Principles and Heresies

The Climate of Discussion

A curious air of unreality seems to pervade what is said and written these days on American foreign policy. And this quality is as pronounced in the thoughtful studies of a Kennan or a Kissinger as in the simple nostrums of an Eisenhower or the hysterical whinings of a Norman Cousins. What is lacking is not awareness of crisis, nor even (for example in Kissinger) honest and careful effort to analyze its aspects and prescribe instrumentalities with which solutions might be achieved. What gives the discussion, the analyses, the proposals, that air of unreality which (to my mind at least) seems to pervade them is the refusal to face simultaneously all the principled issues involved, simultaneously to see both sides of our dilemma, no matter how fearful the contradiction that may be disclosed.

FS

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Frank S. Meyer

Frank S. Meyer was a senior editor of National Review.

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The Climate of Discussion

A curious air of unreality seems to pervade what is said and written these days on American foreign policy. And this quality is as pronounced in the thoughtful studies of a Kennan or a Kissinger as in the simple nostrums of an Eisenhower or the hysterical whinings of a Norman Cousins. What is lacking is not awareness of crisis, nor even (for example in Kissinger) honest and careful effort to analyze its aspects and prescribe instrumentalities with which solutions might be achieved. What gives the discussion, the analyses, the proposals, that air of unreality which (to my mind at least) seems to pervade them is the refusal to face simultaneously all the principled issues involved, simultaneously to see both sides of our dilemma, no matter how fearful the contradiction that may be disclosed.