coauthor with David Riesman of ThenLoneh Crowd, remarked in reviewingnMills’s White Collar. “Not all salesmennare Willv Lomans.” Mills’s worknsuffered as he put more of his ownnangst into it. As Richard Hofstadternremarked to him: “You have somehownmanaged to get into White Collar angreat deal of your own personal nightmare.”nIn The Power Elite, Mills continuednto project his private torments onto ancapitalist world that he was sure was,ngoverned by some anonymous elitenthat made decisions without publicnexplanation and without subjectingnthem to the popular will. In all of thenoperations of the Invisible Hand of thenfree market. Mills detected the conspiracynof some Big Brother. But evennas Mills was growing ever more paranoid,nhe was capturing popularity bvnencouraging resentment of traditionalnauthority. This “resentiment” hadnnothing to do with the American lega­ncy of individualism and everything tondo with the do-your-own-thing flightnfrom responsibility. In the “New Left”nMills wrote:nWe cannot create a left bynabdicating our roles asnintellectuals to become workingnclass agitators or machinenpoliticians, or by play-acting atnother forms of direct politicalnaction. We can begin to createna left by confronting issues asnintellectuals in ournwork. . . . We should makenour. own separate peace.nReviewing The Causes of World WarnIII, Russell Kirk pointed out that Millsnwould only replace one elite with another,n”composed, naturally, of Millsnand his chums’.” The tragedy is thatnMills would not let himself see that hisnkind of intellectuals must inevitablynbecome failed academics trying to resurrectnrevolution in their students’.nTime and the Cross by J. Enoch Powelln”[They] assemble before daylight and recite by turnsna form of words to Christ as god. . . . I discoverednnothing else than a perverse and extravagantnsuperstition. “n—Pliny the YoungernGeorge .. Kennedy: New TestamentnInterpretation Through RhetoricalnCriticism; University of NorthnCarolina Press; Chapel HilLnRamsay MacMullen: Christianizingnthe Roman Empire; Yale University .nPress; New Haven.nThe New Testament is not a book.nIn common with the Old Testament,nto which it can in some ways benregarded as an appendix, like then.•pocrypha, it is a library. It is a librarynof books which have been arrangednalong a shelf in a most interesting andncurious manner, which could quitenpossibly have been intended to benThe Rt. Hon. [. Enoch Powell is anmember of Parliament for SouthnDown.nchronological order—i.e., order ofndate of publication.nConsequendy, almost any generalnstatement about the New Testamentnhas no better status than a generalnstatement about the contents of a librarynwould have. Each of the volumesnin this library, separate as theynare in origin, having been subsequentlyncollected and bound together, demandsnto be studied in its own right.nTo lump them together as if they werenone document and then proceed tondiscuss something called the languagenor the style or the grammar of thenNew Testament is a wholly unscholarlynproceeding.nJust as little, incidentally, is it licitnto treat them collectively as a singlensource for certain historical events.nUntil their relationship with one anothernhas been determined—until wenhave established (if we can) whethernnnManipulating relevant scenarios, academicncynics insure the continuancenof the self-proclaimed intellectual vanguard.nDefenders of genuine imaginationnprefer intelligence which cannweigh and choose for itself, enablingnstudents to surpass their teachers.nChampioning resentment at any pricenby generalizing short-term trends intonsocial essences. Mills merely deniednthe intellect any power to make commitments.n”I do not give unconditionalnloyalty to any institution, man ornstate,” Mills wrote in the “New Left.”n”My loyalties are conditioned on thenpolitics of truth as I determine thenpolitics in each and every case.” Asnalienated intellectual. Mills finally betrayednhimself—with a politics ofntruth that is no truth at all, and anconditional loyalty that is not loyalty.n”My country right or wrong” is a farnbetter choice than “myself right ornwrong.” ccnNos. 2 and 3 on the shelf were writtennby authors using No. 1, with or withoutnany other preexisting materialsn—further study or comment is procedurallynunsound.nThis protest is wrung from me bynthe essay of a professor of classics at thenUniversity of North Carolina, in NewnTestament Interpretation Through RhetoricalnCriticism. That anyone whonwas writing Greek around the beginningnof the Christian era was to somenextent, directly or indirectly, infiu-nNOVEMBER 1985113n