Radical Pacifist

...This book exhibits some of this lack of basic understanding and analysis...

...McReynolds is not guilty of these misconceptions...

...McReynolds' political analysis is not brilliant, but he presents through his articles—reprinted largely from the Village Voice and Liberation—a coherent perspective on the Sixties...

...His description of the Soviet invasion of Prague, which he witnessed, is excellent...

...His essay on homosexuality, which is one of the most compelling in the book, gives a sense of the dilemma of a homosexual even in the permissive subculture of the radical movement and of Greenwich Village...

...He attacks the New Left's visceral anti-Americanism and its championship of the outworn doctrines, Maoism and Stalinism, and he rejects liberalism and gut anti-Communism...

...Indeed, one of the hangups of the "movement" is its myopic view of the developing world and its dependence on such models as Che Guevera, Ho Chi Minh, and others for guidance...

...As an old leftist—he was involved in socialist politics in the dark days of the Fifties— McReynolds looks with some trepidation on the politics of spontaneity and on some aspects of the drug culture...

...Although probably unintended, We Have Been Invaded by the 21st Century provides a useful history of the Sixties...

...The American left, with few exceptions, has been rather ignorant of the rest of the world, and particularly of the developing areas...

...McReynolds seems to be one of those rare people involved for more than a decade in the politics of the radical movement, and particularly in pacifist organizations, without having become insensitive either to the human element or to broader political realities...

...Although he was a Congressional candidate of the Peace and Freedom Party in the 1968 elections, he was not taken in by "movement" rhetoric concerning the essential evil of the United States and the goodness of various national liberation movements...

...As Paul Goodman states in his introduction, David McReynolds stands between the older generation and the New Left—a rather difficult position these days...

...Throughout the period, McReynolds retained his political perspective...

...His comments on such topics as civil rights, homosexuality, Vietnam, and the New Left are infused with a humanism and sensitivity to the plight of individuals which one does not often find among "movement" commentators these days...

...But there is little analysis of the politics of these countries or of their relationship to the American radical movement...

...His comments, written several years ago, are if anything too generous to the New Left in the light of the Weathermen and the breakup of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS...

...In some people, this might be an accusation of moral blindness, but for David McReynolds it is a compliment...

...Reviewed by Philip G. Altbach David McReynolds, radical pacifist, journalist, and long time activist for the War Resisters League, has given us a remarkable book...

...Several essays concerning McReynold's travels to South Vietnam, Czechoslovakia, Japan, and Western Europe are uniformly senstitive to human events...

...McReynolds remains rather ambivalent about the New Left...

...And his short commentary, "In Defense of Butter," is a humorous and unfortunately true put-down of the asceticism and lack of joie de vivre of many radicals...

...The book is written well, and it provides both analysis and understanding...

...This book probably says as much about David McReynolds as it does about the radical movement or American reality...

...It is incomplete—there is relatively little commentary on the "cultural revolution," and the section on the civil rights movement is rather limited—but one gets a sense of the decade...

...Indeed, one of the remarkable things about this book is that McReynolds seems to have maintained a consistent moral and political position throughout a period of tremendous change...

...McReynolds comes through as an engaging and humanistic person, who has held to an admirably consistent and sensitive perspective through a decade of great change and substantial disillusionment for many radicals...