exacerbated conflicts over questions
of values?what Christopher Lasch has
called our ?cultural civil war.? It has
always been dif?cult for Americans
living in a pluralistic society to reach
any kind of consensus about the ends of
a good polity or a good life, but the cur-
rent divisions within our culture now
make it increasingly dif?cult even to
hold such discussions, let alone resolve
them. One doesn?t have to believe in
a totally adminiStered "one-dimensional
society? to realize that the constraints
on our cultural citizenship require more
than plain speaking from our social
critics. Without democratic spaces for
public conversation, how can American
culture provide the right setting for
the type of criticism Walzer advocates?
During the twentieth century, discus-
sion of public issues has tended to
fragment into separate specialized dis-
ciplines inaccessible to outsiders.
Walzer?s reliance on the tradition of
I Silone, Orwell, and Camus has an ad-
ditional drawback: it deprives him of
the opportunity to examine American
traditions of radical thought that are
particularly appropriate to his enter-

BOOK REVIEW

prise. \Valzer?s theoretical writings are,
in many ways, ?rmly in the American
pragmatic tradition. Yet he makes no
effort to address that tradition directly
and ignores the career of John Dewey,
the twentieth-century American who
best embodies Walzer?s own ideals.
Moreover, where, in this brief for the
prophetic role of radical intellectuals,
are the prophetic voices of Jane Ad-
dams, Edmund Wilson, Lewis Mum-
ford, Dwight MacDonald, the 
(Staughton, as well as Robert and
Helen}, James Baldwin, or the authors
of the Port Huron Statement?

By sticking to Silone, Orwell, and
Camus, Walzer stays on what is fa-
miliar ground for him. European critics
of totalitarianism have provided the
ethical underpinnings for the social-
democratic perspeCtive Dissent has ar-
ticulated since its founding. Such critics
have done for American social demo-
crats what Reinhold Niebuhr did for
"realist" liberals in the forties and
?fties. They give a moral dimension to
reformism that justi?es itself in the
adminisrrative language of the welfare
state rather than in the rhetoric of

civic republicanism or Old Testament
prophets. Perhaps the American radi-
cals I mentioned are in the end too
pietistic, too populistic, too libertarian
for W?alzer's brand of social democracy.
They have less to say about the state as
the center of reform activity than they
do about the ways in which friendships
and associations formed in the church,
the school, or the protesr movement
link the quest for personal meaning to
public endeavors. In their insistence
that moral and cultural issues are at
the heart of a democratic politics, they
have embraced positions closer to the
ambiguous tradition of radical protest
that link Tom Watson to Jesse jackson
than to the rationalist socialism of Olaf
Palme and Willy Brandt. The ?rst tradi-
tion may be messier, more problematic,
than the second. But it cannot be
ignored by American social critics
committed to the renewal of a demo-
cratic discourse. As Dos Passes under-
stood, the clean words? spoken by
our fathers?and our mothers~may
sometimes become ?slimy and foul,?
but they are in the end the words we
must use and try to make our own. Cl

Tom Hayden: The Waning of a Politics of Vision

 

Harold Jacobs

Reunion: A i'liemoir by Tom Hayden.
Random House, 1988, 539 pp.

A rticulate, intelligent, courageous,
committed, energetic, and charis-
matic, Tom Hayden was the radical
intellectual who, as a result of his
leadership abilities, stood out among
all his peers in the sixties. The publica-
tion of Reunion: A a book he
had been thinking about writing for
over a decade, has been a long?awaited
event for all those who have an interest
in him as a political figure or in the

 

Harold jar-0b: it a professm ofsociology
at Palsz and is the editor
of the book Weatherman (Rampart-Ir
Press, 1971).

New Left itself. While his recent sepa-
ration from Jane Fonda, much like his
March 1989 introducrion of legislation
to create a California Holocaust Com-
mission, guarantees that he will remain
a mass-media ?gure, Hayden?s future
signi?cance transcends the hype: he
is one of the few veterans of the move-
ment against the Vietnam War who
remains capable of playing a national
leadership role in a revived left during
the coming decade. It is, therefore, all
the more important to understand his
current attempts to distance himself
from the New Left which he did so
much to shape.

