but he’s our scoundrel.” In letters to formerrnassociates at Time-Life, he arguedrnthat there were many ways to fight communism.rnMcCarthy’s way might not bernhis or theirs, but it had its uses. He refusedrnto comment publicly on McCarthyrnfor many reasons, one of which was thatrnin the long run it would hurt the anticommunistrncause.rnTanenhaus broadly implies thatrnChambers resigned from National Reviewrnand broke ideologically with BillrnBuckley on grounds of policy, even as hernsays that Chambers was “dismissed”rnfrom Time. Neither the implication norrnthe statement is true. To the end of hisrnlife Chambers harbored a deep friendshiprnwith and gratitude toward Buckley;rnhe resigned from National Review becausernthe fortnightly visit to New Yorkrnwas too taxing. It took enough out ofrnhim to be the magnet for the great andrnthe small who made pilgrimages tornWestminster and sought intellectual sustenancernthere. Tanenhaus, moreover,rnhas not the slightest understanding ofrnhow and why Chambers almost convertedrnto Catholicism, and then retreated.rnEven after that retreat he was in constantrncorrespondence with a group of intellectualrnpriests—he was four-square for thernmedieval church. Tanenhaus ought tornhave read with greater care the essayrnChambers wrote on St. Benedict forrnClare Boothe Luce’s anthology Saints forrnNow.rnThose later years tell us much aboutrnthe young man who turned his back onrnthe pounding surf of Lynbrook and contemplatedrnthe ruins of the Weimar Republic.rnIt is uncertain why a man in hisrnlate 50’s, certain that death waited behindrnthe arras, should have gone tornschool to study Russian. He had Spanishrnand French and Italian and German andrnLatin—but he felt that only throughrnthrusting himself into the language ofrnDostoevsky and Peter the Great andrnVladimir Ilyitch could he understand therncountry that sought to be the ThirdrnRome and almost brought about the endrnof Western civilization. But of greaterrnimportance is Tanenhaus’s lack of empathyrnwith a man who could, in an hour’srnconversation, bring you to a realizationrnof the contemporary crisis and shake thernpillars of your life as Samson did forrnthose in Gaza.rnWhittaker Chambers agreed with mernthat one of the most acute political statementsrnof our time was made by GrouchornMarx, when asked where he lived. “Irnmoved,” said Groucho. He also sawrnGroucho’s “If we had some ham, werncould have ham and eggs—if we hadrnsome eggs,” as a summation of liberalrneconomics. That is why he thought thatrnLudwig von Mises’ V-8 lacked severalrncylinders. And why he could appreciaternJohn Kenneth Galbraith, even as he disagreedrnwith him.rnSeveral generations have cast their pallrnon our contemporaneity since WhittakerrnChambers seized America’s consciencernby proclaiming the transcendence ofrnwhat apologetic writers now refer to asrnJudeo-Christian civilization, and exposingrnthereby what Julien Benda called therntrahison des clercs—the betrayal by thernintellectuals, if we can so dignify the mediarnand the establishment—in the eternalrncontest for men’s souls. Few now realizernhow he inspirited conservatives (or,rnas he classified them, the men of thernright) in the political battles of the 60’s,rn70’s, and 80’s. History must give himrnthis. He was sui generis, which may havernbeen the core also of Isaiah’s greatness: arngreatness that Bill Buckley and I—rnthough perhaps not Sam Tanenhaus—rncan presume to understand.rn