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even though the peace propagandists themselves argue, when it
suits their purposes, that there are now enough weapons to destroy
the world. The question is how to outlaw or prevent their use.
The peace movement, particularly in Germany and in the U.S.,
plays up the fear of nuclear destruction. But by what logic is fear
lessened by unilateral disarmament? Maybe the opposite is true.
In the end, there are the issues themselves, that are blurred or
evaded by Brooks's and Dickstein's politics. What are their
solutions
to
the very grave and complex problems we face, beyond
grumbling about the conservatives and taking moral postures?
For example, the situation in Central America presents us with a
terrible dilemma. The ideal solution would be a democratic
regime in El Salvador. But no one has discovered an easy way of
transforming autocratic and corrupt regimes in Asia, Africa, or
South America into Western democracies. Do you then simply
accept their conversion into totalitarian communist regimes,
which are even worse in their disregard of human rights and
intellectual freedom?
Brooks and Dickstein's answer to our dilemma is to celebrate
the great days of the sixties, forgetting that the sixties, though
full of radical enthusiasm, came to nothing because they substi–
tuted slogans for programs, and because they ended up in terror–
ism, and in the very illusions about totalitarianism that, according
to Brooks, they tried to shed at the beginning.
Perhaps the basic difference between myself and Brooks and
Dickstein is that they do not appear to regard Soviet totalitarianism
as the main political threat today-perhaps not even as a threat
at all. And it is hard to know what they propose as a policy for
America other than a left wing version of isolationism.
Edith Kurzweil
A specter is, in fact, haunting our political life, but it is
not an obsession with communism; it is the levelling of complexities
to the lowest common denominator-accentuating the legendary
American naivete-and the fear of sorting out legitimate left
issues from cant. How else can one explain that Morris Dickstein
does not recall that only during detente-and who would not
want true detente-the balance of weapons tipped; that then as
