FIRinG Line \=>BS - 55 SOUTHERN EDUCATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS ASSOCIATION

Transcription

1 The copyright laws of the United States (Title 17, U.S. Code) governs the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted material. If a user makes a request for, or later uses a photocopy or reproduction (including handwritten copies) for purposes in excess of fair use, that user may be liable for copyright infringement. Users are advised to obtain permission from the copyright owner before any re-use ofthis material. Use of this material is for private, non-commercial, and educational purposes; additional reprints and further distribution is prohibited. Copies are not for resale. All other rights reserved. For further information, contact Director, Hoover Institution Library and Archives, Stanford University, Stanford, CA Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University. o FIRinG Line \=>BS - 55 Guest: John Kenneth Galbraith, economist \ James Galbraith, student ) Peter Galbraith, student Subject: "THREE McGOVERN DELEGATES - THE GALBRAITH FAMILY" SOUTHERN EDUCATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS ASSOCIATION

2 SECA PRESENTS FIRinG Line The FIRING LINE television series is a production of the Southern Educational Communications Association, 92B Woodrow St., P.O. Box 5966, Columbia, S.C., and is transmitted through the facilities of the Public Broadcasting Service. Production of these programs is made possible through a grant from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. FIRING LINE can be seen and heard each week through public television and radio stations throughout the country. Check your local newspapers for channel and time in your area. Host: Guest: WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR. John Kenneth Galbraith, economist, professor at Harvard University James Galbraith, student, Harvard University Peter Galbraith, student, Harvard University Subject: "THREI:: McGOVERN DELEGATES - THE GALBRAITH FAMI LY" Panelists: Rodney Stiesbold, professor, Department of Politics, University of Miami James W. Foley, assistant professor, Department of Economics, University of Miami Richard L. Hillard, instructor, Department of History, Broward Community College FIRING LINE is produced and directed by WARREN STEIBEL This is a transcript of the FI RING LINE program taped at WPBT in North Miami Beach on July 9, 1972, and originally telecast on PBS on July 9, SOUTHERN EDUCATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS ASSOCIATION Board of Trustees of the land Stanford Jr. University.

3 1972 SOUTHERN EDUCATIONAL COMMUNICATIONS ASSOCIATION MR. BUCKLEY: We are in Miami and tomorrow the action will begin, after a couple of days of which it will be uttered who will oppose the reelection of Mr. Nixon on the Democratic ticket. It is, I take it, important to make that specification because Senator George McGovern is understood to have said that if he doesn't get the Democratic designation, he will bolt and run on his own. If he did that, he would probably lose the election, notwithstanding the support of the Galbraith family. I wish I could report that we have here tonight a cross-section of the Galbraith family, but it turns out that there is no such thing.., regret to report that there is no generation gap between father and sons. We are here to discuss the McGovern phenomenon with three delegates for George McGovern - Professor John Kenneth Galbr.aith and his sons, Peter and James. Mr. Galbraith is, I suppose, the best-known economist in the world, which may account for the continuing economic turbulence throughout the world. He is a professor at Harvard, president of the American Economic Association, former ambassador to India for President Kennedy, and former president of the Americans for Democratic Action an organization currently dedicated to impeaching Richard Nixon, which would certainly lighten the burden for George McGovern. Mr. Peter Galbraith, to whom, with his permission, I shall hereaher refer as Peter in order to avoid confusion, is also at Harvard. He is a senior majoring in history. A delegate from Vermont, where he labored in 1970 for Governor Hoff, Peter is 21. Mr. James Galbraith, hereafter Jamie, is also a senior at Harvard where he is majoring in social studies. He is the co-chairman of the McGovern Student Committee and has worked very nearly full-timefor his candidate since way back last summer. Jamie is 20. I should like to begin by asking Jamie: if the convention declines to nominate Mr. McGovern and McGovern strikes out on his own, will you also bolt the party? JAMI E: I don't think that's a very likely possibility. MR. BUCKLEY: I didn't ask you that. JAMIE: If the convention were to deny George McGovern the nomination on the basis of the steal of the delegates from California, I would not support the nominee and I would probably work for George McGovern should he choose to run on another ticket. But again, I think that's an entirely hypothetical question. MR. BUCKLEY: I don't mind asking you hypothetical questions. MR. GALBRAITH: You wouldn't want to comment on this larceny, woul'd you, Bill? You're a rather honest man. MR. BUCKLEY: Are you prompting your son? MR. GALBRAITH: No, I'm just asking you a question. MR. BUCKLEY: Does this happen all the time? What if they denied him the nomination, not on the grounds that you specified but, say, a creeping dislike? JAMI E: Well, if he lost the nomination legitimately, then he's lost the nomination. But I don't think that's going to happen. MR. BUCKLEY: No, I didn't ask you that. I asked you whether, if Mr. McGovern set out on his own, you would follow him. I think it's always interesting to ask devoted Democrats the extent of their - MR. GALBRAITH: And it's also easier to ask hypothetical questions than questions that have substance. MR. BUCKLEY: You can ask me hypothetical questions if you want. Would you then also bolt? JAMI E: It would depend upon whom the nominee was. MR. BUCKLEY: Oh, suppose it was... PETER: George Wallace? JAMI E: Yes. Hubert Humphrey? Yes. MR. BUCKLEY: Hubert Humphrey? Yes. JAMIE: Yes. Scoop Jackson, yes. MR. BUCKLEY: How do you account for the fact that Hubert Humphrey should be so statistically popular with the Americans for Democratic Action and so unpopular with you? He has a lifetime rating of 97 versus a mere 93 for George McGovern, so why do Board of Trustees of the L land Stanford Jr. University.

