RUTHFULLY YOURS

To mark the reopening of the Cuban Embassy in Washington, D.C. (O frabjous day), The Spectator has reprinted a letter from May 4, 1961, penned by the late historian Robert Conquest (who served as The Spectator’s literary editor from 1962 to 1963, and whom Jay mentions below). Conquest was responding to a letter of protest against the Bay of Pigs invasion, written by a coterie of British “intellectuals” and published in the Times. It is, in both style and substance, devastating. A few excerpts:

The round robin on behalf of some supposedly Leftist cause is a well-established little nuisance which we should all have got used to by this time. . . . [But] in spite of the arguments against paying any attention to such stuff, I feel impelled, just, to give some expression to a distaste which is not only my own. . . .

There is something particularly unpleasant about those who, living in a political democracy, comfortably condone terror elsewhere. Mr. [Kenneth] Tynan [an English theater critic, and one of the Times letter signatories] complains of martyrdom when he was ham-handedly questioned by a senatorial committee in America about his pro-Castro activities; but as a breach of democratic rights it seems rather less dreadful than some of the things he appears to admire in Cuba. And what has Mr. Tynan to say about the democratic rights of Cubans under Castro’s new no-election policy? . . .

Any Socialist who is not just defending a case for debating reasons must admit that he would prefer to live under a Conservative government than a Communist one. With all its faults the former at least does not ban the Socialist parties and put their leaders in gaol or before the firing squad. No amount of abstract or economic theorising can affect this point. There are enough Socialist dead in Eastern Europe to have taught us that it is impossible to co-operate with orthodox Communists. Whatever faults we, like everyone else, see in our and the American system are as nothing compared with those of alternative regimes.

It is true we do not live in an abstraction, and political calculation may render some of the current US actions inadvisable. But in principle democracy is indivisible. And this is apart from the right of democracies to defend themselves. Basically, whether the Americans are tactically well advised or not, they are defending the interests of everyone who cares about real, rather than national, progress and liberty. In a jungle full of totalitarian monsters liberal democracy needs teeth.

Of course, today’s “festivities” and a pending nuclear deal with Iran should lead one to ask: What happens when liberal democracy goes toothless?