The following panel discussion and selected audience comments and questions came in reaction to the following papers: “J. Reuben Clark, Jr.: The Constitution and the Great Fundamentals,” by Martin B. Hickman; “J. Reuben Clark, Jr., Law and International Order,” by Edwin B. Firmage and Christopher L. Blakesley; and “J. Reuben Clark, Jr., on American Sovereignty and International Organization,” by James B. Allen. (The panelists had read the full papers which had to be summarized for the audience because of time limitations.) Dr. Hillam was the panel moderator.
MODERATOR: Ray C. Hillam, chairman, Department of Political Science, Brigham Young University.
DISCUSSANTS: Neal A. Maxwell, Church Commissioner of Education.
Robert S. Jordan, chairman, Department of Political Science, State University of New York at Binghamton.
Martin B. Hickman, Dean of the College of Social Sciences, Brigham Young University.
James B. Allen, assistant Church historian, and professor of history at Brigham Young University.
Neal A. Maxwell
I find myself very grateful to the Department of Political Science for putting together this panorama about President Clark. I have no major quarrels with the papers except that the pressures of time have made the reading of these papers abbreviated. Because of their brevity, the abbreviations have not done justice to what these men have so laboriously put together. I am grateful that BYU Studies will be presenting these and other papers to us in a form that we can savor.
It is too bad that the young members of the Church today do not know President Clark, because there is so much about him that they would appreciate. They would resonate to his immense personal integrity and consistency. Today the young are reaching out to find those who are believable and who tell you clearly where they stand. President Clark was just as wary of slogans as many young people are today.
He cautioned us about how we can amend the U.S. Constitution in the wrong way and about how the manner in which wars are to be declared must be guarded. Many Americans have a gnawing feeling that we have not gone about these two kinds of things legitimately. We are faced as some would put it, with a crisis of legitimacy. The problem of undeclared wars such as the Vietnam encounter has probably shaken America as much as anything since the Civil War. I do not think that we will ever be the same again as a nation.
Let me react quickly to President Clark as I would see him from within the prism of my own experience. First, President Clark anticipated the challenge of the American military bureaucracy to our society. It is not that the military is conspiratorial; it is that they have come to have almost a life of their own. In one of his speeches President Clark said, “our militarists will no more be able to let a great army lie unused than they were able to withhold the use of the atom bomb once they had it.” If there is something about the nature of power (namely, that few individuals can cope with it without abusing their authority) as the Doctrine and Covenants (Section 121) tells us there is, his anticipation of this problem seems to me to be very significant.
Fischer, who now writes for Fortune, once said that there are several conditions to be met in order to create and/or maintain a free and democratic society. Two of the conditions call for the absence of a large standing military force and for peaceful borders. It is significant that President Clark in his work with the Department of State involving American relations with Latin America, and in his speaking about the tendencies of a large standing military force, dwelt on both of these conditions which are allied to the maintenance of freedom.
Second, President Clark described the U.S. Constitution as God’s form of human government; this is completely consistent with what we read in the 98th and 101st sections of the Doctrine and Covenants. The Lord says freedom “belongs to all mankind;” that the Constitution should be maintained for “the rights and protection of all flesh.”
Third, it probably took Vietnam and the consequences of that war to shake the elite liberals in America into realizing what wise conservatives like President Clark have long said—that there is a kind of arrogance that goes with power. In his writings, David Halberstam noted that shortly after Lyndon Johnson had come back from his first cabinet meeting as Vice President of the United States he sought out Speaker Sam Rayburn, his old mentor; he described with a sense of excitement his impressions of the new “elite managers” that President John F. Kennedy had assembled. Sam Rayburn said, “Well, Lyndon, everything you say may be right, and they may be every bit as able as you say—but I’d feel a whole lot better if just one of them had run for Sheriff once.” This is a healthy skepticism. Halberstam also wrote about how one of these same “elite managers” who served two presidents in the ’60s said recently, “When I entered government in 1961, I thought that it could do good, that what we could accomplish for people was limitless. Now I feel that government is not only not a friend, but it is probably the enemy.”