4 you dislike him so much? JAMI E: Well, I take it that the ADA ratings are based upon votes in the Senate, and the part of Hubert Humphrey's career that was most unpopular with me was his tenure as vice-president. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, that's a constitutional encumbrance, isn't it? I mean, that was settled when Calhoun quit. JAMIE: It has a great deal to do with his past record, though. MR. BUCKLEY: Let me ask you, then, a question that is less personal, if you prefer. If Mr. McGovern does not get the nomination tomorrow, or the next day - JAMIE: I'll wait till Wednesday. MR. BUCKLEY: will you follow McGovern's lead in bolting? Let me put it this way. Qo you conceive that it's possible for anyone other than Mr. McGovern to lead a unified Democratic party at this point? JAMIE: No. MR. BUCKLEY: And why would it be unified behind McGovern? I mean, if Humphrey is as distasteful to McGovern as you say he is, why shouldn't McGovern be as distasteful as Humphrey, the distance between the two being the same wherever you start? JAM IE: Our bargaining position here is extremely good, because Senator McGovern's strength is based upon his positions on the issues and the fact that he hasn't compromised any of the basic principles on which he's been running. MR. BUCKLEY: Oh! JAMI E: The position of the uncommitted delegates on the old party structure is based upon a unified party. Their whole survival as a political power is based upon a straight ticket vote headed by the Democratic nominee, and so it is in their interest to unify behind McGovern. It is in McGovern's interest, in terms of maintaining the support that he's developed - MR. BUCKLEY: Do you mean McGovern's disillusionment after backing Henry Wallace in 1948 has caused him to reconsider the virtues of unity? MR. GALBRAITH: You must remember, Bill, that you have an audience that doesn't distinguish sharply between Henry Wallace and George Wallace. Would you explain who Henry Wallace was? MR. BUCKLEY: This is not my audience. You must be used to your program, not mine. I think that it is interesting to dwell for a moment on the whole claim of George McGovern to the united backing of Democrats. My own feeling is that, unfortunately, this world tends to repay people who are very stubborn and very unrelenting and that, under the circumstances, one ends up conceding to people whose claims really are rather inordinate. Let me quote you, if I may, a sentence from The New York Times concerning the Democratic claims of Mr. McGovern, because I'd like to know how you absorb it. "Is the man who was defeated by Muskie in New Hampshire and Illinois, defeated by Humphrey in Pennsylvania and Ohio, defeated by Wallace in Florida, Maryland and Michigan really the choice of the people?" Peter? PETER: Well, I think he is. I mean, one would only have to compare it to the track records of Mr. Humphrey, Mr. Muskie... MR. BUCKLEY: Well, more people have voted for Humphrey than for your man. PETER: That's not true. Have you not added in New York? There was a primary there on the 20th of June. MR. GALBRAITH: I think Bill Shannon, who wrote that ar-ticle, hasn't gotten around to New York. MR. BUCKLEY: Has he not? MR. GALBRAITH: No. PETER: One would also have to mention that Humphrey was defeated in Massachusetts - he got eight percent of the vote as I recollect. He didn't dare enter in New York. Ohio - It IS very hard to clistinguish victory from defeat in that election. It took four days for them to count it, and one quarter of the population in Cuyahoga County didn't even get to vote. He lost in California; he lost in Oregon where he finished third; he lost in Rhode Island where he finished third. On the whole, it's a pretty poor record. Mr. Wallace's record is somewhat better, but he has also lost in a great number of states. His support is largely regional, in the South. MR. BUCKLEY: And Michigan. PETER: And Michigan. MR. BUCKLEY: The South and Michigan - sort of a gerrymandered region, isn't it? I guess the point that Bill Shannon, who is, of course, a liberal Democrat, is trying to make is that the McGovern people have been incredibly skillful in orchestrating an attitude toward various states, the purpose of which is to persuade people that he is sort of a triumphant front runner, when in fact he isn't, is he? MR. GALBRAITH: If you win a whole long string of primaries, Bill, in New York and in California and in Oregon and in Nebraska, in New Mexico and Rhode Island - if you have that whole string, this is, I must say, a pretty damn clever orchestration, and you can hardly blame the American people. for thinking that anybody who has a run of victories of that sort is the choice of the party. MR. BUCKLEY: Oh, sure, I think that's true. They are easily deceived; there's no question about it. It is, for instance, obviously true at a moment when Gallup was polling not New Hampshire, but everybody - MR. GALBRAITH: There are different definitions of deception here. I would say that this was a rather substantive string of victories, wouldn't you? MR. BUCKLEY: No. It couldn't begin to touch, say, Kefauver's. MR. GALBRAITH: You dismiss California and New York as being rather insignificant states? MR. BUCKLEY: No, I don't dismiss them. I was looking for him to win two to one in California because you promised me he would, and he ended up winning by simply five points, which didn't strike me as, you know, overwhelming. He spent twice as much money. Oh, by the way, is it going to be all right under McGovern to spend money in future contests or only to get him elected? Will we clamp down on spending the kind of money McGovern has spent, let's say, next time around? MR. GALBRAITH: We certainly won't spend anything like your man Nixon. By the way, are you supporting Nixon or are yqu... MR. BUCKLEY: No, no, don't change the subject; we're going to talk about McGovern. MR. GALBRAITH: Are you still suspending support? MR. BUCKLEY: That's ultra vires. We're going to talk about McGovern, if you don't mind. You can ask me that tomorrow morning. MR. GALBRAITH: I can understand why you would like to change the subject. MR. BUCKLEY: Have you found anything else wrong in your last book? To get back to McGovern, I'm interested in probing this question: is there a mandate for McGovern? I happen to feel that McGovern is avery, very good expression of Democratic intellectual chaos and, under the circumstances, I personally hope that you will proceed to nominate him; but on the other hand, I do feel that to do so is a very clear act of disfranchisement to a whole lot of Democrats who are terribly unhappy. You know, 40 percent of the people who are Democrats in California told a reporter from The New York Times - not one at a time, a sampling - that they wouldn't vote for McGovern if he were nominated. PETER: As usual, Mr. Buckley, it seems you've got your statistics wrong. Forty percent of the people who voted for Hubert Humphrey - this is not the California Democrats, but only those California Democrats who voted for Humphrey. It's 40 percent of 40 percent which is about 20 percent or a little less. MR. BUCKLEY: Oh, 20 percent of the whole. PETER: Yes. It's a different figure. 2 Board of Trustees of the eland Stanford Jr. University. 3

