THE ANTI-ANTIS:

Sidney Hook Was Right, Arthur Schlesinger Is Wrong (Ronald Radosh, 12-16-02, The New York Sun)

What really irks Mr. Schlesinger, I suspect, is that Sidney Hook did not abandon his anti-Communism to become an ardent exponent of what has come to be called anti-anti-Communism.

When Mr. Schlesinger came back from a conference recently held in Cuba to discuss the Cuban missile crisis, he told the press upon his return how impressed he was with the charisma, warmth, and openness of Fidel Castro. If Hook was alive, he would not ever have been caught singing the praises of the one remaining Latin American dictator, despite the changes in the international situation.

Nor would he have joined Mr. Schlesinger in publicly honoring Mikhail Gorbachev for purportedly alone ending the Cold War. Nor would Hook have followed Murray Kempton in the kind of "balance" he showed when he unreservedly praised and glorified the late thug Huey Newton, leader of the Black Panther Party in the 1960s.

On all these issues, Sidney Hook has been proven to have been right, and Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. has been proven to be wrong. One suspects, as Hilton Kramer has argued, that had Mr. Schlesinger kept up such a stance, he "ran the risk of sounding like Richard Nixon and, after 1980, even more like Ronald Reagan." Mr. Schlesinger changed his views to now attack the old anti-communism as wrong and "obsessive," and to chastise those who stuck to principle.

No longer could a member of the liberal intelligentsia be viewed as a tough anti-Communist. It is to Hook's credit that he never sought admission to that club, and put principle ahead of opportunism.

Many of you are probably too young to remember how odious the anti-anti-communists were. They presented their ideas as follows: well, of course we oppose the Soviet Union and communism, but nothing can justify (fill in the blank--executing the Rosenbergs, Joe McCarthy, the bomb, Vietnam, aid to the Contras, etc.) We see something not too dissimilar today from those who of course oppose radical Islamic terror, but, after Afghanistan, oppose pretty nearly every step that's been taken or contemplated to fight it. To be anti-anti is often to tip-toe right up to the edge of being objectively pro. Posted by Orrin Judd at December 20, 2002 11:57 AM