YALE UNIVERSITY YOUNG REPUBLICANS 155

Had the giant in fact expired, it would not have been murder or
natural death by history's verdict but pure and almost premeditated
suicide. The Republican Party baptized by Abraham Lincoln, evan-
gelized by Theodore Roosevelt, spiritualized by the faith of farmers,
had lost sight of the human rebellion seething under the surface of the
industrial revolution, and what should have been a matter of tempo-
rary blindness lapsed slowly but surely into a desperate paralysis. "The
castle which conservatism is set to defend, " said Emerson, "is the actual
state of things good and bad, " but Republicans interpreted this to
mean the state of things as they once had been and begrudged the
transition from safe knowledge to uncharted experience.

As if all this weren't defeating enough, we Republicans committed
the ultimate act of self-destruction and gave credence to Theodore
White's characterization of the Republican Party as "twins from the
moment of its birth, but twins who are fratricidal and not fraternal. "

Unable to inspire others we tore upon ourselves, and left so gaping
a wound that our own Alf Landon in viewing the wreckage of his own
misfortune was to compare Republican disharmony with two under-
takers fighting over a corpse.

But now the giant stirs, no longer as the Grand Old Party of yester-
year but surely as the vital and viable party of today. And indeed it
is our old adversary, the Liberal Establishment, who stirs us to reform
what they once thought to be reformed, to bring meaning back to the
cause and the spirit of victory to the battle believed over and won.

Fellow Republicans... it is not the past that beckons but the pres-
ent... not only the friend but indeed the foe... not only country
farmer but city worker... not only our happy hunting grounds of
New England and the West but the once barren wastelands of the East
and the South. And they call not for an old-time conservatism but for
a new kind of liberalism, a humanistic Republicanism, a revival of in-
dividualism more realistic than rugged.

We are not called to disown the heritage of the conservative cause
but rather to clearly define it as Peter Viereck, the professor and poet,
did when he wrote:

The conservative principles par excellence are proportion and
measure; self expression through self restraint; preservation
through reform; humanism and classical balance; a fruitful nos-
talgia for the permanent beneath the flux; and a fruitful obsession