THE RIGHT BOOKS

Since the 1930s, a pair of related assumptions has been fashionable among American and Western European intellectuals. The first of these is that what Jean-François Revel called the totalitarian temptation is, at least in the short run, irresistible to sensitive, well-educated, and morally scrupulous young people. The second is that all men and women of heart are—or ought to be—socialists in their youth: a proposition logically equivalent to saying that the best Christians are those who had to be converted to the gospel from cannibalism. These assumptions are effectively controverted in Political Passages: Journeys of Change through Two Decades, 1968-1988 (Free Press, $21.95), edited by John H. Bunzel and comprising apologetic essays by a dozen prominent former socialists, among them Peter Collier and David Horowitz, Julius Lester, Ronald Radosh, Joseph Epstein, Michael Novak, and Mr. Bunzel himself. In addition there is a long introductory piece by the sociologist Edward Shils, who proved immune to the siren-song of radicalism in the Thirties and again in the Sixties. After reading their compelling statements, I hazard a guess that all 12 would admit it is better never to have tasted human flesh than to have done so and repented of it.

On the other hand, none of the conversion experiences described here is Pauline either in its suddenness or in its completeness, nor, in fact, are most of them true conversions: “Conservatism,” Horowitz reflects (“Letter to a Political Friend: On Being Totalitarian in America”), “is not the mirror image of radicalism, any more than skepticism is the mirror of faith.” Truth has revealed itself in fugitive increments to these people, and to only several of them in its entirety. Peter Collier—the biographer (with David Horowitz) of the Rockefellers, the Kennedys, and the Fords—seems to have traveled the furthest, to the point indeed where he today employs theological language to convey the insights vouchsafed by piecemeal revelation; more typical, however, is the historian Ronald Radosh’s cautious statement that, “As the 1980s progress, I find myself somewhere in limbo—chastened about the possibility of what I once thought would be the promise of socialism, but wary of those who believe that the United States has always stood unreservedly for freedom” (“On Hanging Up the Old Red Flag”).

CW

About the Author

Chilton Williamson Jr.

Featured Tags

Since the 1930s, a pair of related assumptions has been fashionable among American and Western European intellectuals. The first of these is that what Jean-François Revel called the totalitarian temptation is, at least in the short run, irresistible to sensitive, well-educated, and morally scrupulous young people. The second is that all men and women of heart are—or ought to be—socialists in their youth: a proposition logically equivalent to saying that the best Christians are those who had to be converted to the gospel from cannibalism. These assumptions are effectively controverted in Political Passages: Journeys of Change through Two Decades, 1968-1988 (Free Press, $21.95), edited by John H. Bunzel and comprising apologetic essays by a dozen prominent former socialists, among them Peter Collier and David Horowitz, Julius Lester, Ronald Radosh, Joseph Epstein, Michael Novak, and Mr. Bunzel himself. In addition there is a long introductory piece by the sociologist Edward Shils, who proved immune to the siren-song of radicalism in the Thirties and again in the Sixties. After reading their compelling statements, I hazard a guess that all 12 would admit it is better never to have tasted human flesh than to have done so and repented of it.

On the other hand, none of the conversion experiences described here is Pauline either in its suddenness or in its completeness, nor, in fact, are most of them true conversions: “Conservatism,” Horowitz reflects (“Letter to a Political Friend: On Being Totalitarian in America”), “is not the mirror image of radicalism, any more than skepticism is the mirror of faith.” Truth has revealed itself in fugitive increments to these people, and to only several of them in its entirety. Peter Collier—the biographer (with David Horowitz) of the Rockefellers, the Kennedys, and the Fords—seems to have traveled the furthest, to the point indeed where he today employs theological language to convey the insights vouchsafed by piecemeal revelation; more typical, however, is the historian Ronald Radosh’s cautious statement that, “As the 1980s progress, I find myself somewhere in limbo—chastened about the possibility of what I once thought would be the promise of socialism, but wary of those who believe that the United States has always stood unreservedly for freedom” (“On Hanging Up the Old Red Flag”).