CONFORMITY IS NOT LOYALTY

New Zealand Listener, Volume 18, Issue 447, 16 January 1948, Page 10

CONFORMITY IS NOT LOYALTY

By

HENRY STEELE

COMMAGER

American |

fistorian

/ [is article, which we reprint from the "New Statesman,’ appeared first in *"Harper’s Magazine,’ and "was designed," the author Points out, "for an American audience familiar with the situation to which it is addressed." Before it was used in the "New Statesman," he added this foreword: "While it would be a mistake to discount the significance of the current ‘loyalty’ drive, it would be a no less unfortunate error to exaggerate it. The United States is in the grip neither of reaction nor of Fascism, and the present ‘purge’ is not comparable to those which afflicted Russia and other totalitarian States before the war. The protest against current Red-baiting is strong and effective; and the situation has by no means deteriorated to that which obtained during the Red hysteria of 1919 and 1920."

N May 6 last a Russian-born girl, Mrs. Shura Lewis, gave a talk about Russia to the students’ of the Western High School of Washington, D.C. Mrs. Lewis said nothing that had not been said a thousand times, in speeches, in newspapers, magazines and books. She said nothing that any normal person could find objectionable. Her speech, however, created a sensation. A few students walked out on it. Others improvised placards proclaiming their devotion to Americanism. Indignant mothers telephoned their protests. Newspapers took a strong stand against the outrage. Congress, rarely concerned for the political or economic welfare. of the citizens of the capital city, reacted sharply when its intellectual welfare was at stake. Congressmen Rankin and Dirksen thundered and lightened; the District of Columbia Committee went into a huddle; there were demands for house-cleaning in the whole school system, which was obviously shot through and through with Communism. Merely by talking about Russia Mrs. Lewis was thought to be attacking Americanism. It is indicative of the seriousness of the situation that during this same week the House found it necessary to take time out from the discussion of the Labour Bill, the Tax Bill, the International Trade Organisation, and the world famine, to meet assaults upon Americanism from a new quarter. This time it was the artists who were undermining the American system, and members of the House spent some hours passing around reproductions of the paintings which the State Department had sent abroad as part of its programme for advertising American culture. What was wrong with these paintings, it shortly appeared, was that they were un-American. The copious files of the Committee on un-American activities were levied upon to prove that of the 45 artists represented "no fewer than 20 were definitely New Deal in various shades of Communism." The damning facts are specified for each of the pernicious 20; we can content ourselves with the first of them, Ben-Zion. What is the evidence here? "Ben-Zion was one of the signers of a letter sent to President Roosevelt by the United American Artists, which urged help to the U.S.S.R. and Britain after Hitler attacked Russia. He was, in short, a. Se ea de | of Churchill and Roosevelt. : The same day that Dr. Dirksen was denouncing the Washington school authorities for allowing students to hear about Russia, Representative Williamg, of Mississippi, rose to denounce the Survey-Graphic magazine. The SurveyGraphic, he said, "contained 129 pages of outrageously vile and nauseating anti-Southern, anti-Christian, un-Ameri-can, and pro-Communist tripe, ostensibly directed toward the elimination of