Hayden was at the cutting edge of
the action during the pivotal moments

of the movement?s history. A brief
synopsis of his political career high-
lights his presence through all the twists
and turns of the New Left's evolution.
He was active in the South during the
early civil rights struggle; he was elected
president of Students for a Democratic
Society (SDS) in 1962 and drafted the
organization?s famous manifesto, the
Port Huron Statement; he was a com-
munity organizer in the Newark ghetto
from 1964 to 1967; he was among
the ?rst New Leftists to travel to
North Vietnam and became a nation-
ally known antiwar spokesman; he
planned and helped lead the demon-
Strations at the Democratic National
Convention in Chicago in 1968 and

105

was one of the defendants in the
Chicago Seven conspiracy trial; he
participated in the uprising at Colum-
bia University and helped found a
revolutionary collective called the Red
Family in Berkeley; he was instru-
mental in organizing the Indochina
Peace Campaign in 1972.

In Reunion: A Memoir Hayden de?
scribes his childhood and adolescent
years growing up in the Midwest; his
estrangement from and eventual recon-
ciliation with his parents; his two mar-
riages and his relationships with other
women; his friendships and encounters
with Old Left, New Left, and esrablish-
ment ?gures. These personal events
are interwoven with an account _of his
political development from existential
rebel and idealisric reformer in the
late ?fties and early sixties to radical
activist and committed revolutionary
in the late sixties and early seventies.
By the midseventies, with the New
Left in a State of collapse, Hayden?s
trajectory moved from left to right as
he sought to reenter the political main-
stream. He depicts himself today as ?a
lucky man" and a practical reformist
who has been working since 1982 in
the Democratic party as a California
state 

The drama of Hayden?s life is charac?
terized by his belief that he is a dam-
aged survivor. What he survived was
the social and personal breakdowns of
the sixties. As he tells it, he started out
early in the decade attempting to imple-
ment the democratic values he imbibed
as a youth. Insread of receiving support
from either the state or his parents, he
experienced conflict and rejection. In-
dicted for conspiracy to engage in
violence against the American govern-
ment, he faced the prospect ofprison,
exile, or a life on the run as an under-
ground revolutionary. In a self-critical
revelation, he confesses that during
this period in his life he ?reacted in
ways which compromised [his] best
judgment,? and he succumbed to the
temptation of hatred.?

But a surprising series of reversals
occurred in Hayden?s life just at the
point when he was tottering on the edge
of the abyss: his accusers were driven
from office in the Watergate scandals,
he fell in love with and married Jane
Fonda, he made great strides toward
reestablishing his political legitimacy
by getting elected to the California
State legislature, he reunited with his

106 TIKKUN VOL. 4, N0. 3

family before his parents? deaths. From
the depths of his alienation, his original
idealistic values reasserted themselves.
He once again found the will and
energy to attempt to improve the
world. On the personal level, the mem~
oirs have an old-fashioned Hollywood
ending that even Ronald Reagan, ide?
ology aside, would appreciate. As for
Hayden?s admission, never expected
to be where I am today,? who can
doubt it?

In spite of his new life, or perhaps
because of it, Hayden feels the need
to reevaluate his past political convic-
tions and behavior. For all his present
optimism and enthusiasm, Hayden con-
siders the New Left a tragedy, not so
much for its having failed as for the
demoralizing manner in which the fail-
ure occurred. Although Hayden ac-
knowledges that momentous things
were accomplished in civil rights, anti-
war work, university reform, and wom-
en?s rights, he writes that the New Left
was brutally and shamefully aborted,
cut down at the time of its greatest
impact, prevented from evolving and
realizing its full potential.