Fourth, what Martin Hickman has said about the importance of limited government ought not to be overlooked. The Constitution did make an effort to circumscribe government. Some of the harsh lessons of history which are coming in now confirm President Clark’s insights about the wisdom of limited government. A satire about Andrew Carnegie’s ostentatious philanthropy once noted that Carnegie was determined that there would be a Carnegie library in every community in America whether the community wanted one or not. Perhaps the “descendant” of that kind of tradition is today’s civil servant who now seeks to impose a particular Federal program on a community whether it wants it or not. President Clark alerted us to this “do-goodism” not just in domestic affairs but in international matters as well. No less a liberal than Patrick Moynihan has observed that he wished that liberals could acquire what conservatives seem to be born with, a healthy skepticism about the power of government programs to do good.
Fifth, President Clark suggests that there were some “unamendable” portions in the U.S. Constitution such as those that deal with the separation of powers, and the first amendment (freedom of the press, religion and speech, etc.). He said these should not be changed. The Constitution has a special meaning for the Latter-day Saint; it is a shelter we must not destroy.
I am also impressed that President Clark makes such a marvelous connection with the wisdom of John Quincy Adams who said in 1820 (when we were being pressed to get involved in European affairs and to renounce our isolationism) that while we sympathize with those who are struggling abroad against tyranny, “America goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy. We are well wishers for freedom for all, and we are champion and vindicator only of our own.” Later, Adams said, “we must keep the lamp burning brightly on the western shore as a light to all nations, rather than hazard its existence amid the ruins of falling republics in Europe.” That lamp could be snuffed out anywhere if we are too venturesome.
Finally, it seems clear to me that President Clark is correct when he says that without the gospel, the efforts of people to achieve peace, however sincere, are reminiscent of Sisyphus, that figure in Greek mythology, who is ever rolling the stone up to the top of the hill, only to see it come crashing down, never quite succeeding.
As a postscript, let me add that it will be important for us to look at events in terms of historical priorities, not that we can be unconcerned with contemporary challenges, but rather so we don’t get locked in on a view of things that will make us ignore the wisdom of President Clark. Thank you.
Robert Jordan
First, let me say how much I appreciate being able to come to BYU and participate on this panel. When I was a graduate student at Princeton studying international law and had occasion to come West, I asked President Clark if I could come by his office and talk to him. I was pleased and flattered when he said that I could. I showed up for the appointment expecting to get about five minutes. When I went into his office his desk was cleared and he was obviously willing to give time to a graduate student. We must have talked for about forty-five minutes. Afterwards he said, “Now listen, if I have not dealt with your questions adequately come again.” I think this is an indication of his willingness not only to be available, but also to discuss and develop his ideas. I have a very fond memory of President Clark, although I cannot really say that I knew him personally.
When I was reading Jim Allen’s paper, where he said that President Clark was forty-eight years old in 1919, it really struck me because I am not yet forty-eight years old and President Clark was at that time less than halfway through his career. We can see the impact which he had on world affairs and on the Church, when we consider that much of his career lay ahead of him even though he was already in 1919 a distinguished man.
I think that one of the dangers of analyzing the writings of a great man is that we have a tendency to impose a systematic uniformity or an internal consistency on his thought that perhaps was not even intended by the writer. This is inevitable in any man’s career, because we all tend to address our thoughts—and hence writings—to one thing at a time. Only later on, perhaps, do we try to connect up our thoughts of the moment in order to weigh their degree of overall consistency.
For example, how can one reconcile President Clark’s abhorrence of intervention with his strong belief in the liberal democratic political system which was being snuffed out in Europe between 1919 and 1939? It is a dilemma which the world in general had, as well as being reflected in President Clark’s writing, and it is not easily reconciled. Let me give another dilemma. How can one reconcile the notion that, at the end of World War II, the United States should be primarily concerned with its own affairs, with the perception that there was obviously one great power and only one in the world which, apparently, was pushing the United States into a global confrontation? This bipolar world was not the kind of world that existed prior to 1914 when President Clark had developed many of his ideas and convictions about the efficacy of using non-violent means in the settlement of disputes among nations.
In sum, I am suggesting that there are historical dilemmas which do not necessarily lend themselves to any kind of internal consistency. But as we review President Clark’s writings on international affairs, we find that he is very consistent in advocating the efficacy of mediation, arbitration, and the peaceful settlement of disputes through international legal means, which concepts were evolving in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, even though the international political environment after 1914 was fundamentally altered.
