Conservative Wing Research Articles

That was the crisis that was

Political Integration and Disintegration in the British Isles. By A. H. Birch. London: George Allen and Unwin, 1977. Pp. 184. £6.50 hardback, £2.95 paperback. Divided Loyalties. British Regional Assertion and European Integration Edited by M. Kolinsky. Manchester University Press, 1978. Pp. 224. £9.50 The Break up of Britain: Crises and Neo‐Nationalism. By Tom Nairn. London, New Left Books, 1977. Pp. 318. £750. The British Right: Conservative and Right Wing Politics in Britain. Edited by Neill Nugent and Roger King, Westmead : Saxon House, 1977, Pp. vi + 230 £7.50

Residential Inmate Aftercare:

The halfway house as a transitional residence for offenders being released from an institution has perhaps been the most enthusiastically accepted correctional program over the past decade. The growth in numbers of programs has eclipsed the expectations of even the most optimistic advocates of halfway houses. However, there is still great argument over the benefit and possible disadvantages of the use of halfway houses. The more conservative wing within corrections argues that halfway houses are not effective, are costly, and add no assurance that a resident will not commit further crime against society. The backers of such programs emphasize the difficult transition from institution to community and the need for intermediate steps. A Law Enforcement Assistance Administration-funded analysis has surveyed adult halfway houses and reviewed relevant evaluations of such programs. General findings indicate that halfway house programs can more effectively reintegrate prisoners returning to the community than direct release to parole. In addition, if the halfway house acts as an alternative to incarceration, the cost to the correctional system can be favorably compared. Although more research and evaluation need to be completed, available findings document a positive benefit by the use of halfway houses in the correctional process.

The Insanity of Community Mental Health: The Myth of the Machine

By this time most professionals, and many laymen, are aware of the objectives of the community mental health movement. In the sixties the federal government began to provide financial support for states wishing to develop comprehensive mental health plans. This legislation was in response to the Joint Commission on Mental Illness and Health* s report, Action for mental health (1961); and although the original focus of this report was on the deplorable conditions in the state hospitals and the plight of the chronic patients confined in them, within a surprisingly short time, by the mid-sixties, the federal government had helped to create a new institution, the community mental health center. Probably because this new institution was born in a period of rising expectations , its stated goals went far beyond the care of the chronic, back-ward, mental patient. The more conservative wing of the community mental health movement talked openly about reaching out and treating whole populations of people previously untouched by the mental health hand; and radicals saw an opportunity to launch programs that would virtually transform society, that would even up the score between the haves and the have-nots, wipe out poverty and racism, and foster community development. These aspirations are still being expressed in some quarters, but other voices speak of false hopes

The Kennedy Court: Left and Right of Center

had an impact through the Court long after they had ceased to exist as a viable electoral political entity; and President Franklin D. Roosevelt was thwarted for nearly a decade by his predecessors' Court appointees. On the other hand, a President's appointees do not always reflect his political interests once they are on the Court. President Eisenhower, generally thought to be moderate and cautious, by his earlier appointments had created an activist Court which was considered in its approach to issues. By the end of Eisenhower's second term in office, however, the Court had become closely divided as a result of his last two appointments to the high tribunal.' In the 1960-61 term of the Supreme Court nearly a quarter of the decisions handed down had been decided by a five-to-four vote. Only about 20 percent of the cases were reported out unanimously by the nine men in black. There appeared to be two fairly cohesive blocs with a contingent of swing voters left over. On the side were Justices Black, Douglas, and Brennan, and Chief Justice Warren; in the conservative wing were Justices Frankfurter, Harlan, and Stewart. Justices Clark and Whittaker were floaters, but were normally considered conservatively inclined. Thus, on a large number of cases the votes of seven of the justices could be anticipated with some reliability; the two others seemed to be oriented to the right of center on the more controversial decisions. The 1961-62 term of the Court evinced somewhat more agreement, but still it was regarded as a divided Court. Any change in its composition could be critically important for several categories of judicial appeals. President John F. Kennedy had taken office in 1961. Any vacancy on the Court would give him the opportunity, as well as the responsibility, to alter the direction the Court was taking. The assumption was that Kennedy would attempt to restore vitality to the liberal wing of the Court when given a chance. It was expected that any vacancy would come from among the more aged justices, Black, Douglas or Frankfurter, who were also at the extremes of the Court factions. But on March 29, 1962, Associate Justice Charles Whittaker announced his retirement effective April 11, 1962. Whittaker had been ill and had been missing from the bench for the previous two weeks, but his illness was not thought to be serious. Having been appointed by President Eisenhower in 1957, at 61 Whittaker was actually one of the younger members of the Court, and his early retirement had not been generally anticipated. It was thus from the conservative

