Friday, March 02, 2007

Schlesinger   [Jonah Goldberg]

I pretty much agree with much that has been said about Schlesinger around here. I also think Norman Podhoretz said what I would have said either before he died or a little while later. I think Schlesinger was essentially a product  and institution of the post-World War II era. A nation accustomed to believing the government and the liberal establishment after the New Deal and the war, looked to certified "experts" to tell them what to believe. The journalists of the liberal establishment, the Murrow Boys, the New York Times, played along with this game because they were part of it. Schlesinger confirmed the stature of these institutions and in return these institutions reconfirmed his own stature. Academics eager to follow his path, well, followed his path (and today, they grow nostalgic now that the path seems closed to them). The Vital Center is a great and important book. But its success at shaping mainstream liberalism and the Democratic Party seemed to have gone to its author's head and he became determined to defend both the Party and his place in it against all critiques, political and intellectual. That made him too much the activist and too little the scholar. 

03/02 12:00 PMShare