5 MR. BUCKLEY: It is a different figure. PETER: It still doesn't mean that McGovern will lose California. MR. BUCKLEY: When one takes his figures in Michigan, does one take into account the Republicans who voted for McGovern to be mischievous, or not? PETER: One suspects Republicans voted for McGovern. PETER: I beg your pardon? that Wallace more than MR. BUCKLEY: Are you as discriminatory about discounting or subtracting the Republicans who mischievously voted for McGovern in Michigan when you make these clarifications? MR. BUCKLEY: It is true,that x number of people who are Democrats are going to refuse to vote for McGovern, right? Now, is x greater than y, i.e., those who would refuse to vote for Humphrey? The principal difference between x and y, as I understand it, is that y would not vote for Nixon; they would simply refuse to vote for Humphrey. X; on the other hand, would vote for Nixon. MR. GALBRAITH: At the moment when you shifted from politics to algebra, I lost track. Could you go back and restate that question? MR. BUCKLEY: You always have the intransigent, in any party, who refuse to accept the party's choice. MR. GALBRAITH: supporters. The Ashbrook MR. BUCKLEY: Well, I don't know, I would say that the majority of the Ashbrook supporters are probably going to vote for Nixon, so I don't think there are that many intransigents. Let's say the Wallace people who defected from Truman would be an example. MR. GALBRAITH: You were campaigning for Ashbrook. MR. BUCKLEY: Don't change the subject. We're talking about McGovern. If you want to have another program on that, we can probably schedule it - if you will reduce your fee. MR. GALBRAITH: Well, with the present situation of public broadcasting, I'll be happy to, but I just want to know how intransigent you Ashbrook supporters are. MR. BUCKLEY: That's not the question. We're trying to explore the Democratic situation. Are there more people who will refuse to vote for McGovern, if he's named tomorrow or the day after tomorrow, than would refuse to vote for Humphrey? 4 JAMI E: I think that's not the operating question. The real question is which Democratic nominee could bring into the Democratic party, could motivate to register and to vote, the 25 million potential, new voters who are between the' ages of 18 and 25 and the additional 12 million unregistered minorities, low income people, working-class people, blacks,,chicanos, who as of yet have not voted in any election. That comes out to a total of 37 million people which is more than enough to make up for any defections, which I think would be exceedingly small, from the McGovern candidacy. MR, BUCKLEY: And you think that McGovern has the best chance to do that? Why? JAMI E: Oh, there's no question about that in my mind. MR. BUCKLEY: Are you correctly quoted as having said that if McGovern is nominated five million will canvass in his behalf, motivated by "pure hatred"? JAMI E: No, the word I used was sheer hatred. MR. BUCKLEY: Oh, sheer hatred. I'm sorry. I thought Peter would correct me. JAMIE: I concede that that may be a little harsh - maybe "enthusiastic malice" would be more appropriate. MR. BUCKLEY: Great heavens, how did that sneak into the family? The idea is that the hatred of Mr. Nixon would cause people to vote for the other guy, right? Why not if the other guy is Humphrey? Why wouldn't the hatred of Mr. Nixon be a staple that would extend in the other direction? Is it McGovern who generates the hate? Is he a catalyst for hatred, whereas Humphrey is not? MR. GALBRAITH: I think we all withdrew the word "hatred" and substituted the word "malice." I. confess that I share a certain discontent with my son over the mature reflection on the word "hatred," so let's stay with "malicious intent." MR. BUCKLEY: Well, is that going to be unanimous, or are you going to walk out? JAMIE: I endorse that thoroughly. Board of Trustees of the eland Stanford Jr, University, MR. BUCKLEY: Well, now, the malicious intent is generated primarily by Nixon, isn't it? It's not generated by Humphrey. Is McGovern sort of a distillery for anti-nixon malicious intent in a sense that Humphrey is not? How does that work? PETER: McGovern has a much better record of opposing the things that Nixon stands for than Humphrey does. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, that would be pro him. That wouldn't be anti-nixon. PETER: Well, I disagree with my brother in a way. I think that most of the people working for McGovern will be working more for McGovern than against Nixon. I don't think there will be many people who will be out working for Humphrey; those working would be, working ijgainst Nixon. MR. BUCKLEY: What about the guys who worked for him in California? What's going to disillusion them with Humphrey? PETER: I didn't know there were very many. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, if there weren't very many - PETER: Wasn't it an oil man and a few others? MR. BUCKLEY: Well, he did incredibly well, then. He was within five points of your man - I take it without any help at all whereas McGovern had all you people working for him and was only able to get a 5 five-point advantage. All right, suppose he had half as many people as McGovern had would he have beaten McGovern? PETER: Humphrey? Where would he have gotten those people? MR. BUCKLEY: Well, from the Democratic party. By drawing from the wells of malicious...what is that? MR. GALBRAITH: Malicious intent. Amiable malicious intent. PETER: Humphrey has to - somebody has to inspire people to go out and work for them. Humphrey has to get half as many people as McGovern and he clearly couldn't do that. The enthusiasm wasn't there. The interest wasn't'there.' -- MR. BUCKLEY: Well, how did he do so well? PETER: Oh, I think it was probably the kind of campaign he Waged at the end of the California campaign. MR. BUCKLEY: He's a better campaigner than McGovern? PETER: No, I think the debates had their effect. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, you say McGovern is more attractive, as I understand it, because of the constancy of his opposition to Lyndon Johnson, which, I guess, we grant, on semi-constitutional grounds, is rather difficult for Humphrey to express. But it was McGovern who s'aid in 1967, "I am not now nor have I ever been an advocate of unilateral withdrawal of our troops from Vietnam. I have voted for all the appropriations supporting our men." Is this something that he regrets having said? Do you feel free to speak for him? PETER: No, I don't feel free to speak for him. I suspect that his position is different now and has been different for quite some time. JAMI E: His position has been in opposition to the policy that we have been waging in Vietnam ever since You may remember that when the opposition to the war first got under way in '66-'67, the plea was for negotiations and an end to the bombing, and you take one thing at a time. I

