"1970, and the Connecticut U.S. Senatorial Campaign"

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Essay from Essex

“1970, and the Connecticut U.S. Senatorial Campaign”

March 27, 2021

 

“The 1970 election was a major turning point in Connecticut’s political history: not only

because of the candidates who were elected that year, but also because it marked the

decline of the power of the nominating convention, and the rise of the statewide primary.”

                                                                                                                                                The New York Times

                                                                                                                                                March 31, 2006

 

If a man is not liberal in his 20s, it means he is heartless; if he is not conservative when he reaches 40, it means he has no head. That sentiment has been attributed to many, including John Adams, the French historian Francois Guizot, Winston Churchill and my maternal grandfather. Assuming the statement is true (which I will not swear to), I exited my 20s like the final display of a 4^th of July fireworks.

 

I write of the 1970 U.S. Senatorial campaign in Connecticut. It was the recent obituary of Joseph Daniel Duffy that prompted these remembrances. Born in Hamilton, West Virginia on July 1, 1932, Joe Duffy came to Connecticut for graduate studies at Yale and a PhD in Theology from Hartford Seminary, where he stayed to teach and to become the founder and director of its Center for Urban Studies. As well, in 1970 he was national chairman of ADA (Americans for Democratic Action). He died on February 21^st of this year at a retirement community outside of Washington, DC.

 

In that 1970 U.S. Senatorial campaign, Duffy ran as the anti-war candidate, attracting noisy and energetic youth, one of whom was me. He also attracted such well-known people as Chester Bowles, Paul Newman, Larry Kudlow, John Podesta, Joe Lieberman and a Yale Law School student, Bill Clinton. Duffy was in the forefront of the Civil Rights movement, having organized Freedom Rides in the mid 1960s. He had led an anti-war delegation at the 1968 Democratic National Convention on behalf of Eugene McCarthy. Two years later, the anti-war movement was still going strong, even as the number of U.S. troops in Vietnam, since peaking in 1968, had been reduced by over 200,000 to 340,000, and while deaths – still at 6,173 – had declined by 37%, from a peak, also in 1968. Nevertheless, Civil Rights and Vietnam remained issues. 

 

In the summer of 1970, at age 29, I lived a Saturday Evening Post-cover-like life – married, the father of two, working for Merrill Lynch in New Haven, while living in a historic house in the small town (population 4,489) of Durham, Connecticut. I had been honorably discharged from the U.S. Army reserve two years earlier. While I had grown up in a Republican household, I was exploring political alternatives. A year before I had registered as a Democrat. In November of 1969, I was elected to the library board, receiving the fewest votes possible – my only experience with elective office. Amidst this milieu, the siren-like call of Joe Duffy’s message was intoxicating. A few friends and neighbors like Cheryl Mallinson, A. Reed Hayes, Helena and Keith Hutchison and I joined the campaign. We joined the Durham Democratic Town Committee. In early June, I was selected to be an alternate delegate to the state convention, which was held on June 27 in Hartford’s Bushnell Memorial Hall.

 

I, of course, had never been to a convention. Though seated in the balcony, I was mesmerized. The activity on the floor, the shouts and smoke were visible, audible and malodorous. It was democracy in action. When the marching, noise and haze abated, Alphonsus Donahue, a Stamford, Connecticut businessman, won the nomination. However, Joe Duffey and State Senator Edward Marcus received enough votes to force a primary, the first in Connecticut’s history. Thomas Dodd, a Democrat and existing U.S. Senator, had been censured by the Senate and opted to run as an Independent. Our small group in Durham had helped raise Duffey’s profile. We had canvassed our neighbors and printed flyers. We had met with him and his campaign manager Anne Wexler in our home. On one occasion, William Manchester, historian and writer-in-residence at Wesleyan, joined us. None of us had expected Duffey to get the Party’s nomination; we were hoping for a primary, and that we got. 

