"Is America Beyond Reform?", by Gordon Durnil can be purchased through the Conservative Bookstore in association with Amazon.com by clicking on the icon below:
Gordon Durnil is the former head of the Indiana State Republican party. He was a founder of the YAF - Young Americans for Freedom which was the counterpoise of the Weathermen in the 60's and 70's. In this interview he quotes from his new book, "Is America Beyond Reform?" and answers questions about his philosophy, the environment, and conservatism. He was also best selling author of, "The Making of a Conservative Environmentalist".
CONSERVATIVE MONITOR: In "Is America Beyond Reform?" you are critical of the press. Were you afraid when you wrote of media bias that they might turn that bias upon you and your new book?
GORDON DURNIL: No. I didn't fear media bias, but I did expect it. In my book I set out several personal experiences with the media since my first interview in 1961 - the Quayle experience being the most bizarre, but it's common for reporters to deny that they do what they do. Even though they enjoy criticizing others, most reporters are thinned skinned when questioned about how they practice their profession. In writing Is America Beyond Reform?, I researched several books on media ethics and learned that their ethics go to the promotion of their profession and not to any ethic tied to right or wrong, morality, religion, etc.
I was a little surprised that several major newspapers who were anxious to review Is America Beyond Reform?, decided against doing so after reading what I had to say. Some say it is nothing new for the media to criticize public figures, but I find it interesting to review the cycle of news media performance over our American history. Early on we had newspapers that promoted a specific philosophy and specific candidates, while they trashed opposing views and opposing candidates. You had a choice of which newspaper to read, or you could read both and get a comprehensive view. Then along came television and we were told the reporters were unbiased and that they would tell us all we needed to know - their truths. During that quarter of a century when television news ruled the roost, much of American moral and educational decline occurred. Now the cycle has swung back. Few people read newspapers and most people who watch television, seldom watch television news. For those who have an interest in current affairs we now have talk radio, alternative newspapers, magazines, and the internet. Americans can now find news from any perspective they wish, and maybe that is the best guarantee of freedom of the press.
CONSERVATIVE MONITOR: You received considerable literary success in publishing your first book, "The Making of a Conservative Environmentalist". The idea that environmentalism and conservatism are compatible is a good one. Can you explain specifically your ideas on the costs of pollution and the way these costs are distributed either "downstream" or to the consumer?
GORDON DURNIL: In a free market, citizens who don't purchase a product should not be required to subsidize any of the cost of that product, but we do. If a producer is subsidized by government or if the plant fouls a river that must be cleaned up with tax dollars, then non-users are subsidizing the cost of a product, which hardly fits a conservative view of free market economics.
The environment is an interesting issue for conservatives to consider. Most environmental progress has come under Republican presidents - Nixon most notably - still it is an issue that we like to ignore. Conservative avoidance of the environmental issue has been called one of the strangest political phenomena of the past couple of decades. Because we don't like the way government deals with environmental issues, we tend to deny the existence of such problems - especially those regarding human health. We should liken it to welfare. We conservatives bemoaned everything about welfare and it was always a liberal or Democrat issue. Then we came up with solutions, and made it our issue (especially at the state level), and now more and more people are coming off welfare and going to work.
We could do the same with the environment by making some sense out of it, by setting priorities (that we now don't do), by shaking out the bureaucracy and duplicitous nature at the E.P.A. and by scrapping the current set of environmental laws and regulations and starting over. Bill Ruckelshaus, who was E.P.A. Administrator under Nixon and Reagan, is suggesting that we restructure our overall approach with an environmental law, instead of the current one-problem-one-law approach. Ruckelshaus advocates a single, unified environmental law that is effective, efficient, fair, and reflects the essential democratic values of our society. Such an approach could cut costs, reduce regulation and more effectively protect the environment.
We could create a system that comes to agreement on science, which deals with the most important problems first, a system capable of honest communication with the public, a system that decides if something is too bad to do - we just not do it, and a system that doesn't look at business as public enemy number one.
There are real human-health environmental problems and when we blindly deny them, we hurt our cause by insulting people who believe they have been harmed (gender gap, etc.). It is interesting to note that most people who believe they are suffering from an environmental problem are not associated with any environmental organization. Most are just small groups of people in various locations whose votes are available to conservative candidates who will at least listen to their concerns.