In accounting for the demise of the
New Left, Hayden stresses (as others
have done) its self-inflicted wounds:
?We ourselves became infected with
many of the diseases of the society we
wished to erase. . .. Claiming love as
our motivation, we could-nOt subdue
hate. Questing for community, we met
our egos.? That the New Left?s col-
lapse was not brought about by outside
forces as much as by divisiveness within
its own ranks makes its end all the more
poignant. Moreover, it is an anomaly
that a movement that began as a moral
crusade for civil rights and peace ended
in moral disarray. Hence the guilt, the
feeling of having been blocked and
overcome in ways not totally under-
stood. Hayden seeks to come to grips
with this inner absurdity? by recount-
ing how the major political events of
the sixties influenced and distorted
his and other people's judgment.

Hayden?s analysis, brie?y stated, runs
as follows: idealistic youth, aroused
by the desire to live a committed life
infused with high moral purpose, were
moved to act against social injustice.
In particular, the Southern civil rights
movement and the struggle againsr the
Vietnam War provided foci around
which to organize, because both issues

powerfully exempli?ed the evil under-
side of American politics. Rather than
the country?s responding constructively
to the movement?s legitimate demands
for change, respected authorities, both
liberal and conservative, defaulted.
Nonviolent protest was ?met by mis?
understanding, mismanagement, and
overreaction.? The uncaring rigidity
of of?cials politicized and radicalized
the New Left and undermined its be-
lief in the possibility of reform. This
tendency was reinforced by the assas-
sinations of John F. Kennedy, Martin
Luther King, Jr, and Robert Kennedy.
Healthy protest, denied a construc-
tive response, beCarne subordinated
to ?aggressive impulses lurking in
us all.? State-supported violence and
intransigence produced a revolution?
ary backlash filled with bitterness and
despair. 

The tragedy, as Hayden sees it, is that
in the face of these and other pres-
sures, the movement self-destructed
in a frenzy of self-recrimination, revolu-
tionary posturing, irrational violence,
and sectarian squabbles. Contrary to
the radical movement?s belief that the
society was evolving into a police state,
the system actually was in the process
of reforming itself. The war came to
an end, and the protesters were even-
tually vindicated. High government
officials who had abused their power
were driven from of?ce. In short, ac-
cording to Hayden, ?the system had
worked.? It was no longer unreasonable
(if it ever was) to believe in the efficacy
of social reform.

Hayden grudgingly admits that he
became as caught up in the movement?s
?madness,? that is, in its revolutionary
fantasies, as were the Weatherpeople
who later went underground. The Red
Family, Hayden?s Berkeley collective,
to which I also belonged, was an above-
ground version ofWeatherman. Its po-
litical analysis was basically the same,
emphasizing support for Third \Vorld
revolutionary insurgencies abroad and
for the Black liberation struggle at
home. Tactically, however, its politics
were implemented in a relatively ra-
tional manner, something that distin-
guished the Red Family and other
collectives like it across the country
from Weatherman. During this period,
Hayden was publicly projecting himself
as a Maoisr or as Kim Il Sungian, largely
as a result of the in?uence of Bob
Scheer, a member of the Red Family

.4

 

 

who had been a former editor of Ram-
parts magazine and who now writes
for the L0: Angela Times. Hayden
acted, no less than any other member
of the collective, in an Openly revolu?
tionary manner. The issue for him, then,
was not whether armed struggle against
the American state was morally justi?-
able (for he certainly believed it was),
but whether it was politically feasible.

While Hayden criticizes the Red
Family for becoming a cult at the time
of his expulsion from it, he never
acknowledges his own responsibility
for reinforcing those tendencies when
he was a member?if not a leaderwin
good standing of that collecrive. For
example, Hayden?s idea of appropriate
political education sessions in the col-
lective was for the members to sit
around in a circle and read aloud, line
by line, Huey Newton?s or Eldridge
Cleaver?s latest political pronounce-
ments in the Black Panther party?s
newspaper. Once, when a member
dared to make a mild criticism of this
material, Hayden angrily scolded the
person for being "stupid." These, no
doubt, are moments that Hayden does
not enjoy looking back on. In discuss-
ing this period of his life, he very
selectively reveals what he actually said
or did, thus minimizing both his revolu-
tionary commitment and his doctrinaire
inclinations.

