Three Intellectual Troubadours

...He never succumbed to the even worse erstwhile comrades like Irving Howe Irving Krlstol has become a who, among other expressions of op- historical phenomenon, a one man position to the war against Hitler, social phenomenon dubbed by his believed that the invasion by American political adversaries neoconservatlsm and allied troops of Europe was not but which could just as well be called prlmardy to overthrow Hitler but to neolibemhsm I have mistakenly been prevent the revolutionary proletariat called the godfather of neoconserunderground from seizing pohtlcal vatism When I set out to discover to power At the time Irving Kristol heart- what I had allegedly given my godlly approved Part I of my "New Failure fatherly blessings, I found more variaof Nerve" which was a vigorous tion and nuanced thought among those criticism of the theological mystifica- called neoconservatlves than among the ritualistic liberals and democratic tions of Reinhold Niebuhr and Paul Tllhch Today I suspect he would be more critical of my unreconstructed critics naturalism than of their rehglous outlook The next time I heard of Irving Knstol was from Elliot Cohen, an old ally of the political wars of the thirties, who had become editor of Commentary, and for whom Irving was working in an editorial capacity Like all great editors Cohen was very fn.m In his judgments Some might even call him tyrannical He admired Irving's talents but complained to me bitterly "I keep telling him where he's wrong He listens intently and then goes ahead and does exactly what he pleases He's a stubborn fellow" Kristol helped bring En- prmaitive human passions He is unfllucounter to birth in London and edited sioned rather than chsdlusioned and Ins him in action on several occasions when most academics I know would have fled, fearful of then" physical safety Tins is particularly true when Lasky forms of political insanity of Ins finds himself among European neutralists or those judicious souls, mindful of the future and forgetful of the past, who regard the Soviet Bear and the American Eagle as equally hostile to the great European humanist legacy His detractors to the contrary notwithstanding, Melvin Lasky has never been an apologist for American domestic or foreign pohcy He has exercised his privilege as a ciUzen of a free culture to criticize his own country's shortcomings, particularly in defense of freedom Unfortunately there is a type of American, I have found its exemplars, sad to say, often among Fulbright scholars, who in order to ingratiate themselves with their foreign hosts play the roles of Tom Wicker and Anthony Lewis, the New York Ttmes's famous rltuahstic liberals, without surcease Whatever the shortcomings of Wicker and Lewis, who apparently believe the United States can never be right about anything, they occasionally are critmal of other countries, too But not the ant~-American Americans abroad An audience accustomed to them is sure to be taken aback when Lasky tries to tell it as it is or rather as it seems to be to him It goes without saying that he is not popular with the anti-American Oxbrldge contingent It with a flair that made it the most distinguished political journal in the Anglo-American world For reasons I quarterly, the Pubhc Interest, is really a school for serious adults who prefer to think about concrete specific probnever fathomed he didn't please some lems of importance rather than to read of the leading members of the Ex- about large, edifying solutions Kristol ecutive Committee of the Congress for has not forgotten what he learned in his Although in many ways simllar--a common working-class Jewish background, a common education at THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1985 Cultural Freedom which sponsored the magazine, and it was proposed by some who thought he was too much a cold warrior that he be replaced