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PARTISAN REVIEW
either a right or a left stance . But I would like to suggest that short of some
cataclysmic social change a critical attitude toward the allocations of power
is not incompatible with a concern for the fate of the country. And though
liberals and the left usually find it politically convenient not to face the is–
sue, they are not really indifferent to the possibility of a national decline–
perhaps they can afford to seem indifferent because they assume that Amer–
ican power will not be diminished. However, a position that is critical with–
out being totally detached is more difficult to maintain : it is much more
difficult than either the conservative faith, which is little more than patriotism
blown up into an ideology, or the extreme radical attitude stemming from
Leninism, which
is
predicated on an indifference to the fate of one's country,
to the point even of indifference to its military defeat. Perhaps the main
question liberals and radicals have to ask themselves is whether the national
interest can be reduced to a euphemism for big business and corrupt poli–
tics . To put it more broadly, the question might be whether-and how–
our government can act to safeguard democratic values in other parts of the
world and whether its interest in freedom is incidental to protecting the
profit system against any kind of socialization . If the world is to be saved–
from tyranny, war, poverty-it has to be in the name of a more inspiring
ideal than free enterprise and a politics more convincing than a handout of
democratic slogans, a rhetorical game which everyone, from left to right, has
learned to play these days. Podhoretz might be right in saying that the
United States should be seen as promoting its own interests whether it is
supporting dictatorial or democratic regimes. But leaving aside the moral
implications of such a policy, what is being questioned is not only whether
it can be successful but also whether it is failing because it does not embrace
a social vision larger than the fate of American power.
W.P.
