Books in Brief: Dear America

Dear America, by Karl Hess (Morrow, 279 pp., $7.95).

Hess has been, he tells us, a newsman, pilot, gun-runner, and corporate executive. And of course he did a stint as Barry Goldwater’s chief speech-writer. (The cover blurb also repeats the persistent rumor that he was “a founding editor of national review.” He wasn’t.) Today he welds, raises fish on his roof, and argues zestfully for something he calls “workplace democracy,” a system that will replace the twin evils of corporate capitalism and state socialism that he says have robbed us of our freedoms. Hess has mastered most of the arguments of the neo Old Right. True, there are problems. He has to demonstrate that conservatives are really liberals; that right is really left; that individualism is really collectivism—that there is, in fact, no such thing as individualism; that working people and Panthers and former SDSers are really natural allies. But no matter. Hess is an enthusiastic fellow, a believer in search of a belief. Perhaps he best sums it up himself when he describes his characteristically brief bout with religion (he is now, of course, an atheist): “I recall actually going to church to pray to believe, for some enlightment that would turn the chore of professing into the joy of believing. It never came . . .” Poor Karl Hess.

JR

About the Author

John R. Coyne Jr.

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Dear America, by Karl Hess (Morrow, 279 pp., $7.95).

Hess has been, he tells us, a newsman, pilot, gun-runner, and corporate executive. And of course he did a stint as Barry Goldwater’s chief speech-writer. (The cover blurb also repeats the persistent rumor that he was “a founding editor of national review.” He wasn’t.) Today he welds, raises fish on his roof, and argues zestfully for something he calls “workplace democracy,” a system that will replace the twin evils of corporate capitalism and state socialism that he says have robbed us of our freedoms. Hess has mastered most of the arguments of the neo Old Right. True, there are problems. He has to demonstrate that conservatives are really liberals; that right is really left; that individualism is really collectivism—that there is, in fact, no such thing as individualism; that working people and Panthers and former SDSers are really natural allies. But no matter. Hess is an enthusiastic fellow, a believer in search of a belief. Perhaps he best sums it up himself when he describes his characteristically brief bout with religion (he is now, of course, an atheist): “I recall actually going to church to pray to believe, for some enlightment that would turn the chore of professing into the joy of believing. It never came . . .” Poor Karl Hess.