"Ballad For a Desperate Cause" (1964)

Desperate causes. A polemic on a topic that bothers me. Bothers me a lot.

I hate when people fret and hedge about Lafferty’s conservatism. He is a dead author. I have even heard it said that Lafferty doesn’t fit within American conservatism. He didn't want to be part of what we now call movement conservatism. This is true to the extent that Lafferty’s largest circle was Catholic, a fact that is also acknowledged by his fretters and hedgers. And most Republican Catholics will indeed take this position because they are Catholics. William F. Buckley did. He said he was Catholic first, conservative second. Do you believe him? Ignoring or soft-pedaling or distorting the depth of Lafferty’s conservatism is bunkum.

In politics, Lafferty squares with hard-right conservatives, rather than with anything moderate in the Republican Party, even if he occasionally breaks with mainstream conservatives on issues domestic and foreign. Michael Swanwick told me he heard Lafferty at a convention say that Garry Trudeau should be shot. That is pretty hard right. It might be the one view Lafferty shared with Hunter S. Thompson. Thompson famously said he might set the little bastard on fire. It was personal for Duke.

Thinking Trudeau should be shot for ideological reasons also squares with the Lafferty correspondence I have read. I have never seen the man disavow any tenet of conservatism, even if shooting Trudeau has been a source of bipartisan agreement at least once. He sometimes turns a cold eye on other conservatives when they soften, but that obviously isn’t breaking with conservatism; it is chastising it. So I crinkle my face when someone says Lafferty had “conservative impulses,” a phrase I’ve heard used about him by someone who of course knows better. On this point, I am going to double down because what a stupid collocation. It shouldn’t be used.

Ever have an impulse? I've heard it is a spontaneous urge. What weaselly weaseling. Ah, Lafferty had those, well, those, what shall we call them, conservative impulses. Are we talking about Lafferty using words like faggot, queer, and nigger and denying the Holocaust? Now, you know I’m joshing you. I know we guys don’t talk about the Holocaust thing because first we need to handle the faggot thing. Somebody has it all covered. He just needs a little more time. This seems to be the intellectual depth. Let’s take a page from folks who work on Faulkner and have to deal with what he said about tv watchers.

Lafferty indeed hated Marxists. Lafferty reviled California as the years went on. Lafferty was furious about the disrespect the American presbyterate showed Pope Paul VI. Lafferty gagged at reverse discrimination in science fiction and elsewhere, and he believed that was exactly the right term. Lafferty thought liberated women were a waste of time, saying the only liberated woman worth anything was the one born that way. I suspect he would still sit on the laps of the recently liberated.

Lafferty also said something he took quite seriously. He said the word “conservative” was losing its meaning. Conservative impulses. What in blue blazes does that even mean? Q.E.D, I guess. It’s a symptom that a critic would use the phrase.

I stress this because amputating the real Lafferty, the few times he drops the ugly words that make you squirm, will not make him easier to read or make him a richer object of criticism. It manufactures a cotton candy Okie. You can have that piffle because that is not RAL. And that is why it bothers me: if we ignore or fret over the ugly words and views, if we sand down his conservatism or misunderstand it, we will certainly mistake what is not whimsical for what is. Whimsy was never Lafferty's main point; it was the spoonful of sugar he used to get the hard pills down people’s throats. His worldview is one of our best hermeneutics for fine-resolution detail.

The number of Lafferty readers who are okay with being pants-crappingly confused because that is just RAL, you-know-how-he-is, shocks me. I don’t overstate this. It included Virginia Kidd and Damon Knight, who went back and forth over "The Skinny People of Leptophlebo Street." If it isn't a coded story making fun of usury, with some elbowing in the ribs about the Jews, I'll kiss my elbow, but that didn't occur to those two intelligent people. If Lafferty is a trickster, this is consummate trickery.

That Lafferty wrote lafferties is a cute one. He will always have that around his neck. For too many people, it’s a brain freeze.

Here's another. Come closer. I have something that you ought to know. Lafferty was against the original Gulf War. Isn’t that really something?! That guy who supported the Vietnam War! He wasn’t dogmatic.

Say someone uses this as evidence that Lafferty was not an ultra-conservative. Hand on my heart, I have heard this nonsense said with blank affect. The only laughter I heard was my own. The remark was obiter dicta meant to contrast his positions on the Vietnam War and the First Gulf War invasion as if there were a political disjunction here. Did anyone ever think Lafferty was a warmonger?

A history lesson.

This was the most famous American against the Gulf War.