6 think that's perfectly legitimate. A vote in the Senate for a Vietnam appropriation which is attached to a defense appropriation of $20 billion or $30 billion and which puts you in a position to disavow Vietnam in that context, puts you in a position of disavowing the entire defense budget. MR. BUCKLEY: But, he's done that now. JAMI E: The situation has evolved since then. There's no question about that. MR. BUCKLEY: Yes. JAMI E: He certainly has not disavowed the entire defense budget, he merely wants it cut. MR. BUCKLEY: As a former president of ADA, maybe you can tell me: why did his ADA rate plummet to 43 the year of his reelection, 1968? MR. GALBRAITH: I don't know. MR. BUCKLEY: You don't know? MR. GALBRAITH: No. I never knew it before. MR. BUCKLEY: It was in the 90's and all of a sudden it went to 43. That was when he came out against gun control. MR. GALB~AITH: I know how much you value a high ADA rating, but this is news to me. ~R. BUCKLEY: Well, would it temper your Judgment that Mr. McGovern doesn't change his mind, that this is one of the reasons why he commends himself to you in a sense that Hubert Humphrey does not? MR. GALBRAITH: No, I would suppose that we all change our minds on these matters. MR. BUCKLEY: He went right back to 90 after he was elected. MR. GALBRAITH: I've been, as you know, rather opposed to the Vietnam war for quite a few years - ever since But, if I look back on the positions I took in the mid-60's they seem positively belligerent as compared eve~.to some of President Nixon's present POSitions. 6 MR. BUCKLEY: Yes, there are those of us who don't have that problem. MR. GALBRAITH: That's certainly true. ~hat one does, if one is within the system, is in some degree to stay in touch with the politi~al discussion. One also has the right and, indeed, the obligation to change his mind. MR. BUCKLEY: I couldn't agree with you more. It's just that so many peop'le have stressed the constancy of McGovern's p~sition here, which doesn't seem to square With the record, that I'm rather surprised, you know, as closely as you've studied him that you were not aware of this seismic fault in MR. GALBRAITH: I confess that this has completely escaped me, but I doubt that this would change my vote at the convention. MR. BUCKLEY: Oh, I'm sure i.t won't change your vote. Could you answer me this: why are we so opposed to Humphrey? Do we simply take the position that, in the future, vice-presidents must n'ot agree with presidents on matters of foreign policy? PETER: May I ask you a question? MR. BUCKLEY: Sure. PETER: How do you arrive at that conclusion from the context of Hubert Humphrey or any other? Why do you assume that's what we would think? MR. BUCKLEY: Well, because it has been more or less taken for granted for quite a long time, more specifically for about 120 y~ars, that the vice-president simply keeps his mouth shut when he disagrees with the president, that his job really is to forward the president's policies and people accept this humiliation, if you like, rather less rancorously than people have in the case of Hubert Humphrey. He is a man who was sort of a number one political liberal for years and years and years; then he became vice-preside~t ~t the urging of Mr. Kennedy, whom he dldn t oppose either, and all of a sudden we have this sort of impacted hostility to him and I don't understand it. Is it only understandable on human terms? JAMIE: How do you square that with what I take to be your attitude toward Mr. Agnew, who doesn't appear to be under any such constraints? MR. BUCKLEY: I don't understand when Mr. Agnew has taken a position different from Mr. Nixon. JAMI E: Oh, on the China thing. Didn't he release a statement to the press, around the time when the ping-pong players went to China, in which he came out against improving relations? MR. BUCKLEY: No. He said that we have to be very careful in dealing with China; I think that's true and I think Mr. Nixon would say as much. MR. GALBRAITH: But you think Mr. Agnew was very much in favor of the trip to Peking? MR. BUCKLEY: No, I don't, but I think he kept his mouth shut the way Humphrey kept his mouth shut with Lyndon Johnson. MR. GALBRAITH: No, no, no. I think we must be reasonably accurate in our history. Senator Humphrey was, for a long period, 1966 and' 1967, an exuberant, vocal, vigorous defender of the Vietnam policy. I think all of us who were involved in that struggle remember him as being a very effective spokesman for Lyndon Johnson during that period. Board of Trustees of the L land Stanford Jr. University. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, in the first place, he's never been unexuberant about anything. So that any position he takes, he's going to take exuberantly, this being his way. But this, after all, was a position taken on Vietnam by John Kennedy and by all the people John Kennedy picked for his Cabinet - McNamara and so forth. At a certain point, people began to withdraw from that position. We are not in a position to say when Humphrey's internal assent actually was withheld, because this is a highly subjective point. MR. GALBRAITH: There is a point to that. \Hubert Humphrey should be allowed to change his mind as well as everybody else. MR. BUCKLEY: Yes, but your son takes a very, very tough position - that if Humphrey is nominated, even if he is nominated without any legerdemain, he will not vote for him. He will not campaign for him. JAMI E: There is a distinction there. There is 7 a distinction between those two things, hope you realize. MR. BUCKLEY: Between you - JAMI E: Between whether I would actually go out and work for the guy and whether I would end up voting for him. MR. BUCKLEY: Okay, but even if you take the lesser of the two distinctions, it puzzles me - and I'm not being at all personal here, because I think it's unquestionably a part of the national political mood. JAMI E: Okay, suppose we say that Hubert Humphrey was only half as bad as Richard Nixon. You'd then have to face the fact that you'd have to have him for twice as long. MR. BUCKLEY: Why? JAMI E: Because normally an incumbent president has a leg up on reelection. MR. BUCKLEY: There are plenty of exceptions. If what you're saying is that, insofar as there are differences between McGovern and Humphrey, you prefer McGovern's positions, that I understand. What I don't understand is your, if I may use the word, sort of petulant animosity to Humphrey, the massive exercise of which could result in the reelection of Nixon. MR. GALBRAITH: I'm sure there's not a trace of petulance here. But it seems to me that there is another point which takes perhaps half a minute to develop. May I? MR. BUCKLEY: Go ahead, Sl,Jre. MR. GALBRAITH: The Democratic party is really one of the reasons that the sages have been so wrong this year. Here's an organization that undergoes changes. It undergoes change as new people come into it. It underwent a great change in the 1930's when the labor movement, CIO, came into it. It has undergone changes as the various ethnic groups have come into it. It seems to me that within the last four to six years it has undergone another change as a new group of people has come in - really not so easily identified by occupation or ethnic group as by a set of ideas, a set of ideas which really largely distinguish Hubert Humphrey from George McGovern. One of these ideas, which I know will depress you inordinately, is the notion that we no longer