by, of all people, Dwight Macdonald Dwight was certainly wilhng despite the fact that the air was thick with rumors about the financial support of the CIA, rumors which Dwight himself was zealously and dehghtedly circulating I couldn't swallow his independence socialists who are their most embittered It may be that I misread him, but although Krlstol is a critic of the waywardness of the welfare state, I find no basic opposition to it if it is integrated with a free enterprise system He has not surrendered the moral 1deals that brought him into the radical movement but he has become Impatient with the utopianism, the loose rhetoric about new institutions, the vaunted remaking of man, the cant and catchwords of his early faith He has become more empirical, more realistic, more aware of the thinness of the cultural integument that overlays salad days as a Marxist about class struggles but he believes that even m a class socmty hke our own there is such a thing as the pubhc interest That behef is something his detractors, even those that are not wc~ous and palpably unfair, cannot account for m their caricature of his vmws H~s one great failing from my point of wew ~s that he never rephes to his critics and he regards my tendency to get embroiled m controversy as a weakness and waste of Ume irving Knstol probably thinks of me as more of a neoconservatlve than I am prepared to admit, and he doesn't share my feehng that our welfare and our freedom are safer m the hands of an mtelhgently orgamzed labor movement than in the hands of businessmen who put profit not freedom first or of bankers whose criterion of whether a country ~s good or bad ~s whether it pays ~ts debts on Ume But I must confess, and I am confident that this holds true even for the jaundiced editors of the Left and New Left press, his discuss~on of specific quesuons always seems to radmte an respired common sense Even when one cannot wholly agree w~th him as m h~s current crmque of NATO strategy, he always moves one to thought I t was Irving Krlstol who once stud of Darnel Bell that he was born a rightwing Socml Democrat But there are Socml Democrats and Socml Democrats-even ff they are all right-wing Danny ~s not a Scheldemann or Noske Socml-Democrat but an Eduard Bernstem Socml-Democmt Truth to tell, we are all offspring of Eduard Bernstem whose intellectual and moral stature has grown with the years It was Bernstem who first reahzed that capltahsm had the regeneratwe power, partly because of the potentml ~mpact of democrauc polmcal acUon on social and economic hfe, that Marx never suspected And even more ~mportant, he reahzed that a socmhsm that was not mspwed by moral ideals that pervaded the struggles of the movement would end up as a Bolshevast nlghtmar~ Danny was one of the few young Socmhsts who never felt drawn to the swan songs of the Left I have nouced that among the young, It was already true during my own youth, there is a kind of hypnoUc appeal in being "Left"--as if that were the only authenUc mgn of sincerity or integrity Although many of h~s friends did go Left, Dan never followed them, especmlly when he observed for all their free words, the hbelous and unscrupulous tacucs m their attacks on the "old guard " These were the veterans of the socmhst movement who had risked and sacrificed more in a hostile environment than their rude v FIREARMS AND VIOLENCE THE PUBLIC SCHOOL MONOPOLY A Critical Analyms of Education and the State in American Soctety Issues of Public Policy Edited by DON B KATES, JR Edited by ROBERT B EVERHART Foreword by JOHN KAPLAN Foreword by CLARENCE J KARIER (lhe contanumg escalataon of vaolent crtme m the / h e escalating problems of pubhc elementary and secondary education have created the wadely recog- Umted States has again focused publm interest on gun control msues Fwearms and Vwlence provides ntzed need to cntacally reassess the pubhc school system...

