THE COLD WAR AND THE WEST
23
countries less fortunate than our own. Even under present conditions
we should do much more along these lines.
The free world
is
handicapped in its struggle for survival by its
own institutions, which, of course, is no reason for curbing them but
rather for using them with greater intelligence. On the one hand,
there are the noisy cultural vigilantes and political Neanderthals who
confuse counsel and make more difficult the courageous grappling
with the problem of how to preserve peace. On the
domestic
front
they do not understand that the chief problem
is
not Communism but
segregation, and racialism and the ugly phenomena connected with it.
For all their talks about freedom, they do not see the hypocrisy of
encouraging Freedom Fighters against Communism abroad and at–
tacking Freedom Riders at home. On the other hand, there are the as–
sorted groups of pacifists, unilateralists, and indifferentists who are so
intent on peace that they would sacrifice our freedom for it, and
whose propaganda by encouraging Khrushchev to think that
his
ad–
ventures may not be resisted, actually increases the danger of war.
Nonetheless both groups can be rendered uninfluential by an aroused
and intelligent public opinion.
Those who make a fetish of free enterprise or capitalism are also
obstacles in the struggle for the survival of a free culture. They not
only misunderstand the actual nature of our mixed economy, but
even more important the economic needs of other regions of the
world which cannot be met except by some form of socialized
economy.
If
freedom comes first, and we are prepared to go down
fighting for it, then we cannot permit the quest for private profit
to have any influence on our foreign policy. This applies as much
to those who would like to appease Communist countries in order to
do profitable business with them as to those who would like the
government to protect their investments against socialization abroad.
A democratic socialist regime has in the long run a much better
chance of withstanding Communist subversion or a Communist coup
than a reactionary regime like that of a Trujillo or a Franco.
There are some unilateralists who believe that
if
the Com–
munists take over a free country which has disarmed itself, they will
be overthrown by the resistance movement even if there were no
military invasion. They overlook three things. First, whatever re–
sistance movement there was in the past depended upon the ex-
