Record-Journal from Meriden, Connecticut • 6

0' The Meriden Record and Conservative Take A Look At Each Other Nail It Down Note: what either was regarded just a few years ago Then just what do they represent? In this spirit of inquiry the Associated Press sought the views of two of the most articulate thinkers on opposite sides of the political fence today Gore Vidal playwright and politician and William Buckley Jr author and editor Vidal usually is labelled a liberal Buckley a conservative In this case to get a fresh viewpoint each was asked to examine the enemy camp The result is the double-barreled discussion presented on this page lectual habitats which the liberals once claimed as their own One factor in (he revival of interest seems to be Sen Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz) New alignments may be in the making If Goldwater is the voice of conservatism today where does that leave Richard Nixon? Where would it have left Robert Taft? if Nelson Rockefeller is the voice of liberalism among Republicans where does that leave the liberal Democrats? Obviously neither conservative ndr liberal is Just what is a conservative in American politics today? What is a liberal? Where do both stand and how do they differ? Both labels have been tossed around and battered for years in campaign oratory in the quick slogan the meaningless catch phrase Today conservatives say enjoying a resurgence on the college campus and in other intel- Gore Vidal Contends: Dreads The Rule Of The Majority if other city problems of traffic and transit are to be solved Meriden should continue to push for a speed-up of 6-A We should urge the State Highway Department toward committing some funds for preliminary work on acquiring rights of way in the area west of Boad Street Even though it is only a beginning the psychological effects in Meriden and in Hartford would be valuable We should begin to campaign now and should insist that the 1963 session of the legislature specifically order by legislation the immediate start of the western sector of the highway And we should be doubly sure that the money is appropriated to pay for it The legislation itself may not be a guarantee but it surely will help This is not a good way of planning and building a highway system this planning by public pressure But as long as the system under which we are working Meriden must stand up and demand its badly needed share along with the rest The Chamber of Commerce the Committee for Meriden officials past and present and interested citizens are proving that we can demand consideration where due Continued pressure will be needed to nail down Route 6-A in the shortest possible order Meriden is mobilizing its attempts to get action on the building of Route 6-A and already we have accomplished something State Representative William Shea backed by protests and pleas for help from Meriden officials interested citizens and newspaper stories has managed to find out at last from the State Highway Department just what its plans are He has wrung from those in f-harge a commitment for an extra two million dollars to expedite building of the eastern sector He has thus to some extent made up for the oversights misunderstandings and inaction of our legislators that landed us in this delay This is progress but it is neither extensive enough nor definite enough to meet necessities We need the relocated 6-A not in 1967 which is when the cars would begin to traverse its total length under present plans but much sooner We need concrete plans for a start on the western sector by 1963 if we are to attract the necessary interest by developers in the redevelopment area sections that will be ready then We need the completion before the commercial aspects of redevelopment can begin to pay off And we need all this doubly if present commercial enterprises are to climb back to prosperity and Left or Right And those who tika to point out that we art a republic not a democracy are totalitarian-minded In their incontinent attacks on those they dislike (anyone favoring any sort of public Welfare is a Communist or Comsymp) and by pretending that there is a vast Communist conspiracy inside the United State (it is not inside but outside) they do their best to divide and confuse Dictatorship of the Right Were the Communist pressure upon uj less I think it unlikely that those radical forces Gold-water is trying to unite will ever take power through the democratic process The majority is too conservative for this But I can see in a time of national panic the emergence of the first dictatorship in bur history and it will com- not from the Left but from the Right and a cynical indifferent electorate already contemptuous of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights will lake to it eagerly When that happens and I pray it does not that great hope for the human race the American Revolution will be at an end and lost become a passive ill-informed fearful society A recent nationwide poll of high school students should give aid and comfort to those who dislike the democratic process Among the findings: 60 percent of our young people favor police censorship of books movies etc 60 per cent believe certain groups should not be allowed to hold public meetings even though they meet peaceably to make speeches (First Amendment) 58 per cent believe the police and the FBI should be allowed to give prisoners the third degree (Eighth Amendment) 41 per cent do not believe the press should publish what it wants (First Amendment) 57 per teat believe the average person is justified in keeping out of local politics (which is to say they do not want to make our form of government work) 76 per cent feel the most serious