...When students engage in mayhem, vandalize libraries, are prepared to throw fire-bombs, disrupt the freedom to teach and to learn of faculty and students, even a pacificminded right-wing Social Democrat should call the police...

...mteUectual development and to know them fairly well when I at Columbia Umverslty at less than known risk Since that time, in consediverse careers exinblt an independence became a contributor to the New half of his current salary quence of Ins contnbutlons wluch have and originality that reflect not only Leader and later to Commentary, where Irving Krlstol's transmutation into made him an esteemed national figure Sidney Hook ts Emeritus Professor of exploits somewhat hghtened the Phdosophy, New York Umverslty, and somber mood of successive defeats In Semor Research Fellow at the Hoover the edRorial sanctum I have some Institution Sidney Hook In praise o f Daniel Bell, Irving Kristol, and Melvin Lasky...

...polmcal ideas that was aussmg from ment of the South ~s at least better than man, and he is fighting with words and that of the North But for gam Dae ~deas an entrenched system that on ocTHREE INTELLECTUAL TROUBADOURS Although formally they were never their personalities but powers of of them are now stars of the first Endowed Luce Professorslup Some of students of mine, and probably never growth which were stimulated during magnitude in the academy I rode herd my colleagues had not heard of Irving ttunk of themselves as such except in the stormy years of their adolescence on Dan Bell until he abandoned the Kristol, and others weren't very much a P~ckw~cklan sense, I know that some in the thirties This was a period in richly rewarded field of labor jourof the friends and unfriendly criacs of winch the powers of growth of some of nalism In which he has had no peers Darnel Bell, Irving Knstol, and Melwn then" equally prormsmg fellow-students In scholarly breadth and historical mLasky sometimes refer to them as my were arrested by fixation on current sight for the dncertmn life, at the time, students Even though each one has dogmas of social salvation of the academy He resigned a post as sharp differences wRh me I would have Actually my relation to them was labor-echtor of Fortune for a modest irrelevant reasons, my nomination of been proud to be their teacher For more avuncular than pedagogic I got posltaon in the department of sooology Irving Krlstol was accepted as the lesser then...

...Irving sometimes toys with theological speculation in order to annoy the smug complacency of Greenwich Village atheists who have not outgrown the logical positivism they studied in their undergraduate years . Danny's religious roots and needs are deeper...

...we only ask that the Umted the approprmte representation, ~t thy hen.s to that same heritage...

...His books show, however, an impressive capacity for organization, and focus on problems of modern culture that embrace a variety of disciplines in the arts and social sciences . His writing is fresh and unhackneyed even when, overburdened with erudition . He tends to be too deferential to leading figures in areas in which he is not at home . Although he strives to be original and constructive, he can be devastatingly critical when moved or urged to do so . He prefers to be sympathetic and interpretative in his critical evaluations . That is his temperament . But he has also written the most annihilating criticism that was ever penned of C . Wright Mills's much touted The Power Elite, one of the books that fed the illusions of the New Left . A striking feature of Danny Bell's writing is the absence of personal animus in his contribution to subjects that are a minefield of factional controversy...