 

Then the work began. Between June 27^th and the August 19^th primary we were in overdrive. We travelled with Mr. Duffey (his opponents insisted on calling him Reverend) from Durham to myriad venues in other towns. At a fundraiser at the Griswold Inn in Essex, we met Paul Newman, marveling at how short he was and how blue were his eyes. On another occasion, also in Essex, we attended a fund raiser at the home of Chester Bowles, a former Connecticut Governor who had been Truman’s Ambassador to India and Kennedy’s Under Secretary of State. About a dozen of us were seated in Mr. Bowles’ living room. We were asked who would be willing to put up $500. There was no response. Finally, I said I would put up $250 if someone else would match me. Henry Pierce, then president of the Union Trust Company of New Haven agreed. (Incidentally, Henry Pierce was the father of Margot who had been my girlfriend during the summer of 1944, when we were both three.) 

 

That summer of 1970 also included the Powder Ridge Rock Festival. It was held on the Powder Ridge ski slope in Middlefield (population 4,132 in 1970), a rural town adjacent to Durham. This was to be Connecticut’s answer to Woodstock and lasted from July 31 to August 2. Student unrest was persistent. Body bags from Vietnam were returning every day, and the shootings at Kent State had occurred less than three months earlier. However, the town fathers of Middlefield cancelled the event, so most musicians did not show, but between 30,000 and 50,000 young people did. Accurate descriptions of all that happened were unclear at the time and have been lost in the fog of time. However, from the vantage of fifty years, an article in Connecticut Magazine noted: “Certain things are indisputable facts. Drugs were plentiful. Clothes were scarce.” My wife Caroline, sensibly, had gone to Rumson with our two young children, leaving me with friends to witness the scene. We spent a couple of hours one evening wandering the fields, and I can attest to the accuracy of the magazine’s report. 

 

But the Democratic primary was our focus. Besides raising money, we knocked on doors, sent out flyers, and wrote letters to editors, all in support of Joe Duffy. Al Donahue, who was backed by the Democrat machine, was a wealthy businessman from Fairfield County – the “zipper king,” as I recall. A naturally gregarious and confident man, he dressed nattily, in sharp suits and French cuffs – a contrast to many of the residents of the farming community of Durham. Joe Duffy was a man of middling height, slightly balding at age 38 and of a serious, quiet demeanor, dressed in rumpled suits and sober ties. The primary was held on August 19. When the votes were tallied, Duffey won 43.55% of the votes; Donahue, 36.81%, and State Senator Edward Marcus, 19.64%. We were ready for Weicker, or thought we were. 

 

Once Joe Duffey won the primary, he became the Democratic Party’s nominee. But, given his progressive opinions, he was viewed skeptically by many in the Party’s hierarchy. About a week after the primary, I attended a six-person meeting in Middletown with John Bailey, a sixty-five-year-old, tough-talking Harvard Law School graduate who had been chairman of the Democratic National Committee during Kennedy’s campaign in 1960, the landslide victory by Lyndon Johnson in 1964, and the hapless Democratic convention in Chicago in 1968. This was my first (and only) meeting with a political “boss.” Bailey, a Roman Catholic looked at Joe Duffey, the young Methodist minister his party had chosen, and assured him that if he ran hard and kept to the Party’s script, he would not have to worry about a future job. Back-office promises and smoke-filled rooms were eye-opening to this politically naïve twenty-nine-year-old.