Male power rivalries were as much
a part of what went on in the Red
Family as anything else. Hayden?s lover,
Anne Weills, was Bob Scheer?s ex-wife.
The three of them formed a complex
emotional triangle that contaminated
the interpersonal relationships within
the collective. \Weills, who became the
de facto leader of the women, felt the
need to demonstrate publicly her in-
dependence from Hayden in order to
maintain her credibility with the radi-
cal feininists in the Berkeley commu-
nity, many of whom were pressuring
women to sever all relationships with
male ?heavies.? During meetings of
the collective, \K'ieills would continually
berate Hayden for the slightest nuances
ofbehavior that might be construed as
sexist. Hayden responded in a cowed
and intimidated fashion.

Scheer, on the other hand, whom the
women had de?ned as the most chau-
vinist male in the collective, was singled
out for special, kid-gloves treatment.
The women met privately with him in
political reeducation sessions. \Weills,

seeking to establish her own indepen-
dence from the two prominent radical
men in her life, used Scheer to dis-
tance herself from Hayden. After meet-
ing with the women, Scheer later met
with the men and attacked them for
not doing more than the women re-
quesred to overcome their male chau-
vinism! More often than not these
meetings were veiled attacks aimed at
Hayden who, fearful of losing \Veills
and guilt-ridden over his past behavior
toward women, proved unable to de
fend himself from even illegitimate
Criticism.

This dynamic, which was never
openly recognized or dealt with in the
Red Family, exacerbated the dif?culties
involved in constructively overcoming
the real vestiges of male chauvinism in
the collective. For Hayden, it culmi?
nated in his expulsion from the Red
Family. The members (his closest friends
at the time] decided in his absence that
he was "an oppressive male chauvinist?
and that ?the group's potential would
best be realized without having some-
one of [his] character in its midst.? In
his memoirs, Hayden recounts his hu-
miliation over being purged from the
collective and the grief he felt over the
loss of his relationship with \Veills, as
well as with Scheer?s and her young
son, Chrisropher, to whom Hayden had
become a surrogate father. He makes
no mention of his rivalry with Scheer,
although he notes in passing that Scheer
was ?seeing? Jane Fonda shortly before
Hayden took up with her. Hayden was
never one to probe too deeply beneath
the surface of what he
refers to as ?complicated relationships
[that] would nor go away.?

ayden never recognized that the

failure of the Red Family, includ-
ing its inhumane treatment of him,
was an outgrowth of an approach to
politics that he himself had made
central to the New Left. Rejecting Old
Left ideologies that tended to view
human beings as shaped by outside
social forces, New Leftists adopted an
existential politics of choice that saw
no limits to the possibilities of tran-
scendence. By personally transforming
oneself, by pushing oneself to one?s
limits, one should have been able to
overcome all forms of ?bourgeois?
conditioning and become an embodi-
ment of the revolutionary values of
the society of the future. Each person

was to be judged on the grounds of
personal authenticity: it was held as
both necessary and legitimate for move-
ment activists to criticize each other
over how well or badly they were re-
making themselves in accordance with
their shared vision and values. If one
did not embody the fullesr personal
transformation, one was failing to make
an authentic commitment.

 

AZZ over the 60311th t,
hard?core ew Leftist;
were putting
each other ?up against the
wall? for their
revofw?z'ozmjt shortcomings.

 

Hayden played an important role in
popularizing this way of thinking about
politics. His decision to live in Berkeley
corresponded to his adoption of a
theory that advocated ?liberated ter-
ritories? built from youth ghettos like
Berkeley, Cambridge, and Ann Arbor.
From these places, the revolution would
spread to the rest of America. The
Red Family, in turn. was to be an
example of how revolutionaries should
live. Inevitably, then, the demands
within the collective reflected the same
demands that Hayden advocated for
the rest of the New Left, namely, that
the movement?s goals?a society free
of alienating and oppressive forms of
domination?become the movement?s
criteria for evaluating the moral integ-
rity of its own inner life. It should
come as no surprise that perfect em-
bodiments of the future liberated soci-
ety were hard to ?nd.