I also make the point in Is America Beyond Reform? that regulation has been the old line prescription for environmental protection, and that prescription has failed to solve the problems it was intended to solve. Prevention is a better answer. But prevention puts a lot of bureaucrats, scientists, environmentalists, etc., out of work, so very little time, effort, or money is dedicated to prevention (breast cancer is the best illustration of that fact). Unfortunately, the big effort is still geared toward regulation.
CONSERVATIVE MONITOR: The recent global warming treaty signed in Kyoto would reduce green house gas emissions in the US by 7 percent under 1990 levels. Yet in China there would be no restrictions. Considering these points, what is your attitude to the recent treaty?
GORDON DURNIL: When President Bush put me on an international treaty organization, I was introduced to many new considerations. Some surprising. Some stupid. One in the latter category is that it is common for nations to enter into agreements where they agree to do differing things. In the U.S./Canada Air Accord, the U.S. agreed to one set of standards, 7 Canadian provinces agreed to another set, while 3 Canadian provinces agreed to do something else. So, it is not unusual that the Kyoto Treaty requires differing nations to do different things.
As the United States Chairman of the International Joint Commission, I had scientists available to me from the United States and Canada who were expert in various disciplines. The International Air Quality Advisory Board was made up of top flight atmospheric scientists from both nations, and the members of that board often offered advice on the question of global warming. As is endemic with contemporary science, those experts had differing opinions on global warming, it's cause, and it's seriousness. Even though conclusions about global warming are based on computer models that validate a hypothesis and not on existing fact, most atmospheric scientists agree that the earth is warming. What they don't agree on is if it is a natural phenomena or one that is caused by human activity. We have had warming and cooling periods throughout the known existence of Earth.
What we hear from collective scientists is that the warming may be natural, caused by man, or a combination of both, or maybe even - neither. Most Americans have little time for such nonsensical expert conclusions. We expect scientists to be broad thinkers, endowed with a common set of facts, and that from all of that should come scientific truth. But the truth is that too many scientists are confined to a narrow framework in which to operate and that narrow framework often dictates the outcome of research. Another disheartening reality is that scientific truth is often more political than it is technical. I have a great fear that the state of contemporary science is such that it will be very difficult for lay people, or even policy makers, to come to grips with what are portrayed to be some of the major environmental issues facing our world.
As a child I remember the white snow quickly turning black from the coal soot falling from neighborhood chimneys. I carried the ashes from our furnace each Saturday morning and dumped them in the alley behind our house. Coal warmed our homes and fired the industrial revolution. Now China has the largest reserve of coal in the world and it is about to fire their industrial revolution, but the industrialized nations are telling China to not do what we did. If I were Chinese, I would tell those folks to go fly a kite - which China has done.
Should the U.S. have greater treaty restrictions than China? Of course not. Should international agreements require all parties to abide by similar standards and strive for common goals? Of course they should, but many "experts" consider me naive when I look for logic in matters governmental.
CONSERVATIVE MONITOR: In your chapter on commercial conservatives you talk about the importance of winning elections. What do you have to say to those conservatives who would rather "go down on principle" than compromise a few points to get the candidate that more closely resembles their perspective?
GORDON DURNIL: The Washington conservatives who buddy up to liberals so they can be television personalities and accepted by the mainstream media bother me. When they attack Republican candidates or office holders because they are not "pure" conservatives, they bother me even more. In the chapter, "Commercial Conservatives Rankle My Dander," I write:
"When the Washington-based commercial conservatives attacked Bob Dole, they rankled my dander, just as they did when they attacked George Bush. They appeared to be reverting to our conservative slogan of the early sixties, when we liked to say "Winning isn't everything." We felt smug when we said it, but we were still losers.
We finally realized that if we were ever going to have a less intrusive government, winning elections was extremely important. Maybe that's another lesson that we need to relearn. Those who are satisfied with losing for principle have little faith in their political philosophy.
The self-promoting tactics of the Republican-attacking commercial conservatives in Washington only aid and abet causes and candidates that they supposedly oppose. Their attacks on Dole and Bush led my conservative mind to conclude that they preferred Clinton. So my question for them is: What kind of conservative would prefer Clinton over Dole?"
