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PARTISAN REVIEW
well the anti-Americanism of those Europeans who were brought
up on it did not diminish; or that only
The Nation
and lesser left
journals would consider "the mobilization of
Partisan Review
history by neoconservatives" a political issue. For William
Barrett's slanted recollections would be treated factually , or
would be ignored, were they not "useful" to their current ideolog–
ical line.
The mobilization of history, not any longer confined to the
right, now is put into the service of left causes: historians, alleged–
ly the only ones to possess a long-range view, are to rethink all past
events, "because the world may be wiped out. " Every volatile sit–
uation in Latin America or Asia is compared to Vietnam in the
most simplistic fashion; and it has become more acceptable to
present facts selectively. I am not accusing Brooks or Dickstein of
such vulgarizations, but I notice that some of their formulations
fail to examine critically the motives of their friends on the left.
Many of these people are also my friends . And I do not favor
some of President Reagan's policies either-his lack of concern
about unemployment, cities, minorities, and his simplistic, un–
informed rhetoric, which, at least in Europe, tends to be taken at
face value. Nor do I think his policy towards Latin America ex–
hibits great statesmanship. Dickstein is correct when he talks of
"sheer bluster," although it is conceivable that had we actively
interfered in Poland, for instance, this might have been much
more of a provocation than the "anticommunist crusade." The
implication that every anticommunist is a cold warrior, and the
lumping of Reaganites, the moral majority, and all other rightist
groups with the anticommunist left, it seems to me, is a cheap at–
tack on those of us who hope to retain our critical faculties, who
don't want to mix up wishful thinking with real politics. And its
aims seem to be to put one on the defensive in a discussion.
The true issues, however, are elsewhere: and they are not the
same in the various European countries as in the U.S., although
the noncommunist left as well as the right do perceive the Soviet
threat as central. In fact, the French socialists continue the Gaul–
list foreign policy, building up their
for ce de frappe,
insisting
that they must increase this
force
because America has not kept
pace with the Soviet Union. Whether part of the right, the left, or
the
nouveau gauche,
the proverbial French individualism mili–
tates against facile solutions by both intellectuals and the general
