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PARTISAN REVIEW
this book greater persuasive power by far. One salient point Weisberg does
make--and he should have made more of it-is the insistent manner in
which celebrants of big government from the 1960s on cast their goals in
nigh utopian language. We weren't just going to do something to ameliorate
poverty. We declared a "War on Poverty." But in wars, the object is victory,
even unconditional surrender of the enemy. Nothing of the sort is ever pos–
sible in the world of domestic policy and problems. By setting one's sights
too high, one invites subsequent disillusionment, even cynicism.
Weisberg calls this the "Expectations Gap" and says it has been a major
source of public disenchantment with government. He lists four "ongoing
crises" as the "prime movers in discrediting government in the American
mind," namely, Vietnam; the welfare explosion and decline of cities; eco–
nomic slowdown; and decline of routine public services.
Is this credible? Even at the height of the Vietnam War trust in govern–
ment was much higher than it is now-at present only about twenty-five
percent of the American public has any trust in government; back in 1973
over seventy percent did--and many of those expressing mistrust in govern–
ment are young people who weren't even born during that tragic debacle.
Welfare explosion and decline of the cities, yes, but the economy waxes and
wanes even when it is hot, at least for the many winners, and it does little to
influence evaluations of public confidence. Decline of services? Maybe,
depending on where you live. But Weisberg strangely omits a major source
of discontent, namely, government's entry into volatile moral and cultural
matters, like abortion, where the full force of the federal government was
placed on one side of a morally fraught and deeply contentious question.
Government as arbiter of moral, even metaphysical, matters fueled what has
come to be known as the "culture wars" and these are a major source of the
present cynicism and overall grumpiness.
Finally, Weisberg launches, at various points, into a vi tuperative attack on
communitarians. They are either naive and nostalgic--deriving "their polit–
ical ideas from a gauzy vision of old-time, small-town America"---or they are
pernicious-unwittingly recapitulating "the views of fascist theorists such as
Carl Schmitt and Giovanni Gentile." Now I doubt whether Weisberg has
read either Schmitt or Gentile but I know he cannot have read Alasdair
MacIntyre and Roberto Unger and make this scandalous claim. Unger's
problem is that he is wildly overinflated in his theory and weak in his argu–
ments, but he is scarcely a proto-fascist, even unwittingly. And this charge
against philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre, repeated from Stephen Holmes's
intemperate attack in his book,
The Anatomy l!fAntiliberalism,
is false and ugly.
MacIntyre has a bleak view oflate modernity, to be sure, but his advice--to
the extent he offers any-is for folks to live in decent communities where
virtue is honored and even possible.
