This book is an attempt to bridge the gap between theory and practice. I shall draw upon my speeches, the radio and television broadcasts and the notes I have made over the years in the hope of doing what one is often unable to do in the course of a harried day’s work on the Senate floor: to show the connection between Conservative principles so widely espoused, and Conservative action, so generally neglected. Table of Contents PAGE NUMBER FOREWORD THE CONSCIENCE OF A CONSERVATIVE 9 THE PERILS OF POWER 15 STATES’ RIGHTS 24 AND CIVIL RIGHTS 31 FREEDOM FOR THE FARMER 38 FREEDOM FOR LABOR 44 TAXES AND SPENDING 58 THE WELFARE STATE 68 SOME NOTES ON EDUCATION 76 THE SOVIET MENACE 86 CHAPTER ONE The Conscience of a Conservative I have been much concerned that so many people today with Conservative instincts feel compelled to apologize for them. Or if not to apologize directly, to qualify their commitment in a way that amounts to breast-beating. “Republican candidates,” Vice President Nixon has said, “should be economic conservatives, but conservatives with a heart.” President Eisenhower announced during his first term, “I am conservative when it comes to economic problems but liberal when it comes to human problems.” Still other Republican leaders have insisted on calling themselves “progressive” Conservatives.[1] These formulations are tantamount to an admission that Conservatism is a narrow, mechanistic _economic_ theory that may work very well as a bookkeeper’s guide, but cannot be relied upon as a comprehensive political philosophy. The same judgment, though in the form of an attack rather than an admission, is advanced by the radical camp. “We liberals,” they say, “are interested in _people_. Our concern is with human beings, while you Conservatives are preoccupied with the preservation of economic privilege and status.” Take them a step further, and the Liberals will turn the accusations into a class argument: it is the little people that concern us, not the “malefactors of great wealth.” Such statements, from friend and foe alike, do great injustice to the Conservative point of view. Conservatism is _not_ an economic theory, though it has economic implications. The shoe is precisely on the other foot: it is Socialism that subordinates all other considerations to man’s material well-being. It is Conservatism that puts material things in their proper place--that has a structured view of the human being and of human society, in which economics plays only a subsidiary role.