sions of the Left who had brokenrnthrough to the dark underside of the radicalrncause. Like Chambers, I had encountersrnwith totalitarian forces that involvedrnbetrayal and death. Like him, Irnhad been demonized for my secondrnthoughts.. . . Like Chambers, I had becomernthe most hated ex-radical of myrngeneration.”rnHere is a narcissism so inflated that itrnexplodes in a burst of pure absurdity: PicturernChambers, defying the establishment,rntaking on a man like Hiss, andrnstanding up to the power of the SovietrnEmpire. Now look at Horowitz: hernswims with the tide, not against it, andrnbreathlessly announces, at this late date,rnthat socialism is evil and the Black Panthersrnwere not Boy Scouts. As for comparingrnthe resources and power of thernSoviet Union to what is little more than arnstreet gang, Newton was no Stalin, butrnan ordinary street thug. Horowitz is nornChambers, nor even a Gitlow or a Budenz,rnbut an ordinary disillusioned liberalrnwith nothing of interest to reveal butrnhis own self-obsession.rnWhile Chambers held his audiencernspellbound with tales of secret papers inrnthe pumpkin patch, and Gitlow mappedrnthe route by which Moscow’s goldrnflowed into communist coffers, all Horowitzrnhas to offer is a couple of friendlyrndinners with an unnamed Soviet official.rnThese discussions were always held atrnthe best restaurants, and on such occasionsrnHorowitz claims to have arguedrnagainst Soviet repression; until, onernnight, as they were walking in the street,rnthe official “stuffed a thick white enveloperninto my left pocket.” Horowitz saysrnhe “knew instinctively what was in thernenvelope,” but claims to have been “sornfrightened that I didn’t dare remove itrnuntil I reached home. Without takingrnoff my coat, I went into the bedroom andrnclosed the door, laying the envelope onrnthe bed. Inside were 150 one-dollarrnbills.”rnAlthough he says he returned thernmoney “at our next meeting,” a questionrnarises: Why did he open the envelope? Ifrnhe “instinctively” knew it was money,rnthen he must have wanted to know howrnmuch. His KGB contact had done thisrnbefore: all those one-dollar bills stuffedrnmto an envelope made it look as if itrnmight be a considerable sum. Clearly,rnthe temptation to open it was too much.rnHorowitz claims to have been “enraged”rnby this incident, but this was cleariy a delayedrnreaction. Whether he actuallyrnconsidered the offer, if only long enoughrnto be disappointed (and perhaps “enraged”)rnat the paucity of the bribe, is unknown;rnperhaps the author will enlightenrnus in Radical Son, Volume II.rnThe autobiographical literature of excommunistsrnis permeated by a singlernemotion: hatred, not only of their old politicalrnidols (Stalin, Huey Newton), butrnof old friends who cross the street at theirrnapproach. Horowitz describes runningrninto an old friend in Berkeley. After beingrn”warmly greeted” by Horowitz, shernsays, “You know, David, people reallyrnhate you.” As Horowitz said of the persecutionrnof his own parents: What elserndid he expect? No one likes an informer,rnnot even those who benefit from the informationrnhe provides.rnAs a literary subgenre, the ex-communistrnconfessional reached its height withrnKoestler, and it has been downhill everrnsince. By the time the 1960’s rolledrnaround, the communist ideal was so tarnishedrnthat no one with any sensitivity orrnintelligence was being taken in anyrnlonger. The defectors from the movementrnwho bothered to detail their experiencesrnwere of a decidedly lower order,rnand the genre inevitably degenerated:rnRadical Son is not only likely to be thernlast, but also the low point of the lot.rnYet, among the Washington-New Yorkrnconservative cognoscenti, this book wasrntouted so loudly and insistently that therndin was deafening. Bill Bennett sang itsrnpraises. George Gilder effused that Horowitzrnhad written “the hrst great Americanrnautobiography of his generation.”rnP.J. O’Rourke, that master of unintentionalrnhumor, declared: “I think the lastrnpolitical book that affected me thisrnstrongly was Hayek’s Road to Serfdom”]rnHorowitz and Collier have managedrnto stay on the cutting edge of politicalrnfashion since the eariy 60’s; when it wasrnchic to shout “Free Bobby—Off thernpig!” they shouted the loudest. Whenrnthe political winds shifted, this feariessrnduo was one step ahead of the crowd.rnWhen the pendulum swings leftwardrnagain, and “extremism” on the rightrncomes under fire, what is to preventrnthese Second Thoughters from havingrnThird Thoughts? You can almost countrnon it.rnJustin Raimondo is a senior fellow at thernCenter for Libertarian Studies and thernauthor o/” Reclaiming the AmericanrnRight: The Lost Legacy of the ConservativernMovement.rnFOREIGN AFFAIRSrnNew Cops onrnthe Blockrnby Scott p. Richertrna w~ ell,” said Sam Donaldson onrnThis Week With DavidrnBrinkley” last February 23, “how manyrnforeign languages do you speak?” “Five,”rnreplied the new U.S. Secretary of State,rnMadeleine Albright. “Well, four; dependsrnon whether you count English as arnforeign language. I guess it is to me.”rnWe all know that Madeleine Albrightrnis a naturalized citizen, born in Czechoslovakia,rnand that her first language wasrncither Czech or German, but certainlyrnnot English. For the third time in a merernquarter of a century, a President of thernUnited States has turned to a naturalizedrncitizen to determine the course of ourrnforeign affairs, but despite their heavyrnaccents and frequent abuse of the Englishrnlanguage, I doubt that either HenryrnKissinger or Zbigniew Brzezinski wouldrnhave referred almost instinctively to Englishrnas a foreign language.rnTo Mrs. Alljright, however, the languagernof the United States remains a foreignrntongue. This episode could serve asrnan allegory for the entire defense teamrnthat Clinton has chosen for his secondrnterm. Strangers in a strange land, theyrnare the “new cops on the block,” ready tornprove their worth by any means necessary.rnSenator William Cohen, the new Secretaryrnof Defense, never served in thernmilitary, but the New York Times has uncoveredrnhis secret qualification for thernjob: according to an article from Januaryrn23, he has a “taste for leather bomberrnjackets when visiting military bases.”rnDuring his confirmation hearing inrnJanuary, Cohen made much of his policyrndisagreements with the administration,rnsingling out American intervention inrnthe Balkans as an example. But his disagreementsrnfollowed the conventionalrnGOP line: he never criticized the Presidentrnfor intervening, nor for any of thernAmerican bombings. The GOP leadershiprnhas consistently been more hawkishrnthan the President, calling for interven-rnJUNE 1997/43rnrnrn