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PARTISAN REVIEW
intellectuals, it seems
to
me it can only be by preserving a critical attitude
toward all ideologies and power structures, and toward all organized rhetor–
ics of salvation. What went wrong-for the apologists of the right and the
left-was to permit one lie to be substituted for another.
A note about the Introduction: I do not understand what Gary Wills's
essay was supposed to add . Far below the level of his earlier writing, it can be
described only as an unfortunate example of pop revisionist history. Every–
thing is reduced to a medieval morality play in which progress is dressed up
as a Communist, and reaction as an anti-Communist. Thus the cold war,
says Wills, was started by Truman as a piece of campaign strategy . And he
makes some mocking remarks about Mary McCarthy's and Dwight Mac–
donald's devotion to liberty , because of their opposition
to
the Waldorf
Conference, which was organized by the Communists. There is something
anachronistic about all this, coming at a time when even the Communists,
particularly in Europe, may be trying to free themselves from the old sectar–
ian thinking .
w.p.
