CommentnThe ambient incoherence of our reality is discounted bynmany as the classic illusion of changing times. The past alwaysnappears ordered, they say, the present chaotic. Astigmaticnperspectives are certainly a fact of life, but I can rememberntimes when things fell into congruity when someone honestlyntried to arrange them. Epochs of all-encompassing incoherencenare a part of history, but they do not constitute an organicnelement of existence.nTh, -he current wave of incoherence, I would tend tonattribute to the preponderance of magazines. Their powernseems underestimated, they are mostly perceived as a countless,nblabbing family related to two boorish giants—the daily pressnand TV. Whether or not the giants listen to them—and theyndo indeed—the synergic impact of news-opinion-leisure andnpopcultural magazines on the popular mind is tremendous.nThey shape the reading American’s Weltanschauung, hisnideology, existential patterns, behavorial preferences, moralitynand eschatology, they instruct on how to live and how to die.nThey are America’s Oxfords and Sorbonnes in Manhattanncubicles with bra-less receptionists, they concoct epistemologynfor mass-retailing. A crushing majority of Americans hasnlearned the word ethics not from Plato, but from Timenmagazine. Each week or month they feature a locust swarm ofnSophocleses in double-knit leisure suits to tell Americans aboutnfate and inevitability, Balzacs and Conrads in Gucci loafers toninform them about society and duty, blue-denim Dostoyevskisnand Freuds to elaborate on the murkiness of human souls, andncloned mini-Lenins in jogging gear to fast talk on social justice.nToday America knows about democracy, misery, choice, pain,nlove, knowledge, failure, success, genitals, value, humanness,nreason, procreation, sorrow, sacrifice and pointlessness fromnthe magazines which are hell-bent on explaining it all.nThe realm of the magazine is a large and shallow puddle innwhich the reflection of a rainbow is perfectly possible. For 30nyears it has been the Libcultural rainbow, a glossy source ofnincoherence, whose colors are not arranged according to thennatural pattern but disarrayed by the liberal orientation whichnfills the puddle. If I had to enumerate what the Liberal Culturentargets as its most insidious and implacable enemies in today’snAmerica, I would say: normalcy and common sense. It isnmainly those elements of humanity which are injured innAmerican magazines on a weekly or monthly basis. Add tonthis the magazines’ cult of transiency and vogue—and wenhave the gloomy explication of why the ERA is rejected bynwomen, taxpayers must pay money to the bureaucrats whoneffect their rapid impoverishment, plutocracy is supportingncommunist preachers, anarchy is called equality, neuroses arenhailed as progress. We seem to exist in a gigantic Helzapoppinnon a national scale, in which frantic amusement bubbles herenand there, though, at second glance, the hilarity suddenlynChronicles of Cultttrennnevaporates. Women’s Wear Daily, one of the best informednspecialty mouthpieces of the Liberal Culture, reports withnrelish on Mr. Warren Burger’s worries on a book about thencourts Messrs. Woodward and Bernstein are welding together:n”‘They’ve been going around the court saying they have allnthese secret documents, and trying to blackmail people intongiving them information,’ said Burger. ‘The problem is,nthey’re never willing to show anyone the documents. Theirntactics are a lot like the ones Joe McCarthy used.’ “nConsidering that Mr. Burger is the U.S. Supreme CourtnChief Justice, while Messrs. Woodward and Bernstein arenacknowledged highwaymen of American journalism, we cannenvisage this country drowning in a puddle—as comic as itnmay sound.nL Lt has become obvious that in this America, overrun bynthe Liberal Culture, a new concept of un-American activitiesnis slowly taking shape. The un-American position seems to benthat which fails to divorce freedom from responsibility andnhumanism from good sense. And that which does not seeninvestigative journalism, in its libcultural version, as daredevilnbravery and intellectual nonconformity. Its victims, ineptngovernment or overregulated business, are doleful underdogsnthese days; the myth of their formidability is preservednartificially, as is the myth of the righteous purity of theninvestigators. Once upon a time, un-American activities werenthose which aimed at the destruction of American values.nMisunderstandings and excessive zealotry marred the fightnagainst them: after all, a belief in Marxism was not an un-nAmerican activity. But spying for a Marxist state was, and isntoday. However, the libcultural incoherence has introducednnovelties. Today, dismantling America at home and abroadnseems to be a virtuous American activity, opposing it un-nAmerican. The Libcult insists on sentencing spies accordingnto the importance of the stolen intelligence; if their booty isnless significant, let them go free until they export the wholendefense system to Cuba or Vietnam. Then we’ll punish themnby casting at them reproachful glances from the Gulags innKolyma.nThere is a liberal dogma which states that the liberal versionnof freedom, justice, conscience, progress, pluralism is the onlynAmerican concept of these values, and the liberal press poundsnit into minds with a ruthless ferocity. In the liberal press therenis a code sentence that says that the ERA is an amendmentndesigned to “outlaw discrimination on the basis of sex.” Nonone ever mentions that there is a giant shelf of congressionaln