...Thus milder r all of the freedoms " are vulnerable prey to the harsher *That a auhtary government means Commumst d~ctatorshlp " *That, by comparison, the govern- position But he remmns a pohucal but wondered when and ff he aught return home and what would be Ins fate [] enamored with what little they had heard But after presentmg a series of names of distinguished academic figures who, I was confident, my fellow committeemen dlshked for relevant and even among those whose skins Itch when they read his cool judgments, he has been reappointed and become an adornment to the university This recommendation of mine THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1985 Mobil ~ An occupational hazard What promtses to be a landmark case tn the field of hbel law began unfolding m the Federal D=stnct Court m New York recently General Wdham C Westmoreland, who commanded U S forces tn Vtetnam from 1964 to 1968, is suing CBS for $120 milhon (whtch he will donate to chanty if he wins), charging he was libeled by the CBS documentary, "The Uncounted Enemy A Vietnam Deception," shown on January 23,1982 Other defendants, m addttton to CBS, are Mtke Wallace, the interviewer on the show, George Cnle, the producer, and Samuel A Adams, a former Central Intelhgence Agency analyst who served as a consultant We don't know whether CBS and the individuals revolved did indeed hbel General Westmoreland, nor do we intend to comment on the detatls of the case Rather, our concern ts wtth a seemingly ancillary issue we feel actually transcends m ~mportance the case =tself--the right of an indlwdual hke General Westmoreland to have his day in court, and to be able to present hts case fairly without undue legal obstacles to his success General Westmoreland had a distinguished 36-year md=tary career He was an infantry officer m World War II, m Korea he led paratroops, and at 42 was the youngest major general in the Army He was superintendent of West Point at 46, and wound up his career, after his Vtetnam command, as Army Ch=ef of Staff H~s service to thts country won him the D=stmgu=shed Service Medal, Bronze Star, Legion of Ment, and Air Medal It also won him, dunng his career, the status of a "public off~ctal" What it did not win h~m was great wealth Army offtcers seldom get rich So General Westmoreland, feehng that the reputation he had established dunng 36 years of pubhc service had been left m tatters by the telecast, turned to the courts for redress In doing so, he faced two major hurdles 9 The U S Supreme Court has ruled that pubhc officials and pubhc figures (generals, mayors, congressmen, prominent businessmen and actors have been held to fit these categories) must prove, m libel cases, that the statements made about them were false They must also prove that the parties defaming them dtd so knowing the statements were false or made "wtth reckless dtsregard" of whether they were false or not This is a much greater burden of proof than the ordinary c=ttzen has, who ts only requtred to prove neghgent falsity 9 The General's second obstacle was the nature of hts opponent--a major corporation w=th deep pockets (presumably including libel insurance) well able to afford teams of lawyers and other counsel Legal expenses m the case have so far totaled almost $4 mllhon Representing General Westmoreland ~s the Capttal Legal Foundat=on, a public-interest law firm supported largely by grants from foundations and mdtviduals We don't know if thetr resources are adequate to provide General Westmoreland wtth the kind of representatton to which he--and any other citizen--ts entitled We understand that private ctt~zens, V=etnam veterans' organizations (with which General Westmoreland is not associated), and foundations have contnbuted to the Capital Legal Foundatton's efforts on his behalf If you wtsh to join this effort, send a check to the foundation at 700 E Street, S E, Washington, D C 20003 But what about other public offtc=als, some of whom serve in relatwely humble posts'~ The=r pos=tlons may make them ready targets for hbel, but the heavy burden of proof they face makes them second-class cttizens How to make justtce more readily attamable'~ In the best of all possible worlds, the U S Supreme Court would redefine the standards it apphes to pubhc officials and pubhc figures Other industrialized nations, such as the United Kingdom, don't apply such heavy burdens of proof in libel cases But m the practical world, why not s~mply recognize that public officials face an occupational hazard--hbel'~ And why not deal with it just as we deal wtth so many other hazards of the workplace'~ Employers now prowde medtcal insurance, dental insurance, workmen's compensatton insurance, and dtsab~hty insurance We beheve all pubhc officials-generals, admtrals, firemen, pohce offtcers, rubbtsh collectors--should be covered by insurance to allow them to sue for hbel Perhaps the employers should pay the premium (we at Mobd have taken out such insurance on behalf of key employees) Or perhaps the system should be government-financed, since the government, through its judicial arm, has stnpped pubhc officials of some of their ctvtl nghts No one should have the rights of citizenship dtmin=shed because he plays an active role tn the system That should be the lasting lesson of the Westmoreland case C) 1984 Mobil Corporation turned out happmr than a prevmus one...

...Today it is at its highest intellectual level . In this achievement Lasky has been aided by a staff of devoted and selfsacrificing editorial and commercial associates...

...then...

...scholarly, and deeply provocatwe It ~s by far the most thoughtful exammatzon of the pohtzcal state and zts monopohst~c hold on educatwn m the Umted States that I have ever read" -ROBERT NISBET Schweltzer Professor Emeritus, Cotumbla Unwerslty -MARK H MOORE Professor of Criminal Justace Pohcy and Management John F Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University .=......ffi 608 Pages 9 ISBN 0-88410-388-9 Paper $13 95 ISBN 0-88410-383-8 Cloth $35 00 552 Pages 9 ISBN 0-88410-923-2 Paper $15.95 ISBN 0-88410-922-4 Cloth $38 00 | II To order, or for a catalog of pubhcatlons, please write PACIFIC INSTITUTE, 177 Post Street, Dept B2, San Francisco, CA 94108 FOR PUBLIC POLICY RESEARCH 21 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1985 mmn interest today hes m sociology, he could have been a htstorlan or an anthropologist or economic msutuuonahst as easily as he was a premier labor journalist He has recently ventured into the field of phdosophy Some have complained that h~s pages are studded w~th references to too many names But this reflects h~s wide, perhaps excesswe, reading It gwes the unfortunate ~mpresslon that he thinks w~th unmahclous humor that endeared him to everyone He was an ommvorous reader with phenomenal powers of recall At one tune he seemed to be gifted with a photographic memory Observmg hurt turn the pages of a book after a cursory glance at them, my wife, who was incredulous that anyone could read that fast, tested h~m, and he came through with an almost perfect score...