 

Thinking back, I suspect too much of our energy had been used up in the primary. We rested too heavily on garlands we had then won. The November elections was a three-way race. Senator Thomas Dodd, who had come to fame during the post-World War II Nuremburg trials, ran as an Independent. He was the conservative. Republican Lowell Weicker was a thirty-nine-year-old first-term U.S. Representative and former First Selectman of Greenwich. He was the moderate. Joe Duffey was an untethered, progressive. As Duffey supporters, our concern was Weicker, though, in retrospect, we should have paid more attention to traditional Democrats, as Edward Marcus and other Party leaders threw their support to Dodd. There were two debates. A New York Times article, after the second debate, headlined: “Weicker Assails Two Rivals in Connecticut Senate-Race Debate.” In contrast, Duffey was a gentle man. The Times reporter wrote about Duffey: “…he avoided sharp counterattacks.” The job for me and my cohorts was to heckle Mr. Weicker, which we did. When election results were reported on the eve of November 3^rd, Lowell Weicker won with 41.74% of the vote. Duffey was second with 33.79%. And Thomas Dodd was third with 24.46%. Now, decades later, Mr. Weicker lives in Old Lyme with his wife Claudia. When I related my long-ago attempts to disrupt his speeches, he smiled.

 

The end of a campaign, like any intense effort, leaves one deflated, in need of something to fill the void. After the election, I happened to read Gary Wills’ book, Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man, which had been published a few months earlier. The book, one must remember, was written two years after Nixon’s election as President, ten years after his defeat by John Kennedy and eighteen years after being selected by Dwight Eisenhower to serve as Vice President. The book is less a biography and more of a reflection on the struggle that so many have, with competing values and aspirations, to determine what is right for themselves and their country. In 1963, Robert Frost starred in a documentary, “A Lover’s Quarrel with the World.” Nixon Agonistes can be seen as universal-man’s quarrel with his country and himself – a struggle to find clarity amid personal and national conflict. While events in the 1972 Presidential campaign relegated Nixon to the ashcan for political crooks, this book, in 1970, caused me to re-think my priorities, including those of a political nature – to use my head as well as my heart. 

 

Joe Duffey was a decent and honorable man, and, despite my political views having changed, I look back on those heady days in the summer of 1970 with pleasure. I am proud to have played a small role, even if not successful. I learned a great deal and met some wonderful people. There are times in our lives that stand out. That summer was one. While saddened by his death, thank you for letting me re-live his campaign. 

"Spring's Return"

 Today, despite being unseasonably cold, marks the first full day of spring. Its return is always a time to rejoice. In Connecticut, we have special reasons to celebrate, as yesterday the State took further steps toward normalcy.

 

 

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Essay from Essex

“Spring’s Return”

March 20, 2021

 

“Spring work is going on with joyful enthusiasm.”

                                                                                                                The Wilderness World of John Muir, 1954

                                                                                                                Edited by Edwin Way Teale

 

In Frances Hodgson Burnett’s 1911 novel, The Secret Garden, twelve-year-old Colin Craven, who has been bed-ridden with a spinal injury, looks up from his wheelchair: “’Is the spring coming?’ he asked. ‘What is it like?’ ‘It is the sun shining on the rain and rain falling on the sunshine,’” answers his twelve-year-old cousin Mary Lennox. In Anna Karina, Leo Tolstoy, wrote, “Spring is the time of plans and projects” – a message heeded by gardeners everywhere. Spring carries us from March winds, through April’s rains, to May’s buds and June’s flowers – from seeded furrows to blossoming borders. In the Northern Hemisphere, the vernal equinox is today, when the sun, on its northward journey, crosses the celestial equator.

 

In early spring, weather is uncertain. When I was growing up, a New Hampshire slogan proclaimed March skiing to be the season’s best. A favorite memory is skiing shirtless on a warm afternoon in late March – getting high on sun and snow. Freezing nights and warm days mean Sugar Maples’ sap is running, providing one of nature’s most delicious products. Changing temperatures are endemic to spring. At the New England Society’s annual dinner in New York on December 22, 1876, Mark Twain spoke: “In the spring I have counted one hundred and thirty-six different kinds of weather inside of four-and-twenty hours.” For us, it is common to see temperatures vary by thirty degrees and more in a day. 

