THE COLD WAR AND THE WEST
77
Americans by force of anus. Khrushchev cannot tell China what to
do, cannot tell Albania what to think. But 180,000,000 Americans,
born and brought up in the conviction of their uniqueness, of
being as good as the next guy and no crap from anybody, are so
menaced in their independence that it would be worth forty million
or more corpses to protect them. What a patriotic image! What
faith in one's country and its traditions!
Americans can lose their freedom only from within. I agree with
the Birchers: if there's a Communist menace it's under the skin.
If
it's not found there it doesn't exist. The Communists can no more
deprive us of freedom (the fear of intellectuals today) than they
could bring us socialism (the hope of intellectuals twenty-five years
ago) . They can provide a model from which Americans can learn
how to deprive themselves of freedom through a collectivism which
is the enemy of the individual. Our strategists of anti-Communism
have been studying this model eagerly since the cold war began.
In sum, there is a Communist antagonist. But having an anta-
- gonist does not mean that you must be ready for murder and suicide.
An
antagonist does not threaten your being, as a menace does-your
own character may even be heightened by his presence. There was
a Communist antagonist in 1938 but the menace then was the Nazis.
Today the menace is nuclear war. To abate this menace a realistic
politics is essential, a politics which would get rid once and for
all
of
the fraud of freedom versus socialism and put ideals and facts on
the table.
ARTHUR SCHLESINGER, JR.
1.
Has the west been winning or losing the cold war?
This
formulation, in my judgment, oversimplifies the actual problem. Either
there will be a hot war, in which case everyone will lose; or else
there will be a protracted, see-saw competition, in which case that
side will 'win' which can deal most adequately with the processes of
modernization. I have no doubt that the open society will ultimately
win this competition. The reason for my confidence is that, if the
