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Robert Leiter
One might assume that this late in the 20th century certain ideas, such as
the efficacy of any socialist enterprise, would have been thoroughly
discredited, especially considering the demise of the Soviet Union and the
publication of books like The Haunted Wood.
But that is not the case, argues writer David Horowitz, in his new and
quite brilliant book of essays, The Politics of Bad Faith, recently
published by the Free Press.
No matter what the pundits say, notes the
author, we are not in a post-ideological age where the political
designations "left" and "right" no longer have credibility. Their meanings
simply have been camouflaged.
According to Horowitz, what Kristol refers to as "liberal ethos" is in no
way liberal, but rather the "radical enterprise" now gussied up in
"liberal" dress.
"Group collectivism, racial preferences, 'substantive equality' and moral
relativism - these are the rallying themes of contemporary liberals,"
Horowitz writes. "But they have little in common with the liberalism of the
pre-Sixties era, or with its classical antecedents. In fact, they make up a
radical creed."
Adherents to this creed, Horowitz argues, have been leading an assault
against the most basic American principles. Horowitz, like many other
commentators before him, warns that nowhere is this assault felt more
incessantly than on the college campus, where the triumph of political
correctness is almost complete.
In the six essays gathered here, Horowitz, author of the monumentally
important autobiography Radical Son, constructs a carefully delineated
history of the radical enterprise beginning with its origins in the 19th
century.
For anyone interested in the fate of political ideas in America today, The
Politics of Bad Faith is indispensible reading. For those interested in the
Jewish attraction to radicalism, the essay "The Religious Roots of
Radicalism" cannot be missed. It illuminates the psychology behind what has
been called, in a ridiculously positive sense, "the romance of American
communism" that led far too many to lose their way in "the haunted wood" of
espionage.
The flip-side of French left-wing callousness
Another species of public intellectual -- this time, the genus is French --
forms the subject of Tony Judt's new book,
FOR ANYONE INTERESTED in the fate of political ideas in America today, The Burden of Responsibility
recently published by the University of Chicago Press.
The book appears
several years after the New York University professor's Past Imperfect, a
devastating indictment of 20th-century French intellectual hauteur and
moral irresponsibility, especially as reflected in the lives and works of
such revered figures as Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir.
It is of note that Blum and Aron were Jewish.
Judt writes: "This book is about three Frenchmen who lived and wrote
against the grain of [the age] of irresponsibility. They were very
different men and would have been surprised to think of themselves as a
group, yet they have something rather distinctive in common. All three
played an important role in the France of their lifetime but lived at a
slightly awkward tangent to their contemporaries.
For much of his adult
life each was an object of dislike, suspicion, contempt or hatred for many
of his peers; only at the end of their long lives were Leon Blum and
Raymond Aron, for quite different reasons, able to relax into the comfort
of near-universal admiration, respect and, in some quarters, adulation.
Camus, who had experienced all three by the age of 35, died 12 years later
an insecure and much-maligned figure; it would be 30 years before his
reputation would recover."
Because of the presence of Aron here, Judt's book also serves as a nice
addendum to Ignatieff's life of Isaiah Berlin. The biographer tells us that Aron
was both one of Berlin's friends and his most sincere rivals.
Aron "became the only French figure whom Isaiah respected," writes
Ignatieff. "Isaiah called upon him in Paris in 1950 and they kept in
contact thereafter. Aron was liberal, anti-communist, Jewish, skeptical --
all these things about him appealed to Isaiah -- but he was too
intellectually vain to become a close friend. He seemed piqued that the
young Oxford don did not appear to regard himself as an Aronian, while
Berlin thought Aron was a superb political journalist but a weak historian
of
Bad-Faith Politics
(http://www.jewishworldreview.com)
FOR ANYONE INTERESTED in the fate of political ideas in America today, The
Politics of Bad Faith is indispensible reading.
Horowitz quotes Irving Kristol, the godfather of neoconservatism, who,
several years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, wrote: "There is no 'after
the Cold War' for me. So far from having ended, my cold war has increased
in intensity, as sector after sector of American life has been ruthlessly
corrupted by the liberal ethos. It is an ethos that aims simultaneously at
political and social collectivism on the one hand, and moral anarchy on the
other."
In his new work, Judt is in a more celebratory mood, analyzing the flip
side of French left-wing callousness. He presents portraits of three major
figures whose careers mark finer moments in recent French intellectual
life: Political figure Leon Blum, novelist Albert Camus and political
theorist Raymon Aron.
Robert Leiter is Literary Editor of the Philadelphia Jewish Exponent.
