SOURCE: Kramer, Hilton. Review of Breaking Ranks: A Political Memoir, by Norman Podhoretz. New Republic 181, no. 20 (17 November 1979): 32-5.

In the following review of Breaking Ranks, Kramer admires Podhoretz's bravery for being instrumental in establishing a liberal, anti-Communist political movement and then breaking away from that movement when its ideals became too radical.

It will never be known what acts of cowardice have been motivated by the fear of not looking sufficiently progressive.

—Charles Péguy, in Notre Patrie

Among the writers and intellectuals who came of age in this country in the 1950s, Norman Podhoretz's was the first critical voice to sound a public warning about the spiritual temper of the generation—the so-called “conformist” generation—which was just then establishing itself on the cultural scene. “It would be a mistake,” he wrote in 1957, “to accept the sobriety and composure of the young generation at face value.” The...