...Finally I should mention that of the three persons I am writing about, Danny is the most deeply religious, not in the tradition of orthodox Jewish piety but in the strength of his aching need for a cosmic support of his decent instincts . Irving Kristol, too, has certain intimations of divinity, if not of immortality, and shares Dan's respect for the institutional aspects of religion that reinforce human solidarity and curb the excesses of Nietzschean demonic individuality...

...When the Schweltzer Chair was established at New York University, President Hester asked me if I could induce Arthur Koestler to accept the invitation to fill it Presumably, this was the initial choice of the Committee of Selection I heartily concurred and wrote Koestler who wired a flat refusal Meanwhile, I learned of the extraordinarily generous provisions of the Schweltzer Professorship It enabled its holder to do little teaching (an activity which Koestler dlshked), to hire others to do it, and to undertake original research projects and programs I wrote agmn to Koestler and pomted out that it was a golden opportunity for him to bridge the gap between the humanities and intuitive scientific research, Ins current passion at the time Koestler replied this time affirmatively, but I had too conscmntiously already informed Hester of Koestler's earlier tentatlve refusal When I telephoned Hester with the "good news," he sadly reported...

...Indeed, they take a positive joy in exaggerating his defection from the "Yipsil socialism" of his youth and ignore his protestations that he is not a neoconservative...

...Eduard Bernstein certainly would...

...gave hun pens, but only a lamted amount of paper...

...I refer not merely to the kind of courage expressed in an article or esoteric writing that will bring down on him the wrath of other writers or scholars or the hired literary guns of the Kremlin and its satelhtes, but to the courage displayed in a public confrontation with a hostile crowd I have seen "I keep telling Irving where he's wrong...

...Despite his long absences abroad, Mel is quintessentially American and will remain so all his life, fascinating, provocative, and as a human being, fundamentally attractive to Europeans of all political persuasions except totalitarians, anti-antiCommunists, and confirmed antiAmericans...

...To be fmr, he struggles wRh Enghsh, but, still, he read Ins speech m a monotone voice wath httle mspn'ataon Shuffling papers absentmmdedly, he had gotten twotlurds of the way through Ins talk when he abruptly read the conclnslon When he reahzed Ins austake, he went back to the errant fork m the text and started m agmn Not exactly the stuff of oratorical legends Nevertheless, during the two days he tal sense a democratic Korea ts desirable for the Umted States as well, because ~t is the surest way was at Columbm, I heard Kim Dae he asks agmn, "that we had all those man He stands on flat feet and walks to reduce tensmn m the Korean pemnJung whenever I could and asked Inm freedonfs dunng the Korean confhct slowly, wRh a shght hmp and a cane sula and consequently the mdRary questions during some of the breaks burden of the Umted States m the Far for support In the Umted States he Like Koreans I had met m Seoul, he meager sum of $60 but none today often delwers Ins message m churches, East " seemed to come alive m personal con- when Koreans earn an average of because m South Korea churches re- Llstemng to him for the last time, I versatmn and spoke wRh an mtensRy no longer concentrated on Ins dehvery, mare one of the few outlets for the opabout Ins prison experience and Ins the speeches...

...He seems to know and care about the best in everything much more pronouncedly than his fellow graduates of the New York slums . 22 Ironically and unfairly Danny Bell has been the chief target of the ritualistic liberals and "democratic socialists" who regard him as, next to Irving Kristol, the leading neoconservative...

