Vol. 31 No. 4 1964

RICHARD SCHLATTER

Senator Goldwater's nomination is

not

significant for the

obvious reasons which have been mentioned over and again by the

political columnists. What they tell us is true enough: he has managed

to unite, as no one before him, all the "anti's," all the crackpots of the

extreme Right, all the ignorant and prejudiced and bitter whose in–

securities and grievances, often real enough, lead them to hatreds and

to bigotries and

the creation of scapegoats. Senator Goldwater, per–

haps to his own surprise, found all these groups supporting him. His

simple-minded and ignorant idealism, his vague but strongly-felt moral

fervor, his rhetorical support .of Americanism, peace

and

war with

victory, justice

and

vigilantism against the devils who beset us, reck–

less derring-do

and

security for all, have made him the hero of these

frustrated fringe groups who normally have little to say in the affairs of

the country. He also, of course, reflects the recurrent sectionalism of

American politics-in this case, the South and West against the de–

cadent East: he will certainly make a speech sometime during the

campaign aimed at financiers and monopolists and big-city corruption.

But all this is

not

very significant. Anyone might have had the

luck to unite these groups and appeal to their hatreds, fears, bigotries

and frustrati.ons. But, there are not enough of them to elect the Senator

in November. Unless he can get support from other major groups, the

frustrated will merely

down in humiliating defeat once more.

The real significance, I think, of Senator Goldwater's nomination

is that it has demonstrated that we are all part of the American

Establishment. For the moment at least, the Republican party, which

is traditionally the party of the East, of Big Business, and of conserva–

tive Eisenhower Do-Nothings has become the party of the Know Noth–

ings. On the other side, liberals, conservatives, and radicals have dis–

covered, in their reaction against Senator Goldwater, that they are all

one under the skin, that they are all supporters of the status quo and

that there are no basic disagreements between intellectuals, bankers,

trade unionists, artists, big businessmen, beatniks, professional people,

and politicians, to name a few, or between economic classes. Thought–

ful men support the present administration because there is no alterna–

tive. There are no real critics, no new ideas, no fundamfmtal differ–

ences of opinion or of aims. Some of us may criticize this or that

policy, some of us may wish that the President were more radical or

more conservative. But in the end we support him without undue