The Church and Moral Decision

Not all the discussion between progressive and conservative wings in the Church is about doctrine and liturgy. As the Humanae Vitae affair revealed there are growing areas of disagreement on questions of morality. Though the ones I want to write about are found in acute form in Roman Catholic circles where there is a sharper clash between individual and authority, they are also frequent wherever any strong doctrine of revelation, particularly of a fundamentalist kind, prevails. This essay aims simply to elucidate some of the questions which do not always get properly examined in the heat of debate and to analyse some of the presuppositions behind popularly held and taught views which lay some claim to being representative of ‘traditional Christian morality’. Not infrequently the views of serious moral thinkers are dubbed ‘situation ethics’ or ‘purely subjective morality’ and by being so labelled are accounted suitably disposed of along with the rest of the contents of the bin marked ‘new theology’. There is a risk that more than garbage is disposed of in this way. I want in this essay to do a bit of ‘cool looking’ at some of the presuppositions of the supporters of ‘traditional Christian morality’ (self-styled) and also to look at a problem that crops up frequently in these discussions: what can be reckoned as specifically ‘Christian’ in a moral view which does not understand moral imperatives to have been delivered timeless and eternal in some earlier period of history?

Women Sexuality and Social Change in the Middle East and the Maghreb

In the present era of globalization, women’s bodies and sexuality are increasingly becoming arenas of intense conflict around the world. Conservative and religious right wing political forces are fiercely trying to maintain or reinforce traditional mechanisms of control over women’s sexuality and even to create new ones. Four UN conferences held in the 1990s – the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo, the 1995 Beijing Conference, the 1999 five-year review of ICPD (ICPD+5), and the 2000 five-year review of the Beijing Conference (Beijing+5) – witnessed an unprecedented cooperation between the Catholic and Muslim religious groups to oppose and restrict women’s right to control their bodies and sexuality.

Competing Elites Within a Political Party: a Study of Republican Leadership

HE CAMPAIGN for the 1968 Republican presidential nomination managed to avoid the kind of bitter fratricidal conflict which can leave ugly and lasting scars on a political party. The and wings never really confronted each other at the party's national convention or in the period prior to the convention. By the time Nelson Rockefeller and Ronald Reagan announced their candidacies, it was against Richard Nixon rather than against each other that their efforts had to be directed. Subsequently, middle-ground candidate Nixon proved well-suited to the task of attenuating the conflict potential within the party, at least at the national level and at least for the duration of the presidential campaign. How different it was in 1964! The liberal-conservative clash surrounding the Republican presidential nomination that year was unusual in both intensity and outcome. It has been accurately described as the most virulent confrontation between the two Republican factions since the 1912 Taft-Roosevelt conflict. The immediate result in 1964, as in 1912, was devastating to the more liberal wing of the party which had long controlled presidential nominations; to the cause of party harmony; and, in the national election, to Republican fortunes generally. If the 1968 Republicans presented an illustration of coalition-building and a muting of longstanding intraparty differences, the 1964 Republicans offered an instance of coalition-breaking and the exacerbation of intraparty differences. The purpose of the present study is to investigate the nature of the liberal and conservative wings of the Republican party by considering the attitudes and backgrounds of individuals who have held leadership position in each of those wings in a single, but highly significant state. More specifically, it is focused on California and it is principally designed to compare the state's Republican elite group supporting Barry Goldwater for the nomination in 1964 with the elite group supporting Nelson Rockefeller with respect to the following questions:

