Nisbet, Robert A. "The Coercive Utopians, by Rael Jean Isaac and Erich Isaac." Commentary Magazine. 1984.

Abstract:

Who are the coercive utopians? According to Rael Jean and Erich Isaac in this valuable book, they are the people in present-day America who hold the view that man is by nature both innocent and perfectible; that man’s innate decency is tormented by the forces of industry, technology, and the needs of national defense; and that therefore extraordinary, even coercive, tactics are required for his redemption.

As prime examples of the coercive utopians, the Isaacs adduce the following: those elements in the hierarchy of the World and National Council of Churches who, against the views of the vast majority of members of these churches, do not hesitate to make financial and other donations to “the Palestine LiberationOrganization, the governments of Cuba and Vietnam, the pro-Soviet totalitarian movements in Latin America, Asia, Africa, and several violence-prone fringe groups in this country”; those environmentalists whose belief in the myth of a once immaculate continent leads them to assail the industrial and technological systems which over the past two centuries have made the American standard of living, and also of international generosity, one of the wonders of history; those “counterfeit peacemakers” who, indifferent to the threat posed by the Soviet Union, press upon the United States a nuclear freeze, one that could not but greatly erode the pattern of deterrence that has thus far protected the world from nuclear catastrophe; those members and camp followers of left-wing groups that posit honor and decency and incorruptibility in the Marxist sectors of the Third World, but hardly ever in the United States; finally, those who, shrinking from overtly revolutionary careers, enter schools of journalism, law, and theology to pursue through these professions the weakening of bourgeois democracy.

The Coercive utopians is a compact and readable account of the influence exerted upon major institutions in America by this entire array of left-leaning bureaucrats, lawyers, theologians, journalists, professors, and the like. The reseach that underlies the book is impressive, and is distinguished by an eye for trenchant detail and for diversity of evidence…

Read online on Commentary Magazine: The Coercive Utopians, by Rael Jean Isaac and Erich Isaac.