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myself argued at the time. McCarthyism was essentially the last
stand of prewar isolationists on the right trying to exploit a new
world situation.
It
appears to have been a self-immunizing di–
sease, for efforts to revive it-by the Birchers, Agnew, Senator
Helms, and others-have had little success.
It is important, as Brooks and Dickstein maintain, to criti–
cize particular Reagan administration military proposals and
pronouncements on foreign policy, "sheer bluster" though they
may be, as Dickstein recognizes. But this job is hardly being neg–
lected by members of Congress, including some of Reagan 's own
party, leading newspapers and other media, and people like
Kennan, Bundy, MacNamara and Kissinger, who cannot
be
re–
garded as spokesmen for the left, which is indeed why Brooks
and Dickstein cite them so freely. The tone of Brooks's and
Dickstein's anxieties over a "new cold war mentality" would have
seemed more appropriate a couple of years ago when Reagan
first assumed office.
But it is also important that left liberals recognize the reality
of Soviet power and the need for a realistic foreign policy to cope
with it. I share the concern expressed by Jeffrey Herf in the Spring
issue of
Partisan Review
that the European left (outside of France)
is increasingly gravitating towards a self-deluding neutralist
position on the conflict between the Soviet Union and the NATO
powers. Such a position as well as its weaker reverberations on
this side of the Atlantic, is something we should also oppose.
