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PARTISAN REVIEW
sense of a positive idea, because without it you don't have a critical
stance. All you have is some kind of instinctive resistance.
In
a way
James Wilson dramatized the problem, because he spoke about some
relationship between popular feeling and neoconservatism. Then,
under questioning, he retreated and said that he doesn 't mean
popular feeling at any given moment, but something more tradi–
tional; and then he speaks of core beliefs. Core beliefs, I suppose,
have always characterized society. But once he invokes the idea of
core beliefs, it seems to me that he has concealed a philosophical
idea, and he goes to the philosophers for that. One of them is
de Tocqueville.
In
his talk I found a very facile conflation between
his notion of popular feeling as it exists in America today, and
de Tocqueville's idea of the citizen which was often the basis for a
critique of popular feeling and of popular passion. And the neocon–
servatives can't just say we know facts, and the liberals have histori–
cally or traditionally been ignorant, and we'll give them the facts,
and somehow together we will work out some solution to the
problems we all recognize.
James
Q.
Wilson:
I can see why they call it the
Partisan Review.
There
are two levels at which I can make a brief response. The first is that
since I do not think of myself as a philosopher, or as a person who
has an ideology that is worked out with respect to political objects, I
don't feel myself under an obligation
to
have those views that many
intellectuals feel all intellectuals must have. I find that stifling.
Secondly, with respect to the question of core beliefs, you put your
finger on an essential point. And it becomes incumbent upon
persons who are evaluating public policy and using facts to be
explicit about what those beliefs are that lead them to make judg–
ments. Most people develop very early in life an almost instinctive
sense of justice which informs virtually everything they judge. Much
of public policy today does serious violence to this elemental sense
of justice. That equals should be treated equally is an empirical
question which most people can agree on. This leads to the follow–
ing problem, which is one of the reasons why people are called
neoconservatives instead of frustrated liberals. And that is the issue of
integration. When I formed views on this subject, they were based on
the principle of equal opportunity to all, and on proportional
division of benefits. With respect to political things, most people
were equal, and therefore most things distributed politically should
be distributed equally. This implied that you favor civil rights laws,
you favor ending inhibitions on people expressing political rights,
you opposed manifestly unjust distributions of public goods and
