Books in Brief: Political Hysteria in America

Political Hysteria in America, by Murray B. Levin (Basic Books, 286 pp., $8.50). Here, one would think, is a book with meat. Who among us has not marveled at the national capacity for political hysteria: the hysteria, for example, that followed Douglas MacArthur’s suggestion that the Korean War might be won; the hysteria that followed the suggestion that Alger Hiss (and possibly even others in State) might not have the best interests of the nation at heart; the hysteria that followed the resumption of bombing in Southeast Asia; the hysteria that followed the suggestion by Spiro Agnew that the television boys do not tell it completely like it is. But those minor blemishes on the national complexion are not what Levin has in mind. What he is talking about is national scar tissue—McCarthy himself, and Agnew and U.S. Steel and the Federalist Party. He is talking about “the deeply felt intolerance that springs from our intense commitment to Americanism, the irrational and compulsive need to defend the assumptions of John Locke and Adam Smith, the antisemitism, the nativism, the anti-intellectualism, the vigilantism, the racism, the xenophobia, the pursuit of self-interest under the guise of superpatriotism and the profound antiradicalism” which form “the working assumptions of millions of Americans.” Levin’s book is refreshing in one respect, however: It is not simply an attack by a liberal on conservatives. The predominant American liberalism, Levin concludes, is itself a reinforcer of traditional Americana (albeit with a Keynesian accent). He complains that the predominant liberalism has been unchallenged either by radicalism or by conservatism, a truth which much of the “conservative movement” fails to recognize. The truths are too infrequent in this book, however, and the hysteria too prevalent. m. h. edwards