Author Bill Kauffman finds A Conservative History of the American Left "a well-written, pugnaciously argued, and consistently interesting account of the American Left." Former Reader's Digest editor Christopher Willcox labels my book "a formidable piece of work--a synthesizing popular history that deserves an audience wider than its polemical title suggests." Nevertheless, both critics, as critics are wont to do, find points to criticize in their generally positive reviews. The reviews, appearing in ISI's First Principles and the New York Sun respectively, interestingly criticize me on (nearly) the same point from opposite angles. Willcox, a former Bush II Pentagon spokesman who believes America's role in the Cold War to be praiseworthy, faults me for not highlighting "the significant role played by some liberal Democrats in exposing and opposing Soviet Communism." He strangely cites the American Federation of Labor--a group whose opposition to radicalism and Communism I repeatedly address (see pp. 187-89)--as an example butressing his point. Kauffman, contra Willcox, finds the Cold War an ignoble pursuit. "[Flynn] throws in with, or at least excuses, the obsessive red hunters," Kauffman writes. "Elevating anticommunism to a central principle of the American Right wrecked the Right by crushing its most decent and humane aspects: respect for home, for place, for decentralized liberty, for local tradition." As the author of the book reviewed, I don't mind criticisms reflecting the reviewer's ideological quirks as readers are generally smart enough to see them as just that. In other words, some criticisms say more about the critic than the criticized. Unfortunately, that idea may also apply to the complaining guy whose book is being criticized, too!
I just got the book. I think some right wing doves, may be prejudiced by your first two books. In them you make the mistake of being proud of the USA. While I'm supportive of many right wing doves this is where they lose me.
Thank you for purchasing the book (I presume, given your occupation, that you did not steal it). I think your general point is correct, Marty. I would never apply the unpatriotic label to Kauffman (not that you did this). His error, methinks, is projecting all-American characteristics to just about anyone who shares his antiwar stance. His laudatory essay on Gore Vidal in his book America First!--strange that a dude who puts an exclamation point in a book title would fault me for over-the-top book titles--is an excellent example of this. I read Kauffman's book about a decade ago and liked it, but I think Kauffman reaches when he projects his own Washingtonian beliefs on anyone who's ever said anything remotely antiwar.
He is in some ways a mirror image of some of the hawkish conservatives he rails against--people who would prefer Joe Lieberman to Pat Buchanan because they are so obsessed with an aggressive foreign policy that they are willing to discard every other issue in pursuit of it. I see this in Kauffman, a guy who strangely sees Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal as more conservative that any number of people who take conservative positions on every issue but have somehow bought into the nation-building exercise in Iraq.
Like Kauffman (and Vidal for that matter), I opposed the Iraq war. But my passionate beliefs on the war being a fool's errand have never clouded my brain into thinking that those gathered at International ANSWER rallies generally have America's interests at heart. The reason I believe what I do on this last point is that I have interviewed hundreds of such people.
Kauffman, then, is a unique breed--an antiwar flag-waver. I wish there were more of him. He does too, which is why I think he sees antiwar flag-wavers everywhere.
I am a fan of Mr. Kauffman and have a few of his books. At times, I too may feel like a front porch anarchist at times.
I just, wanted to point out your unique ati-Iraq war balance with other conservative issues.
Pax
Marty
