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toward the United States with an attitude of giving the benefit of
doubt to the Soviet Union. While the critiques of the former tend to
be passionate and specific, the reproaches of the latter are vague and
perfunctory, lacking in moral fervor and indignation . The recent
PEN Congress in New York City provided an unusually rich harvest
of such attitudes ranging from Norman Mailer's designation of both
the United States and the Soviet Union as "neurotic giants," to Gun–
ther Grass's insistence that life in the United States was in no way
preferable to life in the Soviet Union, to the hostility towards Secre–
tary of State Shultz paralleled by fawning admiration toward Omar
Cabezas, Deputy Minister ofInterior of Nicaragua (and as such di–
rectly responsible for censorship). There was also great enthusiasm
about petitions protesting American policy in Nicaragua but no peti–
tions protesting Soviet policy anywhere. According to Walter Good–
man of
The New York Times,
the posture of alienation remained for
many participants "an irresistible conceit."
Upholders of the moral equivalence thesis range from prominent
scholar-diplomats like George Kennan, to full-time social critics (such
as the associates of the Institute of Policy Studies), journalists taking
pride in their objectivity, and uncounted millions of educated Ameri–
cans who are not friendly towards the Soviet Union but are uncom–
fortable with the idea that their own society may have a moral edge
over it. These tendencies have been strengthened by the peace move–
ment concerned with what it sees as the adverse effects of American
arrogance on resolving disagreements between these two nations.
Kennan's observations typify the attitudes associated with moral
equivalence and the policy recommendations drawn from it:
Isn't it grotesque to spend so much of our energy on oppos–
ing Russia to save a West which is honeycombed with bewilder–
ment and a profound sense of internal decay? Show me first an
America which has successfully coped with . .. crime, drugs , de–
teriorating educational standards, urban decay, pornography and
decadence of one sort or another . . . then I will tell you how we
are going to defend ourselves from the Russians . But, as things
are, I can see very little merit in organizing ourselves to defend
from the Russians the porno shops in central Washington. In fact
the Russians are much better in holding pornography at bay than
we are .
The popular conception of moral equivalence much heard on
