868
PARTISAN REVIEW
In the end, as in the beginning- and except, to repeat, for a
brief interlude in the middle- what
PR
has stood for is the refusal to
choose between the actual alternatives offered by the real world, and
a flight into the utopian dreams of the Left. I too was once mes–
merized by those dreams, but I have come to see them as the breed–
ing ground of a neutralism no less dangerous and immoral today
than its counterpart was in the late thirties. Therefore, I have also
come to see that I was wrong in the claim I once made to
PR's
spiritual and political legacy. To commemorate
PR's
fiftieth anni–
versary by saying this brings no joy to my heart, and perhaps it will
bring no joy to yours either. But there, alas, it is.
Norman Podhoretz, the editor of
Commentary,
is the author
of
Why
We Were in Vietnam
(Simon and Schuster, 1983), and other books of so–
cial criticism.
Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
THE VITAL CENTER
Partisan Review
asks how I have changed in my views over
the past fifty years. Half a century ago I was in my seventeenth year,
a New Dealer in politics and a traditionalist in literature. In the next
dozen years, Hitler, Stalin, and Reinhold Niebuhr persuaded me of
the reality of evil, and I came to see that original sin sets limits on
human striving.
The Vital Center
registered those changes in 1949.
It
is, I suppose, evidence of lack of imagination or of some
other infirmity of character; but, I am rather embarrassed to say, I
have not radically altered my views in the third of a century since . I
took a look at
The Vital Center
the other day and would subscribe to
most of it now. The writers I quote- Pascal, Dostoevsky, Yeats,