Yep. That guy. Are we to believe Pat Buchanan was not a conservative?

Here is what Buchanan said about the Gulf War. It’s what caught him so much heat and what will be mentioned in his New York Times obituary:

“There are only two groups that are beating the drums for war in the Middle East — the Israeli defense ministry and its amen corner in the United States.”

Of course, Pat Buchanan was also a speechwriter for Nixon during the Vietnam War, and his view was likely Lafferty's. In 2007, Buchanan said, "The principal impediment to that objective in Vietnam was the mass demonstrations, given aid and comfort and support by the liberal media which was attacking the president constantly."

It is astonishing—puzzling, even weirdly delightful—that a smart man would take Lafferty’s opposition to the Iraq War as proof he was somehow more politically palatable and less dogmatic about his politics than one might expect. Why would anyone do such a thing? I have thoughts.

The Catholic backdrop matters here. That incredibly famous liberal Pope John Paul II was against the Gulf War because it was not a just war. Most (read that as almost all) American Catholic bishops spoke against the First Gulf War because they followed the Holy Father. How is any of this proof that Lafferty was less dogmatic or conservative?

I cannot believe this kind of slop helps anyone understand the man or his work, lefty or righty. Lafferty was not a typical conservative. He was ultra-conservative reactionary. He was right of a ninety-degree angle. His opposition to the Gulf War is evidence of his ultra-conservatism and dogmatism. He called himself a political Independent and a fiscal conservative because he felt that political conservatives were not conservative enough for him. And yet, there on YouTube, you will find someone (and I mean this sincerely) who is a Lafferty expert saying this somehow makes Lafferty not dogmatic, not thinking about how it might connect with Laffery’s ultramontanism and antisemitic view of international politics. This is disingenuous, desperate, deluded, or dumb.

For perspective, remember that Lafferty appreciated The Wanderer and called The Remnant "much slandered." He wrote about this in letters. Anyone thinking about the issue should at least be familiar with the name Joseph Sobran. If you don’t know who he is or why he is relevant, you don’t understand the context.

With that in mind, if someone spins Lafferty, ask for the full set of receipts. God only knows if you will get them, though. A shrewd clerk knows what files not to open. Insist that they be opened. Remember that there is a lesson you can learn from Lafferty. He wrote about marks, and he laughed at marks. Don’t be one yourself.

With that in mind, let’s go back to the year before the Vietnam War, when Lafferty is where you would expect him, firmly planted on the hard right. In May 1964, he sent a ballad to William F. Buckley’s National Review, declaring his loyalty to the conservative wing of the Republican Party over its moderates.

What follows is the poem itself, accompanied by some brief annotation.

"BALLAD FOR A DESPERATE CAUSE"

Alarm! Alarm! All covert friends, awake to our behest!

The thing we hoped forgotten comes again out of the West!

Arise, all less than gallant men, to bury Barry G.

The cleansing wind- so well we know- would wither you and me.

Contain, confuse, divide, divert with Inner Guard and Out,

And pray the simpler folk not know what it is all about.

With Trojan horse or darker nag we'll undercut the G.

With dorsal dagger do him in- the seven-letter B.

Our confidence in con-men's high. All favored run our sands.

And the ancient soldier gentleman is sitting on his hands.

The Rock is on our side, we know, but then the Rock is clay;

We need a wolf in shepherd's shift to ever save the day.

How stop the folk who still recall the Constitution Thing?

Too weak, too weak, too far away the Harold voice does ring.

The nix is on the Nixon, and the Scranton's in the moors,

And far afield the Cabot sings "Ambivalently yours."

The sands run wrong! The horses fade. We're thrown upon ourself!

We'll pull all stops on mellowing, security, and welf-

The Lippmann's in the willows and there's weeping on the Left;

But we've a fine contrivance left, we are not clear bereft:

We'll set a climate, fulsome friends and half-eroded souls;

We'll do him in with hi-jacked news and falsifying polls.

We have allies you never dreamed. Again our sands will run;

For undercutting is our forte, and defamation's fun.

We'll even puff the Lyndon up- as much as can be blown.

We'll raise a rousing rear-guard yet, and leave no stone unthrown.

— OBTRECTATOR

Alarm! Alarm! All covert friends, awake to our behest! / The thing we hoped forgotten comes again out of the West!

In 1964, establishment figures are alarmed because Barry Goldwater, senator from Arizona, has surged forward as the Republican presidential candidate. Moderates had hoped his candidacy would fade, but it hasn’t.

