Darts to the Heart

As the torchbearers of institutionalized liberalism, Americans for Democratic Action could hardly have relished in advance a scheduled address by Daniel Patrick Moynihan at a policy meeting of their national board in Washington last week. Yet Urbanologist Moynihan (TIME cover, July 28) is a member of the board and had a proper voice at the meeting. In keeping with his maverick style, he managed to plant some well-honed darts in sundry sensitive zones of the liberal conscience. Items:

>Viet Nam and urban riots together represent "an especial problem of American liberals because more than anyone else it is they who have been in office, in power at the time of, and in large measure presided over the onset of both." The war "was thought up and is being managed by the men John F. Kennedy brought to Washington." The cities erupted "in the aftermath of one of the most extraordinary periods of liberal electoral victories that we have ever experienced. Who are we, then, to be pointing fingers?"

> "Liberals [must] see more clearly that their interest is in the stability of the social order, and that given the threats to that stability, it is necessary to make much more effective alliances with political conservatives who share that concern, and who recognize that unyielding rigidity is just as much a threat to the continuity of things as is an anarchic desire for change."

> "Liberals must somehow overcome the curious condescension which takes the form of sticking up for and explaining away anything, howsoever outrageous, which Negroes, individually or collectively, might do." Distinction must be made between "the vast Negro underclass, a disorganized, angry, hurt group easily given to self-destructive violence, and the radical, nihilist youth [that seeks to use the underclass for] apocalyptic confrontation with white society." The differentiation "means facing up to some of the realities of life in that class that liberals have been notoriously unwilling to acknowledge."

> Liberals "must divest themselves of the notion that the nation, especially the cities, can be run from agencies in Washington." Because the Federal Government is "good at collecting revenues and rather bad at disbursing services," federal money should be shared generously with state and local authorities on a "permanent, ongoing basis." Initiative in using the money should be left to the locality. "Let us be frank. The original, determining opposition to this proposition has come from liberals, not conservatives, in Washington, and we should be ashamed of ourselves."

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