Now a second point that I would make is that there are basically two ways to end war. One of them is called a peace of reconciliation, by which the defeated enemy is treated in such a way that he will not desire to change forcibly the terms of the peace. To do so would be to employ a revisionist foreign policy. The other kind of peace-making is punitive in nature, by which “to the victor belong the spoils and the vanquished has to accept the consequences thereof.” President Clark was a man who believed firmly in reconciliation. He was confronted in 1919 with a very frustrating situation for him and his career. He had played an influential role in the development of the legal approach to the settlement of international disputes. After the two Hague Peace Conferences which had advanced the Anglo-Saxon legal concepts of peaceful settlement through mediation and arbitration, it seemed reasonable and likely that the states of Europe would adjust their behavior and constrain themselves within this emerging legal framework. He was very much involved in the planning of American participation in the Third Hague Conference which was to have convened in 1916. I think it is fair to say that if that Conference had taken place, President Clark’s conception of peaceful settlement might have been advanced to the stage where power politics among states could have been domesticated. But World War I interrupted and ended this effort.
If I had been President Clark at that time, involved centrally in the planning of the American position for the Third Hague Conference, I would have been very frustrated and disturbed. World War I became literally a civil war among the states of the West. It was a disaster not only in military terms but also in economic, social, and moral terms. I think he saw, and therefore rightly opposed, the punitive provisions of the settlement of World War I against Germany as contained in the Treaty of Versailles. He argued strongly for a peace of reconciliation, which, regretfully, could only partially be achieved through the Covenant of the League of Nations.
As we move on to 1939 and the outbreak of World War II, it is noteworthy to review his address to the 110th Semi-annual Conference of the Church in October of that year. By this time, you will remember, World War II was under way and virtually all the European Powers had chosen up sides. Here is what President Clark said:
If we shall rebuild our lost moral power and influence by measures such as these which will demonstrate our love for humanity, our justice, our fairmindedness, our determination to do works of righteousness as God shall make them known to us, we shall then be where at a fitting and promising time [remember the war is already going on] we can offer mediation between the two belligerents [he meant this to be the two belligerent alliances], and bringing our moral power and influence into action we shall have a fair chance to bring an end to the criminal slaughter of our fellowmen and to give birth to a peace that shall be lasting, because just and fair to every people.
Looking back at World War I, and seeing that a punitive peace, a peace that puts the defeated power at a more or less permanent disadvantage, sows its own seeds for future war, President Clark was saying, after World War II had already begun, “. . . surely this is infinitely more honorable, will have in it infinitely more of humanity, will be infinitely nearer to the Master’s way, than sending our young sons overseas to be murdered.” He uses the word “murdered,” and I think one cannot use a more emotional term, a more judgmental term, to describe war among states.
A third and related point that I want to make is that President Clark was very instrumental in helping to shape the American outlook toward the settlement of disputes. The United States, when President Clark entered public life just after the turn of the century, had not yet moved onto the center stage of world politics. The United States was not seen as a great power, and its interests were still largely motivated by commercial rather than political-military considerations. Thus, the kinds of international disputes which were subject to mediation and conciliation often had a commercial character to them. President Clark would have deplored involvement in them if it were otherwise. He was very much opposed to establishing political or security definitions of “vital interests” precisely because they are the most difficult to settle through means other than war. The point I am making is that by 1939, in contrast, the United States was a great power at the center of world politics. World War II had begun, and it was pretty obvious that it was going to be even more disastrous than World War I, but President Clark was still arguing that the United States should stay aloof from the conflict and reserve its “moral capital” to help in the eventual settlement. However, how is it in fact possible for a great power to remain aloof in this way from a global confrontation? The forces of history had indeed changed.
President Clark in 1939 had taken clear issue with where the American “vital interest” should rest. From 1919 until the present the United States has assumed the role that Britain had played in Europe in the century of the “Pax Britannica”: that it is in the vital interests of the offshore Power [first Britain and then the United States] to prevent the continent of Europe from being dominated by a single power or coalition of powers. It had been Britain’s role to align itself with the weaker coalition to resist a stronger coalition that might threaten to dominate Europe. The geopolitical rationale for the intervention of the United States in Europe during World War I was due to the prospect that the Central Powers might win and that Germany would then be the dominant power. The same rationale applied both to World War II and to the American intervention in Europe after World War II that we legitimized through the signing of the North Atlantic Treaty. World War II was an anti-German intervention; NATO was an anti-Russian (or Communist) intervention.
