PARTISAN REVIEW
As
the hope of solving our foreign problems by indiscriminately
and rapidly raising the standard of living of the rest of the world
has waned, the more informed critics of contemporary politics have
had to fall back on an austerity program-a program promising less
and requiring more: more money, more soldiers, more arms, more
aid, hence more taxes. All this is required, of course, not for redistribu–
tion within America, though a good deal of this docs ensue, but to
provide a new carrier (it costs as much as a Valley Authority) or a
radar early-warning defense (as costly as socialized medicine). This
program divides the intellectuals among themselves-many still agi–
tate for socialized medicine- but divides them still more grievously
from the poor and uneducated- for the latter, whatever the bellicose
consequences of their xenophobia and love of verbal violence, always
oppose war and sacrifice.
It is perhaps in reaction to these dilemmas that one new issue–
that of the protection of traditional civil liberties-has risen in re–
cent years to monopolize almost completely the intellectuals' atten–
tion. But this, too, is an issue which demands sacrifice from the un–
educated masses- not financial sacrifice but the practice of deference
and restraint which is understood and appreciated only among the
well-to-do and highly educated strata.
6
Thus, a focus on civil liberties
and on foreign policy tends, as we have seen, to make intellectuals
seek allies among the rich and well-born, rather than among the
workingmen and farmers they had earlier courted and cared about;
indeed, it tends to make them conservative, once it becomes clear
that civil liberties are protected, not by majority vote (which is over–
whelmingly unsympathetic), but by traditional institutions, class pre–
rogatives, and judicial life-tenure. At the same time, the protection
of civil liberties has had to cope with the Communist issue, much as
other liberal causes have. The Sacco-Vanzetti case united the liberals;
the Rosenberg case divided them. The great civil liberties cases of the
post-Enlightenment era werCi not fought to save the Czar's spies and
police from detection and punishment; they were fought for anar-
6 It was evident in the first opinion polls of the '30s that the conventional
notion of the rich as conservative and the poor as radic:d was correct in the
realm of government, labor, and distributive policy-thus, the poor h ave no ob–
jection to government ownership-but false in the realm of civil liberties and
foreign policy, where the greater impact of mistrust and fear of the strange and
the stranger among the poor came to light.