danger to this country comes from the Communists within Most Serious Danger Of course the most serious danger is the profoundly un-American attitude of these high school students which makes them perfectly vulnerable to any totalitarian-minded group High School Bowl BY GORE VIDAL Written for the Associated Press The terms and have no real meaning in current American politics Originally a Liberal was one who favored changes and reforms tending toward greater democracy while a Conservative was one who resisted change in order to maintain things the way they are In that sense at least Barry Goldwater is a Liberal (he does not want greater democracy but he certainly wants to change the status quo: stop all this welfarism etc) While John Kennedy would be a Conservative for he would retain and not greatly extend the present welfare programs of the Federal Government Free Socialism Possible Despite the cries of the Radical Right there is no important liberal movement in the United States and by liberal I mean socialist in the sense that most of Western Europe is socialist and at the same time democratic It has been one of the tragedies of our recent politics that the Radical Right has managed to convince the rnajority of our people that socialism is the same thing as Communism which is Soviet foreign policy which is our enemy The Soviet is our enemy but socialism is not communism nor Russian dominated More important and a fact which would come as a great surprise to most of our people it is possible to have a socialist country (Denmark for instance) which Is also a free society with a representative government just like our own The fact that our people understand that socialism is the preferred form of government of most of the civilized world not to mention the new countries of Africa and Asia makes for much misunderstanding in our dealings not only with the enemy but with our allies and would-be friends What then is the division in America? It is I should say be? Freedom to Exploit Now the sophisticated reactionary knows exactly what he is doing He wants complete freedom to get as much money as possible with no interference from the government The freedom to exploit others is the cornerstone of his philosophy book of a Is a hymn to self-interest The simpler more instinctive reactionary tends to be puzzled and annoyed by the state of affairs in this country (and no one argues that we have created another Eden) He sees a vast impersonal and not very competent government involved in more and more areas of his life Each year he pays more money to support this government and with some justice he is resentful He reacts: just get rid of these taxes stop giving money to foreigners help out those deadbeats who smart enough to get a job or take care of themselves then everything will be all right But the matter is not that simple Large countries have large governments and they do cost too much and this is a real problem for as well as Humanizing government is going to be the principal task of the next century The reactionary would prefer to eliminate most government but that will not happen and attempts to revive old forms and attitudes will fail Reaction Cannot Win In a sense the reactionary can never win because clocks go forward not backward That simple America they dream of (it never existed by the way) will not return Life is complex If we are to remain a great power we will have to spend uncomfortable amounts on armaments and foreign aid Taxes will remain great Government will always be large no matter who is at the Whit House Kennedy or Goldwater The tendency toward socialism is as strong in this country as any other though we will have to think of a new way to describe it Dynamic Constitutionalism perhaps The limits which government has set on the power of individuals and groups to exploit others will remain The people -who are the country will probably want more services from the country which is themselves and they will get those services again no matter who presides at the White House Limited Electorate Yet it is the dream of the reactionary to stop the majority cold The reactionary detests our form of government One of his favorite arguments is: the United States is a republic not a democracy This statement is inaccurate since we are both a republic and a democracy What the Reactionary really means to say is that the will of the majority as expressed through elections should be circumvented That there should be a limit to the franchise TTie Right Wing has not yet the courage to propose that some people be allowed to vote and some not to vote according say to the size of their income but that is what they are after For they mistrust and dislike the majority Yet our Constitution which they profess to revere is quite explicit about the value of the democratic process In fact the Constitution begins with the words the not the special interests" or the well edu cated and Fearful Society In free elections in reasonably serene times the reactionary has not got a chance at the polls But these are not serene times In the event of some economic or military disaster I suspect that the reactionary elements in America will come together and in one way or another try to take power Nor would it sad to relate be very difficult for them to impose themselves on the very people they dislike for hsve GORE VIDAL Liberal tween conservative and reactionary John Kennedy is a Conservative Barry Goldwater is a Reactionary A Reactionary is one who wishes to reverse an existing state of affairs and to return to a previous condition of society In the case of Goldwater and his fellow reactionaries the previous condition is the old agrarian America before the income