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PARTISAN REVIEW
mon man, with the embarrassing argument: "You always claim that
you do things for me, that you spend sleepless nights thinking of my
problems, that my good is your only aim in life. I do not approve of
what you have done, and it is up to you to give me, in my simple
language, better evidence of your wisdom."
Democracy having lost all significance in the minds of most
statesmen and politicians, that is why such abundant use of military
secrecy is being made in our time.
It
may be said in fact that the
right to withhold information from the people on the basis of security
reasons is the greatest loot the winning democracies have taken over
from the totalitarian countries. And, most unfortunately, the people
in our age having become so dejected, so unwilling to assert any right
other than that of existing materially, the statesmen get away with
the most incredible nonsense.
But going back from these sad general considerations to the sub–
ject of modern constructiveness, it is easy to see that nobody has a
right to impose upon a negative critic the obligation to produce a
workable substitute for the idea or policy he is shattering to pieces.
A negation stands by itself in its own right, and the man who makes
such a negation and is therefore guilty of disturbing the mental dull–
ness of his opponents, has the right to say that he doesn't feel equipped
to go one step further in suggesting constructive substitutes for the
thing he dislikes, and this will not invalidate in any way his negative
argumentation. In fact it is he, and he alone, who, with his stubborn
"no" establishes the link between the various specialists in their ivory
towers and reality.
If
there is anything real in those ivory towers, it
will be proven real only by the fact that it makes sense to him.
If
instead he has to be invited in and initiated into the mysteries of each
tower's specialty, that is, if he has to leave the ground of common
sense before he can even begin to understand those constructions, then
those constructions are phantasmagoria for which there exists no proof
of truth.
Of course, all the critics of criticism, all the manipulators of
constructiveness, who exact such intellectual passports to admit any–
one to the slightest expression of doubt, are, for the most part, un–
aware of the monstrous implications of their demands; and not less
unaware than they are the lecturers and writers themselves who gladly