...He listens intently and then goes ahead and does for granted about him and Ins thought dug my heels in against any such acI first learned of his existence when he tion, and threatened to resign from the published his first essay which was en- Executive Committee and help some of titled "The Nerve of Sidney Hook " the politically sophisticated members He was a young Trotskyist replying to of the American Committee for Part II of my essay "The New Failure Cultural Freedom to blow the Congress of Nerve" in Partisan Revtew (1943) in out of the water I won the battle but which I criticmed the revoluUonary ir- Irving had resigned In high dudgeon at responsibility and romanticism of both the first intimations of dissatisfaction factions of the Trotskylst movement with his independence, and I had the Both regarded Franklin Delano Roose- devil of a time prevmhng on Inm to stay velt as a greater enemy of the Amen- even though his critics ate crow and made up to him He continued as editor until Max Ascoh, of the Reporter, made him an offer that no responsible married man with two small children could refuse The editorial honeymoon with Ascoli, as I predicted, didn't last long but it gave Irving an opportunity to rethink probcan working class than Hitler Irving lems free from ideological blinkers of recovered quickly from tins aberration the past Ascoh was a great admirer of Irving's immense abilities, but he too exactly what he pleases...

...After reading Harrington's debate on Communism and foreign policy with Carl Gershman, I concluded that our basic human freedoms are much safer with Ronald Reagan than with the Michael Harringtons and their new political allies...

...Like so many other tender-minded he remains likable even when he falls short of justifying his faith . When Melvin Lasky left Berlin and mature persons-it is hard for me to in every area of their interest . As mischief for their teachers and elders the editorship of Der Monat to edit Encounter he did more than inherit the legacy of Irving Kristol . He kept it alive despite an intense attack on its bona fides by angry critics who refused to judge it by its contents but by its subTHE AMERICAN SPECTATOR JANUARY 1985 sidies from the Congress for Cultural Freedom that had been traced in part to the CIA . Those subsidies were discontinued, and Lasky began a heroic task to raise the extensive resources it required to keep publishing the magazine on its customary level of distinction . As issue after issue appeared, Lasky rewon the confidence of the critical reading public and scored one journalistic coup after another...

...He abominated the Communists because of their violent disruptions of the democratic process...

...Too bad) The committee met yesterday and they recommended a man I have never heard of Most of the others didn't know anything about him either but Professor Greene vouches for him " Professor Greene was the current chatrman of the English department whose specialty was Irish Literature He had recommended the then relatively unknown (in scholarly circles) Conor Cruise O'Brlen, whose tenure in the post was marked by a sustained and impassioned crusade against American foreign pohcy Among other worthies whom he invited to teach In the Schweitzer program was David Caute whose book The Great Fear The AnttCommuntst Purge under Truman and Etsenhower ~s a virulent a n t l - anu-Communist tract, an extended fable about the scope and consequences of the American "fear and terr o r " The greatest vocational paradox that characterizes our three intellectual troubadours IS that the individual who seems almost by nature cast in the role of a university professor IS currently not one I mean Melvin Lasky What a magmflcent professor he would be) In appearance, in scholarship, in voice and presence, Melvin Lasky is the very model o f the model University Professor--and of the ideal German professor of pre-World War I vintage at that) Professmnally trained as a historian, he seems at home in all the humanities and social studies He speaks in well-formed sentences, and can fascinate a drawing room as well as a crowded meeting hall with the unconscious art of a performer who gets his point across as effectively with a 20 CCNY when it was still an intellectually exciting institution, a common Interest and participation in the young socialist and Communist movement-all three of our subjects differ profoundly in personality The quietest of the three and apparently the most reserved is Irving Kristol He has always been noted for Ins intellectual independence...

...vantaged Instead, the problem of crime will only be resolved through remedying fundamental socml, economic, and pohtlcal factors revolved "The Public School Monopoly ts at once comprehenswe, "Kate, et al have produced a provocatwe and powerful volume...

...He was orphaned and bereft at a tender age, and the experience seems to have intensified a naturally compassionate nature . I recall with some shame that when a mean and arrogant person in our political circle came a cropper and brought on himself a well-deserved public disgrace, and we shrunk away from him lest we be tarred, Danny was the only one to write him a consoling note of sympathy and support . His deprived past also explains his inordinate fondness for fine things...

...dramatic and sometames prank~sh responslbihty for the fact that two academic hfe was more precipitate I was on the comnuttee appointed by the then president of New York Umverslty, James Hester, to find someone to fill the chair of the recently established 18 He begins h~s argument by saying Jung, sauply to have leadersinp caslon has silenced the opposmon with that it is the Umted States that margmally better than one of the more arrest and pnson...