The basic principle of conservatism is individual freedom. We believe that the individual is supreme and that each individual is guaranteed the opportunity to pursue life, liberty and happiness. That is a political principle upon which we can accept no compromise. Many moral principles prevent us from accepting compromise. If I believe that abortion is murder, then I can never accept government condonation of that practice, unless I dismiss the Sixth Commandment. On the other hand, how we get our public educational system back on track is a political question that does have room for compromise. If Dole didn't promote abolishing the federal Department of Education, but promoted instead a plan to teach basics and to hold educators accountable, he was no less conservative than those who promote abolishment. The principle is to get the best possible education for our kids. Selecting tactics to accomplished that leaves room for compromise. Too often the professional conservatives in our nation's capital try to convince us that their preferred tactics are coequal with principles. If we accept that logic, we will have a very difficult time in conducting democrat debate and fostering a republican form of government. As a conservative, I am convinced that I can think for myself.
CONSERVATIVE MONITOR: "Is America Beyond Reform" is a mixture of short vignettes, musings and well researched essays. How much of these vignettes are autobiographical and how much an allusion to a broader reality?
GORDON DURNIL: I was interested to learn that there is a name for what I did with my vignettes - "creative nonfiction." I wasn't aware of that artistic writing tactic at the time, but as I remembered the teachings of my parents, especially around the supper table, I needed to stretch fact a little to make my point. My siblings and childhood friends have called to say I got dates and names wrong, or that I have combined several actual happenings into one event, so it's been helpful to have an artistic phrase such as "creative nonfiction" to explain my writings.
The first vignette is almost entirely true. I examine a six decade experience with toilet seat covers to make the point that some problems are unsolvable, which means they really weren't problems in the first place. The vignette about The Foreigner is true, and there I attempt to point out a collective "innocent" prejudice of the 1940's and before. We didn't think we were being cruel when we referred to an immigrant as "The Foreigner". A vignette about how plastic bags should be inserted into kitchen waste baskets is an attempt to point out that there is a right and wrong way to deal with almost all of life challenges, but it was entirely the product of my imagination. "Gone To Hell In A Hand Basket" is a combination of what my father said 50 years ago and what I think now. But "Around The Supper Table" is my favorite vignette in the book. It was a time when my two older brothers came home from World War II and it was a time before television. My father, with a third grade education, had found success as an auto mechanic and he wanted his kids to out-succeed him. The family members talked to each other and worked out problems, and my father worried about the future of our democracy. My father taught that FDR had socialized America. The government was too intrusive into his business and personal life. Taxes were too high, and he worried about Harry Truman and whether he would follow Roosevelt's liberal ways. At that supper table, children were held responsible for their actions, school work was discussed and encouraged, and momentous announcements were made - one, my older brother's decision to go to college on the G.I. Bill, had a dramatic effect on my life. Had he not gone to college, I probably would have never gone to college.
I hope in the vignettes I have explained to my grandchildren the importance of family, the importance of being held accountable for our actions, and the necessity for setting and achieving goals in life. My father, born in 1895, had seen and successfully transcended many challenges in life, and his advice to his progeny was that "your only true security lies within yourself, not with others, and certainly not with government."
CONSERVATIVE MONITOR: Can you pinpoint a defining event in your life that made you a conservative?
GORDON DURNIL: I may have been born a conservative. Certainly the teachings of my parents in regard to self reliance, the Golden Rule, and the evils of big government, taught me conservative lessons, although that word was never used. As an 18 year old private in Korea, I saw tremendous governmental waste in the year following the truce. On guard duty on top of a mountain along the DMZ, all alone in a fox hole, I saw an infiltrator coming across the no-man's zone, but I could do nothing about it because the United Nations had taken away our bullets - something that shaped a lifetime opinion about the United Nations.
My first conscious thoughts about the differences between the liberal and conservative philosophies came in undergraduate school where I attended on the G.I. Bill and had a wardrobe of old Army clothing. The older professors tended to be fairly conservative, but the graduate school teaching assistants were what we then called "bohemians." They taught most of the freshmen classes in the latter half of the 1950's, wore sandals without stockings and had the appearance of the unwashed. Such things as Hula-Hoops and Frisbees had just become a rage and the bohemian teachers taught that it was wasteful to produce such things. I went to one poetic reading, but only to observe their weirdness. They later became the "beat" generation, then, after Sputnik went up they became "Beatniks." As time went on they became "hippies," then they filled the professorial chairs, became the reporters of news, controlled Congress, and now sit in the oval office.