But notwithstanding, we have President Clark saying (again I quote from 1939): “Who shall dominate Europe is a question that has been in our international situation from the beginning of our national life. It is not our concern . . . there is neither reason nor excuse for our entry into this European war. Its issues have for us no vital interest. Wise statesmanship will keep us from that war.” I think that in this episode, President Clark revealed a willingness to say things which were at the time unpopular. When he took issue with the American intervention in World War II and opposed the signing of regional security treaties after World War II, what he was saying was that it is not necessarily “vital” to American interests to prevent the domination of Europe by a single great power if this meant waging global war. At the same time, however, as I have already pointed out, he was strongly opposed to the Communist form of government and equally strongly supportive of the form of liberal democracy set forth in the American Constitution.
Let me move now to another point. Since World War I, the United States has been a great power in European politics. The dilemma is this: Is it possible for a great power to mediate other great power conflicts? It is pretty clear that a small power can mediate great power conflicts if the parties are willing (witness the Portsmouth Treaty mediated by the United States to settle the Russo-Japanese War). And one or more great powers can mediate a small power conflict (as the Soviet Union did in 1966 between India and Pakistan at Tashkent). But has it in fact been possible for the United States, after having become a great power, to mediate great power conflicts in which states equal to us in interests and commitments would accept our “Good Offices”? I cannot answer the question; I can only pose it. President Clark was convinced that it was possible and that we ought to hold ourselves ready.
Now this takes me to an observation that was very important to President Clark: any power which desires to play a mediatory role successfully must itself be morally or technically detached from the conflict. Was it possible for a great power such as the United States, after 1919, to detach itself sufficiently from its own conceptions of its vital interests, or from its wide variety of commitments in world affairs, to be a credible mediator? I think that President Clark would clearly say that the United States should mediate only if it could maintain its own national integrity. Here is where I think the contribution of Dean Hickman is important; that is, that there is a linkage between the way in which we conduct our affairs domestically with the moral imperative that we desire to exert internationally. To fail to be true to our liberal democratic heritage, which emphasizes the constraint of power, places us in the situation of being tempted to use our national power too readily for political-military purposes, which President Clark would have deplored. It is fairly obvious that this is what has happened since the end of World War II, as has been pointed out. So we have here, I think, a linkage between President Clark’s notion of the importance of conserving the national moral integrity which is vital to any mediatory power, with the way in which the United States has organized and arranged its own affairs in the past quarter century.
Now another point which I would like to make is that I think it is very difficult for us to project ourselves backward in time just as it is very difficult for any of us to project ourselves forward in time. This is not easy for anyone to do, and I certainly agree with our speakers that the questions that President Clark posed as to how states should conduct their affairs with one another give rise to extremely relevant moral dilemmas which we face as a great power in world politics. But if we consider the use of mediation and arbitration as against the use of force to settle disputes between states, then we have to ask ourselves whether non-action in world politics is as efficacious as action? The answer to that question for a small power is, “perhaps.” But when we ask it in the context of the role of a great power, then we must conclude that the absence of action itself clearly can be as great an influence upon other states as the opposite situation. Not to have intervened in World War I or World War II, or not to have negotiated and ratified the North Atlantic Treaty, would have themselves, in the judgment of history, been viewed as affirmative political acts. And here I think we have a dilemma. because of the sheer size and scope of the interests of the United States after World War II, when we were unquestionably not only the greatest economic power, but also the greatest military power, possessing as we did a monopoly of atomic weapons. The magnitude of our national power made us like the elephant and the mouse with respect to the rest of the world. In other words, whether or not the United States stood outside the framework of the interactions of other states, America’s posture could not help but exercise a determinant force on the outcome of events. President Clark does not, in his later writings, appear to have resolved this dilemma.
The final point that I would make has to do with the notion of collective security. Collective security, as it was defended by those who believed in the League of Nations system, was based on the assumption that aggression of any kind by one state against another should be automatically opposed, and this could only be done successfully by mobilizing an unambiguously overwhelming coalition of force. This notion requires a non-ideological definition of a “just war.” That is, a “just war” is only that war which is waged by an overwhelming coalition of states to prevent or frustrate an act of aggression, no matter what the cause or provocation—excepting only national self-defense pending the introduction of, or the exhaustion of, peace-making machinery. Now, as we know from the interwar period of 1919–1939, the basic assumption of collective security proved to be a very faulty premise. I think President Clark was rightfully skeptical of it. But then the dilemma which we have had since the end of World War II is, what do we put in its place? What kind of deterrent can be structured that will allow aggression to pass out of existence as a means by which states advance or defend their interests? This has been a terrible dilemma for Americans as a whole because we have not found the answer.