...In the U S., Kun Dae "breathes hfe into the Chun Doo backward regunes on Earth is not gobd Jung finds the contrathction of a rich Hwan dlctatorsinp "But he makes the enough Nor should it justify democratic tradlUon--along the dlstmctmn between American pohcy American support He beheves that hnes of the hterature he read m and actmn" " I am not asking the when a government has pretensions pnsonbbut also a pohcy that ts conUmted States to restore democracy m toward democracy and fads to dehver tent to support m Korea men not worour stead...

...Unlike his brotherinlaw, Alfred Kazin, he did not wait for the revelations of the Jewish holocaust to become aware of his Jewishness...

...So he developed a microscopic style that enabled lum to put 18,000 Korean characters on a page--a record, he now muses Through the experience, dunng winch his only joy at times was a small prison garden, IOm Dae Jung seems to have grown into a mature pohucal leader, capable of thought and action Iromcally, when I first heard him speak, I began to wonder how the hopes of many in the opposRmn were pruned on such a speaker...

...Th~s comprehenswe book examines the a flank and well-documented discussion of thts bitterly controversml subject, with topics rmagmg from mlataonshlp between schoohng, education, and the state and how the state, through the regulation of pn- a comprehenswe analysis of the underlying assumptaons of gun controls to an m-depth exarmnataon mary and secondary schoohng m the Umted States, restricts educational practice to an extent that m of constatutaonal guarantees for and lmpechments agmnst effectave firearms legmlatton Fwearms and detnmental to the general pubhc and especially to mmontles and the dmadvantaged The contributions Vwlence finds that gun controls are ineffective m reducing crime, and that gun prohlbllaon produces to this volume are diverse m content and approach, and range from left to right polmcally m their points an increasingly vaolent, cnme-prone sooetg to the parttcular detriment of rmnontaes and the dmad- of vaew Together they prowde a umfied understandmg of the many problems m education and offer new directions for constructave policy reform...

...Although his and crude cnUcs who denounced them with an embittered emmty more intense than what they d~rected agmnst cap~tahsts and Commumsts For many years before he became a sober academic heavyweight, Danny used to be the hfe of every party he attended He had an inexhaustible stock of stones, anecdotes, and quaint lore about people and events, all apposite to matters under discussion and related ThE FIR lO)m ~ 0 ' gwBooKS pACIFIC INSTITIlTE by association...

...251-285) . Danny is incurably tenderminded, in William James's sense...

...Lester Markel of the New York Times who enjoyed a legendary reputation among his subordinates as a hard and hated taskmaster once told me with becoming immodesty: "Every good editor must be a son-of-a-bitch ." I have no doubt that Markel was both but I have met good, even excellent, editors whose paternity is normal . Mel is certainly a good editor but most of the contributors to Encounter find him elusive . One never knows when a contribution accepted with enthusiasm will appear...

...As young men our three intellectual troubadours could have teamed together to publish a magazine, organize a great symposium, launch a new movement, and in general to make E accept the fact that they are all grandfathers !-each one is the central figure in his own intellectual constellation . I enjoy them all, proud to have influenced them and been influenced by them...

...greater econormc growth "How is ~t," Klm Dae Jung is not a powerful when the per capRa income was a $2,000 a year...

...States not support mihtary d~ctatorsinp budds resentment among the people He closed one speech wRh these but lend moral support to our He sees tins potential disenchantment words: "The restorataon of democracy democratic cause " as being as dangerous to the South as is desn.able because it holds a key to One by one he answers the justifica- the North Korean auhtary And he many other problems facing South tions for the mdRary government" argues that "dIctatorml governments Korea today For example, only a gen*That R prowdes security He argues which justify then" existence by their uine democracy can promote stainhty that even during the bleakest days of stand ageanst Commumsm have tradl- and security by the reah:,atlon of socml the struggle w~th the North, the South t~onally been corrupt Wealth under and economic justice Only-a enjoyed all the freedoms he assocmtes such mdder dlctatorsinps tends to be democratic Korea can, wRh confidence with American democracy" freedom of concentrated m the hands of a few...

