, his book-review assignments, and his own writing. Late in the afternoon he would put all else aside and devote himself, with his wife, Elsie, to coaching the two boys, ages twelve and eight, in their schoolwork. It was illegal, under the laws of the State of New York, to fail to send one’s school-age children to public school (or to a licensed private school). It delighted Frank Meyer to defy that law, and as many other laws as, in his dogged search for antistatist expression, he could put his hands on. He declined on principle to declare in Customs his regularly imported English cigarettes. He would read and write until ten or eleven at night and then go to the telephone, through which he exercised his glossolalia—though, over the telephone, he preached less to the heathen than to those young and old already persuaded by the conservative faith, or nibbling at it. His expansive and avuncular good nature and his anxiety to give aid and counsel meant continuous phone calls, narrowing, sometime after one or two in the morning, to others who kept such hours—students, mostly, or Californians who hadn’t gone to bed, or Englishmen who had already risen. One constant companion on the telephone was a fellow National Review senior editor, Brent Bozell, brother-in-law of Buckley. Bozell, law graduate, had written speeches for Joe McCarthy and wrote now—he was responsible for the book The Conscience of a Conservative—for Senator Barry Goldwater. The wisecrack at National Review was, “How do you define an emergency telephone call from Frank Meyer to Brent Bozell?” Answer: “A telephone call that interrupts the regular telephone call from Frank Meyer to Brent Bozell.”
Meyer laughed his hoarse laugh at Dos Passos’s gibe. “Yes, Dos, I had a hand in this kind of macho thing while you were out there writing great literature.”
“What was the big difference between our group—this group—and the kind you had a hand in, ten, fifteen years ago?” Bob Schuchman put the question to Frank Meyer. He added, “I guess back then we were mostly Jews, right, Frank?” Schuchman was only twenty-two years old, freshly matriculated at Yale Law School, but already he was addressing the senior and venerable figure by his first name. This surprised no one, because Meyer, operating from his eyrie in Woodstock, New York, smelled out up-and-coming young conservatives wherever they gestated. He would spot their writing in student journals, getting word of them from cross-references in his network. He cultivated them over the telephone and formed enduring disciples and friends.
Meyer laughed at Schuchman’s point. “Yes, quite right, Bob. A lot of them were Jews. Like me.”
“And like me,” Bob said.
“And here you are, first president of the Young Freedom Americans.”
“Young Americans for Freedom.”
“Yes, sorry.” Meyer drew on his cigarette and swallowed his drink. “Well, you watch, Bob. You watch, Dos. And you”—a courtly nod to Alicia Ellsworth, whose name, extraordinarily, he hadn’t caught—“you watch too, young lady. We Jews are so smart, just give us five or ten years and the most prominent American conservatives will be Jewish!”
Dos Passos said, “Well, we’ve got a pretty good start with Barry Goldwater.”
“He’s only half Jewish.” Bob recounted animatedly the Goldwater story about being denied access to the golf club in Phoenix because he was Jewish and asking whether, since he was only one-half Jewish, he could be allowed to play nine holes.
Bill Buckley approached them with his diminutive mother, wearing her pearls, the tidy lace across the divide on her breasts, her brocaded light-blue dress stretching down to regulation height above her very high heels. She smiled her all-encompassing smile. She had already greeted Dos Passos and Frank Meyer. Indeed, she had shaken hands with all the delegates on their arrival two days before, and more than once with many as she came across them during the weekend, wandering about in the salons and playrooms of the large house where she had raised ten children. She never missed a chance to welcome with her smile anyone who might be lifted by her greeting or encouragement.
Buckley addressed Schuchman. “Mother says it’s time to start supper. Would you do something? Get the word around?”
Bob Schuchman was direct in all matters. He took Frank’s highball glass and banged on it with his own glass, eventually engaging attention.
“Chow time, gang. I mean, chow time, Young Americans for Freedom!”
The tables were set in two parallel living rooms, the buffet in the connecting section. An hour or so after they had sat down—after the pumpkin pie, the apple cider, and the red wine—Schuchman situated the microphone within view of one set of diners. Others, leaving their tables, stood about.