We have in our own national tradition that ideal which President Clark exemplifies, of trying to see the use of force as the very last resort in the settlement of disputes. What form of international machinery is best as an alternative to the unilateral use of force to settle a peace or to limit a conflict? What system can we envisage to keep the peace that leads neither to unbridled international power politics based on force, nor to the elimination of the nation-state system by the introduction of some form of global imperium, or world government? There are those who would argue that the answer lies (as imperfect as it is) with some sort of organized coalition of states operating within agreed-upon norms of international political behavior. They say that we should compromise sovereignty selectively, rather than reject it outright, in order to find an uneasy balance between the legal concept of the peaceful settlement of disputes through such international legal means as conciliation, mediation, and arbitration, on the one hand, and the collective security concept of using overwhelming force against all attempts to break the peace, on the other. In this highly imperfect world we could thus arrive at a situation in which, while war cannot be entirely eliminated, we can constrain and avoid most of the consequences of endless warfare.
I leave these observations with you in the hope that they will stimulate further discussion among my colleagues on the panel and with the audience in the time remaining. Thank you.
Martin Hickman
Let me respond to two things Professor Jordan has raised. Someone once asked Chief Justice Hughes what he would do with regard to a foreign policy issue after he became Chief Justice and was no longer Secretary of State. He said, “I would first ask to see the files.” President Clark did not have the files after he left the State Department. He was always careful to point out that he was speaking as a critic and not as a policy-maker. I do not know if Robert is suggesting that we looked to President Clark as a policy guide during this period. I am not sure he ever saw himself in that role because he did not have all of the information. He did not have the files.
What I get from President Clark is a sense of limit. We have not had this sense of limit since 1939. We have thought we could do everything. If I remember correctly from the days when I taught a course in international organization, it is the peace-keeping operations of the United Nations that have threatened to destroy it; that the first such effort by the United Nations, which was Korea, has led to peace-keeping efforts in the Middle East, the Congo, and Cyprus, and it is precisely those efforts that have been most dysfunctional. In order to keep the organization together we have practically had to abandon all peace-keeping efforts and to concentrate on what we might call functional cooperation in the economic and social areas where we can agree. There is a debate going on among theorists as to whether institution building precedes functional cooperation or the reverse. I think what President Clark is saying, in some kind of theoretical sense if I interpret him correctly, is that the functional cooperation has to be there. It has to exist before you can institutionalize it.
Robert Jordan
I do not think so. I think President Clark is more consistent in his opinion of functionalism as a means to resolve or ameliorate conflict. For example, he was opposed to the Marshall Plan. He was opposed to involving ourselves economically in the affairs of other states. He believed strongly that there cannot help but be political “strings” attached to economic aid. It matters not whether these strings are explicit or implicit; aid-giving is merely another form of intervention in the affairs of another country, making that government subservient in some way. President Clark did not believe that the United States should do that. Thus, I am not sure he would agree to the functional approach in international organization any more than he would agree to peace-keeping as it was practiced in the first two decades of the United Nations—both are forms of intervention.
Martin Hickman
Clark perceives a sense of community that grows out of his concern for international law. He understood that international law could grow by usage and by tradition, and that with codification it could become a constraint on the behavior of states. I am suggesting that in the future he would have seen a voluntary compliance with international law that in effect would have meant institutionalization.
Robert Jordan
That raises a good point that has not been brought up today by any of us; the question of jurisdiction. President Clark realized that to have an international political system based upon law it was necessary for states to agree in advance that they would abide by the decision of a court or tribunal. This inevitably means a derogation of sovereignty. Such a system of law is central to President Clark’s belief that parties to a dispute must be predisposed to accept arbitration, mediation, or conciliation. From there, hopefully, there could emerge the practice of agreeing to compulsory jurisdiction, in which states would agree in advance to abide by a decision or award. If the world attained that level of the compromise of sovereignty, then the “rule of law” might actually have an opportunity to work. I think this observation again indicates that President Clark had one notion of how the world should be structured, which obviously gets in the way of his strong feelings about absolute sovereignty and non-interference in the internal affairs of states.
