Exit Right

February 15, 2016
Exploring why people hold the political convictions that they do, Oppenheimer profiles six of the most famous leftists to ever abandon their politics. Their histories stretch across the 20th century, with each holding a place in his generation's political left before becoming the arch-conservative of the next generation. The reasons for their conversions are as diverse as the men themselves: Whittaker Chambers suffered a spiritual crisis and became a Christian, James Burnham broke rank with the Trotskyites over ideological inconsistencies, Norman Podhoretz became alienated from the New Left after the radicalism of the 1960s and the snubbing of his memoir, David Horowitz was disillusioned by confrontations with the Black Panthers, and Christopher Hitchens joined the neoconservatives in calling for the invasion of Iraq. Ronald Reagan seems to have been a conservative all along, yet too politically naive to realize his true beliefs. Oppenheimer, more interested in reckoning with history than in judging beliefs, writes deeply and sympathetically about these men's crises. But his attempts to form a dialectical history of liberalism from their changes of heart are less convincing. These men were too idiosyncratic to ever truly reflect the larger history of the left, and Oppenheimer's profiles illuminate the men, not the movement. Agent: Melissa Flashman, Trident Media.