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Dear Editor:
Since Bernard Henri Levy, like many European intellectuals who idealize the United States, fails to understand two essential qualities about American politics and intellectuals at this particular historial juncture, he also fails to understand the true nature of the system here.
Mr. Henri Levy fails to understand that there are no independent intellectual figures here such as his truly. This means that all functions of the intellegensia are functions of different institutions such as the press, the academy, professional writers and the like. This also means that in the end, being an intellectual in this country is a career and not a calling which gives the individual a special status in the society. In other words, it is a job, and one has to keep it so one can continue to live.
The result is figures like William Kristol, who
Mr. Henri Levy would like to understand as a fellow intellectual of his status. Unfortunately, he fails to understand that William Kristol has made a career for himself, and that "career" is to be a journalist who supports the Republican Party and to do this, i.e. to do his job properly, he needs to support all of its positions and echo whatever attacks that institution makes on its enemies. To put it another way, he is a propagandist and therefore, he is willing to tow the line.
The right-wing propaganda machine of the past 25 years has also created a kind of polarization of politics that does not exist in France, or any European country. In the absence of a parliamentry system and in the absence of coalition government, if one supports the main policy tenents of a given party, one is compelled to tacitly support all of that party's positions, otherwise one might be weakening their message and delegitimizing its campaign.
In other words, he just doesn't get it, and that is often the problem foreigners, and sometimes even its own citizens, have when dealing with the United States.
Sincerely,
Arthur C. Hurwitz
