Principles and Heresies

“Nature abhors a vacuum”—and the same principle applies in society. This is why a state of permanent anarchy has never existed and never can exist. Something always fills the power vacuum. And that something is usually decidedly unpleasant. When moral authority, which is the cement of a society, is dissolved, rarely can anything but raw power recreate the social cohesion and order without which no society can function. That raw power, necessary to pull a chaotic, anarchy-ridden society together, almost inevitably is wielded by dictators and tyrants.

This is not abstract historical speculation. It is a possible, not too distant fate that may face this country. The liberal leadership which has governed the United States since 1932 has in the last few months driven with catastrophic momentum to the edge of bankruptcy—a bankruptcy always inherent in its principles and its understanding of society and politics, but now becoming imminently real. In its surrender before Communism in Vietnam, as in its surrender before mobs in our cities and our universities, that leadership is no longer merely doing what it has done for 35 years, retreating before Communism abroad and steadily dismantling the Constitution at home. It is no longer merely governing with bad means to achieve bad ends. It is showing an inability to govern at all: abroad, betraying the most fundamental interests of the republic, and at home letting the constituted power in its trust slip from its nerveless fingers into the possession of self-proclaimed “representatives of the popular will,” who burn our cities, desecrate our universities, occupy our capital.

FS

About the Author

Frank S. Meyer

Frank S. Meyer was a senior editor of National Review.

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“Nature abhors a vacuum”—and the same principle applies in society. This is why a state of permanent anarchy has never existed and never can exist. Something always fills the power vacuum. And that something is usually decidedly unpleasant. When moral authority, which is the cement of a society, is dissolved, rarely can anything but raw power recreate the social cohesion and order without which no society can function. That raw power, necessary to pull a chaotic, anarchy-ridden society together, almost inevitably is wielded by dictators and tyrants.

This is not abstract historical speculation. It is a possible, not too distant fate that may face this country. The liberal leadership which has governed the United States since 1932 has in the last few months driven with catastrophic momentum to the edge of bankruptcy—a bankruptcy always inherent in its principles and its understanding of society and politics, but now becoming imminently real. In its surrender before Communism in Vietnam, as in its surrender before mobs in our cities and our universities, that leadership is no longer merely doing what it has done for 35 years, retreating before Communism abroad and steadily dismantling the Constitution at home. It is no longer merely governing with bad means to achieve bad ends. It is showing an inability to govern at all: abroad, betraying the most fundamental interests of the republic, and at home letting the constituted power in its trust slip from its nerveless fingers into the possession of self-proclaimed “representatives of the popular will,” who burn our cities, desecrate our universities, occupy our capital.