Cleaning Our Stablesrnby Gore VidalrnIn the mindless babble that passes for political debate in thernUnited States, nothing means what it appears to mean, particularlyrnthose key words “liberal” and “conservative.” For politicalrnpurposes the latter seems to have demonized the former.rnBut has this really happened? Americans tend to be divided byrnrace, religion, and class. The idea of a political idea is alien tornour passionate folk, and that is why Karl Marx and his admirersrncould never get through to so thoughtless a polity while neitherrnTom Paine nor Tom Jefferson made much impact. So-calledrnliberals—always for some mysterious reason called “so-called”rnby conservatives; does this mean that conservatives want to bernthought of as true liberals?—want to extend democracy as wellrnas see to it that the Bill of Rights applies to everyone and thatrnthe Declaration of Independence, a truly radical liberal document,rnbe heeded so that life, liberty, and the pursuit of happinessrncan be made available to each American, even WilliamrnSahre.rnI would have thought that all of this was fairly simple, butrnnow, thanks to television and to a myriad of religious and politicalrndemagogues, our average citizen is demonstrably the mostrnignorant in the First World, knuckles heavily calloused from toornclose a contact with the greensward as he lurches from error tornerror, all the while hating niggers and fags and uppity womenrnand whatever else was put in his trough that week. CurrentlyrnAmericans are roughly divided between reactionaries and fas-rnThis essay was written as the preface to Bill Kauffman’s recentlyrnreleased hook America First! Gore Vidal’s most recent hook isrnThe City and the Pillar and Seven Early Stories (RandomrnHouse).rncists (admittedly the latter involves a degree of thought andrnmight be too difficult for TV-calloused brains). Officially,rnwhat passes for conservatism at this time is, at best, a liking forrnthe status quo if the citizen has money and, at worst, a hatredrnof minorities if he doesn’t—they are always the reason why he isrnincome-challenged.rnFor years Bill Kauffman, the sage of Batavia, has been tryingrnto make sense of our political scene. He has labored long in thernAugean stable, and though he is no Hercules, he has cleanedrnout an interesting corner or two. By studying our history—rnsomething that is not allowed in Academe, say, while the mediarnare past-less—he has latched on to some interesting factsrn(as opposed to opinions) that completely turn inside out the tediousrnliberal versus conservative debate, or grunting contest.rnHe has discovered that from Jefferson to the Party of the Peoplernat the end of the last century (members known, for short, asrnpopulists) the strain of liberalism was a powerful one in our affairs.rnExtend the democracy, the literal meaning of liberalism,rnwas very much a populist ideal despite the racism and sexismrnendemic to the Southern and Southwestern poor farmers andrnother mechanicals who followed the likes of William JenningsrnBryan. The conservatives of the Atlantic seaboard were statusrncjuo types, quite happy to own the banks that collected the interestrnon farm mortgages. The rise of Bryan terrified them.rnRevolution was at hand. They fought back and, as one wrote tornanother in 1898, “A small war might take the people’s mind offrnour economic problems.”rnKauffman is at his best when he illuminates that most insidiousrnword “isolationism.” The people, in those days, were veryrnmuch aware of their own true interests. They wanted access torn16/CHRONICLESrnrnrn