Conservative Conclaves

By David Aikman/ Washington

Few people have played as important a role in the revival of conservative influence in the U.S. as Jeane Kirkpatrick. Named by Ronald Reagan to be U.N. Ambassador in 1980, the Georgetown University political scientist quickly captivated conservative audiences, delighting them with her closely argued, often witty excoriations of liberal foreign policy analysis, Marxist regimes and what she called the "confused" thinking prevalent in the international body. Last week she was at her best. Freed from the pressures of her U.N. post, which she left in April, and just enrolled in the Republican Party, she was the keynote speaker and top drawing card at two separate conferences organized in Washington by conservative groups.

At a seminar on moral equivalence, a phrase Kirkpatrick used a year ago, she and a group of academics, journalists and government officials explored "false images of U.S. and Soviet values." It was organized by the Shavano Institute for National Leadership, a Colorado-based conservative organization, and co-sponsored by the State Department, which contributed $45,000 of the costs.

Moral equivalence, Kirkpatrick explained at the conference, consists of treating the failures of U.S. society as no different from those of the Soviet Union and its allies. Both Americans and Europeans, she said, increasingly tend to subject democratic societies to "a utopian measuring rod" while completely overlooking--or regarding as irrelevant--far more serious Soviet failings. "The Soviet assault on liberal democratic legitimacy," she said, "involves a demonstration of the failure of Western democracies to meet their own standards (accompanied by) assertions of Soviet loyalty to basic Western values. Our flaws are exaggerated; theirs are simply denied."

Other speakers at the conference used the phrase moral equivalence to describe the dangerously naive outlook of many in the media, government, academe and diplomacy. Explained Irving Kristol, co-editor of Public Interest: "We now have a whole group of people scattered through all these key professions who sometimes write discussions of practical policy as if they were citizens of another planet." The result, the participants contended, is an increasing timidity among those in the West when it comes to defending their societies in the moral and intellectual realms.

Discussing "anti-anti-Communism," participants described it as an intellectual double standard that inhibits discussions of Communism and criticism of the Soviet Union. "To denounce South Africa or Chile is to 'speak out' and earn moral credit," said Syndicated Columnist Joseph Sobran. "To denounce the Soviet Union, however, is to be 'strident.' " Tom Wolfe, in a dinner discourse titled "The Intelligent Coed's Guide to Socialism," satirically noted that it was considered "bad taste" to talk about Communism at all, much less to mention it negatively.

The following day, a block away, at a symposium sponsored by the National Republican Institute for International Affairs and titled "The Totalitarian Threat to Democracy," the mood was equally intense but the discussions on the whole more practical. Portuguese political veterans rubbed shoulders with anti-Sandinista churchmen and journalists from Nicaragua, right-wing leaders from Chile and a Colombian presidential candidate to discuss such topics as how to combat grass-roots Marxist subversion or strengthen democratic institutions. "One thing we can do," Kirkpatrick told the group, "is to make certain that we understand that the Soviet empire is a contemporary form of imperialism which performs all of the functions of traditional imperialism and a good many more besides."

If a Democrat-turned-Republican was the centerpiece of the conservative conclaves, it was a man of socialist background who offered the sharpest analysis of the day's most pressing international challenge. Americans must realize "how fragile a self-governing democratic society is," said Philosopher Sidney Hook, 82, "especially when its existence is threatened by a totalitarian enemy." His conclusion: "The moral here is not to abandon the critical approach--we could not do that without becoming like our enemies--but to employ it intelligently."