Gray Dawn

THE current edition of Lingua Franca, an academic magazine of more than academic interest, contains an article on the drift of intellectuals away from the Right towards a position hostile to the supposedly unregulated capitalism of the post-Cold War world. It is entitled “Ex-Cons.” And it concentrates on the political transformation of two intellectuals in particular, namely John Gray, Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics, and Edward Luttwak, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic & International Studies and author of Turbo-Capitalism.

The subject is certainly an absorbing and significant one. A flight of intellectuals rightwards from the Left between 1968 and 1980 created neoconservatism and heralded the decade-long hegemony of Reaganism and Thatcherism in Anglo-America. If Messrs. Gray and Luttwak represent a similar flight in the opposite direction, then we might conceivably be on the verge of an upsurge in left-wing thought and activism. Nor are signs lacking of such a trend—the rolling anti-WTO riots that began in Seattle, the rise of Naderism in the 2000 campaign, the plurality for Al Gore in the popular vote, and so on. The only problem with Lingua Franco’s argument is that neither Luttwak nor Gray can be reasonably cited as evidence of such a trend since neither of them can be fairly described as an ex-conservative.

About the Author

John O’Sullivan

John O’Sullivan is a senior fellow at National Review Institute and a contributing editor of National Review.

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THE current edition of Lingua Franca, an academic magazine of more than academic interest, contains an article on the drift of intellectuals away from the Right towards a position hostile to the supposedly unregulated capitalism of the post-Cold War world. It is entitled “Ex-Cons.” And it concentrates on the political transformation of two intellectuals in particular, namely John Gray, Professor of European Thought at the London School of Economics, and Edward Luttwak, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic & International Studies and author of Turbo-Capitalism.

The subject is certainly an absorbing and significant one. A flight of intellectuals rightwards from the Left between 1968 and 1980 created neoconservatism and heralded the decade-long hegemony of Reaganism and Thatcherism in Anglo-America. If Messrs. Gray and Luttwak represent a similar flight in the opposite direction, then we might conceivably be on the verge of an upsurge in left-wing thought and activism. Nor are signs lacking of such a trend—the rolling anti-WTO riots that began in Seattle, the rise of Naderism in the 2000 campaign, the plurality for Al Gore in the popular vote, and so on. The only problem with Lingua Franco’s argument is that neither Luttwak nor Gray can be reasonably cited as evidence of such a trend since neither of them can be fairly described as an ex-conservative.