If All Are Not Saved, What Good Is the Salvation of One Only?

Abstract

In Antioch Review (Fall, 1960), James H. Justus published an essay, A New Liberalism to Pay Old Debts, commenting on an essay of mine, Intellectuals and American Democracy, which appeared in Antioch Review in summer of 1959. Justus' comments were stimulating, and they were provocative in best sense. Justus took issue with me on a number of questions, and on several of these went ahead to argue counter propositions of his own. I wish to take this opportunity to clarify some of my views and to make some observations about his. Actually, views of Justus and myself are not so far apart as this running discussion might seem to indicate, for it is in nature of polemical give-and-take to emphasize areas of disagreement and to assume more or less areas of agreement. Today, in our open society, sophisticated conservatives no longer damn liberal tradition as heresy; but they have other ways of denigrating it. They accuse it of being naive, superficial, and callow, of misunderstanding the nature of man and the human situation, of underrating non-rational, of ignoring basic continuities of history and social life. They tend, too, as I wrote in my original article, to appropriate for conservatism whole humanistic tradition of Western world, whereas, of course, that tradition has become a part, in somewhat varying ways, of Western reaction, conservatism, liberalism, radicalism, and socialism. In all fairness: An awareness of tradition, of interplay of rational and non-rational, and of continuities of history is not so much a matter of conservatism or liberalism as it is of political and social maturity. Justus writes: Mr. Carleton implies that America suddenly sprang into being in 1780 or thereabout and that Age of Reason is largely responsible for American character. I implied no such thing.