Tom Alexander
One of the things that hasn’t been raised in the papers or in this discussion is President Clark’s rather selective use of historical evidence in making the points that he tries to make. Consider his use, for instance, of the nineteenth century as an example for the United States. The United States was the aggressor in the Mexican War, we were co-belligerent with France during the War of 1812, we annexed Samoa, tried to annex Hawaii, and eventually did. Why should this be taken as an example of American benevolence or non-involvement? Isn’t this really what you pointed out, Martin, when you spoke of him as a critic, and where there is a selective use of historical evidence to support his point of view? I was surprised that Jim did not see this. He is the historian in the group.
Martin Hickman
President Clark’s renunciation of the Mexican War is the kind of evidence that makes one feel that he was at least attempting to be objective in his selection. Besides I thought I had learned from you, Tom, that there is no such thing as an objective historian.
Tom Alexander
It is true, Clark did criticize the war with Mexico, and I think it is awfully clear in that quotation where he says that we were never wholly right nor wholly wrong, that he would at least try to be objective. But he also had a tendency, and I think all of us do, to over-idealize. I would say that such things as our supporting the independence of Panama or taking Panama from Colombia, do not fit with his view of the nineteenth century. I think he does become a bit too selective, but maybe he is speaking in generalities. He puts World War I as the cut-off date and maybe we are all guilty of the same kind of thing. He also leaves out our acquisition of territory from the Indians which was going on throughout this period, and which is hardly an example of benevolence.
Martin Hickman
President Clark shared in the blindness of generations of Americans about the Indians, and I do not think you can hardly blame him for that.
Tom Alexander
I can blame you brethren for not pointing it out.
David Yarn
I would like to say that he was not blind to this point. There are documents that you brethren have not examined, which show that he was very critical of the United States with reference to the acquisition of all the property west of the Mississippi River.
Michael Stewart
Is there really a foundation for Clark to say that this second period of American history (1900–1917) is the glorious period in American history?
Robert Jordan
I think the disaster of World War I really fundamentally frustrated an evolution in which President Clark was very influential. The non-convening of the Third Hague Peace Conference signaled the end of that period of relative self-restraint in the international politics of states that had existed since 1815.
I agree with Martin that President Clark was not trying to argue policy after he returned to private life. He was trying to argue for a return to a kind of world politics which had been overturned by World War I. It would be in that context that he said that the second period was the glorious period, because the third period was a fundamental change in the nature of the world political system in which armaments, ideology, and hostility tended to be paramount features of international politics. I am not at all sure that we should elevate that second period too high. Maybe if we set aside the third period, he would be somewhat critical of that second period also.
Ray C. Hillam
I think we should remember that the nineteenth century, or second period, was the golden age of arbitration in international affairs, and that President Clark was part of this movement as it extended into the twentieth century.
David Bohn
I am wondering about what seems to be a very strong bias against conflict. If you are on the bottom and you look up to see Great Britain at the top of her Empire, or the United States, you might view the use of violence as the only means of rebalancing the distribution of what you conceive to be important. Now if we could base our view of the world on the premise that all people are good and all states will look towards some common means of justice toward the distribution of awards then we probably could accept Clark’s view about peaceful settlement. But this may not be so for many people.
Robert Jordan
First, let me say that a system of law tends to be a conservative system. I mean this in the sense of Edmund Burke. As I was reading through Ed Firmage’s paper on President Clark, it struck me that President Clark argues more in favor of the status quo than he does in favor of change, and I think that this is a point that Firmage and others on the panel are trying to make. It would be fair to say that President Clark was a conservative in the Burkean sense. This does not mean that he was opposed to all change because obviously, even while condemning conflict categorically—as when he used the word “murder” to describe killing at the outbreak of World War II when it was considered a patriotic duty to kill one’s enemy—he was very sensitive to the necessity for peaceful or non-violent change and the adjustment of interests between disputing parties. But the sum total of a legalistic approach to the settlement of international disputes tends to favor the status quo.
Martin Hickman
I think it was Louis Hartz who said that the problem with American conservatives is that whenever they look backward to what they ought to conserve, the only thing they can find is a revolutionary condition. There is some real truth in this observation. But the very point about President Clark is that he knew this revolutionary tradition. He wanted to conserve it at home and he would have liked to have seen it perpetuated elsewhere, as he wanted others to have the same freedoms as the United States. He did not believe that you could give that to people, but somehow people could win that for themselves because human nature everywhere is enough the same that they would struggle for those kinds of freedoms. You may disagree with this assumption, but you cannot accuse President Clark of wanting to preserve the status quo in the rest of the world. In fact he was a revolutionary in the American tradition. He would have been pleased to see a similar revolution in the rest of the world.
