THE RIGHT BOOKS

In Chapter One of Outgrowing Democracy: A History of the United States in the Twentieth Century (Doubleday, 1984), the conservative historian and historical philosopher John Lukacs declares the themes of his book to be “what the end-phase of the modern age means for the institutions of the United States and for the evolving character of its people; the bureaucratization of American life, the mutations of American thinking, the inflation of words and aspirations, of institutions and of money, the in-substantialization of matter with its dangers, the spiritualization of matter with its evident dangers and potential promises.” Four years later, these concerns are mirrored by a much shorter work by another conservative, the sociologist Robert Nisbet, whose The Present Age: Progress and Anarchy in Modern America (Harper & Row, $17.95) adduces far more anarchy than progress in the history of the United States in the past three-quarters of a century and is, in fact, the most pessimistic work written from a conservative viewpoint that I have read since Outgrowing Democracy.

“The present age in American history,” Nisbet affirms, “begins with the Great War.” To World War I, which marked the end of “American innocence” and the start of “a virtual 75 Years’ War,” can be traced the anarchy of a culture of individuals hanging “loose upon society” (in Dr. Johnson’s phrase), the absolutism of a society dedicated to the ideal of democratic egalitarianism, the militarization of the American defense establishment and the moralization of American foreign policy, the super-bureaucratization of American government at every level, and the development of “a social order seemingly built out of a cash nexus.” Another legacy of the period 1917-1919—what Nisbet calls the Great American Myth: that America, almost singlehandedly, won the war and could win any and every other with equal ease—prevails today at the Pentagon and in the White House; among the American people, Nisbet believes, it is fast waning. “Americans are much less likely than they were a century ago to believe there is a special Providence that looks out for America and guides her purity of conscience to ever greater heights. . . . On the basis of recent White House occupants, it is unlikely that Americans will be coaxed and preached back to the American Idyll.”

CW

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Chilton Williamson Jr.

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In Chapter One of Outgrowing Democracy: A History of the United States in the Twentieth Century (Doubleday, 1984), the conservative historian and historical philosopher John Lukacs declares the themes of his book to be “what the end-phase of the modern age means for the institutions of the United States and for the evolving character of its people; the bureaucratization of American life, the mutations of American thinking, the inflation of words and aspirations, of institutions and of money, the in-substantialization of matter with its dangers, the spiritualization of matter with its evident dangers and potential promises.” Four years later, these concerns are mirrored by a much shorter work by another conservative, the sociologist Robert Nisbet, whose The Present Age: Progress and Anarchy in Modern America (Harper & Row, $17.95) adduces far more anarchy than progress in the history of the United States in the past three-quarters of a century and is, in fact, the most pessimistic work written from a conservative viewpoint that I have read since Outgrowing Democracy.

“The present age in American history,” Nisbet affirms, “begins with the Great War.” To World War I, which marked the end of “American innocence” and the start of “a virtual 75 Years’ War,” can be traced the anarchy of a culture of individuals hanging “loose upon society” (in Dr. Johnson’s phrase), the absolutism of a society dedicated to the ideal of democratic egalitarianism, the militarization of the American defense establishment and the moralization of American foreign policy, the super-bureaucratization of American government at every level, and the development of “a social order seemingly built out of a cash nexus.” Another legacy of the period 1917-1919—what Nisbet calls the Great American Myth: that America, almost singlehandedly, won the war and could win any and every other with equal ease—prevails today at the Pentagon and in the White House; among the American people, Nisbet believes, it is fast waning. “Americans are much less likely than they were a century ago to believe there is a special Providence that looks out for America and guides her purity of conscience to ever greater heights. . . . On the basis of recent White House occupants, it is unlikely that Americans will be coaxed and preached back to the American Idyll.”