In facr, the Red Family mirrored the
relatively inhumane way that people
were treating each other in the move-
ment as a whole. Weatherman guilt-
tripped people for not being militant
enough; women denounced men as
?pigs? for their chauvinism. All over
the country, hard-core New Leftists,
now functioning in small, tight-knit
collectives like the Red Family, were
putting each other ?up againsr the wall"
for their revolutionary shortcomings.
The tone of the criticism was no longer
comradely; it involved attacks on the
personalities in question. ?Trashing?
people for their inability to transcend,
almost overnight, twenty to thirty years

REVIEWS 107

 

of contamination and distortion from
classism, racism, and sexism was the
late New Left?s most crippling vice.
The personal power struggles between
Hayden and Scheer were not that
different in style from struggles for
corporate power; they differed from
television soap opera only in that they
were clothed in revolutionary rhetoric.
Inevitably, human weakness and self-
interest reasserted themselves in the
very heart of the revolutionary venture.

?Inevitably,? not because Hayden
was not an exemplary revolutionary
hero, but rather because he held and
popularized unrealistic expectations of
what any individual could achieve.
Echoing the individualism inherenf in
the popular American belief that any-
body could become anything through
effort, courage, and hard work, Hay-
den?s New Left insisted on pushing
the idea of self-transformation beyond
achievable limits. It was utopian, in
the pejorative sense. Just as his fellow
Red Family members turned on him,
denounced him, and purged him for
his revolutionary shortcomings, so too
throughout the movement did a spirit
of mutual intolerance turn a loving
community into a cesspool of mutual
recriminations and harsh judgments as
each person found others inadequately
antisexist, antiracist, antihierarchical,
and the like. Though undoubtedly ex-
acerbated by the presence of under-
cover agents who used this dynamic
to accelerate disharmony, the Self-
destructive thrust of the New Left was
an outgrowth of the philosophy of in-
dividual existential self-transcendence
that Hayden had a large part in creating
and reinforcing.

In ignoring the insights of borh
Marx and Freud, Hayden was oblivious
to the social and con-
straints that limited what could rea-
sonably be expected in the way of
individual self-transformation. Rely-
ing on individualistic fantasies deeply
rooted in American culture, Hayden
had no theoretical basis for developing
a sense of compassion for individual
weaknesses?his own or anyone else?s.
No wonder, then, that even today
Hayden demonstrates a remarkable
lack of sel?understanding. In his mem-
oirs he adopts a level of self-criticism
carefully calculated to appear open,
and calibrated to give the potential
Hayden voter the impression that he
has been self-reflective and has dis-

108 TIKKUN VOL. 4, N0. 3

covered his weaknesses. In fact, Hayden
subtly defends himself from the kind
of self-scrutiny that would allow others
to really know him.

hen Hayden does discuss his

personality in terms that touch
upon its a number of
problematic tendencies emerge: a
difficulty in maintaining long-term in-
timate relationships with others, in-
cluding parents, friends, and lovers;
a strong aggressive drive to seek
power and to ?be in the center of
things?; (3) a propensity to manipulate
and use people; (4) a paranoid view of
the world that tends to result in a
flirtation with violence and martyr-
dom. These ?narcissistic? tendencies
no doubt derive from an oppressive
and obdurate feeling of guilt Hayden
picked up in his childhood years over
not having lived up to his parents?
expecrations. Although Hayden tends
to gloss over the vicissitudes of his
earliest years so as to maintain the
illusion of a ?secure? young life, the
facts attest to something quite different.