He began by giving thanks to Mrs. Buckley (“who, among other things, educated Bill”). Hearty applause. Welcome was extended to distinguished guests: Dos Passos and Meyer; John Chamberlain, author and literary reviewer; James Burnham, National Review senior editor, strategist, author of The Managerial Revolution; Frank Chodorov, editor of The Freeman; Marvin Liebman from the Committee of One Million Against the Admission of Communist China to the United Nations. They each had applause. “We also welcome someone from the enemy camp. Murray Kempton is—well, you all know—Murray Kempton is Murray Kempton. When he called up and said he wanted to do a column about us, he asked, Did we have any room tonight for a middle-aged American for socialism?” Laughter. “Anyway—welcome, Murray. We conservatives make way for l
ate vocations.”
Schuchman then announced that he had had a very informative telephone call. “I have a spy at the New York Times.” Laughter and applause. “I know, I know, I’m kidding. But what I’m not kidding about is I got from my spy the lead paragraph of the story that will run tomorrow! In the Sunday Times!” Applause. “You want to hear it?” Applause. One voice rang out, “YAF doesn’t care what the New York Times says, right, gang?” Applause, laughter. “Okay, then I won’t read it.” Boos, laughter.
“Come on, Bob,” Bill Buckley said. “They’re the enemy, but we want to know what the enemy is saying, don’t we?” Applause, laughter.
“Okay, okay. So, here it is:
“‘A convention of students met over the weekend at Sharon, Connecticut, at the home of Mrs. William F. Buckley, mother of the editor, to form an association called Young Americans for Freedom.’” Cheers. “‘Ninety-three student delegates from seventeen states resolved to launch a national organization that would give voice to the views of young conservatives, some of whom demonstrated at the Republican convention in Chicago in July urging the nomination of Senator Barry Goldwater for president. When that move failed, they sought Congressman Walter Judd for vice president. The organization’s manifesto declares, “The United States should stress victory over, rather than coexistence with, the Communist world.”
“‘The delegates elected”—Schuchman clasped both hands over his head in the victory pose of the prizefighter, to much laughter and a smattering of applause—“ ‘Robert Schuchman of Chicago as its first president.’” He paused.
“The news story goes on at some length to record my accomplishments, but we can skip that.” Applause and laughter.
Schuchman dropped the Times report and went on to give out administrative details. He said that all delegates would receive within a week or ten days notice about YAF activities. “Make sure that in the registry in the main hall, you have down your address at college, not just your home address.”
He took his wineglass to his lips.
“So, the conference is adjourned. We have music on the patio, and Mrs. Buckley says to stay, and dance if we want to. The bar is open. The mini-bar. The maxi-bar is reserved for Frank Meyer and his closest friends. He is on the telephone with them right now. The bus and cars will leave Great Elm”—the name of the Buckley residence—“at 11 P.M. to take us to where we’ve been staying. You’ve all made your own arrangements about getting back tomorrow to New York and other foreign capitals. Some of us call this the diaspora. And we too will thrive!” There was general applause.
Woodroe Raynor asked Leonora Goldstein if she wanted to dance. “Not really,” she said with a smile. “But let’s anyway. The decision to dance is the reasoned exercise of my free will.”
“What else would it be?” Woodroe asked, putting his hand behind her back.
As they danced in the dim patio light to recorded music of Frank Sinatra and Johnny Mercer, Leonora said, “I want to talk to you, Woody, about what you said in the resolution sessions.”
“About Communist organizations?”
“Yes. About investigating Communist activity.”
“Right. But why not wait until we get back to the Coleys’?”
She nodded her assent. “But we don’t have to hurry off the dance floor.”
Friends and neighbors had volunteered to put up some of the guests, the remainder lodging at the Bartram Inn on Sharon’s elm-lined quadrangle. At eleven, Mrs. Coley was there with her station wagon to pick up her boarders. Woodroe shared a guest room above the garage with Henry Mandelbaum, but Henry had left after dinner, getting a ride to New Haven from a Coley son who came and went to Sharon, unconcerned with the goings-on of the Young Americans for Freedom. Leonora’s roommate was Alicia Ellsworth. They bade good night and thanked Mrs. Coley, who before leaving for her own room said, “You know where the kitchen is, if you want anything.” Alicia said she too was going upstairs to bed, leaving Woodroe and Leonora to sit together at the kitchen table.
“You sleepy?” Leonora asked Woodroe.
“No. Not a bit.”
She got up and opened the refrigerator door. “I’m going to have some of this”—she gripped a gallon jug of apple cider. “Want any?”
Woodroe nodded. “On the rocks.”
Seated, Leonora said that from her “perspective,” the word sedition, which Woody had used that afternoon to define the activity of the congressional committees, was simply not useful anymore.
“Why?”
“Because all collectivist thought is seditious.”
