In short, liberals differ, or may differ, among themselves on application, timing, method and other details, but these differences revolve within a common framework of more basic ideas, beliefs, principles, goals, feelings and values. This does not mean that every liberal is clearly aware of this common framework; on the contrary, most liberals will take it for granted as automatically as pulse or breathing. If brought to light, it is likely to seem as self-evident and unquestionable as Euclid’s set of axioms once seemed to mathematicians.
It is a matter of what seems open to rational discussion, to discussion among reasonable men. It is rational that Leon Keyserling, let us say, should dispute with John Kenneth Galbraith or Walter Heller whether the initial appropriation under a newly proposed federal school program should be $2.3 billion or $3.2 billion. Reasonable men, that is to say liberals, differ on such points, and negotiate their differences through the discussion process. But it is a waste of time for Mr. Keyserling, Ambassador Galbraith, Mr. Heller or other reasonable men to try to argue a contention by, say, Senator Tower that there should not be any federal school program at all. That sort of talk is reactionary nonsense, eighteenth-century thinking, outside the limits of rational discussion. In such cases there is no sense relying on persuasion; it will have to be settled by rounding up the votes, and, if the reactionaries keep asking for trouble long enough, by calling out the paratroops. “In our day,” it seems to a liberal, “nobody but a madman, fascist or crackpot would really question whether democracy is better than aristocracy and dictatorship, whether there ought to be universal education and universal suffrage, whether all races and creeds deserve equal treatment, whether government has a duty to the unemployed, ill and aged, whether we ought to have a progressive income tax, whether trade unions are a good thing, or peace better than war.”
Whether or not all liberals understand the principles behind their own judgments, attitudes and actions—and some of them undoubtedly do—and whether these principles are self-evidently true or just plain true or even plain false, the principles are nevertheless there, logically speaking. They can be brought to light by a consideration of what is logically entailed by liberal words and deeds: by answering the question, “What would a liberal have to believe, in order to make logical sense of the way he talks, judges, feels and acts about political, economic and social affairs?”
Present-day American liberalism is not a complete system of thought comparable to, say, dialectical materialism, Spinozism, or Christian philosophy as taught by the Thomist wing of the Roman Catholic Church. Liberalism has no single, accepted and authoritative book or person or committee that is recognized as giving the final word: no Bible, Pope nor Presidium. Liberalism is looser, vaguer, harder to pin down; and permits its faithful a considerable deviation before they are pronounced heretic. Nevertheless, liberalism does constitute in its own terms a fairly cohesive body of doctrine, cluster of feelings and code of practice. This is indirectly demonstrated by the fact that usually—not always, but usually—it is easy enough to tell the difference between a liberal on the one hand and a conservative on the other; between a liberal proposal in politics or economics and a conservative proposal. (And still easier, it goes without saying, to tell the difference between a liberal and an outright reactionary.) There are troublesome intermediary cases, but surprisingly few, really. A political journalist seldom has any trouble identifying the public figures he writes about as liberal or not. The ideological spectrum between the leftmost wing of liberalism and the rightmost wing of conservatism is not an evenly graduated gray continuum. The L’s and the C’s are bunched; and we can usually tell the difference intuitively. A connoisseur, in fact, can tell the difference intuitively just from a momentary sample of rhetoric at a Parent-Teacher meeting or a cocktail party, even without a specific declaration or proposal to go by, much as a musical connoisseur can distinguish intuitively a single phrase of Mozart from a phrase of Brahms.
IV
IT IS NOT TOO DIFFICULT TO DEVISE a fairly accurate diagnostic test for liberalism. In individual and group experiments over the past several years I have often used, for example, the following set of thirty-nine sentences. The patient is merely asked whether he agrees or disagrees with each sentence—agrees or disagrees by and large, without worrying over fine points.2
1. All forms of racial segregation and discrimination are wrong.
2. Everyone is entitled to his own opinion.
3. Everyone has a right to free, public education.
4. Political, economic or social discrimination based on religious belief is wrong.
5. In political or military conflict it is wrong to use methods of torture and physical terror.
6. A popular movement or revolt against a tyranny or dictatorship is right, and deserves approval.
7. The government has a duty to provide for the ill, aged, unemployed and poor if they cannot take care of themselves.
8. Progressive income and inheritance taxes are the fairest form of taxation.
9. If reasonable compensation is made, the government of a nation has the legal and moral right to expropriate private property within its borders, whether owned by citizens or foreigners.
10. We have a duty to mankind; that is, to men in general.
11. The United Nations, even if limited in accomplishment, is a step in the right direction.
12. Any interference with free speech and free assembly, except for cases of immediate public danger or juvenile corruption, is wrong.
13. Wealthy nations, like the United States, have a duty to aid the less privileged portions of mankind.
14. Colonialism and imperialism are wrong.
15. Hotels, motels, stores and restaurants in the Southern United States ought to be obliged by law to allow Negroes to use all of their facilities on the same basis as whites.
16. The chief sources of delinquency and crime are ignorance, discrimination, poverty and exploitation.
17. Communists have a right to express their opinions.
18. We should always be ready to negotiate with the Soviet Union and other communist nations.
19. Corporal punishment, except possibly for small children, is wrong.
20. All nations and peoples, including the nations and peoples of Asia and Africa, have a right to political independence when a majority of the population wants it.
21. We always ought to respect the religious beliefs of others.
22. The primary goal of international policy in the nuclear age ought to be peace.
23. Except in cases of a clear threat to national security or, possibly, to juvenile morals, censorship is wrong.
24. Congressional investigating committees are dangerous institutions, and need to be watched and curbed if they are not to become a serious threat to freedom.
25. The money amount of school and university scholarships ought to be decided primarily by need.
26. Qualified teachers, at least at the university level, are entitled to academic freedom: that is, the right to express their own beliefs and opinions, in or out of the classroom, without interference from administrators, trustees, parents or public bodies.
27. In determining who is to be admitted to schools and universities, quota systems based on color, religion, family or similar factors are wrong.
28. The national government should guarantee that all adult citizens, except for criminals and the insane, should have the right to vote.
29. Joseph McCarthy was probably the most dangerous man in American public life during the fifteen years following the Second World War.
30. There are no significant differences