Electoral Myth and Reality: The 1964 Election

On Election Day, 1964, the aspirations of Senator Barry Goldwater and the conservative wing of the Republican Party were buried under an avalanche of votes cast for incumbent President Lyndon Johnson. The margin of victory, approaching 16 million votes, was unprecedented. Historical comparisons with other presidential landslides are left somewhat indeterminate by the intrusion of third parties. However, it is safe to observe that Johnson's 61.3 percent of the two-party popular vote put him in the same general range as the striking victories of Franklin Delano Roosevelt in 1936, Harding in 1920, and Theodore Roosevelt in 1904.Before the fact, the election was also expected to be the most intensely ideological campaign since 1936, in no small measure because of Goldwater's reputation as a “pure” conservative. After the fact, doubts existed as to whether this expectation had been fulfilled. Goldwater supporters, in particular, expressed disappointment that President Johnson had refused to join battle on any of the fundamental ideological alternatives that were motivating the Goldwater camp.

The Year the Centre Held

THE NOMINATION OF BARRY GOLDWATER for President of the United States seemed to symbolize a shift to the right in American politics. Many commentators, both in the United States and abroad, spoke ominously of the mood of right-wing hysteria, typified by the white backlash against civil rights progress that seemed to be overtaking the country. Now Goldwater has been defeated by one of the largest landslides in American political history. Does this mean that American public opinion has not moved to the right ? And if it has not, why did the Republicans for the first time in thirty years nominate a presidential candidate from the conservative wing of the party ?

Year Book of Medicine 1962-1963 Series.

The American Right Wing, A Report to the Fund for the Republic, Inc., in University of Illinois Library School Occasional Papers, No. 59, November, 1960. By Ralph E. Ellsworth and Sarah M. Harris. Price, $1. Pp. 50, with no illustrations. University of Illinois Graduate School of Library Science, Chicago 12, 1960. The distribution curve of medical and political attitudes presents a fascinating spectrum with a bell-shaped cluster of the large majority near but not at the middle. But at either end far to the left and far to the right we have fringes, men who follow the one view or the other with such powerful passion that it distorts their thinking and confuses their attitudes. The distribution of the political and social views of physicians has an interesting hump towards the right. It is correlated in a general way with the natural conservatism of medical practice and the increased conservatism of older persons. The extreme right is characterized by reactionary elements who have failed to keep up with the shifting customs, the altered economic contexts, and the changed problems of contemporary existence. While the American Medical Association has often been the whipping boy for those who lean a little to the left, and many charges are empty, it is well to remember the equal but perhaps less obvious dangers which occur when those occupying the ex¬ treme right are willing to sacrifice constitu¬ tional guarantees of freedom in order to promulgate their own views, beliefs, and feelings. Professor Ralph Ellsworth and the late Dr. Sarah M. Harris have gathered together sources of all kinds indicating the activities, publications, and political pres¬ sures of both the orthodox conservative wing and the rabid and morbid edges where

Interventionism and Applied Science in Anthropology

"Interventionism" is not a new thing in the profession of anthropology; it is one of its oldest elements. The account of the first French anthropological society, La société des observateurs de I'homme, as given by one historian,1 indeed confirms the worst fears of some modern sceptics of applied anthropology; we are told that in 1808, three years after its formation, the infant organization "was united with La société philanthropique and lost its scientific identity." The ethnological societies of London and Paris were also abolitionist organizations; the French organization was founded in 1838 under the leadership of a member of the British Society for the Protection of the Aborigines. The anthropological societies of London and Paris were formed after them, partly by the secession of some conservative elements of the two ethnological societies.2 Thus at the outset organized anthropology had two wings—a liberal or radical wing, frankly interventionist, and a conservative wing, proposing to study man "in strictly scientific manner." Although avowedly directed towards "pure science," even the latter organizations were not free from the taint of intervention, although in a direction the reverse of that taken by the earlier, "liberal" organizations; a pamphlet by the head of the London Anthropological Society, James Hart, was published as one of a series of anti-abolition tracts, of frankly propagandistic intent. Even the term "applied anthropology" is not exactly a recent novelty. The term is used by Daniel C. Brinton in a speech of 18953 as retiring president of the AAAS, and for all I know was used before that time.