...26 pp...

...Danny Bell proclaimed that "under no circumstances should the police be called to keep the peace on the campus ." This is the acme of foolishness, an invitation to student storm troopers of any ideology to run riot...

...The worst offender in this respect is Michael Harrington who despite his professed Christian socialism shows far less Christian charity-and elementary fairness-to those with whom he disagrees than does Bell...

...And yet for all the contributions of his collaborators, Encounter is Lasky's handiwork . To those who write for it, how he produces it and when is a mystery as unfathomable as the lapses and replies of his correspondence...

...peaceful umficauon In a fundamenand popular support and legRauacy, the press, dn.ect elecuon of the presi- Under such condmons, we cannot ex- approach and negotmte wRh North dent, local autonomy, and an rode- pect to see a real free-market system, Korea toward peaceful coerastence, pendent judlcmry "Today, m peace but only a government-controlled peaceful exchange, and, finally, time," he says, "our people have lost economy...

...One could take nothing dramatic whisper as with an eloquent peroration In conversation Ins intellectual antennae are all aquiver to catch the waves of some new idea or notion struggling to find expression He is an avid reader in several languages not only of scholarly works but of the daily press and the obscure factional hterature of dissident Communist groups There is one quality Melvin Lasky has which has been matched by few German professors I have known That is an extraordinary intellectual and moral courage...

...The chief one is that he has no fighting heart . His most serious lapse in this respect was his role during the Columbia University student strike in the late sixties when under the leadership of Mark Rudd and the SDS the students took over the administrative offices, seized buildings, and engaged in acts of violence . Danny was part of a dissident faculty group that, encouraged student intransigence by seeking to mediate between the rampaging students and their victims-the administration and the rest of the faculty...

...Nor has he flaunted the anguish of the holocaust as if it were an additional distinction to his laurels, as Kazin did in his New York Jew whose vulgarity about the ineffable horror of Jewish martyrdom has been surpassed only in the work of a much more gifted paskudnak, the author of The Portage of San Christobal...

...Of special note have been the interviews conducted by George Urban with some of the leading political and literary personalities of our time . Urban has been no mere interlocutor . He plays a creative non-intrusive role in interchanges that are as dramatic as they are informative...

...In order to dissociate himself from Irving Kristol and in the vain hope of escaping being tagged a neoconservative, Danny has resigned as co-editor of Public Interest and become, in effect, a co-editor with William Phillips of Partisan Review This is a pity for he has less in common with his new coeditor and periodical than with those he left despite his differences with them which seem to me to be more of nuance than of substance...

...He never explains or apologizes for the delays . Although they fume and fret, even the most choleric of writers end up by accepting the wisdom of the editorial judgment without ceasing to deplore the periodic reticence and sometimes the absence of frankness of the editor...

...They are not Communists, of course, but they will ally themselves or fellow travel with individuals and groups who, ostensibly to further socialism or abolish war and poverty, will in a crisis "temporarily" abolish or restrict our freedoms .) It is true that Bell published a book of essays on The End of Ideology, but his views on this theme like those of Raymond Aron and Martin Lipset have been misinterpreted . They did not contend that the end of ideology meant the end of idealism or that there were no longer individuals who subscribed to the Communist ideology, but rather that the developments of modern history and economy had revealed the intellectual bankruptcy of the systematic and holistic system of Marxism-Leninism in all its forms which actually represented a perversion of Marxism . Danny Bell has the defects of his virtues...

...Danny's recent interest in philosophy is spurred by the hope he can find intellectually respectable foundations for his faith . At this writing, he seems to have missed the remarkable contribution of Lewis Feuer's essay "Noumenalism and Einstein's Argument for the Existence of God" (Inquiry, Oslo . Vol...

...He was always steeped in Rabbinic lore and Jewish historical tradition...