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thinking is advocacy of " unilateral disarmament" is abusive. And
when Phillips assures us that "everyone is for peace," he surely
begs the question: what do you mean by "peace," and how are you
"for" it? What are your goals, and what are your strategies?
My basic quarrel with Phillips is his failure to analyze such
questions, his use of a rhetoric which tends
to
support the simplistic
polarizations of the extreme left and the extreme right-especially
the latter, since it is the latter, after all, that holds political power
in this country at this time. No one can publish a political state–
ment without awareness of the political context, which at present
is dominated by a right which equates the national interest with
evangelical warfare against godless communism on the one hand,
and the redistribution of national resources and power to the
wealthy on the other, and which offers in the place of coherent
programs the sabotage of government policies and agencies de–
vised to protect the common good, and the subversion of rational
approaches to global politics. The Reagan presidency has revealed
a curious trait of the American right that the left has long misun–
derstood: it is not really a totalitarian right-except on questions
of "morality" -and certainly not a conservative one, but more
nearly an anarchist right, which in two years has done more
to
subvert the exercise of government and statesmanship than
Nixon's deviousness or Carter's incompetence ever achieved. Yet
the domestic anarchic impulse is coupled to the militaristic im–
pulse in foreign affairs, creating a situation of unprecedented
danger.
I am of course in agreement with Phillips that political
thought today is full of confusions. But I think that political com–
mentary will best transcend these confusions if it turns to preparing
the way for the political debates of the post-Reagan period–
assuming our survival until then-and attempts to delineate the
elements of a renewed liberal left.
William Phillips
It is difficult to respond to Brooks and Dickstein because
they do not present any genuine arguments or analysis. Instead
they offer a brief refresher course in left attitudinizing. Hence to
