The Cycles of American History
Schlesinger, Arthur M. Jr.
BOOK REVIEWS T he author of these sparkling es- says (republished, but rewritten) is much more partisan than most other historians think proper. Whereas they see partisanship as a danger to be...
...Schlesinger shows himself open view in his chapter, "Why the Cold to instruction from minds greater than War...
...This is the elevated view gained from Schlesinger's historical perspective...
...In his younger days a "Cold his own, if they belong to the dead...
...Why the heedless pursuit of partisan half-truth...
...mended for both its plain talk and its Schlesinger's loss of confidence is on style...
...Why not accommodate to the time—either by listing with the wind or by adopting the policy of the Trimmer (as Lord Halifax explained it) of leaning against the wind...
...But he also takes note of the obvious tension in today's conservatism between the economic conservatives who want to get government off our backs and the evangelical moralists who want (he says) to put government into our beds...
...On the contrary, he says ism without his liveliness...
...But Schlesinger the partisan cannot bring himself to do this...
...Surely Schlesinger is correct to stress the difference between the Puritans and the secularism of the Founding Fathers, but to do so he understates the revolutionism of the American experiment, which was intended to be an experiment in self-government on behalf of mankind...
...and he needs them precisely for the sake of his partisanship...
...He has an instinct, not for the jugular but for the sore point (Nixon, Agnew, and Watergate), as if his intent were to cause maximum irritation to his opponents without running the risk of inadvertently killing them...
...To lead this cause is not to try to impose one's will on the rest of the world, as the French revolutionaries did and Communists continue to do, but it does give us a "standard maxim," in Lincoln's phrase, superior to that of other nations, in the opinion of the Founding Fathers...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1987 39...
...When it comes to foreign policy Schlesinger recognizes cycles of "extrovert" and "introvert" concern that do not quite correspond with the domestic cycles...
...This is the unintended irony of Schlesinger's book, whose title is taken from his essay on the liberal and conservative cycles of American history...
...Schlesinger, however, relies on Reinhold Niebuhr to THE PARTISAN HISTORIAN THE CYCLES OF AMERICAN HISTORY Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr./Houghton Mifflin/$22.95 Harvey C. Mansfield, Jr...
...Schlesinger that his example be followed...
...w hen a historian speaks of cycles in history, he seems to step back from the partisanship of the moment and to look at it in the perspective of the whole...
...Everything he says of the past has immediate reference to a recent or present-day partisan controversy, and the reader is never left in suspense as to what that connection might be...
...To keep his spirits up, he needs to show that he does not take his opponents seriously...
...Indeed, if cycles are meant literally as circular returns to the beginning, the historian who speaks of them admits the relative insignificance of history, since in this view nothing historical would be lasting...
...Why not...
...But not for Schlesinger...
...Whereas they see partisanship as a danger to be guarded against and try to prevent their politics from dictating their conclusions, Schlesinger sees no reason why an intelligent person like himself should suppress his political wisdom when he sits down to write history...
...Yet at the end of this essay, sensing this difficulty, he says that "the two jostling strains in American thought . . . are indispensable partners in the great adventure of democracy...
...For a person of his intelligence, he has the least ironical of minds...
...American "progressives" is in our day Schlesinger's partisan history is a to be found most strikingly in Reagan refreshing change from the bloodless and in his fundamentalist supporters, objectivity of many of his fellow-and hardly at all in liberals like historians, and this book can be recomSchlesinger...
...Because of them, he knows that his fellow-liberals will rise again, maybe soon...
...His belief in cycles does not amount to a generous admission that his partisanship is not Harvey C Mansfield, Jr is professor of government at Harvard University...
...His indignation at the officially and zealously atheistic...
...T he other main theme of the book attempts to state that meaning of America which does not operate in a cycle...
...Perhaps partisans are needed, and their characteristic exaggerations should be tolerated, because they stand for principle instead of accommodation...
...We sense immediately that just as the cycle is intended to explain and contain self-interested conservatism, so this distinction has the Moral Majority for its target...
...In that case one should give conservatives their due and admit that private interest becomes a public purpose when a party is willing to lose by maintaining the cause of private interest...
...Here we have a constant alternative (as opposed to a periodic alternation) between America as experiment (good) and as destiny (bad...
...For Schlesinger without his enemies would be without his life...
...If it were, repeatedly attacks these historians for we should have his shrillness without attempting to describe the Cold War as his felicity, his unfairness without his a conflict of interests between tradi- sophistication, and his vacant liberaltional states...
...It does occur to him that thereafter they must fall again, but he draws no conclusions from this...
...And why is devotion to interest selfish in domestic politics but prudent in foreign affairs, while devotion to principle is noble and just at home but overbearing and officious abroad...
...and War liberal" if there ever was one, he he reproves the vanity of historians now seems to be revising his opinions who think they know better than the in response to the revisionist historians participants what the issues were...
...Although he anic totalitarian state and a capitalist opposes totalitarian regimes, it does democracy...
...America was understood to be leading a cause in the world, the cause of republicanism newly defined and greatly improved in the Constitution...
...Schlesinger wears his liberal heart on his sleeve, and under his sleeve he uses his elbow to seek out abrasive contact with his Republican and conservative opponents...
...Even the partisan—especially he—needs his opponents...
...In Schlesinger's version, the cycles of American history alternate between "public purpose" (the liberals) and "private interest" (conservatives...
...Perhaps this questioncan be answered, but only by finding the virtues and vices of both interest and principle...
...If so, then why prefer one to the other...
...to perceive that the confidence in pro- His liberalism is full of blame but silent gress which was originally American on its own behalf...
...Schlesinger does this when he wants to explain the morality of following the national interest but not when he wants to denounce the immorality of following private interest...
...It is amorality of interests quails before his therefore completely beyond his power belief in the relativity of moral ideas...
...always appropriate, much less that he is wrong 50 percent of the time...
...The latter is self-righteous Calvinism convinced of its own godliness and divine election as a chosen people—a belief that "remains strong" in our day, Schlesinger adds ominously...
...38 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR FEBRUARY 1987 assure himself that religion is nothing it is a clash of ideas between a messibut a danger to liberty...
...It merely tells him why he wins only 50 percent of the time...
...But who have put the blame for the Cold on the whole one cannot recommend War on the United States...
...The former is the project of the Founding Fathers, who were "realists committed, in defiance of history and theology, to a monumental gamble...
...Although this maxim is not derived from prophecy, it may be made compatible with Providence "with malice toward none, with charity for all," as incoln showed in his Second Inaugural Address...
...But this promising criticism not seem to have penetrated to the in- leads him to conclude merely that telligence encased in his thick liberal assessment of blame for the Cold War skull that these regimes have all been is irrelevant...
...At the least it would seem that partisan victories and defeats would lose their clarity, and that both triumph and despair would begin to blur...
...He uses the cycles to relieve his present suffering, nothing more...
...Even the cool reasoners of The Federalist did not forget to acknowledge a debt to Providence for advantages in the making of the American experiment that could not have been gained merely by the exercise of cool reason...
...Are not the latter inspired by public purpose, though misguided according to him...
...It is for "public purand has reappeared frequently in pose"—but which...
...Ronald Reagan and his supporters are just as wrong now as they were in their previous incarnations...
Vol. 20 • February 1987 • No. 2