Hayden?s father, a conservative Re-
publican ?who could not easily show
emotion,? began drinking heavily in
the years just prior to divorcing his
mother. While his father continued
to cooperate in raising him after the
divorce and spent weekends with him,
Hayden points out: "My father and 
were never closer than when there
wasn?t much together." His mother, a liberal Demo-
crat who stalwartly devoted her life to
taking ?protective care? of him after
his father left the household, ?never
even involved herself with another
man? and was the type of person who
never missed a single day of work in
twenty years ?even when she was sick.?
So Hayden's idyllic, ?secure? childhood
consisted of having a father who was
rarely, if ever, there for him emotionally
and a mother who had strong guilt-
tripping, masochistic tendencies.

Is it any wonder that Hayden became
an angry young man who sought to
confirm in the larger world of political
action his true identity? Morally com-
mitted and existentially risky behavior
allowed him to achieve the recognition
and meaning he so deeply craved. Al-
though participation in the New Left
met his emotional needs, it exacerbated
his problematic relationship with his
parents when he found himself in open

rebellion against a political system that
they loyally and patriorically embraced.

\Worse yet, making revolution was
not all that it was cracked up to be.
Hayden's conviction in March 1969 in
the Chicago Seven conspiracy trial ter~
rifyingly brought home to him ?how a
seemingly ?democratic' sysrem could
actually be repressive.? Faced with the
possibility of seven years' imprisonment
or going underground, Hayden found
revolutionary leadership and martyr-
dom less appealing, whatever the emo-
tional payoff had once been. Or as
Hayden euphemistically puts it: ?i
soon realized that I could never sur-
vive underground because of my extro-
vert's need for individual expression.?

Hayden?s later reconciliation with
his parents parallels his reintegration
into mainsrream politics. By the early
seventies, he had gotten married and
become a father. He also had been
cleared on appeal of all charges stem~
ming from the demonstrations at the
Chicago convention. According to Hay-
den, in a moving moment in 1978, his
father, from whom he had been es-
tranged for over a decade, managed to
blurt out, ?Son, I?m proud of you.?
How Hayden must have longed to hear
those words! All that remained was
for the sysrem to con?rm his legitimacy.
The judge in the Chicago conspiracy
trial, Hayden notes, had told him, ?Fel-
lows as smart as you could do awfully
well under this system." With Jane
Fonda?s money and his own political
acumen, Hayden would put that theory
to the test.

What followed was a period of anti?
war lobbying efforts that culminated
in the congressional defeat of sup?
plemental military aid to the Saigon
government in 1974; an unsuccessful
but respectable (36.7 percent of the
vote] run against John Tunney, an in-
cumbent ?orthodox liberal? senator, in
the Democratic party primary elecrion
in 195 a stint as a member of Governor
Jerry Brown?s political inner circle
coupled with local political organizing
campaigns in Santa Monica and else-
where; and the holding of of?ce in the
California state legislature since 1982.

Throughout Hayden's return to the
political mainstream, he has been
plagued by his radical past, or what he
refers to as the ?political baggage?
that he still carries today. His memoirs
constitute a pubiic~relations effort to
convince the American people that

I i

 

 

he has become a dedicated family
man and a political moderate who can
be trusted with whatever political of-
?ce he chooses to seek in the future.
As much as he professes ?to tell the
truth,? he is more like the little boy he
describes in the C0nfessional wondering
?how much truth to tell the priests?
in order to avoid going to hell forever.
Nowhere in his memoirs does his credi-
bility seem more questionable than
in his reconsideration of his political
convictions.

The Vietnam War is a case in point.
Although Hayden retains the essentials
of his antiwar position and gives a
moving account of the Vietnamese
people under siege, he makes no serious
attempt to relate the war to America?s
global, neocolonial ambitions or to its
post?\World \War II counterrevolution-
ary foreign policy. Hayden claims the
war was a tragedy and a mistake, but
he never depicts it as an act of US.
aggression or as an imperialist war, as
he did on numerous occasions in the
past. He skirts these issues by present-
ing worldviews (of his parents, of cold
war liberals, of his generation, and so
on] but no analysis of his own. He
depoliticizes and personalizes the dis?
cussion of the war so that we are left
with claims like this: ?58,000 Americans
died for false pride or, worse, for no-
thing.? What he says is not false per
se; but it is a half-truth that covers
up what a more radical, structural
analysis??which he has made elsewhere
and has never publicly repudiated?
would make preeminent.

