THE STANDARD READER
The Standard Reader Books in Brief The Intellectuals and the Flag by Todd Gitlin (Columbia University, 192 pp., $24.95). Among Winston Churchill's aphorisms, his observation that "when the eagles...
...As an alternative, he wishes to revisit intellectuals like David Reisman, C. Wright Mills, and Irving Howe, who proposed ideas on their own without waiting for what the other guy was going to say...
...One wonders that if it weren't for Gitlin's role as a friendly critic, would his work be treated as nothing more than a conservative attack...
...Finding this exact sort of decay in the modern left, Todd Gitlin presents The Intellec^-uals and the Flag with the intent of silencing the parrots and finding new leftist eagles...
...Nicholas J. Xenakis...
...No one understood better than Churchill that in the absence of innovative leadership, things begin to fall apart...
...In Gitlin's words, the left is a movement that "has been clearer about isms to oppose—mainly imperialism and racism—than about values and policies to further...
...Among Winston Churchill's aphorisms, his observation that "when the eagles are silent, the parrots begin to jabber" speaks profoundly to the current morass of bickering partisanship...
...Specifically, by revisiting the movement's past luminaries and intellectual schools, Gitlin is trying to lead the left away from certain "traditions that have flourished in recent decades," traditions which he sees as responsible for leading it "into a wilderness...
...Nonetheless, it is precisely this insider perspective that makes the book interesting and worth reading...
...Gitlin comes strikingly close to accomplishing his goal, and is only prevented from complete success by using the very type of rhetoric that he warns against when he indulges in an unproductive jeremiad at the conclusion of his book...
...Drawing from his Trotskyite days, Dwight Macdonald used to call this khotevism, a term derived from the Russian word for tail that means "making up your policy in reaction to your enemy...
...If the left has any hope of regaining legitimacy, it will "have to decide not to coast down the currents of least resistance" and return to public life...
...The book is meant not to be a tome of self-flagellation, but rather a tempered plea to stop the insanity...
...Although The Intellectuals and the Flag puts forth a well-reasoned argument for the left to reevaluate its philosophy, intellectuals on the right have previously made many of the same points...
...In the absence of such figures and the subsequent retreat of likeminded intellectuals to the ivory tower, the left has been stuck with the jabbering of postmodernism—something that Gitlin sees as contributing to its current atrophy...
...It is unfortunate, because in his moderation and honesty Gitlin reveals himself to be precisely the type of voice needed by the left...
...Understandably, Gitlin sees a major problem with this sort of rhetoric...
...It is not Gitlin's willingness to criticize Bush that is troublesome, but rather that his criticism seems to be little more than puerile name-calling and not the sort of reasoned polemic one would expect to conclude the book...
...While most of the book is a judicious and thoughtful account of the modern left's genesis, the following sentence refers to President Bush: "First, almost half of American voters chose this lazy ne'er do well, this duty-shirking know-nothing who deceived and hustled his way to power largely without careful scrutiny...
...and in many ways, the left still encounters problems in trying to understand any military action outside of a Vietnam-type context...
...This is not difficult to understand, considering that the New Left carved out an identity as a force of opposition, specifically to the Vietnam war...
...The major criticism of the left today is that while many can identify what it stands against, few can identify what it stands for...
...In Gitlin's world, working for change goes well beyond academia...
Vol. 11 • June 2006 • No. 39
