The Notre Dame Commencement Address

lefties are stepping out. People who once called themselves ‘progressive’ and let everyone wonder what they really meant are now finding it fashionable to admit that they were Communists. . . .

“I suppose we should have seen it coming when Barbra Streisand played a member of the Young Communist League in The Way We Were, but a strange thing has happened: the Communist Party (U.S.A.) which was seen as a dagger pointed at the heart of America in the Fifties and as something of a joke in the Sixties, has become—like virtually everything else in the Seventies— a nostalgia piece, a curio. Over the past year, all sorts of books have appeared reminiscing about the good old days in the party.”

lefties are stepping out. People who once called themselves ‘progressive’ and let everyone wonder what they really meant are now finding it fashionable to admit that they were Communists. . . .

“I suppose we should have seen it coming when Barbra Streisand played a member of the Young Communist League in The Way We Were, but a strange thing has happened: the Communist Party (U.S.A.) which was seen as a dagger pointed at the heart of America in the Fifties and as something of a joke in the Sixties, has become—like virtually everything else in the Seventies— a nostalgia piece, a curio. Over the past year, all sorts of books have appeared reminiscing about the good old days in the party.”