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Exactly forty years ago, in the first issue of COMMENTARY (November 1945), its founding editor, the late Elliot E. Cohen, wrote an introductory statement outlining the problems with which the new magazine would necessarily be concerned. The year 1945, Cohen said, “marks an epoch in world history.” World War II had just ended, “yet we stand troubled and hesitant before the glorious era of peace which we have awaited so long. . . .”

For one thing, there was the question of whether the “giant's strength, in production, in cooperation, in planning, in courage” which the United States had demonstrated in winning the war could be “mustered as greatly and as wisely for the arts of peaceful living. . . .” In addition, there was the “ultimate challenge” posed by the explosion only a few weeks earlier of the atomic bomb. And as if the destructive power of the bomb were not enough, there was “a force that, in the political and social scene, can wreak destruction comparable to the atomic bomb itself.” This power was embodied in “the kind of thinking and feeling” that had led to the “colossal latter-day massacre of innocents, whether Jews or other ‘minorities,’” and that (as subsequent issues of COMMENTARY would make clear) had not disappeared with the destruction of Nazism in Germany but remained alive and well in the form of Soviet totalitarianism.

To commemorate COMMENTARY's fortieth anniversary, the editors addressed these questions to a group of distinguished intellectuals:

Looking back over the last forty years, how would you assess the response of the United States to the three challenges that Elliot Cohen saw as marking the new era born in 1945?

Has the “giant's strength” of the United States been as adequately applied to the “arts of peaceful living” as it had been to the fighting of the war?

How have we managed the “ultimate challenge” of nuclear weapons?

And finally, how successfully have we met the equally dangerous threat of totalitarianism?

The responses—twenty-nine in all—follow in alphabetical order.

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Lionel Abel: The editors of COMMENTARY, referring to the interesting—and approving—comment of its founding editor, the late Elliot Cohen, on the conduct of the United States during World War II, have asked some of us to judge whether American behavior, over the past forty years, can be approved as well. More precisely, what has the United States done in response to its three greatest challenges? To answer this question we have to make some judgment of our country as a whole, for it can hardly be distinguished from its most important policies.

But can one properly judge one's country? I mean, politically. One can, of course, judge a particular policy chosen by the country's decisionmakers. Thus many are critical today of President Reagan's new policy toward the Republic of South Africa. But can one totalize the policies of the country and then judge it as a whole? Now Noam Chomsky does exactly this every time he approaches a foreign-policy question (see his article on our policy in Central America in the Journal of Contemporary Studies, Spring-Summer 1985). In his piece the renowned radical announces that the American government is, and has been, opposed, or indifferent, to the promotion of democratic conditions in any part of the world outside our own borders. I take it that this is one of Chomsky's typically provocative exaggerations. But I do not want to judge the truth or falsity of this deliverance of his here, I only want to make clear what is its intent. It is nothing less than a political judgment of the country as a whole, and not just a judgment of one of its policies.

One can judge one's country morally, also aesthetically, without support from others, and without having to justify one's right to make such judgments. But can one in the same way judge one's country—once again, not just one of its policies—politically? I think not. For a judgment that is truly political cannot be made by just one person; it has to be made along with others, and anyone attempting such a judgment (one made with some others) can quite properly be asked just who those others are. If one is judging an American policy politically, one can judge it with Americans who prefer some other policy, but if one is judging America politically, and judging it unfavorably, this probably would only make sense if done along with the nationals of some other country. And in fact when America has been attacked in political terms, the attack has generally been made in support of the Soviet Union, China, Cuba, or some other Third World country. The currently favored “others,” along with whom one nowadays attacks the United States politically, are the Sandinistas of Nicaragua and their allies among the guerrillas in El Salvador.

In the 18th century, it was thought—though not by Voltaire—that nationalism is the only form of selfishness that is ethically obligatory. And in the 19th century it was thought high-minded to give one's life for the fatherland. But the 20th century saw the birth of a very different political notion, namely, that one's own country can be, often has to be, regarded as one's main enemy. This idea, set forth by the Russian Bolsheviks, is political through and through and not literary, moral, or metaphysical, like the idea expressed by James Joyce's Stephen Dedalus, who, when asked if he is prepared to die for his country, says “Let my country die for me.” I take it he is (if serious) asserting that it is ethically obligatory for the great writer, who was to forge in the smithy of his soul the uncreated conscience of his country, to refuse to die for it. All the same I think the sally of Stephen Dedalus was prepared for by the war position of Lenin and his party: your country is your enemy. With what others could such a position have been taken by a subject of the Russian czar, whom even socialists like Plekhanov were ready, on patriotic grounds, to support against the Kaiser? With members of the international proletariat, of course, the final subject of history, according to the Marxist eschatology: with the international proletarians, whose selfish interests were to replace those of the nation as ethically binding on the individual.

That belief is no longer with us. There are workers and working-class groups in various countries, but there is no longer believed to be an international proletariat in the Marxist sense of the term. Hence if one is going to take a stand against one's own country, one has to postulate loyalty to some other country. And how is an American to find any larger, more progressive, or historically more to be trusted group than his fellow citizens? So if today one wants to criticize or attack the United States, not just one of its policies, one can properly be asked to say with what other country one's loyalty lies. That is, unless one is willing to say of one's politics what Paul Berman, in the New Republic (September 16, 1985), says about the actions of the “hip radicals” of the 60's, which he claims were based on “metaphysical” thinking. What he can mean by metaphysical thinking is surely not any kind of systematic thinking that I have been familiar with. But if he includes among the actions of the hip radicals the New Leftist demonstrations against the war in Vietnam, then I would say that the reason for the metaphysics in their politics was this: they could not attack America in the name of the international proletariat, and it would have been most unwise politically to announce their loyalty to North Vietnam (though in fact at the great peace rally held in Central Park in the 60's, certain New Leftists were honest enough to carry North Vietnamese flags). Yet if the peace movement were to win, then the United States had to lose, and in this sense the movement had to be in favor of victory for North Vietnam. And that is how Georg Lukács, who was opposed to metaphysics and certainly knew something about politics, celebrated in the New Left Review the Vietnamese victory over America when it came.

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