Books in Brief: Ethics (and Other Liabilities)

Ethics (and Other Liabilities), by Harry Stein (St. Martin’s, 168 pp., $10.95). Harry Stein’s “Ethics” columns were not must reading in Esquire, but collected between hard covers they are compelling. This, despite the fact that Stein was apparently a “red-diaper baby,” son of a socialist and ex-Communist, and a typical radical child of the Sixties. When evil is called for, he invariably invokes Joe McCarthy and the blacklist, the Nixon White House, and “Reagan Zealots.” He brings in a certain amount of American selfloathing. He talks about the greatness of “a man like Ramsey Clark,” and the Berrigans’ “fighting the good fight.” And yet, this seemingly unreconstructed leftist admits that ambition and aggressiveness have been given a bad time, and even notes, “A society grounded in individual achievement and self-gratification has its plusses —some people are indeed driven to extraordinary achievement [though] it does not make for general good feeling.” Still, Stein more often than not sees through leftist cant and self-righteousness. He considers adultery, envy, greed, responsibility, and lying, not to mention pluck and vengeance: subjects not often discussed today, and seldom discussed so matter-of-factly. Here is a man grappling with moral decisions, with right and wrong, with what were once called the eternal verities before the Left decided everything was negotiable and everything was relative—which is no doubt why the author evinces such anguish. Ethics is a worthwhile, if occasionally infuriating, book, and the author has enough humor to keep his essays from becoming Puritan harangues.