Retreat from Victory
Grant, James
Drew Middleton, the distinguished New York Times correspondent, has written a newspaperman's account of the decline of American power. Facts and interpretations, in large part, are the fruit...
...A nation of free men must likewise forswear the statist road of crusade...
...The dulling trauma of the Vietnam war and the intellectual poison of the eastern liberals, Middleton concludes, have served to replace national self-confidence with national self-doubt...
...What is more, an 22 The Alternative December 1973...
...There is no scholarly quibbling here, and little evidence of scholarly sweat Middleton writes like a man on deadline...
...It is downright exciting to observe that it is located f a r enough away from the swales where intellectuals clump and clog to offer a prospect that we may get a fresh examination o f some high p r i o r i t y problems...
...In the arena of world politics, where states wrestle barechested, the temptation is strong to seek the vicarious excellence of collective action--redemption through foreign meddling...
...The author brings to Retreat from Victory both a broad background in foreign reporting and an unabashed love for his own country...
...Vhich means, really, do we have the will...
...not even a presidential trip to Moscow will long still Soviet ambitions...
...Rather, concentrate on the improvement of one by one...
...James Grant EDITORIAL (continued from page 3) lishes it for its own sake...
...Wiser men in these heady days counsel that such qualities flow only from the spirit of those capable of lifelong commitment...
...These were the same people who, a few years before, had cheered John F. Kennedy's admonition to ask not what they would receive from their country, but what they could do for their country...
...But does America understand the challenge...
...One striking sociological development in the [Vietnam] war," he writes, "was the manner in which the sons of the best people escaped it...
...Middleton stumbles...
...It is done, but not often, and never very seriously...
...Prof...
...No critic ever puffed up Brahms' German Requiem as '~brilliant...
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...At this moment, no...
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...Middleton has offered us fair warning of the wages of weakness...
...Cancel my subscription if you move East...
...While the world's work awaits the strong arm and the willing heart, the United States sets both its hands to wringing...
...They, who had received the most from their country, repaid the least...
...To strike a just balance between the two extremes is a goal worthy of all Washington...
...Criticizing oneself, for an intellectual, becomes problematic...
...Mere assertions will not end the Cold War...
...In a way the intellectual is a descendant of the court jester, as Ralph Dahrendorf has pointed out, for he has the same privileges of dispensing with propriety and remaining beyond categories or roles established by society...
...An altogether more wholesome approach, others have pointed out, is to avoid either question...
...A robust, imaginative society, after all, is ultimately no more than a collection of robust, imaginative individuals...
...8.00 [] 3 yrs...
...He must be willing and capable of criticizing absolutely everything--everything but himself...
...Both reader and author find themselves on more substantial ground in the concluding analyses of strategic and military policy...
...While arguing effectively against portside historiography, he avoids, for the most part, the pitfalls of the unreflective "It is encouraging to observe the appearance of a new carrier o f acute analysis and bold opinion...
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...But in the matter of society's claim on the individual--and perhaps no other issue is quite as central to the foreign policy of a free nation Mr...
...Facts and interpretations, in large part, are the fruit of the author's firsthand experience overseas...
...Middleton has argued a credible and timely thesis--Jane's Fighting Ships, in late July, declared the Soviet navy the world's strongest--but the reasonably informed reader may ask why he took 250 pages to do it~ Much of the book, particularly the chapters of historical background, ring with textbook familiarity...
...To all of this I should like to add or emphasize that the true intellectual must be possessed of a critical mind...
...When the critics sat in on Bernstein's pathetic attempt at a mass, '%rilliant" was about all that they could say...
...There are far too many signs, which have proven accurate in the past, that there is a general decline in the will, if not the energies, of America...
...11.00 [] 2 yrs...
...Subjectpredicate, subject-predicate, he recounts the course of American foreign policy since the close of World War I. Later, he turns to the present state of American weaponry and resolve...
...Do we have the capacity to fulfill our by Drew Middleton Hawthorn Books $7.95 commitments," he asks...
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...And Robert Nisbet adds a fourth quality, emulation of a certain style the style of brilliance, beyond intelligence or profundity...
...It is a quality that was not much celebrated in the past, but in our day it has truly come into its own...
...The conceit of the Great Society was that greatness, never mind excellence, could be imposed by sociological fiat...
...The young men of the great universities in the Ivy League and of similar institutions in the far and middle West sat this one out...
...He also dresses funny, as Woody Allen has percipiently pointed out...
Vol. 7 • December 1973 • No. 3