The Warren Court - After Three Terms

WHEN ITS 1955 term ended in June, 1956, the Supreme Court of the United States was once again a center of interest, both as an object of severe criticism and as a subject of widespread speculation. In general, the interest in the Court derived from its decisions in cases involving important issues of individual liberties, national security, and states' rights. The criticism, somewhat less vehement than that begun in 1953 as a result of the decisions in the public school segregation cases,' was at the same time less sectional. In Congress certain Northern Republicans joined already embittered Southern Democrats in denouncing the Court and in attacking those decisions which reflected a libertarian viewpoint. Legislative proposals to curb the Court, to prescribe judicial experience as a qualification for appointment, and to reverse certain controversial decisions, multiplied.2 Speculation and comment occurring in newspapers and popular magazines centered around the voting behavior of Chief Justice Warren, who had identified himself closely with the old liberal bloc made up of Justices Black and Douglas. In October, 1953, when Earl Warren was sworn as Chief Justice of the United States, the Court was sharply divided into two unbalanced blocs. On the one hand, the remaining Truman appointees Justices Burton, Clark, and Minton along with Justice Reed, a Roosevelt appointee, constituted the conservative wing.3 During the four previous terms of the Court, 1949-52, this group, led or supported by Chief Justice Vinson, had dominated as a stable majority in disposing of cases involving issues of civil liberties versus governmental authority.4 On the other hand, the liberal bloc, long powerful before the deaths of Justices Murphy and Rutledge in 1949, had dwindled to only two members, Justices Black and Douglas. The

Japan's Rearmament: Progress and Problems

SINCE THE SIGNING of the peace treaty in the late summer of 1951, rearmament has assumed steadily increasing importance in Japanese politics and policy. Directly and indirectly this issue influences major political, constitutional, economic, and diplomatic problems confronting the Japanese government and the Japanese people. The creation in 1954 of a new defense establishment with land, sea, and air arms has centered Japanese attention upon concrete and current aspects of rearmament, and has caused growing concern about its future implications. In domestic politics the impact of rearmament is clearly discernible. In the 1955 elections it contributed to the spectacular fall from power of the Liberal party which had dominated Japanese politics almost without interruption since the first postwar election in 1946. A fundamental split over both the advisability and the extent of rearmament is contributing to a growing bipolarization of Japanese politics. On the one hand, the Liberal party and its successor in power the new Democratic party both favoring rearmament and representing the powerful conservative wing of Japanese politics, seem to be moving in the direction of coalition; on the other hand, the two wings of the Socialist party, at odds since 1951 but standing together in their opposition to rearmament, seem to be approaching a reconciliation. It was rearmament, too, which was at least the point of departure for a conservative attempt drastically to revise the democratic constitution; and not only to eliminate the so-called renunciation of war clause, but also seriously to modify many fundamental democratic provisions of the constitution.