Arise, all less than gallant men, to bury Barry G. / The cleansing wind- so well we know- would wither you and me.

Enter the mainline Eisenhower Republicans. Goldwater and Buckley-style conservatism terrifies them, but the dawning conservative moment is a cleansing wind. Corrupt and timid Republicans won’t withstand it.

Contain, confuse, divide, divert with Inner Guard and Out, / And pray the simpler folk not know what it is all about.

The old establishment’s strategy: let’s use party machinery (“Inner Guard and Out”) to confuse and divide the rank-and-file, hoping ordinary voters don’t see the manipulation.

With Trojan horse or darker nag we'll undercut the G. / with dorsal dagger do him in- the seven-letter B.

If they can’t win the war honorably, they’ll sabotage Goldwater with trickery (“Trojan horse”) or treachery (“dorsal dagger”). The bastard!

Our confidence in con-men's high. All favored run our sands. / And the ancient soldier gentleman is sitting on his hands.

They trust political tricksters to steer things. The “ancient soldier gentleman” is Dwight Eisenhower, who is staying aloof instead of helping Goldwater.

The Rock is on our side, we know, but then the Rock is clay; / We need a wolf in shepherd's shift to ever save the day.

Nelson Rockefeller is the liberal Republican rival to Goldwater. But he’s weak. They need a deceptive leader (“wolf in shepherd’s shift”)—a moderate who can look gentle but fight hard and neutralize the conservative faction.

How stop the folk who still recall the Constitution Thing? / Too weak, too weak, too far away the Harold voice does ring.

Goldwater supporters stand for constitutional principles. Harold Stassen is a perennial GOP candidate, an ex-Minnesota governor. He’s ineffectual.

The nix is on the Nixon, and the Scranton's in the moors, / And far afield the Cabot sings "Ambivalently yours."

Richard Nixon is sidelined. He lost against Kennedy. William Scranton, the Pennsylvania governor, is stuck. Henry Cabot Lodge Jr., diplomat and past GOP hopeful, is halfhearted.

The sands run wrong! The horses fade. We're thrown upon ourself! / We'll pull all stops on mellowing, security, and welf-

Their plans fail; desperation sets in. They’ll lean on moderation, security (Cold War fears), and social programs to counter Goldwater’s hard-right stance.

The Lippmann's in the willows and there's weeping on the Left; / But we've a fine contrivance left, we are not clear bereft:

Walter Lippmann, who is a liberal commentator, is worried, and the political left despairs. But the establishment still has tricks left.

We'll set a climate, fulsome friends and half-eroded souls; / We'll do him in with hi-jacked news and falsifying polls.

They’ll manipulate the political climate by using friendly media voices and biased polling to discredit Goldwater.

We have allies you never dreamed. Again our sands will run; / For undercutting is our forte, and defamation's fun.

They boast of hidden allies in media, politics, and academia. Undercutting opponents and smearing reputations is their specialty.

We'll even puff the Lyndon up- as much as can be blown. / We'll raise a rousing rear-guard yet, and leave no stone unthrown.

In the end, they’ll even promote Lyndon Johnson if necessary to ensure Goldwater’s defeat. They like the left more than the hard right.

—

An Easter Egg. Not without a reason is Lafferty imitating Chesterton’s Lepanto: It's Chesterton at his best. A martial poem, it celebrates the 1571 naval battle where Christian forces under Don John of Austria defeated the Ottoman fleet. Written in a rolling, drumlike rhythm, the poem combines history with mythic grandeur, portraying the clash not merely as a military event but as a cosmic struggle. The stakes could not be higher: a battle between faith and darkness. You can see why Lafferty liked it. There are images of saints, angels, and crusading knights, contrasting Christian unity with the encroaching power of Islam. Don John is raised to the status of legendary hero, embodying providence, sacrifice, and the defense of Christendom, while the victory itself is presented as both miraculous and inevitable within the larger sweep of divine history. You can see what Lafferty was trying to do with Goldwater. With a large number of Catholic intellectual readers, The National Review was one of the few print organs where people might have understood the poem on this level.

Lafferty:

Our confidence in con-men's high. All favored run our sands.

And the ancient soldier gentleman is sitting on his hands.

Chesterton:

Cervantes on his galley sets the sword back in the sheath

(Don John of Austria rides homeward with a wreath.)

And he sees across a weary land a straggling road in Spain,

Up which a lean and foolish knight forever rides in vain,

And he smiles, but not as Sultans smile, and settles back the blade....

(But Don John of Austria rides home from the Crusade.)