Stone's sense of justice is internationalist. Though proudly Jewish and hopeful for Israel, Stone wrote in 1956, "The Arab refugees weigh upon my conscience, and I believe it the moral duty of Jews everywhere to contribute when peace is made towards their resettlement." In 1970, still deploring Israel's failure to deal justly with the Palestinians, Stone wrote that Golda Meir's "coldness was unworthy of a Jewish leader. . . Leadership like hers, in forty years of siege and war, will purge the Jews of the compassion acquired in exile."
The elements of Stone's vision are held together less by theory or unified strategy than by the simple force of his eloquence and his persistent search for the truth. For example, in each of his pieces on the missile race, Stone shows how government figures contradict each other, how published reports give the lie to government statements or at least to their apparent meanings.
Stone is equally forceful in outrage or ridicule. About Nixon, Stone writes: In a realm of discourse in which words have lost all normal meaning, it is not surprising to hear that Nixon also told [C.L.] Sulzberger [of The New York Times], "I rate myself a deeply committed pacifist." Many men have been "committed" for less obvious lapses from reality.
What completes Stone's contribution, what makes his indignation and determination so refreshing, is that they are combined with an iconoclasm directed even at himself. Stone makes no claim to be the suffering crusader; his greatest joy has been the freedom to live true to his faith--a fairly pessimistic view of humanity's worst impulses mixed with a continuing optimism that the social order may hold them in check: To give a little comfort to the oppressed, to write the truth exactly as I saw it, to make no compromises other than those of quality imposed by own inadequacies, to be free to follow no master other than my own compulsions, to live up to my idealized image of what a true newspaperman should be, and still be able to make a living for my family--what more could a man ask?
Indeed, one could hardly ask more of Stone. It is true that his vision of politics springs from often contradictory roots, that he is, as Middleton says, seeking a marriage of Marx and Milton. It is even true now that the left has come out of hiding, extending a supportive hand to Stone, that the criticism Stone provides has become "respectable." But Stone's steadfast insistence on keeping both eyes open with regard to his country, the world, and himself represents the finest impulse of critical thought, the most important prerequisite to serious political writing in journalism or philosophy.
Stone's record even belies somewhat his self-appelation as "counterrevolutionary," probably in the eyes of both radicals and bureaucrats. It can be no comfort to Nixon that Stone is an idealist, not a soldier; and in an age of ubiquitous deception, Stone has proven that truth is radical.