7 have a function, particularly in a Third World, to stand guard against communism. MR. BUCKLEY: Except in Israel. MR. GALBRAITH: Except that we certainly do have an emotional identification with Israel which on the whole I applaud. Secondly, we no longer accept economic growth as being the solution to all of our problems. We recognize that there are costs associated with economic growth which are really serious and indeed could make life very uncomfortable and perhaps even damage our prospect for existence. I think there's a third idea that has come in at this time - it's the one that perhaps distresses you, Bill, more than anything else - the notion that the present distribution of income is not ideal. MR. BUCKLEY: Why does that distress me more than the other two? MR. GALBRAITH: I'm sorry; I was making a value judgment on this point, and if it doesn't distress you, I take it back. MR. BUCKLEY: I said why does it distress me more? MR. GALBRAITH: Oh, I'm sorry, they all distress you. MR. BUCKLEY: So you withdraw them all. MR. GALBRAITH: There was clearly Democratic policy up until the last two or three years that said, "Well, sure, the rich and the powerful do extremely well in this country, but it's not intolerable and if the economy expands, the poor will get a little bit more and they won't be too badly off." Now, it seems to me that the difference, really, between McGovern and Humphrey is that McGovern represents the generation, partly in terms of age, partly in terms of sex, partly in terms of ethnic origin, which has challenged all these three points. This really is the difference and it's a difference that on the whole transcends personalities. Hubert Humphrey is a very vigorous and good exponent of the old liberalism, but McGovern is an exponent of the liberalism that is associated with these three new ideas which are very disturbing to the people Who were associated with the old equilibrium. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, in the first place, 8 they're not new ideas. The communism thing is as old as Charles Lindberg or as old as William Borah, and the income distribution is as old as the Fabian Society. They're extremely old ideas. MR. GALBRAITH: New ideas in the major A.merican political context. MR. BUCKLEY: In point of fact, of course, they're not. MR. GALBRAITH: amendment. MR. GALBRAITH: No, I doo't. accept your MR. BUCKLEY: George McGovern, when he backed Henry Wallace in 194B, was presumably reacting at that point against the idea of having to contain the Soviet Union. By the way, a predecessor of yours, John Roche, head of the Americans for Democratic Action, said that he would like to know what George McGovern meant when he said that Henry Wallace was "essentially right." Do you know? MR. BUCKLEY: Was he right in opposing NATO, in defending the Czechoslovakian coup, in opposing the Marshall Plan? MR. GALBRAITH: I wouldn't want to associate John Roche with this thought or even George McGovern,\but I certainly do have the feeling that we had an excessive alarm, excessive panic,over the cold war, over the fea.- that the Soviets were going to march to the channel. I must say that I find myself, I hope with you, giving Mr. Nixon considerable credit for the steps he has taken to diminish this tension. If George McGovern in 1948 anticipated Richard Nixon's calmer view of the international situation of 1972, I would certainly applaud it. MR. BUCKLEY: I think you've always been very calm about other people's fortunes. I can see that your apprehension about the Soviet juggernaut was less than, let's say, the people of Czechoslovakia, and it's fortunate that you don't have to share their fate. But I think most people do agree that the concerted effort made in 1948 to hold back the Soviet Union was probably one of the signal humanitarian and civilized acts of post-war diplomacy. However, it is - you don't want me to comment on that, but go ahead, I'll pass it over. MR. BUCKLEY: As a matter of fact, I was quoting your friend, Roy Jenkins. The extent to which McGovern is new, it seems to me anyway; depends considerably on a chimera. The extent to which he has succeeded in persuading people that he's going to make them rich by turning on a hose in Washington a) is belied by facts; b) has left him in the most inexhaustible confusion - there isn't any day that he says the same thing that he said the day before and c) is certainly bound to end people up disappointed, isn't it? Assuming that he were elected president, all of a sudden their material worries didn't end - MR. GALBRAITH: I must say there is such a shocking series of overstatements there. Bill, that I don't know which one to begin with. MR. BUCKLEY: Why don't you begin with the one that you wro"te in the current issue of the New York Magazine, where you said onh rich people voted for Goldwater which means 27 million rich people in America. MR. GALBRAITH: MR. BUCKLEY: Yes, you did. didn't quite say that. MR. GALBRAITH: Read exactly what I said. MR. BUCKLEY: You talk while I look. MR. GALBRAITH: We must have this precisely. Mr. Buckley says that I said only the rich voted for Goldwater. Now, let's see what I actually said. This will establish sort of the general level of veracity here, Bill. If I said that... MR. BUCKLEY: Go ahead, because the fu rther you go, as they say, the harder you fall. MR. GALBRAITH: Well, I'm not so sure. MR. BUCKLEY: You were making fun of the comparison. I'm about to quote you. MR. GALBRAITH: Go ahead. Proceed with MR. GALBRAITH: I can understand why the text. Board of Trustees ofthe Leland Stanford Jr. University. 9 MR. BUCKLEY: No, I don't want to be as prolix as you are. If you don't mind, I'll paraphrase. What you said was that you were making fun of the notion that McGovern is the current Goldwater. I haven't misquoted you so far? MR. GALBRAITH: No, no, remarkably, you haven't. MR. BUCKLEY: Doubtless, all of this is true; but it would have been more to the point to argue that McGovern, unlike Barry Goldwater, was urging the kind of change that most voters want. Goldwater was urging change in favor of the few ilnd the rich. MR. GALB RAITH: That's quite different from saying that only the rich voted for Goldwater. MR. BUCKLEY: What was remarkable about Goldwater was that he wanted to make the rich richer. I'm asking you why 27 million people want that. MR. GALBRAITH: I said he was campaigning on behalf of the rich. You attributed to me the statement that only the rich voted for Goldwater. MR. BUCKLEY: I'm saying that the inference from your article is that he was the rich man's candidate. MR. GALBRAITH: Bill, I just can't control your inferences. I take comfort in the fact that they're unique, that nobody else has the same inferences. MR. BUCKLEY: You can write more cautiously. But let's go back to exaggerations. You were accusing me of what? MR. GALBRAITH: I was saying that I take it you had the McGovern welfare program in mind. It doesn't seem to me that in California this was perfectly handled, but - MR. BUCKLEY: Where is that missing $42 billion? Have you found it? MR. GALBRAITH: - it does seem to me that it's an extension of Mr. Nixon's program which, again, to Mr. Nixon's credit,