 

It is spring’s return, its promise of rebirth, from cold winters to warm summers, that makes the season, like Christ’s resurrection, seem magical.  Yet it is real, and its progress is inexorable. E.B. White, in Points of My Compass, wrote, “No matter what changes take place in the world, or in me, nothing ever seems to disturb the face of spring.” Following the five-day battle for Mount Belvedere in Italy’s Northern Apennines, in which 213 soldiers of the 10^th Mountain Division were killed, my father wrote my mother. Instead of death, he wrote of life: “There were crocuses in bloom on Mt. Belvedere and the view was beautiful, both day and night, a strange setting for a battle.” In Tolkien’s The Return of the King, it was the end of winter when Frodo Baggins, accompanied by Gandalf, returned to the Shire, after seventeen years of war: “Do you remember the Shire, Mr. Frodo? It’ll be spring soon. And the orchards will be in blossom. And the birds will be nesting in the hazel thicket. And they’ll be sowing the summer barley in the lower fields…and eating the first of the strawberries with cream. Do you remember the taste of strawberries?” I do. I remember picking strawberries in June, in a field next to the abandoned “Brick House,” about a half mile from our home. They hid their red faces beneath green leaves, but when found their taste, mingled with the odor of fresh meadow grass, was sweeter than anything store-bought. 

 

Springtime is for lovers, and it is not just for humans. All animal and plant life heed nature’s call. A quote attributed to Sitting Bull is a reminder of love’s universality: “Behold my friends, the spring is come; the earth has gladly received the embraces of the sun, and we shall soon see the results of their love.” Wakened from long winter nights, hibernating animals exit lairs, searching for a mate. Trees bud, and spring flowers test the air. Peepers chirp, squirrels fluff their tails and songbirds sing, while black snakes and turtles silently reappear, smiling prettily, seeking sunlight, ready to couple. 

 

But it is the love of two people that poets and playwrights celebrate: “In the spring a young man’s fancy lightly turns to thoughts of love,” wrote Alfred Lord Tennyson in “Locksley Hall.” Proteus speaks In Act I of Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen from Verona: 

 

“O, how this spring of love resembleth

The uncertain glory of an April day,

Which now shows all the beauty of the sun,

And by and by a cloud takes all away.”

 

The cloud dissipates; he and Julia wed. As did Caroline and I, on an April afternoon in 1964.

 

Perhaps it is age, but Toby Keith’s song, “Don’t Let the Old Man In,” strikes a chord: “Don’t let the old man in; get up and go outside.” Keeping the old man at a distance, we do go outdoors. The air is fresh and cool. As my wife and I walk past a pond where a beaver has been busy, across the golf course and on trails through woods and fields, life stirs. Returning birds occupy old nests or build new ones. Hawks circle, looking for field mice blinded by the sunlight. Eight days ago, we saw our first frog of the year and then our first turtle and heard our first peepers. I was reminded of when my mother would offer a nickel to the first of her children to see a turtle each spring. I put out my hand, but she wasn’t there.

 

Nevertheless, I rejoice at spring’s return.

"The Drones Club"

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Essay from Essex

“The Drones Club”

March 7, 2021

 

“Even at the Drones Club, where the average of intellect is not high, it was often

said of Archibald that, had his brain been constructed of silk, he would have been

hard put to find sufficient material to make a canary a pair of cami-knickers.”

                                                                                                                             P.G. Wodehouse (1881-1975)

                                                                                                                             “The Reverent Wooing of Archibald”

                                                                                                                              Mr. Mulliner Speaking, 1929

 

One thing old people do is rummage through old letters, albums and photos, dreaming of a past, where memories are often an improvement on reality. The other day, I came across an album devoted to the Drones Club of New York and P.G. Wodehouse. It includes letters, news clippings, cards, etc. The oldest item is a December 27, 1981 article from the New York Times on Wodehouse, “A Hundred Years and a Hundred Books,” by Charles McGrath. The most recent a June 22, 2017 e-mail from Jane Duncan telling me of the death of Charles Gould in Kennebunkport, Maine, a great friend, world-renowned Wodehousian and fellow Drone. 

