That we are concerned with the problem admirably illustrates the single greatest error of liberalism in these last twenty years. It has been the assumption that we could concentrate on domestic matters and leave foreign policy to the self-styled experts and the conservatives who quite frequently are one and the same. Or it could be left to those liberals who on becoming associated with foreign policy could convert to the official cliches and the doctrines of John Foster Dulles on a moment's notice. Liberalism has few more depressing phenomena than its instant apologists where foreign policy is concerned.

The men who will suffer most from the reaction to Vietnam will be those who had the greatest doubts about it. And generally speaking, those who have spoken most fluently and feelingly about the defense of liberty, freedom and Marshal Ky's version of democracy in Saigon have never shown the slightest passion for these principles in Birmingham or Harlem. Needless to say I do not include the President in this observation, but I do urge that he require all friends of Vietnam democracy to do their boot training in Birmingham.

Support of Nauseous Despots

If one were to isolate the most damaging single feature of American foreign policy in the last twenty years it has been our recurrent support of nauseous despots whom we wouldn't for a moment tolerate within our own frontiers. And much of this support has come from administrations in which, at a minimum, liberal influence has been strong. It has been another result of imagining we could be liberal at home and reactionary abroad. I hope it is a lesson we have finally learned.

Along with supposing that liberalism stopped at the water's edge--except as liberals might be more intelligent in fighting the Cold War--we have also been far too ready to believe that we could have one set of moral standards abroad and another at home. That is not true either.

In these last years on matters ranging from air attacks on Asian villages to the testimonial contributions of the CIA to the organizations it favors, we have heard the argument that in this world we must be brutal and immoral too. This argument has a great appeal to conservatives--provided, as Barry Goldwater urged, the money is spread around--but a great many liberals have seized upon it as an opportunity for escape from the unnatural constraints of virtue. In the liberal soul too there lurks a little of the late James Bond, coupled perhaps with a few of the more commonplace instincts of Senator Thomas J. Dodd.3 We have now learned that because the Communists do something it does not follow that we can do it. We are rightly judged by a different set of standards; illegal or immoral acts are not part of the American armory. In a gathering that is not unanimous in praise of President Johnson I would like to applaud him for his decision last week to bring to an end the messy business of secret subsidies to private organizations. I might add that I also think a better developed sense of liberal outrage on the part of all of us would have brought it to an end earlier.

Johnson Deserves Credit

Now let me conclude with a word on substantive matters. Again I make note of the fact that the President of the United States has not, in these proceedings, suffered from an excess of applause. Let me suggest that it is also a sound liberal tradition to give credit where credit is due.

I have had considerable differences with those experts who have presided over our. Far Eastern policy in increasing error for the last twenty years and who now ask a closing ranks on the mistakes that brought us this misery in Vietnam--presumably so that they will be free to make ever greater ones. Nor do I spare the President whose Administration and responsibility it is. But let us not ignore the accomplishments of the Johnson Administration of these last three years. And let us see that some of the reaction these measures are encountering--notably to civil rights legislation in the North--is the best proof that they have bite. Let there be no doubt about the proper liberal posture in these matters. It is to take pride in the accomplishments and in the great liberal thrust that carried them into effect.

Bizarre Economic Doctrine on 'Taxes

The liberal task now is to consolidate and extend these gains and to overcome the resistance they have engendered. If there is a shortage of hospital beds and of nurses and of medical services, let us be sure that people understand that it is because this sector of the economy has been starved for years. And let us do something about that. Let us fight the backlash not by watching and on occasion deploring the onslaught on Adam Clayton Powell but by pressing for the next steps against bigotry and misunderstanding and segregated communities and schools and restricted housing. Let us meet the problems of administration in the poverty program by training administrators--and especially by pressing for the money it requires. And let us, for God's sake, defeat that most bizarre of all economic doctrines, now having such an enormous vogue, which is that since Americans are now enjoying unprecedented incomes, and are getting them partly because of the war in Vietnam, we must, because of the war in Vietnam, avoid taxes on this more ample income and cut back on spending for the poor.

I would urge also that we need a somewhat stronger line on that most glittering of modern economic doctrines which is that all progress must be bought by increasing profits and allowing a larger return to the needy rich. In the last six years under the presumably stern egalitarian policies of two Democratic Presidents, corporate profits after taxes increased from $27 billion to $48 billion. Nothing comparable to this ever occurred before. It is even bad for the Republicans; what in the world will they have to offer if they ever return to the Treasury? Let me now say a word about foreign policy.

MLF: Stereotyped Planning

In these last years, far more again than liberals have conceded, the Administration has moved to break with the stereotypes of an outworn foreign policy. President Johnson and the more liberal of his advisers have moved courageously to eliminate the notion of a permanent division in Europe. They have ditched the kind of stereotyped military planning that produced the MLF--not all products of Harvard evoke liberal applause or even make sense. The President has improved the language of our discussion with the Soviet Union--a matter on which he has gone far beyond his predecessors. He seems now to be moving the hard-nosed men out of Latin American affairs--where in the name of tough-mindedness and resistance to any form of idealism they accomplish such an infinity of mischief. We have yet to recapture momentum in our aid to underdeveloped countries. But in the last two years, and not, I trust without some knowledge of the problem, I have watched the policy toward the South Asian subcontinent with nearly complete approval.

The President has shown a sure touch in the way he has balanced emphasis on agricultural self-help (mainly production and use of fertilizer) with birth control and emergency supply of food by ourselves and other countries. And, over more opposition one imagines than has been seen on the surface, he has taken the giant step of eliminating arms shipments to both India and Pakistan. When I was in India as Ambassador all of those steps were ones I very much hoped, on liberal grounds, to see. And some of them, like the cessation of arms shipments, I despaired of ever seeing.