U.S. Liberalism Rapped by Kirk

Russell Kirk, one of the foremost conservatives in America, last night asserted that "ritualistic liberal slogaulzing" was responsible for U.S. humiliation in Hungary, the Congo, Cuba, and Laos.

Addressing the Boston University Young Americans for Freedom, Kirk singled out Katanga as a classic example of liberal failings. The American policy was to follow the U.N., and "by this policy we produced anarchy instend of order." "The United Nations is neither a policy-making body nor a world government," Kirk said.

U.N. Congo troops were called into the Congo to establish peace there. But there are no U.N. troops, the Long Island University professor asserted, just national troops with their own national interests. "In the course of it all we got to fighting with the only pro-Western, pro-U.N. regime in the Congo. This was not the result of any wicked plot, but strange liberal delusions."

Kirk, who compared his own attitude toward politics to that of Harvard's Henry A. Kissinger and William Y. Elliott, said that a weak foreign policy was likely to lead to war. "The United States is somewhat stronger than the Soviet Union," he said, "but we act as if we were a good deal weaker."

He added that "Russia is growing confident that we will never take much of a stand anywhere.