 

Wodehouse’s imagined Drones Club was set in London’s Mayfair district, in an eternal Edwardian England, where spring and summer were the only seasons, and where neither wars, nor plagues, nor financial crises ever intervened. Plum, as he was called, named the Club for the male honeybee whose sole function is to mate with a queen bee. They lounge about all day, feeding off nectar delivered by female workers, waiting for their bit of sex, after which they die – “and therefore is winged Cupid painted blind,” as Helena says in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Wodehouse’s Drones never age. They were as vacuous and as full of fun in the 1960s as they had been in the 1920s when they first appeared. Members included Bertie Wooster, Archibald Mulliner, Barmy Fotheringay-Phipps, Freddie Widgeon, Pongo Twistleton, Bingo Little, Oofy Prosser and others.

 

In the Drones Club of New York, we feigned at being members of Wodehouse’s Club, but, in truth, we were working stiffs, full of fun, with no hint of aristocratic bearings. Every three or four weeks, for two hours – or maybe even three or four if the bar remained open and baskets of rolls for throwing were re-filled – we would mimic our favorite characters, quote favorite lines and laugh uproariously. Unlike the Mayfair Club, we integrated, as women’s fondness for Wodehouse equals men’s. In fact, my affection for the “Master” came from my mother and my maternal grandmother.

 

The Drones of New York started with two members, one of whom I knew as director of equity research at a New York insurance company. I was invited to join, along with a friend who was a Wodehouse aficionado. While we never pretended to be as exclusive as Max Beerbohm’s Duke of Dorset’s Oxford club, the Junta, that “holy of holies,” we did not want to be more than a dozen or so. I have a photograph of nine of us taken at New York’s Coffee House Club in the mid 1980s, eight men dressed in black tie, with our Queen bee elegantly outfitted in a black gown. Four of those in the photo are no longer with us, including Jerry Gold, our OM (oldest member, not in age, but in seniority). The title OM died with Jerry.

 

Our first dinners were in a private room at the University Club, where on one memorable occasion a roll bounced off the forehead of a waiter, as he entered the room carrying a loaded tray. A favorite moment was the heated exchange between an elderly member of the Club and two Dronish guests. The subject was hats. The two guests felt proper etiquette allowed for hats to be worn in the lobby of the Club. The elderly member disagreed. (Gentleman’s Gazettesides with the Drones, as a lobby is a public place.) At some point we migrated to the Coffee House Club, a hangout for writers, poets and playwrights on West 44^th Street. It was a cozy place, with the spirits of departed writers mingling with those dining and sluicing. The Drones once put on a skit, written by another now-departed Drone Ned Crabb, to a bemused, if not amused, audience. Ned, besides being Letters Editor at the Wall Street Journal, was the author of two novels, Ralph and Lightning Strikes. Again, we changed venues, this time to the Yale Club, where old Elis, when they see us coming, ask their waiters for a table change.

 

The initiation of new members was good fun. We would send the poor sap into the next room, leaving the door ajar so he or she could overhear our discussion. We would make unintelligible but notably negative comments about the person – florid ties, magenta socks, flashy waistcoats. Some of us would complain the prospective member was too friendly, others, not friendly enough. Then, after fifteen or so minutes of contemptuous commentary and personal insults, we would welcome the victim back into the room as a new member. In the case of two younger members, it took a couple of decades to reach full membership…in fact, they may still not have achieved full membership! 

