University of Virginia Library

Rosen Calls Factions
To Maintain Unity

Coalition politics is the least
satisfying means to any ends in
terms of wear and tear on those
individuals called upon to coalesce.
It smacks of "hypocrisy" and
"compromise," of wheeling and
dealing, of Johnsonian
"consensus." In times such as ours,
in which the news media has
consistently called the nation
"polarized," it is not only passe to
talk of compromise, it is somehow
"immoral."

In a review of Albert Camus's
latest published works, a writer in
The New Republic quoted Sartre's
quip concerning Camus, that he,
Camus, carried about his own
pedestal. In a sense we "liberals"
carry our pedestals, too. Our own
private philosophies, our own
private reservations have become in
these times inviolate and
sacrosanct. If Lyndon Johnson can
be accused of destroying yet
another good, it is the nation's
willingness to think positively
about "consensus."

The present Coalition stands
squarely in the face of this current
anti-consensus impulse. It can most
definitely be criticized by those
amongst us given to speak from the
standpoint of absolutism as
"hypocritical" or "compromising."
Too many factions are involved,
too many factions which have given
the Coalition its strength, to
honestly avoid compromise. But
results will follow. The
effectiveness of coalition politics is
now real on the Grounds, and the
reason for this is the remoteness of
the University from the national
scene. True enough, confrontation
politics are the politics of 1969.
But it is 1964 in Charlottesville.
Emotionally we are yet to undergo
the passage of the Civil Rights Act
in this community. This must take
place before progress can continue.
The gap of years can be peacefully
closed in this semester, but for the
present week unity behind a first
step has been fitfully achieved and
maintained.

Factions, as Mr. Madison
pointed out in Federalist Number
Ten, are natural phenomena. Our
purpose, now, as rational beings is
to unite the factions behind those
ends we all agree are essential, ends
without which protest is still
protest. This is not to deny
underlying conflict. It is to
understand that step one comes
before step two.

I made the mistake of quoting
President Kennedy's Inaugural
Address to the Coalition meeting.
Its reaction was that the quotation
was corny. It may be, but it is the
philosophy which will bring us the
progress we all so fervently seek:
"Let both sides explore what
problems unite us instead of
belaboring those problems which
divide us."

The black people of Virginia will
be the losers, sophisticated rhetoric
notwithstanding, if the
liberal-moderate community galls
to sustain its new-found unity.