the custom of racial segregation in the South." It was written by "meddling un-American purveyors of hate and indecency." Congress Kept Busy All in all, it was a busy week for the House. Yet those who make a practice of reading their Record will agree that it was a typical week. For increasingly Congress is concerted with the eradication of disloyalty amd the defence of Americanism, and scarcely a day passes that some Congressman does not treat us to exhortations and admonitions, impassioned appeals and eloquent declamations. And scarely a day passes that the outlines of the new loyalty and the new Americanism are not etched more sharply in public policy. This is what is significant-the emergence of new patterns of Americanism and of loyalty, patterns radically different from those which have long been traditional. It is not only the Congress that is busy designing the new patterhs. They are outlined in President Truman’s recent disloyalty order; in similar orders formulated by the New York City Council and by State and local authorities throughout the country; in the programmes of the D.A.R., the American Legion, and similar patriotic organisations; in the editorials of the Hearst and the Mc-Cormick-Patterson papers; and in an elaborate series of advertisements sponsored by large corporations and business organisations. In the making is a revival of the Red hysteria of the early 1920’s, one of the shabbiest chapters in the history of American democracy; and more than a revival, for the-new crusade is designed not merely to frustrate Communism but to formulate a positive definition of Americanism, and a positive concept of loyalty. Uncritical Acceptance What is the new loyalty? It is, above all, conformity. It is the uncritical and unquestioning acceptance of America as it is-the political institutions, the social relationships, the economic practices. It rejects inquiry into the race question or socialised medicine, or public housing. It regards as particularly heinous any challenge to what is called "the system of private. enterprise," identifying that system with Americanism. It abandons evolution, repudiates the once popular‘ concept of progress, and regards America as a finished product, perfect and complete. : It is, it must be added, easily satis-° fied. For it wants not intellectual conviction nor spiritual conquest, but mere outward conformity. In matters of loyalty it takes the word for the deed, the gesture for the principle. It is content with the flag salute, and does not pause to consider the warning of our Supreme Court that "a person gets from a symbol the meaning he puts into it, and what is one man’s comfort and irispiration is another’s jest and scorn." It is satisfied with membership in respectable organisations and, as it assumes that every member of a liberal organisation is a

Communist, concludes that every member of a conservative one is a true American. It has not yet learned that not everyone who saith Lord, Lord, shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven. It is designed neither to discover real disloyalty nor to foster true loyalty. What is wrong with this new concept of loyalty? What, fundamentally, is wrong with the pusillanimous retreat of the Washington educators, the hysterical outbursts of the D.A.R., the gross gnd vulgar appeals of business corporations? It is not merely that these things are offensive. It is rather that they are wrong-morally, socially, and politically, False Concept The concept of loyalty as conformity is a false one. It is narrow and restrictive, denies freedom of thought and of conscience, and is irremediably stained by private and selfish considerations. Loyalty must be to something larger than oneself, untainted by private purposes or selfish ends. But what are we to say of the attempts to identify loyalty with the system of. private enterprise? Is it not as if officeholders should attempt to identify loyalty with their own party, their own political careers? Do not those organisations that deplore, in the name of patriotism, the extension of government operation of hydro-elec-tric power expect to profit from their campaign? Certainly it is a gross perversion not only of the concept of loyalty but of the concept of Americanism to identify it with a particular economic system. If loyalty and private enterprise are inextricably associated) what is to preserve loyalty if private enterprise fails. Those who associate Americanism with a particular programme of economic practices have a grave responsibility, for if their programme should fail they expose Americanism itself to disrepute. The effort to equate loyalty with conformity is misguided because it assumes that there is a fixed content to loyalty and that this can be determined and defined. But loyalty is a principle, and eludes definition except in its own terms. It is devotion to the best interests of the commonwealth and may require hostility to the particular policies which the Government pursues, the particular practices which the economy undertakes, the particular institutions which society maintains. "If there is any fixed star in our Constitutional constellation," said the Supreme Court in the Barnette case, "it is that no official, high or petty, can prescribe what shall be orthodox in politics, nationalism, religion, or other matters of opinion, or force citizens to confess by word or act their faith therein. If there are any circumstances which permit an exception they do not now occur to us." Tradition of Revolt ‘True loyalty may require, in fact, what annears to the naive to be disloyalty. It may require hostility to certain provisions of the Constitution itself, and historians have not concluded that those who subscribed to the "T"igher Law" were lacking in patriotism. We should not forget that our tradition is one of g (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) protest and revolt, and it is stultifying to celebrate the rebels of the past-Jef-ferson and Paine, Emerson and Thoreau -while we silence the rebels of the present. Those who would impose upon us 4 new concept of loyalty not only assume that this is possible but haye the presumption to bélieve that they are competent to write the definition. We are reminded of Whitman’s defiance of the "never-ending audacity of elected persons." Who are those who would set the standards of loyalty? They are Rankins and Bilbos, officials of the D.A.R. and the Legion and the N.A.M., Hearsts and McCormicks. May we not say of Rankin’s harangues on loyalty what Emerson said of Webster at the time of the Seventh of March speech: "The word honour in the mouth of Mr. Webster is like the word love in the mouth of a whore." What do men know of loyalty who make a mockery of the Declaration -of Independence and the Bill of Rights, whose energies are dedicated to stirring up race and class hatreds, who would strait-jacket the American spirit? What, indeed, do they know cf America-the America of Sam Adams and Tom Paine, of Jackson’s defiance of the Court and Lincoln’s celebration of labour, of Thoreau’s essay on Civil Disobedience and Emerson’s championship of John Brown, of the America of the Fourierists and the Come-Outers, of cranks and fanatics, of socialists and anarchists? Who among American heroes could meet their tests, who would be cleared by their committees? Not Washington, who was a rebel. Not Jefferson, whose motto was "rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God." Not Garrison, who publicly burned the Con--stitution; or Wendell Phillips, who spoke for the underprivileged everywhere and counted himself a philosophical anarchist; not Seward of the Higher Law or Sumner of racial equality. Not Lincoln, who admonished us to have malice towards none, charity for all; or Wilson, who warned that our flag was "a flag of liberty of opinion as well as of political liberty’; or . Justice Holmes, who said that our Constitution is an experiment and that while that experiment is being made "we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death." More Practical Objections There are further and more practical objections against the imposition of fixed concepts of loyalty or tests of disloyalty. The effort is itself a confession of fear, a declaration of insolvency. Those who are sure of themselves do not need reassurance, and those who have confidence in the strength and the virtue of America do not need to fear either criticism or competition. Nor are we left to idle conjecture in this matter; we have had experience enough. Let us limit ourselves to a single example, one that is wonderfully relevant. Back in 1943 the House UnAmerican Activities Committee, deeply disturbed by alleged disloyalty among Government employees, wrote a definition of subversive activities and proceeded to apply it. The definition was admirable, and no one could challenge its logic or its symmetry. Subversive activity derives from conduct intentionally destructive of. or inimical to the Government of the United Statesthat which seeks to undermine its’ institutions, or to distort its functions, or to impede its projects, or to lessen its efforts, the ultimate end being to overturn it all. Surely anyone guilty of activities so defined deserved not only dismissal but