 

Both Drones clubs are about the joy of companionship, of common interests. Ours is about being with people who share love and respect for the “Master,” P. G. Wodehouse. In this sensitive age, I acknowledge he is a dead, white, male. But the truth is we don’t care about his color or sex. We care about him because he made (and makes) us laugh, and because he could write dialogue like few others. However, like drones who have mated, time takes its toll.  As I leaf through the album, images appear, of fellow Drones. Besides the three mentioned above, we have lost two others. One is Jimmy Heineman, who has since joined Wodehouse, Charles, Jerry, Ned and other Drones, in their heavenly funhouse. Jimmy Heineman had the world’s largest private collection of Wodehouse – 6,300 items according to a June 14, 1998 article in The New York Times. On the centenary of Wodehouse’s birth – October 15, 1981 – the Morgan Library exhibited treasures from the Heineman collection. Jimmy had begun collecting Wodehouse in 1927 at age ten, when living in Brussels. When the Germans marched in, he and his family left. Four years later, as a soldier in the American army, he made his way back to his parent’s home. He found the house intact, the furniture and rugs in good shape, but his collection of Wodehouse was gone, so he had to start over. The other Drone we have lost is Owen Quattlebaum, who died too early of cancer in 2002. He had moved to Santa Fe a few years earlier for health reasons. I always loved the fact that on the famed British bookstore Heywood Hill’s mailing list his name appeared just above that of the Queen Mother (a Wodehouse fan). She also died in 2002, at age 101. On St. Peter’s list, I presume Quattlebaum still precedes Queen.

 

The death of our OM, Jerry Gold, in 2016 put a damper on our group. COVID-19 halted a planned dinner in New York in the spring of 2020. That plus the difficulty of getting older bodies into New York had meant fewer meetings of Drones. But now, with vaccinations coming, it is time for another dinner, even if we have to come in cami-knickers. God knows, we all could do with a good laugh. 

 

We all belong to groups, from country clubs to eleemosynary institutions. Most have purposes – from providing a venue for golf to helping the disadvantaged. The Drones of New York served no purpose, other than contributing to the joy of its members. But that was (and is) enough. Laughter, it is said, is good for one’s health. It tosses one’s innards around. We should look for humor wherever we can. I was fortunate to find the Drones forty years ago. It brought friends and served up cherished memories – memories that cannot improve on reality.

"The Decline of Nations," Joseph F. Johnston, Jr. - A Review

 I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Johnston at a Liberty Fund/Hayek Institute-sponsored colloquium in Vienna a few years ago. We have remained in touch since.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Burrowing into Books

“The Decline of Nations,” Joseph F. Johnston, Jr.

March 5, 2021

 

“Politics today has become further embittered by the loud and immoderate voices

of social media, which are not subject to the ordinary restraints of polite discourse.

In this cultural climate, governing becomes a zero-sum game of irreconcilable hostility

in which compromise, the mother’s milk of politics, becomes increasingly difficult.”

Joseph F. Johnston, Jr.

Decline of Nations, 2020

 

Joseph Johnston received both a master’s degree in history and a law degree from Harvard. He practiced law in New York and Washington. He was a visiting lecturer at the University of Virginia School of Law and the author of The Limits of Government, published in 1984. He believes a knowledge of history is critical to sustaining the nation in which we live.

 

The author believes in individual liberty, constrained by rule of law and tradition, and in the understanding that with liberty comes responsibilities and obligations. He believes markets should be free, with minimum but necessary regulations. He believes in freedom of thought, expressions and movements. He believes in a culture based on Judeo-Christian principles and that, to preserve our system of government, the citizenry should be educated in the history of western civilizations. He believes that consensus can only be achieved through free and rigorous debate. The book is subtitled, “Lessons for Strengthening America at Home and in the World.” The first quarter is an abbreviated history of Rome, from its pre-Christian republican origins to its fourth century empirical endings, and an examination of Britain, from the creation of its Empire to its final collapse in the wake of two world wars.

