Mother Earth News - Mother Earth News 1976

It was so easy back then-during the 1950s and early 60s-to be a Right Thinking Citizen of the United States. Easy because we all knew who wore the White Hats (yeaaa!) and who wore the Black Ones (boooo!).

Capitalism-which we naively defined as equal parts free enterprise, democracy, and the Winning of the West-was Good. Communism which was anything associated with Russia or Red China-was Bad

And they wanted to get us : And, despite the fact that God was on our side, theyd do it too if we didnt somehow keep ahead : (The day-and-night fear of Right Thinking Americans throughout the 50s and early 60s was that the United States would fall behind in some nebulous, unspecified
contest and quickly suffer a very concrete-though undefined-fate: The communists Ill just come in here and take over.)
And so progress-which was already as American as mom, flag, and apple pie-became our secret weapon. Our be-all, end-all. (Your future is great in a growing America.)

New and improved were Good while conservation and little old bird-watchers in tennis shoes were Bad (Your future is Great in a growing America.

We all knew that. Just as we knew that bigger especially if we were measuring the good ole U.S. Government, business, or the family car-meant better: (Your future is GREAT in a growing America!)

And one of the reasons we knew these truths was because Big Business and Big Government hired some very clever and very talented people to convince us that we knew them. And one of those clever, talented people. was Karl Hess.

Back in 1964, Hess was an important public relations man for what Dwight D. Eisenhower had already labeled the `Military Industrial Complex: As a speech writer, aide, and one-man think tank for Presidential candidate Barry Goldwater, Karl was the intellectual darling of the Republican Party (Goldwaters famous observation that extremism in the defense of freedom is no vice and moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue, was a Hess invention). And, while other hawks of the time occasionally advocated hitting either Russia or China with atomic weapons before the country in question could throw a bomb at us, young Mr. Hess favored immediate, pre-emptive nuclear strikes against both Russia and China.

Karl Hess, in short, was the truest of the True Believers in 1964s upwardly mobile, upper-middle-class, uptight America. He dressed conservatively. Lived in a fashionable Washington, D.C. suburb. Wrote speeches for every major Republican spokesman. Was the idol of his country club set.

But that was a long time ago. Today, Karl Hess is ,a6 raggedy homesteader in the hills of West Virginia. So turned against the bigger is better Military-Industrial government he used to shill for that-for the past eight years-he has refused to pay any income tax at all. Which largely explains why Karl and his wife, Therese, now eke out a subsistence living by bartering his welding and her typing for the items they cant produce on their small piece of land.

Gone are the conservative business suits. Gone is the fashionable suburban home. Gone is the country club membership. In their place are bib overalls and a still-under-construction house that the Hesses are putting together from salvaged materials with their own hands.

And has Karls political and economic turnaround impressed, persuaded, or worried his old right-wing, business as usual buddies? Not especially. It has embarrassed them though. Because Hess hasnt been content to just live his new ideals: He had to write about them too. And his book (Dear America, $7.95, William Morrow & Co.) which explains exactly why he changed from right to left, big to little, war to peace-became one of last summers bestsellers. Thereby turning Karl Hess into a rather annoying thorn in the side of the same people that he once elevated to power (But Martha, Barry Goldwaters old speechwriter just cant say things like that! .

Its interesting to note, on the other hand, that Barry Goldwater himself who still carries the right-wing conservative banner and carries it proudly has remained cordial to his old aide. Has, in fact, even agreed with some of Karls new views!

Whats going on here anyway?

In an effort to answer that question, THE MOTHER EARTH NEWS recently sent Anson Mount to visit the 10-acre Hess homestead nestled in a sharp bend of West Virginias Opequon Creek : There he found Karl (a gentle, good-natured bear who-with his beard, ample waistline, and bib overalls-looked as if he had just stepped out of an 1870 daguerreotype) and Therese (a hearty and handsome woman who seems capable of doing everything better than anyone else) slinging mortar and laying concrete blocks with the help of a half dozen, enthusiastic, Huckleberry Finn-type children.

After an afternoon of heavy labor, says Anson, we all walked down to the creek and went skinny-dipping in an old swimming hole straight out of the deepest memory of anyone who ever spent his or her childhood in the country. There was a rope-and-plank suspension bridge nearby, gigantic sycamores leaning over the stream, dragonflies flitting above water so clear it sometimes seemed invisible, and the smells and soft hum of late summer hanging in the air.

Later, back at the farmhouse Karl and Therese live in while building their own home, everyone pitched in to fix a supper of barbecued pork chops, corn on the cob, and salad which we ate in the front yard as darkness fell and a blaze of stars lit the night sky. Throughout the preparation and consumption of the meal, Karl kept us in stitches with hilarious comments about everything from soup to Pentagon nuts. Once the dishes had been washed and Therese and the neighborhood children had retreated to the living room to play flutes and sing, Karl and I began our conversation at the kitchen table in the light of a kerosene lamp.

PLOWBOY:Karl, everyone familiar with your career is intrigued by the switch youve made from traditional right wing conservatism to the New Left yet your book, Dear America, is a fervent call for a return to what can only be described as Old-Fashioned American Values. Have you really changed so much?

HESS: No. I still believe in the same things Ive always believed in.

PLOWBOY: Which are?

HESS: Individualism. Self-reliance. Decentralization. Individual responsibility.

PLOWBOY: Those seem to be rather strange commodities to expect from the left.

HESS: Maybe so. But Im no doctrinaire liberal. I dont now believe in the welfare state any more than I once really believed in the warfare state. Im still holding out for the same old values I always supported the only difference is that Ive changed my mind about the identity of the good guys and the bad guys. The New Left now seems to me to be espousing the causes that the Old Right once stood up for: individual responsibility and self-determination.

PLOWBOY: And you no longer feel that the right ran deliver such values?