tax the industrial revolution and the disturbing responsibilities of being a world power The program of the reactionaries is largely negative Get the government out of this and out of that don't give federal aid to the schools don't extend Social Security in any way do nothing about five million unemployed save as much money as possible by cutting out all human services so that the income tax can be gradually eliminated About The Author: Gore Vidal GORE VIDAL the author of several hit Broadwav plays and a half dozen high brow novels learned liberal potties at the knee of his illustrious grandfather Thomas Gore the blind senator from Oklahoma As a boy Vidal led his grandfather about Washington and spent many evenings reading to him from such diverse works as the Congressional Record and the Roman histories of Livy and Tacitus It was not surprising that the author of Best a hit Broadway comedy about national politics should try his hand at the game and run for Congress as a Democrat ia Republican upstate New York The fact that he was beaten did not curb Ms enthus asm for liberal causes In addition to his plays novels and movie scripts Vidal has written and lectured aridely on politics Now Mi he lives in an ante-bellum mansion on the banks of the Hudson not far from the US Military Academy at West Peiat where his father one coached the football team like to see it set up under the same rules which prevail for athletic events after all this is an exercise and a skill too one which involves the mind Perhaps some adaptation would be necessary in the case of cheer leaders but they would certainly add t' he atmosphere Most of all like to see i 'romoted and conducted in such I way that it would arouse the interest of students and public as does an athletic contest Managed this way it would be good for school spirit good for the prestige of scholars and scholarship and good for the lungs of those protestors against on who could be expected to work off some steam in the rooting section Line-O-Typef Mills Apartments may be occupied with permission if plans call for correction of Harbor Brook within a time And right that mean two or three years Relocation officer has moved in to work with the Redevelopment Agency Wish he could give us a little help in getting Route 6-A relocated in a hurry I The plot visN different but the cast of characters in the high school basketball play is pretty close to the one been seeing on the football fields Due to changes in costume though now we can see what the boys look like The answer to the charge that athletics are overemphasized in our high schools may come with the institution of High School Bowl contests which pit the brains of the schools against each other The Housatonie High School League of Student Councils has the idea under advisement with a representative from each of the eigh' schools including Lyman Hall due to meet and di( cuss it Success of the College Bowl series on television has sparked interest in the idea The College Bowl contests pit picked teams of students against each other to answer questions for the honor of the schools and the glory of their assembled egg-heads The results have been both entertaining and instructive While they hadn't yet pulled- viewing of IJie size that tunes in on the football games they have a steady and growing following Local interest runs high a recent contest in which Bates College overcame Trinity rated front page Hartford newspaper space No ground rules have been laid down even tentatively for the proposed high school bowl It'could be held as an annual event all schools competing simultaneously It could be set up on a regular schedule as are the basketball games with each school competing once or twice with every other It could be in the form of a ladder tournament with playoffs right up to the top for the championship Or it could allow one team to defend itself apiisst challengers until it was defeated It could be sponsored and held on radio or television William Buckl ey Jr Says: Thought Produces Uncertainty BY WILLIAM BUCKLEY JR en for the Associated Press) (Written Current Comment lin frontier stand between us and disaster A World Far Worse During this century we have fought two great wars and a few dozen smaller ones For our pains we have a world far worse off than ever it was before Why? During this century the science of revolution has advanced every bit as fast as the technological advances we read so much about It is a great feat to put a man in space It was an even greater feat to bamboozle the ruling class of the West into believing that the Chinese Communists were merely agrarian reformers We do not yet know how many if any victims will fall to Communism because of the Soviet temporary superiority in outer space We do know that the paralysis of the West during the period when China might have been saved yielded 600 million victims plus nerve combined with Liberal innocence-plus-fright equals Communist success It is notoriously the Liberal who continues to be the easy target for Communist propaganda on everything from disarmament to the House Committee on Un-American Activities Only the Heavenly Registrar knows how many people have actually been murdered by the totalitarian ideologists during this century That number includes six million Jews millions of Russians Chinese by the dozen their freedom and bureaucracies thrived Desolation Perceived As education raises them up out of the child's 1 garden of contentment some students will begin to perceive the desolation that surrounds us and will realize that it is a world which Liberalism helped to build Some students will make their renunciations after a fastidious study of Liberalism's premises They will