punishment. But how was the test applied? It was applied to two distinguished scholars, Robert Morss Lovett and Goodwin Watson, and to one able young historian, William "E. Dodd, Jr., son of our former Ambassador to Germany. Of almost three million persons employed by the Government, these were the three whose subversive activities were deemed the most pernicious, and the House cut them off the payroll. T sequel is familiar. The Senate coficurred only to save a wartime appropriation; the President signed. the Bill under protest for the same reason. The Supreme Court declared the whole business a "bill of attainder" and therefore unconstitutional. Who was it, in the end, who engaged in "subversive activities"™ -Lovett, Dodd and Watson, or the Congress which flagrantly violated Article One of the Constitution? ® Finally, disloyalty tests are not only futile in application, they are pernicious in their consequences. They distract attention from activities that are really disloyal, and silence criticism inspired by true loyalty. That there are disloyal elements in America will not be denied, but there is no reason to suppose that any of the tests now formulated will ever be applied to them. It is relevant to remember that when Rankin was asked why his Committee did not investigate the Ku Kiux Klan he replied that the Klan was not un-American, it was American! America was born of revolt, flourished on dissent, became great through experimentation. Independence was an act of revolution; republicanism was something new under the sun; the federal system was a vast experimental laboratory. Physically Americans were pioneers; in the realm of social and economic institutions, too, their tradition has been one of pioneering. From the beginning, intellectual and spiritual diversity have been as characteristic of America as racial and linguistic. The most distinctively American philosophies have been transcenden-talism-which is the philosophy of the Higher Law, and pragmatism-which is the philosophy of experimentation and pluralism. These two principles are the very core of Americanism; the principle | of the Higher Law, or of obedience to the dictates of conscience rather than of. statutes, and the principle of pragmatism, or the rejection of a single good and of the notion of a finished universe. From the beginning Americans have known that there were new worlds to conquer, new truths to be discovered. Every effort to confine Americanism to a single pattern, to constrain it to a single formula, is disloyalty to everything that is valid in Americanism.