THE SPOILED CHILD OF THE WESTERN WORLD
by HENRY FAIRLIE
350 pages. Doubleday. $8.95.
TODAY AND TOMORROW IN AMERICA
by MARTIN MAYER 217 pages. Harper & Row. $8.95.
Editorial writers, Columnist Murray Kempton once wrote, are the men who come out of the hills to shoot the wounded after the battle. For some time, many American thinkers have been picking through the still-smoking carnage and rubbish of the '60s, finishing off ideas for example, Consciousness III and the millenarian pretensions of "the movement." This is not necessarily a dishonorable exercise, although sometimes it is a...