How to Verbally Attack a Liberal

This article first appeared in the Feb. 26,  1963, issue of NATIONAL REVIEW.

By Steve Allen

A, er, Liberal celebrity addresses the conservative community on  how we should deal with him — what’s fair, and what isn’t. Proceed with  caution…

Audubon Society members  interested in the Golden-Throated Warbler, the Red-Breasted  Robin and the Great Horned Owl must  detect a familiar ring in those hardy denizens of the political forest,  the Black-Hearted Communist, the Die-Hard Reactionary,  the Moss-Backed Conservative and the Fuzzy-Minded  Liberal. In any event, the hunting season appears more open  than ever and arrows fly in all directions.

Those  who believe they have precisely indexed and labeled me when they have  identified me as a Liberal are mistaken. To explain their error  I will assume two points of view, the first of which is limited and  common, the second of which is wider and more profound. Many  conservatives err in believing they have correctly sized me up because,  like most American Liberals, I am to a great extent conservative. In  other words I respect the Constitution, the flag, our national  tradition, and the political philosophy of our forefathers. As much as  any conservative I despise Communism — as I despise every other form of  tyranny — and I yield to no one in regard to appreciation of the beauty  of the ideal of human freedom.

But, even short of this  extreme, conservatives sometimes err in attacking Liberals because they  have not taken the trouble to get their targets into precise focus. I  agree with Mr. Buckley that my own case is appropriately illustrative.  In relating some of its details I shall not resort to documenting my  25-year record as a militant anti-Communist: the record is there, and  such men as Senator Dodd and J. Edgar Hoover have drawn attention to it.  “Some people,” Averell Harriman recently observed, “think it is only if  you are ready to involve our nation in atomic war that you are a  patriot.” Obviously those who think that Robert Welch is more patriotic  than Dwight Eisenhower are truly in need of psychiatric advice,  although how they are to get it when they also suppose that the mental  health movement is a Communist plot I do not know.

Much  political mischief and nonsense, of course, is traceable not to malice  but to a clumsy use of labels. And even when labels are used correctly  they tell very little about a man. A socialist, for example, is not only  a socialist. He may also be a violinist, a Unitarian, a chess-player, a  husband, and a comforter of the afflicted. And when you kill the  socialist you also kill the violinist, the Unitarian, the chess-player,  the husband, the father and the Good Samaritan.