The Limits of Letting Public Opinion Drive Public Policy

 [In a long journal entry — close to 4,000 words — on July 22, 1945, my father opined about foreign policy, the imperative of the United States to engage in reconstruction, the downside of public opinion driving public policy, and a host of other topics. In this first excerpt from that entry, he notes the proclivity of the “everyman” American, Sam Jones, to worry more about a steak dinner today than a recurrence of world war 15 or 20 years into the future. My father’s comments about the need for political leaders willing to buck the pressure of uninformed public opinion seem apropos to the present day (as his journal writings often do). Another of his statements that remains true for our times: “…we easily persuaded ourselves that national good was necessarily universal good, and failed to perceive that certain of our cherished advantages were maintained directly or indirectly at the expense of other parts of the world.”]

July 22, 1945 (Ft. Jackson, S.C.)

… Basically, these war years, with their extravagant spending of men and material, have outraged the practical “business sense” of the common American who carries on the national business, be he civilian or soldier. Right now, he’s getting angry about our large scale handouts to our Allies, and President Truman, his perfect representative, is apparently telling the boys at Potsdam that from now on it’s “put up or shut up.” This attitude is generally applauded, and rightly so, if we don’t let ourselves get talked or scared into “practical” deals which end by increasing, rather than diminishing, the various frictions still existing among the nations. But that’s a big IF, and will often call for national policy which demands present sacrifices as the investment in future security. UNRRA [United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration] presents such a situation now, and we don’t seem willing to go very far beyond a profession of good intentions. Exasperated, but well-fed Americans get the preference over starving Europeans. And later many Americans will become exasperated at these Europeans for embracing Communism after we’d gone to the trouble and expense of liberating them from Fascists totalitarianism. We’ll never know how quickly the sweets of liberation can pale on an empty stomach.

As a nation we’ll make these “mistakes” simply because a steak dinner today seems more important to Sam Jones and his family than another world war fifteen or twenty years from now. That doesn’t mean that Sam Jones is a bad or irresponsible man, but it would seem to mean that he’s a poor man to entrust with the shaping of American foreign policy. Yet Sam Jones, taken by the million, is public opinion, and we are told with authoritative finality that American foreign policy between these last two wars was increasingly isolationist and appeasing because public opinion would allow nothing else. “We knew what was coming,” many of our leading statesmen have said, “but we were powerless to act because of public opinion.” Of course, one seriously questions the omniscience of most of these bleating sheep, but at the same time one must admit a measure of truth in their argument. If important information was made available to the members of Congress, information which revealed the extreme danger of our position in an Axis dominated world, and if these men, reflecting the naturally limited viewpoint of their constituents, refused to believe in the significance of this information, refused, possibly for reasons of election strategy, to pass it on to their constituents, and thus left us dismally unprepared when the strike came, then our foreign policy set-up is certainly inadequate.

There is always pressure for various changes in any governmental system, and unimportant changes in both personnel and procedure are constantly being made. Over a period of years these minor changes may add up to a real change in political philosophy. This is evolutionary development, and has been a privilege of the American people since 1789, with the exception of the Civil War. At that time the revolutionary concept of the right of secession from the Union was advanced, and it was denied only at the cost of a bloody war.

The present war has been as much a Civil War as that war between the North and the South, but because it concerns a world union of “sovereign” nations rather than a continental union of “sovereign“ states, because the apparent national differences of the peoples involved have obscured the basic philosophical issue, we, as the victor side, are likely to bungle the victor’s responsibility of directing reconstruction even worse than we did after our Civil War, when the issues were relatively clearer. The German and Japanese totalitarian governments have been a mortal challenge to our own democratic institutions. This challenge could hardly have been made with such ferocity if democratic government had seemed as fair and advantageous to the rest of the world as it seemed to us. In other words, we easily persuaded ourselves that national good was necessarily universal good, and failed to perceive that certain of our cherished advantages were maintained directly or indirectly at the expense of other parts of the world. And to bring it closer home, we may as well admit that during the thirties the democratic way of life left several million Americans out in the cold of economic privation. Had these millions become a majority, or seized political power while still a minority, Americans might possibly have found themselves attempting the desperate cure for their ills which the Germans tried under Hitler….

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Business-Government Imbalance Poses Potentially Fatal Risks

[This entry begins with an analysis of the interplay between government and business in communist and fascist countries, and contrasts that interplay with America’s historically more-balanced model. From that foundation, my father revisits one of his favorite themes — the importance of individual self-expression and creativity — and discusses how America has done better than most in cultivating and nourishing the individual. Near the entry’s end, however, he cautions that “A society is thrown fatally out of balance when one group within it accumulates the power to deny expression to all conflicting interests.”

Sadly, in our current electoral season, corporations have been given carte blanche by the U.S. Supreme Court to spend endlessly and anonymously to promote their preferred candidates and causes. While Tea Partiers and other right-wing zealots worry endlessly about Big Government, they seem completely oblivious to the threat that Big Business poses to our democratic institutions (to say nothing of the threat to their own self interests…). Perhaps we’ve already reached the tipping point where American democracy is beginning to spin “fatally out of balance.”

