Word: podhoretzes
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...REAL BUSINESS OF AMERICA is, as Calvin Coolidge once said, business, then who needs intellectuals? Breaking Ranks in Norman Podhoretz' attempt to answer this question. In a world where the exclusive concerns of professional politicians are "the distribution of patronage and the administration of the going system," intellectuals, Podhoretz affirms, bear the responsibility of providing us vision and direction. Breaking Ranks is his unabashed celebration of intellectualism...
...Podhoretz' book, written as an expanded letter to his own son, describes both his personal political attitudes and America's during the past 30 years. He is not confessional or apologetic but doggedly forthright as he discusses the forces that convinced him to turn from liberalism in the 1950's to radicalism in the 60's and finally to the opposition of the New Left and the counter culture...
...first glance, then, Podhoretz might appear politically fickle, switching wings more often than a hockey player. But Breaking Ranks reveals a principled man, one who does not quit believing when it hurts to believe. This man has written a serious autobiography, his candid attempt to understand and then describe his motivations and convictions...
...NORMAN PODHORETZ ARRIVED on the intellectual magazine circuit in the early '40's, fresh from a brilliant undergraduate career as Lionel Trilling's and F.R. Leavis' favorite son. He cut his political teeth in the late 1940's as a liberal and an anti-Communist...
...seeming to uphold American political traditions, Podhoretz and his allies have been dubbed "neo-conservatives," a label that causes them some discomfort. Podhoretz continues to claim to be a liberal; it is the radicals, he insists, who became illiberal. Such quib bling may be of greater interest to the author than to his readers. But if his book is often tedious in detail, it has a sweeping theme. At a time of testing, the Commentary group upheld standards of civilized discourse and thereby earned an honorable place in the history of American letters. They behaved as intellectuals are supposed...