The Meaning of Barresisme

SEVERAL RECENT historians of Third Republic have drawn our attention to similarity between forces and ideas which came to surface in Dreyfus Affair and those of twentieth-century fascism. None of complex of ideas anti-Semitism, authoritarianism, racism, irrationalism, state socialism which we now consider as characteristic of fascist position were missing in years 1894-1906 when Dreyfus and Third Republic stood trial for their lives. In streets of Paris gangs of ruffians swarmed about streets attacking Jews and foreigners; and a bloodthirsty, unprincipled and provocative press waged a war in word and deed on Western traditions of political life which foreshadowed later fascist repudiation of these traditions. If late nineteenth century was, as Professor Hayes says, the seedbed of modern totalitarianism, it gave birth to its first noxious but sturdy weed in Dreyfus Affair.* The acknowledged spokesman and political theorist of anti-Dreyfusards was Maurice Barres. Both restless activists like Rochefort and Deroulede and great conservative forces of Church and Army accepted him as an intellectual leader. But his ideas and political tendencies were not what old conservative wing of anti-Dreyfusards thought they were; he did not support a static authoritarianism built about throne, altar and hereditary nobility. Stability and order were not what he sought. Barres rather symbolized realities of a situation in which overthrow of Third Republic no longer meant return to power of French nobility, clergy and high bourgeoisie. He heralded advent of a new type of rightist, activist, And his life, which gave lie to conservatism of very forces which accepted his guidance, demonstrated in its rootless, unceasing destructiveness what is meant by phrase permanent revolutionary. Barres, indeed, exemplifies what modern writers refer to when they talk of emergent fascism of Dreyfus Affair. Like Affair he straddles centuries: while his allies were clerical, aristocratic, basically Christian social groups who viewed him as a nineteenth-century traditionalist, he reached ahead to instruct by word and example Lumpen-proletariat, Hitlers and Goebbelses of recent times.

Belgium: a Survey of Recent Events

A S in most parliamentary democracies, political life in Belgium rests largely on the interplay of parties. The pattern of Belgian political parties, while more complex than in Great Britain, has, in spite of proportional representation, remained very simple: since I893 only three parties have played a leading part in parliamentary life: the Catholics (later to become the Social-Christians), the Socialists, and the Liberals. The Communists for nearly three years after the Liberation took a normal part in that life, but since I947 have reverted to an isolated opposition. Belgian political and social life has, since I830, been organized in terms of belief and unbelief. The Liberal and Socialist Parties are avowedly anti-clerical. The Catholics have always formed one party, which was dominated by its Conservative wing up to I9I4 and, between the wars, was in fact but a coalition of widely diverging groups. The new Social-Christian Party, founded in I945, with a definite programme, has tried sincerely but unsuccessfully to cut across the religious cleavage; in fact it has remained the party of the Roman Catholics. Those who support it include peasants, middle classes and workers. Many of the peasants and trading classes are conservative at heart, but they follow, through Catholic solidarity, a leadership which is definitely left of centre; the Christian trade unions, representing approximately half of the total trade-union membership and a large proportion of the Social-Christian vote, have a strong though unofficial influence on the policies and general tendency of the party. The Liberals, although, because of past traditions and of their anticlerical attitude-they call themselves the 'Liberal Left'-are, in fact, from the social and economic viewpoint, Conservatives; their voters include bourgeois, trading-classes, well-to-do peasants, white-collar workers, and their representation in Parliament fluctuates widely from one election to another; they often attract a large part of the floating vote; but they are at present handicapped by the lack of a clear-cut programme and (contrary to the pre-war years) by a lack of leadership. The Socialist Party in Belgium has from its beginnings been theoretically committed to Marxian doctrines and to class struggle, but it has in fact been a leftist progressive party rather than a group of doctrinaire Marxians. With all other Socialist parties, it believes firmly in State control, but it has pressed for nationalization far less than the Socialist Parties of Great Britain and France. It rests on a solid foundation of 339