“Well, I think I know what you’re getting at, Lee. Ayn Randites consider all collective activity—I suppose the fire department would be included?—‘seditious.’ But there’s a difference. I mean, you can say that Norman Thomas, running for president on the Socialist Party ticket, is preaching a seditious doctrine—he wants programs that would limit the freedom of Americans. Granted, we think that’s seditious, like when George III did it. But that’s not the same as Earl Browder, president of the American Communist Party, running for president. He’s an agent of a foreign power. And he’s prepared to use every weapon he can put his hands on, including the use of agents, to give the enemy information on American security arrangements. And what Browder wants is the same thing those scientists want, though a lot of them probably don’t know who’s calling the signals in their organization. But if they prevailed, hell, they’d tie up our entire defense system, if they could put their hands on it.”
“I knew you’d say that kind of thing.” Leonora reached back into the refrigerator for more cider. “But my point is that you’re really talking about gradations of assault on our freedoms. And sure, I’m perfectly willing to endorse the security laws, the whole apparatus—J. Edgar Hoover, Pat McCarran, Joe McCarthy, the Smith Act. But our basic understanding of the enemy—the generic enemy—isn’t really illuminated. Woody, have you read Atlas Shrugged?”
“Ayn Rand’s novel?”
She nodded.
“It’s very long.”
“I’ve read it three times.”
“Whoa! Reading something that long that many times? That gets in the way of other things, doesn’t it? Like, oh, Gone With the Wind?”
“I’m being serious, Woody.”
“Well, okay. Let me be serious too, then. I think the difference between the liberals and the Communists isn’t slight, like what you think. I say it’s critical. And our trouble isn’t that we fail to identify the central similarity between them, both determined to reduce freedom, whether in Russia through regimentation or in Washington through taxes and regulations. The central problem is that we are accepting the sincerity of critically situated people who are—who are, actually, on the other side. Who we think of as simply, well, Left liberals, but who are, really, people who are affecting to be Left liberals but are actually Communist sympathizers. Some of us call them ‘Comsymps.’”
“You say some of us. Who is ‘us’?”
Woodroe paused. If he lit a cigarette, he’d gain a moment’s time. He did, and exhaled the smoke, and with it his fleeting temptation to hide his affiliation. “‘Us’ is the John Birch Society.”
She stared at him. “I’ll be damned. I’ve never read much on Robert Welch and the Birchers. I do know they want to impeach Earl Warren. You can’t drive five miles in California—I know, I was there in July—without running into ‘Impeach Earl Warren’ signs or stickers or whatever.”
“They’re strong in California. We’re strong in California.”
“So you’re actually a member of their society?”
“Yes. It’s not expensive, the dues are nothing, if you’re under twenty-five.”
“Well, I want to hear a lot more about it. I hope you’re not going to tell me you think Earl Warren, dopey though he is, is a secret Communist?”
“You’d have to give that a lot of thought.”
“I don’t mind doing that. Giving things a lot of thought is what we
objectivists specialize in.”
“Now you’re telling me about an organization you belong to—”
“Oh, no.” Leonora drew back. “We don’t have an organization. And I’m not ‘an objectivist.’ Only two people are authorized to call themselves that. Miss Rand, of course. And Nathaniel Branden.”
“Who’s he?”
“Her primary assistant. And head of the Nathaniel Branden Institute. He teaches courses. In New York. And more and more, he’s touring the country and lecturing about objectivism.”
“How do you know all that?”
Leonora looked down at her glass and twiddled with it. “I have been doing work for Miss Rand. I suppose you have been doing work for Robert Welch?”
“In a way, yes, though of course it isn’t work being done for him directly, it’s work being done to . . . spread the word.”
“About how everybody is a Communist?”
“Aw, shit, Lee. Cut that stuff out. But to say not everybody is a Communist doesn’t justify saying nobody is a Communist.”
“Okay.” She smiled, and her eyes joined in. She got up. “Okay, okay, okay. We’ve got a little crossbreeding ahead of us.”
“I hope so,” Woodroe said cheerfully, touching his lips to her forehead.
11
ONE AFTERNOON, AFTER READING from the material he had been sent by the John Birch Society and admiring the clarity of the exposition on U.S. foreign policy, Woodroe wrote a letter to the Princetonian, the student newspaper, calling attention to the biblical Blue Book of the John Birch Society. The next morning, opening the door of his room at Blair Hall, he retrieved the daily paper and opened it to the letters page.
Getting It Right Page 7
