Principles and Heresies

I have recently received two letters relevant to my column criticizing the Nixon economic program (“Down the Primrose Path,” September 9). Both letters, although the writers are unacquainted, raise the same question, a question well worth discussion: Whether the conditions of a democracy are such that no program which is difficult and painful, even if necessary, can be maintained. Can a political leader who is dependent on the votes of the people for re-election be expected to maintain such a program as Nixon’s original economic program, which was generally correct, if it does not work fast enough to satisfy the electorate? Or, for that matter, can a President be expected to rearm the country and take the steps necessary for survival when such a course requires sacrifice and cuts against the demand for increasing domestic material comfort?

What is implied is, first, that our political structure has become an outright pure democracy, rather than the representative republic of the Constitution as written, and, second, that the source of the liberal refusal to face reality stems from the people as a whole, not from a far-from-democratic elite of ideologists.

FS

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Frank S. Meyer

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

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I have recently received two letters relevant to my column criticizing the Nixon economic program (“Down the Primrose Path,” September 9). Both letters, although the writers are unacquainted, raise the same question, a question well worth discussion: Whether the conditions of a democracy are such that no program which is difficult and painful, even if necessary, can be maintained. Can a political leader who is dependent on the votes of the people for re-election be expected to maintain such a program as Nixon’s original economic program, which was generally correct, if it does not work fast enough to satisfy the electorate? Or, for that matter, can a President be expected to rearm the country and take the steps necessary for survival when such a course requires sacrifice and cuts against the demand for increasing domestic material comfort?

What is implied is, first, that our political structure has become an outright pure democracy, rather than the representative republic of the Constitution as written, and, second, that the source of the liberal refusal to face reality stems from the people as a whole, not from a far-from-democratic elite of ideologists.