Standardizing the Negro college

We are witnessing what might appropriately be called a renaissance in college education for negroes in the United States. This new birth is significant; it is fraught with many vital consequences, as well as with opportunities for ingenuity in educational engineering. The newer philosophers of negro education have discovered the established negro college to be rolling along in a rut which, as it seems to them, carries training in such institutions counter to real effectiveness. Hence, a movement has begun, fostered by such scholars as G. Victor Cools, Francis G. Sumner, and Horace Mann Bond, to reshape the psychology of negro higher education. The conservative wing of negro educators is equally vigorous in a movement to standardize higher education according to the ideas of that group, but the ideas of these thinkers as to what should be the norm differ widely from the notions of those who represent the newer school of thought. It is the purpose here to discuss briefly, in the light of present conditions, the philosophies of the two schools of thinkers. A brief preliminary statement of the history and the present status of higher schools for negroes is essential to an appreciation and a right interpretation of the comparison of views made in this article. The unfavorable attitude of the South, immediately after the Civil War, toward the education of negroes caused persons of philanthropic and missionary spirit, mostly in the North, to endeavor to provide formal training for the freedmen and their children. The enterprise was carried forward hastily, enthusiastically, even eagerly, with missionary zeal. It was not thoughtfully based on experience (of which, of course, there was none) or on a careful analysis of the facts which, except for the haste, might readily have been observed. Thus, indiscriminately there sprang up, in almost all parts of the South, soon after the war, a multiplicity of schools for negroes. Full faith and credit should be given the spirit out of which such efforts came; but it has brought present negro educators, a half century later, face to face with the most formidable educational problems in the history of education in the United States. Within the period of the first twenty years after the close of the civil

A Psychological Analysis of One Problem of Curriculum Construction

It is obviously impossible to treat all the psychological problems involved in curriculum construction in one short article. The curriculum committee of the National Society for the Study of Education has done an important service by formulating the issues which are involved in curriculum construction. A number of these issues are psychological in nature. All these psychological issues are important, but there is one which is more fundamental than the rest and which underlies not only the construction of the curriculum but many other aspects of education. It is one of the chief issues on which the radical wing and the conservative wing in education split. It has been a bone of contention for generations and is therefore not a new issue. It extends beyond the field of formal education and appears in the entire realm of human conduct. It is the issue between the world and the individual. With reference to the curriculum, it is the issue between a socially imposed curriculum and a child-centered curriculum.

University and Educational Intelligence

CAMBRIDGE.—As was generally expected, Report B in favour of the foundation of a separate women's university at Cambridge was rejected last week. Three of the six signatories, who produced the scheme after six months' labour, had signed its death-warrant by issuing a fly-sheet against it. The new scheme— C it may well be called—is supported now by a group of fifty-two. It offers women students degrees, teaching by the University for a limited number, also certain undefined privileges, but no power and no votes in the Senate or any controlling body of the University. Even this scheme seems to open up too many and too serious risks to the more conservative members of the University, who are appealing for support for a fourth scheme D. While rigidly limiting the number of women students admitted to the University and ensuring that they shall pay proper fees for teaching and examinations, this scheme limits any advance from the present position to the granting by diploma of titular degrees. Already several defections have taken place from the moderate party to the extreme conservative wing.

Four Years of Congress

When the sixty-third congress was called in extraordinary session on April 7, 1913, it was the first time since 1895 that both branches of congress and the executive had been under Democratic control. For nearly two decades the policies of the nation had been shaped and directed by the Republicans. Now after many years the minority had become the majority, and a Democratic President sat in the White House. In the congressional elections of 1910, dissatisfaction with the Payne-Aldrich tariff and the growing friction between the conservative and progressive wings of the Republican party had given the Democrats a net gain of 56 seats in the house of representatives, and control of that body by a majority of 66 votes. The senate during the sixty-second congress, however, still remained Republican by a majority of 10 votes. In 1912 the three-cornered presidential contest had resulted in the election of Wilson by an unprecedented electoral vote, although he did not have a majority of the popular vote cast. The schism in the ranks of the Republican party and the drift that had set in toward the Democratic ticket had increased the Democratic representation in the lower branch of congress to 290, while the Republican representation had fallen to 145, including 18 Progressives who did not go into the Republican caucus and who could not always be counted on to vote with the minority. In the senate the Democrats had gained enough seats to give them a majority of 6, a net gain of 16 seats over their membership in the sixty-second congress.