To my surprise at some point in the 1980s Revel found himself persuaded by Friedman. When I asked him why, he responded that the free-market economy had provided the "evidence" of its superiority. Again, Revel was an empiricist. I have always wondered why in the West, given all our putative admiration for freedom, reason, and boldness, more intellectuals did not follow the path of Revel in France or of the neoconservatives in America, that is to say the small band of liberal Democrats who broke with liberalism when it slipped into its narcissistic fantasy world in the early 1970s.
I suppose the answer is that intellectuals are no more independent-minded or courageous than members of any other social group. They are as much conformists as members of Rotary — notwithstanding all their boasts to independence and high intellect. Revel was living proof that an intellectual could break with the herd.
When I lived in Bloomington, Indiana, alongside the campus of Indiana University in the 1980s Revel visited with me for a couple of nights. He was astounded by the wealth of the university but put off by the smug conformity of the faculty. One afternoon we passed the undergraduate library that then held three million books. "Three million books," he enthused. But I lamented, the professoriate all think alike. "It is the same in Paris," he responded, shaking his head. Nonetheless, somehow he was admitted in 1997 into the Academie Francaise, where he was numbered among the 40 "immortals" who maintain the standards of the French language.
After visiting the library I took my friend to a nearby French restaurant, where my thick-set rubicund friend immediately ordered a vin rouge and fois gras. Soon we had the restaurant's French-born proprietor at our table, delighted to find the great Revel in his humble Midwestern restaurant. But Jean-Francois reminded him that he was famous for his pro-Americanism. On through the fois gras and poulet roti he advanced. Then came the salade verte and the mousse au chocolat. At the end of the meal, by the time we had exhausted every subject of the day, the great gastronome spied a fellow diner's mousse that had not been touched. "Are you finished with it?" Revel inquired. Given the right-of-way, the philosopher pounced on it. I hope he maintained that gusto to the end.