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slight heightening of tone gives to the superficially parenthetical
words a weight and a dignity which are meant to encourage us to
understand their determinant value. We know what Lipset means
without his having to say it; thus he ascetically deprives himself of
the credit (or the responsibility?) for the birth of an idea which he
has nonetheless implanted in our minds. The Immaculate Conception
as a technique of propaganda.
With Lipset, the connection between Parsons's compulsively non–
commital "seems" and sociology-in-the-service-of-the-powers-that-be
becomes a trifle more explicit. We begin to see the specific political
loyalties which save these sociologists from living uniquely in the eerie
Parsonsian world of the unrealized Idea. They are not all as subtle
as Lipset, although, if anyone would care to go on with my
explica–
tion de texte
method, I highly recommend Daniel Bell's fascinatingly
slippery history of the Institute of Defense Analysis on pages
73-75
of
Confrontation.
Luckily, the dominant politics of these books is
often spelled out much more directly. First of all, one is struck by
the fact that the sociologists' procedural norms, which make such a
large place for the free exchange of ideas, allows for so little range
of opinion. We have opinion aplenty in
Confrontation
and
Students
in Revolt,
but, especially in
Confrontation,
it all seems to come out
on a barometer of more or less intense hostility to the radical forms
of student activism. Independence of thought, like skepticism, can
be a pretty scary thing - for the individual and for society - so
why pretend to espouse it as a value
if,
like Edward Shils, you can
only approve of local acts of rebellion within a pattern of conformity
to the ideas and institutions of society as it exists? Shils, at any rate,
makes
his
immense irritation with the young clear on every page
of his essay, and I confess that that strikes me as a merit in these two
volumes. Irving Kristol must, of course, get the highest rating in
this
respect, since he frankly recommends that "governmental author–
ities . . . step in and fill the power vacuum" created by "harassed
administrators and preoccupied professors" who have weakly given
in
to "reforms sponsored by students ... in the direction of removing
their obligation to get any kind of education at all."
It's nice to have Irving Kristol around; he clarifies issues and
commitments almost as refreshingly as Zbigniew Brzezinski,· who,
in
such matters, has naturally set a rather high standard. I asked a
