490
PARTISAN REVIEW
What I have been describing are some of the assumptions as well as
the reflexes of the radical mind, at least the more fashionable part of it,
and its merging with some of the liberal mind at many points.
It
is not
hard to discern its features, and one could go on: it is everywhere on
view in political and cultural publications, in the universities, in the
streets, in the living rooms of the most earnest people. What is more dif–
ficult-and more significant-is to trace the origins of this almost auto–
matic manner of thinking. Perhaps it can
be
defmed as middle-brow pol–
itics, which has the same relation to serious politics as middle-brow
culture has to serious culture. For the radical-liberal mind of today has
all
the trappings of dedication and idealism associated with the socialist heri–
tage, without, however, its intellectual integrity or its constant dialogue
with complicated questions-or its goals. It is significant that the media
have made their contribution to both left and right thinking, reducing
them to the most popular and banal components.
But why has the radical mind become an idealized parody of itself?
The only plausible explanation is that the Soviet Union has transformed
what used to be socialist doctrine into a system of political maneuvers
justifYing totalitarian ends but cloaked in a humanitarian and semi–
socialist rhetoric.
It
is no longer socialist but it is made to look socialist, or
"progressive," which is a loose term that can be made to fit ambiguous
and contradictory but seemingly uplifting social aims. How else explain
the hostility of the far left to Israel and its indifference to the terror net–
work that includes the PLO, Libya, and Syria, and receives its arms and
training from the Soviet Union and its satellites-an attitude that has
little to do with socialism or democracy and strangely joins hands with
the anti-Semitism and oil interests of the right. It is also worth noting
that the Soviet Union was once friendly to Israel and that its shift was
echoed by many left groups in the West.
Or why does some of the left advocate unilateral disarmament,
which would make war, not peace, more likely, unless a disarming
America or Europe gave in to the Soviet Union? How explain the neu–
tralist and disarmament movements in Europe? It is true that Europe
dreads another war, but why has this dread taken the form of both
nuclear and conventional disarmament, which can preserve peace only
by relying on American arms or by accommodation to the Soviet
Union? Even the bilateral demonstrations in this country take no
account of the fact that disarmament agitation in one country strength–
ens the hand of the other superpower. Why is it that some of the left,
while pressing for social welfare, does not ask how a sagging economy