8 he has introduced for reforming1thewelfare system, for eliminating the means test, for taking as his point of departure the idea of a very good friend of yours, Milton Friedman's program, for a negative income tax, for raising the IElvel of the gr.ants from - MR. BUCKLEY: You're being sarcastic. MR. GALBRAITH: - $2400, which no family can live on, to $4,000 which is at least a tolerable basis. But this is a very commonplace and rather sensible step. MR. BUCKLEY: Why not raise it to $24,0007 The answer is that this is non-talk except insofar - and this is one of Mr. McGovern's failings - as he simply doesn't acknowledge where it's going to come from. It's impossible to give you money without getting it from somebody, right? Well, under your economic system, it isn't exactly, but as a general rule it is. Now, if he's going to give $200 billion on this, you know, $1,000 per person business, he's got to raise it, and the question is where. Now, as I understand it, one of his principal backers out on the West Coast ran this - MR. GALBRAITH: Max Palevsky. MR. BUCKLEY: Yes, Mr. Palevsky. He, by the way, is worth a billion dollars. I don't know whether he voted for Goldwater. Do you? In any case, he found $42 billion missing. MR. GALBRAITH: I think Max is a rather enlightened Democrat. Perhaps at a billion dollars, you can afford certain - MR. BUCKLEY: You'd think, probably, Engels was, too. Why is it that Mr. McGovern has played it so heavily, especially in an age of candor - you know, this is the age in which we are going to tell people the truth. Now, the truth, as far as Mr. McGovern is concerned, is that he sends his child to a private school to avoid bus in g or to avoid the local school. He himself has an income in excess of $100,000. MR. GALBRAITH: What? MR. BUCKLEY: Yes, I figured it out $42,000 for his Sen ate salary, and '$69,000 - MR. GALBRAITH: You're counting in all his campaign contributions. 10 MR. BUCKLEY: Oh, no, no. He made $70,000 in speaker's fees in 1969, so that's in excess of $100,000. Now, he is giving people to understand that General Motors and those types can, in effect, lift the economic level of the people in this country and he has been, according to The New York Times, according to almost everybody, extremely evasive on the point of, "Where is all this money going to come from?" In part, this is because $42 billion of it is simply unaccounted for. Now, what kind of help can you give us on this point for people who do believe McGovern will end up being consistent? Will he simply retreat under the forces of economic reality? MR. GALBRAITH: I would hope not. I think that the addition of $1600, which is a rather miserable sum when you stop to think of it, to the - MR. BUCKLEY: But that's a relative thing. It wouldn't be miseri'ble in India. It is miserable in America. It's a question of how to raise it. MR. GALBRAITH: The addition of $1600 to the basic Nixon program as the foundation for the welfare system is really not a radically large amount, and when one goes on to inquire what is possible from tax reform, what is possible from the cutback and the reordering of the defense priorities, which we have all been talking about, the assumption that nothing would be done about it- MR. BUCKLEY: Oh, with the cooperation of the Soviet Union. vr"'j'd have $80 billion. MR. GALBRAITH: The possibility of raising these sums of money is not only relatively easy, but I should think - MR. BUCKLEY: Why didn't we think of it before? MR. GALBRAITH: Certainly, it should have been done before. MR. BUCKLEY: May I ask your sons a question, because I know your answer and I don't know theirs, and I hope it will be different. MR. GALBRAITH: I can understand why you want to get away from this topic because - MR. BUCKLEY: Well, I really would like to ask - MR. GALBRAITH: - it puts you in the position of defending the present structure of the income tax and presents - MR. BUCKLEY: No, I don't defend it at all. I don't believe in the progressive feature of the tax. MR. GALBRAITH: Oh, I see. MR. BUCKLEY: May I ask Peter this? To what extent do you think that it is a fundamental human right to consider what one earns as presumptively his? I think we would both agree that there are cases in which the state has the right simply to take a part of somebody's income. But to what extent do you indulge the presumption that what a person earns is his? Because, you know, we are talking about people who earn $12,000, which is very near the mealan,and they are going to net. suffer from Mr. McGovern's proposed redistribution; I want to know what it is that gives somebody automatic title to take more money than is now being taken from somebody who earns $12,000 per year. PETER: Well, I'm not the economist in the family, but- MR. BUCKLEY: This is a value judgment. It has nothing to do with economics. PETER: On your figure - McGovern's program - as I understand MR. BUCKLEY: I concede that it's difficult. PETER: - at $12,000 and under, the additional tax is minimal. MR. BUCKLEY: It's minimal, but it is. JAMIE: At $12,000 and under, under McGovern's plan, there is no net gain or loss in terms of income. They would break even on the income tax credit and the progressive tax scale. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, that may be today's position. The one - Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University. 11 JAM IE: It's been his POSition on that question for as long as I can remember. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, but the figures as elaborated here and as acknowledged by Tom Wicker, for instance, are that between $8,000 ana ~12,000 there's going to be a certain bite. Under $8,000, people will get more. Between $8.000 and $12,000, there's going to be a certain bite. Between $12,000 and $20,000 is where most of it is going to come from, because there aren't enough, we all acknowledge, above $20,000 to - JAMI E: No, I think those figures are wrong. Did you get them out of your magazine? MR. BUCKLEY: No, I got them out of McGovern's speeches. Those figures were not composed ex nihilo. MR. GALBRAITH: You have to make a distinction, too, between individuals and families, don't you? MR. BUCKLEY: I hope there's a subtle point you're making there. Is there? MR. GALBRAITH: Well, because the tax rate is different on a family from what it is on an individual. MR. BUCKLEY: Oh, a loophole. MR. GALBRAITH: No. MR. BUCKLEY: That is a loophole. Are we going to close that loophole - the one that allows a husband and his wife to write - MR. GALBRAITH: I think, on the whole, in your search for some way of escaping from the unfairness of the present tax, you're expanding the doctrine of a loophole beyond anything that any economist or tax expert has ever thought of before. I certainly would continue to keep taxes on families and the present division as between husband and wife, certainly. MR. BUCKLEY: I think it's quite true that tax policy has attempted to accomplish certain things - for instance, to reduce the cost of medical care, to encourage philanthropy. You all teach at an institution which wouldn't exist except for "loopholes" as we now talk about them.

