DENNIS H. WRONG
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unrevolutionary society. Specific proposals addressed to enduring
social problems, proposals supported by ample data and technical
knowledge, remain the kind of politics of the Left most likely to prove
successful, as the experience of the New Deal suggests. It was a mistake,
however, to see such an approach as "the triumph of anti-ideology," to
believe that democratic politics could ever be sanitized of ideals and
passionate protest or that poverty and inequality could be conquered
by purely technical measures administered by experts, as maintained by
President Kennedy in his 1962 Yale speech, nowadays recalled only to
be derided. Political mobilization and the "professionalization of
reform" (Moynihan) are not mutually exclusive alternatives: as the
general in the
New Yorker
cartoon grumbled on spying a "make love
not war" poster, "I don't see why we can't do both."
In any case, extreme disenchantment with American society was
not the result of dormant revolutionary passions aroused by the
excessive optimism of liberal reformers but rather a response to mostly
unrelated events: the war, the assassinations, the brief period of ghetto
rioting, the unlovable, abrasive characters of two successive "acci–
dental" presidents Paradoxically, as Steinfels reminds us, several of the
very policies that have become the special
bete noires
of neoconserva–
tives were first advanced by men who are today counted in their ranks.
Moynihan and Glazer both developed the argument that the traditional
liberal goal of equality of opportunity for blacks and racial minorities
needed to be supplemented by a concern for equality of results or
outcomes. Bell defended temporary "reverse discrimination" in favor
of blacks. Bureaucratic stupidity and rigidity undoubtedly influenced
the application of these policies and some measures intended to
implement them proved ill-conceived at the very least, such as busing
and strict numerical quotas in educational admissions. In addition, as
anyone attending an academic social science convention in recent years
knows, the most questionable measures have often been treated as
sacred cows by small bands of leftover sixties radicals ready to howl
down as "racist" work casting doubt on their effectiveness by careful
researchers like James Coleman and Christopher Jencks. Yet the
original case for affirmative action is persuasively restated by Steinfels,
although he concedes the validity of criticisms directed at particular
programs.
The present moment, however, looks singularly unpromising for
any
politics of the Left, more unpromising than the early fifties in the
absence even of a crYPlOfascist threat like McCarthyism to keep alive a
spirit of defensive protest. Not that there is no mood of crisis, but the