Hayden feels a need to set the record
straight on a number of errors of judg-
ment he believes he made about Viet-
nam, bur in doing so he disrorts the
historical record: he apologizes for
being insensitive to ?any anguish or
confusion I was causing to US. soldiers
or their families?the very people I
was trying to save from death and
deception.? Actually, although the anti-
war movement that Hayden led tended
to View the American combatants as
victims, and the men who sent them
to Vietnam as war criminals, the move-
ment was concerned primarily with
saving the Vzetnamere people from
?death and deception.? since they were
doing a disproportionate share of the
dying. Hayden even goes so far as to
apologize for showing ?minimal con-
cern over NLF-inflicted atrocities on
Vietnamese civilians, as at Hue during

the Tet Offensive." But this is an event
whose occurrence some historians of
the war express doubts about and, if
it occurred at all, view as, according
to Frances FitzGerald, the exception
that proved the rule of Front behavior
for all the previous years of war and
in the other cities and towns it occupied
during the Tet offensive.? Finally, in
rec0unting Jane Fonda?s trip to Vietnam
with him in 1972, where she made
broadcasts on Hanoi radio urging US.
servicemen to oppose the war, Hayden
depiCts the trip as an act of naivet?
rather than what everyone in the anti-
war movement knew it to have been:
a sincere and brave attempt, from a
platform within the victimized country,
to influence US. pilots to stop partici-
pating in a criminal war.

The most twisted thought in Hay-
den?s book lies in his claim that ?the
system had worked because the anti-
war movement prevailed, domestic
fascism was prevented, and of?cials in
the Nixon administration were driven
from of?ce in disgrace. Has Hayden
forgotten the price that was paid in
blood and treasure for these ?reforms??
Aside from the American dead and
wounded, consider the millions of
Indochinese victims. Consider, too,
Hayden?s claim that Vietnam was left
a ?wasteland.? And what of the un-

precedented heroic resistance of the
Vietnamese people? Do they, rather
than the alleged responsiveness of the
American political system, not deserve
the bulk of the credit for ending (by
winning] that barbarous war? And did
the withdrawal from Vietnam put an
end to America's military interventions
on other, more advantageous fronts?
Hayden?s claim distorts the actual na-
ture of American foreign policy and
ignores America?s extralegal, clandes-
tine support for "low intensity? wars
in the post?Vietnam War period and
the enormous unnecessary pain and
suffering such acrions continue to pro-
duce in countries like Nicaragua and
El Salvador.

Along with this kind of political
obscurantism, Hayden uses his mem?
oirs to obsequiously project himself as
a ?patriotic American.? He has some-
how managed to describe his ?rst trip
to North Vietnam as a ?very American
thing to do,? thus inadvertently giving
credibility to the defunct House Un-
American Acrivities Committee's claim
that there are un-American ways of
expressing dissent. Moreover, there is
not the slightest hint in his memoirs
of any marital problems. He stresses
nOt only close family ties, but also his
interest in baseball and ?shing. In other
words, these days he is just an ordinary

 

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The discovery of Klezmer is comparable to the
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REVIEWS 109

guy who also happens to want your
vote so that he can work to apply ?our
ideals with a new maturity to our na?
tion?s future." With every turn of the
page, he sounds more and more like a
conventional liberal politician, speak-
ing in platitudes, selling hope, and
delivering, at best, token change.
Somewhere lurking in the identity of
the Tom Hayden who was radicalized in
the sixties must reside the yearning to
make history rather than to ride it op-
portunistically to some pie-in-the-sky
dead end. Although Hayden?s memoirs