All of the above spurred my reading interests of the important American documents of freedom. M. Stanton Evans was the Editor of the Indianapolis News and the leading conservative intellectual in my neck of the woods. His writings had a great influence in helping me understand why I thought the way I did. In law school we debated political philosophies, but most students in those debates held liberal views and only a minority of us called ourselves conservative. We became founders of Young Americans for Freedom and we sought public office. We enlisted young people to our cause, and we held large meetings to educate the public about the road to ruin we were on under the direction of a liberal president from Boston. In a protest against a John F. Kennedy appearance in Indianapolis in 1962, my conservative friends and I were subjected to the whims of a mob of "union goons" with baseball bats. I wrote about that experience in YAF's national magazine, The New Guard.
I am not exactly sure of a defining moment when I became a conservative. If it was not at birth, it was sometime between World War II and the election of Jack Kennedy.
CONSERVATIVE MONITOR: Many have discerned a conservative tide slowly rising in American society over the last twenty years or so. Others fear the imminent demise of American freedom. Where do you see us headed?
GORDON DURNIL: This questions seems to beg for a definition of conservative. In my first decades of being an activist conservative, I often had to defend my philosophy to those who thought it strange that a thinking person would be a conservative. Lately, I find other conservatives quizzing me about what kind of conservative I am - social or economic. I find that question strange and usually answer that I am a conservative. In "The Making of a Conservative Environmentalist" I made a couple of attempts to define what I thought a conservative was and what the public (in public opinion surveys) thought it meant to live a conservative lifestyle.
My view: "I suppose the classic definition of a conservative is someone who wants no change at all. That is the definition used by the U.S. news media in describing the Russian Communists who like the old ways. Conservative is what the media call the bad guys in Somalia, Haiti, China, and elsewhere when it gives national reporters an opportunity to imply bad things about those who are conservative. But in the United States, conservative has a different connotation. I am a conservative. I oppose large government. I favor limited government. I support wholeheartedly the free enterprise system. I believe the individual is supreme. I know that my fellow citizens and I know better what is good for us than does anyone in government. I believe that values are important. Right is better than wrong and there can be a clear distinction between the two. And I believe that I am responsible for my actions."
And then I attempt to report on the public's view of being conservative from my experience with polling:
"A look at the contemporary connotation of the word conservative is in order. The average American has a different perception of what the word conservative means than do the so called experts in the media, academia, or other perceived intellectual circles. I can make that statement with confidence because of the quarter century of public opinion research to which I have been exposed. The teachers of political science tell us all those things we find in text books: conservatives are adverse to change, adherents of Adam Smith, preferring profit over the needs of people. The news reporters tell us that conservatives are antiabortion, anti-gun control, anti-diversity, anti-environment, anti-everything. The entertainment media try to lead us to the thought that conservatives are prowar, cold-hearted, and racist.
The average person sees it differently. Most people tend to think they are conservative if they see the value of a two-parent home (whether or not they are in one) and believe they are accountable for teaching their children self-respect, self-reliance, respect for others, and values that will enable them to get along as adults. Conservatives believe that they are accountable for their own actions, that they must pay for their mistakes. They consider themselves conservative if they go to work every day, try to better their circumstance, own their own home, dream of going into business for themselves, pay their taxes, and try to improve conditions in their own community. They are proud of their nation, of their heritage, and they are optimistic about the future. They believe the miracles of life (animal life, plant life and human life) are proof enough of the existence of a supreme being. They believe they have the right to openly practice their religion without restraint from government. They believe in normal sex instead of abnormal sex. They believe that they are better able to make decisions for themselves than is any bureaucrat at any level of government. They want governments off of their backs and out of their lives to the greatest extent possible.
I realize that I have just described the majority opinion. That is why most any public opinion survey, in most any state, at most any time, will indicate that a majority of people consider themselves to be conservative, while very few indeed will admit to being liberal. It has to do with life-style more than it does with a narrowly defined academic philosophy. The normal American life-style is a conservative life-style, a fact often missed by media, academic, and political pundits (who quite often just don't get it)."
So, I answer your question by saying that the rising tide of conservatism probably has more to do with conservative officials coming up with viable solutions for the serious problems of our time, such as taxes, crime, education, welfare, etc., that fits the thinking of the broad majority of Americans, than it does with more people thinking about their political philosophies and becoming more conservative. Most Americans have long agreed that morality has declined and that the breakup of the family puts our nation at risk, but they now have conservative leaders at the highest level of government looking for solutions they can agree with (for example, the partial birth abortion issue). Maybe it is a rising tide of conservative respectability that we are witnessing. But that is different from the second part of the question relating to the imminent demise of American freedom. Even though most Americans share a conservative belief, most Americans don't exercise the basic requirement of freedom. Most don't vote. In 1996, 51 percent of all Americans who took the time to get registered to vote, did not vote. Fifty-one percent of registered voters in 1996 opted against democracy, and that certainly raises the specter of a potential demise of freedom.