 

Regarding the Roman republic, he writes of Polybius (c. 200 BC – c. 118 BC), the Greek historian who wrote of the need for checks and balances: [equilibrium] “is maintained by the impulsiveness of one part being checked by its fear of the other.” However, as Johnston writes, the temptation of central governments is to expand their power: “…and Rome provides a clear instance of the threat to liberty poised by excessive centralization, burdensome taxation, and oppressive government.” Quoting the German classical scholar, Theodor Mommsen (1817-1903), Johnston writes “…the republic was ‘brought to ruin in politics and morals, religion and literature, not through outward violence but through inner decay…thereby making room for the new monarchy of Caesar.’” A tyrannical empire followed the collapse of Rome’s republic. 

 

Britain is the world’s 80^th largest country when measured by land mass, yet when Queen Victoria died its empire embraced one quarter of the earth’s inhabited surface. Its population of 30.5 million in 1900 governed 400 million people, one quarter of the world’s population. “As in the case of all powerful states, national greatness and military strength were inseparably linked.” Loss of the American colonies were offset by victory in the Napoleonic wars, with naval victories at the Nile and Trafalgar, which “made England essentially invulnerable to attack from the continent and led to Britain’s worldwide naval supremacy.” But as the 19^th Century came to a close, fractures in Britain’s empire were revealed. While England’s success could be attributed to the discipline imposed by a successful aristocracy, an omission to respect a rising merchant classes abetted their downfall: “…a failure to recognize that commercial activity was not the enemy of culture, but rather a necessary condition of it.” Britain declined, Johnston writes, because “it was over extended and could not afford to defend its empire…it chose to emphasize the redistribution of wealth rather than its creation…it fell behind its competitors in industrial technology…and it called into question the very foundations of Western culture.” Britain’s spirit remained strong, but Crimea, the Boer War, two world wars and the rise of the United States ended what once had been an impregnable empire. There are lessons for the U.S. in both histories.

 

The last three quarters of the book concern the United States, its strengths and weaknesses and what might be done to avoid the fate of Rome and Britain. Economics are covered, as are foreign policy, national defense, education, culture, American society, federalism, law and liberty. In terms of foreign policy, Mr. Johnston writes, “Power matters more than ideology…that we must deal with the world as it is…and not the world as optimists would like it to be.” He adds, “It is a basic theme of this book that military power is predicated on economic strength.” He writes in favor of capitalism, but adds: “Our adherence to capitalism, while justified by its success in creating prosperity, must be tempered by a recognition that the pursuit of wealth alone is insufficient to achieve the good society.” 

 

Education and culture are trends that determine a nation’s success or decline: “An ignorant population will inevitably be susceptible to demagoguery and deceit.” It is troubling, he notes, that a March 2018 Pew Research Center study found that “one in four American adults read no books at all in the past year.” Free speech is critical, especially in universities. He quotes John Stuart Mill, “…it is only through the free expression of adverse opinions that we can arrive at the truth.” He notes recent attacks on Western culture in our colleges, and then points out: “It was Western civilization that abolished serfdom and slavery, substituted astronomy for astrology, replaced magic with technology, created modern medicine, fostered Christian charity, emancipated women, invented civil liberties, asserted the rights of the individual against the state and developed permanent institutions for the protection of private property.” And the West did this while producing some of the world’s greatest art, music and literature. He does not dismiss the values of learning other cultures but feels one must first know one’s own. He writes of five major institutions important to the survivability of a nation’s society: “Family, school, religion, marketplace and government.” They are the links in the chain that bind a nation. A weakening in any one link can lead to centralization of power, individual dependency and moral relativism, which, in turn, can lead to the nihilism heralded by Friedrich Nietzsche.

 

He concludes by telling us that while the patient is sick, the condition need not be fatal: “The price of liberty, as always, is eternal vigilance. Americans should, from their earliest years, be taught civic virtue and the principles of the American founding. This should not be difficult…All that is needed is self-discipline and persistence. Our founders had these principles, and we can recover them.”

 

This is not a long book. Joseph Johnston packs a lot of information into 361 pages. To some, his views may seem too adamant, but to all they should be provocative, as they are well-reasoned and clearly expressed.