September 10, 1944 (Camp Shelly, Miss.)

Call government the chicken and business the egg. Then ask which came first, the chicken or the egg. In the Communist state it was the chicken, nor was this simply a matter of chance. In Russia at the time of the Revolution there was only a comparatively small industrial plant, and its owners were on the losing side. So, entirely aside from the Marxist theories, it was quite natural that the political organization should come first, and that it should assume complete control of the development of the nation’s industry, making it a state enterprise. Nor is it strange that the Communist leaders should believe that their way was the best way. They made it work.

In Germany after the World War, the ruling class, mostly in the person of the Kaiser, was eliminated, but German industry, already highly developed, and not greatly damaged by war, remained in the hands of its pre-war owners. Thus they, by default, became the top-dogs in Germany, and controlled the government as they saw fit. This was the prime condition of Fascism. These businessmen picked Hitler as the best front-man available, and have perhaps lived to regret their choice. But that’s debatable, since it isn’t quite clear that Hitler has ever got completely out of hand, or crossed them up badly.

In the United states, the question of the chicken and the egg remains a riddle. Business and government, through the historical accident by which our state was established at the beginnings of the industrial revolution, have grown up together and though the preponderance of power has sifted back and forth during the years, they’ve never been completely out of balance with each other. It’s this system of constantly-maintained balance between business and government which we’ve come to call democracy. It’s an extension of the system of checks and balances which was written into the original Constitution, and which is probably one of the most fruitful social theories ever formulated. Though we may have acquired it partly through accident, it’s very important today that we understand its value and function, so that we’ll be the stronger to dismiss all temptations to destroy it.

The Communist and Fascist states are both built to ignore the most pressing need of modern society, which is the need for individual self-expression. The leaders of these states have become fascinated with the idea of the mass, and have forgotten that the strength of the mass is in its individual members. And though, for a limited time, and under special conditions, it may be possible to inspire mass movements of considerable force, there is nothing more permanent in such a movement than in the display of the pent-up force in a released rocket. Both are brilliant, and soon spent.

Democratic society has few moments of this type of hysterical mass movement and in these moments it’s the least democratic. The crude techniques of mass appeal have no place in a democratic system, and should be avoided except as a last expedient at times when the state is threatened by outside force. Even then such appeals should be strongly salted with emphasis on the individual.

For the end of democratic society has never been conceived as the power of the state, but as the opportunity and happiness of the individual citizen. In a civilization which seems peculiarly suited to the creation of great Force-States, this democratic theory may appear almost archaic, and certainly very fragile. But the facts don’t bear out this fear. The United States is today the most powerful state in the world, and at the same time, among the large nations, the most democratic. We have demonstrated that mass effort can be demanded of millions of individuals without destroying their individuality. The danger among us now is that fascination with the material power we’ve built for ourselves will make us forget that the main source of this power is in the individual who is free to think for himself, and, to a large degree, free to direct his own creative activities.

In any society it’s always been hard to find a way of guaranteeing a practical degree of freedom to every adult individual, and most societies haven’t even attempted to find such a way. Industrial society, perhaps, makes it at the same time more possible and more difficult than ever before. The material and mechanical means exist which can free men from slavery to the labor of maintaining a bare subsistence. But these same means can also be used to subject men to the most terrible slavery in history. This is the slavery which makes them not slaves of themselves, or of other men, but of the machine. All human quality is sapped out of this relationship, and men can be brutalized to a point where they are themselves nothing more than machines. Something of this sort has happened to the leaders of the Nazi state.

The safest state of affairs exists in a society where no element or interest is completely satisfied, and no one is completely denied satisfaction, where everyone has an opportunity to voice his own desires and have their merits submitted to a forum of the whole. A society is thrown fatally out of balance when one group within it accumulates the power to deny expression to all conflicting interests. In such a society, sufficiency is sacrificed to efficiency. The machine-quality displaces the human-quality. Such a society cannot last…

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American Fascists and the America First Movement

[This entry illustrates my father’s life-long omnivorous reading trait as well as his enduring skepticism of politicians and others who engaged in anti-democratic actions under the guise of “patriotism.” The book he references is Under Cover: My Four Years in the Nazi Underworld of America, published in 1943 and written by John Roy Carlson, one of the pen names used by investigative journalist Avedis Boghos. The book, in part, explored the fascist, pro-Nazi leanings of many of the politicians who joined the America First organization, which lobbied to keep America from entering World War II. Once again, my father’s words reverberate with meaning for today’s polarized political landscape, where obstructionist right-wing politicians exhibit nothing but “contempt for the middle-of-the-road compromises of the democratic system.”]

May 16, 1944 (Camp Shelly, Miss.)

Today I finished Under Cover. It was most surprising to me to find how deeply the Fascist philosophy has penetrated the minds of political big shots like Senators Nye, Wheeler, Taft, and other members of Congress, though I wasn’t unaware of their apparent leaning in that direction. Such men may not call themselves Fascists, but their inflated “patriotism” which makes “America First” a great ideal for them is the beginning phase of just such an unhealthy nationalism as has produced dictatorships in many countries.

