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TOM KAHN
after their confrontation with conservatism. Simultaneously, radicalism
daims for itself what liberalism promised before the confrontation.
Radicalism becomes chaste liberalism or triumphant liberalism, instead
of a qualitatively different politics.
In any case, I am not convinced that a
radical
coalition, as desirable
as that surely is, is required to achieve what the liberal coalition
has
sought, but failed, to achieve.
If
the liberal coalition, as powerful and
respectable as it is, cannot desegregate hospital facilities receiving
federal funds, what hope is there at present for a radical political
majority in the United States? None, as Mr. Duberman says. From a
premature breakdown of liberalism we are more apt to get reaction
than radicalism. Only as liberalism triumphs over conservatism does
radicalism become a relevant option.
Yet one finds among many New Leftists and some older intellectuals
a kind of glee in viewing the fragmentation and weakening of the
liberal coalition, as if a radical movement stood ready in the wings
to take over. They see Vietnam as a crucible in which the excess fat
of liberalism is boiled away, leaving hard crystals of political purity–
for tomorrow. Of these people, as of SNCC and CORE, we may wonder
with Mr. Duberman "whether they are really interested in a future
reconciliation." But whether they are interested or not, political events
are moving too rapidly for anyone to
be
confident of the political con–
figurations two, five or ten years from now.
6) Radicals today should be working with and within the liberal
coalition despite differences over Vietnam, for disintegration of the
coalition will neither enhance the prospects of peace nor move us toward
a more democratic foreign policy. Indeed the prospect of a more demo–
cratic foreign policy hinges largely on winning the mass domestic
interest-based constituencies to the view that peace depends on the
extension into international affairs of progressive social and economic
policies at home. This process is not accelerated but retarded by a
rhetoric which counterposes domestic and foreign policies by proclaim–
ing that domestic social needs must await a peaceful settlement in
Vietnam. Superficially this line appears to link domestic and foreign
policy issues, but in reality it tends to isolate the Doves who employ it
from the day-to-day struggles of those who cannot afford to wait for
peace in Vietnam or to transfer their energies exclusively to that end. It
does no good to tell residents of the ghetto that the war in Vietnam
makes help for them impossible, which is what the conservatives are say–
ing.
It
makes more sense to say what is after all the truth: that the war
provides only the latest in a long succession of phony conservative ex–
cuses for defaulting on the nation's promises.
