618
PARTISAN REVIEW
between "them" and "us" has been replaced by more specific tensions.
Liberalism is attacked from the extreme right and the extreme left, leav–
ing the intellectuals increasingly isolated. For example, when the mem–
bers of the Group for Social Dialogue in Romania tried to bring about
the demystification of the country's political traditions, including prob–
lems involving the political history of the Second World War, they were
attacked as (I quote from official publications) "being enemies of the
nation, rootless cosmopolitans without any understanding of the genuine
interests of the national community." Those intellectuals who have
advocated Europeanism and the necessity of "spiritualizing" political
borders have been reprimanded for their lack of national identity. An
increasingly disaffected population dismisses their views on freedom as
speculative and abstract. The same dissidents who yesterday were lionized
are today seen as "subliminal leftists." (It should be noted that, as in
Hungary and Romania, a number of these scurrilous attacks appear in the
pages of government-linked publications.) Most disturbing of all, those
who most vociferously denounce the intellectuals are those people who
did not do anything to defy the continuum of domination during the
times of Communist dictatorship.
The intellectuals themselves tend to divide along traditional lines:
there are some who favor liberal values, which embody ideas of diversity,
particularism, difference, tolerance, and protection for all minorities.
There are others who are tempted to exalt collective nouns like
father–
land, nation, church,
and
tradition.
Some intellectuals do remain faithful
to
the dissident creed that the alpha and omega of a free public space is
represented by the autonomy of the individual. They support an inclusive
vision of the nation based on a post-traditional identity (which Jiirgen
Habermas once called constitutional patriotism). Others think that
organic roots and ethnic-historical or even racial bonds are at least as
important as the idea of an idealistic, Kantian community based on civic
and moral values. The old conflict between Westernizers and populists
has reemerged in all these countries, as a growing chasm between liberal
and illiberal trends. As the idealization of the pre-Communist past tends
to become contagious, the liberal intellectuals are the ones who remind
their fellow countrymen that these new mythologies cannot lead to any–
thing but the obfuscation of truth and to new disasters. Doing so, they
provoke the ire of ethnocentric zealots - often recruited among the
former Stalinists - who accuse them, as was done during the previous
regime, of "disturbing the peace." The role intellectuals played in the
struggle against Communism is often forgotten in the rising light of the
new political and managerial class that includes a high percentage of
speculators, profiteers, and social climbers.
