is going to fight our battles harder than we can do itnourselves. Nicaragua is not threatened by communism. Wenare. Maybe, for the Nicaraguans, communism represents anhope in their misery, but at least we have pulled away fi-omnsuch despair.nLike vacationers in a shark cage, much of the West isnmindlessly taping the sights and sounds of the world as it is,noutside the fragile bars. North America is shll only ancontinent, yet to be upgraded into a planet. It must beginngauging itself by the rest of this world, instead of by its ownnfancies. No peace can be achieved by disarming oneself,nspiritually, mentally, and physically, in the face of dangersnwhich are formidable.nMy father and my mother fought with guns to transposenthe promise of life from heaven to earth. They werenYugoslav Communist Partisans in the Revolution to ushernin the millennium. Both, as commissars, told their capdvenaudiences of the coming of the New Man: noble, selfless,ngreedless, and cooperative. We lost most of our closest kinnin the Revolution and probably dispatched many others’nrelatives to oblivion. Upon hearing my father’s revolution­nLast Rightsn201 CHRONICLES OF CULTUREnMarxists have never made a secretnof their antipathy toward religion:nout of power, they scoff; in power,nthey persecute. So why is it thatnmany of the most eager defenders ofncommunism have been and continuento be priests, clergymen, andnpious laymen? This irony is thensubject of Lloyd Billingsley’s ThenGeneration That Knew Not josefn(Multnomah; Portland, OR). BiUingsleynrecounts once again the depressingntale of the Christian fellowntravelers who ignored or even justifiednthe atrocities of one of the mostntransparent villains in a century ofnpolitical gangsters, and who refusednto hear the testimonies of repentantnsinners as diverse as Malcolm Muggeridge,nAndre Gide, Arthur Koestler,nor George Orwell. Includednamong “the credulous armies of thenjust” (Muggeridge’s term) werenfound Anna Louise Strong, thenzealous clergyman’s daughter whonadmired Stalin as a man “too valuable”nto be regarded merely as an”god,” and the Very ReverendnHewlett Johnson, the “Red Dean”nof Canterbury who comparednLenin to Christ and who spoke ofnthe Soviet Union as “the salvationnof the world.” Strong justified thenREVISIONSnliquidation of the kulaks; Johnsonnapproved of Stalin’s pact withnHitler. And many other “crazednclergymen” of the day went justnas far in their adulation of Sovietnmight.nSurveying today’s religious left,nBillingsley finds no one indulgingnin “rhapsodies over Soviet economics”nnor speeches “about the humblenman Stalin bringing in the kingdomnof Christ.” What he does find,nthough, is a continuing reluctancento confront the evil of the SovietnUnion (often said to be no worsenthan America) and an overeagernessnto see the hand of God in everynThird World Marxist regime.nBillingsley attributes all this trucklingnto a hidden desire among somenChristians to be total itarians themselves.nBut the belief that ThirdnWorld Marxists are God’s chosennservants has been given theologicalnjustification and intellectual respectabilitynby the soi-distantn”liberation theologians,” especiallynGustavo Gutierrez and Jose’nMiguez-Bonino.nIn Liberation Theology (Mott;nMilford, MI), edited by Ronald H.nNash, a number of leading Christiannscholars and commentatorsn—including Michael Novak, CarlnF.H. Henry, Dale Vree, Richardnnnary spiel, his father-in-law, an incorrigible individualist andna businessman, told him: “You don’t know nothing yet!”nOnly my father’s intervention saved him from being shot asnan obstacle to the Shining Future. Yugoslavia was thenNicaragua of its age, just as previously it had been anLebanon. Deja vu is often merely faulty memory: as soon asnhe consolidated his power, Tito abolished all parties butnhis.nLike D.T. Suzuki, my parents saw that the worldncouldn’t go on in its present form. Though it had beennderived from our wish to have it mirror ourselves. Dr.nSuzuki’s world demands endless sacrifice: we are told thatnwe must evolve further, to fit the nightmare of our ownncreation. But we cannot evolve, for we have alreadynevolved. We arc what we are, and no amount of armednrevolution or scientific tinkering is going to make us lessnevil, destructive, and aggressive than we are. Those whontalk of the New Man, and of Changing Our Ways If We ArenTo Survive, are talking of death, destruction, and wholesalengelding. In our species, aggression is a means to survival;nonly females bear children, while males mate with them.nJohn Neuhaus, and Harold O.J.nBrown—offer skeptical analyses ofnthis new rapprochement withnMarx. While liberation theologynmay serve as “a corrective to thensmug self-sufficiency of bourgeoisnChristianity,” the new formulationnis “deficient both in its diagnosisnand its prescription.” Vree finds itnstrange that liberationists see innLatin American Marxists “Christiansnincognito” despite their repudiationnof Christian doctrine, andnNash is puzzled that liberationistsnhave so little to say about tyranny,npoverty, and religious persecutionnin communist lands. Neuhaus seesnin the liberationists’ willingness tonturn the Church into “a recruitmentnoffice for the revolution” yetnanother instance of “the culturalncaptivity of the gospel.” Althoughnthe contributors voice their criticismsnin more temperate and lessnpolemical tones than Billington,nthey share his perception that thenreligious left is insufficiently concernednabout freedom and is all toonwilling to be yoked in political causesnwith unbelievers. If capitalists arenbusy selling communists the ropenfor their own hanging, liberationntheologians are equally hard at worknconsecrating the barbed wire fornreeducation camps. ccn