come to realize that there is nothing in the Liberal creed save an intricate methodological structure (Academic Freedom Dissent Democracy the United Nations Mrs Roosevelt) on which you build and build and build as tirelessly and as futile-fy as Sisyphus but which ends us up Mr Khrushchev took off his left shoe and pounded the desk interrupting the proceeding and reiterating his threats against the West" helpless before the barbarians Other students will come intuitively to the knowledge of emptiness the cold shudder of loneliness that every sentient man will feel on contemplating our disintegrating world and knowing that only Washington and London and Paris only Harvard Oxford and the Sorbonne (those centers of homeopathy!) "The foreign offices of the United States and Great Britain and France protested today the Soviet Union's unlawful closing of the East Ber WILLIAM BUCKLEY JR Conservative of millions Those whose blueprints brought on this carnage are not Liberals (though at root their philosophies share important premises) The point is that Liberalism with' its unsureness about the enemy or about Itself or even about the meaning of human existence proved unsuccessful in containing the Total-ists In 1917 President Woodrow Wilson the first complete Liberal to come to presidential cower set out to make the world safe for democracy Forty five year- later there was less freedom by far than before he launched his great crusade At this rate a few more years of making the world safe for democracy and we shall have lost our own Here a I understand it are the principal differences between the Liberal and the Conservative approach' to the most pressing problems of our time Negotiators Lose Abroad the Liberal seeks constantly to negotiate And while he negotiates he loses ground For he is actualy negotiating with himself deciding how much to give in this time: the Communist meanwhile moves forward (The New Frontier- in Laos have you noticed? is a couple of hundred miles closer to the United Stales than the Old Frontier) The Conservative the profoundest reasons including a faith in transcendence a belief in absolute values a redemptive historical creed a profound comprehension of evil a realistic appraisal of history would not negotiate at least not on the terms He would revive the great Western tradition of creative and confident statecraft and move forward boldly taking risks winning victories to bring the cold war right to the hearths of Russia Among other concrete things he would liberate Cuba (instantly) withdraw support from the General Assembly rtf the United Nations (gradually) and encourage the consolidation of anti Communist forces in Asia in order to turn the war around again in Vietnam and yes carry the liberation movement on into China DOMESTICALLY the Liberal is obsessed by the notion of tribution of freedom or the encouragement of individuality or a sense cf community be accomplished by making the state th overriding social entrepreneur Man should be free But freedom is the unusual prfdicament this vale of tears It matter how many resolutions ar passed by the General Assembiy or the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People the typical African tribesman is not going to be free not for many generations to come and to impose upon him in the name of democracy an Nkrumah a Nasser a Kenyatta is to repress freedom and hinder its growth and to introduce the kind of nationalistic absolutism that the Communist so successfully exploit IN PHILOSOPHY th Liberal is afraid of truths: only those things are true which have to do with method Thus the Liberal is concerned for the freedom of nativa Communists because so goes the theory of the open society-they ought to be free to convert us to their ways The Conservative believes we have learned something in the past thre thousand years at least enough to know that Communism is wrong from every point of view no matter how large a majority might at any given moment at tract and that therefore only the society with a death wish will permit the Communist to accumulate power Go ahead and let the Communist be free: but if he begins to pick up strength smash him The Liberal is only happy (or is he actually ever happy? Edward face the face of Liberalism? Will he ever realize he i sad because he has to look at the world he built?) when he is searching for truths The Conservative is happy finding them and defending them The idea of the complete political life is a never -ending campaign to iaise the minimum wage or 40 years of devoted service to the Department for the Location of Deposed Area The Conservative wants to worship his God develop' M4 talents enjoy the fruit of them: and in his political life to work unsparingly to keep (Continued On Page g) 4 Most students who enter college are not interested in politics and nothing much is likely to change this short possibly of good whiff of radio active dust or news that Senator McCarthy has risen from the dead There are lots of reasons for staying away from politics including Greek plays trombone playing football practice and the undistracted pursuit of the opposite sex But the best reason is that politics tend nowadays to be so consumingly dull That is what Liberalism has done for us Even so there is lately a modest revival of political interest in American colleges and this seems to be in considerable part the doing of conservatives The phenomenon of 21 year old conservatives is causing considerable dismay among the faculty who were about ready to believe that intelligent young conservatives were as unlikely to reappear on the modern scene as say Pithecanthropus Erectus A indoctrination in the light and the truth should have succeeded in