Along with the extravagant concern for the power and purity of one’s own nation there comes a contempt for the middle-of-the-road compromises of the democratic system, a cynical disdain for the “mob,” and a distorted conception of the destiny of one’s own “race.” This last fallacy makes the persecution of the Jews, Negroes, and other relatively defenseless minorities the proper concern of those in power. No sensible democrat claims that such persecution is absent from American democracy. But he knows that the democratic philosophy makes it morally binding on all sincere citizens, whether in the government or out, to try and eliminate persecution and discrimination. He isn’t discouraged when democracy fails of complete fulfillment in his country, because he knows that it’s doing an immeasurably better job of maintaining human freedoms than are Fascism and Communism in other nations. He believes, too, that social conditions are gradually improving wherever democratic government is kept alive and healthy. So he’s willing to fight for his system wherever he sees it challenged, at home or abroad. 

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Max Lerner Lectures on the War

[Although this journal entry consists primarily of my father’s summary of a lecture by Max Lerner, I decided to include it as it demonstrates my father’s skill as a reporter — a skill that eventually led him to Columbia Journalism School and, then, to the Providence Journal in Rhode Island. Max Lerner was a writer and educator, who would go on, in 1949, to launch an influential column in the New York Post. As reported by my father, Lerner’s talk ranged from his growing optimism about the U.S.’s impact on the course of the war to his criticism that Jim Crow laws were negatively affecting America’s war efforts.]

December 2, 1942 (Middlebury College)

Max Lerner spoke here last night. In his introduction, Bob Rafuse spoke of him as one of the fighters in the front line of the battle of ideas. Lerner lived up to his characterization. I was not so much impressed with what he said as the way he said it. He spoke very clearly, in a pleasant voice, and knew just where he was every minute. He didn’t beat around the bush, but shot his ideas straight from the shoulder, so that there could be no doubt that he knew what he was talking about, and believed in it. “Name-calling can be a very good thing,” he said, “as long as you call the right people the right names.”

He began by saying that he felt better since the opening of [the] North African campaign than at anytime in the last decade. “Up until now we were worried as to whether the US would be able to gather itself for action in time. It is very late now, but it is in time. At long last I can see through the long dark tunnel to the clear air and sunshine ahead. We know now that we can win the war. But the tragic possibility is that we may not know what to do with the clear air and sunshine.”

“American business has handled production better than we had any reason to expect. But still there are too many men in high positions who are more interested in the plants with which they are connected than with the total war effort. Labor has still not been given the representation in the WPB [War Production Board] that it deserves, and that Donald Nelson [chairman of the WPB] promised to it some time ago.

“We are not making any apparent progress on our Negro problem. Industry refuses to hire black men. Baltimore imported 10,000 white laborers when there were that many negroes idle in the city. Jim Crow laws are still maintained in the Army. Henry Kaiser [whose Kaiser Shipyard built Liberty ships during the war] is a really great American businessman, but he is counteracted by too many men like the West Coast union leader who won’t admit negroes into his union.

“There are far too many of the men still in power who only a year ago were shouting that we could do business with Hitler, that we couldn’t get into a war against Fascism without becoming Fascist ourselves, that a European war was no concern of ours. Many of these men have just a month ago been returned to Congress, and have taken this as a mandate from the people to go right ahead with their program of opposition to the administration. These men are dangerous. They must be removed from power by intelligent voting on the part of American citizens.

“America has assembled a striking force stronger than Hitler’s, and done it without sacrificing the democratic liberties. A democracy can be strong, in peace as well as in war, and incomparably stronger than Fascism. Archibald MacLeish saw the true nature of our foe when he characterized it in The Fall of the City as an armored giant all empty inside. The sight of it is terrible only until you stand before it and fight.

“The military war is going well. Our real problem is in the diplomatic war and the idea war. This [François] Darlan deal can’t be stomached. It has shaken the faith of the French people in us, and can lose us many more lives in the long run than it may have saved us at present. Our State Department is showing an extremely dangerous tendency towards a Machiavellian diplomacy that puts the European powers to shame. Our victory must be morally sound all the way though, or it’s no victory at all. Apparently [Secretary of State Cordell] Hull, and possibly even FDR, regard the establishment of such Rightist regimes in Western Europe as a desirable counterpoise to the Leftist influence of Russia, which may well emerge from this war as the strongest European power. But such a policy can only lead to a perfect setup for another struggle.

“This, then, is the justification of our cause: To decide whether American democracy, and a world of democratic states, can exist and grow under the highly complicated conditions of our technical machine civilization.”

That was the main gist of his talk. He answered questions for an hour and half. The fine thing here was that he had his answers ready; he didn’t have to dig around for them, or retrench on what he had already said. He did say that Roosevelt has believed that it’s important to get things done without regard for the abstract principle, and that was disturbing. It’s what Emerson said about Napoleon.

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