show him to be a man of strong but
at times wavering moral courage, there
are new, practical reasons that might
compel him to reassess his political
drift to the right. Jesse Jackson, in his
striking showing in the Democratic
party presidential primaries this past
year, and Bernard Sanders, the socialist
mayor of Burlington, Vermont, for the
last eight years, have demonstrated that
you can attack some of the real prob-
lems in our society and credibly com-
pete for political of?ce. Moreover,
the recent announcement of Hayden?s

separation from Jane Fonda will defeat
his attempt to portray himself as a
happily married man, thus making the
political strategy tied to that public
persona no longer viable. As a result,
Hayden may elect once again to become
the perennial outsider, the visionary
Spokesman of America?s social con-
science. He still remains one of the
few individuals in this country who
has the intelligence, ability, and fol-
lowing to play a critical role in the
reconstruction of the left. In these
times, that would be the ?patriotic?

thing to do. Cl

Current Debate: Is Tikkun Too Conservative?

Social Conservatism on the Left: The Abandonment ofRaclz'calz'sm
and tlae Collapse oft/9e Jean's/9 Left Into Faz'tla anal Family

 

Jesse Lennan

ecular and anticlerical radicalism

are important and wonderful Jewish
traditions. But Tinker! is about Judaism
and religious commitment. Although
Jews have a history of rebellion, Judaism,
as it comes to us, is, by and large,
authoritarian and patriarchal, and it
celebrates obedience to a jealous and
vengeful god. Nonetheless, I have no
quarrel with believers who want to
practice any religion. Any veteran of
the sixties, with its powerful religious
expression, would be foolish to invoke
the old-time Marxist religion of militant
atheism. But the collapse into Judaism
by onetime sixties activists and the
proselytizing of radical secular Jews
mark a retreat from radicalism. The
left?s profamily position is part of the
same package. This is the Big Chill,
born of disillusionment and contempt

 

Jesse Lennst teaches history at the Job?)
Jay College of Criminal Justice, City
University of New l?br?, and writes
American history "from the bottom up.?
This piece has been excerpted from a
speech given at the Tikkun conference.
1989 Jesse Lemr'scl).

110 TIKKUN VOL. 4, N0. 3

for feminism, and emerging from a
strategy that abandons the proud,
radical idea of honestly presenting clear
alternatives.

My critique focuses on Helena. My
argument is that, although Tz'leltzm may
be politically liberal, it is socially conser-
vative. For some of us, feminism, gay
liberation, and the rejection of the
romance of the family are crucial marks
of separation between the old world
and the new. By these standards, Tinker
is part of the old world.

Many of Toe/arms socially conser?
vative articles come from editors of,
and frequent contributors to, the mag-
azine. In no way can these views be
considered atypical, exceptions to the
magazine?s editorial stance. In any case,
why does Tile/arm rescind support for
positions that should be part of our
postsixties consensus? \Vhy argue with
the past when we should be struggling
toward the future? Instead of ques-
tioning the validity of gay and women?s
liberation, we should take the accom-
plishments of these movements as givens
and then argue about future directions.
We don?t need a ?balance,? which func-

tions to revive such ?fties social values
as ?togetherness.?

Although the Jewish emphasis on
social justice and the Prophets? radiant
visions are magni?cent, much of Judaism
is patriarchal and authoritarian, and it
smells of homophobia and' contempt
for women. Of course, this isn?t what
is about. To forge links between
Judaism and a left program, Iii/arena
must oppose these attitudes. How is
this project going?

In Tr'?lezrn?s ?rst issue, Christopher
Lasch found that he could not stomach
the notion of gay marriage, so he put
it in quotes and described it as merely
a ?living arrangement? for people who
seek to ?keep all their options open all
the time, avoiding any constraints or
demands of their own.? After a while,
Editor Michael Lerner understood how
offensive Lasch?s doctrine is, and, al-
though his social views seem generally
congruent with Lasch's, he took this
one back?but only partway. ?[GJay
families and alternate families,? Lerner
writes, ?also deserve our respect,? but
only ?insofar as they represent freely
chOSen alternatives and not simply ac-