9 MR. GALBRAITH: I think, just in defense of the Harvard faculty, that I must protect it from the charge that my two sons here are members of the faculty. MR. BUCKLEY: I assumed that all Galbraiths have always taught, wherever they are. MR. GALBRAITH: Well, thank you. MR. BUCKLEY: In any case, I think it is true that Congress seeks to do certain things via its tax policy. It seeks, for instance, to encourage the discovery of oil and gas. It seeks to encourage gifts to the Red Cross and to Harvard University, to reduce the cost of care, to make it easier for municipal governments to raise money through tax exempt bonds and so on and so forth. Now, you can say that you are for or against the way in which they do it, you can say that you are for or against the in-built biases in the tax system, which I happen to be against, but Mr. McGovern seems not to say that at all. He simply seems to be saying that this is a way of making life easy for the wealthy - sorry, I interrupted you. MR. BUCKLEY: I do, too; I do, too. MR. GALBRAITH: - steeply progressive tax. The operative rule should be, "A buck is a buck is a buck." Now, McGovern has not gone that far. His caution on this subject is not enough to cause me to be against him 01 to be even terribly critical of him. MR. BUCKLEY: You don't go quite that far out. MR. GALBRAITH: But I would certainly hope that we would some day have a candidate who would go all the way on this and would once and for all get us out of the appalling graft. for example, in the oil depletion allowances, which you so gently suggested might be for the purpose of what did you say? - encouraging oil exploration - MR. BUCKLEY: That's right. MR. GALBRAITH: You really don't believe that, do you? MR. BUCKLEY: Roosevelt did, when he urged it on Congress, and Harold Ickes did. MR. GALBRAITH: This is a gravy train for the oil industry. If Roosevelt were wrong, if Ickes were wrong - MR. BUCKLEY: If it's a gravy train, why doesn't everybody get in on it? MR. GALBRAITH: Almost everybody is, you know. MR. BUCKLEY: You surely know about economics enough to know, therefore, that under the circumstances it is neutralized. MR. GALBRAITH: Anybody who 'is rich enough does find an oil well. Do you have any oil wells? MR. BUCKLEY: No, I don't, as a matter of fact. MR. GALBRAITH: You don't. You're lagging on this opportunity. MR. BUCKLEY: I don't particu!arly care what the public policy is on - wa ita minute - MR. GALBRAITH: We were talking about George McGovern's salary. Is there no oil in the background of the Buckley family? MR. BUCKLEY: Yes, there's a great deal. MR. GALBRAITH: Aha! MR. BUCKLEY: There are a great many dry holes, too. It's,frankly, immaterial to me, and I use the word exactly and metaphorically, what Congress does about MR. GALBRAITH: I think I must say a word on that because here I find myself also in disagreement with Senator McGovern and, indeed, I'm one of the sponsors of the minority plank on this. I basically believe that McGovern's position is much too conservative on this. I think however a man is enriched - by $1,000 or $10,000 or $100,000 - whether it comes to him by earned income, so-called, or property income or larceny or defrauding McGraw-Hili or however he gets the money, he should pay the same - and note t his, Bill- oil- MR. GALBRAITH: Well, I wasn't suggesting cny personal bias there. MR. BUCKLEY: - but I would hope not to hear from people who eliminated the depletion allowance complaints about a rise in the cost of oil or about the scarcity of it. MR. GALBRAITH: I would think that if the cost of oil went up as a result of this, it would be certainly something that we could well afford to pay and I think it's a most unlikely eventuality. JAMIE: Senator McGovern has made another proposal to elim inate or at least drastically reduce - I'm not sure which the quotas on import of Middle Eastern oil. MR. BUCKLEY: Yes, I've always opposed quotas of all sorts. I also oppose 100 percent parity, which he is in favor of. He's in favor of all the loopholes that tend to be popular. As I say,. I'm against practically all loopholes. I don't consider that the cost of doing business is a loophole, but I don't believe in writing social policy through the tax laws. MR. GALBRAITH: Well, we would agree on that. You would get rid of - MR. BUCKLEY: Oh, no, no, no. MR. GALBRAIT.H: You would get rid of the depletion allowance? MR. BUCKLEY: No. MR. GALBRAITH: Isn't that writing social policy? Isn't that paying for those dry holes that you alleged through the tax laws? MR. BUCKLEY: I'll explain it to you, if you like. In the first place, notnlny should be done retroactively, under any circunlsli:1i1(;~s. MR. GALBRAITH: Yes, from here on. MR. BUCKLEY: If the policy is that you are not going to allow depreciation of any sort, then I think it should be applied uniformly. MR. GALBRAITH: So, you're willing to wipe out all percentage depletion, whether for livestock, whether for Governor Reagan, whether for oil, whether for oyster shells, whatever. Bill, I must say this is - MR. BUCKLEY: I'm in favor of eliminating all "loopholes" and reducing the maximum rate to 20 percent, as Professor Friedman, whom you quoted approvingly a moment ago, himself recommends. PETER: How would you pay for your Vietnam war if the rate were down to 20 percent? MR. BUCKLEY: Easily. In the first place, my wars wouldn't last as long as your wars. But the answer is that exactly as much money as is now being spent by the federal and state governments could be raised with a uniform rate of 20 percent, doubling the deductions and eliminating - PETER: Would it be a progressive tax? MR. BUCKLEY: No, a uniform tax. PETER: So somebody who makes $2,000 per year would be taxed 20 percent - MR. BUCKLEY: No, because under this particular plan, you would double the deductions, so you'd pay practically no tax. By the way, the last tax law of 1969 reduced taxes at the lower levels by 83 percent and increased taxes at the upper level. But let's hear from our panel, Mr. Stiesbold from the University of Miami. MR. STI ESBOLD: Professor Galbraith, I wonder if you could cogently and briefly elaborate a point for me. liar. BUCKLEY: No. MR. STIESBOLD: Yes, he can. We've heard a great deal about the so called "peace dividend" that would result from some of IVIcGovern's policies. Exactly how much would that amount to and how would those savings be turned into social ends instead of addressed to military needs? MR. GALBRAITH: Well, he's proposed a $30 billion to $35 billion cutback in the defense establishment without - MR. BUCKLEY: Looking into it? MR. GALBRAITH: - altering the present balance of terror, the present capacity of ou rselves to destroy the Soviets and vice versa. I would hope that something more than that might be possible through 12 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University. 13

10 negotiation, through the negotiations, incidentally, which Mr. Nixon has got underway and which I notice in a large, full page advertisement today you oppose, Bill. MR. BUCKLEY: Now, now, now. Answer Professor Stiesbold. I'm not about to be nominated again.. MR. GALBRAITH: But this, of course, becomes a very basic part of the funds that become then available to - MR. STI ESBOLD: But how much of that can actually be realized for social purposes when we take care of such things as the military payroll and so forth? MR. GALBRAITH: Obviously, it can't all be accomplished in a year. Any moderate development of policy must be done over two, three, four years, but I should hope that it would become available. MR. BUCKLEY: Professor Foley. MR. FOLEY: Professor Galbraith, I have a question about President Nixon's Family Assistance Plan and also Mr. McGovern's plans. It seems to me that you can criticize both programs on the grounds that they deal with the symptoms of poverty rather than the causes. I was wondering if Mr. McGovern does have any proposals that would complement this welfare proposal, such as manpower retraining. MR. GALBRAITH: There was a very good piece on these two programs by Leonard Silk in yesterday's New York Times in which he does make the same point I made earlier that the McGovern plan is a direct outgrowth, really, of the Nixon plan. It raises the amount from $2500 per family of four to $4,000 and lowers the so called "tax" which is taken back as the family begins to earn money. Now, a welfare plan which doesn't penalize the man who takes a job is, in itself, a very good way of encouraging self-help, of encouraging earning, encouraging people not to make welfare a way of life. MR. BUCKLEY: Why hasn't Congress passed that - out of curiosity - the Democratic Congress, because Nixon's been urging it, you know, for 10 years? MR.. GALBRAITH: No, not 10 years, because he hasn't been in office that long. He's been around that long. MR. BUCKLEY: He urged a lot of things when he wasn't in office. You're not in office and you urge things. MR. GALBRAITH: No, he's been urging it really actively, Bill, for a couple of years. We must be precise on this. I think that Congress has been really very, very bad on this. I would have liked to have seen this start made, even at the derisory levels that President Nixon proposed. MR. BUCKLEY: Why is that derisory? MR. GALBRAITH: Well, to suppose that anywhere in this country, 'certainly, say, in New York, a family of four can live on $2400 is derisory. MR. BUCKLEY: What do they live on now? MR. GALBRAITH: I think, actually, welfare in New York runs between $4,000 and $4500 per family. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, so then, what's your point? MR. GALBRAITH: The point is that if the man who is now getting $450U gets a job at $4500, he loses all of the welfare. MR. BUCKLEY: No, I know that. But Mr. Nixon is not trying to instruct New York State not to have welfare programs. MR. GALBRAITH: In a way, yes, he is. This is meant to be a federalization of the welfare program and to be the national standard for welfare. MR. BUCKLEY: There's nowhere that I know of that Mr. Nixon has said the states ought to cancel their welfare programs. But anyway, go ahead. MR. GALBRAITH: I think you're right on that, and I don't want to press the point. The Nixon program - MR. BUCKLEY: So, it's not derisory. He's not saying people can live on $2400. MR. GALBRAITH: The Nixon program does continue to require supplemental state and local funds in order to bring it up to, say, the reasonable, or McGovern, level is what you're saying. MR. BUCKLEY: Yes, well, what was derisory about it? People love just to drop the impression that Nixon simply said people can eat and live in New York for $2400. Now, you just did that on sort of a hit and run basis. MR. GALBRAITH: Well, this seems to be a very legitimate form of baseball. MR. BUCKLEY: Maybe that's why there is this hostility toward Nixon. MR. GALBRAITH: The notion that you have reformed welfare by giving people $2400 or $2500 is derisory. I think your point is well taken - MR. BUCKLEY: Was the Social Security law derisory under Franklin Delano Roosevelt? MR. GALBRAITH: No, because on the whole it was more generous than this one. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, Mr. Nixon's is "more generous." If one wanted to go in that direction, it's "more generous," isn't it? Why do you give FOR the benefit that you decline to give to Nixon -; except for the obvious reasons? MR. GALBRAITH: I think there's no question that FOR was establishing unemployment insurance at much closer to the going wage than the Nixon welfare program. MR. BUCKLEY: Thirty dollars per month. Mr. Hillard. Excuse me, I don't want to cut out Mr. Hillard here. MR. HILLARD: Thank you, I would like to direct a question to Professor Galbraith concering a point raised by Mr. Buckley that managed, shall we say, to slip by the entire Galbraith family. This question has to do with justifying the claim that there has emerged here a second category of rights the first category being the old inalienable rights of life, liberty, and property - of each man to his life, to his liberty, and to such property as he has honestly earned. Now, particularly emphasized by the new left politics is the notion that one has economic rights to adequate housing, medical care, and so on. And if these are rights in the sense that the governments should preserve and protect them, then these are rights of a sort that the government must provide them. And it has to provide them out of tax money, which means that particularly those in the category earning $8,000 to $20,000 or so are going to have to provide the bulk of these funds. I would like to know if there is an ethical justification for taking this money from these people, the producers of the country basically, and giving it to, for whatever reason, the non producers. MR. GALBRAITH: Yes, I think so. I would hesitate to accept the category you mentioned, which you cook over from Mr. Buckley, of $8,000 to $20,000 as being the people who will shoulder the major burden of this. There are, in fact, a great many other sources, either in the corporate money-making process or in the higher income brackets, that are very rich sources of tax revenue. MR. HILLARD: Well, now, the corporate revenue is passed on to us as consumers. MR. GALBRAITH: That a rich country such as ours has a responsibility for the poor and deprived I don't doubt for moment and I'm certainly all in favor of any government which recognizes that obligation. I think any government which didn't recognize that obligation would indeed be intolerable. MR. HILLARD: Can you ethically derive this obligation? Where did it come from? MR. GALBRAITH: Absolutely. It seems to me this is the basis of any form of ethical responsibi lity. MR. HILLARD: You are saying that this person's need is a claim on the producer's life. MR. GALBRAITH: I think that the need - MR. HILLARD: Doesn't this contradict the basic sense of the right to your life, your liberty, and your property that you've honestly earned, because you're now taking it and you say that this other guy has a better right to it. There's a contradiction here. MR. GALBRAITH: That's right. But there is an obligation on the part of the people of manifest well being to care and to help look after the people who are deprived and poor. I don't doubt this for a moment. The ethical basis of that seems to me to be very 14 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University. 15

11 strong. MR. BUCKLEY: No, I think he's asking for a refinement of that because I don't think anybody doubts the ethical responsibility of people who have to help people who don't have. It's a question of whether we authorize the police to come and force your- MR. GALBRAITH: Oh, Bill, now don't put this in quite such prejudicial terms. JAMI E: It's a question of whether the society is being run by the bulk of the people for their own benefit or by those with property for their benefit, and I think a basic consideration of economic justice is that the government has a responsibility to care for those - MR. BUCKLEY: Thank you, Jamie, thank you, Professor Galbraith, thank you, Peter, gentlemen of the panel. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, I think it's extremely important because, after all, the law is ultimately enforced by police. MR. GALBRAITH: This is a general obligation of the state which falls on all citizens - MR. BUCKLEY: The state, in a democratic situation, is the instrument of the people. MR. GALBRAITH: - well as I do. and you know it as MR. BUCKLEY: If the people desire to tax themselves, that I understand, but if they desire to tax other people for their purposes, you do something to the integrity of the democratic situation, it seems to me. PETER: One thing on all this that is significant is that in the development of these ideas on life, liberty and property in England in the 17th century, in America at the time of our revolution, that bates on the state constitutions, and in France at the time of their revolution, there was no such idea as the unlimited right of property as developed, say, in America in the 19th century. Property always had, in a sense, certain limitations so that one could not have so much property as to damage the well-being of one's fellow citizens. MR. GALBRAITH: We must, it seems to me, be always very careful about these high-toned moral rationalizations of selfishness. MR. BUCKLEY: Well, they meant a great deal to people like Thomas Jefferson and Burke and so on and so forth and they were not Known primarily as rich men. I think one has to beware also of using ethical justificatior,s to give you your handle on the government so that you can simply run a society according to your eccentric tastes or non-eccentric tastes. 16 Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Jr. University.