David Bohn
Is there a difference between the domestic use of revolution and its international use?
Martin Hickman
Let me put it this way—he would let these people work out their own revolution in their own way.
Robert Jordan
I think I have to differ slightly with Martin on this. (This is the beauty of discussing a man’s writings who is not here, you know. I hope he will forgive us.) President Clark’s view of history is Burkean. He says that the totality of the evolution of society ought to be cherished and preserved, and this accretion is usually defined in terms of the present, whatever that present might be. A conservative has an abiding respect for tradition, or what came before. In this sense, President Clark was a conservative.
Now, on the other hand, I am not at all sure that I would agree with Martin that President Clark would advocate a revolutionary approach toward other states. One point we have not made clear, and probably Jim Allen’s paper suggested it, is that President Clark believed firmly that the “natural order” according to which men should organize themselves politically is that of the nation-state and the nation-state system. He had great respect for the paramountcy of the nation-state, for its right to manage its domestic affairs, and for the right of the nation-state not to have other states intervene. In that sense, I think that President Clark would be apt to accept the diversity of various national political systems regardless of whether they would be revolutionary in the liberal democratic sense. I will just give you a quote:
We lived or we died, we prospered or suffered, as determined between us and our government. [He is talking about us.]
The Family of Nations cannot exist on any other principle than their freedom in all matters of domestic policy, nor can individual states; and the existence of states for the due ordering of all society is of far more importance than the temporary suffering of any group, large or small, within a state. Every state, member of the Family of Nations, must be its own master as to its own nationals. We have always claimed this right unqualified for ourselves.
James Allen
Bob, while that may be true, is it not also possible that since he believed the Constitution to be inspired, since he was so strong on the first amendment that Martin talked about, that still implicitly we have to say that he would have liked to see other countries develop the way we have and get their freedoms, although he certainly would not want to impose it, as you said.
Robert Jordan
I do not think there is any doubt. This is one of the dilemmas that I pointed out in my earlier remarks. How can one be an advocate of the universality and “rightness” of the American system of liberal democracy and at the same time ascribe almost total responsibility to the state (of whatever kind) to manage its own affairs?
Martin Hickman
There is no dilemma here because the only tradition he had any respect for was the tradition of limited government. He had absolutely no respect for the tradition of the civil law and the tyranny which existed on the continent of Europe. So when you say he is a conservative in the Burkean sense, it is true if you are looking at the tradition of limited government. President Clark would have looked with favor on the United States staying at home and providing an example for revolutionary governments which had as their purpose the establishment of limited government, and he would have shed no tears over the abandonment of the traditions which were contrary to limited government.
Robert Jordan
Martin and I seem to end up in a vague area of semi-agreement. President Clark saw the American political experience as a beacon for the rest of the world to look toward and perhaps emulate. But my point is that he was not willing to go so far as to say that the United States should try to organize the world in its own image. I think that my quotation indicates that he would go a long way to allow other governments to do what they please with their own people.
Doug Tobler
I have a question relating to this moral imperative. What happens if there is evidence that the moral imperative in this country is slipping? Can the country be a beacon for others if it is morally changing, and if the high standards established by the founding fathers are no longer demonstrable?
Robert Jordan
I touched upon that in my earlier remarks. In order to be an example for the rest of the world one must be morally true to oneself. In nearly all of his speeches after 1939, and especially after 1945, President Clark deplored the way in which the United States had arranged its affairs. He felt very strongly that we had surrendered a good bit of our right to have a moral claim upon other states.
Doug Tobler
Then I would ask, to what extent is much of what he said invalidated? If the country does not now have the same moral characteristics then his prescription for the country and for the world is no longer applicable.
Neal Maxwell
I certainly agree with what Bob and Martin have said about the eloquence of example. It seems to me that we teach and learn by several ways. With the exhortation way, which we tried in America, we tried to tell people how to do things. That does not work. We tried explanation and telling them how we do it. That doesn’t work. That does not mean we do not have a significant message for the world. The absence of the model does not argue for its invalidity. It seems to me it argues for a kind of self-renewal that would permit us to perform this function. But I do not see that it invalidates the approach to human affairs that he offers; it simply means we are in trouble because the model is tarnished.
Henson Lady
What do you think we can do at the Brigham Young University? Should we work for a restoration?
