University of Virginia Library

Robert Gillmore

Towards A New Republicanism

Over the past eight months,
critics of this column have accused
its author of being, among other
things, an Aristotelian and a faded
Hubert Humphrey Democrat.
Those closer to the mark have
wondered how I can admire radicals
Michael Harrington and Saul
Alinsky and still call myself a
Republican. The short answer to
that question (especially for
Southerners) is: It's easy if you're a
Yankee.

But as this column is probably
my last, at least for this year, let me
come, as Robert Frost would have
it, "in the clearing" and offer a
"platform" for a liberal Republican
party.

A Liberal Republican party
must stand for individualism and
opportunity.

But those words must not be an
apology for laissez faire.

Equal Opportunity

A liberal Republican party
would rather understand that
individualism in the good society
must mean that every individual
must have equal opportunity to
shape and to develop his individual
abilities and aspirations.

A liberal Republican would
further understand that we are, if
nothing else, our father's sons —
that our abilities and even our
aspirations are the products of our
whole physical and familiar
environments; that these
environments are wildly unequal
and that a good society would
make opportunity less unequal and
thus make true individualism itself
less of a dream and more of a
reality.

"Rich Tax Program"

Thus, the first order of liberal
Republican political business might
be, as John Roche writes, a "good
soak the rich tax program" a
substantial guaranteed minimum
income and unwavering support to
all civil rights programs including
integration and tough measures (as
discussed here before) to prevent
the more fortunate from hoarding
their land and protecting their
wealth in the suburbs.

I remember a debate with my
old teacher, James MacGregor
Burns, when he admitted concern
that (his) Democratic party is too
often concerned only with
"quantitative" programs, while the
Republicans devote themselves to
loftier "qualitative" goals. I replied
that both goals are inseparable; that
the latter are built upon the former.
Bread, to borrow another phrase, is
the key to freedom.

A liberal Republican party
would be especially mindful of the
enormous energies of the private
sector; it would seek whenever
possible to harness those energies
and to make them an engine of
Liberal government. The Ripon
Society, the liberal Republican
research group based in Cambridge,
has proposed tax incentives and
subsidies to businesses - black,
white, large and small - to train
and employ ghetto poor.

Free Private Sector

More important, perhaps, a
liberal Republican party would seek
the strengths of a truly free private
sector: as guided by the spirit of
classical economics it would at least
aspire to maximize the interests of
neither business nor labor but the
consumer: The goal of the liberal
Republican economy - like that of
old laissez faire economics would
be lowest prices for the consumer.

This goal would mean
Republicans abandoning
completely their historic
protectionist role and embracing
free trade (as well as programs to
relocate and retrain workers in
marginal industry). A liberal
Republican would have no part of
the uncompetitive SST, and it
would move to let free market
supply and demand forces swallow
up inefficient business - and
provide suitable and humane
adjustment to make hitherto
parasitic enterprise again viable.

Appropriately, I think, it was
Democrat John Kenneth Galbraith
who once said that government
should sustain inefficient family
farms and another Democrat,
Hubert Humphrey, who suggested
that the little corner store should
be subsidized by fair trade laws —
to which a Republican liberal
would reply, you shall not crucify
the consumer on a cross of
n morntili sustained of
course only by consumer tax
money.

Diversity In The States

A liberal Republican party
would, whenever possible, seek to
use the states (in Nelson
Rockefeller words) as "laboratories"
and as spaces for diversity.

At the same time, however, it
would not let states, cities, or
interest groups subvert programs
designed to expand opportunity for
all people. I once defended the
governor's veto on War on Poverty
projects. I was wrong. Were all the
nation's states governed by
Republican progressives like Nelson
Rockefeller of New York, William
Scranton of Pennsylvania (and the
long list more) such a veto would
not be abused. Some states however
are ruled by John Bell Williams,
who would be killers of the federal
dream.

"Less" Is "More"

Liberal Republicans however
can still aspire to programmatic
efficiency - to govern according to
the dictum of the architect Mies
Van der Rohe that "less" is often
"more." The genius of a guaranteed
annual income, for example, is that
it can be administered according to
set standards and merely by the
writing of a check. Ditto for many
programs in the private sector.

In foreign affairs, Republican
liberals should carry forward the
idea of equal opportunity - for not
just Americans but all men on
earth. Under a program perhaps
called (after Theodore Roosevelt)
"The New Internationalism" liberal
Republicans would vastly expand
foreign aid - to at least one per
cent of gross national product, and
distribute it through regimes - on
the left and right - committed to
distribution and modernization.

Above all, perhaps, a liberal
Republican would try to preserve -
as did John Stuart Mill - the best
of liberalism and socialism - to
preserve Hobbesian freedom (the
absence of external "impediments"
of motion) and Lockean freedom
(freedom as "power" or capacity).
A liberal Republican would give
money ("power") but never force a
man to take it (an "impediment").
A liberal Republican therefore still
yearns for a voluntary Social
Security and Medicare programs.
He would bitterly protest the law
that requires motor cycle riders to
wear helmets, as such action is
clearly an abridgement of
Hobbesian freedom, and, as Mill
wrote, clearly a "self" and not an
"other-regarding" action.

Dark Cloud

In the larger sense a liberal
Republican party would serve the
open society. It would, like Mill,
defend the individual -
individualism - against the forces
of community, conformity, and the
neo-tribalism which seems to be
descending like a dark cloud over
our contemporary culture.

It would look rather to Shaw
and to the heady rationalism of the
19th century. It would not try to
make men virtuous, good, happy,
or contented. It would try to make
them free, intelligent and strong -
or, as Shaw said, Superman.