making the species extinct But here they are coast to coatf It is as though the student body of Moscow's Lenin Institute were suddenly to play hookey to celebrate the birthday! Nothingness of Liberalism How can it be that so many students are turning Right? The answer is: Because so many students have awakened to the great Nothingness of Liberalism and are looking for something to believe in and act upon The happy few have begun to realize that tha much heralded renewal of Liberalism under the New Frontier is just the same old thing again: more spending more federal power more appeasement abroad The only thing young about John Kennedy is his age: all his ideas if that is the word for the chaos in Washington these days are Liberal retreads no more likely to serve us today than they did yesterday or the day before when they teetered about seeking to coj)e with reality while bombs fell nation lost RELATIONSHIP OF THINGS PEOPLE SPIRIT Shore Line Time "Almost any day we can look up and see a white contrail cutting a gash in the-blue canopy of the sky We say to ourselves goes a jet As we drive along we note automobiles and factories and churches and houses These are all normal reactions but in their normalcy they are also significant of one of the ills of our society They indicate not only the shallowness of our poii of view but an inconsistency which weakens us in terms of the ideological struggle which exist in the world of today "These simple reactions are absolutely consistent with the communist ideology of materialism and the pattern of thought which results from its pursuit The dialectic materialism of communism has no place for the correct thinking processes of Christian doctrine nor in truth for the basic doctrines of our democratic society "Were we to be consistent with our professed spiritual and political beliefs we should say is a crew of men fly-ing a or are people driving or are people living in those houses' or working in factories or worshipping in churches fetched? My friends if we were more attuned to the fact that people and not things make up the measure of our society communism would have a far more difficult task in its attempts to attain world domination If we set our minds on this fact we would be far more effective individuals in this great struggle which we face Constant recognition of Rhe relationship of people to things and things to people would soon force us to revaluate our perspective of society as a whole to this point we have thought of people as only material beings which is absolutely consistent with our inconsistency The flesh and bones concept of people jibes well again with the communist ideology each according to his abilities to each according to his We should be thinking of people as spiritual beings "When we look at things let us think in terms of their relationship with people and when we look at people let us think of them in terms of their relationship with God "I do not know how you feel about a welfare state which ostensibly strives to give to people everything they want and need 1 do know however that any government that has tjie power to do this also has the power to take from the people everything that they have we are to face disaster or the threat of disaster we should get in training now If we wait until disaster strikes then we shall be found wanting The trials and tribulations of the coming years will to a large extent result from the apathy and neglect of men of good will today The growth of false values in our civilization has weakened it to the extent that in the last 40 year the cancer of communism hat taken over one-third of the world's population" These excerpts from a recent talk given by Albert Stickney Jr senior warden of Christ Church are basic elements of hi appeal for people to support the church They are pertinent also to every attitude toward the values institutions and principles by which this nation can lead the world to freedom I ''4 and the notion of But he does not understand what equality really is or what is required to effect it (Everybody is equal in East Germany and everybody is miserable) The Liberal is determined to make every Negro in the South as contented as every Negro in Harlem And every White as discontented All this to be accomplished by and for Democracy The Thing only nobody knows any more what Democracy means Absolutely nobody Democracy is what you had in the Congo when Lumumba took over? What you will have in Algeria after the FLN takes over? What you have in Egypt under Nasser? In Venezuela under Betancourt? In Ghana under Nkru-mah? Freedom is Unusual The Conservative believe that the meaning of life cannot be approached through abstract ideal like democracy etc cannot be imposed by fuglemen It can only be done under tyranny Nor can the distribution of wealth or the dis About The Author: William Buckley Jr WILLIAM BUCKLEY JR wrote hjs first polemic at the age of 6 It was a letter to King George suggesting that England pay Its war debt One of It children of a Texas oil millionaire Buckley has never been shy about trading quips and quiddities with his eiders He first burst forth on the public as the witty undergraduate author of and Man at a eye view of liberal leanings at Old Ell From that time on he has been almost constantly embroiled In controversy whether the subject happens to be yachting his favorite sport or the Kennedy administration his current target Just turning Buckley has established himself as a leading intellectual spokesman for the conservative position in American politics He is the author of several best sellers an intrepid television debater and campus lecturer and the editor and founder of "National journal of conservative opinion 4.