What lies ahead? I don't know, but I have always been an optimist. American freedom was inspired by God, but government works hard to remove God from our lives. A public well educated in our system of government will keep it alive, but children are seldom taught about the requirements of freedom and it's hard to blame kids for not knowing what they haven't been taught. The understanding of democratic debate, with civility, will keep freedom alive, but now opponents in such debates believe that hate, rather than civility, is appropriate. It's difficult even for an optimist to be optimistic, especially when American voters will elect a president they say they don't trust, but I am optimistic that American freedom will survive. It must! I see more parents disturbed enough about the conduct of our schools to get involved and I see more and more young people in church - not enough yet, but more. And therein lies the fundamental necessities for preserving freedom - morality and knowledge.
CONSERVATIVE MONITOR: On a less philosophic level, what do you see in the upcoming '98 Congressional election. Will the Republicans rebuild their lead in the House? What about the Senate?
GORDON DURNIL: From an historical perspective, 1998 should be a good year for Republicans. It is the sixth year of a presidential term, which almost always benefits the party not holding the White House and results in more seats. It is traditionally the time when presidential scandal is the most noticed, the time when the economy starts to fall, and a time when voters are looking for something different. The retirements in the U.S. House and Senate would seem to benefit Republicans, and the issues on the minds of voters - education, crime, taxes, and declining morality - are issues on which Republicans are expressing solutions that voters find favorable. The current president defies all logic when it comes to scandal, so tradition may not hold up, but I would expect an increase of a dozen or so Republicans in the House and one or two in the Senate.
In Indiana, Senator Dan Coats is keeping his word on his pledge of term limits and is not running again. He is a wonderful conservative senator and the country would be much better off if he stayed in the Senate, but he is retiring and it may be a struggle to keep the seat against a popular former Democrat governor. It's enough to make me rethink my position on term limits.
The gubernatorial races will also be interesting in 1998. An overwhelming percentage of Americans are now governed by Republican governors and those governors are mostly very popular. Probably the best hope of fully implementing a conservative philosophy in the United States lies with the re-election of those Republican governors.
CONSERVATIVE MONITOR: Thank you so much for patiently answering our questions. Do you have any final comments about your new book or society in general?
GORDON DURNIL: Maybe just one last tale to illustrate why I felt the need to write IS AMERICAN BEYOND REFORM? My story took place within the last few weeks, long after I finished writing the book. We didn't touch on religion in this interview, but I have a lengthy chapter trying to contrast the constitutional intent of freedom OF religion, with what has turned out to be freedom FROM religion.
My 8 year old grandson was in a winter play at his public school. It was not a Christmas play as I was in 50 years ago, and my own children were in 25 years ago, but a winter play. The school system is in the Republican and conservative stronghold of Washington Township in Indianapolis. The children sang about various religions of the world. They sang of Hanukkah, Kwansa, and other religious celebrations. In a logical spot to sing about Christianity, they sang instead about snowflakes. His mother asked the principal, why not mention Christ or Christmas? The principal said that separation of church and state made it against the law to mention Christianity. There is no such law, but under his view Christianity was the only religion to be separated. A few days later, my granddaughter was dropped off at kindergarten in the same school system to find a Happy Hanukkah sign. Her mother asked if a Merry Christmas sign would be up in a couple of weeks and was told that was against the law.
I checked with my nephew who is a school board member in another Republican township and he said the teachers all believe that only Christianity must be excluded from their teachings. He was even more disturbed to learn, after election to the school board, that the school system did not have a flag policy and that several of the public schools never flew an American flag. He was able to solve the flag dilemma, but the anti-Christian attitude of the educators was beyond his reach as an elected school board member. I have recently heard about public school examples from across America where separation of church and state only applies to Christianity or Judaism - one or both. In my book, I wonder where were the clergy as the anti-religion crusade was in full force. I wonder where I was. How did we give teacher unions the ability to take the teaching of God's way out of our schools? How did we let separation of church and state extend to a reluctance to teach kids about right and wrong? More importantly, now that we have fallen so far, how do we get morality back into the educational process?