James Allen
I would think that BYU’s role is to provide an educational opportunity so that the students can understand the basis on which President Clark made his decision—and the basis upon which other people make political decisions; that is really the purpose of this symposium. I think it would not be wise for us to go so far as to take direct political action if that is what you are suggesting.
Neal Maxwell
I think the admonition of the Prophet Joseph to “teach them correct principles and they will govern themselves” functions here with regard to our style of education. It would be wrong to politicize a university even for purposes that would be laudable. In a way, a university loses the same kind of integrity that a country loses when it becomes too involved in political activism. So it is the individual man against the world, and it seems to me that that is one of the great and unique things that can occur on this campus, rather than mounting any special kind of crusade or trying to call any special kind of cadence in an organized way. It is my belief that the Mormon expectation about our rendezvous with destiny concerning the United States rests precisely on the likelihood that we can have President Clarks in positions where their influence and voice can be heard.
Stewart Grow
My first contact with President Clark occurred when I was a senior at BYU. I was considering a career in the foreign service so I went to talk to him. I appreciated his generosity, good counsel, and his fine human qualities. I think it is important as we evaluate his speeches and his comments that we be aware of his role at that time. There were times in his career when he was prescriptive. This was true particularly during and shortly after his public career. After World War II I think Brother Clark looked upon himself as a critic. In fact I have heard him say that “the people criticize me for not saying how things should be done instead of pointing out what is wrong with the way they are being done.” If we look on his critical period as being prescriptive then I think we misread Brother Clark. If we assume that his criticism of international organizations means that they are totally wrong, I think it is not reading him accurately. I would urge this bit of caution.
Paul V. Hyer
I have a quotation here that I think is relevant. It is more or less a statement of one of his political Articles of Faith.
I am a profound believer in the aggregate and accumulative wisdom of the people. No one man and no aristocracy of men, or of minds has an equivalent wisdom if we adopt as the purpose of government, Jeremy Bentham’s great statement regarding the purpose of all legislation, the greatest happiness to the greatest number. . . . I am, by intellectual inheritance, and by conviction a believer in the rights and wisdom of the people. I have every confidence in democratic government which brings into play the mass intelligence of the people. For, however imperfect that intelligence may at times appear, however much it may on occasion seem to be misled by scheming minorities or to be the victim of unreasonable passion, yet in the long run the intelligence of the people will finally assert itself and from the play of that intelligence will come the greatest growth and uplift of mankind.
Robert Jordan
I have one final comment about President J. Reuben Clark. I think he is inspiring to read. He deplores human nature as it exists; he is not very optimistic that it will change, but he argues for change; he argues for a kind of human personality and behavior more on the lines of what Christ taught. Tolerance, compassion, self-restraint, non-violence—these are the qualities he advocated for states as well as for each of us as individual children of God.
Neal Maxwell
I think we can tell much about each other by how we handle power. I am told by those close to President Clark that during the time he was a counselor to presidents of the Church who were ill, he took a completely constitutional approach to his delegated power. In one case he went almost every day to President Grant’s home to make sure that his stewardship was intact, deeply concerned that the president of the Church make the decisions and not himself. I suppose when the history of the Church is written, he alone among all the many counselors will loom largest in terms of his impact. This was the result of his skills and abilities. Since we have talked about him as a conservative, he had an interesting view about church government. Soon after he was appointed to the First Presidency he began to raise questions about certain procedural precedents that had built up over time. He would press his colleagues, although he was new to the group, saying, “Where did that rule come from? If we made it, [speaking for the Presidency and the Twelve], then we can change it. If it is divinely given, then it falls of course outside our control.” That was a very healthy thing and we need to see him as having that kind of probing curiosity. It was as much a part of the man as was his conservative nature. Few of us could be examined by such a panel as we have assembled here today and come up nearly as well as he does. He was tremendously consistent and yet he was multifaceted. It is important to see the many dimensions of this man.
J. Reuben Clark III
I have been amazed that we Clarks who are here today have all kept so quiet. For Clarks that is pretty good. And I know that Dad would have enjoyed this discussion if he had been here today, partly because of the humor that has been in it.
•
I now know that all the wisdom of the past is for our use, and that the only place we can learn that wisdom, which comes from all that men have thought, worked, and suffered for, and achieved, is from books. . . . I am grateful for my library, because it enables me to spend part of my time with the greatest minds of all history, both in the religious and the secular worlds, that have left records of their thoughts. I feel that in this I have one of the greatest blessings that my life has brought me.
—J. Reuben Clark, Jr.
