[Vision2020] True believers

[Ralph Nielsen]

Doug Wilson, in his latest blurb in the Daily News, makes much of the  
approval of Eugene Genovese of his opinions in his book on slavery.

It would appear that Genovese and his wife, Mrs. Fox-Genovese, are  
still addicted to a dogmatic view of life. For some years it was  
dogmatic Communism and now it is dogmatic Catholicism. Here is part  
of an interview of them by The American Enterprise. They identify  
themselves with the initials TAE, as in TUSOA, contrary to  
traditional capitalization, as in USA.

Ralph

___________________________________________________________________

TAE: Do the two of you attend church, and are you believers?

MR. GENOVESE: Betsy converted to Catholicism a year ago, and I went  
to confession and returned to the Church about a week ago.

TAE: What do you think of the view that Marxism is really just  
secularized Christianity?

MR. GENOVESE: When I first heard that argument, I sneered. Over the  
years, I came to see that there was a good deal of truth in that. At  
this point I am much more in tune with the argument that Marxism and  
much of Enlightenment thought can fairly be considered a heretical  
development of the Christian religion.

MRS. FOX-GENOVESE: I was never a radical of any kind. As for the  
period in which I defined myself as a Marxist—I perfectly understand  
that no one on the Right could have understood this—it was in large  
part as a conservative reaction to the radicalism that was going on  
in the emerging women’s and cultural studies circles.

TAE: Mr. Genovese, you were not only a Marxist but also a member of  
the Communist Party and a self-described Stalinist. Having been so  
spectacularly wrong before, why should we listen to your advice on  
matters political?

MR. GENOVESE: I am painfully aware of my mistakes, and I’m not about  
to put down anybody who says, "I don’t have to listen to you." From  
the 1960s, when I was positioned on the far left, I was very active  
in insisting on a dialogue with conservatives. I always insisted that  
there were good and bad people in all political camps and that most  
people were opportunists anyway.